The Nature of Government
There are a number of areas of human endeavor and human behavior wherein a certain amount of ignorance continues to manifest.
And one of these areas is the area relating to government.
Normally people don't really understand it.
They haven't taken the time to study it, to understand what it can do and what it cannot do.
And the consequence is that they tend to become superstitious about it. They imagine that it can do certain things that it cannot do, and that it can be prevented from doing certain things that it can do.
And hence they tend to erect a kind of mythology around it, imagining certain things about it which aren't true, never have been true, and probably never will be true.
So it behooves us to examine this peculiar agency of government to find out what it is,
and what in fact it can do and cannot do. Apparently, what is first important would
be a definition. We need to define government so that we understand it, and let me give
you a definition that is as precise as I know how to make it. I would define government
as a group of men who sell retributive justice to the inhabitants of a limited geographic
area at monopolistic prices. In other words, what I am saying is that government is a group
of men, and that they function by doing certain things for other people, implied in the doing
of These Things is the use of compulsion. All governments are based on force of some
kind, either the suggestion that force can and will be used, or the actual application
of force in use. Now, in order to understand what I mean by that definition, we have to
look behind it to see exactly what is being said. When I say that government is a group
of Man.
Then I am presuming that there will be a selected group of men, taken out of the population
generally, who will be clad in these robes.
They will become a special elite group that we think of as governmental people.
That is, they are a part of this agency, whereas other people are not.
I might point out in passing that probably one of the great myths that we believe in
in this country is that the population at large is the government. Now that of course
is really an absurdity. The population at large comprises the governed, those who are
imposed upon. It is that limited number of persons who have been drawn out of the population
generally and have been converted into an elite group that is the government. The government
disposes and the people are disposed of, as well as their earnings.
So that is the difference.
That's one of the most important myths we have to deal with.
The assumption that simply because you have the opportunity of voting, if you do, that
that in itself makes you a member of the ruling elite.
Actually that is not true.
The fact that you vote does not place power in your hands, it merely grants you a momentary
choice relating to the person who is going to have the power.
And although it is admitted, of course, frankly, that the population at large could change
rulers, there is nothing in the arrangement that permits the population at large to rule.
The idea is simply, if you can imagine this analogy, imagine a group of persons, each
one in his respective cell, in a large penitentiary.
And every four years these persons in the penitentiary get to elect their warden.
And because they get to elect their warden, it is said to them that they are really running
the penitentiary.
But the fact is they never get the keys to their cell, so they remain in them.
Now that's in essence the political formula that we have adopted under the democratic
banner, which is that we imagine that we have power when in point of fact it is others who
have been granted a kind of power over us. And that power is manifested primarily in
the seeking of a kind of retroactive justice. That's really what it's all about.
Now while we're examining government and of course one of the areas we will want to take
up will deal with the processes whereby this power is bestowed. Where does it come from?
Now that's something we want to develop more fully as we go on. But while we take up this
area we should examine the nature of politics because we tend to relate the word politics
to Government.
Actually, the word politics has a number of usages, and they are all quite correct.
It's just important that we understand each other so that you know what I mean when I
use the term politics, and I would like to specify that politics, as I am going to use
it here, will be a method.
Some people call it an art, and some people call it a science.
I don't think politics is either an art or a science, but I will call it a method or
a procedure, a way of doing things, that politics then is a method by means of which a monopoly
of power can be obtained or maintained. All governments deal in monopolies. There is no
such thing as any other kind of government, and there never has been. All governments
Methods are concerned with preserving the status quo and with providing a monopoly of
force in the hands of a limited number. That's the whole idea.
Now, the methods whereby this monopoly is obtained or maintained, actually the methods
are academic. There are any number of ways that it can happen. Possibly the best discourse
on the subject was provided by a man named Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote about it during
the Italian Renaissance. His definitive work in the area is entitled The Prince, and I
recommend it if you haven't read it. So far as I know, the statements made by Machiavelli
in the book The Prince have never really been contravened or contradicted substantially.
He does state the case pretty frankly, and if you're interested in that sort of thing,
I'll recommend the book to you. In any case, politics is a method whereby monopolies of
force are obtained, and government is the structure wherein these monopolies of force
will be utilized primarily for the purpose of obtaining a kind of retroactive justice.
Now that's the idea of government. Sometimes people presume that any use of force at all
is government. And you can make a fairly good case for that. And if you do, then we could
say that government, like taxes, has always been with us. But I'm going to specify that
there are certain prerequisites to government that make a use of force per se not totally
be applicable. That is, I will contend that force can arise in a non-government situation
and that it isn't government. It is just force. For example, I will contend that if
a man approaches you with a gun and threatens you with that weapon, that that does not make
make him your government at the time. It may cause him to influence your actions. And doubtless
that is exactly what he would do. But the fact is that he is not a government agent
necessarily. If he is a government agent threatening you with a gun, then he would have received
A special type of licensing that would enable him to carry the gun as a sanctioned representative
of the agency, and that is the thing that comprises government.
Government has certain prerequisites for it to exist, which if not present, although it
may not eliminate the use of force, nonetheless eliminates government as an agency per se.
Let me list these prerequisites of government and discuss them briefly so that we understand
what they are. There are four of them that appear constantly throughout history, and
if all four are not present, then you do not have government as such.
The first prerequisite, the first factor that you must have if you are to have a government,
is a person or possibly a small group of persons who are ready, willing and able to constitute
themselves the ruler or rulers of everyone else. In other words, to have a government
you begin by finding someone who is willing to act as the titular head of that government.
This is the easiest factor to find. In all the history of man, we have never had any
shortage here. There have always been those who were ready, willing, and able to stand
forward and say, I would make a good ruler. There has never been a dearth of this, unfortunately,
but that would be a prerequisite. If you didn't have, for any reason, if by some process that
That type of person didn't appear. You couldn't have a government. You have to have this individual
emerge who somehow fancies himself to be better than other people, to feel that his opinions
are more valid than other people's, and to feel this strongly enough to be ready, willing
and able to employ force to make his opinions accepted. You see, otherwise there would be
If he thinks his opinions can be sold and people would voluntarily accept them, then
he wouldn't need a government.
He could simply communicate his ideas and people would accept them.
But he doesn't think that they're that good.
So he doubts his ability to communicate successfully, and rather he relies on force.
And that is the reason why he believes that, one, his opinions are more important than
and other people's opinions, and two, he can't sell them. Therefore, there is only one way
of getting them across, and that's to have power behind him. And so, such a man would
be the natural candidate for a ruler. Now, whether you are to call him a king or an emperor
or a president or a czar or a dictator or a tyrant or whatever, this is academic. The
The point is that he is constituting himself as being someone above everyone else.
We'll have more to say about rulers after a bit.
Now the second factor that must appear, the second prerequisite to government, is an extremely
important point.
It seems very obvious, and because it is so obvious, we tend not to spend enough time
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and then it succeeds only after a long period of time where this second factor appears. Finally, if for example a military force conquers a territory and then imposes rule by force on that territory, this becomes a kind of military control but it is not government. It is simply military control and it will continue to demand absolute suppression of every
In the early Roman days the Romans experimented with this and began to make a very important discovery and that was that when they conquered a neighboring territory and imposed rule from Rome, the people simply submitted because there was nothing else that they could do, but they were constantly in a state of revolt so that you could never get anything done in that process.
of Money, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory
Government, because at this point the people would then submit to the government because
they would feel that they had someone representing them and therefore it wasn't really a military
despotism, it was a government in fact that would represent their wishes.
So this is the thing that has to be obtained if you are to have a government in fact.
It is the difference between a rule by bandits per se and by a governing body, and this is
a very important point. I can think of no phrase better than the one that Ayn Rand used
in her very important novel Atlas Shrugged. She said here, she came up with this phrase
and it's a happy one because it defines precisely what is involved, she said, the sanction of
of the Victim. And that's an extremely precise way of stating what I'm getting at. In order
for a government to exist, in fact, it not only must have the exclusive use of force,
it must have a sanctioned use of force. That's the thing that makes a government. Force could
crop up anywhere among men. Men are prone to employ it. But to have a government you
You have to have a particular type of force at work, a type of force which is given broad
public approval even by the people who are to be victimized by the use of the force.
And that's the characteristic. The difference between a government and non-government employment
of force is the legal sanction that accompanies force in government hands. That's the characteristic.
And without that you may have force, but it is not government. It is simply an erratic
or a sporadic force that is employed by some over others, and it is a kind of militarism,
and it will serve to suppress people, but it will not serve to release them.
Let me make another analogy so that that point is really grasped. It is in effect the difference
Between Having a Prisoner and Having a Slave
If you have a prisoner, he is an economic liability. He does not have to produce anything.
Characteristically, he will be confined and suppressed. And that's that. A population
that has been placed under military despotism, in essence, is a population prisoner to that
and despotism, and that is not a government. Now, if that population can be converted into
willing workers under the despotism, then you have created a condition of slavery as
opposed to a condition of imprisonment. In other words, that is the standard relationship
between a population and its government. The people in the population continue to work,
is a modified relationship of the slave-slave master condition. If it becomes oppressive, then it, in fact, simply goes to the point where the choices of the individuals are reduced constantly until the people are virtualized.
If it becomes oppressive, then it in fact simply goes to the point where the choices of the individuals are reduced constantly until the people are virtually enslaved as the early blacks were enslaved in this country.
