The Political Thought of Étienne de la Boétie by Murray R. Rothbard
Étienne de la Boétie, properly pronounced not as might be thought la Boétie, but rather la Boétie,
with a hard T, as it was pronounced in the paragord dialect of the region in which la Boétie lived.
Étienne de la Boétie has been best remembered as the great and close friend of the eminent essayist
Michel de Montaigne, in one of history's most notable friendships. But he would be better remembered,
as some historians have come to recognize, as one of the seminal political philosophers,
not only as a founder of modern political philosophy in France, but also for the timeless
relevance of many of his theoretical insights. Etienne de la Boite was born in Sarlat,
in the Paragord region of southwest France in 1530 to an aristocratic family.
His father was a royal official of the Paragord region and his mother was the sister of the
President of the Bordeaux Parliament, Assembly of Lawyers.
Orphaned at an early age, he was brought up by his uncle and, namesake, the curate of
of Boubouna and received his law degree from the University of Orleans in 1553. His great
and precocious ability earned La Boette a royal appointment to the Bordeaux Parliament
the following year, despite his being under the minimum age. There he pursued a distinguished
career as judge and diplomatic negotiator until his untimely death in 1563 at the age
of 32. Labuetti was also a distinguished poet and humanist, translating Xenophon and Plutarch
and being closely connected with the leading young pleiadate group of poets including Pierre
Ronsard, Jean Dorat, and Jean-Antoine de Beff. Labuetti's great contribution to political
thought was written while he was a law student at the University of Orleans, where he imbibed
and the Spirit of Free Inquiry that prevailed there.
In this period of questing and religious ferment, the University of Orleans was a noted center
of free and untrammeled discussion.
Labretti's main teacher there was the fiery Anne de Bourgh, later to become a Huguenot
martyr and burned at the stake for heresy in 1559.
Duborg was not yet a Protestant, but was already tending in that direction, and it was no accident
that this university was later to become a center of Calvinism, nor that some of Lubwetti's
fellow students were to become Huguenot leaders.
One of these was Lubwetti's best friend at the university and Duborg's favorite student,
Lambert Danneau.
The study of law in those days was an exciting enterprise, a philosophical search for truth
Truth and Fundamental Principles.
In the 16th century, writes Paul Bonfond, the teaching of the law was a preaching rather
than an institution, a sort of search for truth carried on by teacher and student in
common and which they feverishly undertook together, opening up an endless field for
philosophic speculation.
It was this kind of atmosphere in the law schools of Orleans and other leading French universities
in which Calvin himself, two decades earlier, had begun to develop his ideas of Protestant
reform.
And it was in that kind of atmosphere as well that lawyers were to form one of the most
important centers of Calvinist strength in France.
In the ferment of his law school days at Orleans, Etienne de la Boétie composed his brief but
Sindelating, profound and deeply radical Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Discours de la servitude
volontaire.
Having remained long in manuscript, the actual date of writing the Discourse of Voluntary
Servitude remains a matter of dispute.
It seems clear, however, and has been so accepted by recent authorities, that Montand's published
story that Labuetti wrote the discourse at the age of 18 or even at 16 was incorrect.
Montand's statement, as we shall see further below, was probably part of his later campaign to
guard his dead friend's reputation by dissociating him from the revolutionary Huguenots who were
claiming Labuetti's pamphlet for their own. Extreme youth tended to cast the discourse
Discourse in the light of a work so youthful that the radical content was hardly to be
taken seriously as the views of the author.
Internal evidence, as well as the erudition expressed in the work, make it likely that
the discourse was written in 1552 or 1553 at the age of 22 while La Boétie was at the
university.
The discourse was circulated in manuscript form and never published by Labuetti.
One can speculate that its radical views were an important reason for the authors withholding
it from publication.
It achieved a considerable fame in local Perigordian intellectual circles, however.
This can be seen by the fact that Montaigne had read the essay long before he first met
Labuetti as a fellow member of the Bordeaux Parliament in 1559.
The first striking thing about the discourse is the form.
Labuetti's method was speculative, abstract, deductive.
This contrast with the rather narrowly legal and historical argument of the Huguenot Monarch
Monarchomoc writers, those sectarian writers who argued for the right of subjects to resist
unjust rulers of the 1570s and 1580s, whom La Buetti resembled in his opposition to tyranny.
