by Murray N. Rothbard
The State is almost universally considered an institution of social
service. Some theorists venerate the State as the apotheosis of society; others
regard it as an amiable, though often inefficient, organization for achieving
social ends; but almost all regard it as a necessary means for achieving the
goals of mankind, a means to be ranged against the "private sector"
and often winning in this competition of resources. With the rise of democracy,
the identification of the State with society has been redoubled, until it is
common to hear sentiments expressed which violate virtually every tenet of
reason and common sense such as, "we are the government." The useful
collective term "we" has enabled an ideological camouflage to be
thrown over the reality of political life. If "we are the
government," then anything a government does to an individual is not only
just and un-tyrannical but also "voluntary" on the part of the
individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt which
must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of
burden is obscured by saying that "we owe it to ourselves"; if the
government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion,
then he is "doing it to himself" and, therefore, nothing untoward has
occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government
were not murdered; instead, they must have "committed
suicide," since they were the government (which was
democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the government did to them was
voluntary on their part. One would not think it necessary to belabor this
point, and yet the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a
greater or lesser degree.
We must, therefore, emphasize that "we" are not the
government; the government is not "us." The
government does not in any accurate sense "represent" the majority of
the people.[1] But, even if
it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30
percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the
part of the slaughtered minority.[2] No
organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that "we are all part of one
another," must be permitted to obscure this basic fact.
If, then, the State is not "us," if it is not "the human family"
getting together to decide mutual problems, if it is not a lodge meeting or
country club, what is it? Briefly, the State is that organization in society
which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a
given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society
that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services
rendered but by coercion. While other individuals or institutions obtain their
income by production of goods and services and by the peaceful and voluntary
sale of these goods and services to others, the State obtains its revenue by
the use of compulsion; that is, by the use and the threat of the jailhouse and
the bayonet.[3] Having used
force and violence to obtain its revenue, the State generally goes on to
regulate and dictate the other actions of its individual subjects. One would
think that simple observation of all States through history and over the globe
would be proof enough of this assertion; but the miasma of myth has lain so
long over State activity that elaboration is necessary.
What the State Is
Man is born naked into the world, and needing to use his mind to learn how
to take the resources given him by nature, and to transform them (for example,
by investment in "capital") into shapes and forms and places where
the resources can be used for the satisfaction of his wants and the advancement
of his standard of living. The only way by which man can do this is by the use
of his mind and energy to transform resources ("production") and to
exchange these products for products created by others. Man has found that,
through the process of voluntary, mutual exchange, the productivity and hence
the living standards of all participants in exchange may increase enormously.
The only "natural" course for man to survive and to attain wealth,
therefore, is by using his mind and energy to engage in the
production-and-exchange process. He does this, first, by finding natural
resources, and then by transforming them (by "mixing his labor" with
them, as Locke puts it), to make them his individual property, and
then by exchanging this property for the similarly obtained property of others.
The social path dictated by the requirements of man's nature, therefore, is the
path of "property rights" and the "free market" of gift or
exchange of such rights. Through this path, men have learned how to avoid the
"jungle" methods of fighting over scarce resources so that A can only
acquire them at the expense of B and, instead, to multiply those resources
enormously in peaceful and harmonious production and exchange.
The great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer pointed out that there are
two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth; one, the above way of
production and exchange, he called the "economic means." The other
way is simpler in that it does not require productivity; it is the way of
seizure of another's goods or services by the use of force and violence. This
is the method of one-sided confiscation, of theft of the property of others.
This is the method which Oppenheimer termed "the political means" to
wealth. It should be clear that the peaceful use of reason and energy in
production is the "natural" path for man: the means for his survival
and prosperity on this earth. It should be equally clear that the coercive,
exploitative means is contrary to natural law; it is parasitic, for instead of
adding to production, it subtracts from it. The "political means"
siphons production off to a parasitic and destructive individual or group; and
this siphoning not only subtracts from the number producing, but also lowers
the producer's incentive to produce beyond his own subsistence. In the long
run, the robber destroys his own subsistence by dwindling or eliminating the
source of his own supply. But not only that; even in the short run, the
predator is acting contrary to his own true nature as a man.
We are now in a position to answer more fully the question: what is the State?
The State, in the words of Oppenheimer, is the "organization of the
political means"; it is the systematization of the predatory process over
a given territory.[4] For crime,
at best, is sporadic and uncertain; the parasitism is ephemeral, and the
coercive, parasitic lifeline may be cut off at any time by the resistance of
the victims. The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the
predation of private property; it renders certain, secure, and relatively
"peaceful" the lifeline of the parasitic caste in society.[5] Since
production must always precede predation, the free market is anterior to the
State. The State has never been created by a "social contract"; it
has always been born in conquest and exploitation. The classic paradigm was a
conquering tribe pausing in its time-honored method of looting and murdering a
conquered tribe, to realize that the time-span of plunder would be longer and
more secure, and the situation more pleasant, if the conquered tribe were
allowed to live and produce, with the conquerors settling among them as rulers
exacting a steady annual tribute.[6] One method
of the birth of a State may be illustrated as follows: in the hills of southern
"Ruritania," a bandit group manages to obtain physical control over
the territory, and finally the bandit chieftain proclaims himself "King of
the sovereign and independent government of South Ruritania"; and, if he
and his men have the force to maintain this rule for a while, lo and behold! a
new State has joined the "family of nations," and the former bandit
leaders have been transformed into the lawful nobility of the realm.
How the State Preserves Itself
Once a State has been established, the problem of the ruling group or
"caste" is how to maintain their rule.[7] While force
is their modus operandi, their basic and long-run problem is
ideological. For in order to continue in office, any government
(not simply a "democratic" government) must have the support of the majority
of its subjects. This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm;
it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature. But
support in the sense of acceptance of some sort it must be; else the minority
of State rulers would eventually be outweighed by the active resistance of the
majority of the public. Since predation must be supported out of the surplus of
production, it is necessarily true that the class constituting the State – the
full-time bureaucracy (and nobility) – must be a rather small minority in the
land, although it may, of course, purchase allies among important groups in the
population. Therefore, the chief task of the rulers is always to secure the
active or resigned acceptance of the majority of the citizens.[8][9]
Of course, one method of securing support is through the creation of vested
economic interests. Therefore, the King alone cannot rule; he must have a
sizable group of followers who enjoy the prerequisites of rule, for example,
the members of the State apparatus, such as the full-time bureaucracy or the
established nobility.[10] But this
still secures only a minority of eager supporters, and even the essential
purchasing of support by subsidies and other grants of privilege still does not
obtain the consent of the majority. For this essential acceptance, the majority
must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good,
wise and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable
alternatives. Promoting this ideology among the people is the vital social task
of the "intellectuals." For the masses of men do not create their own
ideas, or indeed think through these ideas independently; they follow passively
the ideas adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals. The
intellectuals are, therefore, the "opinion-molders" in society. And
since it is precisely a molding of opinion that the State most desperately
needs, the basis for age-old alliance between the State and the intellectuals
becomes clear.
