Martin Luther King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail About Natural Law

16 April 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants--for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies--a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some -such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle--have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger-lovers." Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation. Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Published in:
King, Martin Luther Jr.

Since George Washington, U.S. First President, Guess How Many Of The U.S. Presidents Were Legitimately Elected.?

The Essence of Money

Source: Rheinische Jarhrbücher zur gesellschaftlichen Reform, Darmstadt, 1845;
Transcribed: - By Adam Buick

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,
The signet of its all-enslaving power
Upon a shining ore, and called it gold:
Before whose image bow the vulgar great,
The vainly rich, the miserable proud,
The mob of peasants, nobles, priests and kings,
And with blinding feelings reverence the power
That grinds them to the dust of misery.
But in the temple of their hireling hearts
Gold is a living god ... (V, lines 53-62)

All things are sold: the very light of Heaven
Is venal; earth’s unsparing gifts of love,
The smallest and most despicable things
That lurk in the abysses of the deep,
All objects of our life, even life itself,
And the poor pittance which the laws allow
Of liberty, the fellowship of man,
Those duties which his heart of human love
Should urge him to perform instinctively,
Are bought and sold as in a public mart
Of undisguising selfishness, that sets
On each its price, the stamp mark of her reign.
Even love is sold; the solace of all woe
Is turned to deadliest agony, old age
shivers in selfish beauty’s loathing arms ... (V, lines 177-188)

But hoary headed Selfishness has felt
Its death blow and is tottering to the grave:
A brighter morn awaits the human day,
When every transfer of earth’s natural gifts
Shall be a commerce of good words and works;
When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame,
The fear of infamy, disease and woe,
War with its million horrors, and fierce heel
Shall live but in the memory of Time,
Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start,
Look back, and shudder at his younger days. (V, lines 249-259)
(Shelley, Queen Mab)

– 1 –

Life is exchange of creative life-activity. The body of each living being, i.e., of the animal, the plant, the individual man, is the medium of its life because this is the medium of the exchange of the creative life-activity of this or any being, its inalienable means of life, hence those organs of the body which are the central points of the exchanges are also its noblest, most inalienable organs, i.e., the brain and the heart. What holds good for the bodies of the smallest units holds also for those of the largest and also for the unconscious so-called earthly bodies as for the conscious so-called social bodies. The atmosphere of the Earth, the inalienable medium of the exchange of earthly productions, is the element of earthly life; the sphere in which men exchange their social life-activity with each other - namely intercourse (Verkehr) in society - is the inalienable element of social life. Single men behave as conscious and consciously acting individuals here in the sphere of the exchange of their social life, just as they behave as unconscious individuals, as bodies, in the sphere of their bodily life-activity, in the atmosphere of the Earth. They can as little live if separated from the medium of their social life than they can live bodily if separated from the medium of their bodily life-activity - than if their life-air is taken from them. They behave with regard to the whole social body in the same way that the individual members and organs behave with regard to the body of a single individual. They die if they are separated from each other. Their real life consists only in collaboration, only in connexion with the whole social body.

– 2 –

The mutual exchange of individual life-activity, the intercourse, the mutual stimulation of individual powers, this collaboration is the real essence of individuals, their real capacity (Vermogen). They cannot realise, make use of, exercise, activate their powers, they do not bring them to life, or (if they have brought them to life) they die out again, if they do not mutually exchange their life-activity in intercourse with the fellow-members of the same community or with the parts of the same body. As the Earth’s air is the workplace of the Earth so is the intercourse of men the human workplace in which individual men come to the realisation, to the exercise of their real life or capacity. The stronger their intercourse, the stronger also is their creative power and as long as their intercourse is restricted so too is their creative power. Without their life-medium, without exchange of their individual powers, individuals do not live. The intercourse of men does not arise from their essence; it is their real essence and is indeed not only their theoretical essence, their real life-consciousness, but also their practical, their real life- activity. Thinking and doing only arise from the intercourse, the collaboration of individuals, and what is called the mystical “Spirit” is just this life-air, this workplace, this collaboration of ours. Any free activity - and there is no other since free activity that a being does not draw out of himself and so bring it about freely is not a free activity at all, at least not his but that of another being - so, any real, practical as well as theoretical life-activity is a species-act, a collaboration of different individuals. These collaborations above all realise the creative power and are therefore the real essence of each individual.

– 3 –

The human essence, human intercourse, develops, as any essence, in the course of a history through many struggles and destructions. The real essence, the collaboration of individuals of the human species, had, as all reality, a development or creation history. The social world, human organisation, had its natural history, its genesis, its history of creation, as any other world, as any other organic body. But the natural history of mankind began when that of the Earth had fully developed, when the Earth had already produced its last and highest organisation, the human body, and thus with it all its bodily organisation. The natural history of the Earth which, according to the views of the geologists, lasted for many millions of years and has been over and ended for many thousands of years; the Earth is fully developed. The natural history of mankind conversely is not yet ended; we still live in its struggles. Mankind is not yet fully developed, but its full development is near. We already see in the distance the promised land of organised mankind; we can already reach it with our eyes, this land of promise to which the whole history of mankind up till now points - although we cannot yet tread on it with our feet. It is false to see in the full development of the natural history of, in the end of the history of the creation of mankind the end of mankind itself, its “Doomsday” - an optical illusion to which were subject those who could think of no other reality than the existing one, even though they were not satisfied with it and so wanted another, and who see in the fall of their bad and in the rise of a better world the destruction of the world and the approach of the hereafter. Are also subject to the illusions of “Doomsday” those who do not believe in a better hereafter but who do not believe either in a better life in this world down here than exists at present, who make theirs the Christian dogma of the imperfection of life in this world down here but without accepting the consolation of the hereafter, who dream of infinite progress and accept no other end, no other completion, for it than death or some lifeless ghost which they call “Spirit.” The philosophers too belong to those who can imagine no other reality than the existing one; they belong to those antediluvian species who see in the fall of the old world only their own fall and in the completed organisation of mankind only death - because a correct instinct tells them that they themselves are an integral part of the old, decadent and bad, reality. If the antediluvian monsters that the Earth produced before its completion, before its maturity, in its growing-up years, had had consciousness they would have reasoned and boasted in the same way as our philosophers, theologians and priests. They too would not have believed in any superior creations, in any completed earthly forms, in men; they too would have believed that they saw coming in the decline of the vermin of the primitive world the fall of the world. But as little as the end of the Earth came with its completed condition which was rather the beginning of its real life, so little comes the end of mankind with its completed condition, i.e., with its perfection; on the contrary it is its true beginning.