While the Huguenot Monarchomocs, best exemplified by Francois Hopeman's Franco-Galilla, 1573,
Concentrated on grounding their arguments on real or presumed historical precedents in
French laws and institutions, La Boétie's only historical examples were numerous illustrations
of his general principles from classical antiquity, the very remoteness of which added to the
timeless quality of his discourse.
The later Huguenot arguments against tyranny tended to be specific and concrete, rooted
in actual French institutions, and therefore their conclusions and implications were limited
to promoting the specific liberties against the state of various privileged orders in
French society.
In contrast, the very abstraction and universality of La Boétie's thought led inexorably to
to radical and sweeping conclusions on the nature of tyranny, the liberty of the people,
and what needed to be done to overthrow the former and secure the latter.
In his abstract, universal reasoning, his development of a true political philosophy,
and his frequent references to classical antiquity, La Boétie followed the method of Renaissance
writers notably Niccolò Machiovelli.
There was, however, a crucial difference.
Whereas Machiavelli attempted to instruct the prince on ways of cementing his rule,
Labuetti was dedicated to discussing ways to overthrow him and thus to secure the liberty
of the individual.
Thus Emile Brahear makes a point of contrasting the cynical realism of Machiavelli with the
juridical idealism of Etienne de Labuetti.
In fact, however, DiBretti's concentration on abstract reasoning and on the universal
rights of the individual might better be characterized as foreshadowing the political thinking of
the 18th century.
As J.W. Allen writes, the discourse was an essay on the natural liberty, equality and
fraternity of man.
The essay gave a general support to the Huguenot pamphleteers by its insistence that natural
Universal law and natural rights justified forcible resistance to tyrannous government.
But the language of universal natural rights itself, Allen correctly adds, served no Huguenot
purpose.
It served, in truth, no purpose at all at the time, though one day it might come to
do so.
Or, as Harold Lasky trenchantly put it, a sense of popular right, such as the friend
of Montaigne depicts is indeed as remote from the spirit of the time as the anarchy of
Herbert Spencer in an age committed to government interference.
The contrast between the proto-18th century speculative natural rights approach of la
boîte and the narrowly legalistic and concrete historical emphasis of the Huguenot writers
who reprinted and used the discourse has been stressed by W.F. Church. In contrast to the legal
approach which dominated political thought in 16th century France, Church writes, purely speculative
treaties so characteristic of the 18th century were all but non-existent and at their rare
appearances seem oddly out of place. Church then mentions as an example of the latter,
Labuetti's Discourse of Voluntary Servitude. The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude is lucidly and
coherently structured around a single axiom, a single percipient insight into the nature
not only of tyranny, but implicitly of the state apparatus itself. Many medieval writers had attacked
tyranny, but La Boétie delves especially deeply into its nature and into the nature
of state rule itself.
This fundamental insight was that every tyranny must necessarily be grounded upon general
popular acceptance.
In short, the bulk of the people themselves, for whatever reason, acquiesce in their own
objection.
If this were not the case, no tyranny, indeed no governmental rule, could long endure.
Hence a government does not have to be popularly elected to enjoy general public support, for
general public support is in the very nature of all governments that endure, including
the most oppressive of tyrannies.
The tyrant is but one person, and could scarcely command the obedience of another person much
Much less of an entire country if most of the subjects did not grant their obedience
by their own consent.
David Hume independently discovered this principle two centuries later and phrased it with his
usual succinctness and clarity.
Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical
eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few and the implicit submission
With which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.
When we inquire by what means this wonder is affected, we shall find that as force is always on the side of the governed,
the governors have nothing to support them but opinion.
It is therefore on opinion only that government is founded.
And this maxim extends to the most despotic and military governments as well as to the
most free and most popular.
This then becomes for La Boétie the central problem of political theory.
Why in the world do people consent to their own enslavement?
La Boétie cuts to the heart of what is or rather should be the central problem of political
Civil Philosophy, The Mystery of Civil Obedience.
Why do people, in all times and places, obey the commands of the government, which always
constitutes a small minority of the society?
To La Boétie, the spectacle of general consent to despotism is puzzling and appalling.
I should like merrily to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages,
So many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single 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 have the willingness to bear with him, who could do them absolutely no injury unless
they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him.
Surely a striking situation.
But it is so common that one must grieve the more and wonder the less at the spectacle of
a million men serving in wretchedness, their necks under the yoke, not constrained by a
greater multitude than they.
And this mass submission must be out of consent rather than simply out of fear.
Shall we call subjection to such a leader cowardice?
If a hundred, if a thousand endure the caprice of a single man, should we not rather say
that they lack not the courage, but the desire to rise against him, and that such an attitude
indicates indifference rather than cowardice?
When not a hundred, not a thousand men, but a hundred provinces, a thousand cities, a
When a million men refuse to assail a single man from whom the kindest treatment received is the infliction of serfdom and slavery, what shall we call that? Is it cowardice?
When a thousand, a million men, a thousand cities fail to protect themselves against the domination of one man, this cannot be called cowardly, for cowardice does not sink to such a depth.
What monstrous vice, then, is this which does not even deserve to be called cowardice, a vice for which no term can be found vile enough.
enough.
It is evident from the above passages that Labuetti is bitterly opposed to tyranny and
to the public's consent to its own subjection.
He makes clear also that this opposition is grounded on a theory of natural law and a
natural right to liberty.
In childhood, presumably because the rational faculties are not yet developed, we obey our
parents.
But when grown, we should follow our own reason as free individuals.
As Liberti puts it, if we led our lives according to the ways intended by nature and the lessons
taught by her, we should be intuitively obedient to our parents.
Later, we should adopt reason as our guide and become slaves to nobody.
Reason is our guide to the facts and laws of nature and to humanity's proper path,
and each of us has in our souls some native seed of reason, which if nourished by good
counsel and training, flowers into virtue, but which, on the other hand, if unable to
resist the vices surrounding it, is stifled and blighted.
And reason teaches us the justice of equal liberty for all, for reason shows us that
nature has, among other things, granted us the common gift of voice and speech.
Therefore there can be no further doubt that we are all naturally free, and hence it cannot
be asserted that nature has placed some of us in slavery.
Human animals, he points out, display a natural instinct to be free.
But then, what in the world has so denatured man that he, the only creature really born
to be free, lacks the memory of his original condition and the desire to return to it?
La Boétie's celebrated and creatively original call for civil disobedience, for mass non-violent
Resistance as a method for the overthrow of tyranny stems directly from the above two
premises, the fact that all rule rests on the consent of the subject masses and the
great value of natural liberty, for if tyranny really rests on mass consent, then the obvious
means for its overthrow is simply by mass withdrawal of that consent.
The weight of tyranny would quickly and suddenly collapse under such a non-violent revolution.
The Tory David Hume did not, unsurprisingly, draw similar conclusions from his theory of
mass consent as the basis of all governmental rule.
Thus, after concluding that all tyranny rests on popular consent, Labuetti eloquently concludes
states that, obviously, there is no need of fighting to overcome this single tyrant, for
he is automatically defeated if the country refuses consent to its own enslavement.
Tyrants need not be expropriated by force.
They need only be deprived of the public's continuing supply of funds and resources.
The more one yields to tyrants, the stronger and mightier they become.
But if the tyrants are simply not obeyed, they become undone and as nothing.
La Boétie then exhorts the poor wretched and stupid peoples to cast off their chains by
refusing to supply the tyrant any further with instruments of their own oppression.
The tyrant indeed has nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy
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 could he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you?
La Boete concludes his exhortation by assuring the masses that to overthrow the tyrant they
need not act nor shed their blood.
They can do so merely by willing to be free.
In short, 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 in pieces.
It was a medieval tradition to justify tyrannicide of unjust rulers who break the divine law,
but Labuetti's doctrine, though non-violent, was in the deepest sense far more radical.
For while the assassination of a tyrant is simply an isolated individual act within an
existing political system, mass civil disobedience, being a direct act on the part of large masses
of People is far more revolutionary in launching a transformation of the system itself.
It is also more elegant and profound in theoretical terms, flowing immediately as it does from
La Boete's insight about power necessarily resting on popular consent.
For then the remedy to power is simply to withdraw that consent.
The call for mass civil disobedience was picked up by one of the more radical of the later
Huguenot pamphlets, La France Turquille, 1575, which advocated an association of towns and
provinces for the purpose of refusing to pay all taxes to the state.
But it is not surprising that among the most enthusiastic advocates of mass civil disobedience
have been the anarchist thinkers, who simply extend both Labuetti's analysis and his conclusion
from tyrannical rule to all governmental rule whatsoever.
