Our Enemy, The State by Albert J. Nock
Part 5
It is a commonplace that the persistence of an institution is due solely to the state of mind that prevails towards it,
the set of terms in which men habitually think about it.
So long and only so long as those terms are favorable, the institution lives and maintains its power,
And when for any reason men generally cease to thinking in those terms, it weakens and becomes inert.
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,
and this power has dwindled to the point of disappearance for no other reason than that men generally stopped thinking in those terms.
The persistence of our unstable and iniquitous economic system is not due to the power of
accumulated capital, the force of propaganda, or to any force or combination of forces commonly
alleged its cause. It is due solely to a certain set of terms in which men think of the opportunity
to work. They regard this opportunity as something to be given. Nowhere is there any other idea
This is all that keeps our system alive. When men cease to think in these terms, the system will disappear, and not before.
is not in any sense a right, but a concession.
This is all that keeps our system alive.
When men cease to think in these terms, the system will disappear
and not before.
It seems pretty clear that changes in the terms of thought affecting an
institution are but little advanced by direct means.
They are brought about in obscure and circuitous ways
and assisted by trains of circumstance which before the fact would appear quite unrelated
and their explosive or solvent action is therefore quite unpredictable.
A direct drive at effecting these changes
comes as a rule to nothing or more often than not
turns out to be retarding. They are so largely the work of those unimpassioned
and
and other importunable agencies for which Prince de Bismarck had such vast respect.
He called them the imponderabilia, that any effort which disregards them or thrusts them
violently aside will in the long run find them stepping in to abort its fruit.
That is what we are attempting to do in this rapid survey of the historical progress of
certain ideas, is to trace the genesis of an attitude of mind, a set of terms in which
which now practically everyone thinks of the state, and then to consider the conclusions
towards which this psychical phenomenon unmistakably points. Instead of recognising the state as
the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men, the run of mankind with rare
exceptions regards it not only as a final and indispensable entity, but also as, in
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.
Professor Ortego Egassit analyzes this state of mind extremely well.
Professor Ortego Egassit analyzes this state of mind extremely well. The mass man, he says,
confronting the phenomenon of the state, sees it, admires it, knows that there it is, and
he is not afraid to admit it. He is not afraid to admit it. He is not afraid to admit it.
He is not afraid to admit it. He is not afraid to admit it. He is not afraid to admit it.
Seizing the phenomenon of the state, sees it, admires it, knows that there it is. Furthermore,
the mass man sees in the state an anonymous power and, feeling himself like it, anonymous,
he believes that the state is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of
a country some difficulty, conflict or problem presents itself, the mass man will tend to
demand that the state intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its
It is the genesis of this attitude, this state of mind, and the conclusions which inexorably
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.
The unquestioning, determined, even truculent maintenance of the attitude which Prof. Ortega-Igasset so admirably describes, is obviously of the nature of the book.
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.
When once the predominance of the most important character is the life and strength of the state,
it is now so inveterate and so widespread, one may freely call it universal,
that no effort could overcome its inveteracy or modify it and least of all hope to entertain it.
This attitude can only be sapped and mined by unaccountable generations of experience
When once the predominance of this attitude in any given civilization has become inveterate,
as so plainly it has become in the civilization of America, all that can be done is to leave
it to work its own way out to its appointed end.
The philosophic historian may content himself with pointing out and clearly elucidating
its consequences, as Professor Ortega Agassit has done, aware that after this there is no
more one can do.
The result of this tendency, he says, will be fatal. Spontaneous social action will be
broken up over and over again by state intervention. No new seed will be able to fructify. Society
will have to live for the state, man for the governmental machine, and as after all it
is only a machine whose existence and maintenance depend on the vital supports around it, the
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.
2. The revolution of 1776 to 1781 converted thirteen provinces, practically as they stood,
into thirteen autonomous political units, completely independent, and they so continued
until 1789, formally held together as a sort of league by the Articles of Confederation.
For our purposes, the point to be remarked about this eight-year period, 1781 to 1789,
is that the administration of the political means was not centralized in the federation,
but in the several units of which the federation was composed. The Federal Assembly or Congress
was hardly more than a deliberative body of delegates appointed by the autonomous units.
