The War of All Against All

John Fleming

I wrote The War of All Against All after many years of study and thought. It deals with subjects we can all relate to, such as money, injustice, competition for status, and much more, yet in a unique, riveting manner. As I always strive to find the most suitable expression, the mot juste, the text is clear and concise, and free of technical terms and dull statistics.

To illustrate my ideas, I quote such classic works as Francis Bacon's Essays, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, and Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class.

Some provocative issues examined in my book are: What is the nature of money, power and class in America? Are people inherently good or evil (the view of Hobbes versus Rousseau's)? Why has there never been a classless society? For all these reasons and more, The War of All Against All will make rewarding and entertaining reading both for the layperson and the scholar of the social sciences or the humanities.

Even under the best conditions of class society, life is a war of everyone against everyone, which the lower class decidedly loses. If the ruling class cannot be overthrown the best hope is for a decent culture, a humane system of rules for interaction, with those with modest means being left alone to lead a humble life.

According to Hobbes, only an all-powerful state, a Leviathan, could create order out of the chaos of social warfare, and thereby assure a civilized life for the great as well as the powerless. Yet in every age, the rewards of freedom have been worth fighting for. The Spartacus revolt in ancient Rome, the Jacquerie in France, the Peasants' War in Germany, and the Nat Turner and Denmark Vessey revolts in the antebellum American South were all desperate challenges to the class system. Their brutal suppression in every instance terminated armed revolutionary resistance to oppression, yet class struggle continued in economic and cultural forms.

Conflict is ubiquitous in class society, and everyday each of us is bound to encounter examples of it. A motorist with limited means tries to talk his way out of a police officer's issuing him a ticket that carries a hefty fine. A victim of a business franchising scam finds he is unable to recover his money. A grandee, a blueblood, guilty of a felony is not prosecuted due to his connections, which extend to the district attorney's office. Draftees into the military -- such as during the Vietnam War -- are disproportionately drawn from the working class, while the privileged often find a way to avoid risking life and limb in a war they enthusiastically support. Anti-abortionists try to overturn Roe vs. Wade, saying "your mother was pro-life," while pro-abortion advocates oppose "compulsory pregnancy."

More prosaic forms of conflict include arrest of shoplifters, assault and battery, larceny, malicious contumely, abridgement of freedom of speech (often justified by the ambiguous concept "clear and present danger"), and assessment of regressive fees, surcharges, dues, tolls, tariffs, excise taxes, interest payments, levies, fines, imposts, amercements, overcharges, bail, indemnities, exorbitant rent, and rate hikes. In this connection, the German word for "surcharge" is revealing--Zuschlag, literally meaning "to strike a blow" or "to hit someone."

Turning to another source of conflict, American police, who are often notorious sticklers for the law, have at their disposal many vague laws with which to disconcert or harass law-abiding deviants or dissidents: "disturbing the peace," "resisting arrest," "disorderly conduct," "unlawful assembly," "loitering," "trespassing," "littering," "civil disobedience," "obstructing traffic," "incitement to riot," "investigative detention," and all kinds of "conspiracy" (known as the "prosecutor's darling").

As the German proverb goes, je mehr Gesetz, je weniger Recht (the more laws, the less justice).

Behind all this conflict, injustice and, for the poor especially, considerable hardship, is, as I often point out in the text, inequality, or class divisions. The existence of a class hierarchy necessarily indicates class conflict. Those on top, the haves, are not about to divest themselves of class privileges. No ruling class has ever been known to voluntarily abandon its power for the sake of the general welfare of society.

The universality of class hierarchy suggests something important about human nature, especially when viewed in contrast to the hunting-gathering society. The urge to be dominant in any social situation is strong, as is, on the other hand, the habit of conformity and acquiescence to authority and superior force. Both are survival strategies for an unnatural environment.

Thus, slavery was practiced in every ancient society. "Force made the first slave," observed Rousseau, "and cowardice perpetuated his slavery."

From an institutional perspective, the social warfare stemming from inequality can be: economic (slavery, inheritance of unearned wealth, underpayment of labor [Marx's surplus value]); legal (imprisonment, police brutality); racial (segregation, discriminatory employment practices); religious (intolerance of or hostility toward other faiths, the horror of the Holocaust, the Israeli-Arab battles in the Middle East); familial (wife beating, neglect or abuse of aged parents); sexual (rape, restriction of opportunities for women); international (war, puppet governments propped up by more powerful nations).

Yet the insoluble paradox, the Catch-22, is that the ruling class, those with the power to right the wrongs and institute peace in place of the melee of class society, are loathe to compromise their power for the cause of justice! Governing classes are sometimes overthrown, but only through force, as in a revolution or coup d'etat. (A national election which replaces top leaders with a few members of the same class practicing similar politics is not to be confused with the downfall of a ruling class.) On a more positive level, I argue that the solution for many of society's problems is greater equality.

Eastern or Western, communist or capitalist, "democratic," plutocratic or aristocratic-no mass society has been without a ruling elite, which suggests to many thinkers that hierarchy and conflict serve some "function." "Conflict must do something for societies [writes anthropologist Robert J. Wenke] or it would be difficult to explain its depressing ubiquitousness in human affairs."

But more plausible is the idea that the elite, and the conflict stemming from its rule, is dysfunctional, governing society for no higher reason than to promote the needs and desires of its own members, and bending the energy of the masses to those ends. How else could one explain its privileges and wealth? The elite enjoys a superior education, maximum leisure, a privileged place in the military, multiple luxurious residences, worldly travel, a superior diet and superior health care, laws favoring excuse of their depredations, and exemption from work (except the prestigious political kind).

On the other hand, the poor are subject to monotonous and arduous manual labor, a modest domicile, minimal leisure, impressment into the low ranks of the military, criminal laws biased against them, and inferior diet, health care and education. The brutal exploitation of earlier ages included the corvee, debtor's prison, droi de seignor, physical torture, slavery, starvation, peonage and complete absence of human rights in the lord-vassal paternalistic relationship of feudalism.

I wrote in my book, "all wealth is referential." That is, money talks, money facilitates, and whether the latter likes it or not, the rich man has arbitrary power over the poor man. Since no one can isolate himself from modern society, and the economy is vastly interdependent, a person's financial status largely determines how others regard him, and fixes his social status in society. In America, with the sole possible exception of fame, there simply is no measure of class position other than money.

It is an American fetish, the end and aim of every success story, proceeding historically from Alexander Hamilton to John Jacob Astor l, Mark Twain, the tycoons of the Gilded Age, their heirs and heiresses (e.g., Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke, Nelson Rockefeller), and into the age of the overpaid celebrity and physicians who incorporate themselves to avoid taxes. (Wish we could all do that!) In other societies, of course, money also ruled. According to Ecclesiastes, "wine maketh merry, but money answereth all things."

A cynical twist on a Biblical phrase runs "you know what they say about the Golden Rule: He who has the gold rules." Horace said "by right means, if you can, but by any means make money." Also, money-hungry lawyers are part of the reason that the U.S. is the most litigious society in the world, and from this same class of people is drawn most American politicians and holders of high governmental office.

Yet I discuss these concepts in accessible, non-technical language that requires no specialized background to comprehend. For example, I note in the introduction, "humane sentiment is weakened and dissipated by being extended over the impersonal social distances of mass society."