Prominent among the anarchist advocates of nonviolent resistance have been Thoreau, Tolstoy
and Benjamin R. Tucker, all of the 19th century, and all, unsurprisingly, associated with the
The Nonviolent Pacifist Branch of Anarchism Tolstoy, indeed, in setting forth his doctrine
of nonviolent anarchism, used a lengthy passage from the discourse as the focal point for
the development of his argument.
Thus, Tolstoy writes, The situation of the oppressed should not be compared to the constraint
used directly by the stronger on the weaker, or by a greater number on a smaller. Here,
indeed it is the minority who oppress the majority, thanks to a lie established ages
ago by clever people, in virtue of which men despoil each other. Then, after a long quote
from Labuetti, Tolstoy concludes, it would seem that the workers, not gaining any advantage
should at last realize the lie in which they are living and free themselves in the simplest
and easiest way, by abstaining from taking part in the violence that is only possible
with their cooperation.
Furthermore, Tolstoy's Letter to a Hindu, which played a central role in shaping Gandhi's
is Thinking Toward Mass Nonviolent Action was heavily influenced by Labuetti.
In addition, Gustav Landauer, the leading German anarchist of the early 20th century,
after becoming converted to a pacifist approach, made a rousing summary of Labuetti's Discourse
of Voluntary Servitude, the central core of his anarchist work, The Revolution, 1919.
A leading Dutch pacifist anarchist of the 20th century, Bartholomew de Liet, not only
devoted several pages of his Conquest of Violence to discussion and praise of Labuetti's discourse,
he also translated it into Dutch in 1933.
Several historians of anarchism have gone so far as to classify Labuetti's treatise
The first historian of anarchism, E. V. Zenker, a non-anarchist, made the same mistake.
As he wrote of La Boétie's discourse that it contained a glowing defense of freedom
which goes so far that the sense of the necessity of authority disappears entirely.
The opinion of La Boétie is that mankind does not need government.
It is only necessary that man should really wish it and he would find himself happy and
free again, as if by magic.
But while La Boétie's cannot be considered an anarchist, his sweeping strictures on tyranny
and the universality of his political philosophy lend themselves easily to such an expansion.
All this considerably disturbed La Boétie's biographer, Paul Bonfond, who wrote of the
discourse, after having failed to distinguish legitimate from illicit authority and having
Imprudently attacked even the principle of authority,
Labraty put forth a naive illusion.
He seems to believe that man could live in a state of nature,
without society, and without government,
and discovered that this situation would be filled with happiness for humanity.
This dream is puerile.
To the acute analyst Pierre Mesnard,
Bonfond's alarm is wide of the mark.
Mesnard believes that La Boétie defined tyranny as simply any exercise of personal power.
In doing so, La Boétie went beyond the traditional two-fold definition of tyranny as either usurpation
of power or government against the laws, which were either defined as customary law, divine
law, or the natural law for the common good of the people, whereas the traditional theory
The Theory, thus focused only on the means of the ruler's acquiring power and the use
made of that power, Mesnard points out that La Boétie's definition of tyranny went straight
to the nature of power itself.
Tyranny does not depend, as many of the older theorists had supposed, on illicit means of
acquiring power.
The tyrant need not be a usurper.
As La Boétie declares, there are three kinds of tyrants. Some receive their proud position
through elections by the people, others by force of arms, others by inheritance. Usurpers
or conquerors always act as if they are ruling a conquered country and those born to kingship
are scarcely any better because they are nourished on the breast of tyranny, suck in with their
So far away from any notion of liberty that even if the memory of it is fresh, it will
soon be eradicated.
In some, La Boitique can find no choice between these three kinds of tyrants.
For although the means of coming into power differ, still the method of ruling is practically
the same.
Those who are elected act as if they were breaking in books.
Those who are conquerors make the people their prey.
Those who are heirs plan to treat them as if they were their natural slaves.
Yet, Mesnard's neat conclusion that La Boétie meant simply to indict all personal power,
all forms of monarchy, as being tyrannical, is inadequate.
In the first place, in the passage quoted above, La Boétie indicts elected as well
as other rulers.
Moreover, he states that having several masters, according to the number one has, it amounts
to being that many times unfortunate.
Well, these are not precisely indictments of the concept of a republic, but they leave
the definition of tyranny in La Boete sufficiently vague so that one can easily press on the
anarchist conclusions.
Why do people continue to give their consent to despotism?
Why do they permit tyranny to continue?
This is especially puzzling if tyranny, defined at least as all personal power, must rest
on mass consent.
