Our Enemy, the State
Albert Jay Nock
[1935 / Part 3 of 7]
CHAPTER 2
As far back as one can follow the run of civilization, it presents
two fundamentally different types of political organization. This
difference is not one of degree, but of kind. It does not do to take
the one type as merely marking a lower order of civilization and the
other a higher; they are commonly so taken, but erroneously. Still
less does it do to classify both as species of the same genus - to
classify both under the generic name of "government," though
this also, until very lately, has always been done, and has always led
to confusion and misunderstanding.
A good example of this error and its effects is supplied by Thomas
Paine. At the outset of his pamphlet called Common Sense, Paine draws
a distinction between society and government. While society in any
state is a blessing, he says, "government, even in its best
state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable
one." In another place, he speaks of government as "a mode
rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the
world." He proceeds then to show how and why government comes
into being. Its origin is in the common understanding and common
agreement of society; and "the design and end of government,"
he says, is "freedom and security." Teleologically,
government implements the common desire of society, first, for
freedom, and second, for security. Beyond this it does not go; it
contemplates no positive intervention upon the individual, but only a
negative intervention. It would seem that in Paine's view the code of
government should be that of the legendary king Pausole, who
prescribed but two laws for his subjects, the first being,
Hurt no man, and the second, Then do as you please;
and that the whole business of government should be the purely
negative one of seeing that this code is carried out.
So far, Paine is sound as he is simple. He goes on, however, to
attack the British political organization in terms that are logically
inconclusive. There should be no complaint of this, for he was writing
as a pamphleteer, a special pleader with an ad captandum
argument to make, and as everyone knows, he did it most successfully.
Nevertheless, the point remains that when he talks about the British
system he is talking about a type of political organization
essentially different from the type that he has just been describing;
different in origin, in intention, in primary function, in the order
of interest that it reflects. It did not originate in the common
understanding and agreement of society; it originated in conquest and
confiscation.[1] Its intention, far from contemplating "freedom
and security," contemplated nothing of the kind. It contemplated
primarily the continuous economic exploitation of one class by
another, and it concerned itself with only so much freedom and
security as was consistent with this primary intention; and this was,
in fact, very little. Its primary function or exercise was not by way
of Paine's purely negative interventions upon the individual, but by
way of innumerable and most onerous positive interventions, all of
which were for the purpose of maintaining the stratification of
society into an owning and exploiting class, and a propertyless
dependent class. The order of interest that it reflected was not
social, but purely antisocial; and those who administered it, judged
by the common standard of ethics, or even the common standard of law
as applied to private persons, were indistinguishable from a
professional-criminal class.
Clearly, then, we have two distinct types of political organization
to take into account; and clearly, too, when their origins are
considered, it is impossible to make out that the one is a mere
perversion of the other. Therefore, when we include both types under a
general term like government, we get into logical difficulties;
difficulties of which most writers on the subject have been more or
less vaguely aware, but which, until within the last half-century,
none of them has tried to resolve. Mr. Jefferson, for example,
remarked that the hunting tribes of Indians, with which he had a good
deal to do in his early days, had a highly organized and admirable
social order, but were "without government." Commenting on
this, he wrote Madison that "it is a problem not clear in my mind
that [this] condition is not the best," but he suspected that it
was "inconsistent with any great degree of population."
Schoolcraft observes that the Chippewas, though living in a
highly-organized social order, had no "regular" government.
Herbert Spencer, speaking of the Bechuanas, Araucanians and Koranna
Hottentots, says they have no "definite" government; while
Parkman, in his introduction to The Conspiracy of Pontiac,
reports the same phenomenon, and is frankly puzzled by its apparent
anomalies.
