The State
Albert Jay Nock
[Nock wrote a six-part article On the State in five
issues of the Freeman. Publisher Huebsch described them as "summing
up this paper's attitude towards the State." They were also
Nock's first sustained attempt to present his views on the State.
Parts I and II are included here. They appeared in the June 13 and
June 20, 1923, issues of the Freeman]
From all appearances, organized society is tending away from the
political theory of government, and towards a theory that may be
called purely administrative. The circumstances of the ten years
just past have greatly accelerated this tendency, and recognition of
it now appears in many quarters where the magnitude of the change
involved is perhaps not fully perceived -- as, for example, in
Principal Jacks's excellent article on the League of Nations, in
last February's issue of the Atlantic Monthly. It is much to the
point, however, to see clearly how great and fundamental this change
is. Changes hitherto, throughout the history of humanity's communal
life, have been from one mode or form of political government to
another. Autocracy has been modified into constitutionalism, and
constitutionalism into republicanism, which is generally, also, but
quite improperly, identified with democracy. All these modes or
forms of government are, however, in their essence, political; a
change or development from one to another was merely a modal change,
not an essential change. The change now impending is not modal but
essential; it is a change in fundamental theory. When completed, it
will have divested government of every vestige of political
character and function, and will have left it standing only as an
administrative agency.
To say that this change is impending is by no means to say that it
will soon be reflected in our institutions, or that it will suddenly
or violently assert itself or get itself enforced by coarse and
indiscriminate methods. Such a thing does not happen. In his last
days, Edmund Burke said of the French Revolution, which he so feared
and hated, that "if a great change is to take place, the minds
of men will be fitted to it"; and so it really is,
though no one can say precisely how the fitting is done. Formal
education and propagandizing have little to do with determining it;
indeed, more often than not it goes against these, like the motion
of the tide under the waves. The nature of an impending change can
be better forecast than from any superficial happenings, by
discerning the way the tide is running, the way in which the minds
of men are being fitted, the general terms in which they think; and
now, apparently, the minds of men are being fitted for the
fundamental change above described.
The difference between political and administrative government can
not better be made clear than by paraphrasing the first few pages of
the treatise called The State, by Franz Oppenheimer,
professor of political science in the University of Frankfort, now
well translated and available in English. Confronted by the problem
of the State as a phenomenon of history, English and American
writers on the subject have uniformly tried to solve it by the a
priori method; or, one may better say, by guesswork. How did the
State originate! What circumstances gave rise to it! What was its
primary purpose and intention! To these questions, which touch the
essence of their problem, English and American writers have
invariably replied by conjecture -- one even affirming that the
State came into being by the will of God; another, that its idea
originated in a social instinct; another that it was the development
of an early association for the purposes of protection; and so on.
The trouble with these theories is that they are insufficiently
supported by evidence.
Not long ago, on the Continent, a new method of investigation was
set up, whereby the State is examined as far back as its existence
can be traced, by a strictly historical method, and its phenomena
noted for evidence of its origin and purpose. Among these phenomena,
one is invariable. It appears in every form or manifestation of the
State, from its earlier and simple type down to its present
highly-organized, highly-integrated type. There is no State of which
we have record that does not present the phenomenon of two distinct
economic classes which have interests directly opposed; a relatively
small, owning and exploiting class which lives by appropriating
without compensation the labour products of a relatively large,
propertyless and dependent class.
Wherever in history the State appears, it bears this aspect. The
State of the primitive herdsmen exhibits it as clearly as our own.
How may it be accounted for! It is usually explained as due to the
well-known inequalities of natural endowment prevailing among the
race. Persons of greater ability soon found themselves, by force of
their natural superiority, in a position to command the services of
persons who had less ability, and thus the lateral stratification of
the State into two classes took place almost at once. We can all
remember, by way of illustration, how generally the commercial
success of Mr. John D. Rockefeller and Mr. Andrew Carnegie was
accounted for in this way.
This assumption is very simple and also very plausible; so
naturally it finds ready acceptance. It is nevertheless untenable,
and is instantly seen to be untenable when one recalls the fact that
this economic exploitation of one class by another could not
possibly take place unless all available land were either actually
or legally occupied; for no one would submit to exploitation or to
working for another for less than he could make by going out upon
unoccupied land and working for himself. The Physiocrats, that
illustrious body of Frenchmen who, a century and a half ago, founded
the science of political economy, saw this. Karl Marx saw it; and it
is strange that so clear a thinker should not also have seen all its
implications. In his chapter on colonization, after recounting the
fruitless experiment of the English colonizer, Mr. Peel, Marx puts
it in so many words that the system which he chooses to call
capitalism, but which should properly be called economic
exploitation, can not be erected as long as land, actually and
legally unoccupied, remains available.