And if the way to overthrow tyranny is therefore for the people to withdraw that consent, the
The remainder of Labuetti's treatise is devoted to this crucial problem, and his discussion here is as seminal and profound as it is in the earlier part of the work.
The establishment of tyranny, Labuetti points out, is most difficult at the outset when it is first imposed, for generally, if given a free choice, people will vote to be free rather than to be slaves.
There can be no doubt that they would much prefer to be guided by reason itself than
to be ordered about by the whims of a single man.
A possible exception was the voluntary choice by the Israelites to imitate other nations
in choosing a king, Saul.
Apart from that, tyranny can only be initially imposed by conquest or by deception.
The conquest may be either by foreign armies or by an internal, fractional coup.
The deception occurs in cases where the people, during wartime emergencies, select certain
persons as dictators, thus providing the occasion for these individuals to fasten their power
permanently upon the public.
Since begun, however, the maintenance of tyranny is permitted and bolstered by the insidious
throes of habit, which quickly accustomed the people to enslavement.
It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force, but those who
come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done
because they had to.
This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content,
without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or
right.
And considering as quite natural the condition into which they are born, the powerful influence
is in no respect more compelling than in this, namely, habituation to subjection.
Thus, humanity's natural drive for liberty is finally overpowered by the force of custom,
for the reason that native endowment, no matter how good, is dissipated and less encouraged,
whereas environment always shapes us in its own way, whatever that might be, in spite of nature's gifts.
Labuetti concludes that custom becomes the first reason for voluntary servitude.
People will grow accustomed to the idea that they have always been in subjection, that
their fathers lived in the same way.
They will think they are obliged to suffer this evil and will persuade themselves by
example an imitation of others, finally investing those who ordered them around with proprietary
writes based on the idea that it has always been that way.
David Hume was later to write in his essay of The Origin of Government, Habit soon consolidates
what other principles of human nature had imperfectly founded.
And men, once accustomed to obedience, never think of departing from that path in which
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,
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 new ideas,
in vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so
creditably as little children learned to read by looking at bright picture books.
Another method of inducing consent is purely ideological, duping the masses into believing
that the tyrannical ruler is wise, just and benevolent.
Thus, Labuetti 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, Labuetti 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.
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
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.
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.
Thus, tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their
At this point, Labuetti inserts his one and only reference to contemporary France. It is, on its face, extremely damaging. For he asserts that,
He quickly adds that in this case he does not wish for my part to be incredulous, for French kings have always been so generous in times of peace and so valiant in time of war that from birth they seem not to have been created by nature like many others, but even before birth to have been designated by Almighty God for the government and preservation of this kingdom.
In the light of the context of the work, it is impossible not to believe that the intent of this passage is satirical, and this interpretation is particularly confirmed by the passage immediately following, which asserts that even if this were not so, he would not question the truth of these French traditions, because they have provided such a fine field for the flowering of French poetry.
Certainly I would be presumptuous, he concludes, surely ironically, if I tried to cast slurs
on our records and thus invade the realm of our poets.
Bonfond seizes the occasion to claim his subject as, deep down and in spite of his radical
deviations, a good conservative Frenchman at heart.
It was not the intention of the young man to attack the established order.
He formally accepts the King of France from his argument and in terms which are stamped
by deference and respect.
Specious ideology, mystery, circuses, in addition to these purely propagandistic devices, another
device is used by rulers to gain the consent of their subjects.
Purchase by material benefits, bread as well as circuses.
The distribution of this largesse to the people is also a method, and a particularly cunning
one, of duping them into believing that they benefit from tyrannical rule.
They do not realize that they are, in fact, only receiving a small proportion of the wealth
already filched from them by their rulers.
Roman tyrants provided the city wards with feast to cajole the rabble. Tyrants would
distribute largesse, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce. And then everybody
would shamelessly cry, Long live the king! The fools did not realize that they were merely
recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given
The Theory of Money and Credit
The Mob has always behaved in this way, eagerly open to bribes, and Labuetti goes on to cite the cases of the monstrous tyrannies of Nero and Julius Caesar, each of whose deaths was deeply mourned by the people because of his supposed liberality.
Here, Labuetti proceeds to supplement this analysis of the purchase of consent by the
public with another truly original contribution, one which Professor Lewis considers to be
the most novel and important feature of his theory.
This is the establishment, as it were the permanent and continuing purchase, of a hierarchy
Theory of Subordinate Allies, a loyal band of retainers, praetorians, and bureaucrats.
