On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

by Thomas L. Knapp

America loves its anarchists--from a distance, at any rate.

America loves its anarchists when they are safely ensconced in the grave.

America loves its anarchists when the reality of their times has faded from memory and when they can be turned into warm, fuzzy caricatures of themselves. Witness, for example, the reduction of Emma Goldman to one phrase--"If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution"--in the public mind.

America loves its anarchists when their writings are considered dated enough to be reproduced only in bowdlerized form for the consumption of students who must be taught that America values its "dissident heritage."

The inclusion of an anti-statist essay in the curriculum of a government school is a rare thing. When it happens at all, the intent is generally to discredit its author in the minds of the young and malleable, to give the impression that great men once lived but are now no longer needed (because we have government schools now, you know--except that we must never admit that there was a time when we didn't), or both.

Which brings us to Henry David Thoreau.

The popular history reduces Thoreau to an eccentric character whose principal interests ran to eastern religion and experiments in hermitage. Small reference is made to the proximate cause of Thoreau’s discomfort with the America of his time: the State.

To the extent that Thoreau’s anarchist ideas are mentioned at all, they are written off as mere quirks in the personality of the quintessential quirky New Englander. While his call to civil disobedience is often mentioned, it is seldom presented intact, nor is its context often explored.

Finding ourselves smack in the middle of a "war on terror" which incorporates nearly all of the evils it purports to combat, it’s worth returning to the work of Thoreau, unexpurgated and in context, for especially germane advice.

Let us return, then, to Thoreau’s time for a moment:

It is 1845, and the government of the United States is at war with Mexico. The actual purposes of that war are less relevant than Thoreau’s opinion of those purposes: to his mind, the intent of the government in annexing Texas is the extension of chattel slavery into new territories.

This is something he cannot support. It is something he will not support. And he defines support broadly, extending it not just to his vote to send one candidate or another to a legislative seat, but to the payment of a poll tax for the support of the war.

It is in this context--the context of thought on what it means to support the State when and to the extent that the State acts in a manner not in keeping with one’s principles--that Thoreau spends his famous night in jail before a friend pays the tax on his unwitting and unwilling behalf.

It is in this context that Thoreau sits down to write "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," perhaps the seminal voluntaryist manifesto.

It is in this context that America--or at least America’s ruling political class--does not want you to read "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience."

And it is in this context that it must be read if Thoreau’s intentions are not to be thwarted.

It has become fashionable to trot out "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" to justify the dog and pony shows that America’s ruling political class calls "protests"--pro forma affairs designed to place the popular imprimatur on the latest plan for top-down social engineering. Once so used, the essay is generally placed back in its case, complete with "break glass in case of media opportunity" sticker.

America’s political ruling class plays with fire, and richly deserves the burns that must inevitably result.

You hold in your hands--or, more likely, see on your computer’s monitor--the first in a series of anti-statist essays, dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, to be released by Rational Review Press. These essays still pack the punch that their authors intended, when read as they were intended to be read: in context.

This edition of "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" was compiled using several text files purporting to accurately reproduce the original, and with reference to an edition included in a print work. I have attempted to reconstruct the whole to conform as closely as possible to what I believe to have been Thoreau’s actual language and intent.

Handle with caution. It is, after all, fire.

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience