Where there is no common power, there is no law; whereno law, no injustice.

For the savage people in many placesof America, except the government of small families the concord whereofdependeth on natural lust, have no government at all, and live at this day in thatbrutish manner as I said before.

when going to sleep, he locks his doors; wheneven in his house, he locks his chests; and this when he knows there be lawsand public officers armed to revenge all injuries shall be done him; what opinionhe has of his fellow-subjects when he rides armed; of his fellow-citizens, whenhe locks his doors; and of his children and servants, when he locks his chests.Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions as I do by mywords? But neither of us accuse man’s nature in it.

So that in the nature of man we find three principal causes of quarrel. First,competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory

Also, because there be some that, taking pleasure incontemplating their own power in the acts of conquest, which they pursuefarther than their security requires, if others, that otherwise would be glad to beat ease within the modest bounds, should not be invasion increase their power,they would not be able long time, by standing only on their defence, to subsist.And by consequence, such augmentation of dominion over men beingnecessary to a man’s conservation, it ought to be allowed him

if any two men desire the same thing which nevertheless theycannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and, in the way to their end, which isprincipally their own conservation and sometimes their delectation only,endeavour to destroy or subdue one another.

That which may perhaps makesuch equality incredible is but a vain conceit of one’s own wisdom, which almostall men think they have in a greater degree than the vulgar, that is, than all menbut themselves, and a few others whom by fame or for concurring withthemselves they approve.

If civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man's sexuality but on his aggressivity, we canunderstand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that civilization. In fact, primitive man was betteroff in knowing no restrictions of instinct. To counterbalance this, his prospects of enjoying this happinessfor any length of time were very slender.

If private property were abolished, all wealth held in common, andeveryone allowed to share in the enjoyment of it, ill-will and hostility would disappear among men.

Even so, the behaviour of human beingsshows differences, which ethics, disregarding the fact that such differences are determined, classifies as'good' or 'bad'.

What good will it do us?

Only the weaklings have submitted to such an extensiveencroachment upon their sexual freedom, and stronger natures have only done so subject to acompensatory condition, which will be mentioned later.

Women represent the interests of the family and of sexual life. The work ofcivilization has become increasingly the business of men, it confronts them with ever more difficult tasksand compels them to carry out instinctual sublimations of which women are little capable. Since a mandoes not have unlimited quantities of psychical energy at his disposal, he has to accomplish his tasks bymaking an expedient distribution of his libido. What he employs for cultural aims he to a great extentwithdraws from women and sexual life. His constant association with men, and his dependence on hisrelations with mem, even estrange him from his duties as a husband and father. Thus the woman findsherself forced into the background by the claims of civilization and she adopts a hostile attitude towardsit.

We went on to say that in doing so he made himself dependent in a mostdangerous way on a portion of the external world, namely, his chosen love-object, and exposed himselfto extreme suffering if he should be rejected by that object or should lose it through unfaithfulness ordeath.

When this happened, themale acquired a motive for keeping the female, or, speaking more generally, his sexual objects, nearhim; while the female, who did not want to be separated from her helpless young, was obliged, in theirinterests, to remain with the stronger male.

The other man acquired the value for him of a fellow-worker, with whom it was useful tolive together. Even earlier, in his ape-like prehistory, man had adopted the habit of forming families, andthe members of his family were probably his first helpers.

No doubt he will always defend hisclaim to individual liberty against the will of the group. A good part of the struggles of mankind centreround the single task of finding an expedient accommodation -one, that is, that will bring happiness -between this claim of the individual and the cultural claims of the group; and one of the problems thattouches the fate of humanity is whether such an accommodation can be reached by means of someparticular form of civilization or whether this conflict is irreconcilable

on the contrary,human beings exhibit an inborn tendency to carelessness, irregularity and unreliability in their work, andthat a laborious training is needed before they learn to follow the example of their celestial models

exploitation of the earth by man

Long ago he formed an ideal conception of omnipotence and omniscience

In consequence of insufficientobservation and a mistaken view of their manners and customs, they appeared to Europeans to beleading a simple, happy life with few wants, a life such as was unattainable by their visitors with theirsuperior civilization.

We do not admit it at all; we cannot see why the regulations made by ourselves shouldnot, on the contrary, be a protection and a benefit for every one of us. And yet, when we consider howunsuccessful we have been in precisely this field of prevention of suffering, a suspicion dawns on us thathere, too, a piece of unconquerable nature may lie behind -this time a piece of our own psychicalconstitution

Applying these five criteria to the situation ofgroups makes it possible tocompare oppressions without reducing them to a common essence or claiming that one is more fundamental than another.

To the degree that institutions and soc.ial practices encourage, tolerate, or enable the perpetration of violence· aga/nst members ofspecific groups

Violence is a sociaj practice. It is a social given that everyone knows happens and will happen again.

many groups suffer the oppression of systematic violence

White males, on the other hand, insofar as they escape group marking, can be individuals

These kinds of oppression arc a matter of concrete power in relation to others-of who benefits from whom, and who is dispensable

Powerlessness

Despitetheir differences from nonprofessional workers, most professional workers ar�stiJl not members of the capitalist class.

Feminists have exposed this assumption as inappropriately individualistic and derived from a specificallymale experience of social relations, which values competition and solitaryachievement

Marginalization is perhaps the most dangerous form of oppression.

effrey Reiman argues that such a distributive understanding of exploitation reduces the injustice of class processes to a function of the inequality ofthe productive assets classes own. This misses, according to Reiman, the relationship of force between capitalists and workers, the fact that the unequalexchange in question occurs within coercive structures that give workers fewoptions

There is no doubt thatracialized groups in the United States, especially Blacks and Latinos, are oppressed through capitalist superexploitation resulting from a segmented labormarket that tends to reserve skilled, high-paying, unionized jobs for whites.

sexual and racial oppression are nonexploitative

Every commodity's value is a function of the labor timenecessary for its production. Labor power is the one commodity which in theprocess of being consumed produces new value. Profit comes from the difference between the value of the labor performed and the value of the capacityto labor which the capitalist purchases. Profit is possible only because theowner of capital appropriates any realized surplus value.

groups are fluid;�hey come mto bemg and may fade away

Eliminating oppression thus requires eliminating groups. People should be treatedas individuals, not as members of groups, and allowed to form their lives freelywithout stereoty pes or group norms.

The self is a produce of social processes,not their origin.

Groups, on the other hand, constitute individuals. A person's particularsense of history, affinity, and separateness, even the person's mode of reasoning, evaluating, and expressing feeling, are constituted partly by her or hisgroup affinities.This does not mean that persons have no individual sty les, orare unable to transcend or reject a group identity.

Social processes also differentiate groups within a single society. Thesexual division of labor, for example, has created social groups of women andmen in all known societies. Members of each gender have a· certain affinitywith others in their group because of what they do or experience, and differentiate themselves from the other gender, even when members of each gender consider that they have much in common with members of the other,and consider that they belong to the same society.

ageism

But oppression also refers to systemic constraints on groups that are not necessarilythe result of the intentions of a tyrant. Oppression in this sense is structural,rather than the result of a few people's choices or policies. I

Someone who does not see a pane of glass does not know that he does not see d.Someone who, being placed differently, does see it does not know the other doesnot see it.