Anatomy of the State by Murray N. Rothbard, narrated by Harold Fritchie
What the state is not
The state is almost universally considered an institution of social service.
Some theorists venerate the state as the apotheosis of society.
Others regard it as an amiable, though often inefficient, organization for achieving social ends.
But almost all regard it as a necessary means for achieving the goals of mankind,
a means to be ranged against the private sector and often winning in this competition of resources.
With the rise of democracy, the identification of the state with society has been redoubled
until it is common to hear sentiments expressed which violate virtually every tenet of reason
and common sense such as, we are the government.
The useful collective term we has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over
If we are the government, then anything a government does to an individual is not only
just and un-tyrannical but also voluntary on the part of the individual concerned.
If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group
for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that we owe it
to ourselves.
If the government conscripts a man or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then
he is doing it to himself and therefore nothing untoward has occurred.
Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered, instead
they must have committed suicide since they were the government, which was democratically
chosen and therefore anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part.
One would not think it necessary to belabor this point, and yet the overwhelming bulk
of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or lesser degree.
We must therefore emphasize that we are not the government, and the government is not
us.
The government does not in any accurate sense represent the majority of the people.
But even if it did, even if 70% of the people decided to murder the remaining 30%, this
would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority.
No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that, quote, we are all part of one another,
must be permitted to obscure this basic fact.
If then the state is not us, if it is not the human family getting together to decide
Mutual Problems, If it is not a lodge meeting or country club, what is it?
Briefly, the state is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly
of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area.
In particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by
voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered, but by coercion.
While other individuals or institutions obtain their income by production of goods and services
and by the peaceful and voluntary sale of these goods and services to others, the state
obtains its revenue by the use of compulsion, that is, by the use and the threat of the
jailhouse and the bayonet.
Having used force and violence to obtain its revenue, the state generally goes on to regulate
and dictate the other actions of its individual subjects.
One would think that simple observation of all states throughout history and over the globe would be proof enough of this assertion.
But the miasma of myth has lain so long over state activity that elaboration is necessary.
What the State Is
Man is born naked into the world and needing to use his mind to learn how to take the resources given him by nature and to transform them, for example by investment in capital, into shapes and forms and places where the resources can be used for the satisfaction of his wants and the advancement of his standard of living.
The only way by which man can do this is by the use of his mind and energy to transform resources as production and to exchange these products for products created by others.
Man has found that through the process of voluntary mutual exchange, the productivity and hence the living standards of all participants in exchange may increase enormously.
The only natural course for man to survive and to attain wealth, therefore, is by using
his mind and energy to engage in the production and exchange process.
He does this first by finding natural resources and then by transforming them, by mixing his
labor with them, as Locke puts it, to make them his individual property, and then by
exchanging this property for the similarly obtained property of others.
The social path dictated by the requirements of man's nature, therefore, is the path of
property rights and the free market of gift or exchange of such rights.
Through this path, men have learned how to avoid the jungle methods of fighting over
scarce resources so that A can only acquire them at the expense of B, and instead to multiply
those resources enormously in peaceful and harmonious production and exchange.
The great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer pointed out that there are two mutually exclusive
ways of acquiring wealth.
One, the above way of production and exchange he called the economic means.
The other way is simpler in that it does not require productivity.
It is the way of seizure of another's goods or services by the use of force and violence.
This is the method of one-sided confiscation, of theft of the property of others.
This is the method which Oppenheimer termed the political means to wealth.
It should be clear that the peaceful use of reason and energy in production is the natural
path for man, the means for his survival and prosperity on this earth.
It should be equally clear that the coercive, exploitive means is contrary to natural law.
It is parasitic, for instead of adding to production, it subtracts from it.
The political means siphons production off to a parasitic and destructive individual
or group, and this siphoning not only subtracts from the number producing, but also lowers
the producer's incentive to produce beyond his own subsistence.
In the long run, the robber destroys his own subsistence by dwindling or eliminating the
source of his own supply.
But not only that, even in the short run, the predator is acting contrary to his own
true nature as a man.
We are now in a position to answer more fully the question, what is the state?
The state, in the words of Oppenheimer, is the organization of the political means.
It is the systemization of the predatory process over a given territory, for crime at best
is sporadic and uncertain.
The parasitism is ephemeral, and the coercive parasitic lifeline may be cut off at any time
by the resistance of the victims.
