An astute friend sent me an email recommending this essay as required reading for anyone serious about understanding politics, government, and the bases on which we set up and run governments. After reading it, I concur. It is long, with much meat, and so will be excerpted in four parts.
The Anatomy of the State
This essay is from Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays by Murray N. Rothbard (Auburn: Mises Institute, 2000 [1974]), pp. 55–88.
What the State Is Not
The State is almost universally considered an institution of social service. Some theorists venerate the State as the apotheosis of society; others regard it as an amiable, though often inefficient, organization for achieving social ends; but almost all regard it as a necessary means for achieving the goals of mankind, a means to be ranged against the "private sector" and often winning in this competition of resources. With the rise of democracy, the identification of the State with society has been redoubled, until it is common to hear sentiments expressed which violate virtually every tenet of reason and common sense such as, "we are the government." The useful collective term "we" has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the reality of political life. If "we are the government," then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also "voluntary" on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that "we owe it to ourselves"; if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is "doing it to himself" and, therefore, nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead, they must have "committed suicide," since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part. One would not think it necessary to belabor this point, and yet the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or lesser degree.
We must, therefore, emphasize that "we" are not the government; the government is not "us." The government does not in any accurate sense "represent" the majority of the people.[1] But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority.[2] No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that "we are all part of one another," must be permitted to obscure this basic fact.
If, then, the State is not "us," if it is not "the human family" getting together to decide mutual problems, if it is not a lodge meeting or country club, what is it? Briefly, the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion. While other individuals or institutions obtain their income by production of goods and services and by the peaceful and voluntary sale of these goods and services to others, the State obtains its revenue by the use of compulsion; that is, by the use and the threat of the jailhouse and the bayonet.[3] Having used force and violence to obtain its revenue, the State generally goes on to regulate and dictate the other actions of its individual subjects. One would think that simple observation of all States through history and over the globe would be proof enough of this assertion; but the miasma of myth has lain so long over State activity that elaboration is necessary.
What the State Is
Man is born naked into the world, and needing to use his mind to learn how to take the resources given him by nature, and to transform them (for example, by investment in "capital") into shapes and forms and places where the resources can be used for the satisfaction of his wants and the advancement of his standard of living. The only way by which man can do this is by the use of his mind and energy to transform resources ("production") and to exchange these products for products created by others. Man has found that, through the process of voluntary, mutual exchange, the productivity and hence the living standards of all participants in exchange may increase enormously. The only "natural" course for man to survive and to attain wealth, therefore, is by using his mind and energy to engage in the production-and-exchange process. He does this, first, by finding natural resources, and then by transforming them (by "mixing his labor" with them, as Locke puts it), to make them his individual property, and then by exchanging this property for the similarly obtained property of others. The social path dictated by the requirements of man's nature, therefore, is the path of "property rights" and the "free market" of gift or exchange of such rights. Through this path, men have learned how to avoid the "jungle" methods of fighting over scarce resources so that A can only acquire them at the expense of B and, instead, to multiply those resources enormously in peaceful and harmonious production and exchange.
The great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer pointed out that there are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth; one, the above way of production and exchange, he called the "economic means." The other way is simpler in that it does not require productivity; it is the way of seizure of another's goods or services by the use of force and violence. This is the method of one-sided confiscation, of theft of the property of others. This is the method which Oppenheimer termed "the political means" to wealth. It should be clear that the peaceful use of reason and energy in production is the "natural" path for man: the means for his survival and prosperity on this earth. It should be equally clear that the coercive, exploitative means is contrary to natural law; it is parasitic, for instead of adding to production, it subtracts from it. The "political means" siphons production off to a parasitic and destructive individual or group; and this siphoning not only subtracts from the number producing, but also lowers the producer's incentive to produce beyond his own subsistence. In the long run, the robber destroys his own subsistence by dwindling or eliminating the source of his own supply. But not only that; even in the short run, the predator is acting contrary to his own true nature as a man.
We are now in a position to answer more fully the question: what is the State? The State, in the words of Oppenheimer, is the "organization of the political means"; it is the systematization of the predatory process over a given territory.[4] For crime, at best, is sporadic and uncertain; the parasitism is ephemeral, and the coercive, parasitic lifeline may be cut off at any time by the resistance of the victims. The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property; it renders certain, secure, and relatively "peaceful" the lifeline of the parasitic caste in society.[5] Since production must always precede predation, the free market is anterior to the State. The State has never been created by a "social contract"; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation. The classic paradigm was a conquering tribe pausing in its time-honored method of looting and murdering a conquered tribe, to realize that the time-span of plunder would be longer and more secure, and the situation more pleasant, if the conquered tribe were allowed to live and produce, with the conquerors settling among them as rulers exacting a steady annual tribute.[6] One method of the birth of a State may be illustrated as follows: in the hills of southern "Ruritania," a bandit group manages to obtain physical control over the territory, and finally the bandit chieftain proclaims himself "King of the sovereign and independent government of South Ruritania"; and, if he and his men have the force to maintain this rule for a while, lo and behold! a new State has joined the "family of nations," and the former bandit leaders have been transformed into the lawful nobility of the realm.
How the State Preserves Itself
Once a State has been established, the problem of the ruling group or "caste" is how to maintain their rule.[7] While force is their modus operandi, their basic and long-run problem is ideological. For in order to continue in office, any government (not simply a "democratic" government) must have the support of the majority of its subjects. This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm; it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature. But support in the sense of acceptance of some sort it must be; else the minority of State rulers would eventually be outweighed by the active resistance of the majority of the public. Since predation must be supported out of the surplus of production, it is necessarily true that the class constituting the State – the full-time bureaucracy (and nobility) – must be a rather small minority in the land, although it may, of course, purchase allies among important groups in the population. Therefore, the chief task of the rulers is always to secure the active or resigned acceptance of the majority of the citizens.[8][9]
Of course, one method of securing support is through the creation of vested economic interests. Therefore, the King alone cannot rule; he must have a sizable group of followers who enjoy the prerequisites of rule, for example, the members of the State apparatus, such as the full-time bureaucracy or the established nobility.[10] But this still secures only a minority of eager supporters, and even the essential purchasing of support by subsidies and other grants of privilege still does not obtain the consent of the majority. For this essential acceptance, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives. Promoting this ideology among the people is the vital social task of the "intellectuals." For the masses of men do not create their own ideas, or indeed think through these ideas independently; they follow passively the ideas adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals. The intellectuals are, therefore, the "opinion-molders" in society. And since it is precisely a molding of opinion that the State most desperately needs, the basis for age-old alliance between the State and the intellectuals becomes clear.
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Notes
[1] We cannot, in this chapter, develop the many problems and fallacies of "democracy." Suffice it to say here that an individual's true agent or "representative" is always subject to that individual's orders, can be dismissed at any time and cannot act contrary to the interests or wishes of his principal. Clearly, the "representative" in a democracy can never fulfill such agency functions, the only ones consonant with a libertarian society.
[2] Social democrats often retort that democracy – majority choice of rulers – logically implies that the majority must leave certain freedoms to the minority, for the minority might one day become the majority. Apart from other flaws, this argument obviously does not hold where the minority cannot become the majority, for example, when the minority is of a different racial or ethnic group from the majority.
[3] Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper and Bros., 1942), p. 198.
The friction or antagonism between the private and the public sphere was intensified from the first by the fact that . . . the State has been living on a revenue which was being produced in the private sphere for private purposes and had to be deflected from these purposes by political force. The theory which construes taxes on the analogy of club dues or of the purchase of the service of, say, a doctor only proves how far removed this part of the social sciences is from scientific habits of mind. Also see Murray N. Rothbard, "The Fallacy of the 'Public Sector,"' New Individualist Review (Summer, 1961): pp. 3ff.
[4] Franz Oppenheimer, The State (New York: Vanguard Press, 1926) pp. 24–27:
There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others. . . . I propose in the following discussion to call one's own labor and the equivalent exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the "economic means" for the satisfaction of need while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the "political means". . . . The State is an organization of the political means. No State, therefore, can come into being until the economic means has created a definite number of objects for the satisfaction of needs, which objects may be taken away or appropriated by warlike robbery.
[5] Albert Jay Nock wrote vividly that
the State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime. . . . It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien. Nock, On Doing the Right Thing, and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Bros., 1929), p. 143; quoted in Jack Schwartzman, "Albert Jay Nock – A Superfluous Man," Faith and Freedom (December, 1953): p. 11.
[6] Oppenheimer, The State, p. 15:
What, then, is the State as a sociological concept? The State, completely in its genesis . . . is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group of men on a defeated group, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors. And de Jouvenel has written: "the State is in essence the result of the successes achieved by a band of brigands who superimpose themselves on small, distinct societies." Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power (New York: Viking Press, 1949), pp. 100–01.
[7] On the crucial distinction between "caste," a group with privileges or burdens coercively granted or imposed by the State and the Marxian concept of "class" in society, see Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957), pp. 112ff.
[8] Such acceptance does not, of course, imply that the State rule has become "voluntary"; for even if the majority support be active and eager, this support is not unanimous by every individual.
[9] That every government, no matter how "dictatorial" over individuals, must secure such support has been demonstrated by such acute political theorists as Étienne de la Boétie, David Hume, and Ludwig von Mises. Thus, cf. David Hume, "Of the First Principles of Government," in Essays, Literary, Moral and Political (London: Ward, Locke, and Taylor, n.d.), p. 23; Étienne de la Boétie, Anti-Dictator (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), pp. 8–9; Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 1998), pp. 188ff. For more on the contribution to the analysis of the State by la Boétie, see Oscar Jaszi and John D. Lewis, Against the Tyrant (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1957), pp. 55–57.
[10] La Boétie, Anti-Dictator, pp. 43–44.
Whenever a ruler makes himself dictator . . . all those who are corrupted by burning ambition or extraordinary avarice, these gather around him and support him in order to have a share in the booty and to constitute themselves petty chiefs under the big tyrant.
25 Comments
Freebird
Oooh, good essay. Thanks for this! I've been aware of the essential thievery nature of this government for a long time, but hadn't thought to extend it round to Government, per se. It's a bit like Walter Williams has been saying for years. Love when that man sits in for Limbaugh, more intelligent and enjoyable than El Rushbo.
StuckInNJ
Very good! So, how long do we have to wait for the next installment?
"For in order to continue in office, any government (not simply a "democratic" government) must have the support of the majority of its subjects."
Is that really true? It seems to me that a small minority with weapons can impose its will on the majority without guns. Look at what occurred in Iran this past summer.
Frogman
I remember reading something about the general timelines of governments, that each type had a characteristic lifespan. Despotic regimes had the shortest, around 40–60 years if I remember right. Since they never gain support (or at least passivity / acceptance) of the majority, they tend to die / morph the earliest.
Guns can get you power, and succeed at imposing it for a while.
TLaCour
Prior to 1788, no "State" had ever been voluntarily constructed by peaceful means, and I agree with the author that the genesis of all States before this one was a violent imposition by the few over the many. But we did what had never been done, and set up a new Nation-State, fundamentally different from that imposed by the Revolution, by peaceful means. I disagree with the author in that I believe it is possible to do that move one better.
The nature of the Constitution remained close to the traditional characteristic of States: the power to tax the people directly, even unfairly, was retained and backed by the sword. Although the "exclusive use of violence" was not at first thought to be in the power of the central government, that outcome was inherent to the Constitution. Consider the Whisky Tax and the ensuing Whisky Rebellion. But the United States still was unique on the planet and in history in its decentralization of that taxing power and the sword; and the internal strength of many of its component States kept at bay the typical degradation into Conquest of its own people by the Nation.
Eventually, that American Experiment failed to retain the support of a very substantial portion of the population, necessitating the Conquest of the Southern States in order to retain the form of Union. However, the character of the Union was forever altered by the event. Decentralized or "Federal" government was ended, and after 150 years of the new system we are close to making the Death Run typical of all governments.
No voluntary association that retained the essence of thievery, the "political means" the author discusses that legitimates the theft of some people's property by the State, has ever endured beyond 200 years, if that much. Whether a voluntary association that avoids that theft, that derives its revenue entirely by free exchange (as in user fees, as opposed to taxes), could ever be instituted is an open question.
derryl
This is great stuff. Rothbard/Oppenheimer lays out very clearly the true nature of the "political" realm, that it is essentially a Mafia that has managed through ideological brainwashing to secure the 'consent' of the governed. "The governed" are merely the productive class whose wealth is confiscated for redistribution by the political class. I would include finance in the political class.
It is true that a complex economy requires financial intermediaries (i.e. bankers) to invest some people's savings into the productive ventures of others but in our monetary system where bankers actually create the money they 'lend' this virtuous intermediary function has been corrupted. Even within this corrupted financial system most small scale bankers still work as honest intermediaries so I don't want to tar all bankers with the same brush. But banking has been captured by big time crooks who dominate the system and use their position to essentially 'tax' the monetary system to generate obscene gains for themselves.
My girlfriend tells me of a show she saw that we call "the Swedish experiment". It was done with rats. The setup was that food was placed across a body of water with all the rats on one side so rats had to swim across to get the food. There was no place to stand where the food was so rats had to carry it back to eat it. It very soon emerged that some rats did all the swimming and bringing food back while other rats merely waited for the food to be delivered to them. So we have a productive class of food gatherers and a political class of food appropriators. After these classes had been firmly established the experimenters removed all the political class rats leaving only the producers in the experiment. Almost immediately some of the formerly productive took on the role of the political and simply waited for the food to be delivered to them.
