[D66] Monarchic principle (Wie is van Hout?)

[A.O.]

"I read in Gouy's Histoire de France: "The slightest insult to the King 
meant immediate death". In the American Constitution: "The people are 
sovereign". In Pouget's Père Peinard: "Kings get fat off their 
sovereignty, while we are starving on ours". Courbon's Secret du Peuple 
tells me: "The people today means the mass of men to whom all respect is 
denied". Here we have, in a few lines, the misadventures of the 
principle of sovereignty.

Kings designated as 'subjects' the objects of their arbitrary will. No 
doubt this was an attempt to wrap the radical inhumanity of its 
domination in a humanity of idyllic bonds. The respect due to the king's 
person cannot in itself be criticized. It is odious only because it is 
based on the right to humiliate by subordination. Contempt rotted the 
thrones of kings. But what about the citizen's sovereignty: the rights 
multiplied by bourgeois vanity and jealousy, sovereignty distributed 
like a dividend to each individual? What about the divine right of kings 
democratically shared out?

Today, France contains twenty-four million mini-kings, of which the 
greatest -- the bosses -- are great only in their ridiculousness. The 
sense of respect has become degraded to the point where humiliation is 
all that it demands. Democratized into public functions and roles, the 
monarchic principle floats with its belly up, like a dead fish: only its 
most repulsive aspect is visible. Its will to be absolutely and 
unreservedly superior has disappeared. Instead of basing our lives on 
our sovereignty, we try to base our sovereignty on other people's lives. 
The manners of slaves." --Raoul Vaneigem


http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub_contents/5
Published in The Revolution of Everyday Life 1967
Translation John Fullerton Paul Sieveking