Occupying power

“ To conduct this offensive and defensive war against the proletariat a public force was indispensable: the executive power grew out of the necessities of civil legislation, administration, and justice. ”

“ The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. ”

“ Well, then, what if we tried to rise above the idea of class to the idea of the whole community, the State, and to find our centre of light and authority there? Everyone of us has the idea of country, as a sentiment; hardly anyone of us has the idea of the State, as a working power. ”

“ In contests of this nature, where a considerable body of people who have attempted to free themselves of the control of the superior government have reached such point in occupation of territory, in power, and in general organization as to constitute in fact a body politic ”

“ The growth of national power, either in the form of royalty or parliamentary government, stripped the great lords of individual power and importance, and of their jurisdiction and power over persons, and so repressed striking abuses. ”

“ Thus the power is like the ball which is flung from hand to hand: it passes from kings to tyrants, from tyrants to the aristocracy, from them to democracy, and from these back again to tyrants and to factions; and thus the same kind of government is seldom long maintained. ”

“ The force with which despots and tyrants, enslavers and destroyers, have worked has always been the force of the people themselves. Vox populi vox Dei! If that means anything more than that majorities are the source of power, it is as absurd a superstition as the faith in Mumbo Jumbo. ”

“ Civil power, properly organized and exerted, is capable of diffusing its force to a very great extent; and can, in a manner, reproduce itself in every part of a great empire, by a judicious arrangement of subordinate institutions. ”

“ Is an act of its own will sufficient for it in order to employ to its own liking under all circumstances, as it shall understand them, the power that has been confided to it? Government must have been thus exercised in early society, and in the infancy of the art of governing. But the power, exercised by men, may go astray in different ways, either through weakness or through excess of force. ”

“ But from this grant I infer, as before hath been touched, that the sovereign, original, and foundation of civil power, lies in the people—whom they must needs mean by the civil power distinct from the government set up: and if so, that a people may erect and establish what form of government seems to them most meet for their civil condition. ”

“ Is it true that he wants to take away the power from the rich and bestow it upon the poor? (In a whisper.) And to take the power from those who rule, the might from those who are in command, and distribute it among all the people on earth, giving an equal share to each of them? ”

“ Ans.: "The state is a class instrument, and is the public power of coercion created and maintained in human societies by their division into classes, a power which, being clothed with force, makes laws." ”

“ Town and village organizations, nurseries of law, order, and self-dependence, nuclei of power, capable of indefinite expansion, leading directly to a free and a strong government, the breeders of civil liberty. ”

“ As to the share of power, authority, direction, which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society."—Ibid. ”

“ The only government that I recognize—and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army—is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice. ”

“ Take, for instance, the exercise of political power. Is a state free in proportion to the number of its subjects who are admitted to rank among its citizens, or to the degree in which its recognised citizens are invested with political authority? ”

“ They are the expressions in which it becomes real. As conflicting with the momentary inclinations of the individual, these institutions are a power which he obeys unwillingly; which he has to, or is made to, obey. ”

“ Many are expecting a revolution by force of arms to establish the ideals of the leaders. More are opportunists, snatching every opportunity in legislation, in decision of courts, and in executive power, to apply their methods. ”

“ May I never behold the day when the people of this country, setting on the ruins of their greatness, their hearts full of grief and sorrow, will, with wistful eyes, look back on times gone by, and scrutinize the pages of their history, and say: — here we ought to have resisted, and there we ought to have stood firm and so we ought to have stemmed the current of centralizing power, and all would be well now! ”

“ This power, so formed, is the governing power, which, while all parts have contributed to its formation, is in itself superior to any power that can be organized within its limits by any part of the originally consolidating powers. If at any time an opposition is organized to it, the result must either be, the reduction of the opposition or the destruction of the confederation. For a natural illustration the human body is again referred to. ”

“ A man reasoning thus should ask himself two questions: first, does the proletariat object to the re-introduction of the servile status, provided it brings with it security and sufficiency? second, does the enjoyment of a wide suffrage connote the power of self-government? ”

“ Those who, being in office, commanding the arms and other property of the government, cause them to be removed so as to weaken its power and strengthen those in actual rebellion, or who are threatening the same ”

“ You are in the majority, and the fault is your own if you do not make use of the power you possess. Nominate and elect your own men; if your first choice fails you, try again, and continue trying, until the right man for the position is found; and when found, while holding him strictly accountable, give him your cordial support while he is true to your interests. Most persons who occupy position now, feel compelled to yield principle to the demands of policy, in order to retain it. ”