Social nature is different than individual psychological nature. Rats, and humans, behave one way on their own and another way in groups. Groups seem to almost automatically organize themselves according to a hierarchy.
In his book, "Global Brain", Howard Bloom describes a colony of lobsters in which the alpha male gets all the breeding rights and first access to food and other resources. When the alpha male is supplanted by a more dominant rival a new "top lobster" emerges. When he achieves top lobster status a lobster undergoes physiological changes. A rush of serotonin boosts his confidence and other 'ruling features' so significantly that he essentially has a "different brain". His displaced rival is flooded with octopamine and slinks away in dejection. These hormonal changes generate "dominance hierarchies, pecking orders in which each animal knows who's on top, who is not, and who is in between."(p.33) Bloom lays out the evolutionary trail via which we have inherited these social traits. So the whole political vs productive class hierarchy is a product of our natural evolution.
I argue that human spiritual evolution is the process by which we learn to deliberately replace the impulses and predispositions of our natural animal nature with a morally superior motivational structure. So I think the whole "dominance hierarchy/top lobster" business belongs to the animal nature that we are trying to evolve beyond. Spiritual evolution is an individual process by which we knowingly and deliberately choose to make of ourselves something better than the way we found ourselves to be. So a spiritually evolved "leader" does not use that dominant position to extract material benefits for him/her self. He/she uses it to try to make things work better for the group, and to encourage spiritual advancement among his/her group. Jesus, for e.g., said that the true leader is the one who serves the best, not the one who receives the best service.
I argue that we are born animals and we choose to become "humans", self-made higher beings. There is no personal "credit" in simply being as you were born and raised to be. That is like a Corvette taking credit for not being a Pinto. Both cars are products of somebody else's making. Neither one did anything to make itself what it is even though one is clearly "better" than the other. Many or most people never do become humans. They live and die as natural animals. They never take the initiative to make themselves better than they found themselves. They spend their effort trying to climb the animal food chain rather than trying to evolve themselves beyond it. I think that's what Jesus' whole "sheep and goats" lecturing is about.
In my view the state as Rothbard/Oppenheimer describes it is a spiritually unevolved animal hierarchy. Our 'leaders' are just the meanest monkeys who get what they want by pandering, the threat of force, and whatever else works for them. They rule for their personal gain (both hormonally--the top lobster serotonin buzz and most favored status--and the more obvious material benefits), not for the good of 'the people'. The people are merely the producers who make all the goods that the leaders want to appropriate. So "politics" is the institution in which people compete for top lobster status. It is an animal social structure, a product of natural evolution.
Only very rarely when we get a true leader does politics even achieve the status of a truly "human" institution. The founding of the US is probably one of those rare occasions. The United States of America may be the first, and may be the only, human nation ever instituted on this planet of apes. But in recent decades the US is backsliding down the evolutionary trail and reverting to an animal political dominance hierarchy run by banksters and the various other corporate oligarchs who have managed to climb to the top of the food chain. A light emerged out of the mists of history and the animals tried to snuff it out because they preferred to live in the darkness. Unless the humans redouble their efforts to shine the light, the animals will win. Which side are we on?
derryl
p.s. if you can't wait to read the rest of Rothbard's piece Google 'the anatomy of the state' and it will take you to the lewrockwell site that has the entire text. For some reason this TBP window won't accept the link.
TLaCour
Anyone wanting to go directly to the whole essay need only click on the title of this article or on the essay's title. Both are active links to the whole essay.
I'll probably post Part 2 tomorrow if it appears discussion is finished on this part.
TLaCour
Wow, derryl, Outstanding! This is the kind of contributory post an writer lives for: you grasped the article and then did it one better.
"My girlfriend tells me of a show she saw that we call "the Swedish experiment". It was done with rats. The setup was that food was placed across a body of water with all the rats on one side so rats had to swim across to get the food. There was no place to stand where the food was so rats had to carry it back to eat it. It very soon emerged that some rats did all the swimming and bringing food back while other rats merely waited for the food to be delivered to them. So we have a productive class of food gatherers and a political class of food appropriators. After these classes had been firmly established the experimenters removed all the political class rats leaving only the producers in the experiment. Almost immediately some of the formerly productive took on the role of the political and simply waited for the food to be delivered to them.