It is plain that in no primitive State (wherein, remember, the
system of economic exploitation was in full force) was all available
land actually occupied; for it is not all actually occupied in any
modern State, even those as densely populated as Germany, Belgium or
Japan. Therefore it must have been legally occupied; the ruling and
exploiting class must have held it out of accessibility by
proscription. If not, the exploited majority would have moved out
upon it, and the continuance of exploitation would have become
impracticable -- just as Diaz found that he could not get labourers
to work in the Mexican mines unless he first confiscated the
communal lands.
The State, then as now, must have been the agency whereby this
proscription was made effective and kept effective. It would thus
appear that the State, instead of originating according to any of
the conjectures made by English and American writers on the subject,
originated as a class-weapon of conquest and confiscation, and that
its primary function was, and still is, to maintain the
stratification of society into the two classes noted.[1]
Oppenheimer's conclusion is as follows:
The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and
almost completely during the first stages of its existence, 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 over the vanquished, and securing itself against
revolts from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this
dominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the
vanquished by the victors.
No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner.
Robertus-Jagetzow also, whom Oppenheimer quotes, says,
History is unable to demonstrate any one people
wherein ... the division of labour had not developed itself as the
subjection of one set under the other.
Thus is derived a conception of the State, or if one prefer a
general term that is somewhat simpler, of political government,
as a purely antisocial organization; indeed, as the archetype and
primary pattern of all organization (I can think of no exception
whatever) which is now deemed anti-social and as such is reprehended
and discouraged by the common conscience of mankind. It will be
useful to remark instances -- instances known to every one -- of the
disparity between the social morals of the State and those of the
individual, which are in large part enforced upon the individual by
the power of the State itself. Upon any other theory of the State,
they would be anomalous and inexplicable. If one regard the State,
however, as in its origin and by its first intention an anti-social
organization -- a class-instrument for the perpetuation of economic
exploitation--they at once appear normal and logical. Some of these
will be discussed in a later paper.
Having gone thus far in considering the origin and nature of the
State, or political government, it is appropriate just here to
examine for a moment the content of the word political, as used of
government. This can be best done by expanding Franz Oppenheimer's
introductory paragraphs, and illustrating them with some examples.
Oppenheimer's treatise is extremely brief and compact; the substance
of a chapter being often compressed into a paragraph, and that of a
paragraph into a sentence. It is therefore a rather hard book to
read, and one who approaches the subject for the first time is
likely to miss part of its import. These articles are written only
for the sake of helping to make its fundamental doctrine, and
especially its definitions, clear and easy to be understood.
There are two, and only two, means whereby man can satisfy his
needs and desires. These are, first, by labour, by the exchange of
labour products and services; and second, by appropriating without
compensation the labour-products and services of others. The former
means may be called the economic means. It is well understood and
needs no illustration, for every exercise of the economic means is
easily reducible to the terms of primitive trade and barter. The
second, however, needs careful consideration.
This second means whereby man satisfies his needs and desires is
obviously robbery. When a person employs this means without sanction
of law, as when he breaks a shop or picks a pocket, he is
apprehended and punished. When he employs it under sanction of law,
as when he uses a tariff to enhance the price of a commodity or uses
the monopoly of a natural resource, such as anthracite coal, for
instance, to limit production and create an artificial scarcity,
with consequent enhancement of prices, he goes unpunished and
unquestioned. Yet essentially these acts are robbery; for the
enhanced price must be paid, like all prices, out of production, and
the enhancement represents no value whatever, but merely represents
the privilege conferred upon him by the State through the tariff or
the monopoly. By so much, therefore, as the enhanced price is higher
than the price determined by free competition in the open market, by
so much is he appropriating without compensation the labour-products
and services of others. Quite as truly does he do this as though he
robbed their shops of labour-products and commanded their services
as chattel-slaves.
The State, as we have seen, had its origin in conquest and
confiscation, and it has existed ever since as an agency whereby
this system of economic exploitation is maintained. It is
characterized in every manifestation of which we have record, by
this phenomenon of a small exploiting minority and a large exploited
majority. Every State, from the earliest to the most modern, is a
robber-State. Of its instruments for effecting robbery, the most
primitive, and now most costly, are armies and navies. These are
used chiefly in safeguarding the economic exploitation of weak alien
peoples by the Start's beneficiaries at home; as in Morocco by the
French State's beneficiaries, or in Haiti, Santo Domingo and Central
America by the American State's beneficiaries. The collision of
interests, or the prospect of collision, where several sets of
beneficiaries are at work in one place, enormously stimulates the
growth of armies and navies and the consequent growth of the
militarist spirit.
