#voluntary servitude

[mercury-2015]

The economic crisis is worsening. Many young male people are forced to volunteer as farm laborers to survive, receiving only food and water as wage. Having no longer any rights, they soon know that the rules of voluntary slavery are very strict.

[athousandgateaux]

Can you share any of your preferred readings about voluntary servitude? Particularly wrt how to break out of the patterns that reinforce it

Sure! I'll start off by saying: I have a lot more readings that diagnose, map, and critique the problem than one's that provide strategies for resistance. I would also be skeptical of anything that is trying to present you with a definitive or clear cut solution. The strength of political theory, for me, is in its diagnostic and critical capacity. Most theories fall flat when they become prescriptive. We need to develop our own strategies of resistance, for and amongst ourselves. Which isn't to say that reading diagnostic/critical theory can't help in that regard, but don't look to it to provide solutions.

That said, here are some of my favourite works that engage with the problem of voluntary servitude. I've tried to divide them up a bit by theme and chronology, so hopefully that helps. Classics 1. Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de La Boétie

The OG, and where the term itself originates. It's a relatively short essay, quick and easy to read, and sets out the problem clearly and succinctly. One of the few works of political theory of any kind that seriously addresses the question of why the many obey the few. For Boetie, voluntary servitude is largely a question of mathematics, and he lays it out very plainly. The essay has its shortcomings, but I think it is a criminally under-read and under-studied work in political theory -- especially considering how well it pairs with Machiavelli's Prince and Discourses, which are roughly contemporaneous with it. 2. The Ethics and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (or Theological-Political Treatise) by Baruch Spinoza

The Tractatus is more important here, but the Ethics is also important to understand Spinoza's conception of God-or-Nature, which makes his project in the Tractatus make more sense. Essentially, Spinoza is attempting to theorize how to produce spontaneous obedience through desire or affect, against a more Hobbesian vision of Leviathanic power. Reading up on the De Witt Brothers, what happened to them, and how Spinoza reacted to the event can also be helpful to understand where he's coming from here.

3. The Second Treatise of Government by John Locke (particularly chapters 18-19 "On Tyranny" and "On the Dissolution of Government")

This one's mostly important to get a sense of where our current geopolitical order originates and how the problem of voluntary servitude fits into that. Locke boils down the entire tradition of social contract theory into a very simplified version of itself and lays out the problems clearly. He also gives a very succinct account of the "right of resistance" in the final two chapters, which I think is important to understand when it comes to the question of voluntary servitude (and how liberals up to the present day view it). 4. What is Property? by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (especially Chapter 5, Part 2, Sections 1-3)

A good one to pair with Locke. Proudhon lays out the basic problems with the liberal theory of property (which Locke institutes in the Second Treatise) and how it relates to the problem of voluntary servitude (all property is theft, and property relations essentially create relations of voluntary servitude)

Marx / Marxism 1. Marx's Selected Writings ed. David McLellan

It's kind of hard to point to what's most important here. Marx's thinking developed a lot over time, and there are important fragments throughout his work. The key is to read with an eye to how Marx explains the formation of class consciousness as opposed to what would later be called "false consciousness". The difficulty here is that Marx does not use the term "false consciousness," and so his treatment of it is underdeveloped. The classic starting point here is the "Preface to A Critique of Political Economy". It might also be helpful to read Marx's critiques of Proudhon in The Poverty of Philosophy, as well as his letters on "class consciousness".

2. History of Class Consciousness by George Lukacs

This is where the discussion of "false consciousness" among Marxists really gained traction and started to become a major concern, and it lays out the problem pretty well. Again: read with an eye toward the explanation of how individual consciousness forms from the perspective of political economy, and how this produces a form of "false consciousness" that submits one to the system of capitalism.

3. Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci

Gramsci's explanation of how bourgeois ideology gains a hold over the working class through cultural hegemony is key here, and will be important to later Marxist thought, particularly of the Frankfurt School.

4. The Culture Industry by Adorno and Horkheimer

Speaking of the Frankfurt School... Adorno and Horkheimer's conception of "the culture industry" and the way that bourgeois hegemony over cultural production in modernity is a means of controlling the workers and producing voluntary servitude among the proletariat is classic and unmatched. You might also read Adorno's book Minima Moralia for some more pithy epigrams on the subject (the one about slamming car doors being an expression of fascism is a classic).