Paine's theory of government agrees exactly with the theory set forth
by Mr. Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. The doctrine of
natural rights, which is explicit in the Declaration, is implicit in
Common Sense;[2] and Paine's view of the "design and end
of government" is precisely the Declaration's view, that "to
secure these rights, governments are instituted among men"; and
further, Paine's view of the origin of government is that it "derives
its just powers from the consent of the governed." Now, if we
apply Paine's formulas or the Declaration's formulas, it is abundantly
clear that the Virginian Indians had government; Mr. Jefferson's own
observations show that they had it. Their political organization,
simple as it was, answered its purpose. Their code-apparatus sufficed
for assuring freedom and security to the individual, and for dealing
with such trespasses as in that state of society the individual might
encounter - fraud, theft, assault, adultery, murder. The same is as
clearly true of the various peoples cited by Parkman, Schoolcraft and
Spencer. Assuredly, if the language of the Declaration amounts to
anything, all these peoples had government; and all these reporters
make it appear as a government quite competent to its purpose.
Therefore when Mr. Jefferson says his Indians were "without
government," he must be taken to mean that they did not have a
type of government like the one he knew; and when Schoolcraft and
Spencer speak of "regular" and "definite"
government, their qualifying words must be taken in the same way. This
type of government, nevertheless, has always existed and still exists,
answering perfectly to Paine's formulas and the Declaration's
formulas; though it is a type which we also, most of us, have seldom
had the chance to observe. It may not be put down as the mark of an
inferior race, for institutional simplicity is in itself by no means a
mark of backwardness or inferiority; and it has been sufficiently
shown that in certain essential respects the peoples who have this
type of government are, by comparison, in a position to say a good
deal for themselves on the score of a civilized character. Mr.
Jefferson's own testimony on this point is worth notice, and so is
Parkman's. This type, however, even though documented by the
Declaration, is fundamentally so different from the type that has
always prevailed in history, and is still prevailing in the world at
the moment, that for the sake of clearness the two types should be set
apart by name, as they are by nature. They are so different in theory
that drawing a sharp distinction between them is now probably the most
important duty that civilization owes to its own safety. Hence it is
by no means either an arbitrary or academic proceeding to give the one
type the name of government, and to call the second type simply the
State.
II
Aristotle, confusing the idea of the State with the idea of
government, thought the State originated out of the natural grouping
of the family. Other Greek philosophers, labouring under the same
confusion, somewhat anticipated Rousseau in finding its origin in the
social nature and disposition of the individual; while an opposing
school, which held that the individual is naturally anti-social, more
or less anticipated Hobbes by finding it in an enforced compromise
among the anti-social tendencies of individuals. Another view,
implicit in the doctrine of Adam Smith, is that the State originated
in the association of certain individuals who showed a marked
superiority in the economic virtues of diligence, prudence and thrift.
The idealist philosophers, variously applying Kant's transcendentalism
to the problem, came to still different conclusions; and one or two
other views, rather less plausible, perhaps, than any of the
foregoing, have been advanced.
The root-trouble with all these views is not precisely that they are
conjectural, but that they are based on incompetent observation. They
miss the invariable characteristic marks that the subject presents;
as, for example, until quite lately, all views of the origin of
malaria missed the invariable ministrations of the mosquito, or as
opinions about the bubonic-plague missed the invariable mark of the
rat-parasite. It is only within the last half-century that the
historical method has been applied to the problem of the State.[3]
This method runs back the phenomenon of the State to its first
appearance in documented history, observing its invariable
characteristic marks, and drawing inferences as indicated. There are
so many clear intimations of this method in earlier writers - one
finds them as far back as Strabo - that one wonders why its systematic
application was so long deferred; but in all such cases, as with
malaria and typhus, when the characteristic mark is once determined,
it is so obvious that one always wonders why it was so long unnoticed.
Perhaps in the case of the State, the best one can say is that the coöperation
of the Zeitgeist was necessary, and that it could be had no sooner.
The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had
its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to
history originated in any other manner.[4] On the negative side, it
has been proved beyond peradventure that no primitive State could
possibly have had any other origin.[5] Moreover, the sole invariable
characteristic of the State is the economic exploitation of one class
by another. In this sense, every State known to history is a
class-State. Oppenheimer defines the State, in respect of its origin,
as an institution "forced on a defeated group by a conquering
group, with a view only to systematizing the domination of the
conquered by the conquerors, and safeguarding itself against
insurrection from within and attack from without. This domination had
no other final purpose than the economic exploitation of the conquered
group by the victorious group."
