WEBVTT NOTE Part I 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Our Enemy, The State by Albert J. Nock 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:07.000 Part 1 3 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:19.000 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. 4 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:23.000 This is the fact that interests the student of civilization. 5 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:41.000 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. 6 00:00:41.000 --> 00:01:00.000 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. 7 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:09.000 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. 8 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:15.680 All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to 9 00:01:15.680 --> 00:01:21.480 time on one pretext or another. There is no other source from which state power can be 10 00:01:21.480 --> 00:01:28.000 drawn. Therefore, every assumption of state power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves 11 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:34.400 society with so much less power. There is never, nor can there be, any strengthening 12 00:01:34.400 --> 00:01:41.400 of State Power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power. 13 00:01:41.840 --> 00:01:47.800 Moreover, it follows that with any exercise of state power, not only the exercise of social 14 00:01:47.800 --> 00:01:53.040 power in the same direction, but the disposition to exercise it in that direction tends to 15 00:01:53.040 --> 00:01:59.800 dwindle. Mayor Gaynor astonished the whole of New York when he pointed out to a correspondent 16 00:01:59.800 --> 00:02:06.800 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 of England and of this country, but all citizens of England and of this country. 17 00:02:29.800 --> 00:02:36.800 Here to fore, 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 coincidence. 18 00:02:59.800 --> 00:03:29.800 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, the government of the United States of America, the United States of America, the United States of America, the United States of America, the United States of America, the United States of America, 19 00:03:29.800 --> 00:03:35.920 James Madison called the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating 20 00:03:35.920 --> 00:03:43.060 force in the government. And the passage of time has proved that they were right. The 21 00:03:43.060 --> 00:03:48.580 effect of this upon the balance between state power and social power is clear and also its 22 00:03:48.580 --> 00:03:54.000 effect of a general indoctrination with the idea that an exercise of social power upon 23 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:58.840 on such matters is no longer called for. 24 00:03:58.840 --> 00:04:04.160 It is largely in this way that the progressive conversion of social power into state power 25 00:04:04.160 --> 00:04:08.480 becomes acceptable and gets itself accepted. 26 00:04:08.480 --> 00:04:13.480 When the Johnstown Flood occurred, social power was immediately mobilized and applied 27 00:04:13.480 --> 00:04:15.760 with intelligence and vigour. 28 00:04:15.760 --> 00:04:20.760 Its abundance, measured by money alone, was so great that when everything was finally 29 00:04:20.760 --> 00:04:27.760 If such a catastrophe happens now, not only is social power perhaps too depleted for a like exercise, but the general instinct would be to let the state see to it. 30 00:04:27.760 --> 00:04:34.760 Not only has social power atrophied to that extent, but the disposition to exercise it in that particular direction has atrophied with it. 31 00:04:34.760 --> 00:04:41.760 If the state has made such matters its business and has been atrophied with it, then the state will be atrophied with it. 32 00:04:41.760 --> 00:04:48.760 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? 33 00:04:48.760 --> 00:04:55.760 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? 34 00:04:55.760 --> 00:05:04.760 We can get some kind of rough measure of this general atrophy by our own disposition when approached by a beggar. 35 00:05:04.760 --> 00:05:08.760 Two years ago we might have been moved to give him something. 36 00:05:08.760 --> 00:05:14.300 Today, we are moved to refer him to the state's relief agency. 37 00:05:14.300 --> 00:05:21.060 The state has said to society, you are either not exercising enough power to meet the emergency, 38 00:05:21.060 --> 00:05:25.840 or are exercising it in what I think is an incompetent way. 39 00:05:25.840 --> 00:05:30.720 So I shall confiscate your power and exercise it to suit myself. 40 00:05:30.720 --> 00:05:36.920 Hence, when the beggar asks us for a quarter, our instinct is to say that the state has 41 00:05:36.920 --> 00:05:43.920 Every positive intervention that the State makes upon industry and commerce has a similar effect. 