Likewise with humans: in order to provide ourselves with the lifestyle to which we may aspire, we need to work, to invent, to add labour to the resources of nature. But throughout the ages, those who are stronger and more cunning have discovered that it can be a lot easier to expropriate the results of other people's labour, rather than labour oneself.
Slavery, feudalism, and industrial low-wage exploitation were tolerated, indeed sanctified by law. Why? Because law and governance was traditionally in the hands of those enjoying superior power, wealth, background and the political influence that goes with it. And they consistently ordered society in ways which permitted them to live comfortably from the proceeds of other people's toil.
In early Greek and Roman times, a gentleman owned slaves; in the Middle Ages he owned land which was worked for him by peasants who were bound to him; in Victorian times he owned factories, in which workers risked health and safety for barely enough to buy food and shelter.
Yet despite this long history of self-interest, of man's exploitation of fellow man and its vengeance, idealists and reformers constantly and consistently remained active, pressing not only for humanitarian reforms, but for the wider principles of universality and justice expressed in concepts of mutual respect between people and our environment in our laws, combined with constitutional disciplines and guarantees of individual liberties.
A Predatory Society
But with the dawn of the 1900s, the tables were turned. Society had hitherto been ruled by the rich and powerful, who ordered society in ways which would protect and perpetuate their wealth at the expense of others. Then Karl Marx and friends invited the "poor masses" to throw off the yoke of oppression, turn the tables and plunder the riches of their old masters. And this, encouraged by the newly invented doctrines of Socialism and Communism, they did.
Finally, the politically more advanced countries adopted Democracy or Majority Rule, in which Left and Right, Poor and Rich, take turns to exploit one another, and everyone tries to enlist the aid of Government to provide them with subsidies or welfare which someone else - anybody or everybody, this generation or the next or the next - will have to pay for. And since Victorian working conditions and cheap labour are no longer available at home, companies in the developed world shift their factories around the globe. Their goal: the cheapest source of labour they can find. And never mind the working conditions.
The history of politics and social relationships is a history of continuous imposition exercised by people over one another with government "turning a blind eye", or with government's active participation.
