I
IF WE look beneath the surface of our public
affairs, we can discern one fundamental fact, namely: a great
redistribution of power between society and the State. This is the fact
that interests the student of civilization. He has only a secondary or
derived interest in matters like price-fixing, wage-fixing, inflation, political banking, "agricultural adjustment,"
and similar items of State policy that fill the pages of newspapers and
the mouths of publicists and politicians. All these can be run up under
one head. They have an immediate and temporary importance, and for this
reason they monopolize public attention, but they all come to the same
thing; which is, an increase of State power and a corresponding decrease of social power.
It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All
the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates
from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source
from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power. There
is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a
corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.
Moreover, it follows that with any exercise of State power, not only the
exercise of social power in the same direction, but the disposition to
exercise it in that direction, tends to dwindle. Mayor Gaynor astonished
the whole of New York when he pointed out to a correspondent who had
been complaining about the inefficiency of the police, that any citizen
has the right to arrest a malefactor and bring him before a magistrate. "The law of England and of this country," he wrote, "has been very careful to confer no more right in that respect upon policemen and constables than it confers on every citizen."
State exercise of that right through a police force had gone on so
steadily that not only were citizens indisposed to exercise it, but
probably not one in ten thousand knew he had it.
Heretofore in this country sudden crises of misfortune have been met by a
mobilization of social power. In fact (except for certain institutional
enterprises like the home for the aged, the lunatic-asylum,
city-hospital and county-poorhouse) destitution, unemployment, "depression"and
similar ills, have been no concern of the State, but have been relieved
by the application of social power. Under Mr. Roosevelt, however, the
State assumed this function, publicly announcing the doctrine, brand-new
in our history, that the State owes its citizens a living. Students of
politics, of course, saw in this merely an astute proposal for a
prodigious enhancement of State power; merely what, as long ago as 1794,
James Madison called "the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government";
and the passage of time has proved that they were right. The effect of
this upon the balance between State power and social power is clear, and
also its effect of a general indoctrination with the idea that an
exercise of social power upon such matters is no longer called for.
It is largely in this way that the progressive conversion of social
power into State power becomes acceptable and gets itself accepted.
[1]
When the Johnstown flood occurred, social power was immediately
mobilized and applied with intelligence and vigour. Its abundance,
measured by money alone, was so great that when everything was finally
put in order, something like a million dollars remained. If such a
catastrophe happened now, not only is social power perhaps too depleted
for the like exercise, but the general instinct would be to let the
State see to it. Not only has social power atrophied to that extent, but
the disposition to exercise it in that particular direction has
atrophied with it. If the State has made such matters its business, and
has confiscated the social power necessary to deal with them, why, let
it deal with them. We can get some kind of rough measure of this general
atrophy by our own disposition when approached by a beggar. Two years
ago we might have been moved to give him something; today we are moved
to refer him to the State's relief-agency. The State has said to
society, You are either not exercising enough power to meet the
emergency, or are exercising it in what I think is an incompetent way,
so I shall confiscate your power, and exercise it to suit myself. Hence
when a beggar asks us for a quarter, our instinct is to say that the
State has already confiscated our quarter for his benefit, and he should
go to the State about it.
Every positive intervention that the State makes upon industry and
commerce has a similar effect. When the State intervenes to fix wages or
prices, or to prescribe the conditions of competition, it virtually
tells the enterpriser that he is not exercising social power in the
right way, and therefore it proposes to confiscate his power and
exercise it according to the State's own judgment of what is best. Hence
the enterpriser's instinct is to let the State look after the
consequences. As a simple illustration of this, a manufacturer of a
highly specialized type of textiles was saying to me the other day that
he had kept his mill going at a loss for five years because he did not
want to turn his workpeople on the street in such hard times, but now
that the State had stepped in to tell him how he must run his business,
the State might jolly well take the
responsibility.
The process of converting social power into State power may perhaps be
seen at its simplest in cases where the State's intervention is directly
competitive. The accumulation of State power in various countries has
been so accelerated and diversified within the last twenty years that we
now see the State functioning as telegraphist, telephonist,
match-peddler, radio-operator, cannon-founder, railway-builder and
owner, railway-operator, wholesale and retail tobacconist, shipbuilder
and owner, chief chemist, harbour-maker and dockbuilder, housebuilder,
chief educator, newspaper-proprietor, food-purveyor, dealer in
insurance, and so on through a long list.