5. An Essay on Liberation and Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse

Marcuse was like the cool, hip kid of the Frankfurt School to Adorno's grumpy old professor vibes. While Adorno was calling the cops on his students during the protests of 1968, Marcuse was living it up in America and theorizing about the libidinal (i.e., unconscious, sexual, desiring) aspects of both obedience and resistance. The Essay on Liberation sums up his thinking and experience with the student movements and hippies in America quite succinctly, but Eros and Civilization is where he develops those themes in more depth. He's also probably the most hopeful regarding the possibility of resistance to voluntary servitude on this entire list.

6. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" by Louis Althusser

An important classic in thinking about how ideology (or what others might call cultural hegemony) forms and produces subjectivity. Althusser would have a huge impact on later theories of subjectivization, including those developed by Foucault and Judith Butler later on. Just try to forget that he strangled his wife to death.

Freud, Psychoanalytic Theory, and Anti-Psych 1. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego by Sigmund Freud

It's honestly good to have a basic understanding of Freudian psychoanalytic theory for a number of reasons (despite how much of it is bullshit), the biggest one being that it had a huge impact on all realms of social theory up to the present day. You can thank Freud for popularizing the basic insight that most of what we consider to be our conscious mind is actually underpinned by a variety of unconscious psychic structures, drives, etc. This text is where Freud discusses some of the social implications of that -- particularly, how otherwise "rational" individuals can become deeply invested in "irrational" ideologies (like fascism). It might also be helpful to watch Adam Curtis' documentary The Century of the Self to get a sense of how this relates to Adorno's conception of the culture industry.

2. Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari

This is where the famous quote about voluntary servitude being the basic problem of political philosophy since at least the time of Spinoza comes from, and it's where D&G lay out their conception of desiring-fascism, or what produces the desire for fascism, how fascist subjects are produced, etc. It's also a pretty scathing critique of psychoanalysis that takes for granted a fairly in-depth knowledge of Freud and his later followers (especially Lacan), so it can be difficult to parse without that. Additionally, D&G have a notoriously difficult style, so...good luck. But it's worth the read.

3. Libidinal Economy by Francois Lyotard

This book is kind of like Anti-Oedipus-lite. Lyotard works much more closely with Freudian concepts than against them here, so it has less of that anti-psych critical edge, but he does a good job of marrying psychoanalytic theory to Marxist political economy in a way that helps explain how a desire for subjection and servitude is produced by capitalism.

Theories of Subjectivization 1. Discipline and Punish, History of Sexuality pt. 1, and "Security, Territory, Population" by Michel Foucault

Love him or hate him, Foucault did a lot of important work on the connection between embodied discipline, discourses of sexuality, and ideas of "the body" that informed a lot of later work on subject formation and voluntary servitude -- that is, how people are made to obey through technologies of discipline and what he calls "biopolitics," or normative forms of political action. These texts are probably the most important for understanding those aspects of his work, but a lot of his essays get into these issues as well. The panopticon is everywhere!

2. The Psychic Life of Power and Giving an Account of Oneself by Judith Butler

Butler combines Freud, Foucault, and Althusser here to produce a theory of subjection -- or how we become subjects. Her account does a lot to deepen these thinkers' concepts and show how they relate to the problem of voluntary servitude, imo.

3. Cruel Optimism Lauren Berlant

Berlant's work kind of follows on the heels of Butler, but I think the concept she develops here is really interesting. Essentially, Berlant wants to think about how people become attached to the very things that are oppressing, subjecting, harming them. It's a good way to think about the connection between voluntary servitude and desire under neoliberal capitalism. It's also a good account of why poor people/the proletariat might "vote against their own interests". 4. "In the Penal Colony" by Kafka

A classic image of how the Law becomes inscribed upon the Body. Read in conjunction with Foucault. Post-Colonial/Anti-Colonial Critique, Race and Voluntary Servitude 1. Black Skin, White Masks and Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon Fanon's work is the obvious choice here. He trained as a psychoanalyst, but his insights are more in the vein of phenomenology and political critique. No one does a better job of outlining how subjectivity (of both the colonized and the colonizer) forms under conditions of colonialism, and how the colonized are brought to fight for their own subjection.