An American statesman, John Jay, accomplished the respectable feat of
compressing the whole doctrine of conquest into a single sentence. "Nations
in general," he said, "will go to war whenever there is a
prospect of getting something by it." Any considerable economic
accumulation, or any considerable body of natural resources, is an
incentive to conquest. The primitive technique was that of raiding the
coveted possessions, appropriating them entire, and either
exterminating the possessors, or dispersing them beyond convenient
reach. Very early, however, it was seen to be in general more
profitable to reduce the possessors to dependence, and use them as
labour-motors; and the primitive technique was accordingly modified.
Under special circumstances, where this exploitation was either
impracticable or unprofitable, the primitive technique is even now
occasionally revived, as by the Spaniards in South America, or by
ourselves against the Indians. But these circumstances are
exceptional; the modified technique has been in use almost from the
beginning, and everywhere its first appearance marks the origin of the
State. Citing Ranke's observations on the technique of the raiding
herdsmen, the Hyksos, who established their State in Egypt about B.C.
2000, Gumplowicz remarks that Ranke's words very well sum up the
political history of mankind.
Indeed, the modified technique never varies. "Everywhere we see
a militant group of fierce men forcing the frontier of some more
peaceable people, settling down upon them and establishing the State,
with themselves as an aristocracy. In Mesopotamia, irruption succeeds
irruption, State succeeds State, Babylonians, Amoritans, Assyrians,
Arabs, Medes, Persians, Macedonians, Parthians, Mongols, Seldshuks,
Tatars, Turks; in the Nile valley, Hyksos, Nubians, Persians, Greeks,
Romans, Arabs, Turks; in Greece, the Doric States are specific
examples; in Italy, Romans, Ostrogoths, Lombards, Franks, Germans; in
Spain, Carthaginians, Visigoths, Arabs; in Gaul, Romans, Franks,
Burgundians, Normans; in Britain, Saxons, Normans." Everywhere we
find the political organization proceeding from the same origin, and
presenting the same mark of intention, namely: the economic
exploitation of a defeated group by a conquering group.
Everywhere, that is, with but the one significant exception. Wherever
economic exploitation has been for any reason either impracticable or
unprofitable, the State has never come into existence; government has
existed, but the State, never. The American hunting tribes, for
example, whose organization so puzzled our observers, never formed a
State, for there is no way to reduce a hunter to economic dependence
and make him hunt for you.[6] Conquest and confiscation were no doubt
practicable, but no economic gain would be got by it, for confiscation
would give the aggressors but little beyond what they already had; the
most that could come of it would be the satisfaction of some sort of
feud. For like reasons primitive peasants never formed a State. The
economic accumulations of their neighbours were too slight and too
perishable to be interesting;[7] and especially with the abundance of
free land about, the enslavement of their neighbours would be
impracticable, if only for the police-problems involved.[8]
It may now be easily seen how great the difference is between the
institution of government, as understood by Paine and the Declaration
of Independence, and the institution of the State. Government may
quite conceivably have originated as Paine thought it did, or
Aristotle, or Hobbes, or Rousseau; whereas the State not only never
did originate in any of those ways, but never could have done so. The
nature and intention of government, as adduced by Parkman, Schoolcraft
and Spencer, are social. Based on the idea of natural rights,
government secures those rights to the individual by strictly negative
intervention, making justice costless and easy of access; and beyond
that it does not go. The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis
and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based
on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has
no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It
has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has
invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it
could advantage itself by so doing.[9] So far from encouraging a
wholesome development of social power, it has invariably, as Madison
said, turned every contingency into a resource for depleting social
power and enhancing State power.[10] As Dr. Sigmund Freud has
observed, it can not even be said that the State has ever shown any
disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly
of crime. In Russia and Germany, for example, we have lately seen the
State moving with great alacrity against infringement of its monopoly
by private persons, while at the same time exercising that monopoly
with unconscionable ruthlessness. Taking the State wherever found,
striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to
differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and
beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.
