Our Enemy, the State
Albert Jay Nock
[1935 / Part 2 of 7]
CHAPTER 1
If we look beneath the surface of our public affairs, we can
discern one fundamental fact, namely: a great redistribution of power
between society and the State. This is the fact that interests the
student of civilization. He has only a secondary or derived interest
in matters like price-fixing, wage-fixing, inflation, political
banking, "agricultural adjustment," and similar items of
State policy that fill the pages of newspapers and the mouths of
publicists and politicians. All these can be run up under one head.
They have an immediate and temporary importance, and for this reason
they monopolize public attention, but they all come to the same thing;
which is, an increase of State power and a corresponding decrease of
social power.
It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State
has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power
it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to
time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which
State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power,
whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power;
there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a
corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.
Moreover, it follows that with any exercise of State power, not only
the exercise of social power in the same direction, but the
disposition to exercise it in that direction, tends to dwindle. Mayor
Gaynor astonished the whole of New York when he pointed out to a
correspondent who had been complaining about the inefficiency of the
police, that any citizen has the right to arrest a malefactor and
bring him before a magistrate. "The law of England and of this
country," he wrote, "has been very careful to confer no more
right in that respect upon policemen and constables than it confers on
every citizen." State exercise of that right through a police
force had gone on so steadily that not only were citizens indisposed
to exercise it, but probably not one in ten thousand knew he had it.
Heretofore in this country sudden crises of misfortune have been met
by a mobilization of social power. In fact (except for certain
institutional enterprises like the home for the aged, the
lunatic-asylum, city-hospital and county-poorhouse) destitution,
unemployment, "depression" and similar ills, have been no
concern of the State, but have been relieved by the application of
social power. Under Mr. Roosevelt, however, the State assumed this
function, publicly announcing the doctrine, brand-new in our history,
that the State owes its citizens a living. Students of politics, of
course, saw in this merely an astute proposal for a prodigious
enhancement of State power; merely what, as long ago as 1794, James
Madison called "the old trick of turning every contingency into a
resource for accumulating force in the government"; and the
passage of time has proved that they were right. The effect of this
upon the balance between State power and social power is clear, and
also its effect of a general indoctrination with the idea that an
exercise of social power upon such matters is no longer called for.
It is largely in this way that the progressive conversion of social
power into State power becomes acceptable and gets itself accepted.[1]
When the Johnstown flood occurred, social power was immediately
mobilized and applied with intelligence and vigour. Its abundance,
measured by money alone, was so great that when everything was finally
put in order, something like a million dollars remained. If such a
catastrophe happened now, not only is social power perhaps too
depleted for the like exercise, but the general instinct would be to
let the State see to it. Not only has social power atrophied to that
extent, but the disposition to exercise it in that particular
direction has atrophied with it. If the State has made such matters
its business, and has confiscated the social power necessary to deal
with them, why, let it deal with them. We can get some kind of rough
measure of this general atrophy by our own disposition when approached
by a beggar. Two years ago we might have been moved to give him
something; today we are moved to refer him to the State's
relief-agency. The State has said to society, You are either not
exercising enough power to meet the emergency, or are exercising it in
what I think is an incompetent way, so I shall confiscate your power,
and exercise it to suit myself. Hence when a beggar asks us for a
quarter, our instinct is to say that the State has already confiscated
our quarter for his benefit, and he should go to the State about it.
Every positive intervention that the State makes upon industry and
commerce has a similar effect. When the State intervenes to fix wages
or prices, or to prescribe the conditions of competition, it virtually
tells the enterpriser that he is not exercising social power in the
right way, and therefore it proposes to confiscate his power and
exercise it according to the State's own judgment of what is best.
Hence the enterpriser's instinct is to let the State look after the
consequences. As a simple illustration of this, a manufacturer of a
highly specialized type of textiles was saying to me the other day
that he had kept his mill going at a loss for five years because he
did not want to turn his workpeople on the street in such hard times,
but now that the State had stepped in to tell him how he must run his
business, the State might jolly well take the responsibility.