It is evident that the State needs the intellectuals; it is not so evident
why intellectuals need the State. Put simply, we may state that the
intellectual's livelihood in the free market is never too secure; for the
intellectual must depend on the values and choices of the masses of his fellow
men, and it is precisely characteristic of the masses that they are generally
uninterested in intellectual matters. The State, on the other hand, is willing
to offer the intellectuals a secure and permanent berth in the State apparatus;
and thus a secure income and the panoply of prestige. For the intellectuals
will be handsomely rewarded for the important function they perform for the
State rulers, of which group they now become a part.[11]
The alliance between the State and the intellectuals was symbolized in the
eager desire of professors at the University of Berlin in the nineteenth
century to form the "intellectual bodyguard of the House of
Hohenzollern." In the present day, let us note the revealing comment of an
eminent Marxist scholar concerning Professor Wittfogel's critical study of
ancient Oriental despotism: "The civilization which Professor Wittfogel is
so bitterly attacking was one which could make poets and scholars into
officials."[12] Of
innumerable examples, we may cite the recent development of the
"science" of strategy, in the service of the government's main
violence-wielding arm, the military.[13] A venerable
institution, furthermore, is the official or "court" historian,
dedicated to purveying the rulers' views of their own and their predecessors'
actions.[14]
Many and varied have been the arguments by which the State and its
intellectuals have induced their subjects to support their rule. Basically, the
strands of argument may be summed up as follows: (a) the State rulers are great
and wise men (they "rule by divine right," they are the
"aristocracy" of men, they are the "scientific experts"),
much greater and wiser than the good but rather simple subjects, and (b) rule
by the extent government is inevitable, absolutely necessary, and far better,
than the indescribable evils that would ensue upon its downfall. The union of
Church and State was one of the oldest and most successful of these ideological
devices. The ruler was either anointed by God or, in the case of the absolute
rule of many Oriental despotisms, was himself God; hence, any resistance to his
rule would be blasphemy. The States' priestcraft performed the basic
intellectual function of obtaining popular support and even worship for the
rulers.[15]
Another successful device was to instill fear of any alternative systems of
rule or nonrule. The present rulers, it was maintained, supply to the citizens
an essential service for which they should be most grateful: protection against
sporadic criminals and marauders. For the State, to preserve its own monopoly
of predation, did indeed see to it that private and unsystematic crime was kept
to a minimum; the State has always been jealous of its own preserve. Especially
has the State been successful in recent centuries in instilling fear of other State
rulers. Since the land area of the globe has been parceled out among particular
States, one of the basic doctrines of the State was to identify itself with the
territory it governed. Since most men tend to love their homeland, the
identification of that land and its people with the State was a means of making
natural patriotism work to the State's advantage. If "Ruritania" was
being attacked by "Walldavia," the first task of the State and its
intellectuals was to convince the people of Ruritania that the attack was
really upon themand not simply upon the ruling caste. In this way,
a war between rulers was converted into a war between peoples,
with each people coming to the defense of its rulers in the erroneous belief
that the rulers were defending them. This device of
"nationalism" has only been successful, in Western civilization, in
recent centuries; it was not too long ago that the mass of subjects regarded
wars as irrelevant battles between various sets of nobles.
Many and subtle are the ideological weapons that the State has wielded
through the centuries. One excellent weapon has been tradition. The longer that
the rule of a State has been able to preserve itself, the more powerful this
weapon; for then, the X Dynasty or the Y State has the seeming weight of
centuries of tradition behind it.[16] Worship of
one's ancestors, then, becomes a none too subtle means of worship of one's
ancient rulers. The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual
criticism; there is no better way to stifle that criticism than to attack any
isolated voice, any raiser of new doubts, as a profane violator of the wisdom
of his ancestors. Another potent ideological force is to deprecate the individual and
exalt the collectivity of society. For since any given rule implies majority
acceptance, any ideological danger to that rule can only start from one or a
few independently-thinking individuals. The new idea, much less the new critical idea,
must needs begin as a small minority opinion; therefore, the State must nip the
view in the bud by ridiculing any view that defies the opinions of the mass.
"Listen only to your brothers" or "adjust to society" thus
become ideological weapons for crushing individual dissent.[17] By such
measures, the masses will never learn of the nonexistence of their Emperor's
clothes.[18] It is also
important for the State to make its rule seem inevitable; even if its reign is
disliked, it will then be met with passive resignation, as witness the familiar
coupling of "death and taxes." One method is to induce
historiographical determinism, as opposed to individual freedom of will. If the
X Dynasty rules us, this is because the Inexorable Laws of History (or the
Divine Will, or the Absolute, or the Material Productive Forces) have so
decreed and nothing any puny individuals may do can change this inevitable
decree. It is also important for the State to inculcate in its subjects an
aversion to any "conspiracy theory of history"; for a search for
"conspiracies" means a search for motives and an attribution of
responsibility for historical misdeeds. If, however, any tyranny imposed by the
State, or venality, or aggressive war, was caused not by the
State rulers but by mysterious and arcane "social forces," or by the
imperfect state of the world or, if in some way, everyone was
responsible ("We Are All Murderers," proclaims one slogan), then
there is no point to the people becoming indignant or rising up against such
misdeeds. Furthermore, an attack on "conspiracy theories" means that
the subjects will become more gullible in believing the "general
welfare" reasons that are always put forth by the State for engaging in
any of its despotic actions. A "conspiracy theory" can unsettle the
system by causing the public to doubt the State's ideological propaganda.
