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The Constitution for the United States, Its Sources
and Its Application
Senate Report 93-549 War and Emergency Powers Acts,
Executive Orders, and the New World Order
Who is Running America?
Senate Report 93-549 War and Emergency Powers Acts,
Executive Orders, and the New World Order
Who is Running America?
Our Enemy, The State
by Albert J. Nock - 1935
by Albert J. Nock - 1935
CHAPTER 1
[It must be remembered that Mr. Nock was writing this
shortly after the Coup d'état of
Roosevelt and the New Deal Democrats - What he saw happening HAS HAPPENED! - We are very much closer
as we enter the
21st Century to a Dictatorial Socialist State.]
"There is a principle which is a bar against all
information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep
a man in everlasting ignorance ---- that principle is contempt prior to
investigation." -- Herbert Spencer
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.
Chapter 1
Footnotes https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[8] As, for example, the spectacular voiding of the National
Recovery Act. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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.
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