– 4 –

A necessity in human development, in the formation or natural history, necessary in the creation of men, is their mutual destruction arising from the contradiction of their intercourse in the midst of their isolation. The history of the creation of the human essence, of mankind, appears first as a self-destruction of this essence. Men already sacrificed themselves to their heavenly and earthly idols long before there was a heavenly and earthly, religious and political economy to justify it. They destroyed themselves because in the beginning they could only maintain themselves as isolated individuals, because they could not collaborate harmoniously as members of one and the same organic whole, as members of mankind. If an organised exchange of products, an organised activity, a collaboration of all had already been possible straightaway men would not have needed to wrest or acquire as isolated individuals on their own account their material and spiritual needs through naked force or refined deceit; they would not have had to seek their spiritual and material goods outside themselves, they would have formed themselves by themselves, that is to say they could have exercised their faculties in community. But this amounts to saying that if men had come into the world as a formed human essence they would not have needed to pass through a period of formation. In other words, if mankind had not begun with isolated individua1s men would not have had to fight their way through egoistic struggles to obtain their still extraneous (fremd) and exterior goods. At the end of these brutal struggles for our own essence, now that our essence is formed at least theoretically, we can indeed conceive of and bring into being a human society without self-destruction, a reasonable, organic, human society with many-sided, harmonious collaborating productions, with many-sided organised spheres of activity corresponding to the various life-aims, the many-sided activities of men, so that each formed man can freely exercise his faculties and talents according to his vocation and inclination. This is possible now since now the human capacity, the human essence (the production and communication of the consumption of products for the purpose of further production) has developed to excess. Natural forces no longer stand opposed to man as extraneous and hostile; he knows them and uses them for human ends. Men themselves are drawing closer every day. The barriers of space and time, religion and nationalism, the barriers of individuals are crashing down together, to the terror of the narrow-minded but to the delight of the enlightened friends of: man! We need do no more than .recognise the surrounding light of freedom, no more than dismiss the nightwatchman, so as to be able to all clasp hands joyously. Yes, now mankind is major; nothing prevents it from at last coming into its heritage, the fruit of many thousands of years’ slave labour and e1emental struggles! Indeed its present misery itself proves this most convincingly; for it is not the consequence of the shortage, but of the excess of productive capacities. England penetrates into the most remote parts of the Earth in search of consumers, but the whole Earth is or soon will be too small a market for its products which constantly rise in geometric progression while its consumers increase in arithmetic. progression so that the Malthusian theory -according to which, as is known, the consumers should increase in geometric and the products in arithmetic progression - is in actual fact the opposite of the truth. Yes, men are now ripe for the total enjoyment of their freedom or their life. This was not so at the beginning. The productive capacity of men had first to be formed, the human essence had to be developed. To begin with there were only raw individuals, when the simple elements of mankind which either had not yet come into contact with each other and, like the plants, obtained their nourishment, their bodily life-needs, quite directly from the Earth or they only came into contact with each other by exchanging their forces in a brutal, animal-like struggle. The first form of the exchange of products, of intercourse, could thus only be robbery with murder (Raubmord), and the first form of human activity could only be slave labour. On this still uncontested basis of historical right no organised exchange could occur: there could only be a sell-off (Verschacherung) of products - which is therefore what occurred. The laws resting on this historical basis have only regulated robbery with murder and slavery, they have only raised to a rule, to a principle what was an the beginning only contingent, unconscious and involuntary. History up to now is nothing other than the history of the regulation, the justification, the completion and the generalisation of robbery with murder and slavery. How finally it has come to this that we all without exception and at every moment sell off our activity, our creative power, our capacity -- how the cannibalism, the mutual robbery with murder and slavery, with which the history of mankind had begun has been raised to a princip1e - and how first and foremost the organic community can arise from this general exploitation and universal servitude, that shall be demonstrated in what follows.

– 5 –

The individual raised to an end, the species degraded to a means; that is the inversion of human and natural life in general. Man consciously sacrifices his individual life to the life of the species if they both enter into collision. Even non-thinking beings, the animals, who feel forget their instinct, their drive for self-preservation when this comes into collision with their species-essence or creative instinct. Love, wherever it also appears, is more powerful than egoism. The hen goes into an unequal fight if she must defend her chicks against attack. Cats voluntarily go hungry for days on end to satisfy their species instinct and by grief over the loss of their young which are habitually. taken from them by cruel men. Nature is only always concerned with self-creation, with the preservation of the life of the species, of actual life-activity. Individuals always die in the natural world and they only commence to die off from the moment when they have ceased to be capable of procreation. Indeed with many individuals of the animal world the day of marriage is the day of death. With man who can perform a species-act through thinking, feeling and willing the gradual dwindling of all its spiritual forces is a sure herald of his natural death. The natural conception of the world which sees life itself in the species and the means to life in the individual bases itself on this world order. The inverted conception of the world reigns rather in the condition of egoism because this condition is itself an inverted world. For our philistines, our Christian shopkeepers (Krämer) and our Jewish Christians the individual is the end, the life of the species being rather the means to life. They have created for themselves a world apart. The classic theoretical form of this inverted world is the Christian heaven. In the real world the individual dies; in the Christian heaven he lives for ever. In the real world the species acts in and through the individual; in heaven the essence of the species, God, lives outside the individuals and these are not the medium through which God lives and through which the essence of the species lives but, conversely, the individual lives by means of God. The essence of the species is here degraded to the means for the life of the individual. The Christian “I” needs his God; he needs him for his individual existence, for his holy and immortal soul, for the salvation of his soul! “If I did not hope to participate in immortality, I would care neither about God nor about the whole of dogmatics.” The whole essence of Christianity is contained in these few words from a very pious man. Christianity is the theory, the logic of egoism. Conversely the classic ground of egoistic practice is the modern Christian world of shopkeepers (Krämerwelt): here also is a heaven, a fiction, an imaginary and pretended benefit for the life of the individual, derived from the sick egoistic madness of depraved mankind. The individual who wants to live not through himself for the species, but through the species for himself alone, must create practically an inverted world. In our world of shopkeepers the individual is practically, just as in the Christian heaven he is theoretically, the end and the species only the means to life. Here also the life of the species does not manifest itself through the individual; here as in heaven the life of the species is placed outside of individuals and degraded to a means; here there is money. What God is to the theoretical life, money is to the practical life in this inverted world: the externalised (entäussert) capacity of men, their sold-off life-activity. Money is human value expressed in figures; it is the mark of our slavery, the indelible brand of our servitude. Money is the congealed blood sweat of the miserable wretches who bring to market their inalienable property, their most personal capacity, their life-activity itself, to barter it for a caput mortuum, a so-called capital and to consume cannibalistically their own fat. And all of us, we are these miserable wretches! We can indeed emancipate ourselves theoretically from the inverted consciousness of the world; but as long as we are not also out of this inverted world practically we must, as the proverb says, howl with the wolves. Yes, we must constantly alienate (veräussen) our essence, our life, our own free life-activity, in order to eke out our miserable existence. We constantly buy our own individual existence at the loss of our freedom. And of course it is not just us proletarians but also us capitalists who are these miserable wretches who suck their blood and eat themselves. All of us, we cannot freely act our life, nor can we create or work for each other. We all can only eat up our life; we can only mutually devour each other if we don’t want to die of starvation. For this money which we eat up and which we work to acquire is our own flesh and blood which in its externalisation (Entäusserung) must be acquired, captured and eaten up. We are all - this we are not allowed to hide from ourselves - cannibals, beasts of prey, bloodsuckers. We are so as long as we don’t act all for others, but have to gain our living each for himself.

– 6 –

Money is, according to the principles of political economy, the general means of exchange, thus the medium of life, the human capacity, the real creative power, the real wealth of mankind. If this externalised wealth really corresponded to intrinsic wealth then each man would be worth exactly as much as the cash or money values that he owned - just as a consistent theology values a man by the extent of his orthodoxy, so a consistent economics values him by the weight of his purse. But in fact economics like theology is not at all concerned with men. Economics is the science of the acquisition of earthy goods just as theology is the science of the acquisition of heavenly goods. But men are not goods! For the purely “scientific” economist and theologian men have no value. Where conversely both these holy sciences are applied, thus in the practice of our modern world of shopkeepers, man is really only valued according to his pursue, just as in the practice of the Christian Middle Ages, which still flourishes in part, man was only judged according to his professions of faith.

– 7 –

Money is the product of mutually estranged (entfremdet) man, of externalised man. Money is not the “noble metal” - we now have paper money, State money and bank money than metallic money. Money is what has come to pass for human creative power, the real life-activity of the human essence. Hence capital is, according to the definition of political economy, accumulated, piled-up labour and, where production arises from the exchange of products, money is exchange value. What cannot be exchanged, what cannot be sold, thus has no value. Where men can no longer be sold they are no longer worth a penny, but only when they sell or “hire out” themselves. The economists even claim that the value of a man would increase to the extent that he was no longer sold and was consequently obliged, in order to live, to himself sell himself; they draw the conclusion from this that the “free” man has more “value” than the slave. This is quite true. Hunger is a much stronger impulse to work than the slaveowner’s whip and greed for money a much stronger incentive for the private owner to exert his energies than the condescending smile of the satisfied lord. The economists forget only that the “value” of “freedom” must fall to the extent that it becomes more general. The more “free” men there are rushing to do slave labour, i.e., the more there are on sale, the cheaper they will be or are. Accursed competition ruins the price of “free” men and in fact on the basis of egoistic private acquisition there is to the other way to restore the “value” of men than the re-establishment of slavery.

