WEBVTT NOTE Part II 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.440 Our Enemy, The State, by Albert J. Nock, Part 2 2 00:00:08.440 --> 00:00:14.520 As far back as one can follow the run of civilization, it presents two fundamentally different types 3 00:00:14.520 --> 00:00:21.860 of political organization. This difference is not one of degree, but of kind. It does 4 00:00:21.860 --> 00:00:26.940 not do to take the one type as merely marking a lower order of civilization and the other 5 00:00:26.940 --> 00:00:33.940 A good understanding of this error and its effects is supplied by Thomas Paine. At the 6 00:00:33.940 --> 00:00:39.620 to classify both as species of the same genus, to classify both under the generic term of 7 00:00:39.620 --> 00:00:46.740 government, though this also until very lately has been done, and has always led to confusion 8 00:00:46.740 --> 00:00:49.660 and misunderstanding. 9 00:00:49.660 --> 00:00:55.160 A good understanding of this error and its effects is supplied by Thomas Paine. At the 10 00:00:55.160 --> 00:01:00.880 outset of his pamphlet called Common Sense, Paine draws a distinction between society 11 00:01:00.880 --> 00:01:07.360 Society and Government. While society in any state is a blessing, he says, government even 12 00:01:07.360 --> 00:01:15.160 in its best state is but a necessary evil, in its worst state an intolerable one. In 13 00:01:15.160 --> 00:01:20.640 another place he speaks of government as a mode rendered necessary by the inability of 14 00:01:20.640 --> 00:01:27.560 moral virtue to govern the world. He proceeds then to show how and why government comes 15 00:01:27.560 --> 00:01:35.240 into being. Its origin is in the common understanding and common agreement of society, and the design 16 00:01:35.240 --> 00:01:42.360 and end of government, he says, is freedom and security. Teleologically, government implements 17 00:01:42.360 --> 00:01:49.500 the common desire of society first for freedom and second for security. Beyond this, it does 18 00:01:49.500 --> 00:01:56.500 not go. It contemplates no positive intervention upon the individual, but only a negative intervention. 19 00:01:56.500 --> 00:02:02.140 It would seem that in Paine's view, the code of government should be that of the legendary 20 00:02:02.140 --> 00:02:09.100 King Poisson, who prescribed but two laws for his subject, the first being, Hurt No 21 00:02:09.100 --> 00:02:15.660 Man, and the second, Then Do As You Please, and that the whole business of government 22 00:02:15.660 --> 00:02:21.940 should be the purely negative one of seeing that this code is carried out. 23 00:02:21.940 --> 00:02:28.060 So far, pain is sound as he is simple. He goes on, however, to attack the British political 24 00:02:28.060 --> 00:02:34.220 organization in terms that are logically inconclusive. There should be no complaint of this, for 25 00:02:34.220 --> 00:02:40.520 he was writing as a pamphleteer, a special pleader with an ad capitandum argument to make, 26 00:02:40.520 --> 00:02:46.380 and as everyone knows, he did it most successfully. Nevertheless, the point remains that when 27 00:02:46.380 --> 00:02:51.740 he talks about the British system, he is talking about a type of political organization, essentially 28 00:02:51.740 --> 00:03:01.740 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. 29 00:03:02.740 --> 00:03:09.740 It did not originate in the common understanding and agreement of society, it originated in conquest and confiscation. 30 00:03:11.740 --> 00:03:17.740 Its intention, far from contemplating freedom and security, contemplated nothing of the kind, 31 00:03:17.740 --> 00:03:33.740 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. 32 00:03:33.740 --> 00:03:40.180 Its primary function or exercise was not by way of pain's purely negative interventions 33 00:03:40.180 --> 00:03:46.900 upon the individual, but by way of innumerable and most onerous positive interventions, all 34 00:03:46.900 --> 00:03:52.040 of which were for the purpose of maintaining the stratification of society into an owning 35 00:03:52.040 --> 00:03:57.960 and exploiting class and a property-less dependent class. 