It had no taxing power, and no coercive power. It could not command funds for any enterprise
common to the Federation, even for war. All it could do was apportion the sum needed,
in the hope that each unit would meet its quota. There was no coercive Federal authority
over these matters, or over any matters. The sovereignty of each of the thirteen federated
Units was complete. Thus the central body of this loose association of
Sovereignties had nothing to say about the distribution of the political means.
This authority was vested in the several component units. Each unit had absolute jurisdiction
over its territorial basis and could partition it as it saw fit, and could maintain any system
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.
In short, the whole mechanism of the political means was non-national. The federation was
not in any sense a state. The state was not one, but thirteen. Within each unit, therefore,
as soon as the war was over, there began at once a general scramble for access to the
It must never be forgotten that in each unit society was fluid.
This access was available to anyone gifted with the peculiar sagacity and resolution necessary to get at it.
Hence one economic interest after another brought pressure to bear on the local legislatures,
until the economic hand of every unit was against every other and the hand of every other was against itself.
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.
Mr. Beard remarks that the Legislature of New York, for example, pressed the principle
which governs tariff-making to the point of levying duties on firewood brought in from
Connecticut and on cabbages from New Jersey, a fairly close parallel with the octroy that
one still encounters at the gates of the French towns.
The primary monopoly, fundamental to all others, the monopoly of economic rent, was sought
with redoubled eagerness. The territorial basis of each unit now included the vast holdings
confiscated from British owners, and the bar erected by the British state's proclamation
of 1763 against the appropriation of western lands was now removed. Professor Sikolsky
The Theory observes dryly that the early landlust with which the colonists inherited from their
European forebears was not diminished by the democratic spirit of the revolutionary fathers.
Indeed not, land grants were sought as assiduously from local legislatures as they had been in
earlier days from the Stuart dynasty and from colonial governors, and the mania of land
jobbing ran apace with the mania of land grabbing.
Among the men most actively interested in these pursuits were those whom we have already
seen identified with them in pre-revolutionary days, such as the two Morrises, Knox, Pickering,
James Wilson and Patrick Henry, and with their names appear those of Dewar, Bingham, McKean,
Willing, Greenleaf, Nicholson, Aaron Burr, Lowe, Macomb, Wadsworth, Remson, Constable,
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.
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.
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.
Not only did the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty remain as completely
out of consideration as when Mr. Jefferson first lamented its disappearance, but the
idea of government as a social institution based on this philosophy was likewise unconsidered.
No one thought of a political organization as instituted to secure these rights by process
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.
for the irresistible promotion of this or that set of economic interests and the irredeemable
disservice of others, according as whichever set, by whatever course of strategy, might
succeed in obtaining command of its machinery.
3. It may be repeated that while state power was well centralized under the Federation,
It was not centralized in the Federation, but in the Federated Unit.
For various reasons, some of them plausible, many leading citizens, especially in the more northerly units,
found this distribution of power unsatisfactorily.
And a considerable compact group of economic interests, which stood to profit by a redistribution,
naturally made the most of these reasons.
It is quite certain that dissatisfaction with the existing arrangement was not general,
for when the redistribution took place in 1789, it was effected with great difficulty
and only through a coup d'etat, organized by methods which it employed in any other
field than that of politics would be put down at once as not only daring, but unscrupulous
and dishonorable.
The situation, in a word, was that American economic interests had fallen into two grand
divisions, the special interests in each having made common cause with a view to capturing
control of the political means. One division comprised the speculating industrial commercial
and creditor interests, with their natural allies of the bar and the bench, the pulpit
and the press. The other comprised chiefly the farmers and artisans and the debtor class
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.
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.
General conditions under the Articles of Confederation were pretty good. The people had made a creditable
recovery from the dislocations and disturbances due to the revolution, and there was a very
decent prospect that Mr. Jefferson's idea of a political organization which should be
national in foreign affairs and non-national in domestic affairs might be found continuously
Some tinkering with the Articles seemed necessary, in fact it was expected, but nothing that would transform or seriously impair the General Scheme.
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.
The Articles, however, carried provision for their own amendment and for anything one can see,
In fact, when suggestions of revision arose, as they did almost immediately, nothing else appears to have been contemplated.
