A Cityless and Countryless World
An Outline of Practical Co-Operative Individualism
Henry Olerich
[A condensed and edited version of the book
originally published by Gilmore & Olerich, Holstein, Iowa, 1893 /
CHAPTER 16 - Government]
[I]t is as painful, if not more so, for a highly cultivated person to
command his companions as it is for him to obey a tyrant. A command
always involves a hindrance to order and progress. It makes the obeyer
less self-governing and less self-reliant, and it makes the commander
more tyrannical and more ostentatious.
In a well-adjusted family every adult has learned his part as a
social and industrial being, and he does that part without being
commanded; he does it because it gives him more happiness than to act
otherwise. Our children know of no physical compulsion. They are
exhorted and pleasantly taught, by precept and example, that the right
course of conduct is the easiest and brings the most happiness, which
they soon learn by experience as they grow in years and in wisdom, in
a world where the adults set no bad examples. The old idea that a
family cannot exist without a boss is nothing but a relic of
barbarism.
[E]very sane individual man, woman, and child of our large family
enjoys perfect freedom. They do what they believe to be their
equitable part without being commanded by any one. Our internal
motives and promptings are the only recognized standard of conduct.
But, in order to avoid being misunderstood, let me tell you right
here, that we can certainly not expect the same kind of conduct from a
child, which is full of life and activity, that we do from an older
per- son. The child requires constant activity to develop body and
mind; and we must make due allowance for that. One who does not make
that allowance cannot be successful in orderly government.
We always construct and arrange our things and institutions to suit
the purpose they are intended to serve. We do not endeavor to make,
with a rod, a sage out of an infant in a few days.
If we wish to create self-reliance and a desire for laboring, we make
the labor agreeable, by making it easy, by esteeming it honorable, and
by creating a system of money under which every man, woman and child
draws his own pay at the end of each month; and the amount of his pay
is in proportion to the time each worked or to the wealth produced. If
we desire to educate our children in a certain direction, we first
learn that lesson ourselves, and from our practicing it the children
will learn it without any formal teaching.
To govern our children in the practice of eating, we always keep
before them, as well as before ourselves, more than we want of
everything; consequently the appetite is the safest guide, so that
neither the child nor adult ever eats too much, and just so pleasant,
harmonious and successful is our governing power in all directions.
All our officers are elected, then, by the tacit or avowed ballot of
superior ability and agreeableness, but never by a paper ballot. Hence
you can plainly see that we acknowledge universal suffrage in its true
and full sense, because every man, woman and child is a voter as well
as a candidate.
Some of our family leaders, or officers as you would call them, are
foremen in [our numerous] departments.
The business of the community is transacted at the Com. Every family
has one or more representatives in the Com, who are daily laboring
there, in some department, as paying bills, making money, examining
labor- records, printing, receiving money from the families, canceling
the community s own money when it arrives, inventing, etc.
"The family representatives who work at the Com nearly always
return to their own family after the close of their day's work. By
this arrangement every family, and every person in the family, is in
constant personal communication with the Com. Any one who desires
information concerning the business of the community can get it orally
from the family representative, or, he can get it from the daily
community s newspaper, which contains all the business and which is
taken and read by every one who is old enough to read it.
Some of the community's and family's foremen are in the following
departments: Printing, money making, paying, money receiving, selling,
building and repairing motor lines, agriculture, stock raising,
mining, manufacturing, warehouse, roads and boulevards, electric
light, parks, conservatory and greenhouse, garden, orchard, inventor,
etc., etc.
[In essence], we have no government by physical force against man,
woman or child; that we have no parties, no politicians, no election
frauds, no political boodle, no vast armies and costly navies; no
generals who lead the people to death and destruction; no guns and
cannons; no swords and sabres; no pensions and crippled soldiers ; no
impoverished widows and uncared for orphans; no burning of cities and
tearing up of railroads; no kings, queens, and presidents; no
political congresses, parliaments, and legislatures; no crowns and
thrones; no high-salaried officers, no national debt which often gets
larger by paying on it; no compulsory taxation; no tariff
involuntarily wrung from the people ; no prisons and reform schools;
no so-called courts of justice and an army of lawyers and judges who
have to live from the ignorance and quarreling of the people; no
political patriotism; no statute laws which monopolize natural
opportunity in favor of the rich and against the poor; no hangmen, and
no policemen. Our political congress slowly changed into an industrial
one.
[T]hose who have always lived in a world where a certain class of
people have always ruled, or at least have tried to rule, the
remainder of mankind by physical force, it may seem that no family,
community or nation can do with out a ruler backed by physical force.