36 00:03:57.960 --> 00:04:02.980 The order of interest that it reflected was not social but purely antisocial, and those 37 00:04:02.980 --> 00:04:07.860 Those that administered it, judging by the common standards of ethics, or even the common 38 00:04:07.860 --> 00:04:13.300 standard of law as applied to private persons, were indistinguishable from a professional 39 00:04:13.300 --> 00:04:19.840 criminal class. Clearly then, we have two distinct types of political organization to 40 00:04:19.840 --> 00:04:26.140 take into account, and clearly too, when their origins are considered, it is impossible to 41 00:04:26.140 --> 00:04:32.280 make out that the one is a mere perversion of the other. Therefore, when we include both 42 00:04:32.280 --> 00:04:38.560 With types under a general term like government, we get into logical difficulties, difficulties 43 00:04:38.560 --> 00:04:43.480 of which most writers on the subject have been more or less vaguely aware, but which, 44 00:04:43.480 --> 00:04:49.520 until the last half century, none of them has tried to resolve. 45 00:04:49.520 --> 00:04:54.460 Mr Jefferson, for example, remarked that the hunting tribes of Indians, with which he had 46 00:04:54.460 --> 00:05:00.320 a good deal to do in his early days, had a highly organized and admirable social order, 47 00:05:00.320 --> 00:05:07.480 that were without government. Commenting on this, he wrote Madison that it is a problem 48 00:05:07.480 --> 00:05:13.400 not clear in my mind that this condition is not the best, but he suspected that it was 49 00:05:13.400 --> 00:05:21.740 inconsistent with any degree of population. Schoolcraft observes that the Chippewaast, 50 00:05:21.740 --> 00:05:27.720 though living in a highly organized social order, had no regular government. Herbert 51 00:05:27.720 --> 00:05:34.920 Spenser, speaking of the Bakunas, Arukanians and Karana-Hottentots, says they have no definite 52 00:05:34.920 --> 00:05:41.000 government, while Parkman, in his introduction to the conspiracy of Pontiac, reports the 53 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:46.600 same problem and is frankly puzzled by its apparent anomalies. 54 00:05:46.600 --> 00:05:51.080 Payne's theory of government agrees exactly with the theory set forth by Mr. Jefferson 55 00:05:51.080 --> 00:05:56.920 in the Declaration of Independence. The doctrine of natural rights, which is explicit in the 56 00:05:56.920 --> 00:06:09.920 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. 57 00:06:09.920 --> 00:06:17.920 And further, Payne's view of the origin of government is that it derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. 58 00:06:17.920 --> 00:06:25.120 Now, if we apply Payne's formulas or the Declaration's formulas, it is abundantly clear that the 59 00:06:25.120 --> 00:06:31.880 Virginian Indians had government. Mr. Jefferson's own observations show that they had it. Their 60 00:06:31.880 --> 00:06:39.880 political organization, simple as it was, answered its purpose. Their code apparatus 61 00:06:39.880 --> 00:06:44.840 sufficed for assuring freedom and security to the individual, and for dealing with such 62 00:06:44.840 --> 00:06:51.480 trespasses as in that state of society the individual might encounter fraud, theft, assault, 63 00:06:51.480 --> 00:06:57.680 adultery, murder. The same is clearly true of the various peoples cited by Parkman, Schoolcraft 64 00:06:57.680 --> 00:07:03.520 and Spencer. Assuredly, if the language of the Declaration amounts to anything, all these 65 00:07:03.520 --> 00:07:09.360 peoples had government, and all these reporters make it appear as a government quite competent 66 00:07:09.360 --> 00:07:16.800 to its purpose. Therefore, when Mr. Jefferson says his Indians were without government, 67 00:07:16.800 --> 00:07:20.920 he must be taken to mean that they did not have a type of government like the one he 68 00:07:20.920 --> 00:07:27.160 knew, and when Schoolcraft and Spencer speak of regular and definite government, their 69 00:07:27.160 --> 00:07:32.680 qualifying words must be taken in the same way. This type of government nevertheless 70 00:07:32.680 --> 00:07:38.600 has always existed and still exists, answering perfectly to Payne's formulas and the Declaration's 71 00:07:38.600 --> 00:07:46.920 Formulas, though it is a type which we also, most of us, have seldom had the chance to observe. 72 00:07:46.920 --> 00:07:53.920 It may not be put down as a mark of an inferior race, for institutional simplicity is in itself 73 00:07:53.920 --> 00:07:59.380 by no means a mark of backwardness or inferiority, and it has been sufficiently shown that in 74 00:07:59.380 --> 00:08:05.760 certain essential respects the peoples who have this type of government are, by comparison, 75 00:08:05.760 --> 00:08:11.760 in a position to say a good deal for themselves on the score of a civilized character. 76 00:08:11.760 --> 00:08:18.000 Mr. Jefferson's own testimony on this point is worth notice, and so is Parkman's. 77 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:23.240 This type, however, even though documented by the Declaration, is fundamentally so different 78 00:08:23.240 --> 00:08:28.100 from the type that has always prevailed in history, and is still prevailing in the world 79 00:08:28.100 --> 00:08:33.960 at the moment, that for the sake of clearness the two types should be set apart by name, 80 00:08:33.960 --> 00:08:40.040 as they are by nature. They are so different in theory that drawing a sharp distinction 81 00:08:40.040 --> 00:08:47.040 between them is now probably the most important duty that civilization owes to its own safety. 82 00:08:47.600 --> 00:08:53.680 Hence it is by no means either arbitrary or academic proceeding to give the one type the 83 00:08:53.680 --> 00:09:00.680 name of government and to call the second type simply the state. 84 00:09:00.680 --> 00:09:02.320 2. 85 00:09:02.320 --> 00:09:08.040 Aristotle, confusing the idea of the state with the idea of government, thought the state 86 00:09:08.040 --> 00:09:12.160 originated out of the natural grouping of the family. 87 00:09:12.160 --> 00:09:17.860 Other Greek philosophers, laboring under the same confusion, somewhat anticipated Rousseau 88 00:09:17.860 --> 00:09:23.320 in finding its origin in the social nature and disposition of the individual. 89 00:09:23.320 --> 00:09:28.200 While an opposing school, which held that the individual is naturally antisocial, more 90 00:09:28.200 --> 00:09:35.120 more or less anticipated Hobbes by finding it in an enforced compromise among the antisocial 91 00:09:35.120 --> 00:09:41.880 tendencies of individuals. Another view implicit in the doctrine of Adam Smith is that the 92 00:09:41.880 --> 00:09:47.340 state originated in the association of certain individuals who showed a marked superiority 93 00:09:47.340 --> 00:09:54.820 in the economic virtues of diligence, prudence and thrift. The idealist philosophers, variously 94 00:09:54.820 --> 00:10:00.780 Finally applying Kant's Transcendentalism to the problem came to still different conclusions, 95 00:10:00.780 --> 00:10:05.860 and one or two other views, rather less plausible perhaps than any of the foregoing, have been 96 00:10:05.860 --> 00:10:08.700 advanced. 97 00:10:08.700 --> 00:10:13.340 The root trouble with all these views is not precisely that they are conjectural, but that 98 00:10:13.340 --> 00:10:16.900 they are based on incompetent observation. 99 00:10:16.900 --> 00:10:22.980 They miss the invariable characteristic marks that the subject presents, as, for example, 100 00:10:22.980 --> 00:10:29.120 Until quite lately, all views of the origin of malaria missed the invariable ministrations 101 00:10:29.120 --> 00:10:34.940 of the mosquito, or as opinions about the bubonic plague missed the invariable mark 102 00:10:34.940 --> 00:10:42.020 of the rat parasite. It is only within the last half century that the historical method 103 00:10:42.020 --> 00:10:49.020 has been applied to the problem of the state. This method runs back the phenomenon of the 104 00:10:49.020 --> 00:10:54.500 to its first appearance in documented history, observing its characteristic marks and drawing 105 00:10:54.500 --> 00:11:01.280 inferences as indicated. There are so many clear intimations of this method in earlier 106 00:11:01.280 --> 00:11:07.380 writers, one finds them as far back as Strabo, that one wonders why its systematic application 107 00:11:07.380 --> 00:11:15.420 was not long deferred. But in all such cases, as with malaria and typhus, when the characteristic 108 00:11:15.420 --> 00:11:22.420 If a specific mark is once determined, it is so obvious that one always wonders why it was so long unnoticed. 109 00:11:22.420 --> 00:11:33.420 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. 110 00:11:33.420 --> 00:11:41.420 The positive testimony of history is that the state invariably has its origin in conquest and confiscation. 111 00:11:41.420 --> 00:11:46.920 No primitive state known to history originated in any other manner. 112 00:11:46.920 --> 00:11:51.900 On the negative side, it has been proved beyond peradventure that no primitive state could 113 00:11:51.900 --> 00:11:54.820 possibly have had any other origin. 114 00:11:54.820 --> 00:12:00.860 Moreover, the sole invariable characteristic of the state is the economic exploitation of 115 00:12:00.860 --> 00:12:04.380 one class by another. 116 00:12:04.380 --> 00:12:09.620 In this sense, every state known to history is a class state. 117 00:12:09.620 --> 00:12:39.620 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. 118 00:12:39.620 --> 00:12:45.980 were the respectable feat of compressing the whole doctrine of conquest into a single sentence. 119 00:12:45.980 --> 00:12:48.080 Nations in general, he said, 120 00:12:48.080 --> 00:12:53.140 will go to war whenever there is a prospect of getting something by it. 121 00:12:53.140 --> 00:12:55.820 Any considerable economic accumulation 122 00:12:55.820 --> 00:13:01.640 or any considerable body of natural resources is an incentive to conquest. 123 00:13:01.640 --> 00:13:06.240 The primitive technique was that of raiding the coveted possessions, 124 00:13:06.240 --> 00:13:13.240 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. 125 00:13:26.040 --> 00:13:33.040 Under special circumstances, where this exploitation was either impractical or unprofitable, the primitive technique is even now occasionally revived. 126 00:13:36.240 --> 00:13:42.240 as by the Spaniards in South America, or by ourselves against the Indians. 127 00:13:42.240 --> 00:13:48.240 But these circumstances are exceptional. The modified technique has been in use almost from the beginning, 128 00:13:48.240 --> 00:13:54.240 and everywhere its first appearance marks the origin of the state. 129 00:13:54.240 --> 00:14:00.240 Citing rankers or observations on the technique of the raiding herdsmen, the Hiskos, 130 00:14:00.240 --> 00:14:04.960 who established their state of Egypt about 2000 B.C. 131 00:14:04.960 --> 00:14:13.960 Gumpelwitz remarks that Ranker's words very well sum up the political history of mankind. 132 00:14:13.960 --> 00:14:18.360 Indeed, the modified technique never varies. 133 00:14:18.360 --> 00:14:24.760 Everywhere we see a militant group of fierce men forcing the frontier of some more peaceable people, 134 00:14:24.760 --> 00:14:29.760 settling down upon them and establishing the state with themselves as an aristocracy. 135 00:14:29.760 --> 00:14:35.600 In Mesopotamia, eruption succeeds eruption, state succeeds state. 136 00:14:35.600 --> 00:14:45.100 Babylonians, Amoritans, Assyrians, Arabs, Medes, Persians, Macedonians, Parthians, Mongols, Seljuks, Tartars, Turks. 137 00:14:45.100 --> 00:14:51.500 In the Nile Valley, Hyksos, Nubians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks. 138 00:14:51.500 --> 00:14:55.100 In Greece, the Doric states are specific examples. 139 00:14:55.100 --> 00:15:00.900 In Italy, Romans, Ostrogoths, throughout Lombards, Franks, Germans. 140 00:15:00.900 --> 00:15:04.000 In Spain, Carthaginians, Visigoths, Arabs. 141 00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:07.600 In Gaul, Romans, Franks, Burgundians, Normans. 142 00:15:07.600 --> 00:15:11.300 In Britain, Saxons, Normans. 143 00:15:11.300 --> 00:15:16.000 Everywhere, we find the political organization proceeding from the same origin 144 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:19.400 and presenting the same mark of intention, namely, 145 00:15:19.400 --> 00:15:25.560 The Economic Exploitation of a Defeated Group by a Conquering Group 146 00:15:25.560 --> 00:15:30.820 Everywhere that is, but with one significant exception. 147 00:15:30.820 --> 00:15:36.860 Wherever economic exploitation has for any reason either impractical or unprofitable, 148 00:15:36.860 --> 00:15:39.800 the state has never come into existence. 149 00:15:39.800 --> 00:15:44.160 Government has existed, but the state never. 150 00:15:44.160 --> 00:15:57.160 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. 151 00:15:57.160 --> 00:16:09.160 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. 152 00:16:09.160 --> 00:16:14.520 The most that could come of it would be the satisfaction of some sort of feud. 153 00:16:14.520 --> 00:16:19.040 For like reasons, primitive peasants never formed a state. 