The withdrawal of gold from the monetary system in 1914 resulted not only in the unprecedented destruction of human life, property, culture and wealth of World War 1, but the upheavals of the whole 20th century. The distortions of paper money brought to power, for the first time in recorded history, those wielding an intellectual justification for the repression of humanity.

Socialism and Communism openly sought control over the lives of ‘their’ citizens to a degree that had never even been contemplated in previous centuries. Family were set against family, children were set against parents and producers were re-classified and factioned into ‘workers’ and ‘bosses’. The institutional pillars that had been volitionally built up and refined over thousands of years were defiled and pulled down. The resultant chaos reached its zenith with a slaughter of innocents such had never been witnessed in the whole of history. Hundreds of millions lost their lives in the 20th century wars, pogroms and famines caused by the strivings of The States for total control.

The idea of total control resonated with governments throughout the world. What began in 1825 as a fringe political movement by the Saint-Simonites, had, less than 100 years later, become the template for international governance. Democracies themselves adopted the notion that they existed to forcefully guide ‘their’ citizens in their day-to-day activities. Substantial inducements were provided in the form of government handouts to those who conformed to the new orthodoxy. State welfare, first developed by the Kaiser and Bismarck in Germany as a way of controlling the recently released serfs, was admired and imitated by other governments seeking to further control their own people.

Emergency measures, put into place in 1914, were never removed. Security papers remained the norm. It became impossible to travel without a passport (a hitherto unknown concept) and impossible to drive or open a business without a licence. In much of Europe (including Vienna where I now live) even moving house or checking into a hotel requires registration with the police.

The people who had been liberated by the gold standard of the 19th century were demoted back to citizens, a much nicer sounding word than serfs. As such they were bound to uphold standards dictated by The State; woe betide them if they didn’t. No longer were actions governed by conscience… the voice of internal reason, but by the external iron-fist of The State’s security apparatus… the police and legal system.

The concept of individual rights, without which no freedom can exist, became a subversive, anti-State crime. Individuality is of course inherently anti-State, but never before in history had this been admitted by those who would rule our every waking moment and reduce us to worker ants. Everything became forbidden unless specifically permitted. Never before had there been an attempt by any State to justify the repression of ‘its’ people. Prior to this point they just did it because they could.

All States, no matter the announced brand, became underpinned by the delusion that as a governing group they held a superior wisdom to the masses. All property became the de jure property of The State; even the family home could be legally confiscated in the name of the ‘public good’. The International Socialist Movement gave the brute force of The State what it had always craved: the veneer of intellectual and philosophical respectability.

The stern dictates of gold had imposed its own disciplines, not only on individuals, but on governments. The vast majority abided by its disciplines and lived free, decent, secure and civilised lives. Absent the disciplines of gold, morality, education, responsibility, the concept of right and wrong and even spirituality began to break-down. Without the natural laws that stem from an honest money, society began to collapse.

When the natural order and general prosperity, borne of the interaction of free people with an honest money, were dismantled, all hell broke loose. The immediate failure of emergent State control of the economy and people was visibly demonstrated by social chaos and rising poverty. Unemployment, a hitherto almost unknown phenomenon that did not even enter the dictionary until the late 19th century, grew alarmingly. Riots and scenes of general disorder became regular occurrences.

These dismal results, brought about directly by the newly conceived State Almighty, were adroitly turned on their head to become the justification for The States’ existence. “Look what would happen without us” “Look how people would behave if we were not here to control them”. “We must have The State otherwise there would be chaos”. In that manner, control by The State for philosophical reasons, was joined at the hip of control by The State for the avoidance of social unrest. The disease became the cure.

The political imperative of the 20th century was the attempt to turn back millennia of rising consciousness and social progress and to force mankind back to the level of obedient, Palaeolithic dirt-scratchers dependent for their survival upon great and mysterious forces that only experts could comprehend. Needless to say the push was not initiated by the newly freed working people themselves, though the ignorant were quickly co-opted to the cause through welfare handouts.

Today we live in a world, where not only do we own nothing that cannot be taken from us by legislative whim and where even the product of our labour is confiscated in an amount finely judged to be just bearable, but where our mind itself can be confiscated. The casualties are locked up in psychiatric wards or, when psychotropically neutralized, left to blindly ramble the streets of our inner cities in pursuit of their next handout. With the mind no longer functioning properly all that is left is the urge of the body to survive.

That stumble-bum on the street corner with the blank, staring eyes is the logical conclusion to the mad dreams and schemes of The State. Lest you look down on that bum, you would do well to remember that s/he was once an independent entity. If you doubt this then, the next time you see one of these unfortunates, say: “psychiatric hospital” and see the eyes fill with fear before they lurch away.

Whether this has been an accident, or whether these actions have been outlined, designed and effectively implemented is beside the point. The State is a primitive organization that knows only violence. It passed its use-by date back at the dawn of the agricultural era. Just keeping out of way of The State is no longer an honourable option. It is time for active resistance; indeed the lack of resistance can only be understood in terms of people having already lost their minds; if not to psychotropic drugs, then to the erroneous perception of self-interest. Where else does honour and decency and hope for the future reside if not in the mind of the individual?

Productive individuals are the last bastion of sanity in a world that is not going mad, but which has already gone mad. The fully expressed horror of The State Almighty is already upon us. North Korea is what awaits all of us if we do not quickly change the course of events. Other than feebly awaiting the natural purge of a monetary and social apocalypse and futilely mumbling over one’s beer, what should one do? Active resistance should not be violent. Whilst the pent up frustration naturally tends to violence, violence cannot be the answer. To do violence is to stoop to the level of The State. If we do that then we have already lost and The State has won. States that are violently overthrown are, of necessity, followed by equally repressive States. Violence bears only more violence, witness the French and American Revolution.

It is not the people who occupy positions of power within the apparatus of The State who are the enemy. It is the system of The State Almighty itself. The people who inhabit such systems are just the mentally enfeebled representatives of normal human frailty. The weakness cannot be eradicated, but the system that gives it succour can. It is the monolithic beast of The State that is the enemy, not the people who give it life… contemptible though they may be. The State cannot be destroyed by taking vengeance against its representatives, it can only be destroyed by the destruction of its support mechanism.

The answer is withdrawal from the system in such a manner that one’s property is out of the reach of those who consider it there’s to take and squander. Those of us who are naturally productive have much resistance to this idea, but there is no other way. It is in the area of surplus productivity that The State is most vulnerable, for it is our natural reluctance to cease producing that The State relies upon. Without the activities of its productive citizens there is nothing to fill The State’s coffers. This is the Achilles’ Heel of The State. Without money in the coffers The State loses its ability to bribe and coerce which will almost immediately lead to its collapse. It is that simple. The State is a parasite. Productive people and entrepreneurs are its host. There is no other source of wealth. It is time to withdraw our capital, wealth, property and surplus production from the marketplace.

It is time to refuse to produce real and valuable goods and services in exchange for silly pieces of government paper with numbers written on them. It is time to stop being the backbone of a system that is despicable and can only lead to further ruin and human degradation. In this life you do not get what you deserve, you get what you are prepared to put up with. We have put up with this for almost a century… far too long.