2. Discourse on Colonialism by Aime Cesaire

Cesaire is kind of the other obvious choice here. He was Fanon's teacher and his scathing critique of colonialism is a classic. He also does a good job of connecting the ideologies used to sustain colonialism/imperialism to the rise of fascism, and the way that the colonial scene comes to deform the psyche of the colonizer.

3. Red Skin, White Masks by Glen Coulthard

Less about voluntary servitude than Fanon's work, but Coulthard does do a good job of showing how certain aspects of Marxist political economy are themselves a form of false consciousness when it comes to the situation of settler colonialism. He also does a good job of examining the political/economic reasons that people become attached to settler colonialism.

4. "The Black Body as Fetish Object" by Anthony Paul Farley

Farley gives an account of race, anti-black racism, and colonialism based in a conception of desire. For him, all racial categories (and the various forms of violence that go with them) are a product of an underlying desire -- on both the part of white and non-white people. His analysis can sometimes verge into "blaming the victim," but I think there is something insightful here about how racism and colonialism are, in part, forms of voluntary servitude. It's also an important piece for understanding a lot of contemporary afropessimist theory.

Feminism/Feminist Philosophy 1. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

Again, this is sort of a classic in this category, and there's no real way of getting around the significance of de Beauvoir's work. The whole book is an existential/phenomenological account of how women's subjectivity is formed under conditions of patriarchy and sexism, and subsequently, how women become attached to the patriarchal systems that subject them in the first place. The second section is probably more important than the first for the purposes of understanding voluntary servitude, particularly the chapter on "The Woman in Love". 2. Scenes of Subjection by Saidiya Hartman

Explores how the institution of slavery was perpetuated (despite its precarity and economic disutility) from a black feminist perspective by exploring the intersections between race, slavery, and gender to show how slavery was sustained through investment in normative categories of gender and race. Still very applicable for thinking through the issue of voluntary servitude today. 3. "I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess" by Jasbir Puar A somewhat dense piece that assumes some knowledge about the work of thinkers like Donna Haraway, as well as how certain strains of feminism tend toward a reification of "womanhood" through concepts like the "divine feminine," but I think Puar provides a good critique of the limits of intersectionality here, while also firing shots at the way certain forms/practices of feminism align themselves with the greater patriarchal order. 4. Females by Andrea Long Chu

A lot of people hate this book. I think it's a really interesting transfeminist (or at least transfeminism adjacent) polemic about the ways that gender is always a matter of desire (even if its a negative desire), and how that can tie us to the various oppressive forces that women (and particularly trans women) are subject to.

Other / Post-Marxist / Can't think of a category States of Injury by Wendy Brown

Particularly the parts where she uses Nietzsche to discuss the idea of "wounded attachments" as a form of ressentiment. Basically, she's interested in how oppressed people become attached to their own oppression, or invested in oppressive political projects themselves. Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord Many of the same insights as Adorno's "culture industry" or Lyotard's "libidinal economy," but Debord takes them a step further. Campus Sex, Campus Security by Jennifer Doyle Discusses how the concept of "risk" and discourses around sexual assault work to re-victimize people who have been raped and shore up systems of sexism, even while attempting to mitigate them. The Making of Indebted Man by Maurizio Lazzarato

Following in the vein of Nietzsche, Foucault, Butler, etc. on the topic of subjectivization, but showing how neoliberal economies of debt work to shape our subjectivity such that we become "indebted" to the very systems that subject us. Psychopolitics by Byun-Chul Han

Similar to Lazzarato's text, but in a more pop-philosophical vein. The Agony of Power by Jean Baudrillard Discusses how power functions in modern societies and how resistance necessarily involves a rejection of the desire for power, or desiring to be subjected by power. Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher I'm not a huge fan of Fisher's work, tbh. But he does have a knack for getting at certain problems in a way that is very easily accessible, even for people who have no background in theory. And his concept of Capitalist Realism can be useful in this regard. Anyway, that's a lot. There's a ton more I could have mentioned, but this is already too much. If other folks have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

[russia-libertaire]

"It is we who are responsible for Putin's policies, we first and foremost, not Putin. The fact that our reaction to him and his cynical manipulation of Russia has been confined to gossiping in the kitchen has enabled him to do all the things he has done in the past four years [2000-2004]. Society has shown limitless apathy, and this is what has given Putin the indulgence he requires. We have reacted to his actions and speeches not just lethargically but fearfully. As the Chekists have become entrenched in power, we have let them see our fear, and thereby have only intensified their urge to treat us like cattle. The KGB respects only the strong. The weak it devours. We of all people ought to know that."