La Boétie himself considers this factor the main spring and the secret of domination,
the support and foundation of tyranny.
Here is a large sector of society, which is not merely duped with occasional and negligible
handouts from the state.
Here are individuals who make a handsome and permanent living out of the proceeds of despotism.
Hence their stake in despotism does not depend on illusion or habit or mystery.
Their stake is all too great and all too real.
A hierarchy of patronage from the fruits of plunder is thus created and maintained.
5 or 6 individuals are the chief advisors and beneficiaries of the favors of the king.
These half-dozen, in a similar manner, maintain 600 who profit under them, and the 600 in
their turn maintain under them 6000 whom they promote in rank, upon whom they confer the
the government of provinces or the direction of finances in order that they may serve as
instruments of avarice and cruelty, executing orders at the proper time and working such
havoc all around that they could not last except under the shadow of the 600.
In this way does the fatal hierarchy pyramid and permeate down through the ranks of society
until a hundred thousand and even millions cling to the tyrant by this cord to which they are tied.
In short, when the point is reached through big favors or little ones that large profits or small
are obtained under a tyrant, there are found almost as many people to whom tyranny seems
advantageous as those to whom liberty would seem desirable. Whenever a ruler makes himself
a dictator, all the wicked dregs of the nation, all those who are corrupted by burning ambition
or extraordinary avarice, these gather around him and support him in order to have a share
in the booty and to constitute themselves petty chiefs under the big tyrant. Thus the
The hierarchy of privilege descends from the large gainers from despotism to the middling
and small gainers, and finally down to the mass of the people who falsely think they
gain from the receipt of petty favors.
In this way, the subjects are divided, and a great portion of them induced to cleave
to the ruler, just as, in order to split wood, one has to use a wedge of the wood itself.
Of course, the train of the tyrants, retinue, and soldiers suffer at their leaders' hands,
but they can be led to endure evil if permitted to commit it.
Not against him who exploits them, but against those who like themselves submit but are helpless.
In short, in return for its own subjection, this order of subordinates is permitted to
oppress the rest of the public.
How is tyranny concretely to be overthrown if it is cemented upon society by habit,
privilege and propaganda?
How are the people to be brought to the view where they will decide to withdraw their consent?
In the first place, affirms La Boétie, not all the people will be deluded or sunk into
habitual submission.
There is always a more percipient elite who will understand the reality of the situation.
There are always a few, better endowed than others, who feel the weight of the yoke and
cannot restrain themselves from attempting to shake it off.
These are the people who, in contrast to the brutish mass, possess clear and far-sighted
minds and have further trained them by study and learning.
Such people never quite disappear from the world.
Even if liberty had entirely perished from the earth, such men would invent it.
Because of the danger these educated people represent, tyrants often attempt to suppress
education in their realms, and in that way, those who have preserved their love of freedom
still remain ineffective because, however numerous they may be, they are not known to
one another.
Under the tyrant they have lost freedom of action, of speech, and almost of thought.
They are alone in their aspiration.
Here La Boétie anticipates such modern analysts of totalitarianism as Hannah aren't.
But there is hope, for still the elite exist, and, calling examples once again from antiquity,
La Boétie maintains that heroic leaders can arise who will not fail to deliver their country
from evil hands when they set about their task with a firm, wholehearted and sincere
intention.
The evident task, then, of this valiant, knowledgeable elite, is to form the vanguard of the revolutionary
Resistance Movement Against the Despot. Through a process of educating the public to the truth,
they will give back to the people knowledge of the blessings of liberty and of the myths
and illusions fostered by the state. In addition to rousing the people to the truth, the opposition
movement has another vital string to its bow. The unnatural lives lived by the despots and
and their hierarchy of favorites, for their lives are miserable and fearful and not happy.
Tyrants live in constant and perpetual fear of the well-deserved hatred they know is borne
them by every one of their subjects.
Courtiers and favorites live miserable, crawling, cringing lives, every moment of which is bent
and on servilely fawning upon the ruler on whom they depend.
Eventually, as enlightenment spreads among the public, the privileged favorites will begin
to realize the true misery of their lot, for all their wealth can be seized from them at
any moment should they fall out of step in the race for the favors of the king.
When they look at themselves as they really are, they will realize clearly that the townspeople
The peasants whom they trample underfoot and treat worse than convicts or slaves are, nevertheless,
in comparison with themselves, better off and fairly free.
