“Now in regard to trades and other means of livelihood, which ones are to be considered becoming to a gentleman and which ones are vulgar, we have been taught, in general, as follows.

First, those means of livelihood are rejected as undesirable which incur people’s ill-will, as those of tax-gatherers and usurers.

Unbecoming to a gentleman, too, and vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labour, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery.

Vulgar we must consider those also who buy from wholesale merchants to retail immediately; for they would get no profits without a great deal of downright lying; and verily, there is no action that is meaner than misrepresentation.

And all mechanics are engaged in vulgar trades; for no workshop can have anything liberal about it.

Least respectable of all are those trades which cater for sensual pleasures.”

–Cicero, 44 BC

To retranslate:

You want to be a GentlePerson, and that means not being vulgar. So pick your form of wage slavery carefully.

Laboring manually is out of the question, but maybe you could make it as an “artist”.

Or maybe an entrepreneur, a member of the petit bourgeoisie, except in order to do that you absolutely have to lie routinely, so forget it.

Not a mechanic of any kind. No working in a garage or a wood/metal/stone shop, no opened computers on the bench or anything crafty at all.

And don’t even consider being a cook, massage therapist, deejay, perfume tester, dominatrix, escort, or plain old whore. If getting your wage involves sensual pleasure of any kind, it’s vulgar and wrong.

***

“The State can only be what it is: the defender of mass exploitation and social privileges, the creator of privileged classes and castes and of new monopolies. Who fails to recognize this function of the state does not understand the real nature of the present social order at all.”

–Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice

Cicero is full of shit. Rocker is spot on.

The reason to embrace anarchy is that supporting the state with your labor, your taxes, or your vote means exactly supporting an institution that exists precisely and solely to prop up mass exploitation and socioeconomic inequality. You can call your state whatever you like–a “democracy”, a socialist republic, a third reich–it’s there to keep the privileged privileged, and to keep a firm boot on the necks and/or brains of everyone else.

“The whole horror of the much-praised capitalist order lies just in this: Without pity and devoid of all humanity it strides across the corpses of whole peoples to safeguard the brutal right of exploitation, and sacrifices the welfare of millions to the selfish interests of tiny minorities.”

–Rudolf Rocker, The Tragedy of Spain