– 8 –

Ancient slavery is human intercourse based on robbery with murder in a natural form; and it is also the most human form. It is natural and human that one only lets oneself be sold unwillingly; conversely it is unnatural and unhuman to oneself to sell oneself voluntarily. The modern world of shopkeepers could only come to this high point of baseness, of unnaturality and inhumanity by means of Christianity, the unnaturality par principe. Man had first to learn to look down on human life so as to externalise it voluntarily. He had to unlearn considering the real life, real freedom as a priceless good so as to offer these for sale. Mankind had first to pass through the school of servitude so as to come to embrace slavery as a principle. Our modern shopkeepers are the worthy descendants of the mediaeval serfs as these latter, the Christian slaves, were the worthy descendants of the heathen slaves. Just as mediaeval serfdom was an intensified ancient slavery so the modern Christian world of shopkeepers is an intensified mediaeval serfdom. The Ancients had not yet raised the externalisation of human life to Christian self-externalisation, nor the decomposition of human society to consciousness, they had not raised these factual situations to a principle. The Ancients were naïve: they simply accepted what lay in the essence of the world they moved (and in which we still move today): the externalisation of man. Just as religion received from the Ancients the human sacrifices that it demanded so politics also received its without seeking to establish this “scientifically” nor to hypocritically explain it away in the face of a still slumbering bad conscience. It is when the bad conscience woke up that Christianity began. Christianity is the sophistry of the awoken bad conscience of mankind, it is the attempt to be freed from the reproaches of this bad conscience. But the Christian does not get rid of his qualms of conscience by freeing miserable mankind from its misery, but by convincing himself that this human misery is not an inversion but rather something that is right, that the real life is rightly the external life, and that the externalisation of life is the normal condition of the world in general. The Christian draws a distinction between the “internal” and the “external” man, between reality and non-reality. The human “spirit,” i.e., the remains that are left over when all that is “bodily” has been removed (and what is left over is invisible because it is precisely nothing), is thus holy and inalienable life of man; but the human “body” is the impious, bad, condemnable, external and thus also alienable (veräusslich) life. The unreal man cannot sell himself as a slave; the real man is anyhow a vile thing and so not only can he but he should be in misery: the kingdom of heaven belongs to the miserable. The direct consequence of this doctrine was that slavery was left to exist factually and was even considered to be legitimate, except that it was no longer men but simple bodies that were being sold: a greater progress but a progress deeper into the morass. Afterwards once the principle of saleability was acquired in this way the route was open for the universal servitude, for the general mutual and voluntary selling-off of our shopkeepers.

– 9 –

The essence of our modern world of hucksters, money, is the realised essence of Christianity. The shopkeeper-state, the so-called “free” state is the promised kingdom of God, the world of shopkeepers is the promised kingdom of heaven, just as conversely God is only idealised capital and heaven the theoretical world of shopkeepers. Christianity discovered the principle of saleability but it was not concerned with the application of its principle. For, for it, reality was evil and nothing, thus it could not concern itself at all with reality in general and so not with the realisation of its principle. Christianity was quite indifferent to the fact that men externalised themselves really, i.e., that they became bondsmen, bodily slaves. This “external” practice it abandoned to the “external,” “worldly” authorities. Real servitude in spite of its theoretical justification was purely contingent as long as this was still more or less acceptable in theoretical externalisation, in the Christian faith, as long as this had not been brought into Christian practice. To begin with Christianity changed nothing of the reality of classical slavery; existing slavery remained - and was only enriched by a principle. But a new principle is not a new existence, a distinction very current with our new Christians. the last philosophers. Who can be surprised at such cleverness? When only a theory is given - and Christianity like philosophy has only given a theory - the relationship to the practice of life will be indifferent; the theory is a truth, taught and learned, given and received “for itself” and not for the sake of application. Thus in the Middle Ages as in Antiquity whether a man became a real slave or whether he remained in the “free” world was quite contingent. The distinction between Mediaeval serfdom and Ancient slavery lay only in the idea. Conversely in the reality there was not the slightest difference between them. The one was neither better nor worse than the other. In the Middle Ages a man could as little make a claim to real freedom in virtue of his essence than in Antiquity; in Antiquity this essence was not yet known and for this reason was not recognised, but in the Middle Ages the human essence was only recognised in “spirit” and in “truth,” in the divine beyond and for this other reason was not recognised in the reality of life. So in the Middle Ages as little as in Antiquity the problem was not to make man in general, i.e. ., each man, into a real slave. In the one case as in the other therefore there still existed some freedom: in the Middle Ages as little as in Antiquity there existed in the facts, i.e., contingently, alongside those “some” men who according to Aristotle were “born” for “slavery” also “some” free born, “well born” or “very highly born,” “highly born” men. In the reality servitude was thus still exchange based on robbery with murder in a natural form. Mediaeval serfdom was not in the reality a self-externalisation of men and it could not be; for man cannot make himself into a direct, natural bondsman. The direct life of man, his natural body, can be appropriated only by other men. Direct bondage implies men who are not bondsmen. The serf of the Middle Ages could not own serfs; he owned nothing - not even his own body was his own property - so he could not own other bodies. If the Christians had been interested in legislating for this world down here they would have had to quickly realise that the “worldly” situation still contradicted their principle and that there still reigned here much too much “naturalness.” But they were not interested in this because they were theoretical egoists. Nevertheless when in the course of time, having become enlightened and practical, they wanted to put Christianity into practice down here, when they wanted to apply “pure” Christianity, to realise the “Idea,” it was discovered that the “spiritual” freedom and equality proclaimed by Christianity was in no way realised. To introduce into life the clever distinction between body and spirit one had to go to work with much more cleverness than the purely theoretical egoists had done. A form of social life had to be found in which the externalisation of man took shape as universally as in the Christian heaven. The free spirits without bodies had to appear down here as well: a colossal nonsense due to the cleverness of our modern Christian-trained law-givers and political economists. Christianity is realised in our world of shopkeepers.

– 10 –

The modern law-givers, who as enlightened practical Christians could not be kept quiet with the law-giving of the hereafter, thus wanted to have the Christian world, its heaven, on Earth they had to make the blessed spirits of heaven appear down here. But such a conjuring up of spirits was no witchcraft: it had all already been prepared and the modern law-givers could therefore bring about this conjuring up even though they were not witches. One needed only to sanctify the factual already existing private man of the mediaeval bourgeois society (which emerged from serfdom) who had disposed of, abstracted himself from all that belonged to his species-life and who had ceded it to God in heaven, i.e., in theory, and to money on Earth, i.e., in practice. It is this dead relic of real man, this abstract personality, that it sufficed to sanctify; thus was the sexless individual of the Christian heaven was also realised in this world down here. In other words, it only needed to happen for politics and economics with regard to practical life what up till then had happened for religion and theology with regard to theoretical life. The practical as well as the theoretical, externalisation of man only needed to be raised to a principle. Thus was heavenly egoism also achieved on Earth. This is what was done. Practical egoism was sanctioned by declaring men as isolated individuals, as abstracted naked persons, to be real men, by proclaiming the rights of man to be the right of independent men, thus declaring that the independence of men from each other, their separation and isolation, was the essence of life and freedom, and stamping isolated persons as free, true and natural men. Logically these monads should not have been allowed to enter any more into direct intercourse with each other - which in our intercourse based on robbery with murder simply meant that they should no longer be brought into intercourse, should no longer be directly bought and sold. This direct intercourse, direct trade in men, direct slavery and serfdom had to be abolished, otherwise men would have continued to be dependent on each other. In the place of direct had to come indirect servitude, in the place of factual had to come principled servitude, that which made all men free and equal, i.e., isolated and dead. But with the abolition of factual slavery robbery with murder is not abolished, only direct robbery with murder is. It was only through the application of logical egoism that ancient and mediaeval slavery was now abolished. Above all, the principle of slavery - the externalisation of the human essence through the isolation of individuals and the degradation of this essence to a means of existence for these individuals - could now be brought into being universally. The principally established egoism of the modern world of shopkeepers removes down here as well as in the hereafter, theoretically and practically, all direct intercourse, all direct life and allows this only as a means for private existence. But where all human intercourse, all direct human activity, is abolished and can be used only as a means to egoist existence; where all intercourse from natural love, sexual relations, to the exchange of the thoughts of the fully educated world, is not feasible without money; where there are no practical men but cashed-in and sold-off men; where each emotion must first be converted into cash so as to be able to come into being; there heavenly spirits have travelled down to Earth, there dehumanised man is also down here, the “bliss” of heaven has become the “happiness” of down here, theoretical egoism has become practical: the bare fact of real slavery has become a consistently-applied principle.