[2]
It is obvious that private forms of these enterprises must tend to
dwindle in proportion as the energy of the State's encroachments on them
increases, for the competition of social power with State power is
always disadvantaged, since the State can arrange the terms of
competition to suit itself, even to the point of
outlawing any exercise of social power whatever in the premises; in
other words, giving itself a monopoly. Instances of this expedient are
common; the one we are probably best acquainted with is the State's
monopoly of letter-carrying. Social power is estopped by sheer fiat from
application to this form of enterprise, notwithstanding it could carry
it on far cheaper, and, in this country at least, far better. The
advantages of this monopoly in promoting the State's interests are
peculiar. No other, probably, could secure so large and well-distributed
a volume of patronage, under the guise of a public service in constant
use by so large a number of people; it plants a lieutenant of the State
at every country-crossroad. It is by no means a pure coincidence that an
administration's chief almoner and whip-at-large is so regularly
appointed Postmaster-general.
Thus the State "turns every contingency into a resource"
for accumulating power in itself, always at the expense of social
power; and with this it develops a habit of acquiescence in the people.
New generations appear, each temperamentally adjusted - or as I believe
our American glossary now has it, "conditioned"
- to new increments of State power, and they tend to take the process
of continuous accumulation as quite in order. All the State's
institutional voices unite in confirming this tendency; they unite in
exhibiting the progressive conversion of social power into State power
as something not only quite in order, but even as wholesome and
necessary for the public good.
II
In the United States at the present time, the principal indexes of the
increase of State power are three in number. First, the point to which
the centralization of State authority has been carried. Practically all
the sovereign rights and powers of the smaller political units - all of
them that are significant enough to be worth absorbing - have been
absorbed by the federal unit; nor is this all. State
power has not only been thus concentrated at Washington, but it has
been so far concentrated into the hands of the Executive that the
existing regime is a regime of personal government. It is nominally republican, but actually monocratic;
a curious anomaly, but highly characteristic of a people little gifted
with intellectual integrity. Personal government is not exercised here
in the same ways as in Italy, Russia or Germany, for there is as yet no
State interest to be served by so doing, but rather the contrary; while
in those countries there is. But personal government is always personal
government; the mode of its exercise is a matter of immediate political
expediency, and is determined entirely by circumstances.
This regime was established by a
coup d'état
of a new and unusual kind, practicable only in a rich country. It was
effected, not by violence, like Louis-NapolTon's, or by terrorism, like
Mussolini's, but
by purchase. It therefore presents what might be called an American variant of the
coup
d'état .
[3]
Our national legislature was not suppressed by force of arms, like the French Assembly in 1851, but was
bought
out of its functions with public money; and as appeared most
conspicuously in the elections of November, 1934, the consolidation of
the
coup d'état was effected
by the same means; the corresponding functions in the smaller units
were reduced under the personal control of the Executive.
[4]
This is a most remarkable phenomenon; possibly nothing quite like it
ever took place; and its character and implications deserve the most
careful attention.
A second index is supplied by the prodigious extension of the bureaucratic principle that is now observable. This is attested
prima facie
by the number of new boards, bureaux and commissions set up at
Washington in the last two years. They are reported as representing
something like 90,000 new employees appointed outside the civil service,
and the total of the federal pay-roll in Washington is reported as
something over three million dollars per month.
[5]
This, however, is relatively a small matter. The pressure of
centralization has tended powerfully to convert every official and every
political aspirant in the smaller units into a venal and complaisant agent of the federal bureaucracy.
This presents an interesting parallel with the state of things
prevailing in the Roman Empire in the last days of the Flavian dynasty,
and afterwards. The rights and practices of local self-government, which
were formerly very considerable in the provinces and much more so in
the municipalities, were lost by surrender rather than by suppression.
The imperial bureaucracy, which up to the second century was
comparatively a modest affair, grew rapidly to great size, and local
politicians were quick to see the advantage of being on terms with it.
