MDMD "No one owns me"

[Terrance]

Force is a physical power, and I fail to see what moral effect it can
have. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will — at the
most, an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty?


Let us then admit that force does not create right, and that we are
obliged to obey
only legitimate powers. In that case, my original question recurs.


War is constituted by a relation between things, and not between
persons; and, as the state of war cannot arise out of simple personal
relations, but only out of real relations, private war, or war of man
with man, can exist neither in the state of nature, where there is no
constant property, nor in the social state, where everything is under
the authority of the laws.

Individual combats, duels and encounters, are acts which cannot
constitute a state;
while the private wars, authorised by the Establishments of Louis IX,
King of
France, and suspended by the Peace of God, are abuses of feudalism, in
itself an
absurd system if ever there was one, and contrary to the principles of
natural right
and to all good polity.

War then is a relation, not between man and man, but between State and
State, and
individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as men, nor even as
citizens,3 but as
soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its defenders.
Finally, each State
can have for enemies only other States, and not men; for between things
disparate
in nature there can be no real relation.

Furthermore, this principle is in conformity with the established rules
of all times
and the constant practice of all civilised peoples. Declarations of war
are intimations
less to powers than to their subjects. The foreigner, whether king,
individual, or
people, who robs, kills or detains the subjects, without declaring war
on the prince,
is not an enemy, but a brigand. Even in real war, a just prince, while
laying hands,
in the enemy's country, on all that belongs to the public, respects the
lives and
goods of individuals: he respects rights on which his own are founded.
The object of
the war being the destruction of the hostile State, the other side has a
right to kill its defenders, while they are bearing arms; but as soon as
they lay them down and
surrender, they cease to be enemies or instruments of the enemy, and
become once
more merely men, whose life no one has any right to take. Sometimes it
is possible
to kill the State without killing a single one of its members; and war
gives no right
which is not necessary to the gaining of its object. These principles
are not those of
Grotius: they are not based on the authority of poets, but derived from
the nature of
reality and based on reason.

The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the
strongest. If war
does not give the conqueror the right to massacre the conquered peoples,
the right
to enslave them cannot be based upon a right which does not exist. No
one has a
right to kill an enemy except when he cannot make him a slave, and the
right to
enslave him cannot therefore be derived from the right to kill him. It
is accordingly
an unfair exchange to make him buy at the price of his liberty his life,
over which
the victor holds no right. Is it not clear that there is a vicious
circle in founding the right of life and death on the right of slavery,
and the right of slavery on the right of life and death?

Even if we assume this terrible right to kill everybody, I maintain that
a slave made
in war, or a conquered people, is under no obligation to a master,
except to obey
him as far as he is compelled to do so. By taking an equivalent for his
life, the victor
has not done him a favour; instead of killing him without profit, he has
killed him
usefully. So far then is he from acquiring over him any authority in
addition to that
of force, that the state of war continues to subsist between them: their
mutual
relation is the effect of it, and the usage of the right of war does not
imply a treaty
of peace. A convention has indeed been made; but this convention, so far
from
destroying the state of war, presupposes its continuance.

So, from whatever aspect we regard the question, the right of slavery is
null and
void, not only as being illegitimate, but also because it is absurd and
meaningless.
The words slave and right contradict each other, and are mutually
exclusive. It will
always be equally foolish for a man to say to a man or to a people: "I
make with
you a convention wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I
shall keep
it as long as I like, and you will keep it as long as I like."

		--Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Slavery"