42 00:05:51.760 --> 00:05:57.680 When the State intervenes to fix wages or prices or to prescribe the conditions of competition, 43 00:05:57.680 --> 00:06:02.160 it virtually tells the enterpriser that he is not exercising social power in the right 44 00:06:02.160 --> 00:06:07.720 way, and therefore it proposes to confiscate his power and exercise it according to the 45 00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:14.400 state's own judgment of what is best. Hence the enterprise's instinct is to let the state 46 00:06:14.400 --> 00:06:21.760 look after the consequences. As a simple illustration of this, a manufacturer of a highly specialized 47 00:06:21.760 --> 00:06:27.040 type of textiles was saying to me the other day that he had kept his mill going at a loss 48 00:06:27.040 --> 00:06:31.760 for five years because he did not want to turn his work people on the street in such 49 00:06:31.760 --> 00:06:38.760 But now that the state has stepped in to tell him how he must run his business, the state might jolly well take the responsibility. 50 00:06:38.760 --> 00:06:45.760 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. 51 00:06:45.760 --> 00:06:52.760 The accumulation of state power in various countries has been so accelerated and diversified within the last 20 years, 52 00:06:52.760 --> 00:07:00.820 The accumulation of state power in various countries has been so accelerated and diversified 53 00:07:00.820 --> 00:07:07.440 within the last 20 years that we now see the state functioning as telegraphist, telephonist, 54 00:07:07.440 --> 00:07:13.520 match peddler, radio operator, cannon founder, railway builder and owner, railway operator, 55 00:07:13.520 --> 00:07:19.560 wholesale and retail tobacconist, chip builder and owner, chief chemist, harbour maker and 56 00:07:19.560 --> 00:07:26.560 It is obvious that private forms of these enterprises must tend to dwindle in proportion as the energy of the state's encroachment 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 its needs. 57 00:07:49.560 --> 00:07:55.320 Institute itself, even to the point of outlawing any exercise of social power whatever in the 58 00:07:55.320 --> 00:08:04.320 premises, in other words giving itself a monopoly. Instances of this expedient are common. The 59 00:08:04.320 --> 00:08:10.460 one we are probably most acquainted with is the state's monopoly of letter carrying. Social 60 00:08:10.460 --> 00:08:16.520 power is stopped by sheer fiat from application to this form of enterprise, notwithstanding 61 00:08:16.520 --> 00:08:46.520 The advantages of this monopoly and 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 the state could be so well-distributed. 62 00:08:46.520 --> 00:08:53.520 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, are accustomed to it. 63 00:09:16.520 --> 00:09:23.220 Our American glossary now has it conditioned to new increments of state power, and they 64 00:09:23.220 --> 00:09:30.720 tend to take the process of continuous accumulation as quite in order. All the state's institutional 65 00:09:30.720 --> 00:09:37.420 voices unite in confirming this tendency. They unite in exhibiting the progressive conversion 66 00:09:37.420 --> 00:09:43.780 of social power into state power as something not only quite in order, but even as wholesome 67 00:09:43.780 --> 00:09:50.780 In the United States at the present time, the principal indexes of the increase of state power are three in number. 68 00:09:58.780 --> 00:10:04.780 First, the point to which the centralization of state authority has been carried. 69 00:10:04.780 --> 00:10:11.780 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 Reserve. 70 00:10:13.780 --> 00:10:20.780 State power has not only been thus concentrated at Washington, but it has been so far concentrated 71 00:10:23.480 --> 00:10:30.420 into the hands of the executive that the existing regime is a regime of personal government. 72 00:10:30.420 --> 00:10:36.820 It is nominally republican but actually monocratic, a curious anomaly but highly characteristic 73 00:10:36.820 --> 00:10:41.940 of a people little gifted with intellectual integrity. 74 00:10:41.940 --> 00:10:47.960 Personal government is not exercised here in the same ways as in Italy, Russia or Germany, 75 00:10:47.960 --> 00:10:54.860 for there is as yet no state interest to be served by so doing, but rather the contrary, 76 00:10:54.860 --> 00:11:01.380 while in those countries there is. But personal government is always personal government. 77 00:11:01.380 --> 00:11:07.820 The mode of its exercise is a matter of immediate political expediency and is determined entirely 78 00:11:07.820 --> 00:11:12.180 by Circumstances. 79 00:11:12.180 --> 00:11:18.760 This regime was established by a coup d'état of a new and unusual kind, practicable only 80 00:11:18.760 --> 00:11:21.080 in a rich country. 81 00:11:21.080 --> 00:11:27.360 It was affected not by violence like Louis Napoleon's or by terrorism like Mussolini's, 82 00:11:27.360 --> 00:11:30.020 but by purchase. 