Now one of the strangest things in the entire live world is this: When in some life-forms a certain stage of parasitism is reached, when the guest has permanently fastened itself upon the body of the host and the host has become thoroughly accustomed to and adjusted to the parasitic arrangement, the host stupidly inclines to _defend the parasitic guest_. It is remarkable (and discouraging) that this law of nature, this tendency, is found in operation in the social life of man. For thousands of years multitudes of men, women and children have been held in the grip of this law, mentally strangled in their effort to think Justice and Freedom; the vast majority of the working class are always quickly and easily rendered “peaceful,” “law-abiding,” and “satisfied,” and “patriotic.” Millions of chattel slaves have “loyally” defended their parasitic masters. Millions of serfs have “loyally” defended their landlords-and-masters. And today tens of millions of wage-earners strongly incline to “loyally” defend their parasitic employer masters. Moreover, the employer, by craftily praising the wage-earner, can induce the wage-earner to ignorantly, blindly, stupidly praise and defend not only the employer, but also the whole wage-system of robbery and social parasitism. Not only that, the employers, by controlling certain institutions such as the school, the library, the press, and the lecture platform, can have the wage-earning hosts taught to teach their own children to defend and praise the parasitic employer guests and the parasitic social system under which their lives are belittled by being sucked up as rent, interest and profits and fed to the parasitic capitalist class. What the employer calls a contented and loyal working man is simply a stupidly acquiescent “host,” biologically considered. And a working class man with a rifle in his hand defending the class that, as social parasites, rob the working class—such a workingman is the best possible illustration of the fact that the great laws of nature are careless of the so-called “dignity of man,” totally careless of the ridiculous spectacle of a human being reverting to the behavior of creatures far, far down below even the simian cousins of the human race. Nature does not care whether a man behaves like a crab or a sucker, a tiger or a monkey, a sycophantic slave or a defiantly self-respecting man.[219] (=28=) Toward the prideless working class as a social “host” defending the ruling class, the defended ruling class take nature’s contemptuous attitude. And the working-class soldier as professional defender of the parasitic capitalist class, tho’ much flattered, is cordially despised.