Many are making use of its aims in order to hide from men the state of oppression and slavery in which they now are.
The way they set about doing so is by starting the theory that the violence connected with the economy of social slavery is a natural and unavoidable evil; and men thereby are deceived and turn their eyes from the real causes of their misfortunes.
Slavery has long been abolished. It has been abolished in Rome as well as in America, and in Russia; but only the word has been abolished,—not the evil.
Slavery is the violent freeing of some men from the labour necessary for satisfying their wants, which transfers this labour to others; and wherever there is a man who does not work, not because others willingly and lovingly work for him, but because he has the possibility, while not working himself, to make others work for him, there slavery exists.
Wherever there are, as in all European societies, men who utilize the labour of thousands of others by coercion, and consider such to be their right, and others who submit to this coercion considering it to be their duty,—there you have slavery in its most dreadful proportions.
Slavery exists. In what, then, does it consist? Slavery consists of that of which it has always consisted, and without which it cannot exist at all,—in the coercion of a weak and unarmed man by a strong and armed man.
Slavery in its three fundamental modes of operation,—personal violence, the military, land-taxes,—maintained by the military, and direct and indirect taxes put upon all the inhabitants, is still in operation now as it has been before.
We do not see it because each of these three forms of slavery has received a new justification, which hides its meaning from us.
The personal violence of armed over unarmed men has been justified as the defence of one's country from imaginary enemies,—while in its essence it has the one old meaning, the submission of the conquered to the oppressors.
The violent seizure of the labourers' land has been justified as the recompense for services rendered to an imaginary common welfare, and confirmed by the right of heritage; but in reality it is the same dispossession of men from their land and enslaving them which was performed by the troops.