But the general scheme itself was as a whole objectionable to the interests grouped in the First Grand Division.
The grounds of their dissatisfaction are obvious enough.
When one bears in mind the vast prospect of the continent,
one needs use of the general scheme itself.
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.
For instance, leaving aside the advantage of having but one central tariff making body
to chaffer with, instead of twelve, any industrialist could see the great primary advantage of being
able to extend his exploiting operations over a nationwide free trade area walled in
by a general tariff.
The closer the centralization, the larger the exploitable area.
Any speculator in land rental values would be quick to see the advantage of bringing
Any speculator in depreciated public securities would be strongly for a system that could
offer him the use of a political means to bring back their face value. Any ship owner
or foreign trader would be quick to see that his bread was buttered on the side of a national
state which, if properly approached, might lend him the use of the political means by
by way of a subsidy, or would be able to back up some profitable but dubious freebooting
enterprise with diplomatic representations, or with reprisals.
The farmers and the debtor class in general, on the other hand, were not interested in
those considerations, but were strongly for letting things stay, for the most part, as
they stood. Proponderance in the local legislators gave them satisfactory control of the political
of the Creditor Class, and they did not care to be disturbed in their preponderance.
They were agreeable to such modifications as the articles as should work out short of
this, but not to setting up a national replica of the British merchant state, which they
perceived was precisely what the classes grouped in the opposing grand division wished to do.
These classes aimed at bringing in the British system of economics, politics and judicial
control on a nationwide scale, and the interests grouped in the second division saw that what
this would really come to was a shifting of the incidence of economic exploitation upon
themselves.
They had an impressive object lesson in the immediate shift that took place in Massachusetts
after the adoption of John Adams' local constitution of 1780.
They naturally did not care to see this sort of thing put into operation on a
nationwide scale,
and they therefore looked with extreme disfavour upon any bait put forth for
amending the articles out of existence.
When Hamilton in 1780 objected to the articles in the form in which they were
proposed for adoption,
and proposed the calling of a constitutional convention instead,
They turned the cold shoulder, as they did again to Washington's letter to the local
governors three years later, in which he adverted the need of a strong, coercive central authority.
Finally, however, a constitutional convention was assembled on the distinct understanding
that it should do no more than revise the articles in such a way, as Hamilton cleverly
and on the further understanding that all the thirteen units should assent to the amendments before they went into effect.
In short, that the method of amendments provided by the articles themselves should be followed.
Neither understanding was fulfilled. The Convention was made up wholly of men representing the economic interests of the First Division.
The convention was made up wholly of men representing the economic interests of the First Division.
The great majority of them, possibly as many as four-fifths, were public creditors, one-third
were land speculators, some were money lenders, one-fifth were industrialists, traders, shippers,
and many of them were lawyers.
They planned and executed a coup d'état, simply tossing the Articles of Confederation
into the wastebasket and drafting a constitution de novo, with the audacious provision that
it should go into effect when ratified by nine units instead of by all thirteen.
Moreover, with like audacity, they proposed that the document should not be submitted
either to the Congress or to the local legislators, but that it should go direct to a popular
vote.
The unscrupulous methods employed in securing ratification need not be dwelt on here. We
are not indeed concerned with the moral quality of the proceedings by which the Constitution
was brought into being, but only with showing their instrumentality in encouraging a definite
general idea of the state and its functions, and a consequent general attitude towards
the state. We therefore go on to observe that in order to secure ratification by even the
In the nine necessary units, the document had to conform to certain very exacting and
difficult requirements. The political structure which is contemplated had to be republican
in form, yet capable of resisting what Jerry unctuously called the excess of democracy
and what Randolph termed its turbulence and follies. The task of the delegates was precisely
Madison defined their task explicitly in saying that the Convention's purpose was,
Democratic Faction, and at the same time preserve the spirit and form of popular government.
Under the circumstances, this was a tremendously large order, and the Constitution emerged
as it was bound to do as a compromised document, or as Mr. Beard puts it very precisely, a
mosaic of second choices, which really satisfied neither of the two opposing sets of interests.
It was not strong and definite enough in either direction to please anybody. In particular,
the interest composing the First Division, led by Alexander Hamilton, saw that it was
not sufficient of itself to fix them in anything like a permanent, impregnable position to
exploit continuously the groups comprising the Second Division. To do this, to establish
the degree of centralization requisite to their purpose, certain lines of administrative
Management must be laid down, which, once established, would be permanent.
The further task, therefore, in Madison's phrase, was to administration the Constitution
into such absolutist modes as would secure economic supremacy by a free use of the political
means to the groups which made up the First Division.
This was accordingly done.
For the first ten years of its existence, the Constitution remained in the hands of
its makers for administration in the directions most favorable to their interests. For an
accurate understanding of the newly erected system's economic tendencies, too much stress
cannot be laid on the fact that for these ten critical years, the machinery of economic
and political power was mainly directed by the men who had conceived and established
Washington, who had been Chairman of the Convention, was elected President. Nearly half the Senate
was made up of men who had been delegates, and the House of Representatives was largely
made up of men who had to do with the drafting or ratifying of the Constitution. Hamilton,
Randolph and Knox, who were active in promoting the document, filled three of the four positions
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.
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.
This measure created a federal Supreme Court of the United States of America.
was the Judiciary Act of 1789. This measure created a Federal Supreme Court of six members,
subsequently enlarged to nine, and a Federal District Court in each state, with its own
complete personnel and a complete apparatus for enforcing its decrees. The Act established
federal oversight of state legislation by the familiar device of interpretation, whereby
by the Supreme Court might nullify state legislative or judicial action, which for any reason it
saw fit to regard as unconstitutional. One feature of the Act, which for our purposes
is most noteworthy, is that it made the tenure of all these federal judgeships appointive,
not elective, and for life, thus marking almost the farthest conceivable departure from the
and the Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty.
The first Chief Justice was John Jay, the learned and gentle Jay as Beveridge calls
him in his excellent biography of Marshall.
A man of superb integrity, he was far above doing anything whatever in behalf of the accepted
principle that est bon judicus ampliari juristic tionem.
Ellsworth who followed him also did nothing.
The succession, however, after Jay had declined a reappointment, then fell to John Marshall,
who, in addition to the control established by the Judiciary Act over the State Legislative
and Judicial Authority, arbitrarily extended judicial control over both the legislative
and executive branches of the Federal Authority, thus effecting as complete and convenient a
centralization of power as the various interests concerned in framing the Constitution could
We may now see from this necessarily brief survey, which anyone may amplify and particularise
at his pleasure, what the circumstances were which rooted a certain definite idea of the
state still deeper in the general consciousness.
The idea was precisely the same in the constitutional period as that which we have seen prevailing
in the two periods already examined, the colonial period and the eight-year period following
the revolution.
Nowhere in the history of the constitutional period do we find the faintest suggestion
of the Declaration's doctrine of natural rights, and we find its doctrine of popular sovereignty
not only continuing in abeyance but constitutionally is stopped from ever reappearing.
Where do we find a trace of the declaration's theory of government?
On the contrary, we find it expressly repudiated.
The new political mechanism was a faithful replica of the old established British model,
but so far improved and strengthened as to be incomparably more close working and efficient,
and hence presenting incomparably more attractive possibilities of capture and control.
By consequence, therefore, we find more firmly implanted than ever the same general idea
of the state that we have observed as prevailing hitherto, the idea of an organization of the
political means, an irresponsible and all-powerful agency standing always ready to be put into
use for the service of one set of economic interests as against another.
4. Out of this idea proceeded what we know as the party system of political management,
which has been in effect ever since. Our purposes do not require that we examine its history
in close detail for evidence that it has been from the beginning a purely bipartisan system,
since this is now a matter of fairly common acceptance. In his second term, Mr. Jefferson
The Republican discovered the tendency towards bipartisanship and was both dismayed and puzzled by it.
I have elsewhere remarked his curious inability to understand how the cohesive power of public
plunder works straight towards political bipartisanship.
In 1823, finding some who called themselves Republicans favoring the Federalist policy
of Centralization, he spoke of them in a rather bewildered way as pseudo-republicans but real
Federalists. But most naturally any Republican who saw a chance of profiting by the political
means would retain the name and at the same time resist any tendency within the party
to impair the general system which held out such a prospect. In this way, bipartisanship
Thus the party system at once became in effect an elaborate system of fetishes which, in
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.