III
Such are the antecedents of the institution which is everywhere now
so busily converting social power by wholesale into State power.[11]
The recognition of them goes a long way towards resolving most, if not
all, of the apparent anomalies which the conduct of the modern State
exhibits. It is of great help, for example, in accounting for the open
and notorious fact that the State always moves slowly and grudgingly
towards any purpose that accrues to society's advantage, but moves
rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own
advantage; nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own
initiative, but only under heavy pressure, while its motion towards
anti-social purposes is self-sprung.
Englishmen of the last century remarked this fact with justifiable
anxiety, as they watched the rapid depletion of social power by the
British State. One of them was Herbert Spencer, who published a series
of essays which were subsequently put together in a volume called The
Man versus the State. With our public affairs in the shape they are,
it is rather remarkable that no American publicist has improved the
chance to reproduce these essays verbatim, merely substituting
illustrations drawn from American history for those which Spencer
draws from English history. If this were properly done, it would make
one of the most pertinent and useful works that could be produced at
this time.[12]
These essays are devoted to examining the several aspects of the
contemporary growth of State power in England. In the essay called
Over-legislation, Spencer remarks the fact so notoriously
common in our experience,[13] that when State power is applied to
social purposes, its action is invariably "slow, stupid,
extravagant, unadaptive, corrupt and obstructive." He devotes
several paragraphs to each count, assembling a complete array of
proof. When he ends, discussion ends; there is simply nothing to be
said. He shows further that the State does not even fulfil efficiently
what he calls its "unquestionable duties" to society; it
does not efficiently adjudge and defend the individual's elemental
rights. This being so - and with us this too is a matter of
notoriously common experience - Spencer sees no reason to expect that
State power will be more efficiently applied to secondary social
purposes. "Had we, in short, proved its efficiency as judge and
defender, instead of having found it treacherous, cruel, and anxiously
to be shunned, there would be some encouragement to hope other
benefits at its hands."
Yet, he remarks, it is just this monstrously extravagant hope that
society is continually indulging; and indulging in the face of daily
evidence that it is illusory. He points to the anomaly which we have
all noticed as so regularly presented by newspapers. Take up one, says
Spencer, and you will probably find a leading editorial "exposing
the corruption, negligence or mismanagement of some State department.
Cast your eye down the next column, and it is not unlikely that you
will read proposals for an extension of State supervision.[14] . . .
Thus while every day chronicles a failure, there every day reappears
the belief that it needs but an Act of Parliament and a staff of
officers to effect any end desired.[15] Nowhere is the perennial faith
of mankind better seen."
It is unnecessary to say that the reasons which Spencer gives for the
anti-social behaviour of the State are abundantly valid, but we may
now see how powerfully they are reinforced by the findings of the
historical method; a method which had not been applied when Spencer
wrote. These findings being what they are, it is manifest that the
conduct which Spencer complains of is strictly historical. When the
town-dwelling merchants of the eighteenth century displaced the
landholding nobility in control of the State's mechanism, they did not
change the State's character; they merely adapted its mechanism to
their own special interests, and strengthened it immeasurably.[16] The
merchant-State remained an anti-social institution, a pure
class-State, like the State of the nobility; its intention and
function remained unchanged, save for the adaptations necessary to
suit the new order of interests that it was thenceforth to serve.
Therefore in its flagrant disservice of social purposes, for which
Spencer arraigns it, the State was acting strictly in character.