83 00:11:30.020 --> 00:11:36.780 It therefore presents what might be called an American variant of the coup d'état. 84 00:11:36.780 --> 00:11:41.600 Our National Legislature was not suppressed by a force of arms like the French Assembly 85 00:11:41.600 --> 00:11:48.600 in 1851, but was brought out of its functions with public money. And as appeared most conspicuously 86 00:11:49.500 --> 00:11:56.500 in the elections of November 1934, the consolidation of the coup d'etat was effected by the same 87 00:11:56.500 --> 00:12:02.260 means. The corresponding functions in the smaller units were reduced under the personal 88 00:12:02.260 --> 00:12:09.260 Control of the Executive. This is a most remarkable phenomenon, possibly nothing quite like it 89 00:12:09.500 --> 00:12:16.500 ever took place, and its character and implications deserve the most careful attention. 90 00:12:17.340 --> 00:12:22.180 A second index is supplied by the prodigious extension of the bureaucratic principle that 91 00:12:22.180 --> 00:12:28.860 is now observable. This is a tested premier facie by the number of new boards, bureaux 92 00:12:28.860 --> 00:12:35.860 The Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve are the only federal bureau and commissioners set up at Washington in the last two years. 93 00:12:35.860 --> 00:12:46.860 They are reported as representing something like 90,000 new employees appointed outside the civil service, and the total of the federal payroll in Washington is reported as something over $3 million per month. 94 00:12:46.860 --> 00:12:50.860 This, however, is relatively a small matter. 95 00:12:50.860 --> 00:13:05.860 The pressure of centralization has tended powerfully to convert every official and every political aspirant in the smaller units into a venal and complacent agency of the Federal bureaucracy. 96 00:13:05.860 --> 00:13:14.860 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. 97 00:13:14.860 --> 00:13:27.860 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 suppression. 98 00:13:27.860 --> 00:13:40.860 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. 99 00:13:40.860 --> 00:13:49.860 They came to Rome with their hats in their hands as governors, congressional aspirants and such like now go to Washington. 100 00:13:49.860 --> 00:13:57.860 Their eyes and thoughts were constantly fixed on Rome because recognition and preferment lay that way. 101 00:13:57.860 --> 00:14:09.860 And in their incorrigible sycophancy they became, as Plutarch says, like hyperchondriacs who dare not eat or take a bath without consulting their physician. 102 00:14:09.860 --> 00:14:21.900 A third index is seen in the erection of poverty and mendicancy into a permanent political asset. 103 00:14:21.900 --> 00:14:27.340 Two years ago many of our people were in hard straits, to some extent no doubt through no 104 00:14:27.340 --> 00:14:32.580 fault of their own, though it is now clear that in the popular view of their case, as 105 00:14:32.580 --> 00:14:37.740 well as in the political view, the line between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor 106 00:14:37.740 --> 00:14:44.740 were not distinctly drawn. Popular feeling ran high at the time, and the prevailing wretchedness 107 00:14:44.740 --> 00:14:50.580 was regarded with undiscriminating emotion as evidence of some general wrong done upon 108 00:14:50.580 --> 00:14:56.780 its victims by society at large, rather than as the natural penalty of greed, folly or 109 00:14:56.780 --> 00:15:03.780 actual misdoings, which in large part it was. The State, always instinctively turning every 110 00:15:03.780 --> 00:15:09.260 The State, effectively turning every contingency into a resource for accelerating the conversion 111 00:15:09.260 --> 00:15:15.340 of social power into state power, was quick to take advantage of this state of mind. All 112 00:15:15.340 --> 00:15:20.840 that was needed to organize these unfortunates into an invaluable political property was 113 00:15:20.840 --> 00:15:27.840 to declare the doctrine that the State owes all its citizens living. And this was accordingly 114 00:15:27.840 --> 00:15:34.840 It immediately precipitated an enormous mass of subsidized voting power, an enormous resource 115 00:15:35.400 --> 00:15:40.400 for strengthening the state at the expense of society. 116 00:15:40.400 --> 00:15:47.400 3. There is an impression that the enhancement of state power, which has taken place since 117 00:15:48.520 --> 00:15:54.800 1932, is provisional and temporary, that the corresponding depletion of social power is 118 00:15:54.800 --> 00:16:01.800 is by way of a kind of emergency loan, and therefore is not to be scrutinized too closely. 119 00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:08.040 There is every probability that this belief is devoid of foundation. No doubt our present 120 00:16:08.040 --> 00:16:14.560 regime will be modified in one way and another. Indeed, it must be, for the process of consolidation 121 00:16:14.560 --> 00:16:20.840 itself requires it. But any essential change would be quite unhistorical, quite without 122 00:16:20.840 --> 00:16:26.480 are precedent and is therefore most unlikely, and by an essential change, I mean one that 123 00:16:26.480 --> 00:16:33.480 will tend to redistribute actual power between the state and society. In the nature of things, 124 00:16:34.200 --> 00:16:38.920 there is no reason why such a change should take place, and every reason why it should 125 00:16:38.920 --> 00:16:45.920 not. We shall see various apparent recessions, apparent compromises, but the one thing we 126 00:16:45.920 --> 00:16:53.920 The first thing we may be quite sure of is that none of these will tend to diminish actual state power. 