Sublime

Nietzsche appelle l’élite les « maîtres » de la société, car elle exerce un contrôle presque total sur les richesses, la production et le pouvoir politique. Il appelle les masses travailleuses les « esclaves », car l’employé qui travaille toute sa vie pour un maigre salaire n’est pour lui pas très différent de l’esclave6.

Les hommes nés sous le joug, puis nourris et élevés dans la servitude, sans regarder plus avant, se contentent de vivre comme ils sont nés et ne pensent point avoir d'autres biens ni d'autres droits que ceux qu'ils ont trouvés ; ils prennent pour leur état de nature l'état de leur naissance.

A true friend of man; almost the only friend of human progress. An Old Mortality, say rather an Immortality, with unwearied patience and faith making plain the image engraven in men’s bodies, the God of whom they are but defaced and leaning monuments.

Au-delà même de leur dépendance matérielle vis-à-vis de l’État, les citoyens peuvent être conduits, au nom de l’égalité, à renoncer à leur liberté par goût du conformisme ou par simple lassitude.

As soon as one has a group of people living routinely off the labour of another, the argument ran, they will necessarily create an apparatus of rule, officially to protect their property rights, in reality to preserve their advantage

Hannibal shrewdly took advantage of the old pecking order rule: friends flock to the beast on the top; they abandon the beast on the bottom. Whenever the Carthaginian triumphed, he reduced his Roman prisoners to slavery. Since the Romans had been bolstered by armies of allies—troops from the conquered tribes of the Italian boot—the savvy commander

So that no man would have grounds to feel superior to another, Lycurgus divided the country into 9000 equal plots of land. To each family, he gave one plot. Further, he decreed that the men no longer be called “citizens” but “peers” or “equals.” So that no man might compete with another or put on airs over wealth, Lycurgus outlawed money. A coin su

have accomplished it with the aid of the gods. I call to witness the goddess Mother, the black earth, whose landmarks I have in many places torn up, the earth, which was enslaved, and is now free.” In doing this, Solon had accomplished a considerable revolution. He had put aside the ancient religion of property, which, in the name of the immovable

the social structure, the most important part of which was the surplus-extraction relationship between the direct producers and the ruling class (Brenner 1985a:10–11).