154 00:16:19.040 --> 00:16:24.440 The economic accumulations of their neighbours were too slight and too perishable to be interesting, 155 00:16:24.440 --> 00:16:28.880 and especially with the abundance of free land about, the enslavement of their neighbours 156 00:16:28.880 --> 00:16:35.640 would be impracticable, if only for the police problems involved. 157 00:16:35.640 --> 00:16:41.400 It may now be easily seen how great the difference is between the institution of government, 158 00:16:41.400 --> 00:16:46.440 as understood by Paine and the Declaration of Independence, and the institution of the 159 00:16:46.440 --> 00:16:48.240 state. 160 00:16:48.240 --> 00:16:53.660 Government may quite conceivably have originated as Paine thought it did, or Aristotle or Hobbes 161 00:16:53.660 --> 00:16:59.940 or Rousseau, whereas the state not only never did originate in any of these ways, but never 162 00:16:59.940 --> 00:17:02.720 could have done so. 163 00:17:02.720 --> 00:17:08.600 The nature and intention of government, as adduced by Parkman, Schoolcraft and Spencer, 164 00:17:08.600 --> 00:17:14.900 are social. Based on the idea of natural rights, government secures those rights to the individual 165 00:17:14.900 --> 00:17:21.800 by strictly negative intervention, making justice costless and easy of access, and beyond 166 00:17:21.800 --> 00:17:28.280 that it does not go. The state, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary 167 00:17:28.280 --> 00:17:34.020 Humanary intention is purely antisocial. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, 168 00:17:34.020 --> 00:17:38.940 but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the state may provisionally 169 00:17:38.940 --> 00:17:45.420 grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably 170 00:17:45.420 --> 00:17:52.420 held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing. 171 00:17:52.420 --> 00:18:07.420 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. 172 00:18:07.420 --> 00:18:19.420 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. 173 00:18:19.420 --> 00:18:37.420 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. 174 00:18:37.420 --> 00:18:52.420 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. 175 00:18:53.420 --> 00:19:03.420 3. Such are the antecedents of the institution which is everywhere now so busily converting social power by wholesale into state power. 176 00:19:03.420 --> 00:19:09.780 The recognition of them goes a long way towards resolving most, if not all, of the apparent 177 00:19:09.780 --> 00:19:14.340 anomalies which the conduct of the modern state exhibits. 178 00:19:14.340 --> 00:19:19.460 It is of great help, for example, in accounting for the open and notorious fact that the state 179 00:19:19.460 --> 00:19:26.480 always moves slowly and grudgingly towards any purpose that accrues to society's advantage, 180 00:19:26.480 --> 00:19:31.780 but moves rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own advantage. 181 00:19:31.780 --> 00:19:37.660 Nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own initiative, but only under heavy 182 00:19:37.660 --> 00:19:44.100 pressure while its motion towards antisocial purposes is self-sprung. 183 00:19:44.100 --> 00:19:50.140 Englishmen of the last century remarked this fact with justifiable anxiety as they watched 184 00:19:50.140 --> 00:19:56.140 the rapid depletion of social power by the British state. One of them was Herbert Spencer, 185 00:19:56.140 --> 00:20:01.060 who published a series of essays which were subsequently put together in a volume called 186 00:20:01.060 --> 00:20:06.340 The Man versus the State. With our public affairs in the shape they are, 187 00:20:06.340 --> 00:20:11.300 it is rather remarkable that no American publicist has improved the chance 188 00:20:11.300 --> 00:20:16.140 to reproduce these essays verbatim, merely substituting illustrations drawn 189 00:20:16.140 --> 00:20:17.700 from American history 190 00:20:17.700 --> 00:20:21.100 for those which Spencer draws from English history. 