Spencer does not discuss what he calls "the perennial faith of
mankind" in State action, but contents himself with elaborating
the sententious observation of Guizot, that "a belief in the
sovereign power of political machinery" is nothing less than "a
gross delusion." This faith is chiefly an effect of the immense
prestige which the State has diligently built up for itself in the
century or more since the doctrine of jure divino rulership
gave way. We need not consider the various instruments that the State
employs in building up its prestige; most of them are well known, and
their uses well understood. There is one, however, which is in a sense
peculiar to the republican State. Republicanism permits the individual
to persuade himself that the State is his creation, that State action
is his action, that when it expresses itself it expresses him, and
when it is glorified he is glorified. The republican State encourages
this persuasion with all its power, aware that it is the most
efficient instrument for enhancing its own prestige. Lincoln's phrase,
"of the people, by the people, for the people" was probably
the most effective single stroke of propaganda ever made in behalf of
republican State prestige.
Thus the individual's sense of his own importance inclines him
strongly to resent the suggestion that the State is by nature
anti-social. He looks on its failures and misfeasances with somewhat
the eye of a parent, giving it the benefit of a special code of
ethics. Moreover, he has always the expectation that the State will
learn by its mistakes, and do better. Granting that its technique with
social purposes is blundering, wasteful and vicious - even admitting,
with the public official whom Spencer cites, that wherever the State
is, there is villainy - he sees no reason why, with an increase of
experience and responsibility, the State should not improve.
Something like this appears to be the basic assumption of
collectivism. Let but the State confiscate all social power,
and its interests will become identical with those of society.
Granting that the State is of anti-social origin, and that it has
borne a uniformly anti-social character throughout its history, let it
but extinguish social power completely, and its character will change;
it will merge with society, and thereby become society's efficient and
disinterested organ. The historic State, in short, will disappear, and
government only will remain. It is an attractive idea; the hope of its
being somehow translated into practice is what, only so few years ago,
made "the Russian experiment" so irresistibly fascinating to
generous spirits who felt themselves hopelessly State-ridden. A closer
examination of the State's activities, however, will show that this
idea, attractive though it be, goes to pieces against the iron law of
fundamental economics, that man tends always to satisfy his needs
and desires with the least possible exertion. Let us see how this
is so.
IV
There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs
and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of
wealth; this is the
economic means.[17] The other is the uncompensated
appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political
means. The primitive exercise of the political means was, as we
have seen, by conquest, confiscation, expropriation, and the
introduction of a slave-economy. The conqueror parcelled out the
conquered territory among beneficiaries, who thenceforth satisfied
their needs and desires by exploiting the labour of the enslaved
inhabitants.[18] The feudal State, and the merchant-State, wherever
found, merely took over and developed successively the heritage of
character, intention and apparatus of exploitation which the primitive
State transmitted to them; they are in essence merely higher
integrations of the primitive State.
The State, then, whether primitive, feudal or merchant, is the organization
of the political means. Now, since man tends always to satisfy his
needs and desires with the least possible exertion, he will employ the
political means whenever he can - exclusively, if possible; otherwise,
in association with the economic means. He will, at the present time,
that is, have recourse to the State's modern apparatus of
exploitation; the apparatus of tariffs, concessions, rent-monopoly,
and the like. It is a matter of the commonest observation that this is
his first instinct. So long, therefore, as the organization of the
political means is available - so long as the highly-centralized
bureaucratic State stands as primarily a distributor of economic
advantage, an arbiter of exploitation, so long will that instinct
effectively declare itself. A proletarian State would merely, like the
merchant-State, shift the incidence of exploitation, and there is no
historic ground for the presumption that a collectivist State would be
in any essential respect unlike its predecessors;[19] as we are
beginning to see, "the Russian experiment" has amounted to
the erection of a highly-centralized bureaucratic State upon the ruins
of another, leaving the entire apparatus of exploitation intact and
ready for use. Hence, in view of the law of fundamental economics just
cited, the expectation that collectivism will appreciably alter the
essential character of the State appears illusory.
Thus the findings arrived at by the historical method amply support
the immense body of practical considerations brought forward by
Spencer against the State's inroads upon social power. When Spencer
concludes that "in State-organizations, corruption is
unavoidable," the historical method abundantly shows cause why,
in the nature of things, this should be expected - vilescit
origine tali. When Freud comments on the shocking disparity
between State-ethics and private ethics - and his observations on this
point are most profound and searching - the historical method at once
supplies the best of reasons why that disparity should be looked
for.[20] When Ortega y Gasset says that "Statism is the higher
form taken by violence and direct action, when these are set up as
standards," the historical method enables us to perceive at once
that his definition is precisely that which one would make a
priori.
The historical method, moreover, establishes the important fact that,
as in the case of tabetic or parasitic diseases, the depletion of
social power by the State can not be checked after a certain point of
progress is passed. History does not show an instance where, once
beyond this point, this depletion has not ended in complete and
permanent collapse. In some cases, disintegration is slow and painful.
Death set its mark on Rome at the end of the second century, but she
dragged out a pitiable existence for some time after the Antonines.
Athens, on the other hand, collapsed quickly. Some authorities think
that Europe is dangerously near that point, if not already past it;
but contemporary conjecture is probably without much value. That point
may have been reached in America, and it may not; again, certainty is
unattainable - plausible arguments may be made either way. Of two
things, however, we may be certain: the first is, that the rate of
America's approach to that point is being prodigiously accelerated;
and the second is, that there is no evidence of any disposition to
retard it, or any intelligent apprehension of the danger which that
acceleration betokens.
Footnotes to Chapter 2
- Paine was of course well aware
of this. He says, "A French bastard, landing with an armed
banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the
consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally
original." He does not press the point, however, nor in view
of his purpose should he be expected to do so.
- In Rights of Man, Paine is as
explicit about this doctrine as the Declaration is; and in several
places throughout his pamphlets, he asserts that all civil rights
are founded on natural rights, and proceed from them.
- By Gumplowicz, professor at
Graz, and after him, by Oppenheimer, professor of politics at
Frankfort. I have followed them throughout this section. The
findings of these Galileos are so damaging to the prestige that
the State has everywhere built up for itself that professional
authority in general has been very circumspect about approaching
them, naturally preferring to give them a wide berth; but in the
long-run, this is a small matter. Honourable and distinguished
exceptions appear in Vierkandt, Wilhelm Wundt, and the revered
patriarch of German economic studies, Adolf Wagner.
- An excellent example of
primitive practice, effected by modern technique, is furnished by
the new State of Manchoukuo, and another bids fair to be furnished
in consequence of the Italian State's operations in Ethiopia.
- The mathematics of this
demonstration are extremely interesting. A résumé of
them is given in Oppenheimer's treatise Der Staat,
ch. I, and they are worked out in full in his Theorie der
Reinen und Politischen Oekonomie.
- Except, of course, by preëmption
of the land under the State-system of tenure, but for occupational
reasons this would not be worth a hunting tribe's attempting.
Bicknell, the historian of Rhode Island, suggests that the
troubles over Indian treaties arose from the fact that the Indians
did not understand the State-system of land-tenure, never having
had anything like it; their understanding was that the whites were
admitted only to the same communal use of land that they
themselves enjoyed. It is interesting to remark that the settled
fishing tribes of the Northwest formed a State. Their occupation
made economic exploitation both practicable and profitable, and
they resorted to conquest and confiscation to introduce it.
- It is strange that so little
attention has been paid to the singular immunity enjoyed by
certain small and poor peoples amidst great collisions of State
interest. Throughout the late war, for example, Switzerland, which
has nothing worth stealing, was never raided or disturbed.
- Marx's chapter on colonization
is interesting in this connexion, especially for his observation
that economic exploitation is impracticable until expropriation
from the land has taken place. Here he is in full agreement with
the whole line of fundamental economists, from Turgôt,
Franklin and John Taylor down to Theodor Hertzka and Henry George.
Marx, however, apparently did not see that his observation left
him with something of a problem on his hands, for he does little
more with it than record the fact.
- John Bright said he had known
the British Parliament to do some good things, but never knew it
to do a good thing merely because it was a good thing.
Reflections
- In this country the condition of several socially-valuable
industries seems at the moment to be a pretty fair index of this
process. The State's positive interventions have so far depleted
social power that by all accounts these particular applications of
it are on the verge of being no longer practicable. In Italy, the
State now absorbs fifty per cent of the total national income.