They came to Rome with their hats in their hands, as governors,
Congressional aspirants and such-like now go to Washington. Their eyes
and thoughts were constantly fixed on Rome, because recognition and
preferment lay that way; and in their incorrigible sycophancy they became, as Plutarch says, like hypochondriacs who dare not eat or take a bath without consulting their
physician.
A third index is seen in the erection of poverty and mendicancy into a
permanent political asset. Two years ago, many of our people were in
hard straits; to
some extent, no doubt, through no fault of their own, though it is now
clear that in the popular view of their case, as well as in the
political view, the line between the deserving poor and the undeserving
poor was not distinctly drawn. Popular feeling ran high at the time, and
the prevailing wretchedness was regarded with undiscriminating emotion,
as evidence of some general wrong done upon its victims by society at
large, rather than as the natural penalty of greed, folly or actual
misdoings; which in large part it was. The State, always instinctively
"turning every contingency into a resource"
for accelerating the conversion of social power into State power, was
quick to take advantage of this state of mind. All that was needed to
organize these unfortunates into an invaluable political property was to
declare the doctrine that the State owes all its citizens a living; and
this was accordingly done. It immediately precipitated an enormous mass
of subsidized voting-power, an enormous resource for strengthening the
State at the expense of society.
[6]
III
There is an impression that the enhancement of State power which has
taken place since 1932 is provisional and temporary, that the
corresponding depletion of social power is by way of a kind of
emergency-loan, and therefore is not to be scrutinized too closely.
There is every probability that this belief is devoid of foundation.
No doubt our present regime will be modified in one way and another;
indeed, it must be, for the process of consolidation itself requires it.
But any essential change would be quite unhistorical, quite without
precedent, and is therefore most unlikely; and by an essential change,
I mean one that will tend to redistribute actual power between the State and society. [7]
In the nature of things, there is no reason why such a change should
take place, and every reason why it should not. We shall see various
apparent recessions, apparent compromises, but the one thing we may be
quite sure of is that none of these will tend to diminish actual State
power.
For example, we shall no doubt shortly see the great pressure-group of
politically-organized poverty and mendicancy subsidized indirectly
instead of directly, because State interest can not long keep pace with
the hand-over-head disposition of the masses to loot their own Treasury.
The method of direct subsidy, or sheer cash-purchase, will therefore in
all probability soon give way to the indirect method of what is called "social legislation";
that is, a multiplex system of State-managed pensions, insurances and
indemnities of various kinds. This is an apparent recession, and when it
occurs it will no doubt be proclaimed as an actual recession, no doubt
accepted as such; but is it? Does it actually tend to diminish State
power and increase social power? Obviously not, but quite the opposite.
It tends to consolidate firmly this particular fraction of State power,
and opens the way to getting an indefinite increment upon it by the mere
continuous invention of new courses and developments of
State-administered social legislation, which is an extremely simple
business. One may add the observation for whatever its evidential value
may be worth, that if the effect of progressive social legislation upon
the sum-total of State power were unfavourable or even nil, we should
hardly have found
Prince de Bismarck and the British Liberal politicians of forty years
ago going in for anything remotely resembling it.
When, therefore, the inquiring student of civilization has occasion to
observe this or any other apparent recession upon any point of our
present regime,
[8] he may content himself with asking the one question,
What effect has this upon the sum-total of State power?
The answer he gives himself will show conclusively whether the
recession is actual or apparent, and this is all he is concerned to
know.
There is also an impression that if actual recessions do not come about
of themselves, they may be brought about by the expedient of voting one
political
party out and another one in. This idea rests upon certain assumptions
that experience has shown to be unsound; the
first one being that the power of the
ballot is what republican political theory makes it out to be, and that
therefore the electorate has an effective choice in the matter. It is a matter of open and notorious fact that nothing like this is true.