Another tried and true method for bending subjects to the State's will is
inducing guilt. Any increase in private well-being can be attacked as
"unconscionable greed," "materialism," or "excessive
affluence," profit-making can be attacked as "exploitation" and
"usury," mutually beneficial exchanges denounced as
"selfishness," and somehow with the conclusion always being drawn
that more resources should be siphoned from the private to the "public
sector." The induced guilt makes the public more ready to do just that.
For while individual persons tend to indulge in "selfish greed," the
failure of the State's rulers to engage in exchanges is supposed to signifytheir devotion
to higher and nobler causes – parasitic predation being apparently morally and
esthetically lofty as compared to peaceful and productive work.
In the present more secular age, the divine right of the State has been
supplemented by the invocation of a new god, Science. State rule is now
proclaimed as being ultrascientific, as constituting planning by experts. But
while "reason" is invoked more than in previous centuries, this is
not the true reason of the individual and his exercise of free will; it is
still collectivist and determinist, still implying holistic aggregates and
coercive manipulation of passive subjects by their rulers.
The increasing use of scientific jargon has permitted the State's
intellectuals to weave obscurantist apologia for State rule that would have
only met with derision by the populace of a simpler age. A robber who justified
his theft by saying that he really helped his victims, by his spending giving a
boost to retail trade, would find few converts; but when this theory is clothed
in Keynesian equations and impressive references to the "multiplier
effect," it unfortunately carries more conviction. And so the assault on
common sense proceeds, each age performing the task in its own ways.
Thus, ideological support being vital to the State, it must unceasingly try
to impress the public with its "legitimacy," to distinguish its
activities from those of mere brigands. The unremitting determination of its
assaults on common sense is no accident, for as Mencken vividly
maintained: The average man, whatever his errors otherwise, at least sees
clearly that government is something lying outside him and outside the
generality of his fellow men – that it is a separate, independent, and hostile
power, only partly under his control, and capable of doing him great harm. Is
it a fact of no significance that robbing the government is everywhere regarded
as a crime of less magnitude than robbing an individual, or even a corporation?
. . . What lies behind all this, I believe, is a deep sense of the fundamental
antagonism between the government and the people it governs. It is apprehended,
not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the
whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted
to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members. . . . When a
private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his
industry and thrift; when the government is robbed, the worst that happens is
that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had
before. The notion that they have earned that money is never entertained; to
most sensible men it would seem ludicrous.[19]
How the State Transcends Its Limits
As Bertrand de Jouvenel has sagely pointed out, through the centuries men
have formed concepts designed to check and limit the exercise of State rule;
and, one after another, the State, using its intellectual allies, has been able
to transform these concepts into intellectual rubber stamps of legitimacy and
virtue to attach to its decrees and actions. Originally, in Western Europe, the
concept of divine sovereignty held that the kings may rule only according to
divine law; the kings turned the concept into a rubber stamp of divine approval
for any of the kings' actions. The concept of parliamentary democracy began as
a popular check upon absolute monarchical rule; it ended with parliament being
the essential part of the State and its every act totally sovereign. As de
Jouvenel concludes:
Many writers on theories of sovereignty have worked out one . . . of these
restrictive devices. But in the end every single such theory has, sooner or
later, lost its original purpose, and come to act merely as a springboard to
Power, by providing it with the powerful aid of an invisible sovereign with
whom it could in time successfully identify itself.[20]
Similarly with more specific doctrines: the "natural rights" of
the individual enshrined in John Locke and the Bill of Rights, became a statist
"right to a job"; utilitarianism turned from arguments for liberty to
arguments against resisting the State's invasions of liberty, etc.
Certainly the most ambitious attempt to impose limits on the State has been
the Bill of Rights and other restrictive parts of the American Constitution, in
which written limits on government became the fundamental law to be interpreted
by a judiciary supposedly independent of the other branches of government. All
Americans are familiar with the process by which the construction of limits in
the Constitution has been inexorably broadened over the last century. But few
have been as keen as Professor Charles Black to see that the State has, in the
process, largely transformed judicial review itself from a limiting device to
yet another instrument for furnishing ideological legitimacy to the
government's actions. For if a judicial decree of "unconstitutional"
is a mighty check to government power, an implicit or explicit verdict of
"constitutional" is a mighty weapon for fostering public acceptance
of ever-greater government power.
Professor Black begins his analysis by pointing out the crucial necessity
of "legitimacy" for any government to endure, this legitimation
signifying basic majority acceptance of the government and its actions.[21] Acceptance
of legitimacy becomes a particular problem in a country such as the United
States, where "substantive limitations are built into the theory on which
the government rests." What is needed, adds Black, is a means by which the
government can assure the public that its increasing powers are, indeed,
"constitutional." And this, he concludes, has been the major historic
function of judicial review.
Let Black illustrate the problem:
The supreme risk [to the government] is that of disaffection and a feeling
of outrage widely disseminated throughout the population, and loss of moral
authority by the government as such, however long it may be propped up by force
or inertia or the lack of an appealing and immediately available alternative.
Almost everybody living under a government of limited powers, must sooner or
later be subjected to some governmental action which as a matter of private
opinion he regards as outside the power of government or positively forbidden
to government. A man is drafted, though he finds nothing in the Constitution
about being drafted. . . . A farmer is told how much wheat he can raise; he
believes, and he discovers that some respectable lawyers believe with him, that
the government has no more right to tell him how much wheat he can grow than it
has to tell his daughter whom she can marry. A man goes to the federal
penitentiary for saying what he wants to, and he paces his cell reciting . . .
"Congress shall make no laws abridging the freedom of speech.". . . A
businessman is told what he can ask, and must ask, for buttermilk.
