Our Enemy, The State, by Albert J. Nock, Part 2
As far back as one can follow the run of civilization, it presents two fundamentally different types
of political organization. This difference is not one of degree, but of kind. It does
not do to take the one type as merely marking a lower order of civilization and the other
A good understanding of this error and its effects is supplied by Thomas Paine. At the
to classify both as species of the same genus, to classify both under the generic term of
government, though this also until very lately has been done, and has always led to confusion
and misunderstanding.
A good understanding of this error and its effects is supplied by Thomas Paine. At the
outset of his pamphlet called Common Sense, Paine draws a distinction between society
Society and Government. While society in any state is a blessing, he says, government even
in its best state is but a necessary evil, in its worst state an intolerable one. In
another place he speaks of government as a mode rendered necessary by the inability of
moral virtue to govern the world. He proceeds then to show how and why government comes
into being. Its origin is in the common understanding and common agreement of society, and the design
and end of government, he says, is freedom and security. Teleologically, government implements
the common desire of society first for freedom and second for security. Beyond this, it does
not go. It contemplates no positive intervention upon the individual, but only a negative intervention.
It would seem that in Paine's view, the code of government should be that of the legendary
King Poisson, who prescribed but two laws for his subject, the first being, Hurt No
Man, and the second, Then Do As You Please, and that the whole business of government
should be the purely negative one of seeing that this code is carried out.
So far, pain is sound as he is simple. He goes on, however, to attack the British political
organization in terms that are logically inconclusive. There should be no complaint of this, for
he was writing as a pamphleteer, a special pleader with an ad capitandum argument to make,
and as everyone knows, he did it most successfully. Nevertheless, the point remains that when
he talks about the British system, he is talking about a type of political organization, essentially
It is essentially different from the type that he has just been describing, different in origin, in intention, in primary function, in the order of interest that it reflects.
It did not originate in the common understanding and agreement of society, it originated in conquest and confiscation.
Its intention, far from contemplating freedom and security, contemplated nothing of the kind,
It contemplated primarily the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another, and it concerned itself with only so much freedom and security as was consistent with this primary intention, and this was, in fact, very little.
Its primary function or exercise was not by way of pain's purely negative interventions
upon the individual, but by way of innumerable and most onerous positive interventions, all
of which were for the purpose of maintaining the stratification of society into an owning
and exploiting class and a property-less dependent class.
The order of interest that it reflected was not social but purely antisocial, and those
Those that administered it, judging by the common standards of ethics, or even the common
standard of law as applied to private persons, were indistinguishable from a professional
criminal class. Clearly then, we have two distinct types of political organization to
take into account, and clearly too, when their origins are considered, it is impossible to
make out that the one is a mere perversion of the other. Therefore, when we include both
With types under a general term like government, we get into logical difficulties, difficulties
of which most writers on the subject have been more or less vaguely aware, but which,
until the last half century, none of them has tried to resolve.
Mr Jefferson, for example, remarked that the hunting tribes of Indians, with which he had
a good deal to do in his early days, had a highly organized and admirable social order,
that were without government. Commenting on this, he wrote Madison that it is a problem
not clear in my mind that this condition is not the best, but he suspected that it was
inconsistent with any degree of population. Schoolcraft observes that the Chippewaast,
though living in a highly organized social order, had no regular government. Herbert
Spenser, speaking of the Bakunas, Arukanians and Karana-Hottentots, says they have no definite
government, while Parkman, in his introduction to the conspiracy of Pontiac, reports the
same problem and is frankly puzzled by its apparent anomalies.
Payne's theory of government agrees exactly with the theory set forth by Mr. Jefferson
in the Declaration of Independence. The doctrine of natural rights, which is explicit in the
is implicit in common sense, and Payne's view of the design and end of government is precisely the declaration's view that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted amongst men.
And further, Payne's view of the origin of government is that it derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.