191 00:20:21.100 --> 00:20:25.420 If this were properly done, it could make one of the most pertinent and useful 192 00:20:25.420 --> 00:20:30.380 works that could be produced at this time. 193 00:20:30.380 --> 00:20:35.020 These essays are devoted to examining the several aspects of the contemporary growth 194 00:20:35.020 --> 00:20:41.560 of the state power in England. On the essay called Over Legislation, Spencer remarks the 195 00:20:41.560 --> 00:20:47.340 fact so notoriously common in our experience that when state power is applied to social 196 00:20:47.340 --> 00:20:54.340 purposes its action is invariably slow, stupid, extravagant, unadaptive, corrupt and obstructive. 197 00:20:54.340 --> 00:21:00.700 and Obstructive. He devotes several paragraphs to each count, assembling a complete array 198 00:21:00.700 --> 00:21:07.700 of proof. When he ends, discussion ends, there is simply nothing to be said. He shows further 199 00:21:07.700 --> 00:21:13.500 that the state does not even fulfill efficiently what he calls its unquestionable duties to 200 00:21:13.500 --> 00:21:20.260 society. It does not efficiently adjudge and defend the individual's elemental rights. 201 00:21:20.260 --> 00:21:25.940 This being so, and with us this too is a matter of notoriously common experience, Spencer 202 00:21:25.940 --> 00:21:30.700 sees no reason to expect that state power will be more efficiently applied to secondary 203 00:21:30.700 --> 00:21:37.540 social purposes. Had we, in short, proved its efficiency as judge and defender, instead 204 00:21:37.540 --> 00:21:42.260 of having found it treacherous, cruel and anxiously to be shunned, there would be some 205 00:21:42.260 --> 00:21:49.760 encouragement to hope other benefits at its hands. Yet, he remarks, it is just this monstrously 206 00:21:49.760 --> 00:21:56.760 He points to the anomaly which we have all noticed so regularly presented by newspapers. 207 00:22:04.160 --> 00:22:10.040 Take up one, says Spencer, and you will probably find a leading editorial exposing the corruption, 208 00:22:10.040 --> 00:22:15.240 negligence or mismanagement of some State Department. Cast your eye down the next column 209 00:22:15.240 --> 00:22:43.440 It is unnecessary to say that the reasons which Spencer gives for the antisocial behaviour 210 00:22:43.440 --> 00:22:49.280 of the State are abundantly valid, but we may now see how powerfully they are reinforced 211 00:22:49.280 --> 00:22:54.640 by the findings of the historical method, a method which had not been applied when Spencer 212 00:22:54.640 --> 00:23:01.320 wrote. These findings being what they are, it is manifest that the conduct which Spencer 213 00:23:01.320 --> 00:23:07.320 complains of is strictly historical, and when town-dwelling merchants of the 18th century 214 00:23:07.320 --> 00:23:13.080 displaced the land-holding nobility in control of the State's mechanism, they did not change 215 00:23:13.080 --> 00:23:18.600 is the state's character. They merely adapted its mechanism to their own special interests 216 00:23:18.600 --> 00:23:25.600 and strengthened it immeasurably. The merchant state remained an antisocial institution, 217 00:23:26.120 --> 00:23:31.880 a pure class state, like the state of the nobility. Its intention and function remained 218 00:23:31.880 --> 00:23:37.080 unchanged, save for the adaptations necessary to suit the new order of interest that it 219 00:23:37.080 --> 00:23:43.320 was then forced to serve. Therefore, in its flagrant disservice of social purposes for 220 00:23:43.320 --> 00:23:50.320 which Spencer arranged it, the state was acting strictly in character. 221 00:23:50.640 --> 00:23:57.280 Spencer does not discuss what he calls the perennial faith of mankind in state action, 222 00:23:57.280 --> 00:24:03.280 but contents himself with elaborating the sententious observations of Guizot that a 223 00:24:03.280 --> 00:24:10.480 Belief in the sovereign power of political machinery is nothing less than a gross delusion. 224 00:24:10.480 --> 00:24:15.480 This faith is cheaply an effect of the immense prestige with which the State has diligently 225 00:24:15.480 --> 00:24:21.320 built up for itself in the century or more since the doctrine of Eure De Vino rulership 226 00:24:21.320 --> 00:24:23.480 gave way. 227 00:24:23.480 --> 00:24:27.640 We need not consider the various instruments that the State employs in building up its 228 00:24:27.640 --> 00:24:34.640 There is one, however, which is, in a sense, peculiar to the Republican state. 229 00:24:39.120 --> 00:24:44.600 Republicanism permits the individual to persuade himself that the state is his creation, that 230 00:24:44.600 --> 00:24:51.360 state action is his action, that when it expresses itself, it expresses him, and when it is glorified, 231 00:24:51.360 --> 00:24:53.720 he is glorified. 