Our nominally republican system is actually built on an imperial model,
with our professional politicians standing in the place of the
prætorian guards; they meet from time to time, decide what can be "got away with,"and
how, and who is to do it; and the electorate votes according to their
prescriptions. Under these conditions it is easy to provide the
appearance of any desired concession of State power, without the
reality; our history shows innumerable instances of very easy dealing
with problems in practical politics much more difficult than that. One
may remark in this connexion also the notoriously baseless assumption
that party-designations connote principles, and that party-pledges imply
performance. Moreover, underlying these assumptions and all others that
faith in "political action"contemplates,
is the assumption that the interests of the State and the interests of
society are, at least theoretically, identical; whereas in theory they
are directly opposed, and this opposition invariably declares itself in
practice to the precise extent that circumstances permit.
However, without pursuing these matters further at the moment, it is
probably enough to observe here that in the nature of things the
exercise of personal government, the control of a huge and growing
bureaucracy, and the management of an enormous mass of subsidized
voting-power, are as agreeable to one stripe of politician as they are
to another. Presumably they interest a Republican or a Progressive as
much as they do a Democrat, Communist, Farmer-Labourite, Socialist, or
whatever a politician may, for electioneering purposes,
see fit to call himself. This was demonstrated in the local campaigns
of 1934 by the practical attitude of politicians who represented nominal
opposition parties. It is now being further demonstrated by the
derisible haste that the leaders of the official opposition are making
towards what they call "reorganization"of
their party. One may well be inattentive to their words; their actions,
however, mean simply that the recent accretions of State power are here to stay,
and that they are aware of it; and that, such being the case, they are
preparing to dispose themselves most advantageously in a contest for
their control and management. This is all that "reorganization" of the Republican party means, and all it is meant to mean; and this is in itself quite enough to show that any expectation of an essential change of regime through a change of party-administration is illusory.
On the contrary, it is clear that whatever party-competition we shall
see hereafter will be on the same terms as heretofore. It will be a
competition for control and management, and it would naturally issue in
still closer centralization, still further extension of the bureaucratic
principle, and still larger concessions to subsidized voting-power.
This course would be strictly historical, and is furthermore to be
expected as lying in the nature of things, as it so obviously does.
Indeed, it is by this means that the aim of the collectivists seems
likeliest to be attained in this country; this aim being the complete
extinction of social power through absorption by the State. Their
fundamental doctrine was formulated and invested with a quasi-religious
sanction by the idealist philosophers of the last century; and among
peoples who have accepted it in terms as well as in fact, it is
expressed in formulas almost identical with theirs. Thus, for example,
when Hitler says that "the State dominates the nation because it alone represents it," he is only putting into loose popular language the formula of Hegel, that "the State is the general substance, whereof individuals are but accidents." Or, again, when Mussolini says, "Everything for the State; nothing outside the State; nothing against the State," he is merely vulgarizing the doctrine of Fichte, that "the State is the superior power, ultimate and beyond appeal, absolutely independent."
It may be in place to remark here the essential identity of the various
extant forms of collectivism. The superficial distinctions of Fascism,
Bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists and publicists;
the serious student
[9]
sees in them only the one root-idea of a complete conversion of social
power into State power. When Hitler and Mussolini invoke a kind of
debased and hoodwinking mysticism to aid their acceleration of this
process, the student at once recognizes his old friend, the formula of
Hegel, that
"the State incarnates the Divine Idea upon earth," and he is not hoodwinked. The journalist and the impressionable traveler may make what they will of
"the new religion of Bolshevism";
the student contents himself with remarking clearly the exact nature of
the process which this inculcation is designed to sanction.
IV
This process - the conversion of social power into State power
- has not been carried as far here as it has elsewhere; as it has in
Russia, Italy or Germany, for example. Two things, however, are to be
observed. First, that it has gone a long way, at a rate of progress
which has of late been greatly accelerated. What has chiefly
differentiated its progress here from its progress in other countries is
its unspectacular character. Mr. Jefferson wrote in 1823 that there was
no danger he dreaded so much as "the consolidation [i.e., centralization] of our government by the noiseless and therefore unalarming instrumentality of the Supreme Court."
These words characterize every advance that we have made in State
aggrandizement. Each one has been noiseless and therefore unalarming,
especially to a people notoriously preoccupied, inattentive and
incurious. Even the coup d'état of 1932 was noiseless and unalarming. In Russia, Italy, Germany, the coup d'état
was violent and spectacular; it had to be; but here it was neither.