The danger is real enough that each of these people (and who is not of their number?) will confront the concept of governmental limitation with the reality (as he sees it) of the flagrant overstepping of actual limits, and draw the obvious conclusion as to the status of his government with respect to legitimacy.[22]
The danger is real enough that each of these people (and who is not of their number?) will confront the concept of governmental limitation with the reality (as he sees it) of the flagrant overstepping of actual limits, and draw the obvious conclusion as to the status of his government with respect to legitimacy.[22]
This danger is averted by the State's propounding the doctrine that one
agency must have the ultimate decision on constitutionality and that this
agency, in the last analysis, must be part of the federal
government.[23] For while
the seeming independence of the federal judiciary has played a vital part in
making its actions virtual Holy Writ for the bulk of the people, it is also and
ever true that the judiciary is part and parcel of the government apparatus and
appointed by the executive and legislative branches. Black admits that this
means that the State has set itself up as a judge in its own cause, thus
violating a basic juridical principle for aiming at just decisions. He
brusquely denies the possibility of any alternative.[24]
Black adds:
The problem, then, is to devise such governmental means of deciding as will
[hopefully] reduce to a tolerable minimum the intensity of the objection that
government is judge in its own cause. Having done this, you can only hope that
this objection,though theoretically still tenable [italics mine],
will practically lose enough of its force that the legitimating work of the
deciding institution can win acceptance.[25]
In the last analysis, Black finds the achievement of justice and legitimacy
from the State's perpetual judging of its own cause as "something of a
miracle."[26]
Applying his thesis to the famous conflict between the Supreme Court and
the New Deal, Professor Black keenly chides his fellow pro-New Deal colleagues
for their shortsightedness in denouncing judicial obstruction:
[t]he standard version of the story of the New Deal and the Court, though
accurate in its way, displaces the emphasis. . . . It concentrates on the
difficulties; it almost forgets how the whole thing turned out. The upshot of
the matter was [and this is what I like to emphasize] that after some
twenty-four months of balking . . . the Supreme Court, without a single change
in the law of its composition, or, indeed, in its actual manning, placed
the affirmative stamp of legitimacy on the New Deal, and on the whole new
conception of government in America.[27]
In this way, the Supreme Court was able to put the quietus on the large
body of Americans who had had strong constitutional objections to the New Deal:
Of course, not everyone was satisfied. The Bonnie Prince Charlie of
constitutionally commanded laissez-faire still stirs the hearts of a few
zealots in the Highlands of choleric unreality. But there is no longer any
significant or dangerous public doubt as to the constitutional power of
Congress to deal as it does with the national economy. . . .
We had no means, other than the Supreme Court, for imparting legitimacy to the New Deal.[28]
We had no means, other than the Supreme Court, for imparting legitimacy to the New Deal.[28]
As Black recognizes, one major political theorist who recognized – and
largely in advance – the glaring loophole in a constitutional limit on
government of placing the ultimate interpreting power in the Supreme Court was
John C. Calhoun. Calhoun was not content with the "miracle," but
instead proceeded to a profound analysis of the constitutional problem. In
his Disquisition, Calhoun demonstrated the inherent tendency of the
State to break through the limits of such a constitution:
A written constitution certainly has many and considerable advantages, but
it is a great mistake to suppose that the mere insertion of provisions to
restrict and limit the power of the government, without investing those
for whose protection they are inserted with the means of enforcing their
observance [my italics] will be sufficient to prevent the major and
dominant party from abusing its powers. Being the party in possession of the
government, they will, from the same constitution of man which makes government
necessary to protect society, be in favor of the powers granted by the
constitution and opposed to the restrictions intended to limit them. . . . The
minor or weaker party, on the contrary, would take the opposite direction and
regard them [the restrictions] as essential to their protection against the
dominant party. . . . But where there are no means by which they could compel
the major party to observe the restrictions, the only resort left them would be
a strict construction of the constitution. . . . To this the major party would
oppose a liberal construction. . . . It would be construction against
construction – the one to contract and the other to enlarge the powers of the
government to the utmost. But of what possible avail could the strict
construction of the minor party be, against the liberal construction of the
major, when the one would have all the power of the government to carry its
construction into effect and the other be deprived of all means of enforcing
its construction? In a contest so unequal, the result would not be doubtful.
The party in favor of the restrictions would be overpowered. . . . The end of
the contest would be the subversion of the constitution . . . the restrictions
would ultimately be annulled and the government be converted into one of
unlimited powers.[29]
One of the few political scientists who appreciated Calhoun's analysis of
the Constitution was Professor J. Allen Smith. Smith noted that the
Constitution was designed with checks and balances to limit any one
governmental power and yet had then developed a Supreme Court with the monopoly
of ultimate interpreting power. If the Federal Government was created to check
invasions of individual liberty by the separate states, who was to check the
Federal power? Smith maintained that implicit in the check-and-balance idea of
the Constitution was the concomitant view that no one branch of government may
be conceded the ultimate power of interpretation: "It was assumed by the
people that the new government could not be permitted to determine the limits
of its own authority, since this would make it, and not the Constitution,
supreme."[30]
The solution
advanced by Calhoun (and seconded, in this century, by such writers as Smith)
was, of course, the famous doctrine of the "concurrent majority." If
any substantial minority interest in the country, specifically a state
government, believed that the Federal Government was exceeding its powers and
encroaching on that minority, the minority would have the right to veto this
exercise of power as unconstitutional. Applied to state governments, this
theory implied the right of "nullification" of a Federal law or
ruling within a state's jurisdiction.
In theory, the ensuing constitutional system would assure that the Federal
Government check any state invasion of individual rights, while the states
would check excessive Federal power over the individual. And yet, while
limitations would undoubtedly be more effective than at present, there are many
difficulties and problems in the Calhoun solution. If, indeed, a subordinate
interest should rightfully have a veto over matters concerning it, then why
stop with the states? Why not place veto power in counties, cities, wards?
Furthermore, interests are not only sectional, they are also occupational, social,
etc. What of bakers or taxi drivers or any other occupation? Should they not
be permitted a veto power over their own lives? This brings us to the important
point that the nullification theory confines its checks to agencies of
government itself. Let us not forget that federal and state
governments, and their respective branches, are still states, are still guided
by their own state interests rather than by the interests of the private
citizens. What is to prevent the Calhoun system from working in reverse, with
states tyrannizing over their citizens and only vetoing the
federal government when it tries to intervene to stop that
state tyranny? Or for states to acquiesce in federal tyranny? What is to
prevent federal and state governments from forming mutually profitable
alliances for the joint exploitation of the citizenry? And even if the private
occupational groupings were to be given some form of "functional"
representation in government, what is to prevent them from using the State to
gain subsidies and other special privileges for themselves or from imposing
compulsory cartels on their own members?
