The State, Morality and Freedom

21. Any manipulation or destruction of originary morality (how men relate to one another economically) inevitably serves the purposes of the State. The State’s laws become the default measure of what is moral between men. The State thereby controls morality. The State stands for morality. The State has a monopoly on moral life. What is right is what is legal.

 

22. A man sent off to kill for the State is an acolyte of a higher and holy power.

 

50. To be middle class is to be totally exposed; to have an edge on nothing--To be domesticated and servile to both a job, a way of life, and a government.

 

52. To have an edge is to have a skill that liberates a man so that no boss or government can affect him. Around his edge he develops his life as project. To have an edge is to be free. (Money is not an edge.)

 

55. The middle class (read: the indebted class) are the cubicle worker slaves of the oligarchs, enslaved by an interest rate or the fear of losing their middle manager positions. The lower class are the military class, the soldiers sent to give their lives in the oligarchy’s wars and expand its empire. The stability of the oligarchy subsists in both the middle and lower classes' voluntary acceptance of their social/economic position.*
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* The State's error in the Vietnam War was not simply in having a draft, but in sending middle class men to fight alongside the lower class. The middle class is a worker slave class, not a fighting class, and to demand that the worker slaves also give up their lives is for the State to demand too much. In contrast, the Iraq and Afghan Wars, the torture and indefinite incarceration of prisoners, drone attacks in multiple countries and a Presidential 'hit list' have resulted in very little public (middle class) protest.