The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property.
that renders certain, secure, and relatively peaceful, the lifeline of the parasitic caste
in society.
Albert J. Nock wrote vividly that, the state claims and exercises the monopoly of crime.
It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale.
It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether
to the property of citizen or of alien.
Since production must always precede predation, the free market is anterior to the state.
The state has never been created by a social contract.
It has always been born in conquest and exploitation.
The classic paradigm was a conquering tribe pausing in its time-honored method of looting
and murdering a conquered tribe to realize that the time span of plunder would be longer
One method of the birth of a state may be illustrated as follows.
In the hills of southern Ruritania, a bandit group manages to obtain physical control over
the territory, and finally the bandit chieftain proclaims himself king of the sovereign and
by the Independent Government of South Buretania.
And if he and his men have the force to maintain this rule for a while,
lo and behold, a new state has joined the family of nations.
And the former bandit leaders have been transformed
into the lawful nobility of the realm.
How the State Preserves Itself
Once a state has been established, the problem of the ruling group or caste is how to maintain their rule.
While force is their modus operandi, their basic and long-run problem is ideological.
For in order to continue in office, any government, not simply a democratic government, must have the support of the majority of its subjects.
This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm.
It may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature.
But support in the sense of acceptance of some sort it must be, else the minority of
state rulers would eventually be outweighed by the active resistance of the majority of
the public.
Since predation must be supported out of the surplus of production, it is necessarily true
It is true that the class constituting the state, full-time bureaucracy and nobility must be a rather small minority in the land, although it may, of course, purchase allies among important groups in the population.
Therefore, the chief task of the rulers is always to secure the active or resigned acceptance of the majority of the citizens.
Of course, one method of securing support is through the creation of vested economic interests.
Therefore, the king alone cannot rule. He must have a sizable group of followers who enjoy the
perquisites of rule, for example, the members of the state apparatus, such as the full-time
bureaucracy or the established nobility. But this still secures only a minority of eager supporters,
and even the essential purchasing of support by subsidies and other grants of privilege
still does not obtain the consent of the majority. For this essential acceptance,
The majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise, and at least
inevitable, and certainly better than any other conceivable alternatives. Promoting this ideology
among the people is the vital social task of the intellectuals, for the masses of men do not create
their own ideas or indeed think through these ideas independently. They followividely the ideas
is adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals. The intellectuals are therefore
the opinion-molders in society. And since it is precisely a molding of opinion that the
state most desperately needs, the basis for age-old alliance between the state and the
intellectuals becomes clear. It is evident that the state needs the intellectuals. It
is not so evident why intellectuals need the state. Put simply, we may state that the intellectual's
livelihood in the free market is never too secure, for the intellectual must depend on
the values and choices of the masses of his fellow men, and it is precisely characteristic
of the masses that they are generally uninterested in intellectual matters. The state, on the
other hand, is willing to offer the intellectuals a secure and permanent birth in the state
and thus a secure income and the panoply of prestige, for the intellectuals will be handsomely
rewarded for the important function they perform for the state rulers, of which group they
now become a part.
The alliance between the state and the intellectuals was symbolized in the eager desire of professors
at the University of Berlin in the 19th century to form the intellectual bodyguard of the
House of Hohenzollern.
In the present day, let us note the revealing comment of an eminent Marxist scholar concerning
Professor Whitfogle's critical study of ancient oriental despotism.
Quote, the civilization which Professor Whitfogle is so bitterly attacking was one which could
make poets and scholars into officials, unquote.
Of innumerable examples, we may cite the recent development of the science of strategy in
and the service of the government's main violence-wielding arm, the military.
A venerable institution, furthermore, is the official, or court historian, dedicated to
purveying the ruler's view of their own and their predecessor's actions.
Many and varied have been the arguments by which the state and its intellectuals have
induced their subjects to support their rule.
Basically, the strands of argument may be summed up as follows.
A. The state rulers are great and wise men. They rule by divine right. They are the aristocracy
of men. They are the scientific experts. Much greater and wiser than the good, but rather
simple subjects. And B. Rule by the extent government is inevitable, absolutely necessary,
and far better than the indescribable evils that would ensue upon its downfall.
The union of church and state was one of the oldest and most successful of these ideological
devices.
The ruler was either anointed by God or, in the case of absolute rule of many Oriental
despotisms, was himself God, hence any resistance to his rule would be blasphemy.