– 11 –

The divorce between the private man and the community, between home life and public life, has always existed factually; for it is nothing other than the divorce between person and property. The “personality” separated, removed from all its means of existence, this ghost without body or life, has chased its lost body since the beginning of history and it searched for it sometimes in the heavenly beyond, in God, the granter of eternal, far away and never-accessible bliss, sometimes in money, the granter of eternal, far away, this-worldly and never-accessible happiness. This divorce between person and property, which was factual as long as religion and politics were factual, only needed to be recognised and sanctioned as a principle; thus it was therewith expressed that only money was the essence of the community or State and that man was a bare wage-bearer or more exactly only a bearer of a tattered moneybag. In the modern essence of the State it is thus also not man but the moneybag that is the law-giver - and just as the private man .represents the holy “personality” so conversely the citizen represents the holy “property.” Just as formerly the law-givers received from God. their fully-developed power they now receive it from property, from money. The holiness of “property” detached and abstracted from the person, from man, presupposes the holiness of the naked, empty “personality” detached and abstracted from its property, and vice versa. This abstract, externalised, exterior and a1ienable “property” can only appear in its holy purity separated from all human-ness if, in the same way, the “personality” appears in its holy purity separated from all real property. A clear frontier is thus drawn around each individual inside of which should be found the holy personality. These holy personalities are the blessed spirits of heaven on Earth; they are the bodies of these shadows and their frontier is their outer skin. But the actual atmosphere of man which in heaven is God, the superhuman good, is on Earth the extra-human, unhuman, touchable good, the thing, the property, the product which has been taken from the producer its creator, the abstract essence of intercourse, money. Thus the “person” was pronounced holy not because it was a human essence (its essence is quite the contrary torn from it, general human-ness not entering into account in egoism) but because it is an “I"! On the other hand “property” was pronounced holy again not because it was human (it is certainly only a thing and not even a superhuman thing like God in heaven, but only a thing exterior to man), it was rather pronounced so because it is the means of egoistic existence, because it is needed by an “I” (in the practice the egoism of the hereafter becomes touchable). But the egoism which only wants to conserve the person, naked, separated and independent from its natural and human environment, from its physical and social atmosphere, in a lifeless, inorganic, inactive, stone-like existence, egoism which feels no further than its outer skin and sees no further than the end of its nose - this limited essence destroys rather the real life of the very individual. It has not occurred to the wise Christian law-givers that man can not be separated from the atmosphere in which he breathes without suffocating in his miserable solitude; that his natural and physical life concerns not only what is within the traced frontiers of the body but the whole of nature; that his spiritual or social activity concerns not only the creations, ideas and feelings which remain within him but all the products of social life. They have not therefore considered that man cut off from his environment was an abstracted, skinned being as little alive as the raw animal flesh from which the hide has been removed, as a breathing creature which has been deprived of air. They have deprived man of social life-air and have left him free to surround himself with the fumes of money, this materialised spirit or God, and to survive as he can. And this holy corpse set in spirit they have proclaimed to be free man, inviolable, holy and eternal personality! What do these holy corpses do in order to conserve themselves? They seek to mutually deprive each other of the spirit, their abstract essence without which they decompose; they rob each other so as not to be without property - t hey murder each other in order to live, i.e., to be able to exist pitifully! It was thought that human freedom and equality had been created whereas a freedom of beasts of prey based on the equality of the dead had been consistently achieved. And it is this freedom that has been named the natural freedom of man! What enlightened law-givers! They spoke to poor men along the following lines: “You are free by nature and your natural freedom, your naked personality must remain your inviolable, inalienable property. But as concerns your social life (and that of course concerns everything, for you cannot prolong your natural life if you do not acquire the means of life produced by society) and so as concerns your life you must struggle isolatedly with each other. You must use your natural freedom to acquire your means of life. You only acquire them by alienating your natural freedom, but alienate it voluntarily! Nobody is forced to alienate his natural freedom, to sell, rent or hire himself, if he prefers to die of hunger. But take care not to disturb the others, who have understood better, from cashing in, from converting into money their natural freedom, take care not to disturb these honest people in their business! You want to earn a living, so you must voluntarily offer your natural freedom for sale, as do all other honest people. Thus if you have acquired something you can in your turn buy and use the natural freedom of others.”

The trade in humans, the trade in human freedom, in human life, is today too universal to be able to be seen at first glance. Quite literally one cannot see the wood for the trees. It is by no means only the propertyless who sell off their freedom against means of existence. For the more someone has “earned” the more he wants to “earn” - in the end he wants to suck up the whole world for his private purpose. Yes, the trade in our own freedom and in the freedom of others will be so usual that in the end we will be so steeped in our slavery that no suspicion, no trace of an idea of free activity, of the true life will remain any more. The slavery is more visible for the propertyless whereas for the propertied it is more a state of mind. But for this race of born slaves, even visible slavery is invisible! Our working men and women, our day labourers, valets and maids who are glad to find masters are, according to our modern concepts, free workers; and the master who employs very many hands and feeds very many mouths is an “honourable (normally very broad-minded) useful member of bourgeois society” ... But what about those blacks in “free” North America who in exactly the same way as our “free” workers work for masters, those slaveowners who in exactly the same way as our honourable, broad-minded and useful members of bourgeois society employ very many hands and feed very many mouths? Oh how unchristian! In any event, there is a distinction between the “shameful” trade in men on the coasts of Africa and the honourable trade in men on our doorsteps! Yes, and what is more, there is an essential distinction between the modern slavery of Christian America and the ancient slavery of heathen Greece! The Greeks only had slaves to be able to devote their services to the community, to live in freedom, to cultivate the arts and sciences in their free time; the Ancients did not yet have machines which would have made slaves, the human machines, unnecessary, but if they had had modern inventions, as Aristotle clearly stated, they would not have kept slaves to pander to their greed. But the Moderns, the Christians, only buy men because bought men could work more cheaply than hired men; conversely they declare this trade in men shameful as soon as it threatens to be less profitable or to be very dangerous for the existence of the shopkeepers. So what about the trade in men on our doorstep! What is the essential difference! With us slavery is no longer one-sided, it is mutual: not only do I make you a slave but you make me a slave, but we do not rob each other directly of our freedom - that would not be feasible - but we mutually tear from each other the means of freedom and life. As we can no longer be sold against our will we must sell ourselves voluntarily! In fact we can no longer sell ourselves, no, we must continually rent, hire ourselves; we must, as has been said, continually and completely voluntarily give up our freedom. Yes, our modern law-givers have clearly distinguished between sale and hire ... Such a cleverness is frightful! But ah, the cleverness of our modern law-givers is nothing but slave sense. As has been said, the visible slavery of our modern world of shopkeepers is itself an invisible one.