“ You only have to think about the fundamental aspects of control, however, to realize that such a belief is a departure from the basic principles of the class struggle. What is control? To control, you must have power. ”

“ Sir, in granting Congress the power to raise armies, the People have granted all the means which are ordinary & usual, & which are consistent with the liberties & security of the People themselves; & they have granted no others. To talk about the unlimited power of the Government over the means to execute its authority, is to hold a language which is true only in regard to despotism. ”

“ A French writer has aptly observed, that "En revolution comme en morale, ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute:" thus the executive, in imitation of the legislative body, seem disposed to render their power perpetual. ”

“ Examining the history of his native city with the eye of a statesman, and meditating upon the civic revolutions which he himself had witnessed, that sagacious politician had observed, that in the contentions for power which had frequently taken place between the aristocracy and the lower orders of the state, the plebeian faction had almost always failed, through want of a leader whose authority might restrain their irregularities, and whose judgment might give to their efforts the consistency and energy of system. ”

“ This distinct public power is necessary, because a self-acting armed organization of the population has become impossible with the break-up of Society into classes. ... This public authority exists in every State. ”

“ An average individual among them prefers the chance, however distant or improbable, of wielding some share of power over his fellow-citizens, above the certainty, to himself and others, of having no unnecessary power exercised over them. ”

“ The task of grouping the scattered forces of society had thus fallen to the central power, which, in performing it, had naturally applied itself more to imposing duties on the associations it called into being than to acknowledging that they possessed rights of their own. ”

“ A large proportion of the power which is too heavy for you, you should delegate to the people, to its representatives, reserving for yourself only the supreme control, that is, the general direction of the affairs of State. ”

“ Their purpose, however, is equally answered, by pushing forward this unhappy figure, and forcing it to bear the odium of measures, which they in reality direct. Without immediately appearing to govern, they possess the power, and distribute the emoluments of government as they think proper. ”

“ When it is said that the strongest power in society will make itself strongest in the government, what is meant by power? Not thews and sinews; otherwise pure democracy would be the only form of polity that could exist. To mere muscular strength, add two other elements, property and intelligence, and we are nearer the truth, but far from having yet reached it. ”

“ When I walk towards an object, it is necessary first that I should will to go there, and, in the second place, that my feet should carry me. If a paralytic wills to run and an active man wills not to, they will both stay where they are. The body politic has the same motive powers; here too force and will are distinguished, will under the name of legislative power and force under that of executive power. ”

“ Government, therefore—municipal, State, national—is passing into the hands of these two classes, specialized for the functions of power by their appetite for the fruits of power. The power of citizenship is relinquished by those who do not and cannot know how to exercise it to those who can and do—by those who have a livelihood to make to those who make politics their livelihood. ”

“ In such a country as ours—a democratic one—the masses are governed by a few great leaders; these leaders, whether in power or not, are still the almost despots who rule us. Their actions give fruit and coloring to the character of the sections over which they sway their autocratic sceptres. ”

“ that all are upon an equality, and that the only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed. ”

“ Is there not a most formidable combination of power thus created in a few? and can the most critic eye, if a candid one, discover responsibility in this potent corps? or will any sensible man say that great power, without responsibility, can be given to rulers with safety to liberty? ”

“ The want of protection to general interests, the absence of the strong bond of experienced benefits; the oppressive nature of the conquering government; the sacrifice of the general interests to the selfish ambition or rapacious passions of a section of the community, whether civil or military, which had got possession of power. ”

“ And, indeed, I know, not whether these may not yet so prevail as to get the chief regimen of things into their own hand, for, as all history teaches us, the course of things in all such revolutions as this that hath lately overthrown the constitution of this country is this: first, the moderate and discreet have power ”

“ The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist, and its power is employed above all to enforce this claim. ”

“ Forms of self-government and representative government developed during the bourgeois revolution and advocated and partially applied during the proletarian up-surge, are being continued or are reappearing during the current struggle for power and prestige at the planetary level. ”

“ In the government of the concurrent majority, on the contrary, the same cause which prevents such strife, as the means of obtaining power, and which makes it the interest of each portion to conciliate and promote the interests of the others, would exert a powerful influence towards purifying and elevating the character of the government and the people, morally, as well as politically. ”