To people who believe in destiny, fate, historical materialism, determinism, divine will, mathematical cosmology, or other such dogma, when events of significance occur it is proof of some sort of Grand Design.

The development of civilization is seen by many people as the crowning achievement of human endeavor, and Ultramodern convenience viewed as our reward for the fulfillment of some divine plan. However, it can also be viewed as an abomination
against life on Earth. At this point in the (end)game, civilization can also be seen as representing the triumph of the worst characteristics of human capabilities.

After pummeling one another for a millennium, the Northern nations discovered distant lands inhabited by a wide variety of Peoples who shared one thing in common: their societies were not devoted to developing more efficient methods to slaughter their neighbors. This is not meant to suggest that warfare was unknown outside the North. However, most peoples had other things to do besides scheming up easier ways to massacre their neighbors.

The Northerners, on the other hand, were so adept at wholesale slaughter, Christopher Columbus salivated at the thought that his armored, heavily armed sailors could readily subdue the Arawak and Carib peoples he encountered on the islands he stumbled upon. He wrote to his Masters that these simply-living Peoples could easily be forced to “accept our ways.”

It wasn’t enough to rape, rob and massacre these other Peoples. Their cultures were to be obliterated and the unlucky survivors forced to live in a manner acceptable to their conquerors. This was the original shock and awe campaign. The Columbus brothers obliterated a People who numbered in the millions. Just them and their sailors. Before Pizarro, Cortes, “Mad Dog” Anthony Wayne, DeSoto, Fremont…

Northerners asserted their military superiority. It’s no wonder that most of the survivors came to emulate their conquerors. To many, the choice was to either adopt the alien civilization or face extermination. This is still the false choice presented to all of us on a daily basis: work or starve.

Tremendous amounts of wealth accumulated over generations, centuries even, were plundered from people around the world by European armies, mercenaries, and adventurers. This vast wealth was used to initiate capitalism. It funded the construction of massive factories, and the seizure of the commons. Having been born and grown up together, capitalism and the state are thus co-joined twins, each dependent on the other. The state created the social crises capitalism required in order to move into the Industrial Age. Capitalism rewarded the state with wealth. For instance, capitalists needed desperately impoverished people to destroy in their mines and factories. The state provided a ready workforce when it confiscated the common lands and thereby reduced subsistence farmers and prosperous peasants to destitution.

Evil Twins

Capitalism and the state were born and grew up together as a result of corruption and crisis. Crises helped to establish the dominance of capitalism, and were often created by the state. From the beginning of this alliance, the state and capital have depended on one another. If capital falters, the state intervenes on its behalf. When the state grows weak, capitalists recreate it in a manner more beneficial for the Masters and in a way that pulls the state through its political crisis. This happened in America during the Great Depression, the Reagan “revolution,” and is re-occurring again, now.

One of the greatest obstacles to overcome in the struggle against capitalism is the sense of dependency its methods of production have forced upon us. By forcing people to spend most of their time in productive, redundant and unskilled labor, people must depend upon the specialized production of other workers to provide the food, clothing, shelter and countless consumer gizmos that we’re trained to want.

All of us are born as free beings in a thriving, dynamic world of abundance. All of nature’s plentiful banquet is ours for the taking, for sharing, for cherishing. This must be denied us – at all cost! – by the forces of the state and capital. Should we awaken to and demand our birthright, all industry and nationstates would vanish, made irrelevant by our refusal to accept their limitations.

Prior to the era of industrial enslavement, most households and families were considered functional or not by that households ability to be more-or-less-self-sufficient. Living, back then, was what people did throughout the course of the day, like preparing food and other things necessary for comfort and survival in the future. This has been true of societies from the time of nomadic bands through the ages of village communities. Now, however, people must earn a living.

Not only are we forced to make profits for corporations, but we are also compelled to structure our lives around our labor activities. Whereas life once flowed in gentle rhythms of light and dark, now we must construct our days according to regulations of the timeclock. Our society jumps according to the dictates of the workplace.