– 12 –

The task of realising Christianity, i.e., the task of absolutely removing all and any capacity from man in his real, actual life, in practice and not just in imaginary theory and of attributing to him an imagined, chimerical essence, the task of, under the pretence of making a tangible heaven on Earth, making a just as tangible hell on Earth, the task of removing from man in social life all human life-air, of bringing him under the air pump of egoism and of interpreting the struggle to the death of the miserable as the normal life-activity of men, this task the world of shopkeepers has solved! Compared with the relations of our society, Antiquity and also the Middle Ages are still human. Mediaeval society with its whole detestable appendage of barbarous laws and institutions did not entirely deform men, as modern society does. In the Middle Ages indeed beside the serfs who were and had nothing there were also men who had a social possession and a social character, who were something. The estates and corporations, although they were only egoistic associations, had a social character if also only a limited one; the individual could flourish in his social sphere of activity and unite himself into the community even though only in a limited way. It is quite different now where the formula for universal servitude has been discovered. The social life of men is now completely deprived of all noble impulses. There is no social possession, no living property, there are no more men who really have or are something. This general rubbish (Plunder) of which it is imagined that in it something is owned is a phantom which is strived for in vain! For in what consists the true social property? Surely only in the means to live and act in society. Property is the body of social man and as such the first condition of social life, just as the natural body, the natural property, is the first condition of life in general. But what is our social property? This general rubbish, this money, is not an organic, living body. Yes, it should represent the social body, the organic species-life, social intercourse, but it cannot do so because it is by nature inorganic, unarticulated, undifferentiated, nothing other than a dead mass, a sum and a figure. How can the value of a living being, of man and his highest life and activity, how can the value of social life be expressed in sums, in figures? One can arrive at such nonsense only after having robbed the real life of its soul, after having dismembered and divided it, and after having placed a half for the hereafter and a half for this world down here. Imagine a world of spirits without bodies, thus a chimera, in face of a world of bodies without spirit and without life, a dead matter, (another chimera), then imagine that these bodiless spirits run after this soul-less matter to grab from it more or less large pieces and drag them after them, and you have a faithful picture of the chimerical world in which we live. We can indeed acquire and obtain some of this dead, soul-less, inorganic matter, some of this rubbish after which we chase like ghosts after their lost bodies; but we do not thereby have any real living property or social possession, something which determines and conditions our life and our activity in society, our social activity, but only the materialised Christian God, the spirit or spirits in which we can conserve our earthly corpse, maintain it in a dead, stone-like existence. Money can never ever become property; it must rather be considered by all not yet corrupted human nature as something so external, so little the property of man that the intimate attachment between the possessor and his possession which constitutes the character of any true and real property appears here as the most revolting and despicable depravity. He who on the other hand identifies with his property, with his real social possession, to the point of being as intimately attached to it as the soul is to the body; the man who fills his post so fully that a separation of him from his sphere of activity is just unthinkable (a phenomenon that is now the exception because money is now the content of all social efforts), is a man of honour, a true man. For it is not the Christian and philosophical elevation above the common life but the devotion, the life and activity for others that makes man man. So the attachment of the possessor and possession is also the character of real and so of social property as well as of natural property in general. All that I have appropriated really, and so my living property, is intimately attached to me and must and should be so. But what is someone who is intimately attached to our so-called property, to money-property? Who is so identified with his money that he is not separated from it? A miserable wretch! Nevertheless we must consider this universal rubbish as so much our first condition of life, so much our indispensable property, that we cannot conserve ourselves without it. You must therefore constantly strive to appropriate something that cannot be appropriated, that always remains far, on the other side for you. You can possess with your money only a soul-less body to which you can never give a soul, which can never become your property! You must consider yourself happy to be able to exchange your own body, your own flesh and blood, your life-activity, for this rubbish, happy to be able to sell yourself -- something which in the Middle Ages and Antiquity was considered at the least as a misfortune. You must consider yourself happy to be a modern bondsman; for you are always exposed to the danger of falling back into the original condition of the blessed spirits which the law-givers have brought down from the Christian heaven and which they have proclaimed the normal condition of “natural” man - you are always exposed to the danger of becoming a pure, free, naked person!

– 13 –

The world of shopkeepers is the practical world of illusion and lies. Under the appearance of absolute independence there is absolute want; under the appearance of the most living intercourse there is the most deadly separation of every man from his fellow men; under the appearance of an inviolable property guaranteed to everyone the capacity of everyone is taken from them in reality; under the appearance of general freedom there is general servitude. No wonder that in the realised world of lies dishonesty is the rule and honesty the infringement, that baseness should have all the honours and the man of honour should fall into misery and shame; that hypocrisy celebrates its triumph and is taken as the truth; that there should be division amongst the majority and determination amongst the minority; that finally the freest understanding is the most destructive and conversely the narrowest servility is the most conservative element!

– 14 –

The isolated individual, separated from his roots, from his life-element, as a rotten fruit falling from a living tree and thereby perishing, can only be artificially removed from his decomposition or conserved. A living being does not conserve itself but manifests itself, produces itself anew at each moment. But in order to be able to live really, i.e., to manifest or produce themselves, the various isolated members of one and the same organic body must be indissolubly linked to each other as well as to their communal life-elements or materials; they and their bodies and their life-atmosphere must not be separated from each other. This separation, isolation and disintegration of individuals is the characteristic of the animal world, of egoism. And mankind has had this animal characteristic till now because it was still being created; for the animal world itself is nothing other than developing mankind in creation. In other words, mankind has a double history of creation: the first is that of its still unconscious or bodily existence and this we meet in the animal world; the second creation history, which follows from and after the first and which completes it, exists wholly and completely; this creation is that of its conscious, spiritual or social existence and this we meet in the social animal world. We now find ourselves at the summit, at the culminating point of the social animal world; we are thus now social beasts of prey, fully-developed conscious egoists who sanction in free competition the war of all against all, in the so-called rights of man the rights of isolated individuals, of private persons, of the “absolute personality,” and in freedom of trade mutual exploitation, thirst for money. This thirst for money is nothing but the thirst for blood of the social beast of prey. We are no longer grass-eaters like our good-natured ancestors, who indeed were also social beasts but were not yet beasts of prey, the great majority of whom let themselves be fed like good-natured domestic animals. We are bloodsuckers who mutually skin and devour each other. Just as the animal tastes in blood only his own life in an animal-like, brutal way, so man tastes in money his own life in a brutal, animal-like, cannibalistic way. Money is the social blood, but externalised, spilt blood. The Jews had the world-historic mission in the natural history of the social animal world of developing the beast of prey out of man; they have finally fulfilled their mission. The mystery of Judaism and Christianity has been made public in the modern Jewish-Christian world of shopkeepers. The mystery of the blood of Christ, like the mystery of the old Jewish blood cult, appears here finally completely unveiled as the mystery of the beast of prey. In ancient Judaism the cult of blood was only prototypic; in the Christian Middle Ages it was realised theoretically, ideally, logically, i.e., the externalised, split blood of mankind was consumed really but only in the imagination, as the blood of the man-God. In the modern Jewish-Christian world of shopkeepers this bent and drive of the social animal world no longer comes out either symbolic or mystic but as wholly prosaic. In the religion of the social beasts of prey there was still some poetry. It was not at all the poetry of Olympus, but indeed that of Blocksberg. The social animal world first became common and prosaic when nature again enforced its rights and the isolated man, this pitiful slave of Antiquity and serf of the Middle Ages, no longer wanted to be satisfied with heavenly nourishment; when he began to struggle for material instead of for spiritual treasures and when he wanted to play out his externalised life, his split blood in a visible purse rather than in an invisible stomach. So the holy juggling tricks became profane, heavenly trickery became earthly, the poetic fight of God and the Devil became a prosaic animal fight and the mystical theophagy became a public anthrophagy. The church of God, the heavenly vault where the priest, the hyena of the social animal world, celebrated an imaginary funeral meal changed itself into the money State, into this earthly battlefield where beasts of prey with equal rights suck each other’s blood. In the money State, the State of free competition, all privilege and all distinctions of rank come to an end. There reigns, as has been said, a poetry-less freedom of beasts of prey based on the equality of death. In face of money kings are no longer entitled to conquer as the lions of the animal-men, just as little as the gloomy priests still have the right to refresh themselves with the smell of corpses because they are their hyenas. Rather have they only the right, like the other animal-men, arising from common natural right, from their common quality of beasts of prey, bloodsuckers, Jews, money-wolves.

