WEBVTT NOTE Part V 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 5 3 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:15.000 It is a commonplace that the persistence of an institution is due solely to the state of mind that prevails towards it, 4 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:19.000 the set of terms in which men habitually think about it. 5 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:26.000 So long and only so long as those terms are favorable, the institution lives and maintains its power, 6 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:34.000 And when for any reason men generally cease to thinking in those terms, it weakens and becomes inert. 7 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:45.600 At one time, a certain set of terms regarding man's place in nature gave organized Christianity the power largely to control men's consciences and direct their conduct, 8 00:00:45.600 --> 00:00:54.600 and this power has dwindled to the point of disappearance for no other reason than that men generally stopped thinking in those terms. 9 00:00:54.600 --> 00:01:00.680 The persistence of our unstable and iniquitous economic system is not due to the power of 10 00:01:00.680 --> 00:01:06.600 accumulated capital, the force of propaganda, or to any force or combination of forces commonly 11 00:01:06.600 --> 00:01:13.740 alleged its cause. It is due solely to a certain set of terms in which men think of the opportunity 12 00:01:13.740 --> 00:01:21.360 to work. They regard this opportunity as something to be given. Nowhere is there any other idea 13 00:01:21.360 --> 00:01:28.360 This is all that keeps our system alive. When men cease to think in these terms, the system will disappear, and not before. 14 00:01:28.360 --> 00:01:32.360 is not in any sense a right, but a concession. 15 00:01:32.360 --> 00:01:37.040 This is all that keeps our system alive. 16 00:01:37.040 --> 00:01:41.240 When men cease to think in these terms, the system will disappear 17 00:01:41.240 --> 00:01:45.240 and not before. 18 00:01:45.240 --> 00:01:48.980 It seems pretty clear that changes in the terms of thought affecting an 19 00:01:48.980 --> 00:01:52.320 institution are but little advanced by direct means. 20 00:01:52.320 --> 00:01:56.120 They are brought about in obscure and circuitous ways 21 00:01:56.120 --> 00:02:01.400 and assisted by trains of circumstance which before the fact would appear quite unrelated 22 00:02:01.400 --> 00:02:06.040 and their explosive or solvent action is therefore quite unpredictable. 23 00:02:06.040 --> 00:02:09.840 A direct drive at effecting these changes 24 00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:13.920 comes as a rule to nothing or more often than not 25 00:02:13.920 --> 00:02:19.720 turns out to be retarding. They are so largely the work of those unimpassioned 26 00:02:19.720 --> 00:02:20.040 and 27 00:02:20.040 --> 00:02:26.320 and other importunable agencies for which Prince de Bismarck had such vast respect. 28 00:02:26.320 --> 00:02:32.240 He called them the imponderabilia, that any effort which disregards them or thrusts them 29 00:02:32.240 --> 00:02:38.840 violently aside will in the long run find them stepping in to abort its fruit. 30 00:02:38.840 --> 00:02:43.240 That is what we are attempting to do in this rapid survey of the historical progress of 31 00:02:43.240 --> 00:02:49.040 certain ideas, is to trace the genesis of an attitude of mind, a set of terms in which 32 00:02:49.040 --> 00:02:54.600 which now practically everyone thinks of the state, and then to consider the conclusions 33 00:02:54.600 --> 00:03:03.340 towards which this psychical phenomenon unmistakably points. Instead of recognising the state as 34 00:03:03.340 --> 00:03:09.460 the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men, the run of mankind with rare 35 00:03:09.460 --> 00:03:15.980 exceptions regards it not only as a final and indispensable entity, but also as, in 36 00:03:15.980 --> 00:03:45.980 The Mass Man, ignorant of its history, regards its character and intentions as social rather than antisocial, and in that faith he is willing to put at his disposal an indefinite credit of navery, mendacity and chicane, upon which its administrators may draw at will, instead of looking upon the state's progressive absorption of social power with the repugnance and resentment that he would naturally feel. 37 00:03:45.980 --> 00:03:52.980 Professor Ortego Egassit analyzes this state of mind extremely well. 38 00:03:52.980 --> 00:03:59.980 Professor Ortego Egassit analyzes this state of mind extremely well. The mass man, he says, 39 00:03:59.980 --> 00:04:05.980 confronting the phenomenon of the state, sees it, admires it, knows that there it is, and 40 00:04:05.980 --> 00:04:12.980 he is not afraid to admit it. He is not afraid to admit it. He is not afraid to admit it. 41 00:04:12.980 --> 00:04:17.980 He is not afraid to admit it. He is not afraid to admit it. He is not afraid to admit it. 42 00:04:17.980 --> 00:04:25.340 Seizing the phenomenon of the state, sees it, admires it, knows that there it is. Furthermore, 43 00:04:25.340 --> 00:04:31.500 the mass man sees in the state an anonymous power and, feeling himself like it, anonymous, 44 00:04:31.500 --> 00:04:36.420 he believes that the state is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of 45 00:04:36.420 --> 00:04:42.080 a country some difficulty, conflict or problem presents itself, the mass man will tend to 46 00:04:42.080 --> 00:04:46.620 demand that the state intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its 47 00:04:46.620 --> 00:05:15.380 It is the genesis of this attitude, this state of mind, and the conclusions which inexorably 48 00:05:15.380 --> 00:05:22.380 These conclusions may perhaps be briefly forecast here, in order that the reader, who is for any reason indisposed to entertain them, may take warning of them at this point and close the book. 49 00:05:22.380 --> 00:05:29.380 The unquestioning, determined, even truculent maintenance of the attitude which Prof. Ortega-Igasset so admirably describes, is obviously of the nature of the book. 50 00:05:45.380 --> 00:05:52.380 This attitude can only be sapped and mined by unaccountable generations of experience in a course marked by recurrent calamity of the most appalling character. 51 00:05:52.380 --> 00:05:58.380 When once the predominance of the most important character is the life and strength of the state, 52 00:05:58.380 --> 00:06:03.380 it is now so inveterate and so widespread, one may freely call it universal, 53 00:06:03.380 --> 00:06:08.380 that no effort could overcome its inveteracy or modify it and least of all hope to entertain it. 54 00:06:08.380 --> 00:06:13.380 This attitude can only be sapped and mined by unaccountable generations of experience 55 00:06:13.380 --> 00:06:20.220 When once the predominance of this attitude in any given civilization has become inveterate, 56 00:06:20.220 --> 00:06:25.400 as so plainly it has become in the civilization of America, all that can be done is to leave 57 00:06:25.400 --> 00:06:29.940 it to work its own way out to its appointed end. 58 00:06:29.940 --> 00:06:34.980 The philosophic historian may content himself with pointing out and clearly elucidating 59 00:06:34.980 --> 00:06:40.960 its consequences, as Professor Ortega Agassit has done, aware that after this there is no 60 00:06:40.960 --> 00:06:43.360 more one can do. 61 00:06:43.360 --> 00:06:49.200 The result of this tendency, he says, will be fatal. Spontaneous social action will be 62 00:06:49.200 --> 00:06:56.200 broken up over and over again by state intervention. No new seed will be able to fructify. Society 63 00:06:58.340 --> 00:07:04.560 will have to live for the state, man for the governmental machine, and as after all it 64 00:07:04.560 --> 00:07:10.560 is only a machine whose existence and maintenance depend on the vital supports around it, the 65 00:07:10.560 --> 00:07:25.560 The state, after sucking out the very marrow of society, will be left bloodless, a skeleton, dead with that rusty death of machinery, more gruesome than the death of a living organism. Such was the lamentable fate of ancient civilization. 66 00:07:25.560 --> 00:07:37.480 2. The revolution of 1776 to 1781 converted thirteen provinces, practically as they stood, 67 00:07:37.480 --> 00:07:43.280 into thirteen autonomous political units, completely independent, and they so continued 68 00:07:43.280 --> 00:07:51.600 until 1789, formally held together as a sort of league by the Articles of Confederation. 69 00:07:51.600 --> 00:07:58.400 For our purposes, the point to be remarked about this eight-year period, 1781 to 1789, 70 00:07:58.400 --> 00:08:03.920 is that the administration of the political means was not centralized in the federation, 71 00:08:03.920 --> 00:08:10.560 but in the several units of which the federation was composed. The Federal Assembly or Congress 72 00:08:10.560 --> 00:08:16.880 was hardly more than a deliberative body of delegates appointed by the autonomous units. 73 00:08:16.880 --> 00:08:23.380 It had no taxing power, and no coercive power. It could not command funds for any enterprise 74 00:08:23.380 --> 00:08:29.840 common to the Federation, even for war. All it could do was apportion the sum needed, 75 00:08:29.840 --> 00:08:35.620 in the hope that each unit would meet its quota. There was no coercive Federal authority 76 00:08:35.620 --> 00:08:41.040 over these matters, or over any matters. The sovereignty of each of the thirteen federated 77 00:08:41.040 --> 00:08:47.200 Units was complete. Thus the central body of this loose association of 78 00:08:47.200 --> 00:08:52.580 Sovereignties had nothing to say about the distribution of the political means. 79 00:08:52.580 --> 00:08:58.180 This authority was vested in the several component units. Each unit had absolute jurisdiction 80 00:08:58.180 --> 00:09:04.440 over its territorial basis and could partition it as it saw fit, and could maintain any system 81 00:09:04.440 --> 00:09:34.440 Each unit set up its own trade regulations. Each unit levied its own tariffs, one against another, in behalf of its chosen beneficiaries. Each manufactured its own currency, and might manipulate it as it liked, for the benefit of such individuals or economic groups, as were able to get effective access to the local legislature. Each managed its own system of bounties, concessions, subsidies, etc. 82 00:09:34.440 --> 00:09:41.440 In short, the whole mechanism of the political means was non-national. The federation was 83 00:09:48.760 --> 00:09:55.760 not in any sense a state. The state was not one, but thirteen. Within each unit, therefore, 84 00:09:57.920 --> 00:10:02.320 as soon as the war was over, there began at once a general scramble for access to the 85 00:10:02.320 --> 00:10:06.320 It must never be forgotten that in each unit society was fluid. 86 00:10:06.320 --> 00:10:14.320 This access was available to anyone gifted with the peculiar sagacity and resolution necessary to get at it. 87 00:10:14.320 --> 00:10:20.320 Hence one economic interest after another brought pressure to bear on the local legislatures, 88 00:10:20.320 --> 00:10:28.320 until the economic hand of every unit was against every other and the hand of every other was against itself. 