Most people accept this unquestioningly. Most people are not only unwilling to take a critical glance at these imposed conditions of our lives, but are actually incapable of doing so. All the institutions of industrial society serve one main purpose; to enforce a feeling of helplessness upon the masses. Their master stroke is achieved by convincing people to embrace their dependency upon the industrial nation-state by selling it to them as empowerment. Even the most intelligent, capable people of the modern societies have fallen into this trap.

In the times before the invention of Childhood, young people spent all their time in the company of adults, mainly their parents. Infants are observant and intelligent. They could see what their parents did during their day – cooking, grooming, creating things, working their gardens. By the time the young ones could walk, they were capable of helping their parents out, if only in very slight ways. The more the young person grew, the more the person contributed to the maintenance of the household and the well-being of its members. This was a source of pride for the young boy or girl. Is it any wonder then that a person raised in this manner would be capable of starting their own household at the age of 13, 14, or 15? Having encountered few limitations other than those of their physical and experiential development, these young folks grew steadily in confidence and ability until they knew they were ready to move on to adulthood.

Unfortunately, the machinations of industry are so entrenched into our lives that the denial of our birthright begins at the moment of our birth. Immediately, we are subject to the regimentation of numbers – weighed, measured, timed, classified, documented. While imprisoned within childhood, we are protected from the demands of the real world. Pushed aside, ignored and neglected, we are confined to one of the roles we are expected to play all our lives – that of helpless, drooling idiots, to be looked after, cared for, spoiled, tolerated, and eventually employed.

The straight jacket called childhood enshrouds us and few escape its bonds during our lives. Taught to be quiet, still and out of the way, children are left dependent upon the family, or – more often – total strangers, who take great care to stop us from growing, from realizing our abilities, from claiming our rightful place as living beings in a world of abundance.

Capitalism was manufactured in the English countryside when people, derided by the elite as “commoners,” were forced into destitution. Access to lands their ancestors had utilized for centuries (the commons) was denied them. Prior to that, most people were able to meet their needs through the efforts of their own hands. People did not give up their ability to live self-sufficiently and take up wage-slavery voluntarily. It was forced on them through overwhelming military power. Luddite rebellions against Industrialization didn’t come until later (1800-1820). The original, primary battle to establish capitalism was over access to land. Class-based “revolutionary” movements have yet to grasp this, the single most important aspect to the fight against capital. Yet peoples’ demands for land to utilize for their sustenance have fueled revolutionary movements since the 1640′s on every continent contaminated by capitalism’s touch.

The Masters abolished common law. They refused to acknowledge the commoners’ ages-old rights because these rights weren’t recognized by written laws utilized by the Master Race. It helped their cause that the Masters were often the judges, too. It also didn’t hurt that the Masters had professional soldiers in their service, nor that factory owners and bankers would assist them to hire mercenaries, if necessary, and arm them in order to seize the common lands.

The plundering of natural resources, traditionally utilized by people through common agreement, was legitimized through shady legal shenanigans. These legal sleight-of-hand maneuvers form the basis on which contemporary international trade treaties, and organizations that enforce and fund them, claim their authority. In addition to continued conquest of lands inhabited by indigenous Peoples with no “legal” title to their homelands, the WTO and IMF/WB demand that local laws – fully established and recognized by local courts and governments -be overturned in favor of the interests (primarily the creation of profits) of international corporations and banks.

The traditions of the commons were finally eclipsed by the cowboy economics of the American West, wherein the first person or entity to utilize resources for profitable enterprises could claim First Rights to them. Thus, a mining company could divert the flow of a river to wash away mountainsides and leave simple pastoral families and subsistence farmers downstream with little or no water for their use. What mattered was that distant banks and industrialists profited, not whether homesteaders could provide for themselves and their families.

Capital funded the voyages of discovery and conquest that brought about the Modern world. This benefited capital, but nowhere near the extent it benefited the Master Race of Europe and their military agents. Whereas the capitalists reinvested their earnings into colonial plantations and domestic industries, the feuding elites squandered vast fortunes on senseless continental and colonial squabbles over territory. The states used these wars to solidify their claim to legitimacy and, of course, capitalists profited from these conflicts. This rewarded the worst possible characteristics in people, and the Master Race absorbed those who would do anything for money.