– 15 –

Money is the life-killing means of intercourse which has solidified into a dead letter just as the letter is the spirit-killing means of intercourse which has solidified into dead money. The invention of money and letters is attributed to the Phoenicians, the same people to whom is also attributed the invention of the Jewish God. A writing joker believes he has said something very intelligent against the abolition of money in comparing, in one of his writings entitled Bewegung der Production, the spiritual capital which we possess in writings (especially in his own) to the material capital which we possess in money, and then he adds: “An abolition of money would have the same significance as an abolition of writing: this would be an edict to world history to return to its mother’s womb.” First Mr Schulz has overlooked the difference between the material capital which we possess in money and the spiritual capital which we can appropriate through writing. This difference is as great as that between true and false property. I can indeed appropriate for myself through writing spiritual treasures. But it would not occur to anyone to wish to stamp the treasure which we appropriate through word and writing as the private property of individuals who could then transmit it to their private heirs. I can indeed inherit and acquire a library and its so-called treasures; I can also receive so-called revelations from the Holy Scriptures; but the more this acquisition comes near to being a money acquisition, the more external, contingent it is, the more it is subject to profit and loss, the more worthless, spirit-less is my “spiritual” treasure. Or does Mr Schulz believe that I already received the spirit with the letters and the books? Language is a living, spirit-rich means of intercourse but letters are not. Spiritual money is only valid in so far as it is organically attached to man. Language can be organically attached to man because it is an organic, articulated whole. But money cannot be organically attached to man, as already shown above. Money therefore resembles writing not as a living language but as a dead letter. The letter - this is very significant - must have been invented like money by those who invented Moloch. But language was never and nowhere in the world invented. When an invention is no longer necessary, no longer usable, when it has even become harmful, it is not used any more, without it therefore having to be returned to the “mother’s womb.” It is not disputed that the invention of letters and coins was a “useful” and even a “necessary” invention, but it is disputed that it will therefore also be in the future. It is quite right that in the old condition of the isolation of men, in the old mutual estrangement of men, an external symbol had to be invented to represent the spiritual and material exchange of products. Through this abstraction from real, spiritual and living intercourse the capacity, the creative force of men was increased during their estrangement; in other words, they found in this abstract means of intercourse a mediating essence for their own estrangement; they had to seek the unifying essence outside of themselves, i. e., an inhuman, super-human essence, since they were not men, i.e., were not united. Without this inhuman means of intercourse they would never have entered into intercourse. But as soon as men unite, as soon as a direct intercourse between them can take place the inhuman, external, dead means of intercourse must necessarily be abolished. This dead and deadly means of intercourse cannot and will not be abolished arbitrarily; its abolition therefore happens as little through an “edict” as did its creation. In the same way that the need for an external means of union during the period of the internal disintegration of the human species had brought into being spiritual and material idols, so the need for a direct and intimate union of men will demolish these idols again. Love which fled to heaven while the Earth was not yet able to grasp it will again have its seats of living in the place where it was born and nurtured, the breast of man. We will no longer vainly seek our life outside and above us. No extraneous essence, no third middle term will any more intrude between us so as to unite us externally and apparently to “mediate” us, while separating and splitting us internally and really. With commercial speculations will cease philosophical and theological speculations and with politics will cease religion. Driven by the internal necessity of our nature and by the external necessity of our relations we will put an end once and for all to all these absurdities and hypocritical nonsense of our philosophers, scholars, priests and statesmen, who harmonise so well with the inhumanity and baseness of our bourgeois society; we will do this by uniting together in a community and expelling all these extraneous bodies and all these external means of communication, these thorns in our flesh.

– 16 –

The organic community which we are looking forward to can only come into being as a result of the highest development of all our forces and by means of the painful stimulus of necessity and of vicious passions. The organic community, the ripe fruit of human development, could not come into being as long as we were not wholly developed and we could not develop ourselves unless we engaged in intercourse with each other. But during the development of this intercourse we still grappled with each other as single and isolated individuals. We grappled with each other for our material and spiritual means of intercourse because as isolated individuals we needed this means of intercourse to live. We needed it because we were not united, but the union or the collaboration of our forces is our life. We thus had to seek our own life outside of us and to secure it in mutual struggle. But through this struggle we have won something entirely different from what we were striving and hoping to win. We thought we were winning an external good, but we were developing ourselves. But this madness was salutary and beneficial for us for as long as it contributed really to develop our forces and faculties. After these had developed we will only mutually ruin ourselves if we do not pass on to communism. Our forces are now no longer further developed through struggle, for the good reason that they are already developed. But we also see every day that, on the one hand, we only waste our forces fruitlessly and that, on the other hand, due to the excess of productive forces they just can not be developed any more. If the liberal bourgeois are always talking to us about the need for progress through the struggle of competition, this is because they are thoughtless chatterers, because they commit anachronisms or are blinded by egoism and unable to understand the truths which impose themselves on all those who are only prepared to open their eyes. At the stage of development where we are, we can only further mutually exploit and consume ourselves if we do not unite ourselves in love. Contrary to what the thoughtless liberals think, not centuries, not decades will elapse when the hundredfold-increased productive forces will precipitate into the deepest misery the great mass of people who have to work with their hands, because their hands will have become worthless; while a tiny minority, which is engaged in the accumulation of capital, will wallow in abundance and sink in disgusting dissipation, if they have not previously heard the voice of love and reason or if they have yielded to force.

– 17 –

The creation history of society is over; the last hour of the social animal world will soon sound. The mechanism of the money-machine has run down and it is in vain that our progressive and reactionary statesmen seek to keeping it turning ...

Patrick M. Wood - Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order

Published: September 26, 2020

Patrick M. Wood in 'The Mind Renewed', with host Julian Charles, April 13, 2019.

Self-Sufficiency: A Local Solution to a Global Problem

- By Tony Cartalucci - October 28, 2012

Introduction

When thinking about "solutions" many are quick to cite organizing a protest and taking to the streets. Let's for a moment consider the mechanics of a protest, what it might accomplish, and what it may leave to be desired.

Take Glenn Beck's disingenuous 2010 "Restoring Honor" event in Washington D.C. It drew thousands of honest, well-intentioned people from all over the United States. Indeed, thousands of people filled up their Fortune 500 made cars with gas from Fortune 500 oil companies, drove countless miles, stopping along the way at Fortune 500 fast food restaurants, stayed at Fortune 500 run hotels, and stocked up on supplies purchased at Fortune 500 Walmart. They slaked their thirst under the hot August sun with cans of Fortune 500 Pepsi and Coke, and at the end of the day, they drove home, paid their Fortune 500 cable subscriptions to watch their Fortune 500 media reports, most likely on News Corporation's Fox News, a Council on Foreign Relations corporate member.

At best, all a protest will lead to, while we are so hopelessly dependent on this system, is a round of musical chairs inside the political arena, with perhaps superficial concessions made to the people. The vector sum however, will still be decidedly in favor of the global corporate-financier oligarchy.

If we understand that the fundamental problem facing not only America, but the entire world, is a global corporate-financier oligarchy that has criminally consolidated their wealth by "liberalizing" their own activities while strangling ours through regulations, taxes, and laws, we should then understand why events like Beck's "Restoring Honor" are not only fruitless, but in fact, counterproductive. We should also realize that any activity we commit ourselves to must be directed at this corporate-financier oligarchy rather than the governments they have co-opted and positioned as buffers between themselves and the masses.

While people understand something is wrong and recognize the necessity to do "something," figuring out what that "something" should be becomes incredibly difficult when so few understand how power really works and how to strip it away from the oligarchs that have criminally consolidated it.