In short, Calhoun does not push his path-breaking theory on concurrence far
enough: he does not push it down to the individual himself. If
the individual, after all, is the one whose rights are to be protected, then a
consistent theory of concurrence would imply veto power by every individual;
that is, some form of "unanimity principle." When Calhoun wrote that
it should be "impossible to put or to keep it [the government] in action
without the concurrent consent of all," he was, perhaps unwittingly,
implying just such a conclusion.[31] But such
speculation begins to take us away from our subject, for down this path lie
political systems which could hardly be called "States" at all.[32] For one
thing, just as the right of nullification for a state logically implies its
right of secession, so a right of individual nullification would
imply the right of any individual to "secede" from the State under
which he lives.[33]
Thus, the State has invariably shown a striking talent for the expansion of
its powers beyond any limits that might be imposed upon it. Since the State
necessarily lives by the compulsory confiscation of private capital, and since
its expansion necessarily involves ever-greater incursions on private
individuals and private enterprise, we must assert that the State is profoundly
and inherently anti-capitalist. In a sense, our position is the
reverse of the Marxist dictum that the State is the "executive
committee" of the ruling class in the present day, supposedly the
capitalists. Instead, the State – the organization of the political means –
constitutes, and is the source of, the "ruling class" (rather,
ruling caste), and is in permanent opposition to genuinely private
capital. We may, therefore, say with de Jouvenel:
Only those who know nothing of any time but their own, who are completely
in the dark as to the manner of Power's behaving through thousands of years,
would regard these proceedings [nationalization, the income tax, etc.] as the
fruit of a particular set of doctrines. They are in fact the normal
manifestations of Power, and differ not at all in their nature from Henry
VIII's confiscation of the monasteries. The same principle is at work; the
hunger for authority, the thirst for resources; and in all of these operations
the same characteristics are present, including the rapid elevation of the
dividers of the spoils. Whether it is Socialist or whether it is not, Power
must always be at war with the capitalist authorities and despoil the
capitalists of their accumulated wealth; in doing so it obeys the law of its
nature.[34]
What the State Fears
What the State fears above all, of course, is any fundamental threat to its
own power and its own existence. The death of a State can come about in two
major ways: (a) through conquest by another State, or (b) through revolutionary
overthrow by its own subjects – in short, by war or revolution. War and
revolution, as the two basic threats, invariably arouse in the State rulers
their maximum efforts and maximum propaganda among the people. As stated above,
any way must always be used to mobilize the people to come to the State's
defense in the belief that they are defending themselves. The fallacy of the
idea becomes evident when conscription is wielded against those who refuse to
"defend" themselves and are, therefore, forced into joining the
State's military band: needless to add, no "defense" is permitted
them against this act of "their own" State.
In war, State power is pushed to its ultimate, and, under the slogans of
"defense" and "emergency," it can impose a tyranny upon the
public such as might be openly resisted in time of peace. War thus provides
many benefits to a State, and indeed every modern war has brought to the
warring peoples a permanent legacy of increased State burdens upon society.
War, moreover, provides to a State tempting opportunities for conquest of land
areas over which it may exercise its monopoly of force. Randolph Bourne was
certainly correct when he wrote that "war is the health of the
State," but to any particular State a war may spell either health or grave
injury.[35]
We may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in
protecting itself rather than its subjects by asking: which
category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely – those
against private citizens or those against itself? The gravest
crimes in the State's lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private
person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for
example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for
the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and
such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion
of its income tax. Or compare the degree of zeal devoted to pursuing the man
who assaults a policeman, with the attention that the State pays to the assault
of an ordinary citizen. Yet, curiously, the State's openly assigned priority to
its own defense against the public strikes few people as
inconsistent with its presumed raison d'être.[36]
How States Relate to One Another
Since the territorial area of the earth is divided among different States,
inter-State relations must occupy much of a State's time and energy. The
natural tendency of a State is to expand its power, and externally such
expansion takes place by conquest of a territorial area. Unless a territory is
stateless or uninhabited, any such expansion involves an inherent conflict of
interest between one set of State rulers and another. Only one set of rulers
can obtain a monopoly of coercion over any given territorial area at any one
time: complete power over a territory by State X can only be obtained by the
expulsion of State Y. War, while risky, will be an ever-present tendency of
States, punctuated by periods of peace and by shifting alliances and coalitions
between States.
We have seen that the "internal" or "domestic" attempt
to limit the State, in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, reached
its most notable form in constitutionalism. Its "external," or
"foreign affairs," counterpart was the development of
"international law," especially such forms as the "laws of
war" and "neutrals' rights."[37] Parts of
international law were originally purely private, growing out of the need of
merchants and traders everywhere to protect their property and adjudicate
disputes. Examples are admiralty law and the law merchant. But even the
governmental rules emerged voluntarily and were not imposed by any
international super-State. The object of the "laws of war" was to
limit inter-State destruction to the State apparatus itself,
thereby preserving the innocent "civilian" public from the slaughter
and devastation of war. The object of the development of neutrals' rights was
to preserve private civilian international commerce, even with
"enemy" countries, from seizure by one of the warring parties. The
overriding aim, then, was to limit the extent of any war, and, particularly to
limit its destructive impact on the private citizens of the neutral and even
the warring countries.