127 00:16:53.920 --> 00:17:03.920 For example, we shall no doubt shortly see the great pressure group of politically organized poverty and mendicancy subsidized indirectly instead of directly, 128 00:17:03.920 --> 00:17:12.920 because the state interests cannot long keep pace with the hand-over-head disposition of the masses to loot their own treasury. 129 00:17:12.920 --> 00:17:18.960 The method of direct subsidy or sheer cash purchase will therefore in all probability 130 00:17:18.960 --> 00:17:25.760 give way to the indirect method of what is called social legislation, that is, a multiplex 131 00:17:25.760 --> 00:17:32.320 system of state-managed pensions, insurance and indemnities of various kinds. This is 132 00:17:32.320 --> 00:17:38.640 an apparent recession and when it occurs it will no doubt be proclaimed as an actual recession, 133 00:17:38.640 --> 00:17:41.800 No doubt accepted as such, but is it? 134 00:17:41.800 --> 00:17:47.240 Does it actually tend to diminish state power and increase social power? 135 00:17:47.240 --> 00:17:50.740 Obviously not, but quite the opposite. 136 00:17:50.740 --> 00:17:55.400 It tends to consolidate firmly this particular fraction of state power 137 00:17:55.400 --> 00:17:59.240 and opens the way to getting an indefinite increment upon it 138 00:17:59.240 --> 00:18:04.760 by the mere continuous invention of new courses and developments of state-administered social 139 00:18:04.760 --> 00:18:11.760 Education, which is an extremely simple business. One may add the observation, for whatever 140 00:18:11.760 --> 00:18:17.140 its evidential value may be worth, that if the effect of progressive social legislation 141 00:18:17.140 --> 00:18:23.700 upon the sum total of state power were unfavourable or even nil, we should hardly have found Prince 142 00:18:23.700 --> 00:18:29.400 de Bismarck and the British liberal politicians of forty years ago going in for anything remotely 143 00:18:29.400 --> 00:18:36.400 When, therefore, the inquiring student of civilization has occasion to observe this or any other apparent recession upon any point of our present regime, he may contend himself with asking the one question, what effect has this upon the sum total of state power? 144 00:18:51.500 --> 00:18:58.500 The answer he gives himself will show conclusively whether the recession is actual or apparent, and this is all he is concerned to know. 145 00:18:59.400 --> 00:19:02.720 and No. 146 00:19:02.720 --> 00:19:07.980 There is also an impression that if actual recessions do not come about by themselves, 147 00:19:07.980 --> 00:19:14.420 they may be brought about by the expedient of voting one party out and another one in. 148 00:19:14.420 --> 00:19:19.880 This idea rests upon certain assumptions that experience has shown to be unsound, the first 149 00:19:19.880 --> 00:19:23.980 one being that the power of the ballot is what republican political theory makes it 150 00:19:23.980 --> 00:19:29.620 out to be and that therefore the electorate has an effective choice in the matter. 151 00:19:29.620 --> 00:19:35.020 It is a matter of open and notorious fact that nothing like this is true. 152 00:19:35.020 --> 00:19:40.300 Our nominally republican system is actually built on an imperial model, with our professional 153 00:19:40.300 --> 00:19:44.260 politicians standing in the place of the praetorian guards. 154 00:19:44.260 --> 00:19:50.260 They meet from time to time, decide what can be got away with and how and who is to do 155 00:19:50.260 --> 00:19:55.720 do it, and the electorate votes according to their prescriptions. 156 00:19:55.720 --> 00:20:00.900 Under these conditions it is easy to provide the appearance of any desired concession of 157 00:20:00.900 --> 00:20:07.900 state power without the reality. Our history shows innumerable instances of very easy dealing 158 00:20:08.040 --> 00:20:15.040 with problems in practical politics much more difficult than that. One may remark that in 159 00:20:15.040 --> 00:20:27.040 I would like to remark that in this connection also the notoriously baseless assumption that party designations connote principles and that party pledges imply performance. 160 00:20:27.040 --> 00:20:41.040 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 theoretical, identical. 