Understanding Globalization

As of late, the expansion of this global oligarchical empire has taken a more extreme, perhaps desperate form involving staged revolutions as seen in Egypt and Tunisia, and in Libya's case, armed rebellion and foreign military intervention. However, worldwide coup d'etats have occurred before - for example, in the late 1990's under the guise of a "financial collapse" and IMF "restructuring."

Many nations fell beholden to the IMF and its regiment of "reforms" which amounted to neo-colonialism packaged under the euphemism of "economic liberalization." To illustrate how this works, it may help to understand what real colonialism looked like.

Image: Thailand's geopolitical surroundings 1800-1900. Thailand was the only Southeast Asian country to avoid European colonization.

....

Thailand in the 1800's, then the Kingdom of Siam, was surrounded on all sides by colonized nations and in turn was made to concede to the British 1855 Bowring Treaty. See how many of these "gunboat policy" imposed concessions sound like today's "economic liberalization:"

1. Siam granted extraterritoriality to British subjects.
2. British could trade freely in all seaports and reside permanently in Bangkok.
3. British could buy and rent property in Bangkok.
4. British subjects could travel freely in the interior with passes provided by the consul.
5. Import and export duties were capped at 3%, except the duty-free opium and bullion.
6. British merchants were to be allowed to buy and sell directly with individual Siamese.

A more contemporary example for comparison would be the outright military conquest of Iraq and Paul Bremer's (CFR) economic reformation. The Economist gleefully enumerates the neo-colonial "economic liberalization" of Iraq in a piece titled "Let's all go to the yard sale: If it all works out, Iraq will be a capitalist's dream:"

1. 100% ownership of Iraqi assets.
2. Full repatriation of profits.
3. Equal legal standing with local firms.
4. Foreign banks allowed to operate or buy into local banks.
5. Income and corporate taxes capped at 15%.
6. Universal tariffs slashed to 5%.

Read more: Egypt Today, Thailand Tomorrow

And few could argue that the IMF's rehabilitation regiments being forced upon nations all over the world after the late 90's financial crash are any different than economic colonialism both past and present. In fact, the IMF itself publishes reports at great length concerning the "necessity" of economic liberalization.

To be sure, the governments that come to power in the wake of the current Middle East destabilizations will be more servile and will undoubtedly be committed to similar economic liberalization. Brookings Institute's Kenneth Pollack already made it quite clear that "The struggle in the new Middle East must be defined as one between nations that are moving in the right direction and nations that are not; between those that are embracing economic liberalization, educational reform, democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties, and those that are not."

Siam eventually rolled back the terms of the 1855 Bowring Treaty as the British Empire waned, but as of 1997, Thailand was once again faced with similar terms, dictated this time by the bankers of the IMF.

Thailand's Answer to Globalization

Thailand's answer to the IMF, and globalization in general was profound in both implications as well as in its understanding of globalization's end game. Fiercely independent and nationalistic, and being the only nation in Southeast Asia to avoid colonization, Thailand's sovereignty has been protected for over 800 years by its revered monarchy. The current dynasty, the House of Chakri, has reigned nearly as long as America has existed as a nation and the current king is regarded as the equivalent of a living "Founding Father." And just as it has for 800 years, the Thai Monarchy today provides the most provocative and meaningful answer to the threats facing the Kingdom.

The answer of course is self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency as a nation, as a province, as a community and as a household. This concept is enshrined in the Thai King's "New Theory" or "self-sufficiency economy" and mirrors similar efforts found throughout the world to break the back of the oppression and exploitation that results from dependence on an interdependent globalized system.

The foundation of the self-sufficiency economy is simply growing your own garden and providing yourself with your own food. This is portrayed on the back right-hand side of every 1,000 baht Thai banknote as a picture of a woman tending her garden. The next step is producing surplus that can be traded for income, which in turn can be used to purchase technology to further enhance your ability to sustain yourself and improve your life-style.

The New Theory aims at preserving traditional agrarian values in the hands of the people. It also aims at preventing a migration from the countryside into the cities. Preventing such migrations would prevent big agricultural cartels from moving in, swallowing up farming land, corrupting and even jeopardizing entire national food supplies (see Monsanto). Those familiar with the UN's Agenda 21, and the more recent UN "Climate Change Program," may understand the deeper implications and dangers of such a migration and why it needs to be stopped.

By moving to the city, people give up private property, cease pursuing productive occupations, and end up being folded into a consumerist paradigm. Within such a paradigm, problems like overpopulation, pollution, crime, and economic crises can only be handled by a centralized government and generally yield political solutions such as quotas, taxes, micromanagement, and regulations rather than meaningful technical solutions.

Also, such problems inevitably lead to a centralized government increasing its own power, always at the expense of the people and their freedom. The effects of economic catastrophe are also greater in a centralized, interdependent society, where everyone is subject to the overall health of the economy for even simple necessities like food, water, and electricity.

Under the "New Theory," demonstration stations all across Thailand have been created promoting education in matters of agriculture and self-sufficient living. The program is competing against the contemporary globalization system, which as of now, is mired in many parts of the world with economic meltdown. The relatively self-sufficient nature of Thais in general has weathered this economic chaos fairly well. In 10 years, a plate of food still costs the same amount of money, as do many everyday commodities. This only further vindicates the value of being self-sufficient and now more than ever, in both Thailand, and abroad, it is a good time to get involved and get self-sufficient.

The West Strikes Back

Of course the head-of-state of a nation almost 70 million strong promoting a lifestyle that cuts the legs out from under the Western corporate-financier agenda does not sit well with the oligarchical establishment. Their response to this, as it has been with all of Thailand's habitual displays of defiance is something to behold.

Perhaps the most vocal Western corporate-financier critic of Thailand is the Economist. It openly criticizes the King's self-sufficiency economy in an article titled "Rebranding Thaksinomics." It states that the economic plan is "a partial retreat from Thailand's hitherto liberal economic stance." The Economist muddles the debate by side-stepping the self-sufficient aspects of the"self-sufficiency economy." It claims that socialist handouts under deposed Prime Minister and documented Western proxy Thaksin Shinawatra somehow accomplished the exact same goals. The Economist also claims the concept of self-sufficiency is merely a "rebranding" of such socialist handouts.

The Economist article then breaks down into a pro-Thaksin rant, decrying his ousting from power and continued claims that somehow encouraging people to grow their own food is a theft of Thaksin's socialist/populist policies.

It should be noted that permanent socialism is not self-sufficiency. It is complete dependency on the state and on people who pay their ever increasing taxes. Socialism is not about growing your own garden, using technology to enhance your independence or solving your problems with your own resources. It is about taking from the collective storehouses of the state, and when you are again hungry, taking again. Socialism could only be very useful as a stop-gap measure between current problems and the active pursuit of permanent technical solutions. However, the goal of globalization is to create interdependency between states, and total dependency on global institutions, therefore, perpetuating problems, not solving them becomes the equation.

Another Western pro-corporate-financier point-of-view comes from Australia's National University's "New Mandala" blog written by academic wonk Andrew Walker. The blog itself is a clearinghouse for corporate subsidized talking points regarding Southeast Asia and is tied to the corporate-financier funded Lowy Institute. Some "contributing writers" even include Thaksin Shinawatra's hired lobbyist, Robert Amsterdam.

Walker's entire perception of Thailand seems to be derived from his time spent in a single village in Northern Thailand. From his myopic point-of-view in the minute village of "Baan Tian," he condemns entirely Thailand's self-sufficiency economy in his article "Royal misrepresentation of rural livelihoods." He suggests that "the sufficiency economy prescriptions for rural development are inappropriate and dis-empowering."

As with the Economist, the article breaks down into a pro-Thaksin rant claiming the entire plan is meant to keep the rural population of Thailand in their place, out of the cities, and thus out of the debate of national issues.