Under cover of a nationwide, State-managed mobilization of inane
buffoonery and aimless commotion, it took place in so unspectacular a
way that its true nature escaped notice, and even now is not generally understood.
The method of consolidating the ensuing regime, moreover, was also
noiseless and unalarming; it was merely the prosaic and unspectacular "higgling of the market,"
to which a long and uniform political experience had accustomed us. A
visitor from a poorer and thriftier country might have regarded Mr.
Farley's activities in the local campaigns of 1934 as striking or even
spectacular, but they made no such impression on us. They seemed so
familiar, so much the regular thing, that one heard little comment on
them. Moreover, political habit led us to attribute whatever
unfavourable comment we did hear, to interest; either partisan or
monetary interest, or both. We put it down as the jaundiced judgment of
persons with axes to grind; and naturally the regime did all it could to
encourage this view.
The second thing to be observed is that certain formulas, certain
arrangements of words, stand as an obstacle in the way of our perceiving
how far the conversion of social power into State power has actually
gone. The force of phrase and name distorts the identification of our
own actual acceptances and acquiescences. We are accustomed to the
rehearsal of certain poetic litanies, and provided their cadence be kept
entire, we are indifferent to their correspondence with truth and fact.
When Hegel's doctrine of the State, for example, is restated in terms
by Hitler and Mussolini, it is distinctly offensive to us, and we
congratulate ourselves on our freedom from the "yoke of a dictator's tyranny."
No American politician would dream of breaking in on our routine of
litanies with anything of the kind. We may imagine, for example, the
shock to popular sentiment that would ensue upon Mr. Roosevelt's
declaring publicly that "the State embraces everything, and nothing has value outside the State. The State creates right."
Yet an American politician, as long as he does not formulate that
doctrine in set terms, may go further with it in a practical way than
Mussolini has gone, and without trouble or question. Suppose Mr.
Roosevelt should defend his regime by publicly reasserting Hegel's
dictum that "the State alone possesses rights, because it is the strongest."
One can hardly imagine that our public would get that down without a
great deal of retching. Yet how far, really, is that doctrine alien to
our public's actual acquiescences? Surely not far.
The point is that in respect of the relation between the theory and the
actual practice of public affairs, the American is the most
un-philosophical of beings. The rationalization of conduct in general is
most repugnant to him; he prefers to emotionalize it. He is indifferent
to the theory of things, so long as he
may rehearse his formulas; and so long as he can listen to the patter of
his litanies, no practical inconsistency disturbs him - indeed, he
gives no evidence of even recognizing it as an inconsistency.
The ablest and most acute observer among the many who came from Europe
to look us over in the early part of the last century was the one who is
for some reason the most neglected, notwithstanding that in our present
circumstances, especially, he is worth more to us than all the de
Tocquevilles, Bryces, Trollopes and Chateaubriands put together. This
was the noted St.-Simonien and political economist, Michel Chevalier.
Professor Chinard, in his admirable biographical study of John Adams,
has called attention to Chevalier's observation that the American people
have "the morale of an army on the march." The more one thinks of this, the more clearly one sees how little there is in what our publicists are fond of calling "the American psychology" that it does not exactly account for; and it exactly accounts for the trait that we are considering.
An army on the march has no philosophy; it views itself as a creature of the moment.
It does not rationalize conduct except in terms of an immediate end. As
Tennyson observed, there is a pretty strict official understanding
against its doing so; "theirs not to reason why."
Emotionalizing conduct is another matter, and the more of it the
better; it is encouraged by a whole elaborate paraphernalia of showy
etiquette, flags, music, uniforms, decorations, and the careful
cultivation of a very special sort of comradery. In every relation to "the reason of the thing," however - in the ability and eagerness, as Plato puts it, "to see things as they are"
- the mentality of an army on the march is merely so much delayed
adolescence; it remains persistently, incorrigibly and notoriously
infantile.
Past generations of Americans, as Martin Chuzzlewit left record, erected
this infantilism into a distinguishing virtue, and they took great
pride in it as
the mark of a chosen people, destined to live forever amidst the glory
of their own unparalleled achievements wie Gott in Frankreich .
