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    Anti-Dictator: the Discours sur la servitude volontaire of Étienne de La Boétie
    Anti-Dictator: the Discours sur la servitude volontaire of Étienne de La Boétie
    Anti-Dictator: the Discours sur la servitude volontaire of Étienne de La Boétie
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    Anti-Dictator: the Discours sur la servitude volontaire of Étienne de La Boétie

    By Étienne de La Boétie

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    This famous essay asserts that tyrants have power because the people give it to them. La Boetie linked together obedience and domination, a relationship which would be later elaborated by anarchist thinkers.  By advocating a solution of simply refusing to support the tyrant, he became one of the earliest advocates of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance. “To him, the great mystery of politics was obedience to rulers. Why in the world do people agree to be looted and otherwise oppressed by government overlords? It is not just fear, Boetie explains in “The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude,” for our consent is required. And that consent can be non-violently withdrawn.”—Lew Rockwell
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarakaldo Books
    Release dateJun 25, 2020
    ISBN9781839745669
    Anti-Dictator: the Discours sur la servitude volontaire of Étienne de La Boétie

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      Book preview

      Anti-Dictator - Étienne de La Boétie

      © Barakaldo Books 2020, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

      Publisher’s Note

      Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

      We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

      ANTI-DICTATOR

      The Discours sur la servitude volontaire of Étienne de la Boétie

      RENDERED INTO ENGLISH BY

      HARRY KURZ

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Contents

      TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

      DEDICATION 5

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 6

      INTRODUCTION 7

      Unique Qualities of This Discourse 7

      Life of the Author 8

      Friendship of Two Men 10

      Curious History of the Essay 12

      Interpretation of the Essay 15

      ANTI-DICTATOR 17

      REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 41

      DEDICATION

      This call to freedom ringing down the corridors of four centuries is sounded again here for the sake of peoples in all totalitarian countries today who dare not freely declare their thought.

      It will also ring dear and beautiful in the ears of those who still live freely and who by faith and power will contribute to the liberation of the rest of mankind from the horrors of political serfdom.

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      DR. Royal S. van de Woestyne, formerly at Knox College, where I knew him, and now teaching at the Universities of Chicago and of Buffalo, first stirred an abiding interest in La Boétie by his expressed admiration for the spirit of liberty in the sixteenth century.

      Mr. Gilbert H. Doane, formerly at the University of Nebraska, where I knew him, and now Director of Libraries at the University of Wisconsin, urged me effectively to undertake the work of giving to our new world a new rendering of La Boétie’s old cry for freedom.

      Grace Cook Kurz, my wife, lent her luminous intelligence and beautiful literary style to the perfecting of the translation of the essay.

      To Roy, Gilbert, and Grace, I express here gratitude for their inspiration and comradeship.

      To Matilda L. Berg of the Columbia University Press I wish to make a special acknowledgment of her skilful and close scrutiny of the manuscript of this book and her excellent guidance.

      HARRY KURZ

      Queens College

      February, 1942

      INTRODUCTION

      Unique Qualities of This Discourse

      LA Boétie’s essay against dictators{1} makes stirring reading. A clear analysis of how tyrants get power and maintain it, its simple assumption is that real power always lies in the hands of the people and that they can free themselves from a despot by an act of will unaccompanied by any gesture of violence. The astounding fact about this tract is that in 1948 it will be four hundred years old. One would seek hard to find any writing of current times that strips the sham from dictators more vigorously. Better than many modern political thinkers, its author not only reveals the contemptible nature of dictatorships, but he goes on to show, as is aptly stated by the exiled Borghese{2} that all servitude is voluntary and the slave is more despicable than the tyrant is hateful. No outraged cry from the past or present points the moral more clearly that Rome was worthy of her Nero, and by inference, Europe of her present little strutters and the agony in which they have engulfed their world. So appropriate to our day is this courageous essay that one’s amazement is aroused by the fact that a youth of eighteen really wrote it four centuries ago, with such far-sighted wisdom that his words can resound today as an ever-echoing demand for what is still dearest to mankind.

      Life of the Author

      La Boétie{3} was born at Sarlat, southwestern France, on November 1, 1530. He came from the provincial nobility, his father being an assistant to the governor of Périgord. His uncle, a priest, gave him his early training and prepared him for entrance to the School of Law at the University of Toulouse, where in 1553 he received his degree with special honors. During these years of study he steeped himself also in the classics so that later he translated from the Greek and composed poetry in Latin. Early in this period he wrote his immortal essay, presumably in 1548. His reputation as a scholar procured for him at graduation, although he was under age, appointment as a judge attached to the court of Bordeaux. He was named to a post vacated by an illustrious predecessor, Longa,{4} who was summoned as justice to Paris. During the next ten years we find La Boétie’s name on the official records of the court in connection with a number of difficult cases.

      A justice of that day had to perform a wide variety of duties. La Boétie was called in as literary critic and censor when the Collège de Guyenne wanted official sanction for the presentation of some plays. A little later he was entrusted with the delicate mission of traveling to Paris to petition the king, Henry II, for special financial arrangements for the regular payment of the salaries of the court. He was successful in this quest and brought back also a personal message from the great Chancellor of France, Michel de l’Hospital, who was trying to pacify

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