"Edward Garver..." (VIII, p. 76) is:
"The director of the Federal Centrum of Security and Law Enforcement..." (p. 77)
- in the Lunar Federation, i.e., on the Moon.
He:
"...had studied the apologetics of the modern philosophers. 'Government is the organization which claims the right to command all individuals to do whatever it desires and to punish disobedience with loss of property, liberty, and ultimately life. It is nothing more. The fact is not changed by its occasional beneficence. Possessing equal or greater power, but claiming no such right of compulsion, the Polesotechnic League functions as the most effective check upon government which has yet appeared in known history.' He did not believe a word of it." (X, pp. 92-93)
Neither do I. League companies do not need to claim any right to compulsion. They exercise economic power as large-scale employers and purveyors of necessities and they need governments to make and enforce laws to protect their property and also to prevent conflicts both between owners of capital and between capital and labour from destroying society. The League is not a check on government but would be lost without it. The check upon government is the population which can vote, demonstrate, campaign, petition, boycott, build defensive organizations (trade unions) and offensive organizations (single issues campaigns, mass movements, new political parties) and exercise economic power by withdrawing its labour. There is ultimate power. But the Sleeper must wake, as Wells wrote.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And I disagree, at least in part. There are factions, sections, interests, etc., composed of people, who by one means or another, have influence/power capable of exerting pressures on the State sufficient that it at least sometimes backs down from what it tries to do, good or (more often) bad.
I don't share this confidence you have in direct political action. Partly because rival parties, single interest campaigns, etc., will largely cancel each other out.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment