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Today we will discuss a short but powerful book that looks at how territories with government came into existence. America’s declaration of independence states that governments were instituted among men in order to protect men’s unalienable natural rights such as the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Unfortunately, this is wishful thinking. Actually, governments were created for quite another reason as we shall see. Let’s get started.
From Chapter 1: 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.
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.”
Liberty Man Van: How many times have you heard a politician say “we did this” or “we did that” meaning the government. If we take “us” to mean the government then you could say:
- We have stationed troops in over 140 countries around the globe
- We have dropped bombs in over 20 countries since WWII
- We support brutal dictators as long as they do what we like
- We overthrow democratically elected leaders in other countries
- We kill thousands of people in other countries every year
- We engage in torture
- We incarcerate ourselves more than any other people on earth
- We always spend more than we take in
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.
Liberty Man Van: Does his best mafia guy impression.
from Chapter 2: 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.
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.
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.
Liberty Man Van: So, as you can see, the state gains its resources by the confiscation of the wealth of those who earned it. This theft is done in a variety of ways.
- income taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, tariffs
- hunting license, fishing license, drivers license
- business licenses
- marriage license
- building permit
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. 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. 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.
From Chapter 3: 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. 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.
…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.” … 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.
…The State, on the other hand, is willing to offer the intellectuals a secure and permanent berth in the State apparatus; and thus a secure income and the panoply of prestige. For the intellectuals will be handsomely rewarded for the important function they perform for the State rulers, of which group they now become a part.
Liberty Man Van: In these passages Rothbard highlights the cozy relationship that has always existed between the intellectuals and the state. Often times the intellectuals in this equation have been the religious or spiritual leaders. The priests help to prop up the legitimacy of the king’s rule and in exchange the priests receive assistance from the king. We can see this mutually beneficial relationship at work in the Hebrew Bible with the story of King Solomon’s construction of the temple. We are told that the crowning achievement of King Solomon’s reign was the construction of a magnificent temple in Jerusalem.
Solomon spared no expense for the building’s creation. He ordered vast quantities of cedar wood from King Hiram of Tyre (I Kings 5:2025), had huge blocks of the choicest stone quarried, and commanded that the building’s foundation be laid with hewn stone. To complete the massive project, he imposed forced labor on all his subjects, drafting people for work shifts that sometimes lasted a month at a time. Some 3,300 officials were appointed to oversee the Temple’s erection (5:2730). Solomon assumed such heavy debts in building the Temple that he is forced to pay off King Hiram by handing over twenty towns in the Galilee (I Kings 9:11).
Solomon was not content to live in his father’s house and built a huge palace to house his 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 7:1-11). It took 13 years to construct, compared to just 7 years for the temple.
Liberty Man Van: And how did Solomon pay for these building projects? The same way modern leaders pay for large construction projects- through heavy taxation and borrowing, which is tax on the future.
Again, the point of this story is to show the cozy relationship that has always existed between the intellectuals and the state. In modern times it is the talking heads who constantly appear on television touting the merits of some new building project, new weapons system ,etc. The advocates of state power also benefit from it. We rarely hear the arguments against expansion of state power- the erosion of individual freedom- discussed in the mainstream media.
Back to excerpts from “Anatomy of the State.”
…Many and varied have been the arguments by which the State and its intellectuals have induced their subjects to support their rule…The union of Church and State was one of the oldest and most successful of these ideological devices. The ruler was either anointed by God or, in the case of the absolute rule of many Oriental despotisms, was himself God; hence, any resistance to his rule would be blasphemy. The States’ priestcraft performed the basic intellectual function of obtaining popular support and even worship for the rulers.
…Another successful device was to instill fear of any alternative systems of rule or nonrule. The present rulers, it was maintained, supply to the citizens an essential service for which they should be most grateful: protection against sporadic criminals and marauders…Especially has the State been successful in recent centuries in instilling fear of other State rulers…Since most men tend to love their homeland, the identification of that land and its people with the State was a means of making natural patriotism work to the State’s advantage… This device of “nationalism” has only been successful, in Western civilization, in recent centuries; it was not too long ago that the mass of subjects regarded wars as irrelevant battles between various sets of nobles.
Many and subtle are the ideological weapons that the State has wielded through the centuries. One excellent weapon has been tradition… Worship of one’s ancestors, then, becomes a none too subtle means of worship of one’s ancient rulers.