The process of converting social power into State power may perhaps
be seen at its simplest in cases where the State's intervention is
directly competitive. The accumulation of State power in various
countries has been so accelerated and diversified within the last
twenty years that we now see the State functioning as telegraphist,
telephonist, match-pedlar, radio-operator, cannon-founder,
railway-builder and owner, railway-operator, wholesale and retail
tobacconist, shipbuilder and owner, chief chemist, harbour-maker and
dockbuilder, housebuilder, chief educator, newspaper-proprietor,
food-purveyor, dealer in insurance, and so on through a long list.[2]
It is obvious that private forms of these enterprises must tend to
dwindle in proportion as the energy of the State's encroachments on
them increases, for the competition of social power with State power
is always disadvantaged, since the State can arrange the terms of
competition to suit itself, even to the point of outlawing any
exercise of social power whatever in the premises; in other words,
giving itself a monopoly. Instances of this expedient are common; the
one we are probably best acquainted with is the State's monopoly of
letter-carrying. Social power is estopped by sheer fiat from
application to this form of enterprise, notwithstanding it could carry
it on far cheaper, and, in this country at least, far better. The
advantages of this monopoly in promoting the State's interests are
peculiar. No other, probably, could secure so large and
well-distributed a volume of patronage, under the guise of a public
service in constant use by so large a number of people; it plants a
lieutenant of the State at every country-crossroad. It is by no means
a pure coincidence that an administration's chief almoner and
whip-at-large is so regularly appointed Postmaster-general.
Thus the State "turns every contingency into a resource"
for accumulating power in itself, always at the expense of social
power; and with this it develops a habit of acquiescence in the
people. New generations appear, each temperamentally adjusted - or as
I believe our American glossary now has it, "conditioned" -
to new increments of State power, and they tend to take the process of
continuous accumulation as quite in order. All the State's
institutional voices unite in confirming this tendency; they unite in
exhibiting the progressive conversion of social power into State power
as something not only quite in order, but even as wholesome and
necessary for the public good.
II
In the United States at the present time, the principal indexes of
the increase of State power are three in number. First, the point to
which the centralization of State authority has been carried.
Practically all the sovereign rights and powers of the smaller
political units - all of them that are significant enough to be worth
absorbing - have been absorbed by the federal unit; nor is this all.
State power has not only been thus concentrated at Washington, but it
has been so far concentrated into the hands of the Executive that the
existing régime is a régime of personal government. It
is nominally republican, but actually monocratic; a curious anomaly,
but highly characteristic of a people little gifted with intellectual
integrity. Personal government is not exercised here in the same ways
as in Italy, Russia or Germany, for there is as yet no State interest
to be served by so doing, but rather the contrary; while in those
countries there is. But personal government is always personal
government; the mode of its exercise is a matter of immediate
political expediency, and is determined entirely by circumstances.
This regime was established by a
coup d'État of a new and unusual kind, practicable only
in a rich country. It was effected, not by violence, like Louis-Napoléon's,
or by terrorism, like Mussolini's, but by purchase. It therefore
presents what might be called an American variant of the coup d'État.[3]
Our national legislature was not suppressed by force of arms, like the
French Assembly in 1851, but was bought out of its functions with
public money; and as appeared most conspicuously in the elections of
November, 1934, the consolidation of the coup d'État
was effected by the same means; the corresponding functions in the
smaller units were reduced under the personal control of the
Executive.[4] This is a most remarkable phenomenon; possibly nothing
quite like it ever took place; and its character and implications
deserve the most careful attention.
A second index is supplied by the prodigious extension of the
bureaucratic principle that is now observable. This is attested prima
facie by the number of new boards, bureaux and commissions set up
at Washington in the last two years. They are reported as representing
something like 90,000 new employés appointed outside the civil
service, and the total of the federal pay-roll in Washington is
reported as something over three million dollars per month.[5] This,
however, is relatively a small matter. The pressure of centralization
has tended powerfully to convert every official and every political
aspirant in the smaller units into a venal and complaisant agent of
the federal bureaucracy. This presents an interesting parallel with
the state of things prevailing in the Roman Empire in the last days of
the Flavian dynasty, and afterwards. The rights and practices of local
self-government, which were formerly very considerable in the
provinces and much more so in the municipalities, were lost by
surrender rather than by suppression. The imperial bureaucracy, which
up to the second century was comparatively a modest affair, grew
rapidly to great size, and local politicians were quick to see the
advantage of being on terms with it. They came to Rome with their hats
in their hands, as governors, Congressional aspirants and such-like
now go to Washington. Their eyes and thoughts were constantly fixed on
Rome, because recognition and preferment lay that way; and in their
incorrigible sycophancy they became, as Plutarch says, like
hypochondriacs who dare not eat or take a bath without consulting
their physician.