The instruments whereby the State most largely effects robbery of
its own citizens are natural-resource monopoly, tariffs, franchises,
concessions. These are all delegations of the taxing power. By
putting a tariff against the importation, say, of wool, the State
permits the domestic wool-producing interests to levy a tax upon
consumers of wool to the amount of the excess in price over the
price determined by supply and demand in a free competitive market.
These interests give the consumer nothing in return for this tax;
the State gives them, as beneficiaries, the privilege of levying it,
and they accordingly do so.[2]
Similarly, by permitting private monopoly of natural resources,
the State delegates to those beneficiaries who are lucky enough to
hold such monopoly, the power to levy a tax upon all who desire
access to those natural resources for purposes of production.
Nothing is given in return for this tax; the beneficiary simply
appropriates without compensation so much of the labour-products and
services of others as the State permits him to take. In some cases,
it is a very large amount, e.g., the monopoly of lands in New York
City held by the Astor family and by the corporation of Trinity
Church. These delegations of the taxing power are called privileges.
These are the main devices whereby the State fulfills its primary
function of keeping up, in our communal lift, the economic
exploitation of one class by another. Wt are now prepared to
understand that the second means which man has of satisfying his
needs and desires, which is directly opposed to the first or
economic means, may be called the political means.
It is important to understand these definitions clearly. To gain a
livelihood, to satisfy his needs and desires, man can either work or
steal, he can use the economic means or the political means. By the
economic means, he exchanges labour and labour-products for the
labour and labour-products of others. By the political means, he
appropriates the labour and labour-products of others, giving
neither labour nor labour-products in exchange. Inasmuch as so large
proportion of the State's activity, certainly ninety per cent of it,
is spent upon enabling this uncompensated appropriation of labour
and labour products, the State itself is well described by
Oppenheimer, in reference to its origin, nature and function, as
the organization of the political means. "Political
government" signifies the same thing; it means the sort of
government that has for its primary purpose the maintenance of
economic exploitation through privilege.
The reader is now in a position to survey certain aspects of the
State which must have impressed him as anomalous. For instance, upon
any of the current theories of the State, it is rather remarkable
that the right of individual self-expression in politics, which has
been rapidly extended and is now wellnigh universal, should have
resulted in so much less benefit to the exploited majority than was
expected. Republicanism has done little more to make effective the
will and the desires of the majority than constitutionalism or
autocracy. The war made this clear in a striking and unmistakable
way; and even disregarding the revelations made by the war, it is a
matter of the commonest knowledge that the interests of the majority
are as egregiously disserved in republican France and America as
they are in monarchical Britain and Belgium. But if the State is per
se an anti-social institution, an organization of the political
means, then obviously its nature persists under one form as under
another, and a change of form or mode counts for nearly nothing. A
republic which maintains the integrity of the political means
through an army and navy, private monopoly of natural resources,
tariffs and franchises, is quite as essentially anti-social as any
autocracy that uses the like instruments for the like purpose.
Similarly, in republics and constitutional monarchies where the
party system prevails, a change of party is futile. Party-politics
and campaign promises have quite generally become, in our popular
scale of speech, synonyms for falsehood and disreputableness. If the
State were a social institution, having its origin in any kind of
regard for the general welfare, it is hard to see why this should be
as it invariably is. The politically-minded liberal or progressive
would be quite justified in his indefeasible optimism, his hopeful
belief that a due allowance for human frailty, a little busy
tinkering with externals -- a change of party, a new platform, a new
party, or what not -- will help to mend matters. But if the State be
the organization of the political means, a device to enable certain
persons to live without working, by appropriating the labour and
labour-products of other persons, without compensation, his faith
and his enterprise are alike devoid of foundation and are mere
mischievous absurdity.
ENDNOTES
- It is worthy of remark that
the hunting tribes, with whom conquest and economic exploitation
is almost impracticable, on account of the nature of their
pursuits, never formed a State; nor yet did the primitive
peasants, for the same reason.
- It is rather interesting to
observe signs that the true character of tariffs as sheer charters
of robbery, is becoming generally known. Formerly there was a good
deal of popular argument and discussion of tariff bills, and many
pleas in Congress on the ground of "protecting American
industries," "protecting the American workingman,"
etc. There was only a little pro forma discussion of our present
tariff-law, probably the most outrageous and indefensible in our
history, and hardly any pretence that it meant anything but
straight theft or that it was passed for any reason but that it
could be passed and that its beneficiaries, by making hay while
the sun shone, could do quite well out of it in the length of time
that must elapse before it can be revised.