The state's priestcraft performed the basic intellectual function of obtaining popular
support and even worship for the rulers.
Another successful device was to instill fear of any alternative system of rule or non-rule.
The present rulers it was maintained supplied to the citizens an essential service for which
they should be most grateful, protection against sporadic criminals and marauders.
For the State, to preserve its own monopoly of predation did indeed see to it that private
and unsystematic crime was kept to a minimum.
The State has always been jealous of its own preserve. Especially has the State been successful
in recent centuries in instilling fear of other State rulers. Since the land area of
the globe has been parceled out among particular States, one of the basic doctrines of the
State was to identify itself with the territory it governed. Since most men tend to love their
homeland, the identification of that land and its people with the State was a means
of Making Natural Patriotism Work to the State's Advantage.
If Ruritania was being attacked by Waldavia, the first task of the state and its intellectuals
was to convince the people of Ruritania that the attack was really upon them and not simply
upon the ruling caste.
In this way, a war between rulers was converted into a war between peoples, with each people
coming to the defense of its rulers in the erroneous belief that the rulers were defending
This device of nationalism has only been successful in Western civilization in recent centuries.
It was not too long ago that the mass of subjects regarded wars as irrelevant battles between
various sets of nobles.
Many and subtle are the ideological weapons that the state has wielded through the centuries.
One excellent weapon has been tradition.
The longer that the rule of a state has been able to preserve itself, the more powerful
this weapon, for then the X dynasty or the Y state has the seeming weight of centuries
of tradition behind it.
Worship of one's ancestors then becomes a none too subtle means of worship of one's
ancient rulers.
The greatest danger to the state is independent intellectual criticism.
There is no better way to stifle that criticism than to attack any isolated voice, any race,
Another potent ideological force is to deprecate the individual and exalt the collectivity of society, for since any given rule implies majority acceptance, any ideological danger to that rule can only start from one or a few independently thinking individuals.
The new idea, much less the new critical idea, must needs begin as a small minority opinion.
Therefore, the state must nip the view in the bud by ridiculing any view that defies the opinions of the mass.
Listen only to your brothers, or a just society thus becomes ideological weapons for crushing individual dissent.
By such measures, the masses will never learn of the non-existence of their emperor's clothes.
H. L. Mencken wrote in 1949,
All government can see in an original idea is potential change and hence an invasion of its prerogatives.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself
without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.
Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so if he is romantic he tries to change it, and even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.
It is also important for the state to make its rules seem inevitable.
Even if its reign is disliked, it will then be met with passive resignation as witnessed
the familiar coupling of death and taxes.
One method is to induce historiographical determinism as opposed to individual freedom
of will.
If the X dynasty rules us, this is because the inexorable laws of history, or the divine
It is also important for the state to inculcate in its subjects an aversion to any conspiracy
theory of history.
For a search for conspiracies means a search for motives and an attribution of responsibility
for historical misdeeds.
If, however, any tyranny imposed by the state, or venality, or aggressive war was caused
not by the state rulers but by mysterious and arcane social forces, or by the imperfect
state of the world, or if in some way everyone was responsible, then there is no point in
the people becoming indignant or rising up against such misdeeds.
Furthermore, an attack on conspiracy theories means that the subjects will become more gullible
in Believing the General Welfare Reasons that are always put forth by the state for engaging
in any of its despotic actions.
A conspiracy theory can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the state's
ideological propaganda.
Another tried-and-true method for bending subjects to the state's will is inducing
guilt.
Any increase in private well-being can be attacked as unconscionable greed, materialism,
for Excessive Affluence.
Profit-making can be attacked as exploitation and usury.
Mutually beneficial exchanges denounced as selfishness and somehow, with the conclusion
always being drawn, that more resources should be siphoned from the private to the public
sector.
The induced guilt makes the public more ready to do just that, for while individual persons
tend to indulge in selfish greed, the failure of the state's rulers to engage in exchanges
States is supposed to signify their devotion to higher and nobler causes, parasitic predations
being apparently morally and aesthetically lofty as compared to peaceful and productive
work.
In the present more secular age, the divine right of the state has been supplemented by
the invocation of a new god, science.
State rule is now proclaimed as being ultra-scientific, as constituting planning by experts.
But while reason is invoked more than in previous centuries, this is not the true reason of
the individual in his exercise of free will.
It is still collectivist and determinist, still implying holistic aggregates and coercive
manipulation of passive subjects by their rulers.