Of course, becoming self-sufficient is one step on the road to real empowerment. Academic wonks like Andrew Walker presume the height of empowerment is feeding a paper voting stub into a box, on your way home from a service sector job, and then relaxing behind the glow of a new plasma screen TV bought on credit. A more likely argument would be that sustaining your own existence, wrought from the land beneath your feet, and the ability to shape the world around you with an understanding of science and the mastery of multiple trades is the height of empowerment and the truest form of human freedom.

The hand wringing within the writings of the Economist and ANU's Andrew Walker is not the full extent of the West's reaction to Thailand and its wandering from foreign dominion. A full fledged "red" color revolution has been brewing within the Kingdom since at least 2009. Reading the "Red Siam Manifesto" penned by "red shirt" intelligentsia Giles Ungpakorn makes it quite clear how they view "self-sufficiency" and the need to "reform" Thailand as a "socialist welfare state."

Ungpakorn's childish and ranting manifesto can be found on "Socialist Worker Online" here. A complete selection of the "red shirt" propaganda used within Thailand can be found here.

It should be noted that the leader of the "red shirt" protest is deposed ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra. Long before Thaksin Shinwatra would become prime minister in Thailand, he was already working his way up the Wall Street-London ladder of opportunity, while simultaneously working his way up in Thai politics. He was appointed by the Carlyle Group as an adviser, while holding public office, and attempted to use his connections to boost his political image. Thanong Khanthong of Thailand's English newspaper "the Nation," wrote in 2001:

"In April 1998, while Thailand was still mired in a deep economic morass, Thaksin tried to use his American connections to boost his political image just as he was forming his Thai Rak Thai Party. He invited Bush senior to visit Bangkok and his home, saying his own mission was to act as a "national matchmaker" between the US equity fund and Thai businesses. In March, he also played host to James Baker III, the US secretary of state in the senior Bush administration, on his sojourn in Thailand."

Upon becoming prime minister in 2001, Thaksin would begin paying back the support he received from his Western sponsors. In 2003, he would commit Thai troops to the US invasion of Iraq, despite widespread protests from both the Thai military and the public. Thaksin would also allow the CIA to use Thailand for its abhorrent rendition program.

In 2004, Thaksin attempted to ramrod through a US-Thailand Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) without parliamentary approval, backed by the US-ASEAN Business Council who just before last year's 2011elections that saw Thaksin's sister Yingluck Shinawatra brought into power, hosted the leaders of Thaksin’s "red shirt" personality cult.

The council in 2004 included 3M, war profiteering Bechtel, Boeing, Cargill, Citigroup, General Electric, IBM, the notorious Monsanto, and currently also includes banking houses Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Chevron, Exxon, BP, Glaxo Smith Kline, Merck, Northrop Grumman, Monsanto’s GMO doppelganger Syngenta, as well as Phillip Morris.

Thaksin would remain in office from 2001 until September of 2006. On the eve of the military coup that ousted him from power, Thaksin was literally standing before the Fortune 500-funded Council on Foreign Relations giving a progress report in New York City.

Since the 2006 coup that toppled his regime, Thaksin has been represented by US corporate-financier elites via their lobbying firms including, Kenneth Adelman of the Edelman PR firm (Freedom House, International Crisis Group, PNAC), James Baker of Baker Botts (CFR), Robert Blackwill of Barbour Griffith & Rogers (CFR), Kobre & Kim, and currently Robert Amsterdam of Amsterdam & Peroff (Chatham House).

To say that Thaksin Shinawatra and his "red shirts" have foreign backing would be a profound understatement.

Thaksin's proxy political party maintains the "red shirt" mobs which in turn are supported by several NGOs including the National Endowment for Democracy funded "Prachatai," an "independent media organization" that coordinates the "red shirt" propaganda efforts. Prachatai was recently nominated for the Deutsche Welle Blog Awards by the "Neo-Con" infested Freedom House, upon which former Thaksin lobbyist Kenneth Adelman sits as a member on the board of directors.

Western corporate-financier interests know what's going on already and they are moving against it while the majority of humanity still sleeps in ignorance and apathy. Thailand is but one nation of many, in China's "String of Pearls" that is targeted for destabilization and US State Department sponsored "liberation."

The key to stopping these foreign interests dead in their tracks is seizing back from them the mechanisms of civilization - and we have done that already in terms of the alternative media. Such success is necessary in all aspects of our life, and as the King in Thailand suggests, it can start with something as simple as growing your own garden.

Today and Into the Future

Of course in Thailand, agricultural self-sufficiency is coupled with technology to enhance efficiency and improve the quality of life. Even in the city, small independent businesses are adopting the latest technology to improve their production, increase their profits, and even out-compete larger corporations. Computer controlled machining equipment can be found in small workshops crammed into old shop-houses, automatic embroidering machines allow a single woman to fulfill orders for name tags on new school uniforms - rather than both businesses sending off orders to factories owned by a handful of wealthy investors. A multitude of examples can be seen walking around any city block in Thailand's capital of Bangkok.

Bringing this sort of technology to rural people, even enabling people to create their own technology rather than just employ it, is not just science fiction but is a reality of today. MIT Professor Dr. Neil Gershenfeld has developed the "fabrication laboratory" or "Fab Lab." The Fab Lab is a microfactory that can "make almost anything." His Fab Lab has since been replicated all over the world in what he calls the personal fabrication revolution. It aims at turning a world of dependent consumers into independent designers and producers.

Dr. Gershenfeld in his own words articulates the problem of finding support amongst institutions and governments, stating that individuals are very enthusiastic about this revolution "but it breaks their organizational boundaries. In fact it is illegal for them, in many cases, to equip ordinary people to create rather than consume technology."

This indeed not only encapsulates Dr. Gershenfeld's dilemma, but describes to a "t" the mentality of oligarchs and the fears they harbor about empowering the people, a fear reflected in the "organizational boundaries" of their corporations and governmental institutions. This is a feature of oligarchy described as early as 300 B.C. in ancient Greece in "The Athenian Constitution." In it, a character referred to as "the Old Oligarch" describes his contempt for the social mobility the technology of the Athenian navy affords the lower echelons of Athenian society.

Dr. Gershenfeld goes on to encapsulate the true potential of his Fab Labs by stating, "the other 5 billion people on the planet aren't just technical "sinks," they are "sources." The real opportunity is to harness the inventive power of the world to locally design and produce solutions to local problems." Dr. Gershenfeld concludes by conceding he thought such a possibility was 20 years off, but "it's where we are today," noting the success his Fab Labs are already having around the world.

Image: The interior of a "Fab Lab" in Amsterdam, featuring a array of personal manufacturing technology.

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Dr. Gershenfeld's message resonates with the current culture of Thailand and the ambitions of the "self-sufficiency economy." In many ways, Thailand's patchwork of micro-businesses, already successfully by-passing capital intensive centralized production, vindicates the work and optimism of Dr. Gershenfeld. It also, however, resonates strongly with the self-reliant traditions that had made America great. The technical possibility for this to change the world is already a reality, but Dr. Gershenfeld himself concedes that the biggest obstacle is overcoming social engineering - in other words - creating a paradigm shift in the minds of the population to meet the technical paradigm shift that has already taken place.

Self-sufficiency and the harnessing of technology in the hands of the people are the greatest fears of the corporate-financier oligarchy - fears that oligarchs throughout the centuries have harbored. Simply boycotting multinational corporations and replacing them with local solutions is something everyone can afford to do starting today. And by simply looking into Dr. Neil Gershenfeld's "Fab Lab," similar ideas such as "hackerspaces," raising awareness of the personal fabrication revolution, and even in the smallest way participating can help overcome the obstacle of social-engineering and spur a profound paradigm shift. We have begun to seize back the media, now it is time to seize back the other levers of power. Now is the time to recognize true freedom as being self-sufficient as a nation, as a community, and as a household, and start living it everyday.

For an extreme in-depth look at Thailand's "Sufficiency Economy" and "New Theory" economics, please see, "Wisdom from the Orient: Self-Sufficiency."

https://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/10/self-sufficiency-local-solution-to.html