The jurist F.J.P. Veale charmingly describes such "civilized
warfare" as it briefly flourished in fifteenth-century Italy:
the rich burghers and merchants of medieval Italy were too busy making
money and enjoying life to undertake the hardships and dangers of soldiering
themselves. So they adopted the practice of hiring mercenaries to do their
fighting for them, and, being thrifty, businesslike folk, they dismissed their
mercenaries immediately after their services could be dispensed with. Wars
were, therefore, fought by armies hired for each campaign. . . . For the first
time, soldiering became a reasonable and comparatively harmless profession. The
generals of that period maneuvered against each other, often with consummate
skill, but when one had won the advantage, his opponent generally either
retreated or surrendered. It was a recognized rule that a town could only be
sacked if it offered resistance: immunity could always be purchased by paying a
ransom. . . . As one natural consequence, no town ever resisted, it being
obvious that a government too weak to defend its citizens had forfeited their
allegiance. Civilians had little to fear from the dangers of war which were the
concern only of professional soldiers.[38]
The well-nigh absolute separation of the private civilian from the State's
wars in eighteenth-century Europe is highlighted by Nef:
Even postal communications were not successfully restricted for long in
wartime. Letters circulated without censorship, with a freedom that astonishes
the twentieth-century mind. . . . The subjects of two warring nations talked to
each other if they met, and when they could not meet, corresponded, not as
enemies but as friends. The modern notion hardly existed that . . . subjects of
any enemy country are partly accountable for the belligerent acts of their
rulers. Nor had the warring rulers any firm disposition to stop communications
with subjects of the enemy. The old inquisitorial practices of espionage in
connection with religious worship and belief were disappearing, and no
comparable inquisition in connection with political or economic communications
was even contemplated. Passports were originally created to provide safe
conduct in time of war. During most of the eighteenth century it seldom
occurred to Europeans to abandon their travels in a foreign country which their
own was fighting.[39]
And trade being increasingly recognized as beneficial to both parties; eighteenth-century warfare also counterbalances a considerable amount of "trading with the enemy."[40]
And trade being increasingly recognized as beneficial to both parties; eighteenth-century warfare also counterbalances a considerable amount of "trading with the enemy."[40]
How far States have transcended rules of civilized warfare in this century
needs no elaboration here. In the modern era of total war, combined with the
technology of total destruction, the very idea of keeping war limited to the
State apparati seems even more quaint and obsolete than the original
Constitution of the United States.
When States are not at war, agreements are often necessary to keep frictions
at a minimum. One doctrine that has gained curiously wide acceptance is the
alleged "sanctity of treaties." This concept is treated as the
counterpart of the "sanctity of contract." But a treaty and a genuine
contract have nothing in common. A contract transfers, in a precise manner,
titles to private property. Since a government does not, in any proper sense,
"own" its territorial area, any agreements that it concludes do not
confer titles to property. If, for example, Mr. Jones sells or gives his land
to Mr. Smith, Jones's heir cannot legitimately descend upon Smith's heir and
claim the land as rightfully his. The property title has already been
transferred. Old Jones's contract is automatically binding upon young Jones,
because the former had already transferred the property; young Jones,
therefore, has no property claim. Young Jones can only claim that which he has
inherited from old Jones, and old Jones can only bequeath property which he
still owns. But if, at a certain date, the government of, say, Ruritania is
coerced or even bribed by the government of Waldavia into giving up some of its
territory, it is absurd to claim that the governments or inhabitants of the two
countries are forever barred from a claim to reunification of Ruritania on the
grounds of the sanctity of a treaty. Neither the people nor the land of
northwest Ruritania are owned by either of the two governments. As a corollary,
one government can certainly not bind, by the dead hand of the past, a later
government through treaty. A revolutionary government which overthrew the king
of Ruritania could, similarly, hardly be called to account for the king's
actions or debts, for a government is not, as is a child, a true
"heir" to its predecessor's property.
History as a Race Between State Power and Social Power
Just as the two basic and mutually exclusive interrelations between men are
peaceful cooperation or coercive exploitation, production or predation, so the
history of mankind, particularly its economic history, may be considered as a
contest between these two principles. On the one hand, there is creative
productivity, peaceful exchange and cooperation; on the other, coercive
dictation and predation over those social relations. Albert Jay Nock happily
termed these contesting forces: "social power" and "State
power."[41] Social power
is man's power over nature, his cooperative transformation of nature's
resources and insight into nature's laws, for the benefit of all participating
individuals. Social power is the power over nature, the living standards
achieved by men in mutual exchange. State power, as we have seen, is the
coercive and parasitic seizure of this production – a draining of the fruits of
society for the benefit of nonproductive (actually anti-productive) rulers.
While social power is over nature, State power is power over man.
Through history, man's productive and creative forces have, time and again,
carved out new ways of transforming nature for man's benefit. These have been
the times when social power has spurted ahead of State power, and when the
degree of State encroachment over society has considerably lessened. But
always, after a greater or smaller time lag, the State has moved into these new
areas, to cripple and confiscate social power once more.[42] If the
seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries were, in many countries of the
West, times of accelerating social power, and a corollary increase in freedom,
peace, and material welfare, the twentieth century has been primarily an age in
which State power has been catching up – with a consequent reversion to
slavery, war, and destruction.[43]
In this century, the human race faces, once again, the virulent reign of
the State – of the State now armed with the fruits of man's creative powers,
confiscated and perverted to its own aims. The last few centuries were times
when men tried to place constitutional and other limits on the State, only to
find that such limits, as with all other attempts, have failed. Of all the
numerous forms that governments have taken over the centuries, of all the
concepts and institutions that have been tried, none has succeeded in keeping
the State in check. The problem of the State is evidently as far from solution
as ever. Perhaps new paths of inquiry must be explored, if the successful,
final solution of the State question is ever to be attained.[44]
Notes
[1] We cannot, in this chapter, develop the many
problems and fallacies of "democracy." Suffice it to say here that an
individual's true agent or "representative" is always subject to that
individual's orders, can be dismissed at any time and cannot act contrary to
the interests or wishes of his principal. Clearly, the
"representative" in a democracy can never fulfill such agency functions,
the only ones consonant with a libertarian society.
[2] Social democrats often retort that democracy –
majority choice of rulers – logically implies that the majority must leave
certain freedoms to the minority, for the minority might one day become the
majority. Apart from other flaws, this argument obviously does not hold where
the minority cannot become the majority, for example, when the
minority is of a different racial or ethnic group from the majority.
[3] Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism,
and Democracy (New York: Harper and Bros., 1942), p. 198.
The friction or antagonism between the private and the public sphere was
intensified from the first by the fact that . . . the State has been living on
a revenue which was being produced in the private sphere for private purposes
and had to be deflected from these purposes by political force. The theory
which construes taxes on the analogy of club dues or of the purchase of the
service of, say, a doctor only proves how far removed this part of the social
sciences is from scientific habits of mind.
Also
see Murray N. Rothbard, "The Fallacy of the 'Public Sector,"' New Individualist Review (Summer,
1961): pp. 3ff.
There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring
sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his
desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible
appropriation of the labor of others. . . . I propose in the following
discussion to call one's own labor and the equivalent exchange of one's own
labor for the labor of others, the "economic means" for the
satisfaction of need while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others
will be called the "political means". . . . The State is an
organization of the political means. No State, therefore, can come into being
until the economic means has created a definite number of objects for the
satisfaction of needs, which objects may be taken away or appropriated by
warlike robbery.