The increasing use of scientific jargon has permitted the state's intellectuals to weave
obscurantist apologia for state rule that would only have met with derision by the populace
A robber who justified his theft by saying that he really helped his victims by his spending
giving a boost to retail trade would find few converts, but when this theory is clothed
in Keynesian equations and impressive references to the multiplier effect, it unfortunately
carries more conviction, and so the assault on common sense proceeds, each age performing
the task in its own way.
Thus, ideological support being vital to the State, it must unceasingly try to impress
the public with its legitimacy, to distinguish its activities from those of mere brigands.
The unremitting determination of its assaults on common sense is no accident, for as Mencken
vividly maintained, the average man, whatever his errors otherwise, at least sees clearly
that government is something lying outside him and outside the generality of his fellow
men, that it is a separate, independent and hostile power only partly under his control
and capable of doing him great harm.
Is it a fact of no significance that robbing the government is everywhere regarded as a
crime of less magnitude than robbing an individual or even a corporation?
What lies behind all this, I believe, is a deep sense of the fundamental antagonism between
the government and the people it governs.
It is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of
the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation mainly devoted to exploiting
the population for the benefit of its own members.
When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry
and Thrift. When the government is robbed, the worst that happens is that certain rogues
and loafers have less money to play with than they had before. The notion that they have
earned that money is never entertained. To most sensible men, it would seem ludicrous.
How the State Transcends Its Limits
As Bertrand de Jovenel has sagely pointed out, through the centuries men have formed
concepts designed to check and limit the exercise of state rule, and one after another the state
using its intellectual allies has been able to transform these concepts into intellectual
rubber stamps of legitimacy and virtue to attach to its decrees and actions.
Originally in Western Europe the concept of divine sovereignty held that the kings may
rule only according to divine law. The kings turned the concept into a rubber stamp of divine
approval for any of the king's actions. The concept of parliamentary democracy began as a popular
check upon absolute monarchical rule. It ended with parliament being the essential part of the state
and its every act totally sovereign. As de Jauvenel concludes, many writers on theories of sovereignty
have worked out one of these restrictive devices. But in the end, every single such theory has
sooner or later lost its original purpose and come to act merely as a springboard to power by providing
it with the powerful aid of an invisible sovereign with whom it could in time successfully identify
itself. Similarly, with more specific doctrines, the natural rights of the individual enshrined
in John Locke and the Bill of Rights became a status right to a job. Utilitarianism turned from
arguments for liberty to arguments against resisting the state's invasion of liberty, and so on.
Certainly the most ambitious attempt to impose limits on the state has been the Bill of Rights
and other restrictive parts of the American Constitution, in which written limits on government
became the fundamental law to be interpreted by a judiciary supposedly independent of the
other branches of government. All Americans are familiar with the process by which the construction
of limits in the Constitution has been inexorably broadened over the last century. But few have been
as keen as Professor Charles Black to see that the state has in the process largely transformed
from judicial review itself, from a limiting device, to yet another instrument for furnishing
ideological legitimacy to the government's actions.
For if a judicial decree of unconstitutional is a mighty check to government power, an
implicit or explicit verdict of constitutional is a mighty weapon for fostering public acceptance
of ever greater government power.
Professor Black begins his analysis by pointing out the crucial necessity of legitimacy for
any government to endure, this legitimation signifying basic majority acceptance of the
government and its actions.
Acceptance of legitimacy becomes a particular problem in a country such as the United States
where substantive limitations are built into the theory on which the government rests.
Let Black illustrate the problem.
The supreme risk to the government is that of disaffection and a feeling of outrage widely
disseminated throughout the population and loss of moral authority by the government
Almost everybody living under a government of limited powers must sooner or later be subjected to some governmental action which as a matter of private opinion he regards as outside the power of the government, or positively forbidden to government.
A man is drafted, though he finds nothing in the Constitution about being drafted.
A farmer is told how much wheat he can raise.
He believes and he discovers that some respectable lawyers believe with him that the government
has no more right to tell him how much wheat he can grow than it has to tell his daughter
whom she can marry.
A man goes to the federal penitentiary for saying what he wants to, and he paces his
A businessman is told what he can ask and must ask for buttermilk.
The danger is real enough that each of these people, and who is not of their number, will
confront the concept of government limitation with the reality, as he sees it, of the flagrant
overstepping of actual limits and draw the obvious conclusion as to the status of his
government with respect to legitimacy.