Italy appears to be rehearsing her ancient history in something
more than a sentimental fashion, for by the end of the second
century social power had been so largely transmuted into State
power that nobody could do any business at all. There was not
enough social power left to pay the State's bills.
- It seems a most discreditable thing that this century has not
seen produced in America an intellectually respectable
presentation of the complete case against the State's progressive
confiscations of social power; a presentation, that is, which
bears the mark of having sound history and a sound philosophy
behind it. Mere interested touting of "rugged individualism"
and agonized fustian about the constitution are so specious, so
frankly unscrupulous, that they have become contemptible.
Consequently collectivism has easily had all the best of it,
intellectually, and the results are now apparent. Collectivism has
even succceded in foisting its glossary of arbitrary definitions
upon us; we all speak of our economic system, for instance, as "capitalist,"
when there has never been a system, nor can one be imagined, that
is not capitalist. By contrast, when British collectivism
undertook to deal, say with Lecky, Bagehot, Professor Huxley and
Herbert Spencer, it got full change for its money. Whatever steps
Britain has taken towards collectivism, or may take, it at least
has had all the chance in the world to know precisely where it was
going, which we have not had.
- Yesterday I passed over a short stretch of new road built by
State power, applied through one of the grotesque alphabetical
tentacles of our bureaucracy. It cost $87,348.56. Social power,
represented by a contractor's figure in competitive bidding, would
have built it for $38,668.20, a difference, roughly, of one
hundred per cent!
- All the newspaper-comments that I have read concerning the
recent marine disasters that befell the Ward Line have, without
exception, led up to just such proposals!
- Our recent experiences with prohibition might be thought to
have suggested this belief as fatuous, but apparently they have
not done so.
- This point is well discussed by the Spanish philosopher Ortega
y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, ch. XIII
(English translation), in which he does not scruple to say that
the State's rapid depletion of social power is "the greatest
danger that today threatens civilization." He also gives a
good idea of what may be expected when a third,
economically-composite, class in turn takes over the mechanism of
the State, as the merchant class took it over from the nobility.
Surely no better forecast could be made of what is taking place in
this country at the moment, than this: "The mass-man does in
fact believe that he is the State, and he will tend more and more
to set its machinery working, on whatsoever pretext, to crush
beneath it any creative minority which disturbs it - disturbs it
in any order of things; in politics, in ideas, in industry."
- Oppenheimer, Der Staat, ch. I. Services are
also, of course, a subject of economic exchange.
- In America, where the native huntsmen were not exploitable, the
beneficiaries - the Virginia Company, Massachusetts Company, Dutch
West India Company, the Calverts, etc. - followed the traditional
method of importing exploitable human material, under bond, from
England and Europe, and also established the chattel-slave economy
by importations from Africa. The best exposition of this phase of
our history is in Beard's Rise of American Civilization,
vol. 1, pp. 103-109. At a later period, enormous masses of
exploitable material imported themselves by immigration; Valentine's
Manual for 1859 says that in the period 1847-1858,
2,486,463 immigrants passed through the port of New York. This
competition tended to depress the slave-economy in the industrial
sections of the country, and to supplant it with a wage-economy.
It is noteworthy that public sentiment in those regions did not
regard the slave-economy as objectionable until it could no longer
be profitably maintained.
- Supposing, for example, that Mr. Norman Thomas and a solid
collectivist Congress, with a solid collectivist Supreme Court,
should presently fall heir to our enormously powerful apparatus of
exploitation, it needs no great stretch of imagination to forecast
the upshot.
- In April, 1933, the American State issued half a billion
dollars' worth of bonds of small denominations, to attract
investment by poor persons. It promised to pay these, principal
and interest, in gold of the then-existing value. Within three
months the State repudiated that promise. Such an action by an
individual would, as Freud says, dishonour him forever, and mark
him as no better than a knave. Done by an association of
individuals, it would put them in the category of a
professional-criminal class.
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