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On deeper reflection, then, the strategy for the achievement of liberty is not so simple; for even though mass civil disobedience is the master key, how is the public to be brought to such an action, blinded as they are by a network of habit, propaganda, and special privilege?

https://mises.org/wire/why-most-people-embrace-state-%E2%80%94-and-why-some-will-always-reject-it

Murray N. Rothbard

[From “Concepts of the Role of Intellectuals In Social Change Toward Laissez Faire” in The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Fall 1990]

Why, La Boétie cries out in anguish, why, when reason teaches us the justice of natural rights and equal liberty for all, why, when even animals display a natural instinct to be free, is man, “the only creature really born to be free, [lacking] the memory of his original condition and the desire to return to it?”7 Why, in short, are people steeped in such a “vile” and “monstrous vice” as consenting to their own subjection?

La Boétie answers, first, that the difficult act of initially establishing tyrannical State power is accomplished through some form of conquest, either by a foreign power, an internal coup, or by the use of a wartime emergency as an excuse to fasten a permanent despotism upon the public. And why then do people continue to consent?

In the first place, explains La Boétie, there is the insidious power of habit, which quickly accustoms and inures the public to any institution, including its own enslavement.

It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they are born. …

Thus humanity’s natural drive for liberty is overpowered by the force of custom, “for the reason that native endowment, no matter how good, is dissipated unless encouraged, whereas environment always shapes us in its own way. …” Hence, people will

grow accustomed to the idea that they have always been in subjection, that their fathers lived in the same way; they will think they are obliged to suffer this evil, and will persuade themselves by example and imitation of others, finally investing those who order them around with proprietary rights, based on the idea that it has always been that way.8

And so consent of the public need not be eager or enthusiastic, but rather of the resigned “death and taxes” variety. But second, the State apparatus need not wait for the slow workings of custom; consent can also be engineered. La Boétie proceeds to discuss the various devices by which rulers engineer such consent. One time-honored device is circuses, for the entertainment of the masses:

Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects … that the stupified peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures, … learned subservience as naively, bit not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.9

Another important device for gaining the consent of the public is duping them into believing that the rule of the tyrant is wise, just, and benevolent…

the fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them. … The mob has always behaved in this way — eagerly open to bribes…

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