Is Law a Tool for Enslavement?

From a very young age human beings are inculcated with a wide variety of information. As we grow older our ability to filter this incoming information improves. This results from having access to greater information, and more experiences to aid in critical examination. The amount of examination depends on the contemporary society, educational opportunities, and personal drive of each individual. The overwhelming majority fail to ever examine predominant beliefs, ideologies, and myths. The majority opinion on many issues is assumed valid. It is a rare event for one system to be examined, and a veritable impossibility for multiple systems to be examined. One system rarely put into debate is that of law. For centuries the assumption that codified laws are necessary, just, and good has been accepted without question.
Is this sound reasoning? Does the codification of a legal system aid, or enslave men?

What is Law?

Law-1) a binding custom or practice of a community , a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority (2) the whole body of such customs, practices, or rules (3)

Merriam-Webster

How did mankind survive before written laws?

For ages and ages mankind lived without any written law, even that graved in symbols upon the entrance stones of a temple. During that period, human relations were simply regulated by customs, habits and usages, made sacred by constant repetition, and acquired by each person in childhood, exactly as he learned how to obtain his food by hunting, cattle-rearing, or agriculture for some thousands of years.

Kropotkin- Law and Authority

Can mankind exist in complicated modern society without legal systems? That I cannot answer, but is a question that is never asked.

What we can discuss is why laws were codified, and who benefits most from them. The answer to this question is clearly the elite class in whichever society or time period examined.

As society became more and more divided into two hostile classes,
one seeking to establish its domination, the other struggling to escape, the
strife began. Now the conqueror was in a hurry to secure the results of his
actions in a permanent form, he tried to place them beyond question, to
make them holy and venerable by every means in his power. Law made
its appearance under the sanction of the priest, and the warrior’s club was
placed at its service. Its office was to render immutable such customs as
were to the advantage of the dominant minority. Military authority
undertook to ensure obedience. This new function was a fresh guarantee
to the power of the warrior; now he had not only mere brute force at his
service; he was the defender of law.
If law, however, presented nothing but a collection of prescriptions
serviceable to rulers, it would find some difficulty in insuring acceptance
and obedience. Well, the legislators confounded in one code the two
currents of custom, of which we have just been speaking, the maxims
which represent principles of morality and social union wrought out as a
result of life in common, and the mandates, which are meant to ensure
external existence to inequality. Customs, absolutely essential to the very
being of society, are, in the code, cleverly intermingled with usages
imposed by the ruling caste, and both claim equal respect from the word.
“Do not kill,” says the code, and hastens to add, “And pay tithes to the
priest.” “Do not steal,” says the code, and immediately after, “He who
refuses to pay taxes, shall have his hand struck off.”
Such was law; and it has maintained its two-fold character to this day. Its
origin is the desire of the ruling class to give permanence to customs
imposed by themselves for their own advantage. Its character is the
skilful commingling of customs useful to society, customs which have no
need of law to insure respect, with other customs useful only to rulers,
injurious to the mass of the people, and maintained only by the fear of
punishment.

Kropotkin

One could make a case that the order benefits even the oppressed multitude, and without it we would be worse off. Is this true? Possibly. Equally possible is that we have been controlled by systems for so long that we have no notion of reality without them. What do laws in our modern time provide? They overwhelming benefit the powerful, and reinforce the existence of the institutions the powerful control. Do I not kill because I fear imprisonment? No. It is because I have empathy for other human beings, and would be punished by the community regardless of law. If society broke down, and someone was killing at will then the majority would turn on them. Not because the law existed, but because it is the self interest of the community.

Look at our society today, and ask yourself who gains most from laws? What justice does laws provide?

Law is one system of many that enslave men. Codified law, controlled political systems, education, economics, and institutionalized religion are the foundations for control. Until we move past assuming we need these institutions we will be forever caught in an endless cycle of oppression.

The indolence, the fears, the inertia of the crowd, and thanks to the continual repetition of the same acts, they have permanently established customs which have become a solid basis for their own domination.

Without a doubt as it directly clashes with our given right of free will. Many will try to flame and deny that but this Earth, this planet, is everyone's 'property' and the government makes the 'criminals' by poverty, atrocius war and mind control crimes and the suffering of people world wide, aside from the few who control it at the very top.

man kind survived before laws from the fear of a higher being, before that we just acted like animals so survived just how animals do

Laws are good if based on scientific fact for the use of a Law. That is not however how it is used. Most Laws are used to enslave us to only being allowed what they claim is for our own well being. Take Drugs for instance. They incarcerate us if we take drugs but they are the distributers of it and benefit from it in a big way when they haul our butts to jail. That is not heresay that is fact. Based on fact those laws should be abolished for those reasons. We should have the Freedom of Choice especially in this country. America Land of the Free.....Education is KEY!

great thread. i will chime in as it develops, IF it develops.

reply to post by OneLife


The idea of property being sanctified, and a right beyond question ties into this. I have been a hard core libertarian on most issues, but I had a conversation recently that gave me pause. Why do we place the right to private property, and laws protecting this on such a pedestal? Do we do this because the majority benefit from it, or because the powerful do. My mind goes to eminent domain laws. Property is infallible for those powerful enough to afford teams of lawyers, but not for the rest of us. What does that show about the laws protecting property?

Property is something that I always understood to be earned through hard work, and therefore laws were just in protecting the fruits of your labor. In reality, the major holders of property achieved there holdings by what are considered by most unjust means. Banking, governmental, political, and corporate elites gained there wealth by different means. These include speculation, nepotism, confiscation, and off the labor of wage slaves. Most property was accumulated by seizing the labor of others. I am being very generalized, but I think my argument has validity.

It could be questioned that private property is just, and the laws concerning it just. That does not mean a technocracy should seize all property from everyone to distribute "evenly." I am only pointing out that philosophically the idea of property should be at least discussed.