161 00:20:41.040 --> 00:20:47.520 Whereas in theory they are directly opposed and this opposition invariably declares itself 162 00:20:47.520 --> 00:20:54.520 in practice to the precise extent that circumstances permit. However, without pursuing these matters 163 00:20:54.760 --> 00:20:59.580 further at the moment, it is probably enough to observe here that in the nature of things 164 00:20:59.580 --> 00:21:05.480 the exercise of personal government, the control of a huge and growing bureaucracy and the 165 00:21:05.480 --> 00:21:11.960 The management of an enormous mass of subsidized voting power are as agreeable to one stripe 166 00:21:11.960 --> 00:21:18.800 of politicians as they are to another. Presumably they interest a republican or a progressive 167 00:21:18.800 --> 00:21:25.160 as much as they do a democrat, communist, farmer, laborite, socialist or whatever a 168 00:21:25.160 --> 00:21:31.680 politician may, for electioneering purposes, see fit to call himself. This was demonstrated 169 00:21:31.680 --> 00:21:38.240 in the Local Campaigns of 1934 by the practical attitude of politicians who represented nominal 170 00:21:38.240 --> 00:21:44.760 opposing parties. It is now being further demonstrated by the desirable haste that the 171 00:21:44.760 --> 00:21:50.280 leaders of the official opposition are making towards what they call reorganization of their 172 00:21:50.280 --> 00:21:56.680 party. One may well be inattentive to their words. Their actions, however, mean simply 173 00:21:56.680 --> 00:22:26.680 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 expectations of an essential change of regime through a change of government, through a change of government, through a change of government, through a change of government, through a change of government, 174 00:22:26.680 --> 00:22:34.040 Party Administration is illusory. On the contrary, it is quite clear that whatever party competition 175 00:22:34.040 --> 00:22:40.280 we shall see hereafter will be on the same terms as heretofore. It will be a competition 176 00:22:40.280 --> 00:22:46.320 for control and management, and it would naturally issue in still closer centralization, still 177 00:22:46.320 --> 00:22:51.880 further extension of the bureaucratic principle, and still larger concessions to subsidized 178 00:22:51.880 --> 00:22:58.760 Voting Power. This course would be strictly historical and is furthermore to be expected 179 00:22:58.760 --> 00:23:05.760 as lying in the nature of things, as it so obviously does. Indeed, it is by this means 180 00:23:07.040 --> 00:23:12.980 that the aim of the collectivists seems likeliest to be attained in this country, this aim being 181 00:23:12.980 --> 00:23:18.320 the complete extinction of social power through absorption by the state. Their fundamental 182 00:23:18.320 --> 00:23:23.760 The Federal Doctrine was formulated and invested with a quasi-religious sanction by the idealist 183 00:23:23.760 --> 00:23:28.960 philosophers of the last century, and among people who have accepted it in terms as well 184 00:23:28.960 --> 00:23:34.240 as in fact, it is expressed in formulas almost identical with theirs. 185 00:23:34.240 --> 00:23:40.200 Thus, for example, when Hitler says that the State dominates the nation because it alone 186 00:23:40.200 --> 00:23:47.120 represents it, he is only putting into loose popular language the formula of Hegel, that 187 00:23:47.120 --> 00:23:53.840 The state is the general substance whereof individuals are but accidents. 188 00:23:53.840 --> 00:23:59.400 Or again when Mussolini says, everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing 189 00:23:59.400 --> 00:24:05.840 against the state, he is merely vulgarizing the doctrine of Fichte that the state is the 190 00:24:05.840 --> 00:24:12.680 superior power, ultimate and beyond appeal, absolutely independent. 191 00:24:12.680 --> 00:24:21.040 It may be in place to remark here the essential identity of the various extant forms of collectivism. 192 00:24:21.040 --> 00:24:26.880 The superficial distinctions of fascism, bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists 193 00:24:26.880 --> 00:24:33.080 and publicists. The serious student sees in them only the one root idea of a complete 194 00:24:33.080 --> 00:24:39.320 conversion of social power into state power. When Hitler and Mussolini invoke a kind of 195 00:24:39.320 --> 00:24:44.980 of debased and hoodwinking mysticism to aid their acceleration of this process, the student 196 00:24:44.980 --> 00:24:52.040 at once recognizes his old friend, the formula of Hegel, that the state incarnates the divine 197 00:24:52.040 --> 00:25:00.000 idea upon earth, and he is not hoodwinked. The journalist and impressionable traveler 198 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:06.040 may make all they will of the new religion of Bolshevism. The student contents himself 199 00:25:06.040 --> 00:25:36.040 4. 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, perhaps. Two things, however, are to be observed. First, that it has gone a long way, at a rate that is far too high for social power. 200 00:25:36.040 --> 00:25:42.560 of Progress that has of late been greatly accelerated. What has chiefly differentiated 201 00:25:42.560 --> 00:25:49.200 its progress here from its progress in other countries is its unspectacular character. 202 00:25:49.200 --> 00:25:55.520 Mr Jefferson wrote in 1823 that there was no danger he dreaded so much as the consolidation 203 00:25:55.520 --> 00:26:00.840 of our government by the noiseless and therefore unalarming instrumentality of this Supreme 204 00:26:00.840 --> 00:26:07.840 These words characterize every advance that we have made in state aggrandizement. 