A third index is seen in the erection of poverty and mendicancy into
a permanent political asset. Two years ago, many of our people were in
hard straits; to some extent, no doubt, through no fault of their own,
though it is now clear that in the popular view of their case, as well
as in the political view, the line between the deserving poor and the
undeserving poor was not distinctly drawn. Popular feeling ran high at
the time, and the prevailing wretchedness was regarded with
undiscriminating emotion, as evidence of some general wrong done upon
its victims by society at large, rather than as the natural penalty of
greed, folly or actual misdoings; which in large part it was. The
State, always instinctively "turning every contingency into a
resource" for accelerating the conversion of social power into
State power, was quick to take advantage of this state of mind. All
that was needed to organize these unfortunates into an invaluable
political property was to declare the doctrine that the State owes all
its citizens a living; and this was accordingly done. It immediately
precipitated an enormous mass of subsidized voting-power, an enormous
resource for strengthening the State at the expense of society.[6]
III
There is an impression that the enhancement of State power which has
taken place since 1932 is provisional and temporary, that the
corresponding depletion of social power is by way of a kind of
emergency-loan, and therefore is not to be scrutinized too closely.
There is every probability that this belief is devoid of foundation.
No doubt our present régime will be modified in one way and
another; indeed, it must be, for the process of consolidation itself
requires it. But any essential change would be quite unhistorical,
quite without precedent, and is therefore most unlikely; and by an
essential change, I mean one that will tend to redistribute actual
power between the State and society.[7] In the nature of things, there
is no reason why such a change should take place, and every reason why
it should not. We shall see various apparent recessions, apparent
compromises, but the one thing we may be quite sure of is that none of
these will tend to diminish actual State power.
For example, we shall no doubt shortly see the great pressure-group
of politically-organized poverty and mendicancy subsidized indirectly
instead of directly, because State interest can not long keep pace
with the hand-over-head disposition of the masses to loot their own
Treasury. The method of direct subsidy, or sheer cash-purchase, will
therefore in all probability soon give way to the indirect method of
what is called "social legislation"; that is, a multiplex
system of State-managed pensions, insurances and indemnities of
various kinds. This is an apparent recession, and when it occurs it
will no doubt be proclaimed as an actual recession, no doubt accepted
as such; but is it? Does it actually tend to diminish State power and
increase social power? Obviously not, but quite the opposite. It tends
to consolidate firmly this particular fraction of State power, and
opens the way to getting an indefinite increment upon it by the mere
continuous invention of new courses and developments of
State-administered social legislation, which is an extremely simple
business. One may add the observation for whatever its evidential
value may be worth, that if the effect of progressive social
legislation upon the sum-total of State power were unfavourable or
even nil, we should hardly have found Prince de Bismarck and the
British Liberal politicians of forty years ago going in for anything
remotely resembling it.
When, therefore, the inquiring student of civilization has occasion
to observe this or any other apparent recession upon any point of our
present régime,[8] he may content himself with asking the one
question,
What effect has this upon the sum-total of State power? The
answer he gives himself will show conclusively whether the recession
is actual or apparent, and this is all he is concerned to know.
There is also an impression that if actual recessions do not come
about of themselves, they may be brought about by the expedient of
voting one political party out and another one in. This idea rests
upon certain assumptions that experience has shown to be unsound; the
first one being that the power of the ballot is what republican
political theory makes it out to be, and that therefore the electorate
has an effective choice in the matter. It is a matter of open and
notorious fact that nothing like this is true. Our nominally
republican system is actually built on an imperial model, with our
professional politicians standing in the place of the prætorian
guards; they meet from time to time, decide what can be "got away
with," and how, and who is to do it; and the electorate votes
according to their prescriptions. Under these conditions it is easy to
provide the appearance of any desired concession of State power,
without the reality; our history shows innumerable instances of very
easy dealing with problems in practical politics much more difficult
than that. One may remark in this connexion also the notoriously
baseless assumption that party-designations connote principles, and
that party-pledges imply performance. Moreover, underlying these
assumptions and all others that faith in "political action"
contemplates, is the assumption that the interests of the State and
the interests of society are, at least theoretically, identical;
whereas in theory they are directly opposed, and this opposition
invariably declares itself in practice to the precise extent that
circumstances permit.
