The Politics of Obedience, The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de la Boétie
Part 1
The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government?
The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants.
Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action but from the refusal to serve.
Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.
I see no good in having several lords.
Let one alone be master.
Let one alone be king.
These words Homer puts in the mouth of Ulysses as he addresses the people.
If he had said nothing further than, I see no good in having several lords, it would
have been well spoken. For the sake of logic, he should have maintained that the rule of
several could not be good, since the power of one man alone, as soon as he acquires the
title of master, becomes abusive and unreasonable. Instead, he declared what seems preposterous.
Let one alone be master, let one alone be king.
We must not be critical of Ulysses, who at the moment was perhaps obliged to speak these
words in order to quell a mutiny in the army, for this reason, in my opinion, choosing language
to meet the emergency rather than the truth.
Yet, in the light of reason, it is a great misfortune to be at the beck and call of one
Master, for it is impossible to be sure that he is going to be kind, since it is always
in his power to be cruel whenever he pleases. As for having several masters, according to
the number one has, it amounts to being that many times unfortunate. Although I do not
wish at this time to discuss this much debated question, namely whether other types of government
are preferable to monarchy. Still, I should like to know, before casting doubt on the
place that monarchy should occupy among commonwealths, whether or not it belongs to such a group,
since it is hard to believe that there is anything of common wealth in a country where
everything belongs to one master. This question, however, can remain for another time and would
For the present, 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, yet 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, but simply, it would seem, delighted
and charmed by the name of one man alone whose power they need not fear, for he is evidently
the one person whose qualities they cannot admire because of his inhumanity and brutality
A weakness characteristic of humankind is that we often have to obey force. We have
to make concessions. We ourselves cannot always be the stronger. Therefore, when a nation
is constrained by the fortune of war to serve a single clique, as happened when the city
of Athens served the Thirty Tyrants, one should not be amazed that the nation obeys, but simply
We be grieved by the situation, or rather, instead of being amazed or saddened, consider
patiently the evil, and look forward, hopefully, toward a happier future.
Our nature is such that the common duties of human relationship occupy a great part
of the course of our life.
It is reasonable to love virtue, to esteem good deeds, to be grateful for good from whatever
and often to give up some of our comfort in order to increase the honor and advantage of some man whom we love and who deserves it.
Therefore, if the inhabitants of a country have found some great personage who has shown rare foresight in protecting them in an emergency,
presidency, rare boldness in defending them, rare solicitude in governing them, and if,
from that point on, they contract the habit of obeying him and depending upon him to such
an extent that they grant him certain prerogatives, I fear that such a procedure is not prudent.
Inasmuch as they remove him from a position in which he was doing good and advance him
to a dignity in which he may do evil. Certainly, while he continues to manifest good will,
one need fear no harm from a man who seems to be generally well-disposed. But, 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? To see an endless multitude
of People not merely obeying, but driven to servility, not ruled, but tyrannized over.
These wretches have no wealth, no kin, nor wife, nor children, nor even life itself that
they can call their own. They suffer plundering, wantonness, cruelty, not from an army, not
from a barbarian horde, on account of whom they must shed their blood and sacrifice their
Not from a Hercules nor from a Samson, but from a single little man.
Too frequently this same little man is the most cowardly and effeminate in the nation,
a stranger to the powder of battle and hesitant on the sands of the tournament, not only without
energy to direct men by force, but with hardly enough virility to bed with a common woman.
Shall we call subjection to such a leader cowardice?
Shall we say that those who serve him are cowardly and faint-hearted?
If two, if three, if four do not defend themselves from the one, we might call that circumstance
It's surprising, but nevertheless conceivable. In such a case, one might be justified in
suspecting a lack of courage. But 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
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 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? Of course, there is in every vital
and vice-inevitably some limit beyond which one cannot go, two, possibly ten, may fear one, but 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, any more than valor can be termed the effort of one individual to scale a fortress.
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, which nature herself disavows and our tongues refuse to name?
Place on one side fifty thousand armed men, and on the other the same number. Let them join in battle, one side fighting to retain its liberty, the other to take it away. To which would you, at a guess, promise victory?
Which men do you think would march more gallantly to combat, those who anticipate as a reward
for their suffering the maintenance of their freedom, or those who cannot expect any other
prize for the blows exchanged than the enslavement of others?
One side will have before its eyes the blessings of the past and the hope of similar joy in
and the Future. Their thoughts will dwell less on the comparatively brief pain of battle
than on what they may have to endure forever, they, their children, and all their posterity.
