I
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
[economic slaves]; 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 parceled 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.
[1] 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.
[2] 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.
[3] 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.
[4] 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.
[5] The mathematics of this demonstration are extremely interesting. A rTsumT 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.
[6] Except, of course, by predmption 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.
[7] 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.
[8] 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 Turg(t, 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.
[9] 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.
[11] 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.
[12] 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.
[13] 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!
[14] 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!
[15] Our recent experiences with prohibition might be thought to have
suggested this belief as fatuous, but apparently they have not done so.
[16] 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."
[17] Oppenheimer,
Der Staat, ch. I. Services are also, of course, a subject of economic exchange.
[19] 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.
[19] 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.
[20] 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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