However, without pursuing these matters further at the moment, it is
probably enough to observe here that in the nature of things the
exercise of personal government, the control of a huge and growing
bureaucracy, and the management of an enormous mass of subsidized
voting-power, are as agreeable to one stripe of politician as they are
to another. Presumably they interest a Republican or a Progressive as
much as they do a Democrat, Communist, Farmer-Labourite, Socialist, or
whatever a politician may, for electioneering purposes, see fit to
call himself. This was demonstrated in the local campaigns of 1934 by
the practical attitude of politicians who represented nominal
opposition parties. It is now being further demonstrated by the
derisible haste that the leaders of the official opposition are making
towards what they call "reorganization" of their party. One
may well be inattentive to their words; their actions, however, mean
simply that the recent accretions of State power are here to stay, and
that they are aware of it; and that, such being the case, they are
preparing to dispose themselves most advantageously in a contest for
their control and management. This is all that "reorganization"
of the Republican party means, and all it is meant to mean; and this
is in itself quite enough to show that any expectation of an essential
change of regime through a change of party-administration is illusory.
On the contrary, it is clear that whatever party-competition we shall
see hereafter will be on the same terms as heretofore. It will be a
competition for control and management, and it would naturally issue
in still closer centralization, still further extension of the
bureaucratic principle, and still larger concessions to subsidized
voting-power. This course would be strictly historical, and is
furthermore to be expected as lying in the nature of things, as it so
obviously does.
Indeed, it is by this means that the aim of the collectivists seems
likeliest to be attained in this country; this aim being the complete
extinction of social power through absorption by the State. Their
fundamental doctrine was formulated and invested with a
quasi-religious sanction by the idealist philosophers of the last
century; and among peoples who have accepted it in terms as well as in
fact, it is expressed in formulas almost identical with theirs. Thus,
for example, when Hitler says that "the State dominates the
nation because it alone represents it," he is only putting into
loose popular language the formula of Hegel, that "the State is
the general substance, whereof individuals are but accidents."
Or, again, when Mussolini says, "Everything for the State;
nothing outside the State; nothing against the State," he is
merely vulgarizing the doctrine of Fichte, that "the State is the
superior power, ultimate and beyond appeal, absolutely independent."
It may be in place to remark here the essential identity of the
various extant forms of collectivism. The superficial distinctions of
Fascism, Bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists and
publicists; the serious student[9] sees in them only the one root-idea
of a complete conversion of social power into State power. When Hitler
and Mussolini invoke a kind of debased and hoodwinking mysticism to
aid their acceleration of this process, the student at once recognizes
his old friend, the formula of Hegel, that "the State incarnates
the Divine Idea upon earth," and he is not hoodwinked. The
journalist and the impressionable traveller may make what they will of
"the new religion of Bolshevism"; the student contents
himself with remarking clearly the exact nature of the process which
this inculcation is designed to sanction.
IV
This process - the conversion of social power into State power - has
not been carried as far here as it has elsewhere; as it has in Russia,
Italy or Germany, for example. Two things, however, are to be
observed. First, that it has gone a long way, at a rate of progress
which has of late been greatly accelerated. What has chiefly
differentiated its progress here from its progress in other countries
is its unspectacular character. Mr. Jefferson wrote in 1823 that there
was no danger he dreaded so much as "the consolidation [i.e.,
centralization] of our government by the noiseless and therefore
unalarming instrumentality of the Supreme Court." These words
characterize every advance that we have made in State aggrandizement.