This danger is averted by the state propounding the doctrine that one agency must have the
ultimate decision on constitutionality and that this agency in the last analysis must
be part of the federal government.
Again, according to Black, the prime and most necessary function of the Supreme Court has
has been that of validation, not that of invalidation.
What a government of limited powers needs at the beginning and forever is some means
of satisfying the people that it has taken all steps humanly possible to stay within
its powers.
This is the condition of its legitimacy, and its legitimacy in the long run is the condition
of its life.
And the court, throughout its history, has acted as the legitimation of the government.
For while the seeming independence of the federal judiciary has played a vital part
in making its actions virtually wholly writ for the bulk of the people, it is also and
ever true that the judiciary is part and parcel of the government apparatus and appointed
by the executive and legislative branches.
Black admits that this means that the state has set itself up as judge in its own cause,
Thus violating a basic juridical principle for aiming at just decisions.
He brusquely denies the possibility of any alternative.
To black this solution, while paradoxical, is blithely self-evident.
The final power of the State must stop where the law stops it.
And who shall set the limit?
And who shall enforce the stopping against the mightiest power?
Why the State itself, of course, through its judges and its laws?
Who controls the temperate, who teaches the wise?
Were the questions concerned governmental power in a sovereign nation, it is not possible
to select an umpire who is outside government.
Every national government, so long as it is a government, must have the final say on its
own power.
Black ads.
The problem then is to devise such governmental means of deciding as will hopefully reduce
In the last analysis, Black finds the achievement of justice and legitimacy from the state's
Applying his thesis to the famous conflict between the Supreme Court and the New Deal,
Professor Black keenly chides his fellow pro-New Deal colleagues for their short-sightedness
in denouncing judicial obstruction.
Quoting Black,
The standard version of the story of the New Deal in the Court, though accurate in its
way, displaces the emphasis.
It concentrates on the difficulties, it almost forgets how the whole thing turned out.
The upshot of the matter was, and this is what I like to emphasize, that after some
twenty-four months of balking, the Supreme Court, without a single change in the law
of its composition or indeed in its actual manning, placed the affirmative stamp of legitimacy
on the New Deal, and on the whole new conception of government in America.
In this way, the Supreme Court was able to put the quietus on the large body of Americans
who had strong constitutional objections to the New Deal.
Again quoting Black, Of course, not everyone was satisfied.
The Bonnie Prince Charlie of Constitutional commanded laissez-faire still stirs the hearts
of a few zealots in the highlands of choleric unreality.
But there is no longer any significant or dangerous public doubt as to the constitutional
powers of Congress to deal as it does with the national economy.
We had no means other than the Supreme Court for imparting legitimacy to the New Deal.
As Black recognized, one major political theorist who recognized, and largely in advance, the
glaring loophole in a constitutional limit on government of placing the ultimate interpreting
The main power in the Supreme Court was John C. Calhoun.
Calhoun was not content with the miracle, but instead proceeded to a profound analysis
of the constitutional problem.
In his Disquisition, Calhoun demonstrated the inherent tendency of the state to break
through the limits of such a constitution.
Quoting Calhoun,
A written constitution certainly has many and considerable advantages, but it is a great
mistake to suppose that the mere insertion of provisions to restrict and limit the power
of the government, without investing those for whose protection they are inserted, with
the means of enforcing their observance, will be sufficient to prevent the major and dominant
party from abusing its powers.
Being the party in possession of the government, they will, from the same constitution of the
Man which makes government necessary to protect society be in favor of the powers granted
by the Constitution and opposed to the restrictions intended to limit them.
The minor or weaker party, on the contrary, would take the opposite direction and regard
them, the restrictions, as essential to their protection against the dominant party.
But where there are no means by which they could compel the major party to observe the
The only resort left to them would be a strict construction of the Constitution.
To this the major party would oppose a liberal construction.
It would be construction against construction, the one to contract and the other to enlarge
the powers of the government to the utmost.
But of what possible avail could the strict construction of the minor party be against
It's the liberal construction of the major when the one would have all of the power of
the government to carry its construction into effect and the other be deprived of all means
of enforcing its construction.
In a contest so unequal, the result would not be doubtful.
The party in favor of the restrictions would be overpowered.
The end of the contest would be the subversion of the Constitution.
The restrictions would ultimately be annulled and the government be converted into one of
Unlimited Power.