Now, if we apply Payne's formulas or the Declaration's formulas, it is abundantly clear that the
Virginian Indians had government. Mr. Jefferson's own observations show that they had it. Their
political organization, simple as it was, answered its purpose. Their code apparatus
sufficed for assuring freedom and security to the individual, and for dealing with such
trespasses as in that state of society the individual might encounter fraud, theft, assault,
adultery, murder. The same is clearly true of the various peoples cited by Parkman, Schoolcraft
and Spencer. Assuredly, if the language of the Declaration amounts to anything, all these
peoples had government, and all these reporters make it appear as a government quite competent
to its purpose. Therefore, when Mr. Jefferson says his Indians were without government,
he must be taken to mean that they did not have a type of government like the one he
knew, and when Schoolcraft and Spencer speak of regular and definite government, their
qualifying words must be taken in the same way. This type of government nevertheless
has always existed and still exists, answering perfectly to Payne's formulas and the Declaration's
Formulas, though it is a type which we also, most of us, have seldom had the chance to observe.
It may not be put down as a mark of an inferior race, for institutional simplicity is in itself
by no means a mark of backwardness or inferiority, and it has been sufficiently shown that in
certain essential respects the peoples who have this type of government are, by comparison,
in a position to say a good deal for themselves on the score of a civilized character.
Mr. Jefferson's own testimony on this point is worth notice, and so is Parkman's.
This type, however, even though documented by the Declaration, is fundamentally so different
from the type that has always prevailed in history, and is still prevailing in the world
at the moment, that for the sake of clearness the two types should be set apart by name,
as they are by nature. They are so different in theory that drawing a sharp distinction
between them is now probably the most important duty that civilization owes to its own safety.
Hence it is by no means either arbitrary or academic proceeding to give the one type the
name of government and to call the second type simply the state.
2.
Aristotle, confusing the idea of the state with the idea of government, thought the state
originated out of the natural grouping of the family.
Other Greek philosophers, laboring under the same confusion, somewhat anticipated Rousseau
in finding its origin in the social nature and disposition of the individual.
While an opposing school, which held that the individual is naturally antisocial, more
more or less anticipated Hobbes by finding it in an enforced compromise among the antisocial
tendencies of individuals. Another view implicit in the doctrine of Adam Smith is that the
state originated in the association of certain individuals who showed a marked superiority
in the economic virtues of diligence, prudence and thrift. The idealist philosophers, variously
Finally applying Kant's Transcendentalism to the problem came to still different conclusions,
and one or two other views, rather less plausible perhaps than any of the foregoing, have been
advanced.
The root trouble with all these views is not precisely that they are conjectural, but that
they are based on incompetent observation.
They miss the invariable characteristic marks that the subject presents, as, for example,
Until quite lately, all views of the origin of malaria missed the invariable ministrations
of the mosquito, or as opinions about the bubonic plague missed the invariable mark
of the rat parasite. It is only within the last half century that the historical method
has been applied to the problem of the state. This method runs back the phenomenon of the
to its first appearance in documented history, observing its characteristic marks and drawing
inferences as indicated. There are so many clear intimations of this method in earlier
writers, one finds them as far back as Strabo, that one wonders why its systematic application
was not long deferred. But in all such cases, as with malaria and typhus, when the characteristic
If a specific mark is once determined, it is so obvious that one always wonders why it was so long unnoticed.
Perhaps in the case of the state, the best one can say is that the cooperation of the zeitgeist was necessary and that it could be had no sooner.
The positive testimony of history is that the state invariably has its origin in conquest and confiscation.
No primitive state known to history originated in any other manner.
On the negative side, it has been proved beyond peradventure that no primitive state could
possibly have had any other origin.
Moreover, the sole invariable characteristic of the state is the economic exploitation of
one class by another.
In this sense, every state known to history is a class state.
The Federal Reserve defines the state in respect of its origin as an institution forced on a defeated group by a conquering group with a view only to systematizing the domination of the conquered by the conquerors and safeguarding itself against insurrection from within and attack from without. This domination had no other final purpose than the economic exploitation of the conquered group by the victorious group.
were the respectable feat of compressing the whole doctrine of conquest into a single sentence.