89 00:10:28.320 --> 00:10:51.320 The principle of protection, which, as we have seen, was already well understood, was carried to lengths precisely comparable with those to which it is carried in international commerce today, and for the same primary purpose, the exploitation, or in plain terms, the robbery of the domestic consumer. 90 00:10:51.320 --> 00:10:58.640 Mr. Beard remarks that the Legislature of New York, for example, pressed the principle 91 00:10:58.640 --> 00:11:03.860 which governs tariff-making to the point of levying duties on firewood brought in from 92 00:11:03.860 --> 00:11:11.760 Connecticut and on cabbages from New Jersey, a fairly close parallel with the octroy that 93 00:11:11.760 --> 00:11:18.000 one still encounters at the gates of the French towns. 94 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:23.840 The primary monopoly, fundamental to all others, the monopoly of economic rent, was sought 95 00:11:23.840 --> 00:11:29.960 with redoubled eagerness. The territorial basis of each unit now included the vast holdings 96 00:11:29.960 --> 00:11:35.200 confiscated from British owners, and the bar erected by the British state's proclamation 97 00:11:35.200 --> 00:11:42.880 of 1763 against the appropriation of western lands was now removed. Professor Sikolsky 98 00:11:42.880 --> 00:11:48.800 The Theory observes dryly that the early landlust with which the colonists inherited from their 99 00:11:48.800 --> 00:11:55.960 European forebears was not diminished by the democratic spirit of the revolutionary fathers. 100 00:11:55.960 --> 00:12:01.960 Indeed not, land grants were sought as assiduously from local legislatures as they had been in 101 00:12:01.960 --> 00:12:07.360 earlier days from the Stuart dynasty and from colonial governors, and the mania of land 102 00:12:07.360 --> 00:12:12.520 jobbing ran apace with the mania of land grabbing. 103 00:12:12.520 --> 00:12:17.240 Among the men most actively interested in these pursuits were those whom we have already 104 00:12:17.240 --> 00:12:24.480 seen identified with them in pre-revolutionary days, such as the two Morrises, Knox, Pickering, 105 00:12:24.480 --> 00:12:31.000 James Wilson and Patrick Henry, and with their names appear those of Dewar, Bingham, McKean, 106 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:38.840 Willing, Greenleaf, Nicholson, Aaron Burr, Lowe, Macomb, Wadsworth, Remson, Constable, 107 00:12:38.840 --> 00:13:08.840 There is probably no need to follow out the rather repulsive trail of effort after other modes of the political means. What we have said about the foregoing two modes, Tariff and Rental Value Monopoly, is doubtless enough to illustrate satisfactorily the spirit and attitude of mind towards the State during the eight years immediately following the Revolution. 108 00:13:08.840 --> 00:13:25.840 The whole story of insensate scuffle for state created economic advantage is not especially animating, nor is it essential to our purposes. Such as it is, it may be read in detail elsewhere. 109 00:13:25.840 --> 00:13:37.840 All that interests us is to observe that during the eight years of federation, the principles of government set forth by pain and by the Declaration continued in utter abeyance. 110 00:13:37.840 --> 00:13:43.440 Not only did the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty remain as completely 111 00:13:43.440 --> 00:13:48.720 out of consideration as when Mr. Jefferson first lamented its disappearance, but the 112 00:13:48.720 --> 00:13:55.880 idea of government as a social institution based on this philosophy was likewise unconsidered. 113 00:13:55.880 --> 00:14:01.800 No one thought of a political organization as instituted to secure these rights by process 114 00:14:01.800 --> 00:14:31.800 The History of the Eight-Year Period of Federation shows no trace whatever of any idea of political organization other than the state idea. No one regarded this organization otherwise than as the organization of the political means, an all-powerful engine which should stand permanently ready and available for any political action. 115 00:14:31.800 --> 00:14:37.880 for the irresistible promotion of this or that set of economic interests and the irredeemable 116 00:14:37.880 --> 00:14:44.360 disservice of others, according as whichever set, by whatever course of strategy, might 117 00:14:44.360 --> 00:14:49.280 succeed in obtaining command of its machinery. 118 00:14:49.280 --> 00:14:56.280 3. It may be repeated that while state power was well centralized under the Federation, 119 00:14:56.280 --> 00:15:01.280 It was not centralized in the Federation, but in the Federated Unit. 120 00:15:01.280 --> 00:15:07.280 For various reasons, some of them plausible, many leading citizens, especially in the more northerly units, 121 00:15:07.280 --> 00:15:11.280 found this distribution of power unsatisfactorily. 122 00:15:11.280 --> 00:15:18.280 And a considerable compact group of economic interests, which stood to profit by a redistribution, 123 00:15:18.280 --> 00:15:22.280 naturally made the most of these reasons. 124 00:15:22.280 --> 00:15:27.240 It is quite certain that dissatisfaction with the existing arrangement was not general, 125 00:15:27.240 --> 00:15:33.120 for when the redistribution took place in 1789, it was effected with great difficulty 126 00:15:33.120 --> 00:15:39.080 and only through a coup d'etat, organized by methods which it employed in any other 127 00:15:39.080 --> 00:15:44.880 field than that of politics would be put down at once as not only daring, but unscrupulous 128 00:15:44.880 --> 00:15:47.940 and dishonorable. 129 00:15:47.940 --> 00:15:53.460 The situation, in a word, was that American economic interests had fallen into two grand 130 00:15:53.460 --> 00:15:58.340 divisions, the special interests in each having made common cause with a view to capturing 131 00:15:58.340 --> 00:16:04.780 control of the political means. One division comprised the speculating industrial commercial 132 00:16:04.780 --> 00:16:09.740 and creditor interests, with their natural allies of the bar and the bench, the pulpit 133 00:16:09.740 --> 00:16:15.620 and the press. The other comprised chiefly the farmers and artisans and the debtor class 134 00:16:15.620 --> 00:16:28.620 From the first, these two grand divisions were colliding briskly here and there in the several units, the most serious collision occurring over the terms of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. 135 00:16:28.620 --> 00:16:44.620 The state in each of the thirteen units was a class state, as every state known to history has been, and the work of maneuvering it in its function of enabling the economic exploitation of one class by another went steadily on. 136 00:16:44.620 --> 00:16:52.100 General conditions under the Articles of Confederation were pretty good. The people had made a creditable 137 00:16:52.100 --> 00:16:57.260 recovery from the dislocations and disturbances due to the revolution, and there was a very 138 00:16:57.260 --> 00:17:02.460 decent prospect that Mr. Jefferson's idea of a political organization which should be 139 00:17:02.460 --> 00:17:08.080 national in foreign affairs and non-national in domestic affairs might be found continuously 140 00:17:08.080 --> 00:17:18.080 Some tinkering with the Articles seemed necessary, in fact it was expected, but nothing that would transform or seriously impair the General Scheme. 141 00:17:18.080 --> 00:17:27.080 The chief trouble was with the Federation's weakness in view of the chance of war and in respect of debts due to foreign creditors. 142 00:17:27.080 --> 00:17:33.080 The Articles, however, carried provision for their own amendment and for anything one can see, 143 00:17:33.080 --> 00:17:39.080 In fact, when suggestions of revision arose, as they did almost immediately, nothing else appears to have been contemplated. 144 00:17:39.080 --> 00:17:45.080 But the general scheme itself was as a whole objectionable to the interests grouped in the First Grand Division. 145 00:17:45.080 --> 00:17:49.080 The grounds of their dissatisfaction are obvious enough. 146 00:17:49.080 --> 00:17:53.080 When one bears in mind the vast prospect of the continent, 147 00:17:53.080 --> 00:17:57.080 one needs use of the general scheme itself. 148 00:17:57.080 --> 00:18:16.080 When one bears in mind the vast prospect of the continent, one need use but little imagination to perceive that the national scheme was by far the more congenial to those interests, because it enabled an ever closer centralization of control over the political means. 149 00:18:16.080 --> 00:18:20.920 For instance, leaving aside the advantage of having but one central tariff making body 150 00:18:20.920 --> 00:18:27.160 to chaffer with, instead of twelve, any industrialist could see the great primary advantage of being 151 00:18:27.160 --> 00:18:32.840 able to extend his exploiting operations over a nationwide free trade area walled in 152 00:18:32.840 --> 00:18:34.880 by a general tariff. 153 00:18:34.880 --> 00:18:39.680 The closer the centralization, the larger the exploitable area. 154 00:18:39.680 --> 00:18:45.520 Any speculator in land rental values would be quick to see the advantage of bringing 155 00:18:45.520 --> 00:18:52.520 Any speculator in depreciated public securities would be strongly for a system that could 156 00:18:56.080 --> 00:19:01.840 offer him the use of a political means to bring back their face value. Any ship owner 157 00:19:01.840 --> 00:19:06.800 or foreign trader would be quick to see that his bread was buttered on the side of a national 158 00:19:06.800 --> 00:19:11.840 state which, if properly approached, might lend him the use of the political means by 159 00:19:11.840 --> 00:19:17.320 by way of a subsidy, or would be able to back up some profitable but dubious freebooting 160 00:19:17.320 --> 00:19:24.320 enterprise with diplomatic representations, or with reprisals. 161 00:19:24.420 --> 00:19:28.760 The farmers and the debtor class in general, on the other hand, were not interested in 162 00:19:28.760 --> 00:19:33.440 those considerations, but were strongly for letting things stay, for the most part, as 163 00:19:33.440 --> 00:19:40.360 they stood. Proponderance in the local legislators gave them satisfactory control of the political 164 00:19:40.360 --> 00:19:50.080 of the Creditor Class, and they did not care to be disturbed in their preponderance. 165 00:19:50.080 --> 00:19:54.440 They were agreeable to such modifications as the articles as should work out short of 166 00:19:54.440 --> 00:20:00.200 this, but not to setting up a national replica of the British merchant state, which they 167 00:20:00.200 --> 00:20:06.760 perceived was precisely what the classes grouped in the opposing grand division wished to do. 168 00:20:06.760 --> 00:20:11.040 These classes aimed at bringing in the British system of economics, politics and judicial 169 00:20:11.040 --> 00:20:18.520 control on a nationwide scale, and the interests grouped in the second division saw that what 170 00:20:18.520 --> 00:20:23.760 this would really come to was a shifting of the incidence of economic exploitation upon 171 00:20:23.760 --> 00:20:25.920 themselves. 