205 00:26:07.840 --> 00:26:16.840 Each one has been noiseless and therefore unalarming, especially to a people notoriously preoccupied, inattentive and incurious. 206 00:26:16.840 --> 00:26:21.840 Even the coup d'etat of 1932 was noiseless and unalarming. 207 00:26:21.840 --> 00:26:28.840 In Russia, Italy, Germany the coup d'etat was violent and spectacular. It had to be. 208 00:26:28.840 --> 00:26:37.140 It had to be, but here it was neither. Under covers of a nationwide, state-managed mobilization 209 00:26:37.140 --> 00:26:42.800 of inane buffoonery and aimless commotion, it took place in so unspectacular a way that 210 00:26:42.800 --> 00:26:50.220 it is true nature escaped notice, and even now is not generally understood. The method 211 00:26:50.220 --> 00:26:55.600 of consolidating the ensuing regime, moreover, was also noiseless and unalarming. It was 212 00:26:55.600 --> 00:27:01.720 is merely the prosaic and unspectacular higgling of the market, to which a long and uniform 213 00:27:01.720 --> 00:27:08.600 political experience have accustomed us. A visitor from a poorer and thriftier country 214 00:27:08.600 --> 00:27:15.220 might have regarded Mr Farley's activities in the local campaigns of 1934 as striking 215 00:27:15.220 --> 00:27:22.280 or even spectacular, but they made no such impression on us. They seemed so familiar, 216 00:27:22.280 --> 00:27:29.000 So much the regular thing that one heard little comment on them. Moreover, political habit 217 00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:35.320 led us to attribute whatever unfavorable comment we did hear to interest, either partisan or 218 00:27:35.320 --> 00:27:41.060 monetary interest, or both. We put it down to the jaundiced judgment of persons with 219 00:27:41.060 --> 00:27:48.060 access to grind, and naturally the regime did all it could to encourage this view. 220 00:27:48.060 --> 00:28:03.060 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. 221 00:28:03.060 --> 00:28:11.060 The force of phrase and name distorts the identification of our own actual acceptances and acquiescences. 222 00:28:11.060 --> 00:28:22.060 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. 223 00:28:22.060 --> 00:28:36.060 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 in our freedom from the yoke of a dictator's tyranny. 224 00:28:36.060 --> 00:28:43.060 No American politician would dream of breaking in our routine of litanies with anything of the kind. 225 00:28:43.060 --> 00:28:51.060 We may imagine, for example, the shock to popular sentiment that would ensue upon Mr. Roosevelt's declaring publicly that 226 00:28:51.060 --> 00:28:58.060 the state embraces everything and nothing has value outside the state, the state creates right. 227 00:28:58.060 --> 00:29:10.060 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. 228 00:29:10.060 --> 00:29:21.060 Suppose Mr. Roosevelt should defend his regime by publicly reasserting Hegel's dictum that the state alone possesses rights because it is the strongest. 229 00:29:21.060 --> 00:29:27.060 One can hardly imagine that our public would get that down without a great deal of retching. 230 00:29:27.060 --> 00:29:36.060 Yet how far, really, is that doctrine alien to our public's actual acquiescences? Surely not far. 231 00:29:36.060 --> 00:29:44.060 The point is that in respect of the relation between the theory and the actual practice of public affairs, 232 00:29:44.060 --> 00:29:47.060 the American is the most unphilosophical of beings. 233 00:29:47.060 --> 00:30:12.060 The rationalisation of conduct in general is most repugnant to him. He prefers to emotionalise 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 recognising it as an inconsistency. 234 00:30:12.060 --> 00:30:42.060 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, Trollops and Chateaubriand put together. This was the noted Sam Simonian and political economist Michel Chevalier. 235 00:30:42.060 --> 00:30:55.060 Professor Shinard, in his Admiral 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. 236 00:30:55.060 --> 00:31:11.060 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 we are considering. 237 00:31:11.060 --> 00:31:18.060 An army on the march has no philosophy. It views itself as a creature of the moment. 238 00:31:18.460 --> 00:31:24.940 It does not rationalize conduct except in terms of an immediate end. As Tennyson observed, 239 00:31:24.940 --> 00:31:30.340 there is pretty strict official understanding against it doing so. Theirs is not to reason 240 00:31:30.340 --> 00:31:33.820 why. 241 00:31:33.820 --> 00:31:38.580 Emotionalizing conduct is another matter, and the more of it, the better. It is encouraged 242 00:31:38.580 --> 00:31:45.380 by a whole elaborate paraphernalia of showy etiquette, flags, music, uniforms, decorations 243 00:31:45.380 --> 00:31:50.380 and the careful cultivation of a very special sort of camaraderie. 244 00:31:50.380 --> 00:31:55.860 In every relation to the reason of the thing, however, in the ability and eagerness, as 245 00:31:55.860 --> 00:31:59.660 Plato puts it, to see things as they are. 246 00:31:59.660 --> 00:32:05.720 The mentality of an army on the march is merely so much delayed adolescence, it remains persistently 247 00:32:05.720 --> 00:32:35.720 The Theory of Money and Credit The Theory of Money and Credit 248 00:32:35.720 --> 00:32:42.720 The IJARB program 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. 