Although he does not explicitly say so, it seems to be La Boete's contention that the
spread of enlightenment among the public will not only generate refusal of consent among
of the Mass, but will also aid its course immeasurably by splitting off, by driving
a wedge inside, a portion of the disaffected privileged bureaucracy.
There is no better way to conclude a discussion of the content of La Boétie's notable discourse
of voluntary servitude than to note Mesnard's insight that, for La Boétie, as for Machiavelli,
can only be grounded on acceptance by the subjects, except that the one teaches the
prince how to compel their acquiescence while the other reveals to the people the power
that would lie in their refusal.
After graduating from law school, Etienne de la Poitie took up an eminent career as
a royal official in Bordeaux.
He never published the discourse, and as he pursued a career in faithful service of the
monarch, never hint did he express along the lines of his earlier treatise.
Certainly one of the reasons for Montand's stout insistence on his friend's conservatism
and monarchal loyalty is that La Boétie had changed his political views by the time they
They met around 1559. Indeed, in late 1662, shortly before he died, Labuetti wrote, but
did not publish, a manuscript forgotten and lost until recent years in which he, with
moderate conservatism, advised the state to punish Protestant leaders as rebels, to enforce
Catholicism upon France, but also to reform the abuses of the Church moderately and respectably
by the Agency of the King and his Parliaments. Protestants would then be forced to convert
back to Catholicism or leave the country. Certainly it is far from unusual for a young university
student eagerly caught up in a burst of free inquiry to be a fiery radical, only to settle
into a comfortable and respectable conservatism, once well entrenched in a career bound to
to the emoluments of the status quo. But there seems to be more here than that. For the very
abstractness of Labuetti's arguments in the discourse, the very Renaissance-like remoteness
of the discussion from the concrete problems of the France of his day, while universalizing
and Radicalizing the Theory, also permitted La Boétie, even in his early days, to divorce
theory from practice.
It permitted him to be sincerely radical in the abstract while continuing to be conservative
in the concrete.
His almost inevitable shift of interest from the abstract to concrete problems in his busy
Career, thereby caused his early radicalism to drop swiftly from sight, as if it had never
existed.
But if his abstract method permitted La Boitie to abandon his radical conclusions rapidly
in the concrete realm, it had an opposite effect on later readers.
Its very timelessness made the work ever available to be applied concretely in a radical manner
Center to Later Problems in Institutions, and this was precisely the historical fate
of La Boétie's discourse.
It was first published, albeit anonymously and incompletely, in the radical Huguenot
pamphlet, Révely Matin de François, 1574, probably written by Nicolas Barnode with the
The full text with the author's name appeared for the first time two years later, in a collection of radical Huguenot essays compiled by a Calvinist minister in Geneva, Simon Goulard.
Montand was furious at the essay's publication under revolutionary Huguenot auspices. He had intended to publish it himself.
Now, however, not only did he refuse to do so, but he tried to refurbish Labuetti's conservative
reputation by successively averring that his friend had been eighteen and then sixteen
years old at the time of the essay's writing.
For their part, however, even the Huguenots used Labuetti in gingerly fashion.
Attractive as was the spirit of La Boétie's essay, writes Harold Lasky, avowed an academic
republicanism was meet too strong for the digestion of the time.
Not that La Boétie was entirely without influence, but he was used as cautiously as an Anglican
bishop might in the sixties have an interest in Darwinism.
Almost completely forgotten in the more peaceful days of the first half of the seventeenth
In the 18th century in France, the discourse became widely known again during the Enlightenment
of the 18th century, through being printed as a supplement to Montaigne's essays, but
was not particularly influential.
Finally and unsurprisingly, the essay found its métier in the midst of the French Revolution
when it was twice reprinted.
Later, the radical Abbé de Lamine reprinted the discourse with a violent preference 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 19th and 20th 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 Parliament.
La Boétie's discourse has a vital importance for the modern reader, an importance that
It 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 modern 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 Boitie 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 so
are 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 communist
countries.
In modern political thought, only the free market economist Ludwig von Mises has sufficiently
stressed the fact that all governments must rest on majority consent.
Since despotic rule is against the interest of the bulk of the population, how then does
this consent come about?
Again La Boite highlights the point that this consent is engineered largely by propaganda
beamed at the populace by the rulers and their intellectual apologist.
The devices of bread and circuses, of ideological mystification that rulers today use to gull
the masses and gain the consent, remain the same as in Laporte's days.
