States are more vulnerable than people think. They can collapse in an
instant—when consent is withdrawn.
This is the thesis of this thrilling book. Murray Rothbard writes a
classic introduction to one of the great political essays in the history of
ideas.
In times when dictators the world over are falling from pressure from
their own people, this book, written nearly 500 years ago, is truly the
prophetic tract of our times.
Étienne de La Boétie was born in Sarlat, in the Périgord region of
southwest France, in 1530, to an aristocratic family, and became a dear
friend of Michel de Montaigne. But he ought to be remembered for this
astonishingly important essay, one of the greatest in the history of
political thought. It will shake the way you think of the state. His thesis
and argument amount to the best answer to Machiavelli ever penned as well as
one of the seminal essays in defense of liberty.
La Boétie's task is to investigate the nature of the state and its strange
status as a tiny minority of the population that adheres to different rules
from everyone else and claims the authority to rule everyone else,
maintaining a monopoly on law. It strikes him as obviously implausible that
such an institution has any staying power. It can be overthrown in an instant
if people withdraw their consent.
He then investigates the mystery as to why people do not withdraw, given
what is obvious to him that everyone would be better off without the state.
This sends him on a speculative journey to investigate the power of
propaganda, fear, and ideology in causing people to acquiesce in their own
subjection. Is it cowardice? Perhaps. Habit and tradition. Perhaps. Perhaps
it is ideological illusion and intellectual confusion.
La Boétie goes on to make a case as to why people ought to withdraw their
consent immediately. He urges all people to rise up and cast off tyranny
simply by refusing to concede that the state is in charge.
The tyrant has "nothing more than the power that you confer upon him
to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do
not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with,
if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities,
where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power
over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no
cooperation from you?"
Then these inspiring words: "Resolve to serve no more, and you are at
once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him
over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him,
like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own
weight and break in pieces."
In all these areas, the author has anticipated Jefferson and Arendt,
Gandhi and Spooner, and those who overthrew Soviet tyranny. The essay has
profound relevance for understanding history and all our times.
As Rothbard writes in his spectacular introduction, "La Boetie's
Discourse has a vital importance for the modern reader—an importance that
goes beyond the sheer pleasure of reading a great and seminal work on
political philosophy, or, for the libertarian, of reading the first
libertarian political philosopher in the Western world. For La Boétie speaks
most sharply to the problem which all libertarians—indeed, all opponents of
despotism—find particularly difficult: the problem of strategy. Facing the devastating
and seemingly overwhelming power of the modern State, how can a free and very
different world be brought about? How in the world can we get from here to
there, from a world of tyranny to a world of freedom? Precisely because of
his abstract and timeless methodology, La Boétie offers vital insights into
this eternal problem."