Each one has been noiseless and therefore unalarming, especially to a
people notoriously preoccupied, inattentive and incurious. Even the
coup d'État of 1932 was noiseless and unalarming. In
Russia, Italy, Germany, the coup d'État was violent and
spectacular; it had to be; but here it was neither. Under cover of a
nationwide, State-managed mobilization of inane buffoonery and aimless
commotion, it took place in so unspectacular a way that its true
nature escaped notice, and even now is not generally understood. The
method of consolidating the ensuing regime, moreover, was also
noiseless and unalarming; it was merely the prosaic and unspectacular
"higgling of the market," to which a long and uniform
political experience had accustomed us. A visitor from a poorer and
thriftier country might have regarded Mr. Farley's activities in the
local campaigns of 1934 as striking or even spectacular, but they made
no such impression on us. They seemed so familiar, so much the regular
thing, that one heard little comment on them. Moreover, political
habit led us to attribute whatever unfavourable comment we did hear,
to interest; either partisan or monetary interest, or both. We put it
down as the jaundiced judgment of persons with axes to grind; and
naturally the regime did all it could to encourage this view.
The second thing to be observed is that certain formulas, certain
arrangements of words, stand as an obstacle in the way of our
perceiving how far the conversion of social power into State power has
actually gone. The force of phrase and name distorts the
identification of our own actual acceptances and acquiescences. We are
accustomed to the rehearsal of certain poetic litanies, and provided
their cadence be kept entire, we are indifferent to their
correspondence with truth and fact. When Hegel's doctrine of the
State, for example, is restated in terms by Hitler and Mussolini, it
is distinctly offensive to us, and we congratulate ourselves on our
freedom from the "yoke of a dictator's tyranny." No American
politician would dream of breaking in on our routine of litanies with
anything of the kind. We may imagine, for example, the shock to
popular sentiment that would ensue upon Mr. Roosevelt's declaring
publicly that "the State embraces everything, and nothing has
value outside the State. The State creates right." Yet an
American politician, as long as he does not formulate that doctrine in
set terms, may go further with it in a practical way than Mussolini
has gone, and without trouble or question. Suppose Mr. Roosevelt
should defend his regime by publicly reasserting Hegel's dictum that "the
State alone possesses rights, because it is the strongest." One
can hardly imagine that our public would get that down without a great
deal of retching. Yet how far, really, is that doctrine alien to our
public's actual acquiescences? Surely not far.
The point is that in respect of the relation between the theory and
the actual practice of public affairs, the American is the most
un-philosophical of beings. The rationalization of conduct in general
is most repugnant to him; he prefers to emotionalize it. He is
indifferent to the theory of things, so long as he may rehearse his
formulas; and so long as he can listen to the patter of his litanies,
no practical inconsistency disturbs him - indeed, he gives no evidence
of even recognizing it as an inconsistency.
The ablest and most acute observer among the many who came from
Europe to look us over in the early part of the last century was the
one who is for some reason the most neglected, notwithstanding that in
our present circumstances, especially, he is worth more to us than all
the de Tocquevilles, Bryces, Trollopes and Chateaubriands put
together. This was the noted St.-Simonien and political economist,
Michel Chevalier. Professor Chinard, in his admirable biographical
study of John Adams, has called attention to Chevalier's observation
that the American people have "the morale of an army on the
march." The more one thinks of this, the more clearly one sees
how little there is in what our publicists are fond of calling "the
American psychology" that it does not exactly account for; and it
exactly accounts for the trait that we are considering.
An army on the march has no philosophy; it views itself as a creature
of the moment. It does not rationalize conduct except in terms of an
immediate end. As Tennyson observed, there is a pretty strict official
understanding against its doing so; "theirs not to reason why."
Emotionalizing conduct is another matter, and the more of it the
better; it is encouraged by a whole elaborate paraphernalia of showy
etiquette, flags, music, uniforms, decorations, and the careful
cultivation of a very special sort of comradery. In every relation to
"the reason of the thing," however - in the ability and
eagerness, as Plato puts it, "to see things as they are" -
the mentality of an army on the march is merely so much delayed
adolescence; it remains persistently, incorrigibly and notoriously
infantile.