The other side has nothing to inspire it with courage except the weak urge of greed, which
fades before danger and which can never be so keen, it seems to me, that it will not
not be dismayed by the least drop of blood from wounds.
Consider the justly famous battles of Miltiades, Leonidas, Themostocles, still fresh today
in recorded history and in the minds of men as if they had occurred but yesterday, battles
fought in Greece for the welfare of the Greeks and as an example to the world.
What power do you think gave to such a mere handful of men, not the strength, but the
and courage to withstand the attack of a fleet so vast that even the seas were burdened,
and to defeat the armies of so many nations, armies so immense that their officers alone
outnumbered the entire Greek force. What was it but the fact that in those glorious days
this struggle represented not so much a fight of Greeks against Persians as a victory of
of Liberty over Domination, of Freedom over Greed.
It amazes us to hear accounts of the valor that liberty arouses in the hearts of those
who defend it. But who could believe reports of what goes on every day among the inhabitants
of some countries? Who could really believe that one man alone may mistreat a hundred
and deprive them of their liberty. Who would credit such a report if he merely heard it
without being present to witness the event? And if this condition occurred only in distant
lands and were reported to us, which one among us would not assume the tale to be imagined
or invented and not really true? Obviously, there is no need of fighting to overcome this
There is no need that the country make an effort to do anything for itself, provided it does nothing against itself.
It is therefore the inhabitants themselves who permit, or rather bring about their own
subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude.
A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when having a choice between being vassals
and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its
in his own misery, or rather, apparently welcomes it. If it costs the people anything to recover its freedom, I should not urge action to this end, although there is nothing a human should hold more dear than the restoration of his own natural right to change himself from a beast of burden back to a man, so to speak.
I do not demand of him so much boldness, let him prefer the doubtful security of living
wretchedly to the uncertain hope of living as he pleases.
What then?
If in order to have liberty nothing more is needed than to long for it, if only a simple
act of the will is necessary, is there any nation in the world that considers a single
will wish too high a price to pay in order to recover rights which it ought to be ready
to redeem at the cost of its blood, rights such that their loss must bring all men of
honor to the point of feeling life to be unendurable and death itself a deliverance.
Everyone knows that the fire from a little spark will increase and blaze ever higher
as long as it finds wood to burn. Yet without being quenched by water, but merely by finding
no more fuel to feed on, it consumes itself, dies down and is no longer a flame. Similarly,
the more tyrants pillage, the more they crave, the more they ruin and destroy, the more one
Everyone yields to them and obeys them by that much do they become mightier and more
formidable the readier to annihilate and destroy.
But if not one thing is yielded to them, if without any violence they are simply not obeyed,
may become naked, and undone, and as nothing, just as when the root receives no nourishment,
the branch withers and dies.
To achieve the good that they desire, the bold do not fear danger, the intelligent do
not refuse to undergo suffering, it is the stupid and cowardly who are neither able to
to endure hardship nor to vindicate their rights.
They stop at merely longing for them and lose through timidity the valour roused by the
effort to claim their rights, although the desire to enjoy them still remains as part
of their nature.
A longing common to both the wise and the foolish, to brave men and to cowards, is this
There is longing for all those things which, when acquired, would make them happy and contented.
Yet one element appears to be lacking.
I do not know how it happens that nature fails to place within the hearts of men a burning
desire for liberty, a blessing so great and so desirable that when it is lost all evils
and even the blessings that remain lose taste and savor because of their corruption by servitude.
Liberty is the only joy upon which men do not seem to insist, for surely if they really wanted it, they would receive it.
Apparently they refuse this wonderful privilege because it is so easily acquired.
Poor, wretched and stupid peoples, nations determined on your own misfortune and blind to your own good.
You let yourself 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 yourself 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 than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you.
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?
What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you?
If you were not accomplices of the murderer who kills you, if you were not traitors to yourselves, you sow your crops in order that he may ravage them, you install and furnish your homes to give him goods to pillage, you rear your daughters that he may gratify his lust.
you bring up your children in order that he may confer upon them the greatest privilege he knows
to be led into his battles, to be delivered to butchery, to be made the servants of his greed
and the instruments of his vengeance. You yield your bodies unto hard labor in order that he may
indulge in his delights and wallow in his filthy pleasures. You weaken yourselves in order to make
From all these indignities, such as the very beast of the field would not endure, you can deliver 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.