In primitive times the force process begins soon after birth and
continues until death. First the child is scolded, cuffed and flogged
by the parent and nurse, then by the teacher and preacher, then by his
playmates and street-ruffians; when he wants to marry, the church and
state begin to interfere; the policeman clubs his victim into
submission, the hangman hangs him, the tax-collector forces him to pay
taxes, and finally the landlord compels him or his friends to pay for
the little patch of earth in which he is buried. Consequently, all but
a few of [the world's] foremost thinkers believe that the ruler and
the force system is absolutely necessary to the welfare of an orderly
society. But when we examine the pages of history, we find that the
ruler, either directly or indirectly, has played all the cruel
mischief that ever was played in the human family.
"The ruler calls the soldier to war to shoot his neighbor. The
ruler instituted the practice of suttee, and exhorts the slavish widow
to practice it. The ruler induces the Hindoo mother to throw her
newly-born babe in the Ganges, by which the mother becomes a ruler
over the child, to satisfy the ruler's created Deity, who is supposed
to be the supreme ruler. The ruler tortured and killed every so-called
heretic the cream of the mental world, during the dark ages. The ruler
kindled every witch fire that consumed thousands and millions of
innocent persons supposed to be witches. The ruler .did all the wife
and child flogging. The ruler gave all the unjust decisions that were
ever given in any court of so-called justice. The ruler made all the
millions of laws that have already been repealed, and are now
considered wrong and cruel. The ruler had every national building and
monument built and erected with the life and labor of his ruled. The
ruler is the author of every battle. The ruler has been the suppressor
of all liberty and freedom. The ruler has drafted every soldier, and
forced him to burn and kill. The ruler has preached all superstitious
doctrines, whether religious, industrial, social, political or sexual.
The ruler has grown rich without productive labor, on profit,
interest, rent, taxes, and the varying purchasing power of the dollar.
The ruler has compelled children to attend school in which they were
forced to act in direct opposition to the known laws of life and
health. The ruler, whether individual, state or nation, has committed
every murder. The ruler is the author of every ravishment. The ruler
has received all the boodle. The ruler has so far, in your world, made
slaves of women and children, and has thereby indirectly made a slave
of himself. The ruler has committed every theft, robbery and burglary.
The ruler has, in many cases, demanded prayer and shrine cure, instead
of resorting to sanitary measures. The ruler has caused every quarrel
and fight. The ruler has, in countless cases, commended the infamous
and prohibited the virtuous. The ruler is the invader of all personal
right and personal liberty. The ruler has done all this and much more.
He has caused all the social and industrial discord. Why, then, should
the ruled pay the ruler for ruling them, after having made so many
errors and committed so many crimes? What guarantee have the ruled now
that the ruler will not err in the present and future as he has done
in the past?
Your officials receive, as a rule, high salaries, and as it is
generally difficult here for a person to acquire wealth by productive
labor, on account of monopoly, all are rushing for the well-paying
offices. With us the highest officer in the community receives no more
pay for his day's labor than a washerwoman does. [I]n a world where
money is necessary and scarce, a person can stoop to most anything, if
he thereby gains his election so that he receives the high salary and
not infrequently some boodle; for in a world where money is necessary
and scarce, a victorious person can buy his honor, fame, and
distinction with money. But in a [society] like ours, where money is
not monopolized, where it can be easily obtained by every one, money
has lost the power of purchasing honor, fame and distinction. In such
a [society] nothing but personal worth, fitness and noble attainments
elevate a person to a higher position where he enjoys approbation and
admiration of his fellowmen. [We] have removed the causes of
corruption, while you are still endeavoring to make a person good
under bad conditions.
Your government, as now constituted, also tends to concentrate
wealth. The American republic is practically owned by less than
one-quarter of a million of persons. If present causes which produce
concentration of capital continue, the republic will soon be owned by
less than fifty thousand men.
[S]ome have amassed immense fortunes of material wealth, while the
vast majority under your present conditions are doomed to life-long
toil, to poverty. But, by what means or power did these rich men
accumulate their immense wealth? Not by personal industry, for the
industrial powers of an individual are too limited. Not by economy,
for if he had saved everything he ever earned, he would have but a
small fractional part of what he has accumulated. Not by any
particular personal superiority, for the personal powers to produce
material wealth are nearly equal in all sound men and women; but he
accumulated and appropriated it by monopoly. You have enacted many
laws by your much prized ballot, and these rich men used those laws to
monopolize natural opportunity so that they are continually growing
richer on interest, profit, rent and taxes, without productive labor.
You see if all monopolistic statute laws, which include nearly all
statute laws as such, were repealed and disregarded, all would stand
equal before natural opportunity. Profit, interest, rent and taxes are
produced by monopolistic laws. If there were no monopolistic laws, no
person could accumulate or appropriate wealth with out productive
labor.