Past generations of Americans, as Martin Chuzzlewit left record,
erected this infantilism into a distinguishing virtue, and they took
great pride in it as the mark of a chosen people, destined to live
forever amidst the glory of their own unparalleled achievements wie
Gott in Frankreich. Mr. Jefferson Brick, General Choke and the
Honourable Elijah Pogram made a first-class job of indoctrinating
their countrymen with the idea that a philosophy is wholly
unnecessary, and that a concern with the theory of things is
effeminate and unbecoming. An envious and presumably dissolute
Frenchman may say what he likes about the morale of an army on the
march, but the fact remains that it has brought us where we are, and
has got us what we have. Look at a continent subdued, see the spread
of our industry and commerce, our railways, newspapers,
finance-companies, schools, colleges, what you will! Well, if all this
has been done without a philosophy, if we have grown to this
unrivalled greatness without any attention to the theory of things,
does it not show that philosophy and the theory of things are all
moonshine, and not worth a practical people's consideration? The
morale of an army on the march is good enough for us, and we are proud
of it.
The present generation does not speak in quite this tone of robust
certitude. It seems, if anything, rather less openly contemptuous of
philosophy; one even sees some signs of a suspicion that in our
present circumstances the theory of things might be worth looking
into, and it is especially towards the theory of sovereignty and
rulership that this new attitude of hospitality appears to be
developing. The condition of public affairs in all countries, notably
in our own, has done more than bring under review the mere current
practice of politics, the character and quality of representative
politicians, and the relative merits of this-or-that form or mode of
government. It has served to suggest attention to the one institution
whereof all these forms or modes are but the several, and, from the
theoretical point of view, indifferent, manifestations. It suggests
that finality does not lie with consideration of species, but of
genus; it does not lie with consideration of the characteristic marks
that differentiate the republican State, monocratic State,
constitutional, collectivist, totalitarian, Hitlerian, Bolshevist,
what you will. It lies with consideration of the State itself.
V
There appears to be a curious difficulty about exercising reflective
thought upon the actual nature of an institution into which one was
born and one's ancestors were born. One accepts it as one does the
atmosphere; one's practical adjustments to it are made by a kind of
reflex. One seldom thinks about the air until one notices some change,
favourable or unfavourable, and then one's thought about it is
special; one thinks about purer air, lighter air, heavier air, not
about air. So it is with certain human institutions. We know that they
exist, that they affect us in various ways, but we do not ask how they
came to exist, or what their original intention was, or what primary
function it is that they are actually fulfilling; and when they affect
us so unfavourably that we rebel against them, we contemplate
substituting nothing beyond some modification or variant of the same
institution. Thus colonial America, oppressed by the monarchical
State, brings in the republican State; Germany gives up the republican
State for the Hitlerian State; Russia exchanges the monocratic State
for the collectivist State; Italy exchanges the constitutionalist
State for the "totalitarian" State.
It is interesting to observe that in the year 1935 the average
individual's incurious attitude towards the phenomenon of the State is
precisely what his attitude was towards the phenomenon of the Church
in the year, say, 1500. The State was then a very weak institution;
the Church was very strong. The individual was born into the Church,
as his ancestors had been for generations, in precisely the formal,
documented fashion in which he is now born into the State. He was
taxed for the Church's support, as he now is for the State's support.
He was supposed to accept the official theory and doctrine of the
Church, to conform to its discipline, and in a general way to do as it
told him; again, precisely the sanctions that the State now lays upon
him. If he were reluctant or recalcitrant, the Church made a
satisfactory amount of trouble for him, as the State now does.
Notwithstanding all this, it does not appear to have occurred to the
Church-citizen of that day, any more than it occurs to the
State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution it was
that claimed his allegiance. There it was; he accepted its own account
of itself, took it as it stood, and at its own valuation. Even when he
revolted, fifty years later, he merely exchanged one form or mode of
the Church for another, the Roman for the Calvinist, Lutheran,
Zuinglian, or what not; again, quite as the modern State-citizen
exchanges one mode of the State for another. He did not examine the
institution itself, nor does the State-citizen today.