249 00:32:49.240 --> 00:32:56.240 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. 250 00:32:56.240 --> 00:33:02.400 explains that it has brought us where we are and has got us what we have. 251 00:33:02.400 --> 00:33:07.680 Look at a continent subdued, see the spread of our industry and commerce, our railways, 252 00:33:07.680 --> 00:33:11.560 newspapers, finance companies, schools, colleges, what do you will? 253 00:33:11.560 --> 00:33:16.240 Well, if all this has been done without a philosophy, if we have grown to this unrivaled 254 00:33:16.240 --> 00:33:21.000 greatness without any attention to the theory of things, does it not show that philosophy 255 00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:26.000 and the theory of things are all moonshine and not worth a practical people's consideration? 256 00:33:26.000 --> 00:33:33.480 The morale of an army on the march is good enough for us, and we are proud of it. 257 00:33:33.480 --> 00:33:38.740 The present generation does not speak in quite this tone of robust certitude. 258 00:33:38.740 --> 00:33:44.100 It seems, if anything, rather less openly contemptuous of philosophy. 259 00:33:44.100 --> 00:33:49.180 One even sees some signs of a suspicion that in our present circumstances the theory of 260 00:33:49.180 --> 00:33:52.160 things might be worth looking into. 261 00:33:52.160 --> 00:33:56.520 And it is especially towards the theory of sovereignty and rulership that this new attitude 262 00:33:56.520 --> 00:34:00.300 of hospitality appears to be developing. 263 00:34:00.300 --> 00:34:05.400 The condition of public affairs in all countries, notably our own, has done more than bring 264 00:34:05.400 --> 00:34:11.160 under review the mere current practice of politics, the character and quality of representative 265 00:34:11.160 --> 00:34:17.080 politicians and the relative merits of this or that form or mode of government. 266 00:34:17.080 --> 00:34:23.060 It has served to suggest attention to the one institution, whereof all those forms or modes 267 00:34:23.060 --> 00:34:29.760 are but the several, and, from the theoretical point of view, indifferent manifestations. 268 00:34:29.760 --> 00:34:36.560 It suggests that finality does not lie with consideration of species but of genus. 269 00:34:36.560 --> 00:34:40.700 It does not lie with the consideration of the characteristic marks that differentiate 270 00:34:40.700 --> 00:34:49.100 The Republican State, Monocratic State, constitutional, collectivist, totalitarian, hitlerian, bolshevist, 271 00:34:49.100 --> 00:34:56.100 what you will. It lies with the consideration of the state itself. 272 00:34:56.100 --> 00:35:03.700 5. There appears to be a curious difficulty about exercising reflective thought upon the 273 00:35:03.700 --> 00:35:10.180 actual nature of an institution into which one was born and one's ancestors were born. 274 00:35:10.180 --> 00:35:13.700 One accepts it as one does the atmosphere. 275 00:35:13.700 --> 00:35:18.300 One's practical adjustments to it are made by a kind of reflex. 276 00:35:18.300 --> 00:35:23.740 One seldom thinks about the air until one notices some change, favorable or unfavorable, 277 00:35:23.740 --> 00:35:27.220 and then one's thought about it is special. 278 00:35:27.220 --> 00:35:33.380 One thinks about purer air, lighter air, heavier air, not about air. 279 00:35:33.380 --> 00:35:36.680 So it is with certain human institutions. 280 00:35:36.680 --> 00:35:42.000 We know that they exist, that they affect us in various ways, but we do not ask how 281 00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:47.880 they came about, or what their original intention was, or what primary function it is they are 282 00:35:47.880 --> 00:35:54.440 actually fulfilling. And when they affect us so unfavorably that we rebel against them, 283 00:35:54.440 --> 00:36:00.440 we contemplate substituting nothing beyond some modification or variant of the same institution. 284 00:36:00.440 --> 00:36:06.720 Thus, colonial America, oppressed by the monarchical state, brings in the Republican 285 00:36:06.720 --> 00:36:13.720 state. Germany gives us the Republican state for the Hitlerian state. Russia exchanges 286 00:36:14.800 --> 00:36:19.640 the monocratic state for the collectivist state. Italy exchanges the constitutionalist 287 00:36:19.640 --> 00:36:26.640 state for the totalitarian state. It is interesting to observe that in the year 1935, the average 288 00:36:26.640 --> 00:36:32.960 In the year 1935, the average individual's incurious attitude towards the phenomenon of 289 00:36:32.960 --> 00:36:37.880 the state is precisely what his attitude was toward the phenomenon of the church in the 290 00:36:37.880 --> 00:36:41.160 year, say, 1500. 291 00:36:41.160 --> 00:36:46.120 The state was then a very weak institution, the church was very strong. 