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.
The history of the whole post-constitutional period, from 1789 to the present day, is an instructive and cynical exhibit.
It is the first of its kind in the history of the Constitution.
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.
When the fetish of strict construction, for example, has collided with this principle,
it has invariably gone by the board, the party that maintained it simply changing sides.
The Anti-Federalist Party took office in 1800 as the party of strict construction, yet once
in office it played ducks and drakes with the Constitution in behalf of the special
interests that it represented.
The Federalists were nominally for loose construction, yet they fought bitterly every one of the
opposing party's loose constructionist measures, the embargo, the protective tariff and the
national bank. They were the constitutional nationalists of the deepest die, as we have
seen. Yet in their centre and stronghold, New England, they held the threat of secession
over the country throughout the period of what they harshly call Mr. Madison's War,
The War of 1812, which was in fact a purely imperialist adventure after annexation of
Floridian and Canadian territory in behalf of stiffening agrarian control of the political
means. But when the planting interests of the South made the same threat in 1861, they
became fervid nationalists again. Such exhibitions of pure fetishism, always cynical in their
always cynical in their transparent candour make up the history of the party system.
Their reductio ad absurdum is now seen as perhaps complete.
One cannot see how it could go further in the attitude of the democratic party
towards its historical principles of state sovereignty and strict constitution.
A fair match for this, however, is found in a speech made the other day
to a group of exporting and importing interests by the Mayor of New York, always known as
a Republican in politics, advocating the horrid democratic doctrine of a low tariff.
Throughout our post-constitutional period, there is not on record as far as I know a
single instance of party adherence to a fixed principle, qua principle, or to a political
by Theory. Indeed, the very cartoons on the subject show how widely it has come to be
accepted that party platforms, with their cant of issues, are so much sheer quackery,
and that campaign promises are merely another name for thimble-rigging. The workaday practice
of politics has been invariably opportunist, or in other words, invariably conformable
to the primary function of the state, and it is largely for this reason that the state's
service exerts its most powerful attraction upon an extremely low and sharp set type of
individual.
The maintenance of this system of fetishes, however, gives great enhancement to the prevailing
general view of the state. In that view, the state is made to appear as somehow deeply
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,
by a state-dazzled pulpit, by a meretricious press, by a continuous kaleidoscope display
of state pomp, panoply and circumstance, and by all the innumerable devices of electioneering.
These last invariably take their stand on the foundation of some imposing principle,
as witness the agonized cry now going up here and there in the land for a return to the
and the Constitution. All this is simply the interested clamors and sophistry, which means
no more and no less than it meant when the Constitution was not yet five years old and
Fisher Ames was observing contemptuously that of all the legislative measures and proposals
which were on the carpet at the time, he scarce knew one that had not raised this same cry,
not accepting a motion for adjournment.
In fact, such popular terms of electioneering, appeal, are uniformly and notoriously what
Jeremy Bentham called imposter terms, and their use invariably marks one thing and one
only. It marks a state of apprehension, either fearful or expectant as the case may be, concerning
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.
Let the incidents of exploitation show the first sign of shifting, and we hear at once
from one source of interested clamors and sophistry that democracy is in danger, and
that the unparalleled excellences of our civilization have come about solely through a policy of
rugged individualism carried out under terms of free competition, while from another source
Of course we hear that the enormities of laissez-faire have grounded the faces of the poor and obstructed
entrance into the more abundant life.
The general upshot of all this is that we see politicians of all schools and stripes
behaving with the obscene depravity of degenerate children, like the loose-footed gangs that
infest the railway yards and purlews of gas houses. Each group tries to circumvent another
with respect to the fruit accruing to acts of public mischief. In other words, we see
them behaving in a strictly historical manner. Professor Lasky's elaborate moral distinction
between the state and the officialdom is devoid of foundation. The state is not, as he would
have it, a social institution administered in an antisocial way. It is an antisocial
Social institution administered in the only way an antisocial institution can be administered
and by the kind of person who, in the nature of things, is best adapted to such service.