How can the few rule over the many

in #anarchy6 years ago

These are my recent thoughts on the topic. I do not claim that they are perfectly correct and am happy to discuss and hear other opinions

The power always lies with the many. If all (the working 95%) stop and are coordinated there is nothing the 5% in power can do. Even if the have the weapons to win in a fight, they would be killing the people working for them and thus act against their won interest.

In most animals the strongest individual is always the leader. However in groups of humans (of natural size from 20-50 individuals) the situation is much more complex. The weaker ones can organise and cooperate to get rid of a leader that acts against their interest.

But when we move to larger groups (city to country size) it is significantly more difficult to organise.
In the past, the elite secured there power by having better access to weapons, so that small uprisings could be suppressed.
Larger uprisings were not possible without a very strong cause, since there was no way for the working people to organise.

Nowadays we have much better ways to organise on larger scales giving the 95% a lot of power. In order to keep the power in few hands it would therefore be necessary to control this power. Options could be censorship, creating distrust in the independent media (label everything as "fake news"), campaigns against movements while they are still small, state sponsored media, pretending everyone is the 5% (fake democracy), inventing and creating external threads and pitting various groups against each other.
Weather we have actual political power or if any of these hypothetical methods are already being employed and we live under the rule of a small minority I leave for you to decide.

It becomes much more interesting in the future. As long as human labour is valuable the most important tool for freedom is the ability to organise. But what happens when human labour is no longer needed. Now the working class becomes a risk and a burden for the rulers.

One might hope that in such a world the divide between the 5% and 95% would be removed. However, even when human labour is worthless there will still be scarce resources. Humans will always consume produce waste. Therefore, for the people that are in power at that time, there would be an incentive to reduce the global population to the level where there are no more scarce resources (probably by war).

I believe that the time when human labour will become worthless is much closer than we think and this makes it important to make sure now that we live in a world where the power is with the people.

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