Our government [of cooperative individualism] has no statute laws and
has, therefore, no profit, interest, rent and taxes. Your government
monopolizes land by the deed system, hence your rent. Our government
has nothing to do with the ownership of land; every one may occupy and
use all the vacant land he wants. Your government monopolizes the
making of money, which makes money scarce, hence your interest; in our
government, each individual gets his money made at the end of each
month, and as much as he has produced wealth; money is plenty, and
hence no interest. Your government enforces compulsory taxation,
whether the individual wants it or not; we have no compulsory
taxation. From the foregoing and other monopolizations your profit
results. Your government has enacted laws for the collection of debts,
hence your many failures and unpaid accounts. Our government has no
need of such laws, because we have always plenty of money and,
therefore, always pay cash. Your government endeavors to enforce its
mandates by an external agency of soldier and policeman, while our
governmental force resides in the internal promptings of the
individual. The desire of the non-invasive individual is the highest
authority [in our society].
The government of the United States, in many respects, is perhaps
better than any of its predecessors or any of its contemporaries. But
all ages had a best government. The question is not whether it is the
best that ever was, but whether it is faultless. Best is not good
enough unless it is faultless. Can we find any faults? If so, we
should labor to remove them.
All your labor for advancement, then, should be most economically
directed in the diffusion and assimilation of this additional
intelligence. As long as a person is ignorant enough, he does not feel
the burden unjustly imposed upon him by others; but as he grows in
intelligence, the bearer of the burden becomes continually more
sensitive to its weight, and the imposition becomes continually more
repugnant to the imposer. Let us remember, then, that all wrong and
injustice arise from ignorance. Intelligence is the only motive power
that can move the physical world to higher and nobler planes.
We believe in non-aggressive competition. In this manner, a sharp,
healthy, commercial competition springs up between the communities,
which naturally throws every community in that line of industry for
which it is best adapted on account of climate, soil, and other
natural resources.
You build and maintain costly statehouses and spacious legislative
halls. You have a vast army of national, state and municipal
politicians who are supported by the productive laborer. You have an
army and a navy to equip and maintain. You have guns and cannons to
mine and manufacture, arsenals to build, and fortifications to
construct. You have ammunition and soldiers clothes to manufacture.
You have vast libraries to build, filled with countless volumes of law
books, over the contents of which a large army of judges and lawyers
wrangle and sometimes even fight. You have an endless number of
courthouses to build and maintain, and a swarm of policemen to uniform
and support. You have the country dotted with prisons, jails,
penitentiaries, scaffolds, poorhouses, asylums and reform schools.
Your armies and navies in time of war destroy an immense amount of
wealth by burning cities and family houses, by destroying the growing
crops in the fields through which they march, and in which they fight,
by blowing up ships and bridges, by tearing up railroads, by cutting
down fences, orchards and forests, by killing the brute animals which
come in the line of their march, and by maiming human bodies and
taking human life itself. Your government in time of war makes sound
men diseased and crippled; it makes mothers helpless widows, and
children poor orphans, and then it forcibly taxes the sound ones who
live a generation later to pension the cripples it made itself.
Besides the crime of class legislation, which produces an aristocracy
of social parasites who appropriate the products of the laborer in the
forms of profit, interest, rent and taxes, your government is guilty
of graver and more direct crimes. Under the cloak of capital
punishment, it legally murders its so-called criminals on the pretext
of protecting society. In the field of intemperance, it licenses the
manufacturing and selling of intoxicating liquor, thereby indirectly
sanctioning, for a consideration, the evil of intemperance. In the
licentious world, it actually sells to certain fallen women the
privilege of selling their own persons for lewd purposes, thereby
becoming a participant in the crime of impurity, which is caused
directly or indirectly by the government s own monopoly. By its
marriage interference, it often compels married men and women to live
together when they do not love each other, when they quarrel and
fight. As a self-righteous censor of its so-called morality, it has in
all ages, countries and climes tried to suppress freedom of speech and
freedom of the press. The foregoing are only a few of the countless
number of evils, wrongs and cruelties which a government, by physical
force, imposes on its own people. I mean which the rulers impose on
the ruled.
Our family representatives, who go daily to the Com to work, are all
engaged in productive labor, and the person, man or woman, who can add
the greatest number of columns quickest and surest is the person who
goes there for that purpose. The national and world representatives do
the same. No strife, no monopoly, but complete individual freedom,
which has eliminated every vestige of government by physical force
against all non-invasive per sons, and has established the highest
social harmony.
[W]e have no compulsory taxation. No [person] is forced to support
any institution he does not wish to support. As to voluntary taxation,
if you wish to call those gifts which visitors to the [family centers]
usually give voluntary taxation, then we have a kind of voluntary
taxation; but if you do not call that taxation, we have no taxation at
all.
[T]he element of compulsory taxation can be weakened only in
proportion as the mental condition is strengthened by the discovery of
new truths; and the discovery of new truths implies time. Therefore it
is as impossible for [other societies] to do away with compulsory
taxation instantaneously as it is for you to produce instantaneously a
ripe apple from an unfolding blossom. There is only one known agency
which can do away with compulsory taxation, and that agency is the
acquisition of a higher and broader intelligence.
CONTENTS
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