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\nFranz Oppenheimer, in his book The State<\/i><\/a>,(1919) saw no other way of turning tribal territories into States except through conquest. The conquerors became the rulers and the conquered, the ruled.\nSince humans need food to live, the rulers required of the ruled to provide them with food and whatever else they wished.\n<\/p> \nBut here comes the most clever of all stratagems: the division of the ruled into two groups. One group of workers is given the job of enforcement, and the other workers remain enforced workers. The enforcers are called “police,” “soldier,” “sheriff,” “deputy,” “marshal,” “bodyguard,” “security guard,” “national guard,” etc. The non-enforcers are forced into wage-labor by forbidding them free access to subsistence land.\nThis is true from the time of recorded history. Allowing occupation of land was conditional on some kind of payment and service. At first this is called feudalism, but in a sense, feudalism still exists in the form of payment of property and other taxes to the State, and military service when required.\n<\/p> \nThe ease of dividing people into enforcers and non-enforcers was dramatically demonstrated by the Stanford prison experiment<\/a> by Philip Zimbardo, in which students were randomly divided into prison guards and prisoners.\n<\/p> \nWhat this — as well as my general independent knowledge — shows me is that people will do almost anything for a job and money. Perhaps the book by Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil<\/a>, 2007, captures this phenomenon as does Hannah Arendt’s description of Adolph Eichmann by the phrase the “banality of evil” — that people will sell themselves easily as slaves of others. \n<\/p> \nI have always wondered — and still do — how soldiers were recruited to fight in massive face-to-face battles, where death and the known probability of death was so extensive. I can understand the willingness of people to fight in a defensive action; but I am utterly disturbed by how easily the police and national guards comply to quell people with justifiable grievances; or even how an organized war of Americans against Americans (1861-1865) was possible. \n<\/p> \nBelow is a documentary about what took place in Chicago during the August 1968 Democratic National Convention. Thousands of young people congregated in Lincoln and Grant Parks in protest against the Vietnam War. Mayor Daley ordered the police to clear the parks and stop any illegal marching, and the police brutally complied, with the national guard standing in the background. \n<\/p> \n\n