One of the few political scientists who appreciated Calhoun's analysis of the Constitution was
Professor J. Alan Smith.
Smith noted that the Constitution was designed with checks and balances to limit any one
governmental power and yet had then developed a Supreme Court with the monopoly of ultimate
interpreting power.
If the Federal Government was created to check invasions of individual liberty by the separate
States who was to check the federal power. Smith maintained that implicit in the check
and balance idea of the Constitution was the concomitant view that no one branch of government
may be conceded the ultimate power of interpretation. It was assumed by the people that the new
government could not be permitted to determine the limits of its own authority since this
This would make it, and not the Constitution, supreme.
Smith writes, It was obvious that were a provision of the Constitution was designed to limit
the powers of a governmental organ, it could be effectively nullified of its interpretation
and enforcement left to the authorities it was designed to restrain.
Clearly common sense required that no organ of the government should be able to determine
its own powers.
Common Sense and Miracles dictate very different views of government.
The solution advanced by Calhoun and seconded in this century by such writers as Smith was
of course the famous doctrine of the concurrent majority.
If any substantial minority interest in the country, specifically a state government,
believed that the federal government was exceeding its powers and encroaching on that minority,
The minority would have the right to veto this exercise of power as unconstitutional.
Applied to state governments, this theory implied the right of nullification of a federal
law or ruling within a state's jurisdiction.
In theory, the ensuing constitutional system would assure that the federal government check
any state invasion of individual rights, while the states would check excessive federal power
over the individual.
And yet, while limitations would undoubtedly be more effective than at present, there are
many difficulties and problems in the Calhoun solution.
If indeed a subordinate interest should rightly have a veto over matters concerning it, then
why stop with the states?
Why not place veto power in counties, cities and wards?
Furthermore, interests are not only sectional, they are also occupational, social and so
forth.
of Bakers or Taxi Drivers or Any Other Occupation.
Should they not be permitted a veto power over their own lives?
This brings us to the important point that the nullification theory confines its checks
to agencies of government itself.
Let us not forget that federal and state governments and their respective branches are still states.
They are still guided by their own state interests rather than by the interests of the private
citizens.
What is to prevent the Calhoun system from working in reverse, with states tyrannizing
over their citizens and only vetoing the federal government when it tries to intervene to stop
that state tyranny?
Or for states to acquiesce in federal tyranny?
What is to prevent federal and state governments from forming mutually profitable alliances
for the joint exploitation of the citizenry?
And even if the private occupational groupings were to be given some form of functional representation
in Government, what is to prevent them from using the state to gain subsidies and other
special privileges for themselves, or from imposing compulsory cartels on their own members?
In short, Calhoun does not push his path-breaking theory on concurrence far enough.
He does not push it down to the individual himself.
If the individual, after all, is the one whose rights are to be protected, then a consistent
The theory of concurrence would imply veto power by every individual, that is, some form
of unanimity principle.
When Calhoun wrote that it should be impossible to put or keep the government in action without
the concurrent consent of all, he was, perhaps unwittingly, implying just such a conclusion.
But such speculation begins to take us away from our subject, for down this path lie political
systems which could hardly be called states at all.
For one thing, just as the right of nullification for a state logically implies its right of
secession, so a right of individual nullification would imply the right of any individual to
secede from the state under which he lives.
Thus, the state has invariably shown a striking talent for the expansion of its powers beyond
any limits that might be imposed upon it.
Since the state necessarily lives by the compulsory confiscation of private capital, and since
its expansion necessarily involves ever greater incursion on private individuals and private
enterprise, we must assert that the state is profoundly and inherently anti-capitalist.
In a sense, our position is the reverse of the Marxist dictum that the state is the executive
committee of the ruling class in the present day, supposedly the capitalists.
Instead, the State, the organization of the political means, constitutes and is the source
of the ruling class, rather ruling caste, and is in permanent opposition to genuinely
private capital.
We may therefore say, with de Jovenel, only those who know nothing of any time but their
own, who are completely in the dark as to the manner of powers behaving through thousands
What the State Fears
What the state fears above all, of course, is any fundamental threat to its own power
and its own existence.
The death of a state can come about in two major ways.
A. Through conquest by another state, or B. Through revolutionary overthrow by its own
subjects, in short, by war or revolution.
War and revolution as the two basic threats invariably arouse in the state rulers their
The Fallacy of the Idea becomes evident when conscription is wielded against those who refuse to defend themselves, and are therefore forced into joining the state's military band.