The only difference is the enormous increase in the use of specialized intellectuals in
the service of the rulers.
But in this case, the primary task of opponents of modern tyranny is an educational one, to
awaken the public to this process, to demystify and desanctify the state apparatus.
Furthermore, La Boite's analysis, both of the engineering of consent and of the role
played by bureaucrats and other economic interests that benefit from the state, highlights another
is another critical problem which many modern opponents of statism have failed to recognize that the problem of strategy is not simply one of educating the public about the errors committed by the government.
For much of what the state does is not an error at all from its own point of view, but a means of maximizing its power, influence and income.
We have to realize that we are facing a mighty engine of power and economic exploitation and therefore that, at the very least, libertarian education of the public must include an expose of this exploitation and of the economic interest and intellectual apologist who benefit from state rule.
By confining themselves to analysis of alleged intellectual errors, opponents of government
intervention have rendered themselves ineffective.
For one thing, they have been beaming their counter-propaganda at a public which does
not have the equipment or the interest to follow the complex analyses of error, and which
which can therefore easily be re-bamboozled by the experts in the employ of the state.
Those experts, too, must be de-sanctified.
And again, La Boétie strengthens us in the necessity of such de-sanctification.
The libertarian theorist Lysander Spooner, writing over 400 years after La Boétie, propounded
The similar view that the supporters of government consisted largely of dupes and naves.
The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other
governments, are made up of three classes as follows.
One, naves, a numerous and active class who see in the government an instrument which
they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth.
Two dupes, a large class no doubt, each of whom, because he's allowed one voice out
of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property, and because
he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving and murdering others, that
others have in robbing, enslaving and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that
3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see
how to get rid of them, or do not choose to so far sacrifice their private interest as
as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change.
The prime task of education then is not simply abstract insight into governmental errors in
advancing the general welfare, but de-bamboozling the public on the entire nature and procedures
of the despotic state.
In that task, La Boétie also speaks to us in his stress on the importance of a perceptive
vanguard elite of libertarian and anti-statist intellectuals.
The role of this cadre to grasp the essence of statism and to de-sanctify the state in
the eyes and minds of the rest of the population is crucial to the potential success of any
It becomes, therefore, a prime libertarian task to discover, coalesce, nurture, and advance its cadre, a task of which all too many libertarians remain completely ignorant, for no amount of oppression or misery will lead to a successful movement for freedom unless such a cadre exists and is able to bring about a free society.
to educate and rally the intellectuals and the general public.
There is also the hint in La Boétie of the importance of finding and encouraging disaffected
portions of the ruling apparatus and of stimulating them to break away and support the opposition
to despotism.
While this can hardly play a central role in a libertarian movement, all successful
The first theoretical movements against state tyranny in the past have made use of such
disaffection and inner conflicts, especially in their later stages of development.
La Boitie was also the first theorist to move from the emphasis on the importance of consent
to the strategic importance of toppling tyranny by leading the public to withdraw that consent.
Hence, Laborty was the first theorist of the strategy of mass, non-violent, civil disobedience
of state edicts and exactions.
How practical such a tactic might be is difficult to say, especially since it has rarely been
used, but the tactic of mass refusal to pay taxes, for example, is increasingly being
employed in the United States today, albeit in a sporadic form.
In December 1974, the residents of the city of Willimantic, Connecticut, assembled in
a town meeting and rejected the entire city budget three times, finally forcing a tax
cut of 9%.
This is but one example of growing public revulsion against crippling taxation throughout
the country.
On a different theme, Labretti provides us with a hopeful note on the future of a free
society.
He points out that once the public experiences tyranny for a long time, it becomes inert
and heedless of the possibility of an alternative society.
But this means that should state despotism ever be removed, it would be extremely difficult
to reimpose statism.
The bulwark of habit would be gone, and statism would be seen by all for the tyranny that
it is.
If a free society were ever to be established then, the chances for its maintaining itself
would be excellent.
More and more, if inarticulately, the public is rebelling.
Not only against onerous taxation, but, in the age of Watergate, against the whole carefully
nurtured mystique of government.
Many years ago, the historian Cecilia Kenyon, writing of the anti-Federalist opponents of
the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, chided them for being men of little faith. Little
faith, that is, in a strong central government. It is hard to think of anyone having such
unexamined faith in government today. In such an age as ours, thinkers like Etienne de
have become far more relevant, far more genuinely modern than they have ever been for over a century.