232 00:24:53.720 --> 00:24:58.800 The republican state encourages this persuasion with all its power, aware that it is the 233 00:24:58.800 --> 00:25:05.480 most efficient instrument for enhancing its own prestige. Lincoln's phrase, of the people, 234 00:25:05.480 --> 00:25:11.380 by the people, for the people, was probably the most effective single stroke of propaganda 235 00:25:11.380 --> 00:25:20.380 ever made on behalf of republican state prestige. Thus the individual's sense of his own importance 236 00:25:20.380 --> 00:25:26.300 Spence inclines him strongly to resent the suggestion that the State is by nature antisocial. 237 00:25:26.300 --> 00:25:31.020 He looks on its failures and misfeasances with somewhat the eye of a parent, giving 238 00:25:31.020 --> 00:25:34.100 it the benefit of a special code of ethics. 239 00:25:34.100 --> 00:25:40.180 Moreover, he has always the expectation that the State will learn by its mistakes and do 240 00:25:40.180 --> 00:25:46.660 better, granting that its technique with social purposes is blundering, wasteful and vicious, 241 00:25:46.660 --> 00:25:50.940 even admitting with the public official whom Spencer cites that wherever the 242 00:25:50.940 --> 00:25:53.540 state is there is villainy. 243 00:25:53.540 --> 00:25:58.180 He sees no reason why with an increase of experience and responsibility 244 00:25:58.180 --> 00:26:01.780 the state should not improve. 245 00:26:01.780 --> 00:26:06.140 Something like this appears to be the basic assumption of collectivism 246 00:26:06.140 --> 00:26:10.300 but let the state confiscate all social power and its interests will become 247 00:26:10.300 --> 00:26:13.160 identical with those of society. 248 00:26:13.160 --> 00:26:16.620 Granting that the state is of anti-social origin 249 00:26:16.620 --> 00:26:22.020 and that it has borne a uniformly antisocial character throughout its history, let it but 250 00:26:22.020 --> 00:26:27.620 extinguish social power completely and its character will change. It will merge with 251 00:26:27.620 --> 00:26:34.100 society and thereby become society's efficient and disinterested organ. The historic state, 252 00:26:34.100 --> 00:26:41.100 in short, will disappear and government only remain. It is an attractive idea. The hope 253 00:26:41.100 --> 00:26:55.100 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. 254 00:26:55.100 --> 00:27:06.100 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, 255 00:27:06.100 --> 00:27:13.840 Man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion. 256 00:27:13.840 --> 00:27:17.040 Let us see how this is so. 257 00:27:17.040 --> 00:27:19.640 4. 258 00:27:19.640 --> 00:27:27.120 There are two methods or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. 259 00:27:27.120 --> 00:27:32.540 One is the production and exchange of wealth, this is the economic means. 260 00:27:32.540 --> 00:27:38.100 The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others. This is the 261 00:27:38.100 --> 00:27:44.580 political means. The primitive exercise of the political means was, as we have seen, 262 00:27:44.580 --> 00:27:51.580 by conquest, confiscation, expropriation and the introduction of a slave economy. The conqueror 263 00:27:51.620 --> 00:27:56.900 parceled out the conquering territory among beneficiaries, who thenceforth satisfied their 264 00:27:56.900 --> 00:28:16.900 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. 265 00:28:16.900 --> 00:28:22.900 The State, then, whether primitive, feudal or merchant, is the organization of the political means. 266 00:28:22.900 --> 00:28:28.900 Now, since man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion, 267 00:28:28.900 --> 00:28:33.900 he will employ the political means whenever he can, exclusively if possible, 268 00:28:33.900 --> 00:28:37.900 otherwise in association with the economic means. 