[5] Albert Jay Nock wrote vividly that
the State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime. . . . It forbids
private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private
theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the
property of citizen or of alien.
Nock, On Doing the Right Thing,
and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Bros., 1929), p.
143; quoted in Jack Schwartzman, "Albert Jay Nock – A Superfluous
Man," Faith and Freedom (December, 1953): p. 11.
[6] Oppenheimer, The State, p. 15:
What, then, is the State as a sociological concept? The State, completely
in its genesis . . . is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of
men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of
the victorious group of men on a defeated group, and securing itself against
revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion had
no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the
victors.
And
de Jouvenel has written: "the State is in essence the result of the successes
achieved by a band of brigands who superimpose themselves on small, distinct
societies." Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power (New
York: Viking Press, 1949), pp. 100–01.
[7] On the crucial distinction between
"caste," a group with privileges or burdens coercively granted or
imposed by the State and the Marxian concept of "class" in society,
see Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957), pp. 112ff.
[8] Such acceptance does not, of course, imply that
the State rule has become "voluntary"; for even if the majority
support be active and eager, this support is not unanimous by every individual.
[9] That every government, no matter how
"dictatorial" over individuals, must secure such support has been
demonstrated by such acute political theorists as Étienne de La Boétie, David
Hume, and Ludwig von Mises. Thus, cf. David Hume, "Of the First Principles
of Government," in Essays, Literary, Moral
and Political (London: Ward, Locke, and Taylor, n.d.), p. 23;
Étienne de La Boétie, Anti-Dictator (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1942), pp. 8–9; Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (Auburn, Ala.:
Mises Institute, 1998), pp. 188ff. For more on the contribution to the analysis
of the State by La Boétie, see Oscar Jaszi and John D. Lewis, Against the Tyrant (Glencoe,
Ill.: The Free Press, 1957), pp. 55–57.
[10] La Boétie, Anti-Dictator, pp. 43–44.
Whenever a ruler makes himself dictator . . . all those who are corrupted
by burning ambition or extraordinary avarice, these gather around him and
support him in order to have a share in the booty and to constitute themselves
petty chiefs under the big tyrant.
[11] This by no means implies that all intellectuals
ally themselves with the State. On aspects of the alliance of intellectuals and
the State, cf. Bertrand de Jouvenel, "The Attitude of the Intellectuals to
the Market Society," The Owl (January, 1951): pp. 19–27;
idem, "The Treatment of Capitalism by Continental Intellectuals," in
F.A. Hayek, ed., Capitalism and the Historians (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1954), pp. 93–123; reprinted in George B. de
Huszar, The Intellectuals (Glencoe,
Ill.: The Free Press, 1960), pp. 385–99; and Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social
Classes (New York: Meridian Books, 1975), pp. 143–55.
[12] Joseph Needham, "Review of Karl A.
Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism," Science
and Society (1958): p. 65. Needham also writes that
"the successive [Chinese] emperors were served in all ages by a great
company of profoundly humane and disinterested scholars," p. 61. Wittfogel
notes the Confucian doctrine that the glory of the ruling class rested on its
gentleman scholar-bureaucrat officials, destined to be professional rulers
dictating to the mass of the populace. Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental
Despotism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957), pp. 320–21
and passim. For an attitude contrasting to Needham's, cf. John Lukacs,
"Intellectual Class or Intellectual Profession?" in de Huszar, The
Intellectuals, pp. 521–22.
[13] Jeanne Ribs, "The War Plotters," Liberation (August,
1961): p. 13. "[s]trategists insist that their occupation deserves the
'dignity of the academic counterpart of the military profession.'" Also
see Marcus Raskin, "The Megadeath Intellectuals," New York
Review of Books (November 14, 1963): pp. 6–7.
[14] Thus the historian Conyers Read, in his
presidential address, advocated the suppression of historical fact in the
service of "democratic" and national values. Read proclaimed that
"total war, whether it is hot or cold, enlists everyone and calls upon
everyone to play his part. The historian is not freer from this obligation than
the physicist." Read, "The Social Responsibilities of the
Historian,"American Historical Review (1951): p. 283ff. For a
critique of Read and other aspects of court history, see Howard K. Beale,
"The Professional Historian: His Theory and Practice," The
Pacific Historical Review (August, 1953): pp. 227–55. Also cf. Herbert
Butterfield, "Official History: Its Pitfalls and Criteria," History and Human
Relations (New York: Macmillan, 1952), pp. 182–224; and
Harry Elmer Barnes, The Court Historians
Versus Revisionism (n.d.), pp. 2ff.
[15] Cf. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism,
pp. 87–100. On the contrasting roles of religion vis-Ã -vis the State in ancient
China and Japan, see Norman Jacobs, The Origin of Modern
Capitalism and Eastern Asia (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 1958), pp. 161–94.
[16] De Jouvenel, On Power, p. 22:
The essential reason for obedience is that it has become a habit of the
species. . . . Power is for us a fact of nature. From the earliest days of
recorded history it has always presided over human destinies . . . the
authorities which ruled [societies] in former times did not disappear without
bequeathing to their successors their privilege nor without leaving in men's
minds imprints which are cumulative in their effect. The succession of
governments which, in the course of centuries, rule the same society may be
looked on as one underlying government which takes on continuous accretions.
[17] On such uses of the religion of China, see
Norman Jacobs, passim.
All [government] can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence
an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man, to any government, is
the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the
prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the
conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and
intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he
is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who
are.
[19] Ibid., pp. 146–47.
[20] De Jouvenel, On Power, pp. 27ff.
[22] Ibid., pp. 42–43.
[23] Ibid., p. 52:
The prime and most necessary function of the [Supreme] Court has been that
of validation, not that of invalidation. What a government of limited powers
needs, at the beginning and forever, is some means of satisfying the people
that it has taken all steps humanly possible to stay within its powers. This is
the condition of its legitimacy, and its legitimacy, in the long run, is the
condition of its life. And the Court, through its history, has acted as the
legitimation of the government.