Another potent ideological force is to deprecate the individual and exalt the collectivity of society. For since any given rule implies majority acceptance, any ideological danger to that rule can only start from one or a few independently-thinking individuals…The new idea, much less the new critical idea, must needs begin as a small minority opinion; therefore, the State must nip the view in the bud by ridiculing any view that defies the opinions of the mass…It is also important for the State to make its rule seem inevitable; even if its reign is disliked, it will then be met with passive resignation, as witness the familiar coupling of “death and taxes.”
… Another tried and true method for bending subjects to the State’s will is inducing guilt. Any increase in private well-being can be attacked as “unconscionable greed,” “materialism,” or “excessive affluence,” profit-making can be attacked as “exploitation” and “usury,” mutually beneficial exchanges denounced as “selfishness,” and somehow with the conclusion always being drawn that more resources should be siphoned from the private to the “public sector.”
Liberty Man Van: How many times have you heard the same lame argument that if you are not in favor of some new government program that you must be selfish or greedy? If you are not in favor of government run schools you must be anti-education. If you don’t believe the climate change dogma you must be anti-environment. If you are not in favor of government run health care you must want people to die.
Back to the book:
… In the present more secular age, the divine right of the State has been supplemented by the invocation of a new god, Science. State rule is now proclaimed as being ultrascientific, as constituting planning by experts.
… The unremitting determination of its assaults on common sense is no accident, for as Mencken vividly maintained:
The average man, whatever his errors otherwise, at least sees clearly that government is something lying outside him and outside the generality of his fellow men—that it is a separate, independent, and hostile power, only partly under his control, and capable of doing him great harm… When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the government is robbed, the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had before. The notion that they have earned that money is never entertained; to most sensible men it would seem ludicrous.
From Chapter 4: How the State Transcends Its Limits
… through the centuries men have formed concepts designed to check and limit the exercise of State rule; and, one after another, the State, using its intellectual allies, has been able to transform these concepts into intellectual rubber stamps of legitimacy and virtue to attach to its decrees and actions. Originally, in Western Europe, the concept of divine sovereignty held that the kings may rule only according to divine law; the kings turned the concept into a rubber stamp of divine approval for any of the kings’ actions. The concept of parliamentary democracy began as a popular check upon absolute monarchical rule; it ended with parliament being the essential part of the State and its every act totally sovereign.
… Certainly the most ambitious attempt to impose limits on the State has been the Bill of Rights and other restrictive parts of the American Constitution, in which written limits on government became the fundamental law to be interpreted by a judiciary supposedly independent of the other branches of government. All Americans are familiar with the process by which the construction of limits in the Constitution has been inexorably broadened over the last century. But few have been as keen as Professor Charles Black to see that the State has, in the process, largely transformed judicial review itself from a limiting device to yet another instrument for furnishing ideological legitimacy to the government’s actions.
… For while the seeming independence of the federal judiciary has played a vital part in making its actions virtual Holy Writ for the bulk of the people, it is also and ever true that the judiciary is part and parcel of the government apparatus and appointed by the executive and legislative branches… the State has set itself up as a judge in its own cause, thus violating a basic juridical principle for aiming at just decisions.
Liberty Man Van: Think about what the Supreme Court is asked to do in a number of cases- determine a dispute between a state government and the general government. Through the years the Supreme Court ruling have functioned to gradually move the balance of power from the states to the central government. This makes perfect sense when we consider the Supreme Court is a PART of the central government. As Rothbard says here this is akin to allowing a party in a case to also be the judge. How could one expect an impartial ruling?
To see an example of the Supreme Court shifting power to the central government. For example, California passed a law in the 1990’s that made medical marijuana legal. Angel Raich, a California resident, grew some marijuana for medicinal use and was prosecuted by the federal government. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court which ruled in 2005 Gonzales vs. Raich decision that federal government had the authority under the commerce clause of the Constitution to criminalize the production and use of cannibas even in states where it has been legalized.
The ruling of the court in this case goes clearly against the spirit of the tenth amendment. We see here another case of the federal government being the judge in a case involving itself and ruling in its own favor. This happen over and over and over and over again. The end result is that state power has been trampled under foot
Back to the book:
… the standard version of the story of the New Deal and the Court, though accurate in its way, displaces the emphasis. . . . It concentrates on the difficulties; it almost forgets how the whole thing turned out. The upshot of the matter was [and this is what I like to emphasize] that after some twenty-four months of balking . . . the Supreme Court, without a single change in the law of its composition, or, indeed, in its actual manning, placed the affirmative stamp of legitimacy on the New Deal, and on the whole new conception of government in America.
