Politics of Obedience

preface of his own, and the same was done by another writer in
1852 to strike back at the coup d(etat of Napoleon III. And we
have seen how the Discourse inspired the non-violent wing of
the anarchist movement in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. As the centuries went on, the abstract argument of the
Discourse continued to exert a fascination for radicals and
revolutionaries. The speculative thought of the young law
student was taking posthumous revenge upon the respectable and
eminent official of the Bordeaux Parlement.
LA BOEITE’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.
Notice, for example, how many anti-Communists write about
Communist rule as if it were solely terror imposed from above
on the angry and discontented masses. Many of the errors of
American foreign policy have stemmed from the idea that the
majority of the population of a country can never accept and
believe in Communist ideas, which must therefore be imposed
by either a small clique or by outside agents from existing
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