Chapter 1: Six Nuts

NUT: Though we are moral beings, we've always had unjust societies where coercive power in the hands of the few enables the unequal distribution of goods.  

NUT: Despite our moral intuitions, all significant social power develops social inequality because it gives more privilege to itself than it deserves, taking whatever it can.

NUT: Inequality occurs when land is disproportionately distributed to a few, leaving most powerless.

NUT: Social injustice grows through the acceptance of social gradations--which are introduced with slavery--and the highest social gradation now is the commercial class or business man.

NUT: Coercive power may be capable of maintaining internal peace for a while, but it encourages violence toward other groups, thereby guaranteeing a cycle of rebellion and suffering.

NUT: While society has been in a state of perpetual war, to move toward a moral society we must destroy forms of power that cannot be made socially responsible and non-violent.

1.6 Man and Society: The Art of Living Together, pg 19-22

1.6.1 Society is therefore in a perpetual state of war.  Coercion is necessary to create stability, but is also dangerous because it sows the seeds of its own destruction.  History is a long attempt at social cohesion and justice, most of which have failed.  To move forward, we must destroy kinds of power which cannot be made socially responsible, and developing types of power based in self-restraint.  There is no one single solution to the problem of power, but many social strategies will be necessary to subdue it.  Perpetual peace and brotherhood will probably never be achieved, but possible in approximation but never fully realized in history.  The vision of peace must be kept alive.  But this vision is one where there is enough peace and justice so coercion will be sufficiently non-violent.


NUT: While society has been in a state of perpetual war, to move toward a moral society we must destroy forms of power that cannot be made socially responsible and non-violent.

1.5 Man and Society: The Art of Living Together, pg. 15-19

1.5.1 The coercive factors in social life create injustice in the process of establishing peace, and it also creates intergroup conflict, that is, it destroys peace between communities.  People within a community commonly indulge envy, jealousy, pride, bigotry and greed directed toward those not in their community.  The power that keeps the peace at home encourages violence towards other groups.  International conflict, for instance, is often spawned by pride, jealousy, hurt love, vanity, greed for more treasure, lust for power, petty animosities, and momentary passion.  Napoleon's vanity could lead him to bathe all of Europe in blood, all the while posing as a democratic instrument of the French Revolution.  Teddy Roosevelt started the Spanish-American War out of petty ambition and national vanity.  Now we have industrial overlords fighting wars over raw materials.  All groups tend toward imperial ambitions, and what starts as defensive instruments usually become tools of aggression.  And when peace is obtained it is usually an uneasy one because it is unjust.  Once again, power is at the root of suffering, and ultimately guarantees a cycle of rebellion, not peace.


NUT: Coercive power may be capable of maintaining internal peace for a while, but it encourages violence toward other groups, thereby guaranteeing a cycle of rebellion and suffering.

1.4 Man and Society: The Art of Living Together, pg 12-15

1.4.1 Slavery offers and illustration of how social injustice grows in complex societies.  Rights are granted in primitive social groups to all people, but with the introduction of slaves, equality of rights disappears.  Once inequality in introduced it always remains as a basic value.  This distinction between slave and freeman is one of the many social gradations that develop in complex societies.  This is called disproportionate power.

1.4.2 Democracy is supposed to have distributed power to the people.  While coercion may be diminished in democratic states, and peaceful methods are introduced for resolving conflict, the commercial class has become the new dictator.  It was in their interest to weaken royal and aristocratic authority so economic activity could proceed without interference.  The state is now a tool of economic interests.  Economic power is now the chief coercive force in modern society.

1.4.3 Democracy, therefore, has not given society a permanent solution for it's vexing problems of power and justice.

NUT: Social injustice grows through the acceptance of social gradations--which are introduced with slavery--and the highest social gradation now is the commercial class or business man.

1.3 Man and Society: The Art of Living Together, pg. 9-12

1.3.1 As we moved from hunting to agriculture, power became disproportionately distributed to land owners, thereby creating inequality.  In all societies (e.g., Egypt, Peru, China, Japan, Rome), the landless are powerless.  The problem is that a society that has only lords and slaves typically crumbles internally and/or disintegrates through external aggression.

1.3.2 Power contains its own seeds of destruction, because it uses coercion and oppression to maintain internal loyality (keeping the subjects down) and wastes money and energy trying to continuously feed its thirst for other people's resources (or at least keep others from taking its resources).  Poor folk go to war to fight and die for the delights and riches of the powerful.

NUT: Inequality occurs when land is disproportionately distributed to a few, leaving most powerless.

1.2 Man and Society: The Art of Living Together, pg. 5-9

1.2.1. The democratic method resolves differences using rationality and morality, but it remains a fact that political opinions are rooted in economic interest, making it extremely difficult for any but a few to view a problem without regard to their own interests.  The minority rarely accepts the "general will" or "majority mind," but waits for an opportunity to wrest control, which makes coercion always present in politics.

1.2.2. The problem with power is that it gives an inordinate portion of social privilege to itself, thereby creating the conditions for injustice.  Power, said Henry Adams, is poison.  Historically, this power was in the hands of the priests and the military, but now is falls mostly in the hands of industrial or economic overlords.  The point is that any significant social power develops social inequality.  It is hard to imagine any way to justify the degree of inequality between those in power and those without power.  The rewards for those in power are not impartially given, but determined by those in control.  The problem, however, is that individuals have a moral code that makes this inequality an outrage to their conscience.  As individuals we believe we ought to love and serve one another and live justly, but as racial, economic, and national groups we deny these moral imperatives and take whatever our power can command.  And to top it off, we create ways to deny this tragedy and hypocrisy.

NUT: Despite our moral intuitions, all significant social power develops social inequality because it gives more privilege to itself than it deserves, taking whatever it can.