Needless to add, no defense is permitted them against this act of their own state.
In war, state power is pushed to its ultimate, and under the slogans of defense and emergency,
it can impose a tyranny upon the public such as might be openly resisted in time of peace.
War thus provides many benefits to a state, and indeed every modern war has brought to the warring peoples
War, moreover, provides to a State tempting opportunities for conquest of land areas over
which it may exercise its monopoly of force.
Randolph Bourne was certainly correct when he wrote that war is the health of the State,
but to any particular State a war may spell either health or grave injury.
We may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in protecting itself rather
than its subjects by asking, which category of crime does the State pursue and punish
most intensely, those against private citizens or those against itself?
The gravest crimes in the State's lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private
Person or Property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion
of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy,
assassination of rulers, and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting
its money or evasion of its income tax, or compare the degree of zeal devoted to pursuing
As Mencken puts it in his inevitable fashion,
The number of men sitting in Atlanta and Leavenworth for revolting against the extortions of the government is always ten times as great as the number of government officials condemned for oppressing the taxpayers to their own gain.
How States Relate to One Another
Since the territorial area of the earth is divided among different states, interstate
relations must occupy much of a state's time and energy.
The natural tendency of a state is to expand its power and externally such expansion takes
place by conquest of a territorial area.
Unless a territory is stateless or uninhabited, any such expansion involves an inherent conflict
of interest between one set of state rulers and another.
Only one set of rulers can obtain a monopoly of coercion over any given territorial area
at any one time.
Complete power over a territory by state X can only be obtained by the expulsion of state
Y.
War, while risky, will be an ever-present tendency of states punctuated by periods of
peace and by shifting alliances and coalitions between states.
We have seen that the internal or domestic attempt to limit the state in the 17th through
19th centuries reached its most notable form in constitutionalism.
Its external or foreign affairs counterpart was the development of international law especially
such forms as the Law of War and Neutral's Rights. Parts of international law were originally
purely private, growing out of the need of merchants and traders everywhere to protect
their property and adjudicate disputes. Examples are Admiralty Law and the Law of Merchant.
But even the governmental rules emerged voluntarily and were not imposed by any international
Super-State. The object of the laws of war was to limit interstate destruction to the
state apparatus itself, thereby preserving the innocent civilian public from the slaughter
and devastation of war. The object of the development of neutrals' rights was to preserve
private civilian international commerce, even with enemy countries, from seizure by one
of the warring parties. The overriding aim, then, was to limit the extent of any war and
and particularly to limit its destructive impact on the private citizens of the neutral
and even the warring countries.
The jurist F. J. P. Veale charmingly described such civilized warfare as it briefly flourished
in 15th century Italy.
The rich burghers and merchants of medieval Italy were too busy making money and enjoying
life to undertake the hardships and dangers of soldiering themselves.
So they adopted the practice of hiring mercenaries to do their fighting for them and being thrifty
businesslike folk, they dismissed their mercenaries immediately after their services could be
dispensed with.
Wars were therefore fought by armies hired for each campaign.
For the first time, soldiering became a reasonable and comparatively harmless profession.
The generals of that period maneuvered against each other, often with consummate skill, but
When one had won the advantage, his opponent generally either retreated or surrendered.
It was a recognized rule that a town could only be sacked if it offered resistance.
Immunity could always be purchased by paying a ransom.
As one natural consequence, no town ever resisted, it being obvious that a government too weak
to defend its citizens had forfeited their allegiance.
had little to fear from the dangers of war which were the concern only of professional soldiers.
The well-nigh absolute separation of the private civilian from the state's wars in 18th century
Europe is highlighted by Neff. Even postal communications were not successfully restricted
for long in wartime. Letters circulated without censorship with a freedom that astonishes the
The Subjects of Two Warring Nations Talked to Each Other If They Met and When They Could Not Meet Corresponded Not As Enemies but As Friends The Modern Notion Hardly Existed That Subjects of Any Enemy Country Are Partly Accountable for the Belligerent Acts of Their Rulers Nor Had the Warring Rulers Any Firm Disposition to Stop Communications with Subjects of the Enemy
and espionage in connection with religious worship and belief were disappearing, and no comparable inquisition in connection with political or economic communications was even contemplated.
Passports were originally created to provide safe conduct in time of war.
During most of the 18th century it seldom occurred to Europeans to abandon their travel in a foreign country with which their own was fighting.