That is, their choices are virtually wiped out. And that of course would be the fundamental difference.
So the difference then between a governing force over a people and a blind military force
over a people is the difference between the condition of slavery versus the condition
of imprisonment. If you are imprisoned, of course, you can't produce. But if you are
a slave, you can produce, and populations tend to accept a limited amount of slavery which
which makes it possible for them to continue to produce and therefore to exercise some
control over their lives, and they accept that whereas they will not accept imprisonment.
So it's an important point to keep in mind as we go ahead with understanding the nature
of government.
Now there's a third point, also very important, one that if it does not exist means that there
There is not a government existing in fact, and this is a point of contact between the
ruler and the ruled. There have been in the history of man any number of instances wherein
there has been a government over a territory, and the people in the territory knew that
they were being governed in a sense, and yet there was no point of contact between the
and the ruler and the ruled. And hence, in point of fact, there was no de facto government.
Now that is a condition that pertained in the United States on two occasions. It pertained
at the outset when we were British colonies. And it related to a great number of the people
who came over here from Britain and elsewhere in the early days of colonization. What happened
was that titularly we were under the government and hence the protection of the King of England.
But in point of fact from 1603 on up to 1760, a period of better than 150 years, the kings
and queens in England became largely indifferent to what was going on in their colonies and
And the consequence was that the hand of control simply wasn't felt in the colonies.
Oh, there were royal governors sent over, but they had a modicum of power and it would
extend only a short distance beyond the particular town in which they made their headquarters.
The vast number of people in the area were setting up farms and establishing villages
and trade of various sorts in rural communities.
And the consequence was the American people were not taxed and they were not regulated
by the state.
But if you ask anyone of them they would say, oh yes, well I'm a loyal subject of His Majesty
the King of England.
And yet they were paying no taxes, they were not being regulated and if anybody said anything
they didn't like, in essence they turned their back on them and went ten miles further west
because we had a territorial freedom by virtue of the fact that we had such a large area
to move into, and the consequence was that in a very real sense there was no contact
between the ruler and the ruled although psychologically the people felt that they were being ruled
all the time. Now that same condition reappeared in the settling of the West where the development
and mining communities and cattle towns and so forth out in the western area went ahead
rapidly beyond the ability of government to come in. So you had, in essence, what was
called the lawless West. There was no law. There were simply people. And, of course,
in spite of television and the modern tendency to dramatize, the lawlessness, ergo the crime
and Corruption of the period. In point of fact, a study of those communities reveals
that there was very little crime until governments began to get in, more substantially. There
were many communities where no such thing occurred. There was no taxes, no regulation,
there probably wasn't even a sheriff. And yet these communities became thriving centers
of business and industry long before the arm of government was established. Now here again
Again you have a case where these people felt themselves to be other than wild-eyed, unruled
anarchists or something of the sort.
They felt themselves to be substantial citizens and future citizens of this country.
But they didn't have a government because there was no point of contact.
There are other instances that could be given, some far more modern than the two I've cited,
Wherein whole populations have come out from under a point of contact with their government,
they pay no taxes, they have no officials, in essence they are unruled. Therefore if
you are to have a government de facto, you must have not only the ruler and the sanction
of the victim, but a point of contact between the two, where the force of the one is in
in fact imposed upon the other, and the others accept it. Now that would be those requirements.
There is a fourth prerequisite here that is also of considerable importance, and once
more we don't pay enough attention to it so we don't understand it, and it is time
that we did. In order for any kind of government to exist there must always be an administrative
Elite, to enforce and administer the laws or the rules or the you cases set forth by
that governing body, whatever it may be. Laws do not administer themselves. You could write
law, you could write miles of copy of law every day, and it would be meaningless. The
only thing that is actually meaningful about any written law is the extent to which it
is to be enforced. You could fill libraries with printed laws and they would have no significance
whatever. It is the enforcement arm of government that makes it government in fact. And this
is where the power resides. It is the flexed bicep of the military and the state in combination
that makes it government what it is. And so in order to have a government you have to
It must be a non-productive elite. That is to say, it has to be people who aren't producing anything, because if they were producing anything, they wouldn't have the time to devote to these wasteful processes of trying to enforce rules on everybody else.
And what does that mean? That means that you never have a government, in fact, until the
economy has been built up high enough so that surpluses exist that will support a non-productive
elite. Therefore you don't really have government per se until you have taxation, until you
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surpluses produced to make it possible for a non-productive elite to survive. The elite
of the primitive times were simply the chieftains who were best at providing for a livelihood
for the tribal members, and they were looked to and followed because they were able producers.
The political sphere and the sphere of government begins to emerge only when the economy has
Compulsion and Coercion to accomplish this and to obtain the funds by means of which they can get it all done.
Thank you very much.