172 00:20:25.920 --> 00:20:31.240 They had an impressive object lesson in the immediate shift that took place in Massachusetts 173 00:20:31.240 --> 00:20:36.800 after the adoption of John Adams' local constitution of 1780. 174 00:20:36.800 --> 00:20:41.000 They naturally did not care to see this sort of thing put into operation on a 175 00:20:41.000 --> 00:20:42.880 nationwide scale, 176 00:20:42.880 --> 00:20:47.160 and they therefore looked with extreme disfavour upon any bait put forth for 177 00:20:47.160 --> 00:20:50.720 amending the articles out of existence. 178 00:20:50.720 --> 00:20:55.320 When Hamilton in 1780 objected to the articles in the form in which they were 179 00:20:55.320 --> 00:20:57.360 proposed for adoption, 180 00:20:57.360 --> 00:21:01.160 and proposed the calling of a constitutional convention instead, 181 00:21:01.160 --> 00:21:05.920 They turned the cold shoulder, as they did again to Washington's letter to the local 182 00:21:05.920 --> 00:21:12.920 governors three years later, in which he adverted the need of a strong, coercive central authority. 183 00:21:13.600 --> 00:21:20.600 Finally, however, a constitutional convention was assembled on the distinct understanding 184 00:21:21.040 --> 00:21:26.460 that it should do no more than revise the articles in such a way, as Hamilton cleverly 185 00:21:26.460 --> 00:21:33.460 and on the further understanding that all the thirteen units should assent to the amendments before they went into effect. 186 00:21:33.460 --> 00:21:40.460 In short, that the method of amendments provided by the articles themselves should be followed. 187 00:21:40.460 --> 00:21:48.460 Neither understanding was fulfilled. The Convention was made up wholly of men representing the economic interests of the First Division. 188 00:21:48.460 --> 00:21:54.820 The convention was made up wholly of men representing the economic interests of the First Division. 189 00:21:54.820 --> 00:22:00.580 The great majority of them, possibly as many as four-fifths, were public creditors, one-third 190 00:22:00.580 --> 00:22:07.060 were land speculators, some were money lenders, one-fifth were industrialists, traders, shippers, 191 00:22:07.060 --> 00:22:09.720 and many of them were lawyers. 192 00:22:09.720 --> 00:22:14.500 They planned and executed a coup d'état, simply tossing the Articles of Confederation 193 00:22:14.500 --> 00:22:20.700 into the wastebasket and drafting a constitution de novo, with the audacious provision that 194 00:22:20.700 --> 00:22:26.500 it should go into effect when ratified by nine units instead of by all thirteen. 195 00:22:26.500 --> 00:22:32.500 Moreover, with like audacity, they proposed that the document should not be submitted 196 00:22:32.500 --> 00:22:38.180 either to the Congress or to the local legislators, but that it should go direct to a popular 197 00:22:38.180 --> 00:22:40.500 vote. 198 00:22:40.500 --> 00:22:46.460 The unscrupulous methods employed in securing ratification need not be dwelt on here. We 199 00:22:46.460 --> 00:22:51.540 are not indeed concerned with the moral quality of the proceedings by which the Constitution 200 00:22:51.540 --> 00:22:57.000 was brought into being, but only with showing their instrumentality in encouraging a definite 201 00:22:57.000 --> 00:23:02.860 general idea of the state and its functions, and a consequent general attitude towards 202 00:23:02.860 --> 00:23:09.760 the state. We therefore go on to observe that in order to secure ratification by even the 203 00:23:09.760 --> 00:23:14.920 In the nine necessary units, the document had to conform to certain very exacting and 204 00:23:14.920 --> 00:23:21.240 difficult requirements. The political structure which is contemplated had to be republican 205 00:23:21.240 --> 00:23:28.240 in form, yet capable of resisting what Jerry unctuously called the excess of democracy 206 00:23:29.400 --> 00:23:36.080 and what Randolph termed its turbulence and follies. The task of the delegates was precisely 207 00:23:36.080 --> 00:23:43.080 Madison defined their task explicitly in saying that the Convention's purpose was, 208 00:24:06.080 --> 00:24:14.920 Democratic Faction, and at the same time preserve the spirit and form of popular government. 209 00:24:14.920 --> 00:24:20.300 Under the circumstances, this was a tremendously large order, and the Constitution emerged 210 00:24:20.300 --> 00:24:27.160 as it was bound to do as a compromised document, or as Mr. Beard puts it very precisely, a 211 00:24:27.160 --> 00:24:34.160 mosaic of second choices, which really satisfied neither of the two opposing sets of interests. 212 00:24:34.160 --> 00:24:41.060 It was not strong and definite enough in either direction to please anybody. In particular, 213 00:24:41.060 --> 00:24:45.960 the interest composing the First Division, led by Alexander Hamilton, saw that it was 214 00:24:45.960 --> 00:24:51.860 not sufficient of itself to fix them in anything like a permanent, impregnable position to 215 00:24:51.860 --> 00:24:58.480 exploit continuously the groups comprising the Second Division. To do this, to establish 216 00:24:58.480 --> 00:25:03.600 the degree of centralization requisite to their purpose, certain lines of administrative 217 00:25:03.600 --> 00:25:09.620 Management must be laid down, which, once established, would be permanent. 218 00:25:09.620 --> 00:25:16.000 The further task, therefore, in Madison's phrase, was to administration the Constitution 219 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:22.640 into such absolutist modes as would secure economic supremacy by a free use of the political 220 00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:28.840 means to the groups which made up the First Division. 221 00:25:28.840 --> 00:25:30.560 This was accordingly done. 222 00:25:30.560 --> 00:25:34.520 For the first ten years of its existence, the Constitution remained in the hands of 223 00:25:34.520 --> 00:25:40.740 its makers for administration in the directions most favorable to their interests. For an 224 00:25:40.740 --> 00:25:46.020 accurate understanding of the newly erected system's economic tendencies, too much stress 225 00:25:46.020 --> 00:25:51.380 cannot be laid on the fact that for these ten critical years, the machinery of economic 226 00:25:51.380 --> 00:25:55.860 and political power was mainly directed by the men who had conceived and established 227 00:25:55.860 --> 00:26:04.620 Washington, who had been Chairman of the Convention, was elected President. Nearly half the Senate 228 00:26:04.620 --> 00:26:09.560 was made up of men who had been delegates, and the House of Representatives was largely 229 00:26:09.560 --> 00:26:15.740 made up of men who had to do with the drafting or ratifying of the Constitution. Hamilton, 230 00:26:15.740 --> 00:26:21.340 Randolph and Knox, who were active in promoting the document, filled three of the four positions 231 00:26:21.340 --> 00:26:28.340 and all the federal judgeships, without a single exception, were filled by men who had a hand in the business of drafting or of ratification or both. 232 00:26:28.340 --> 00:26:37.340 Of all the legislative measures enacted to implement the new Constitution, the one best calculated to ensure a rapid and steady progress in the centralization of political power was the Judiciary Act of 1789. 233 00:26:37.340 --> 00:26:44.340 This measure created a federal Supreme Court of the United States of America. 234 00:26:44.340 --> 00:26:52.740 was the Judiciary Act of 1789. This measure created a Federal Supreme Court of six members, 235 00:26:52.740 --> 00:26:57.860 subsequently enlarged to nine, and a Federal District Court in each state, with its own 236 00:26:57.860 --> 00:27:04.580 complete personnel and a complete apparatus for enforcing its decrees. The Act established 237 00:27:04.580 --> 00:27:10.620 federal oversight of state legislation by the familiar device of interpretation, whereby 238 00:27:10.620 --> 00:27:16.300 by the Supreme Court might nullify state legislative or judicial action, which for any reason it 239 00:27:16.300 --> 00:27:23.780 saw fit to regard as unconstitutional. One feature of the Act, which for our purposes 240 00:27:23.780 --> 00:27:30.100 is most noteworthy, is that it made the tenure of all these federal judgeships appointive, 241 00:27:30.100 --> 00:27:36.220 not elective, and for life, thus marking almost the farthest conceivable departure from the 242 00:27:36.220 --> 00:27:39.860 and the Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty. 243 00:27:39.860 --> 00:27:46.060 The first Chief Justice was John Jay, the learned and gentle Jay as Beveridge calls 244 00:27:46.060 --> 00:27:49.700 him in his excellent biography of Marshall. 245 00:27:49.700 --> 00:27:55.500 A man of superb integrity, he was far above doing anything whatever in behalf of the accepted 246 00:27:55.500 --> 00:28:01.700 principle that est bon judicus ampliari juristic tionem. 247 00:28:01.700 --> 00:28:05.780 Ellsworth who followed him also did nothing. 248 00:28:05.780 --> 00:28:11.220 The succession, however, after Jay had declined a reappointment, then fell to John Marshall, 249 00:28:11.220 --> 00:28:16.220 who, in addition to the control established by the Judiciary Act over the State Legislative 250 00:28:16.220 --> 00:28:21.780 and Judicial Authority, arbitrarily extended judicial control over both the legislative 251 00:28:21.780 --> 00:28:28.220 and executive branches of the Federal Authority, thus effecting as complete and convenient a 252 00:28:28.220 --> 00:28:33.940 centralization of power as the various interests concerned in framing the Constitution could 253 00:28:33.940 --> 00:28:43.940 We may now see from this necessarily brief survey, which anyone may amplify and particularise 254 00:28:43.940 --> 00:28:49.340 at his pleasure, what the circumstances were which rooted a certain definite idea of the 255 00:28:49.340 --> 00:28:53.220 state still deeper in the general consciousness. 256 00:28:53.220 --> 00:28:59.300 The idea was precisely the same in the constitutional period as that which we have seen prevailing 257 00:28:59.300 --> 00:29:04.860 in the two periods already examined, the colonial period and the eight-year period following 258 00:29:04.860 --> 00:29:07.500 the revolution. 259 00:29:07.500 --> 00:29:12.280 Nowhere in the history of the constitutional period do we find the faintest suggestion 260 00:29:12.280 --> 00:29:18.540 of the Declaration's doctrine of natural rights, and we find its doctrine of popular sovereignty 261 00:29:18.540 --> 00:29:25.340 not only continuing in abeyance but constitutionally is stopped from ever reappearing. 262 00:29:25.340 --> 00:29:29.300 Where do we find a trace of the declaration's theory of government? 263 00:29:29.300 --> 00:29:34.060 On the contrary, we find it expressly repudiated. 