My purpose in writing is to raise the question whether the enormous
depletion of social power which we are witnessing everywhere does not
suggest the importance of knowing more than we do about the essential
nature of the institution that is so rapidly absorbing this volume of
power.[10] One of my friends said to me lately that if the
public-utility corporations did not mend their ways, the State would
take over their business and operate it. He spoke with a curiously
reverent air of finality. Just so, I thought, might a Church-citizen,
at the end of the fifteenth century, have spoken of some impending
intervention of the Church; and I wondered then whether he had any
better-informed and closer-reasoned theory of the State than his
prototype had of the Church. Frankly, I am sure he had not. His
pseudo-conception was merely an unreasoned acceptance of the State on
its own terms and at its own valuation; and in this acceptance he
showed himself no more intelligent, and no less, than the whole mass
of State-citizenry at large.
It appears to me that with the depletion of social power going on at
the rate it is, the State-citizen should look very closely into the
essential nature of the institution that is bringing it about. He
should ask himself whether he has a theory of the State, and if so,
whether he can assure himself that history supports it. He will not
find this a matter that can be settled offhand; it needs a good deal
of investigation, and a stiff exercise of reflective thought. He
should ask, in the first place, how the State originated, and why; it
must have come about somehow, and for some purpose. This seems an
extremely easy question to answer, but he will not find it so. Then he
should ask what it is that history exhibits continuously as the
State's primary function. Then, whether he finds that " the State"
and "government" are strictly synonymous terms; he uses them
as such, but are they? Are there any invariable characteristic marks
that differentiate the institution of government from the institution
of the State? Then finally he should decide whether, by the testimony
of history, the State is to be regarded as, in essence, a social or an
anti-social institution?
It is pretty clear now that if the Church-citizen of 1500 had put his
mind on questions as fundamental as these, his civilization might have
had a much easier and pleasanter course to run; and the State-citizen
of today may profit by his experience.
Footnotes to Chapter 1
- The result of a questionnaire
published in July, 1935, showed 76.8 per cent of the replies
favourable to the idea that it is the State's duty to see that
every person who wants a job shall have one; 20.1 per cent were
against it, and 3.1 per cent were undecided.
- In this country, the State is
at present manufacturing furniture, grinding flour, producing
fertilizer, building houses; selling farm-products,
dairy-products, textiles, canned goods, and electrical apparatus;
operating employment-agencies and home-loan offices; financing
exports and imports; financing agriculture. It also controls the
issuance of securities, communications by wire and radio, discount
rates, oil-production, power-production, commercial competition,
the production and sale of alcohol, and the use of inland
waterways and railways.
- There is a sort of precedent
for it in Roman history, if the story be true in all its details
that the army sold the emperorship to Didius Julianus for
something like five million dollars. Money has often been used to
grease the wheels of a coup d'État, but
straight over-the-counter purchase is unknown, I think, except in
these two instances.
- On the day I write this, the
newspapers say that the President is about to order a stoppage on
the flow of federal relief-funds into Louisiana, for the purpose
of bringing Senator Long to terms. I have seen no comment,
however, on the propriety of this kind of procedure.
- A friend in the theatrical
business tells me that from the box-office point of view,
Washington is now the best theatre-town, concert-town and
general-amusement town in the United States, far better than New
York.
- The feature of the approaching
campaign of 1936 which will most interest the student of
civilization will be the use of the four-billion-dollar
relief-fund that has been placed at the President's disposal - the
extent, that is, to which it will be distributed on a
patronage-basis.
- It must always be kept in mind
that there is a tidal-motion as well as a wave-motion in these
matters, and that the wave-motion is of little importance,
relatively. For instance, the Supreme Court's invalidation of the
National Recovery Act counts for nothing in determining the actual
status of personal government. The real question is not how much
less the sum of personal government is now than it was before that
decision, but how much greater it is normally now than it was in
1932, and in years preceding.
- As, for example, the
spectacular voiding of the National Recovery Act.
- This book is a sort of
syllabus or précis of some lectures to students of American
history and politics - mostly graduate students - and it therefore
presupposes some little acquaintance with those subjects. The few
references I have given, however, will put any reader in the way
of documenting and amplifying it satisfactorily.
- An inadequate and partial idea
of what this volume amounts to, may be got from the fact that the
American State's income from taxation is now about one third of
the nation's total income! This takes into account all forms of
taxation, direct and indirect, local and federal.
Part
3 * Return
to Part 1
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