Mr. Jefferson Brick, General Choke and the Honourable Elijah Pogram
made a first-class job of indoctrinating their countrymen with the idea
that a philosophy is wholly unnecessary, and that a concern with the
theory of things is effeminate and unbecoming. An envious and presumably
dissolute Frenchman may say what he likes about the morale of an army
on the march, but the fact remains that it has brought us where we are,
and has got us what we have. Look at a continent subdued, see the spread
of our industry and commerce, our railways, newspapers,
finance-companies, schools, colleges, what you will! Well, if all this
has been done without a philosophy, if we have grown to this unrivalled
greatness without any attention to the theory of things, does it not
show that philosophy and the theory of things are all moonshine, and not
worth a practical people's consideration? The morale of an army on the
march is good enough for us, and we are proud of it.
The present generation does not speak in quite this tone of robust
certitude. It seems, if anything, rather less openly contemptuous of
philosophy; one even sees
some signs of a suspicion that in our present circumstances the theory
of things might be worth looking into, and it is especially towards the
theory of sovereignty and rulership that this new attitude of
hospitality appears to be developing. The condition of public affairs in
all countries, notably in our own, has done more than bring under
review the mere current practice of politics, the character and quality
of representative politicians, and the relative merits of this-or-that
form or mode of government. It has served to suggest attention to the
one institution whereof all these forms or modes are but the several,
and, from the theoretical point of view, indifferent, manifestations. It
suggests that finality does not lie with consideration of species, but
of genus; it does not lie with consideration of the characteristic marks
that differentiate the republican State, monocratic State,
constitutional, collectivist, totalitarian, Hitlerian, Bolshevist, what
you will. It lies with consideration of the State itself.
V
There appears to be a curious difficulty about exercising reflective
thought upon the actual nature of an institution into which one was born
and one's
ancestors were born. One accepts it as one does the atmosphere; one's
practical adjustments to it are made by a kind of reflex. One seldom
thinks about the air
until one notices some change, favourable or unfavourable, and then
one's thought about it is special; one thinks about purer air, lighter
air, heavier air, not about air. So it is with certain human
institutions. We know that they exist, that they affect us in various
ways, but we do not ask how they came to exist, or what their original
intention was, or what primary function it is that they are actually
fulfilling; and when they affect us so unfavourably that we rebel
against them, we contemplate substituting nothing beyond some
modification
or variant of the same institution. Thus colonial America, oppressed by
the monarchical State, brings in the republican State; Germany gives up
the republican State for the Hitlerian State; Russia exchanges the
monocratic State for the collectivist State; Italy exchanges the
constitutionalist State for the
"totalitarian" State.
It is interesting to observe that in the year 1935 the average
individual's incurious attitude towards the phenomenon of the State is
precisely what his attitude was towards the phenomenon of the Church in
the year, say, 1500. The State was then a very weak institution; the
Church was very strong. The individual was born into the Church, as his
ancestors had been for generations, in precisely the formal, documented
fashion in which he is now born into the State. He was taxed for the
Church's support, as he now is for the State's support. He was supposed
to accept the official theory and doctrine of the Church, to conform to
its discipline, and in a general way to do as it told him; again,
precisely the sanctions that the State now lays upon him. If he were
reluctant or recalcitrant, the Church made a satisfactory amount of
trouble for him, as the State now does. Notwithstanding all this, it
does not appear to have
occurred to the Church-citizen of that day, any more than it occurs to
the State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution it was
that claimed his allegiance. There it was; he accepted its own account
of itself, took it as it stood, and at its own valuation. Even when he
revolted, fifty years later, he merely exchanged one form or mode of the
Church for another, the
Roman for the Calvinist, Lutheran, Zuinglian, or what not; again, quite
as the modern State-citizen exchanges one mode of the State for another.
He did not examine the institution itself, nor does the State-citizen
today.
My purpose in writing is to raise the question whether the enormous
depletion of social power which we are witnessing everywhere does not
suggest the importance
of knowing more than we do about the essential nature of the institution
that is so rapidly absorbing this volume of power.