264 00:29:34.060 --> 00:29:39.660 The new political mechanism was a faithful replica of the old established British model, 265 00:29:39.660 --> 00:29:45.960 but so far improved and strengthened as to be incomparably more close working and efficient, 266 00:29:45.960 --> 00:29:52.800 and hence presenting incomparably more attractive possibilities of capture and control. 267 00:29:52.800 --> 00:29:58.440 By consequence, therefore, we find more firmly implanted than ever the same general idea 268 00:29:58.440 --> 00:30:05.040 of the state that we have observed as prevailing hitherto, the idea of an organization of the 269 00:30:05.040 --> 00:30:11.000 political means, an irresponsible and all-powerful agency standing always ready to be put into 270 00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:18.000 use for the service of one set of economic interests as against another. 271 00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:26.240 4. Out of this idea proceeded what we know as the party system of political management, 272 00:30:26.240 --> 00:30:32.280 which has been in effect ever since. Our purposes do not require that we examine its history 273 00:30:32.280 --> 00:30:38.560 in close detail for evidence that it has been from the beginning a purely bipartisan system, 274 00:30:38.560 --> 00:30:44.960 since this is now a matter of fairly common acceptance. In his second term, Mr. Jefferson 275 00:30:44.960 --> 00:30:51.280 The Republican discovered the tendency towards bipartisanship and was both dismayed and puzzled by it. 276 00:30:51.280 --> 00:30:56.980 I have elsewhere remarked his curious inability to understand how the cohesive power of public 277 00:30:56.980 --> 00:31:03.360 plunder works straight towards political bipartisanship. 278 00:31:03.360 --> 00:31:09.160 In 1823, finding some who called themselves Republicans favoring the Federalist policy 279 00:31:09.160 --> 00:31:15.520 of Centralization, he spoke of them in a rather bewildered way as pseudo-republicans but real 280 00:31:15.520 --> 00:31:21.960 Federalists. But most naturally any Republican who saw a chance of profiting by the political 281 00:31:21.960 --> 00:31:27.480 means would retain the name and at the same time resist any tendency within the party 282 00:31:27.480 --> 00:31:34.480 to impair the general system which held out such a prospect. In this way, bipartisanship 283 00:31:34.480 --> 00:31:41.480 Thus the party system at once became in effect an elaborate system of fetishes which, in 284 00:31:41.480 --> 00:31:48.480 Thus the party system at once became in effect an elaborate system of fetishes, which, in order to be made as impressive as possible, were chiefly molded up around the Constitution, and were put on show as constitutional principles. 285 00:31:48.480 --> 00:31:55.480 Thus, the party system at once became in effect an elaborate system of fetishes, which, in order to be made as impressive as possible, were chiefly molded up around the Constitution, and were put on show as constitutional principles. 286 00:31:55.480 --> 00:32:02.480 The history of the whole post-constitutional period, from 1789 to the present day, is an instructive and cynical exhibit. 287 00:32:02.480 --> 00:32:09.480 It is the first of its kind in the history of the Constitution. 288 00:32:09.480 --> 00:32:30.480 The history of the whole post-constitutional period, from 1789 to the present day, is an instructive and cynical exhibit of the fate of those fetishes, when they encounter the one and only actual principle of party action, the principle of keeping open the channels of access to the political means. 289 00:32:30.480 --> 00:32:36.880 When the fetish of strict construction, for example, has collided with this principle, 290 00:32:36.880 --> 00:32:43.480 it has invariably gone by the board, the party that maintained it simply changing sides. 291 00:32:43.480 --> 00:32:50.080 The Anti-Federalist Party took office in 1800 as the party of strict construction, yet once 292 00:32:50.080 --> 00:32:54.920 in office it played ducks and drakes with the Constitution in behalf of the special 293 00:32:54.920 --> 00:32:58.480 interests that it represented. 294 00:32:58.480 --> 00:33:04.580 The Federalists were nominally for loose construction, yet they fought bitterly every one of the 295 00:33:04.580 --> 00:33:09.840 opposing party's loose constructionist measures, the embargo, the protective tariff and the 296 00:33:09.840 --> 00:33:15.200 national bank. They were the constitutional nationalists of the deepest die, as we have 297 00:33:15.200 --> 00:33:20.720 seen. Yet in their centre and stronghold, New England, they held the threat of secession 298 00:33:20.720 --> 00:33:26.380 over the country throughout the period of what they harshly call Mr. Madison's War, 299 00:33:26.380 --> 00:33:32.340 The War of 1812, which was in fact a purely imperialist adventure after annexation of 300 00:33:32.340 --> 00:33:38.420 Floridian and Canadian territory in behalf of stiffening agrarian control of the political 301 00:33:38.420 --> 00:33:45.260 means. But when the planting interests of the South made the same threat in 1861, they 302 00:33:45.260 --> 00:33:52.260 became fervid nationalists again. Such exhibitions of pure fetishism, always cynical in their 303 00:33:52.260 --> 00:33:58.340 always cynical in their transparent candour make up the history of the party system. 304 00:33:58.340 --> 00:34:03.580 Their reductio ad absurdum is now seen as perhaps complete. 305 00:34:03.580 --> 00:34:08.620 One cannot see how it could go further in the attitude of the democratic party 306 00:34:08.620 --> 00:34:14.140 towards its historical principles of state sovereignty and strict constitution. 