Liberty Man Van: I will add a little background to Rothbard’s New Deal comments. The Supreme Court originally ruled some of the new programs being created by FDR and a willing congress were unconsitutional. Not to be thwarted, FDR threatened to pack the courts by passing legislation that would have created enough new Supreme Court judges, which he would have been able to appoint, to shift decisions in his favor. The Supreme Court judges, knowing that FDR would make good on his threat, were intimidated into going along with FDR and ruling that previous laws they had ruled unconstitutional were now constitutional; hence vast new powers were granted to the central government.
Back to the book:
… Thus, the State has invariably shown a striking talent for the expansion of its powers beyond any limits that might be imposed upon it. Since the State necessarily lives by the compulsory confiscation of private capital, and since its expansion necessarily involves ever-greater incursions on private individuals and private enterprise, we must assert that the State is profoundly and inherently anticapitalist… the State—the organization of the political means—constitutes, and is the source of, the “ruling class” (rather, ruling caste), and is in permanent opposition to genuinely private capital.
From Chapter 5: What the State Fears
.. The death of a State can come about in two major ways: (a) through conquest by another State, or (b) through revolutionary overthrow by its own subjects—in short, by war or revolution. War and revolution, as the two basic threats, invariably arouse in the State rulers their maximum efforts and maximum propaganda among the people.
… In war, State power is pushed to its ultimate, and, under the slogans of “defense” and “emergency,” it can impose a tyranny upon the public such as might be openly resisted in time of peace. War thus provides many benefits to a State, and indeed every modern war has brought to the warring peoples a permanent legacy of increased State burdens upon society. War, moreover, provides to a State tempting opportunities for conquest of land areas over which it may exercise its monopoly of force.
… We may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in protecting itself rather than its subjects by asking: which category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely—those against private citizens or those against itself? The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment…
Liberty Man Van: What crimes are most important to the state? Property crime? Mass murder? No. The three crimes mentioned in the U.S. Constitution are treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. Of these three, two of them are definitely a threat to state power: treason and counterfeiting. State sponsored piracy was common in the eighteenth century.
From Chapter 7: History as a Race Between State Power and Social Power
… Just as the two basic and mutually exclusive interrelations between men are peaceful cooperation or coercive exploitation, production or predation, so the history of mankind, particularly its economic history, may be considered as a contest between these two principles. On the one hand, there is creative productivity, peaceful exchange and cooperation; on the other, coercive dictation and predation over those social relations. Albert Jay Nock happily termed these contesting forces: “social power” and “State power.”… While social power is over nature, State power is power over man. Through history, man’s productive and creative forces have, time and again, carved out new ways of transforming nature for man’s benefit. These have been the times when social power has spurted ahead of State power, and when the degree of State encroachment over society has considerably lessened. But always, after a greater or smaller time lag, the State has moved into these new areas, to cripple and confiscate social power once more.
… Of all the numerous forms that governments have taken over the centuries, of all the concepts and institutions that have been tried, none has succeeded in keeping the State in check.
Liberty Man Van: This is an important point. No matter what form a government takes- monarchy, dictatorship, representative republic- it always grows with time if it continues to exist. Look at the U.S. government whose size and scope was supposed to be constrained with a written constitution. Originally the smallest government in history, it is now the largest government in history with an almost 20 trillion dollar national debt and growing.
Video of national debt clock
Liberty Man Van: So to recap, what has this book taught us about the state?
- The state is not “we”. The state often engaged in activities, such as killing and torture, that we as individuals would find unconscienable.
- We as individuals must earn our resources through peaceful, voluntary exchange of goods and services; the state gains its resources at the point of a gun.
- Free market exchange existed prior to the creation of the state. The state was not born out of a social contract; it was created out of conquest and exploitation.
- In order to continue to exist, the state must convince the majority of people in its mythology. This is maintained through its adoption of the intellectual class, which help to distribute its propaganda to the masses. The intellectual class is handsomely rewarded for its participation.
- The state is often propped up through the use of shame. For example, if you are not for government controlled schools you are against education. If you are not for government controlled health care you want people to die. Therefore, you are just being selfish or greedy.
- In earlier centuries, the mass of people thought of wars as being between competing kings and nobles; more recently a sense of nationalism has caused the masses to think of the state’s wars as their own. This sense of nationalism is reinforced through the government run schools. For example “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.” Or how about “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America…”
- The Divine was once used to endorse the state rulers such as “The Divine Right of Kings”. More recently the old gods have been replaced by a new God, Science. We are told that state planning is done using ultrascientific methods by experts.
- Attempts to impose limits on the state through such devices as a written constitution have proved futile. State actors, always seeking to enhance power and prestige, always find new and creative ways to bypass attempted restrictions on their power.
That’s our episode for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Join us next time to discuss libertarian principles where we don’t believe you need some guy with a bullhorn to tell you what to do.