292 00:36:46.120 --> 00:36:50.900 The individual was born into the church as his ancestors had been for generations in 293 00:36:50.900 --> 00:36:56.860 and precisely the formal documented fashion in which he is now born into the state. 294 00:36:56.860 --> 00:37:02.380 He was taxed for the church's support, as he now is for the state's support. 295 00:37:02.380 --> 00:37:07.300 He was supposed to accept the official theory and doctrine of the church to conform to its 296 00:37:07.300 --> 00:37:13.500 discipline and in a general way to do as it told him, again precisely the sanctions that 297 00:37:13.500 --> 00:37:16.620 the state now lays upon him. 298 00:37:16.620 --> 00:37:21.460 If he were reluctant or recalcitrant, the Church made a satisfactory amount of trouble 299 00:37:21.460 --> 00:37:24.820 for him, as the State now does. 300 00:37:24.820 --> 00:37:28.940 Notwithstanding all this, it does not appear to have occurred to the Church-citizen of 301 00:37:28.940 --> 00:37:35.140 that day, any more than it occurs to the State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution 302 00:37:35.140 --> 00:37:38.260 it was that claimed his allegiance. 303 00:37:38.260 --> 00:37:39.400 There it was. 304 00:37:39.400 --> 00:37:45.760 He accepted its own account of itself, took it as it stood, and at its own valuation. 305 00:37:45.760 --> 00:37:50.720 From when he revolted fifty years later, he merely exchanged one form or mode of the Church 306 00:37:50.720 --> 00:37:58.240 for another, the Roman for the Calvinist, Lutheran, Zwinglian, or what not. Again, quite 307 00:37:58.240 --> 00:38:03.740 as the modern state citizen exchanges one mode of the state for another. He did not 308 00:38:03.740 --> 00:38:12.600 examine the institution itself, nor does the state citizen today. 309 00:38:12.600 --> 00:38:17.500 My purpose in writing is to raise the question whether the enormous depletion of social power 310 00:38:17.500 --> 00:38:22.740 which we are witnessing everywhere does not suggest the importance of knowing more than 311 00:38:22.740 --> 00:38:28.280 we do about the essential nature of the institution that is so rapidly absorbing this volume of 312 00:38:28.280 --> 00:38:35.060 power. One of my friends said to me lately that if the public utility corporations did 313 00:38:35.060 --> 00:38:41.120 not mend their ways, the state would take over their business and operate it. He spoke 314 00:38:41.120 --> 00:38:47.200 work with a curiously reverent air of finality. Just so, I thought, might a church citizen 315 00:38:47.200 --> 00:38:53.320 at the end of the 15th century have spoken of some impending intervention of the church, 316 00:38:53.320 --> 00:38:58.040 and I wondered then whether he had any better informed and closer reasoned theory of the 317 00:38:58.040 --> 00:39:05.880 state than his prototype had of the church. Frankly, I am sure he had not. His pseudo-conception 318 00:39:05.880 --> 00:39:10.200 was merely an unreasoned acceptance of the state on its own terms and at its own 319 00:39:10.200 --> 00:39:11.600 valuation. 320 00:39:11.600 --> 00:39:15.400 He showed himself no more intelligent and no less 321 00:39:15.400 --> 00:39:20.440 than the whole mass of state citizenry at large. 322 00:39:20.440 --> 00:39:25.560 It appears to me that with the depletion of social power going on at the rate it is, 323 00:39:25.560 --> 00:39:29.360 the state citizen should look very closely into the essential nature of the 324 00:39:29.360 --> 00:39:32.320 institution that is bringing it about. 325 00:39:32.320 --> 00:39:37.520 He should ask himself whether he has a theory of the state, and if so, whether he can assure 326 00:39:37.520 --> 00:39:43.040 himself that history supports it. He will not find this a matter that can be settled 327 00:39:43.040 --> 00:39:50.040 off-hand. It needs a good deal of investigation and a stiff exercise of reflective thought. 328 00:39:50.320 --> 00:39:56.080 He should ask in the first place how the state originated and why. It must have come about 329 00:39:56.080 --> 00:40:01.080 That seems an extremely easy question to answer, but he will not find it so. 330 00:40:01.080 --> 00:40:08.080 Then he should ask what it is that history exhibits continuously as the state's primary function. 331 00:40:08.080 --> 00:40:15.080 Then, whether he finds that the state and government are strictly synonymous terms, 332 00:40:15.080 --> 00:40:18.080 he uses them as such, but are they? 333 00:40:18.080 --> 00:40:24.080 Are there any invariable characteristic marks that differentiate the institutes of history 334 00:40:24.080 --> 00:40:31.080 Marx that differentiate the institution of government from the institution of the state. 335 00:40:31.300 --> 00:40:36.980 Then finally he should decide whether by the testimony of history the state is to be regarded 336 00:40:36.980 --> 00:40:43.980 as in essence a social or an anti-social institution. It is pretty clear now that if the church 337 00:40:45.840 --> 00:40:52.200 citizen of 1500 had put his mind on questions as fundamental as these, his civilization 338 00:40:52.200 --> 00:40:58.760 One might have had a much easier and pleasanter course to run, and the state citizen today 339 00:40:58.760 --> 00:41:00.800 may profit by his experience.