Nations in general, he said,
will go to war whenever there is a prospect of getting something by it.
Any considerable economic accumulation
or any considerable body of natural resources is an incentive to conquest.
The primitive technique was that of raiding the coveted possessions,
In the early days, however, it was seen to be in general more profitable to reduce the possessors to dependence and use them as labour motors, and the primitive technique was accordingly modified.
Under special circumstances, where this exploitation was either impractical or unprofitable, the primitive technique is even now occasionally revived.
as by the Spaniards in South America, or by ourselves against the Indians.
But these circumstances are exceptional. The modified technique has been in use almost from the beginning,
and everywhere its first appearance marks the origin of the state.
Citing rankers or observations on the technique of the raiding herdsmen, the Hiskos,
who established their state of Egypt about 2000 B.C.
Gumpelwitz remarks that Ranker's words very well sum up the political history of mankind.
Indeed, the modified technique never varies.
Everywhere we see a militant group of fierce men forcing the frontier of some more peaceable people,
settling down upon them and establishing the state with themselves as an aristocracy.
In Mesopotamia, eruption succeeds eruption, state succeeds state.
Babylonians, Amoritans, Assyrians, Arabs, Medes, Persians, Macedonians, Parthians, Mongols, Seljuks, Tartars, Turks.
In the Nile Valley, Hyksos, Nubians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks.
In Greece, the Doric states are specific examples.
In Italy, Romans, Ostrogoths, throughout Lombards, Franks, Germans.
In Spain, Carthaginians, Visigoths, Arabs.
In Gaul, Romans, Franks, Burgundians, Normans.
In Britain, Saxons, Normans.
Everywhere, we find the political organization proceeding from the same origin
and presenting the same mark of intention, namely,
The Economic Exploitation of a Defeated Group by a Conquering Group
Everywhere that is, but with one significant exception.
Wherever economic exploitation has for any reason either impractical or unprofitable,
the state has never come into existence.
Government has existed, but the state never.
The American hunting tribes, for example, whose organization so puzzled our observers, never formed a state, for there is no way to reduce a hunter to economic dependence and make him hunt for you.
Conquest and confiscation were no doubt practicable, but no economic gain would be got by it, for confiscation would give the aggressors but little beyond what they already had.
The most that could come of it would be the satisfaction of some sort of feud.
For like reasons, primitive peasants never formed a state.
The economic accumulations of their neighbours were too slight and too perishable to be interesting,
and especially with the abundance of free land about, the enslavement of their neighbours
would be impracticable, if only for the police problems involved.
It may now be easily seen how great the difference is between the institution of government,
as understood by Paine and the Declaration of Independence, and the institution of the
state.
Government may quite conceivably have originated as Paine thought it did, or Aristotle or Hobbes
or Rousseau, whereas the state not only never did originate in any of these ways, but never
could have done so.
The nature and intention of government, as adduced by Parkman, Schoolcraft and Spencer,
are social. Based on the idea of natural rights, government secures those rights to the individual
by strictly negative intervention, making justice costless and easy of access, and beyond
that it does not go. The state, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary
Humanary intention is purely antisocial. It is not based on the idea of natural rights,
but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the state may provisionally
grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably
held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.
So far from encouraging a wholesome development of social power, it has invariably, as Madison said, turned every contingency into a resource for depleting social power and enhancing state power.
As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it cannot even be said that the state has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime.
In Russia and Germany, for example, we have lately seen the state moving with great alacrity against infringement of its private monopoly by private persons, while at the same time exercising that monopoly with unconscionable ruthlessness.
Taking the state wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional criminal class.
3. Such are the antecedents of the institution which is everywhere now so busily converting social power by wholesale into state power.
The recognition of them goes a long way towards resolving most, if not all, of the apparent
anomalies which the conduct of the modern state exhibits.
It is of great help, for example, in accounting for the open and notorious fact that the state
always moves slowly and grudgingly towards any purpose that accrues to society's advantage,
but moves rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own advantage.
Nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own initiative, but only under heavy
pressure while its motion towards antisocial purposes is self-sprung.
Englishmen of the last century remarked this fact with justifiable anxiety as they watched
the rapid depletion of social power by the British state. One of them was Herbert Spencer,
who published a series of essays which were subsequently put together in a volume called
The Man versus the State. With our public affairs in the shape they are,
it is rather remarkable that no American publicist has improved the chance
to reproduce these essays verbatim, merely substituting illustrations drawn
from American history
for those which Spencer draws from English history.
If this were properly done, it could make one of the most pertinent and useful
works that could be produced at this time.
These essays are devoted to examining the several aspects of the contemporary growth
of the state power in England. On the essay called Over Legislation, Spencer remarks the
fact so notoriously common in our experience that when state power is applied to social
purposes its action is invariably slow, stupid, extravagant, unadaptive, corrupt and obstructive.
and Obstructive. He devotes several paragraphs to each count, assembling a complete array
of proof. When he ends, discussion ends, there is simply nothing to be said. He shows further
that the state does not even fulfill efficiently what he calls its unquestionable duties to
society. It does not efficiently adjudge and defend the individual's elemental rights.
This being so, and with us this too is a matter of notoriously common experience, Spencer
sees no reason to expect that state power will be more efficiently applied to secondary
social purposes. Had we, in short, proved its efficiency as judge and defender, instead
of having found it treacherous, cruel and anxiously to be shunned, there would be some
encouragement to hope other benefits at its hands. Yet, he remarks, it is just this monstrously
He points to the anomaly which we have all noticed so regularly presented by newspapers.
Take up one, says Spencer, and you will probably find a leading editorial exposing the corruption,
negligence or mismanagement of some State Department. Cast your eye down the next column
It is unnecessary to say that the reasons which Spencer gives for the antisocial behaviour
of the State are abundantly valid, but we may now see how powerfully they are reinforced
by the findings of the historical method, a method which had not been applied when Spencer
wrote. These findings being what they are, it is manifest that the conduct which Spencer
complains of is strictly historical, and when town-dwelling merchants of the 18th century
displaced the land-holding nobility in control of the State's mechanism, they did not change
is the state's character. They merely adapted its mechanism to their own special interests
and strengthened it immeasurably. The merchant state remained an antisocial institution,
a pure class state, like the state of the nobility. Its intention and function remained
unchanged, save for the adaptations necessary to suit the new order of interest that it
was then forced to serve. Therefore, in its flagrant disservice of social purposes for
which Spencer arranged it, the state was acting strictly in character.
Spencer does not discuss what he calls the perennial faith of mankind in state action,
but contents himself with elaborating the sententious observations of Guizot that a
Belief in the sovereign power of political machinery is nothing less than a gross delusion.
This faith is cheaply an effect of the immense prestige with which the State has diligently
built up for itself in the century or more since the doctrine of Eure De Vino rulership
gave way.
We need not consider the various instruments that the State employs in building up its
There is one, however, which is, in a sense, peculiar to the Republican state.
Republicanism permits the individual to persuade himself that the state is his creation, that
state action is his action, that when it expresses itself, it expresses him, and when it is glorified,
he is glorified.
The republican state encourages this persuasion with all its power, aware that it is the
most efficient instrument for enhancing its own prestige. Lincoln's phrase, of the people,
by the people, for the people, was probably the most effective single stroke of propaganda
ever made on behalf of republican state prestige. Thus the individual's sense of his own importance
Spence inclines him strongly to resent the suggestion that the State is by nature antisocial.
He looks on its failures and misfeasances with somewhat the eye of a parent, giving
it the benefit of a special code of ethics.
Moreover, he has always the expectation that the State will learn by its mistakes and do
better, granting that its technique with social purposes is blundering, wasteful and vicious,
even admitting with the public official whom Spencer cites that wherever the
state is there is villainy.
He sees no reason why with an increase of experience and responsibility
the state should not improve.
Something like this appears to be the basic assumption of collectivism
but let the state confiscate all social power and its interests will become
identical with those of society.
Granting that the state is of anti-social origin
and that it has borne a uniformly antisocial character throughout its history, let it but
extinguish social power completely and its character will change. It will merge with
society and thereby become society's efficient and disinterested organ. The historic state,
in short, will disappear and government only remain. It is an attractive idea. The hope
The scope of its being somehow translated into practice is what, only so few years ago, made the Russian experiment so irresistibly fascinating to generous spirits who felt themselves hopelessly state-ridden.
A closer examination of the state's activities, however, will show that this idea, attractive though it be, goes to pieces against the iron law of fundamental economics,
Man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion.
Let us see how this is so.
4.
There are two methods or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied.
One is the production and exchange of wealth, this is the economic means.
The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others. This is the
political means. The primitive exercise of the political means was, as we have seen,
by conquest, confiscation, expropriation and the introduction of a slave economy. The conqueror
parceled out the conquering territory among beneficiaries, who thenceforth satisfied their
the capital of the state, and the merchant state, where ever found, merely took over and developed successively the heritage of character, intention, and apparatus of exploitation, which the primitive state transmitted to them.
The State, then, whether primitive, feudal or merchant, is the organization of the political means.
Now, since man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion,
he will employ the political means whenever he can, exclusively if possible,
otherwise in association with the economic means.
He will, at the present time, that is, have recourse to the same political means
He will, at the present time that is, have recourse to the state's modern apparatus of
exploitation, the apparatus of tariffs, concessions, rent monopoly and the like. It is a matter
of the commonist observation that this is his first instinct. So long therefore as the
organization of the political means is available, so long as the highly centralized bureaucratic
A proletarian state stands as primarily a distributor of economic advantage, an arbiter of exploitation,
so long that instinct effectively declare itself. A proletarian state would merely,
like the merchant state, shift the incidence of exploitation, and there is no historic
ground for the presumption that a collectivist state would be in any essential respect unlike
Like its predecessors, as we are beginning to see, the Russian experiment has amounted
to the erection of a highly centralized bureaucratic state upon the ruins of another, leaving the
entire apparatus of exploitation intact and ready for use. Hence, in view of the law of
fundamental economics just cited, the expectation that collectivism will appreciably alter the
Thus, the findings arrived at by the historical method amply support the immense body of practical considerations brought forward by Spencer against the state's inroads upon social power.
When Spencer concludes that, in state organizations, corruption is unavoidable, the historical method abundantly shows cause why, in the nature of things, this should be expected.
The historical method abundantly shows cause-why. In the nature of things, this should be expected.
Villeskit origine tali. When Freud comments on the shocking disparity between state ethics and private ethics,
and his observations on this point are most profound and searching,
the historical method at once supplies the best of reasons why that disparity should be looked for.
When Ortega Igasset says that
statism is the higher form taken by violence and direct action
when these are set up as standards,
the historical method enables us to perceive at once that his definition is
precisely that which one would make a priori.
The historical method, moreover, establishes the important fact that,
as in the case of tabetic or parasitic diseases,
The depletion of social power by the state cannot be checked after a certain point of progress is passed.
History does not show an instance where, once beyond this point, this depletion has not ended in a complete and permanent collapse.
In some cases, disintegration is slow and painful.
Death set its mark on Rome at the end of the second century, but she dragged out her pitiable existence for some time after the Antonines.
Athens, on the other hand, collapsed quickly.
Some authorities think Europe is dangerously near that point, if not already past it.
But contemporary conjecture is probably without much value.
That point may have been reached in America, and it may not.
Again, certainty is unattainable.
Plausible arguments may be weighed either way.
Of two things, however, we may be certain.
The first is that the rate of America's approach to that point is being prodigiously accelerated,
and the second is that there is no evidence of any disposition to retard it,
or any intelligent apprehension of the danger which that acceleration betokens.