In trade being increasingly recognized as beneficial to both parties, 18th century warfare also counterbalances a considerable amount of trading with the enemy.
How far states have transcended rules of civilized warfare in this century needs no elaboration here.
In the modern era of total war combined with the technology of total destruction,
The very idea of keeping war limited to the state apparatus seems even more quaint and
obsolete than the original Constitution of the United States.
When states are not at war, agreements are often necessary to keep frictions at a minimum.
One doctrine that has gained curiously wide acceptance is the alleged sanctity of treaties.
This concept is treated as the counterpart of the sanctity of contract, but a treaty
and a genuine contract have nothing in common.
A contract transfers, in a precise manner, titles to private property.
Since a government does not, in any proper sense, own its territorial area, any agreements
that it concludes do not confer titles to the property.
If, for example, Mr. Jones sells or gives his land to Mr. Smith, Jones's heir cannot
legitimately descend upon Smith's heir and claim the land as rightfully his.
The property title has already been transferred.
Old Jones's contract is automatically binding upon young Jones because the former had already
transferred the property.
Young Jones, therefore, has no property claim.
Young Jones can only claim that which he has inherited from old Jones, and old Jones can
only bequeath property which he still owns.
But if at a certain date the government of, say, Ruritania is coerced or even bribed by
the government of Wallavia into giving up some of its territory, it is absurd to claim
that the governments or inhabitants of the two countries are forever barred from a claim
According to Reunification of Ruritania on the grounds of the sanctity of a treaty, neither
the people nor the land of Northwest Ruritania are owned by either of the two governments.
As a corollary, one government can certainly not bind, by the dead hand of the past, a
later government through treaty.
A revolutionary government which overthrew the King of Ruritania could similarly hardly
should only be called to account for the king's actions or debts, for a government is not, as is a child, a true heir to its predecessor's property.
History as a Race Between State Power and Social Power
Just as the two basic and mutually exclusive interrelations between men are peaceful cooperation or coercive exploitation,
Production or Predation So the history of mankind, particularly its
economic history, may be considered as a contest between these two principles.
On the one hand there is creative productivity, peaceful exchange and cooperation.
On the other, coercive dictation and predation over those social relations.
Albert J. Nock happily termed these contesting forces social power and state power.
Social power is man's power over nature, his cooperative transformation of nature's resources
and insight into nature's laws for the benefit of all participating individuals.
Social power is the power over nature, the living standards achieved by men in mutual
exchange.
State power, as we have seen, is the coercive and parasitic seizure of this production,
A Draining of the Fruits of Society for the Benefit of Non-Productive, Actually Anti-Productive, Rulers
While social power is over nature, state power is power over man.
Through history, man's productive and creative forces have, time and again, carved out new ways of transforming nature for man's benefit.
These have been the times when social power has spurted ahead of state power,
and the degree of state encroachment over society has considerably lessened.
But always after a greater or smaller time lag, the state has moved into these areas
to cripple and confiscate social power once more.
Amidst the flux of expansion or contraction, the state always makes sure that it seizes
and retains certain crucial command posts of the economy and society.
Among these command posts are a monopoly of violence, monopoly of the ultimate judicial
power, the channels of communication and transportation, such as post office, roads, air routes and
irrigated water, in order to mold the opinions of its future citizens.
In the modern economy, money is the critical command post.
If the 17th through the 19th centuries were in many countries of the West, times of accelerating
Social Power and a Corollary Increase in Freedom, Peace, and Material Welfare.
The 20th century has been primarily an age in which state power has been catching up,
with a consequent reversion to slavery, war, and destruction.
This parasitic process of catching up has been almost openly proclaimed by Karl Marx,
who conceded that socialism must be established through seizure of capital previously accumulated
Under Capitalism.
In this century the human race faces, once again, the virulent reign of the state, of
the state now armed with the fruits of man's creative powers, confiscated and perverted
to its own aims.
The last few centuries were times when men tried to place constitutional and other limits
on the state, only to find that such limits, as with all other attempts, have failed.
Of all the numerous forms that governments have taken over the centuries, of all the
concepts and institutions that have been tried, none has succeeded in keeping the state in
check.
The problem of the state is evidently as far from solution as ever.
Perhaps new paths of inquiry must be explored if the successful final solution of the state
Question, is ever to be attained.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute hopes you have enjoyed this audiobook.
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