[10]
One of my friends said to me lately that if the public-utility
corporations did not mend their ways, the State would take over their
business and operate it. He spoke with a curiously reverent air of
finality. Just so, I thought, might a Church-citizen, at the end of the
fifteenth century, have spoken of some impending intervention of the
Church; and I wondered then whether he had any better-informed and
closer-reasoned theory of the State than his prototype had of the
Church. Frankly, I am sure he had not. His pseudo-conception was merely
an unreasoned acceptance of the State on its own terms and at its own
valuation; and in this acceptance he showed himself no more intelligent,
and no less, than the whole mass of State-citizenry at large.
It appears to me that with the depletion of social power going on at the rate it is, the State-citizen should look very closely into the essential nature of the institution that is bringing it about.
He should ask himself whether he has a theory of the State, and if so,
whether he can assure himself that history supports it. He will not find
this a matter that can be settled offhand; it needs a good deal of
investigation, and a stiff exercise of reflective thought. He should
ask, in the first place, how the State originated, and why; it must have
come about somehow, and for some purpose. This seems an extremely easy
question to answer, but he will not find it so. Then he should ask what
it is that history exhibits continuously as the State's primary
function. Then, whether he finds that "the State" and "government"
are strictly synonymous terms; he uses them as such, but are they? Are
there any invariable
characteristic marks that differentiate the institution of government
from the institution of the State? Then finally he should decide
whether, by the testimony of history, the State is to be regarded as, in essence, a social or an anti-social institution?
It is pretty clear now that if the Church-citizen of 1500 had put his
mind on questions as fundamental as these, his civilization might have
had a much easier and pleasanter course to run; and the State-citizen of
today may profit by his experience.
[1] The result of a questionnaire published in July, 1935, showed 76.8
per cent of the replies favourable to the idea that it is the State's
duty to see that every person who wants a job shall have one; 20.1 per
cent were
against it, and 3.1 per cent were undecided.
[2] In this country, the State is at present manufacturing furniture,
grinding flour, producing fertilizer, building houses; selling
farm-products, dairy-products, textiles, canned goods, and electrical
apparatus; operating
employment-agencies and home-loan offices; financing exports and
imports; financing agriculture. It also controls the issuance of
securities, communications by wire and radio, discount rates,
oil-production, power-production, commercial competition, the production
and sale of alcohol, and the use of inland waterways and railways.
[3] There is a sort of precedent for it in Roman history, if the story
be true in all its details that the army sold the emperorship to Didius
Julianus for something like five million dollars. Money has often been
used to grease the wheels of a
coup d'état, but
straight over-the-counter purchase is unknown, I think, except in these two instances.
[4] On the day I write this, the newspapers say that the President is
about to order a stoppage on the flow of federal relief-funds into
Louisiana, for the purpose of bringing Senator Long to terms. I have
seen no comment, however, on the propriety of this kind of procedure.
[5] A friend in the theatrical business tells me that from the
box-office point of view, Washington is now the best theatre-town,
concert-town and general-amusement town in the United States, far better
than New York.
[6] The feature of the approaching campaign of 1936 which will most
interest the student of civilization will be the use of the
four-billion-dollar relief-fund that has been placed at the President's
disposal - the extent, that is, to which it will be distributed on a
patronage-basis.
[7] It must always be kept in mind that there is a tidal-motion as well
as a wave-motion in these matters, and that the wave-motion is of little
importance, relatively. For instance, the Supreme Court's invalidation
of the
National Recovery Act counts for nothing in determining the actual
status of personal government. The real question is not how much less
the sum of personal
government is now than it was before that decision, but how much greater
it is normally now than it was in 1932, and in years preceding.
[8] As, for example, the spectacular voiding of the National Recovery Act.
[9] This book is a sort of syllabus or prTcis of some lectures to
students of American history and politics - mostly graduate students -
and it therefore presupposes some little acquaintance with those
subjects. The few
references I have given, however, will put any reader in the way of
documenting and amplifying it satisfactorily.
[10] An inadequate and partial idea of what this volume amounts to, may
be got from the fact that the American State's income from taxation is
now about one third of the nation's total income! This takes into
account all forms of taxation, direct and indirect, local and federal.
Reproduction of all or any parts of the above text may be used for general information.
This HTML presentation is copyright by Barefoot, December 1999
Reproduction of all or any parts of the above text may be used for general information.
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