Social nature is different than individual psychological nature. Rats, and humans, behave one way on their own and another way in groups. Groups seem to almost automatically organize themselves according to a hierarchy."
I had never heard of the "Swedish experiment." Your post is going to make me think hard before I reply in substance, because the implications for establishing a non-thieving government are enormous.
TLaCour
derryl:
This is one of the best essays I've seen on this topic. Besides being well-written, with good flow and clear connections, the post reveals that this is a topic that ranks as more basic than any economic or political discussion. I am truly impressed and grateful that you took the time to write it. Of course, I am biased, since your post agrees with my own view.
"I argue that human spiritual evolution is the process by which we learn to deliberately replace the impulses and predispositions of our natural animal nature with a morally superior motivational structure. So I think the whole "dominance hierarchy/top lobster" business belongs to the animal nature that we are trying to evolve beyond. ...
"I argue that we are born animals and we choose to become "humans", self-made higher beings. ...In my view the state as Rothbard/Oppenheimer describes it is a spiritually unevolved animal hierarchy. ...It is an animal social structure, a product of natural evolution.
Only very rarely when we get a true leader does politics even achieve the status of a truly "human" institution. The founding of the US is probably one of those rare occasions. The United States of America may be the first, and may be the only, human nation ever instituted on this planet of apes. But in recent decades the US is backsliding down the evolutionary trail and reverting to an animal political dominance hierarchy run by banksters and the various other corporate oligarchs who have managed to climb to the top of the food chain. A light emerged out of the mists of history and the animals tried to snuff it out because they preferred to live in the darkness. Unless the humans redouble their efforts to shine the light, the animals will win. Which side are we on?"
Beat me to the punch, you did! Bully for you, and good for us. Great summary of where these articles were intended to lead.
HansGruber
Synposis:
What the State is Not:
Main point: "We are the governed," not "We are the government." The state is bad.
What the State is:
I found myself in opposition to this point about the state just being an organization of the political means. I think the state is often a seamless blend for both economic means and political means. Somehow Rothbard talks around or ignores the idea of competition for limited resources. The state, (political means) is often used to gain the territory and control of these resources, so that (economic means) can then be employed. Examples, United Fruit Company, oil in the Middle East, Manifest Destiny, etc. There are too many examples to mention here. In my opinion, the military then becomes a pre-requisite for the capitalism following behind it.
How the State Preserves Itself: Main point: Academia is in cahoots with the ruling elite. Co-opting a portion of the population is a requirement for the state to survive.
An excellent read. Thank you.
Socratease
Hans, the point about land / resources being gained FIRST by the State, then let to the people, is true sometimes, certainly in the American West. Does the Fruit company you mention have to do with the annexation of Hawaii? But the point is valid, whether it is always true or not. And it is not, since many States arose where the economic exploitation was already in full swing.
Clearly then, the State would need a military to gain the land / resources, perhaps the same military it used to establish itself as "The State" to begin with. But the State, unless it is Socialist, does no producing. The State engages in no capitalism, it just takes the fruits of trading. the State doens't build cars in a capitalist system, only in a Socialist system. But again, your point is valid: in at least SOME States, the political means and the economic means are intertwined.
Where I disagree with the author is, like you, on the rather sweeping definitions of State that are demonstrably TOO sweeping. The essential nature of the State as a thief of its citizens' produce, however, seems to have no exceptions in the real world.
Yet.
Slowsmile
TLaCour...Wonderful article for sure. I have read many of Rothbard's essays and books and would heartily recommend The Case Against the Fed as one of Rothbard's most revealing books. The concept of government, I believe, can never be accurately defined because it's meaning or definition never stands still, always morphing and changing in step with where the power lies at any point in time. This is the main problem with modern democracy now. Look at the difference between America the Republic of the Revolution and America today whose modern government entity seems to have become so fuzzily and inaccurately associated with such a strange form of democracy. Yes, of course, but a democracy for who ? Freedoms for who ? The meanings of the latter have all been subtley transferred to other areas or power bases within the government/financial sectors and have been equally and ruthlessly subtracted from the ordinary citizen's lifestyle.
There are several other books worth a read. "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by E Griffin is damning book indeed, but my favourite still remains as "Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire" by M Hudson. This is a most astonishing book which reveals the insidious foreign control which is exerted by American "owned" entites such as the CIA, IMF, WTO etc that all plainly act as the ruthless external tentacles of American power and economic control abroad via the quiet, dirty rules of the Washington Consensus. All are well worth a read.