307 00:34:14.140 --> 00:34:18.460 A fair match for this, however, is found in a speech made the other day 308 00:34:18.460 --> 00:34:23.540 to a group of exporting and importing interests by the Mayor of New York, always known as 309 00:34:23.540 --> 00:34:30.540 a Republican in politics, advocating the horrid democratic doctrine of a low tariff. 310 00:34:31.980 --> 00:34:36.580 Throughout our post-constitutional period, there is not on record as far as I know a 311 00:34:36.580 --> 00:34:42.520 single instance of party adherence to a fixed principle, qua principle, or to a political 312 00:34:42.520 --> 00:34:50.240 by Theory. Indeed, the very cartoons on the subject show how widely it has come to be 313 00:34:50.240 --> 00:34:57.840 accepted that party platforms, with their cant of issues, are so much sheer quackery, 314 00:34:57.840 --> 00:35:04.360 and that campaign promises are merely another name for thimble-rigging. The workaday practice 315 00:35:04.360 --> 00:35:09.960 of politics has been invariably opportunist, or in other words, invariably conformable 316 00:35:09.960 --> 00:35:15.420 to the primary function of the state, and it is largely for this reason that the state's 317 00:35:15.420 --> 00:35:21.940 service exerts its most powerful attraction upon an extremely low and sharp set type of 318 00:35:21.940 --> 00:35:25.340 individual. 319 00:35:25.340 --> 00:35:30.380 The maintenance of this system of fetishes, however, gives great enhancement to the prevailing 320 00:35:30.380 --> 00:35:35.780 general view of the state. In that view, the state is made to appear as somehow deeply 321 00:35:35.780 --> 00:36:05.780 The Theory of Money and State is, arguably and disinterestedly, concerned with great principles of action, and hence, in addition to its prestige as a pseudo-social institution, it takes on the prestige of a kind of moral authority, thus disposing of the last vestige of the doctrine of natural rights, by over-spreading it heavily with a quick line of legalism. Whatever is state sanctioned is right. This double-prestige is assiduously inflated by many agencies, 322 00:36:05.780 --> 00:36:12.380 by a state-dazzled pulpit, by a meretricious press, by a continuous kaleidoscope display 323 00:36:12.380 --> 00:36:19.980 of state pomp, panoply and circumstance, and by all the innumerable devices of electioneering. 324 00:36:19.980 --> 00:36:24.960 These last invariably take their stand on the foundation of some imposing principle, 325 00:36:24.960 --> 00:36:30.500 as witness the agonized cry now going up here and there in the land for a return to the 326 00:36:30.500 --> 00:36:38.100 and the Constitution. All this is simply the interested clamors and sophistry, which means 327 00:36:38.100 --> 00:36:43.180 no more and no less than it meant when the Constitution was not yet five years old and 328 00:36:43.180 --> 00:36:48.900 Fisher Ames was observing contemptuously that of all the legislative measures and proposals 329 00:36:48.900 --> 00:36:55.380 which were on the carpet at the time, he scarce knew one that had not raised this same cry, 330 00:36:55.380 --> 00:37:00.860 not accepting a motion for adjournment. 331 00:37:00.860 --> 00:37:07.040 In fact, such popular terms of electioneering, appeal, are uniformly and notoriously what 332 00:37:07.040 --> 00:37:12.820 Jeremy Bentham called imposter terms, and their use invariably marks one thing and one 333 00:37:12.820 --> 00:37:19.960 only. It marks a state of apprehension, either fearful or expectant as the case may be, concerning 334 00:37:19.960 --> 00:37:42.960 As we are seeing at the moment, once let this access come under the threat of straightening or stoppage, the menaced interests immediately trot out the spavined-glandered hobby of state rights or a return to the Constitution and put it through its galvanic movements. 335 00:37:42.960 --> 00:37:49.560 Let the incidents of exploitation show the first sign of shifting, and we hear at once 336 00:37:49.560 --> 00:37:56.240 from one source of interested clamors and sophistry that democracy is in danger, and 337 00:37:56.240 --> 00:38:02.240 that the unparalleled excellences of our civilization have come about solely through a policy of 338 00:38:02.240 --> 00:38:08.880 rugged individualism carried out under terms of free competition, while from another source 339 00:38:08.880 --> 00:38:14.940 Of course we hear that the enormities of laissez-faire have grounded the faces of the poor and obstructed 340 00:38:14.940 --> 00:38:19.600 entrance into the more abundant life. 341 00:38:19.600 --> 00:38:24.560 The general upshot of all this is that we see politicians of all schools and stripes 342 00:38:24.560 --> 00:38:30.400 behaving with the obscene depravity of degenerate children, like the loose-footed gangs that 343 00:38:30.400 --> 00:38:37.480 infest the railway yards and purlews of gas houses. Each group tries to circumvent another 344 00:38:37.480 --> 00:38:42.960 with respect to the fruit accruing to acts of public mischief. In other words, we see 345 00:38:42.960 --> 00:38:49.960 them behaving in a strictly historical manner. Professor Lasky's elaborate moral distinction 346 00:38:50.260 --> 00:38:56.640 between the state and the officialdom is devoid of foundation. The state is not, as he would 347 00:38:56.640 --> 00:39:03.640 have it, a social institution administered in an antisocial way. It is an antisocial 348 00:39:03.640 --> 00:39:09.840 Social institution administered in the only way an antisocial institution can be administered 349 00:39:09.840 --> 00:39:15.840 and by the kind of person who, in the nature of things, is best adapted to such service.