269 00:28:37.900 --> 00:28:42.900 He will, at the present time, that is, have recourse to the same political means 270 00:28:42.900 --> 00:28:48.500 He will, at the present time that is, have recourse to the state's modern apparatus of 271 00:28:48.500 --> 00:28:55.580 exploitation, the apparatus of tariffs, concessions, rent monopoly and the like. It is a matter 272 00:28:55.580 --> 00:29:01.240 of the commonist observation that this is his first instinct. So long therefore as the 273 00:29:01.240 --> 00:29:07.120 organization of the political means is available, so long as the highly centralized bureaucratic 274 00:29:07.120 --> 00:29:14.120 A proletarian state stands as primarily a distributor of economic advantage, an arbiter of exploitation, 275 00:29:14.280 --> 00:29:21.280 so long that instinct effectively declare itself. A proletarian state would merely, 276 00:29:21.600 --> 00:29:26.880 like the merchant state, shift the incidence of exploitation, and there is no historic 277 00:29:26.880 --> 00:29:32.040 ground for the presumption that a collectivist state would be in any essential respect unlike 278 00:29:32.040 --> 00:29:37.680 Like its predecessors, as we are beginning to see, the Russian experiment has amounted 279 00:29:37.680 --> 00:29:43.400 to the erection of a highly centralized bureaucratic state upon the ruins of another, leaving the 280 00:29:43.400 --> 00:29:50.480 entire apparatus of exploitation intact and ready for use. Hence, in view of the law of 281 00:29:50.480 --> 00:29:57.000 fundamental economics just cited, the expectation that collectivism will appreciably alter the 282 00:29:57.000 --> 00:30:04.000 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. 283 00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:11.000 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. 284 00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:20.000 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. 285 00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:28.000 The historical method abundantly shows cause-why. In the nature of things, this should be expected. 286 00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:37.000 Villeskit origine tali. When Freud comments on the shocking disparity between state ethics and private ethics, 287 00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:41.000 and his observations on this point are most profound and searching, 288 00:30:41.000 --> 00:30:48.000 the historical method at once supplies the best of reasons why that disparity should be looked for. 289 00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:50.600 When Ortega Igasset says that 290 00:30:50.600 --> 00:30:54.600 statism is the higher form taken by violence and direct action 291 00:30:54.600 --> 00:30:57.500 when these are set up as standards, 292 00:30:57.500 --> 00:31:01.700 the historical method enables us to perceive at once that his definition is 293 00:31:01.700 --> 00:31:06.500 precisely that which one would make a priori. 294 00:31:06.500 --> 00:31:11.200 The historical method, moreover, establishes the important fact that, 295 00:31:11.200 --> 00:31:15.500 as in the case of tabetic or parasitic diseases, 296 00:31:15.500 --> 00:31:22.820 The depletion of social power by the state cannot be checked after a certain point of progress is passed. 297 00:31:22.820 --> 00:31:31.620 History does not show an instance where, once beyond this point, this depletion has not ended in a complete and permanent collapse. 298 00:31:31.620 --> 00:31:35.860 In some cases, disintegration is slow and painful. 299 00:31:35.860 --> 00:31:45.000 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. 300 00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:48.520 Athens, on the other hand, collapsed quickly. 301 00:31:48.520 --> 00:31:54.800 Some authorities think Europe is dangerously near that point, if not already past it. 302 00:31:54.800 --> 00:31:59.320 But contemporary conjecture is probably without much value. 303 00:31:59.320 --> 00:32:03.100 That point may have been reached in America, and it may not. 304 00:32:03.100 --> 00:32:06.000 Again, certainty is unattainable. 305 00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:09.520 Plausible arguments may be weighed either way. 306 00:32:09.520 --> 00:32:12.520 Of two things, however, we may be certain. 307 00:32:12.520 --> 00:32:19.000 The first is that the rate of America's approach to that point is being prodigiously accelerated, 308 00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:23.840 and the second is that there is no evidence of any disposition to retard it, 309 00:32:23.840 --> 00:32:30.720 or any intelligent apprehension of the danger which that acceleration betokens.