[24] To Black, this "solution," while
paradoxical, is blithely self-evident:
the final power of the State . . . must stop where the law stops it. And
who shall set the limit, and who shall enforce the stopping, against the
mightiest power? Why, the State itself, of course, through its judges and its
laws. Who controls the temperate? Who teaches the wise? (Ibid., pp. 32–33)
And:
Where the questions concern governmental power in a sovereign nation, it is
not possible to select an umpire who is outside government. Every national
government, so long as it is a government, must have the final say on its own
power. (Ibid., pp. 48–49)
[25] Ibid., p. 49.
[26] This ascription of the miraculous to government
is reminiscent of James Burnham's justification of government by mysticism and
irrationality:
In ancient times, before the illusions of science had corrupted traditional
wisdom, the founders of cities were known to be gods or demigods. . . . Neither
the source nor the justification of government can be put in wholly rational
terms . . . why should I accept the hereditary or democratic or any other
principle of legitimacy? Why should a principle justify the rule of that man
over me? . . . I accept the principle, well . . . because I do, because that is
the way it is and has been.
James Burnham, Congress and the American
Tradition (Chicago: Regnery, 1959), pp. 3–8. But what if
one does not accept the principle? What will "the way" be then?
[27] Black, The People and the Court, p.
64.
[28] Ibid., p. 65.
[29] John C. Calhoun, A Disquisition on
Government (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1953), pp. 25–27.
Also cf. Murray N. Rothbard, "Conservatism and Freedom: A Libertarian
Comment," Modern Age (Spring, 1961): p. 219.
[30] J. Allen Smith, The Growth and Decadence
of Constitutional Government (New York:
Henry Holt, 1930), p. 88. Smith added:
it was obvious that where a provision of the Constitution was designed to
limit the powers of a governmental organ, it could be effectively nullified if
its interpretation and enforcement are left to the authorities as it designed
to restrain. Clearly, common sense required that no organ of the government
should be able to determine its own powers.
Clearly, common sense and "miracles" dictate very different views
of government (p. 87).
[31] Calhoun, A Disquisition on Government,
pp. 20–21.
[32] In recent years, the unanimity principle has
experienced a highly diluted revival, particularly in the writings of Professor
James Buchanan. Injecting unanimity into the present situation, however, and
applying it only to changes in the status quo and
not to existing laws, can only result in another transformation of a limiting
concept into a rubber stamp for the State. If the unanimity principle is to be
applied only to changes in laws and edicts, the nature of the
initial "point of origin" then makes all the difference. Cf. James
Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1962), passim.
[33] Cf. Herbert Spencer, "The Right to Ignore
the State," in Social Statics (New York:
D. Appleton, 1890), pp. 229–39.
[34] De Jouvenel, On Power, p. 171.
[35] We have seen that essential to the State is
support by the intellectuals, and this includes support against their two acute
threats. Thus, on the role of American intellectuals in America's entry into
World War I, see Randolph Bourne, "The War and the Intellectuals,"
in The History of a Literary
Radical and Other Papers (New York:
S.A. Russell, 1956), pp. 205–22. As Bourne states, a common device of
intellectuals in winning support for State actions, is to channel any
discussion within the limits of basic State policy and to discourage any
fundamental or total critique of this basic framework.
[36] As Mencken puts it in his inimitable fashion:
This gang ("the exploiters constituting the government") is well
nigh immune to punishment. Its worst extortions, even when they are baldly for
private profit, carry no certain penalties under our laws. Since the first days
of the Republic, less than a few dozen of its members have been impeached, and
only a few obscure understrappers have ever been put into prison. The number of
men sitting at Atlanta and Leavenworth for revolting against the extortions of
the government is always ten times as great as the number of government
officials condemned for oppressing the taxpayers to their own gain.
(Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, pp. 147–48)
For a vivid and entertaining description of the lack of protection for the
individual against incursion of his liberty by his "protectors," see
H.L. Mencken, "The Nature of Liberty," in Prejudices: A Selection (New York:
Vintage Books, 1958), pp. 138–43.
[37] This is to be distinguished from modern
international law, with its stress on maximizing the extent of war through such
concepts as "collective security."
[38] F.J.P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism (Appleton,
Wis.: C.C. Nelson, 1953), p. 63. Similarly, Professor Nef writes of the War of
Don Carlos waged in Italy between France, Spain, and Sardinia against Austria,
in the eighteenth century:
at the siege of Milan by the allies and several weeks later at Parma . . .
the rival armies met in a fierce battle outside the town. In neither place were
the sympathies of the inhabitants seriously moved by one side or the other.
Their only fear as that the troops of either army should get within the gates
and pillage. The fear proved groundless. At Parma the citizens ran to the town
walls to watch the battle in the open country beyond. (John U. Nef, War and Human Progress [Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950], p. 158. Also cf. Hoffman
Nickerson, Can We Limit War? [New York: Frederick A. Stoke, 1934])
[39] Nef, War and Human Progress, p. 162.
[40] Ibid., p. 161. On advocacy of trading with the
enemy by leaders of the American Revolution, see Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in
American Civilization (New York: Viking Press,
1946), vol. 1, pp. 210–11.
[41] On the concepts of State power and social power,
see Albert J. Nock, Our Enemy the State (Caldwell,
Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1946). Also see Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous
Man (New York: Harpers, 1943), and Frank
Chodorov, The Rise and Fall of
Society (New York: Devin-Adair, 1959).
[42] Amidst the flux of expansion or contraction, the
State always makes sure that it seizes and retains certain crucial
"command posts" of the economy and society. Among these command posts
are a monopoly of violence, monopoly of the ultimate judicial power, the
channels of communication and transportation (post office, roads, rivers, air
routes), irrigated water in Oriental despotisms, and education – to mold the
opinions of its future citizens. In the modern economy, money is the critical
command post.
[43] This parasitic process of "catching
up" has been almost openly proclaimed by Karl Marx, who conceded that
socialism must be established through seizure of capital previously
accumulated under capitalism.
[44] Certainly, one indispensable ingredient of such
a solution must be the sundering of the alliance of intellectual and State,
through the creation of centers of intellectual inquiry and education, which
will be independent of State power. Christopher Dawson notes that the great
intellectual movements of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were achieved
by working outside of, and sometimes against, the entrenched universities.
These academia of the new ideas were established by independent patrons. See
Christopher Dawson, The Crisis of Western
Education (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1961).
No comments:
Post a Comment