Putin's Russia, by Anna Politkovskaya

[russia-libertaire]

Establishing the Romanov dynasty

'After the Time of Troubles the mood among most people - except those, like brigands and some Cossacks, with a direct interest in disorder - was naturally to yearn for peace and prosperity. As the zemskii sobor of 1613 showed, they were profoundly conservative in outlook and sought stability in a restoration of starina, the "old days" (even though they had not found those "old days" so attractive at the time). They recreated - or rather created - a monarchy with unlimited authority of a kind Ivan IV had aspired to but had never been able to achieve. The boyars and churchmen who had obstructed Ivan now supported untrammeled autocracy to protect them against social rebellion and foreign invasion.'

Russia and the Russians, by Geoffrey Hosking

[fivestarhuman]

Voluntary Servitude

“I want to know how it is that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, suffer under a tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him: Who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they are willing to suffer it? Who could inflict absolutely no harm upon them without them choosing to put up with it, rather than withdrawing support.

O good Lord! What strange phenomenon is this? What name shall we give it? What is the nature of this misfortune? What vice is it, or, rather, what degradation?

You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death.

He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more to destroy you with, than the power that you confer upon him.

Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you?

From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can save yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.”

from The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, by Étienne de la Boétie (1548)

Full document here

[charismaandcashmere]

[conza]

From Circuses to Consent

Consent is also actively encouraged and engineered by the rulers; and this is another major reason for the persistence of civil obedience. Various devices are used by rulers to induce such consent. One method is by providing the masses with circuses, with entertaining diversions:

Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.34

Another method of inducing consent is purely ideological: duping the masses into believing that the tyrannical ruler is wise, just, and benevolent. Thus, La Boétie points out, the Roman emperors assumed the ancient title of Tribune of the People, because the concept had gained favor among the public as representing a guardian of their liberties. Hence the assumption of despotism under the cloak of the old liberal form.

In modern times, La Boétie adds, rulers present a more sophisticated version of such propaganda, for “they never undertake an unjust policy, even one of some importance, without prefacing it with some pretty speech concerning public welfare and common good.”35 Reinforcing ideological propaganda is deliberate mystification: “The kings of the Assyrians and...the Medes showed themselves in public as seldom as possible in order to set up a doubt in the minds of the rabble as to whether they were not in some way more than man...“

Symbols of mystery and magic were woven around the Crown, so that “by doing this they inspired their subjects with reverence and admiration.... It is pitiful to review the list of devices that early despots used to establish their tyranny; to discover how many little tricks they employed, always finding the populace conveniently gullible.... 36

At times, tyrants have gone to the length of imputing themselves to the very status of divinity: “they have insisted on using religion for their own protection and, where possible, have borrowed a stray bit of divinity to bolster up their evil ways.”37 Thus, “tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration.”38

          — Murray Rothbard

[conza]

The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude

La Boeties’s Discourse has a vital importance for the modern reader—an importance that goes beyond the sheer pleasure of reading a great and seminal work on political philosophy, or, for the libertarian, of reading the first libertarian political philosopher in the Western world.

For La Boétie speaks most sharply to the problem which all libertarians—indeed, all opponents of despotism—find particularly difficult: the problem of strategy. Facing the devastating and seemingly overwhelming power of the modem State, how can a free and very different world be brought about? How in the world can we get from here to there, from a world of tyranny to a world of freedom?

Precisely because of his abstract and timeless methodology, La Boétie offers vital insights into this eternal problem.

In the first place, La Boétie’s insight that any State, no matter how ruthless and despotic, rests in the long run on the consent of the majority of the public, has not yet been absorbed into the consciousness of intellectuals opposed to State despotism.

          — Murray Rothbard, The Political Thought of Étienne de la Boétie