The predatory state: how the coercive monopoly devours its own civilization

“ When we consider the profits of cooperative association—of which man is a fair judge—the calling in of divine intent is gratuitous, and perhaps mischievously so. Man is the miracle, but his institutions are wholly rational. Society began when man hit upon the benefits of specialization and trade. This is not to say that he became a Society man contractually, just as one might join a club; it is rather his will to live that impels him to partake of the benefits of the market place. It is the human sense of value that welds a herd of individuals into a cooperating group. ”

“ In a primitive state of society, the enjoyments of life, though few and simple, are spread over a great extent, and are unalloyed; but Civilization, for every advantage she imparts, holds a hundred evils in reserve;—the heart-burnings, the jealousies, the social rivalries, the family dissentions, and the thousand self-inflicted discomforts of refined life, which make up in units the swelling aggregate of human misery, are unknown among these unsophisticated people. ”

“ Would there be any need for Government if the individual had no sense of property, no concern with ownership?
The primary concern of the pioneer is with production; the need for disengaging himself from production to pursue some protective enterprise is a nuisance; there is no profit in it. The time and effort put into policing the competence piled up in his barn and pantry could be better employed, and the thought occurs to him that it would be more profitable for him to turn over his gun, his instrument of authority, to a specialist in its use. ”

“ Since the State is possessed of a monopoly of coercion, and has no other competence, the "services" it presumes to render cannot be subjected to any other judgment. But, though coercion is its own justification, the acceptance of it by Society calls for moral support; and so it is said that there are some services which can best be performed collectively and these are called "social." ”

“ THE GOVERNMENT AN ENGINE OF TYRANNY. The grievances and protests of the workers aroused no response save the ever-active one of contumely, coercion and violent reprisals. The treasury of Nation, States and cities, raised by a compulsory taxation falling heavily upon the workers, was at all times at the complete disposal of the propertied interests, who emptied it as fast as it was filled. ”

“ What must happen if in a poor country some people insist on being rich at the expense of the others?
(I) Unutterable poverty for the others. All this misery, then, was caused by the destructive government of which we have been speaking?
(H.) Nay, it would be incorrect to say so. The government itself was but the necessary result of the careless, aimless tyranny of the times; it was but the machinery of tyranny. Now tyranny has come to an end, and we no longer need such machinery; we could not possibly use it since we are free. Therefore in your sense of the word we have no government. ”

“ But, since the State thrives on what it expropriates, the general decline in production which it induces by its avarice foretells its own doom. Its source of income dries up. Thus, in pulling Society down it pulls itself down. Its ultimate collapse is usually occasioned by a disastrous war, but preceding that event is a history of increasing and discouraging levies on the market place, causing a decline in the aspirations, hopes and self-esteem of its victims.
When we speak of the disappearance of a civilization we do not mean that a people has been extinguished. ”

“ The social habit of mind which impels us to make the life of our fellow-beings a burden to them where they differ from us even in such a thing as their choice of food, is sure to persist in our political organization and result in creating engines of coercion to crush every rational difference which is the sign of life. And tyranny will only add to the inevitable lies and hypocrisy in our political life. Is the mere name of freedom so valuable that we should be willing to sacrifice for its sake our moral freedom? ”

“ Where international enmity is great and the social organization has to be adapted to warlike activities, the coercion of individuals by the State is such as almost to destroy their freedom of action and make them slaves of the State ”

“ State coercion is necessary as against private coercion, not because the state can elevate the people to a higher level than that attained by the free exercise of their own persuasive powers, but in order to prevent the lower and selfish elements of society from dragging the several institutions down. The state sets the minimum level below which the struggle for existence shall not be permitted to force an institution. ”

“ No man pretends the contrary: we all see and feel this necessity. The only question is, Shall it be a coercion of law, or a coercion of arms? There is no other possible alternative. Where will those who oppose a coercion of law come out? Where will they end? A necessary consequence of their principles is a war of the states one against the other. I am for coercion by law—that coercion which acts only upon delinquent individuals. This Constitution does not attempt to coerce sovereign bodies, states, in their political capacity. ”

“ For the moment we have to deal only with those actions of State which compel all citizens, or all whom they concern, to fall in with them and allow of no divergence. This kind of coercion tends to increase. Is its extension necessarily an encroachment upon liberty, or are the elements of value secured by collective control distinct from the elements of value secured by individual choice, so that within due limits each may develop side by side? ”

“ Thus luxury necessarily produces corruption. For as wealth is essentially necessary to the support of luxury, wealth will be the universal object of desire in every state where luxury prevails: consequently all those who have dissipated their private fortunes in the purchase of pleasure, will be ever ready to enlist in the cause of faction for the wages of corruption. A taste for pleasure immoderately indulged, quickly strengthens into habit, eradicates every principle of honour and virtue, and gets possession of the whole man. ”

“ Before that time the love of glory, and a contempt of wealth, was the ruling passion of the Romans. Since that time money was the only object of their applause and desire. Before, ambition impelled them to war, from a thirst of dominion; now avarice, for the sake of plunder to support the expense of luxury. Before, they seemed a race of heroes; they were now a gang of insatiable robbers. Formerly, when they had reduced a people to obedience, they 225 received them as their allies; they now made the conquered nations their slaves. They fleeced the provinces, and oppressed their friends. ”

“ The poor,269 now dissolute and desperate, were ready to engage in every seditious insurrection, which promised them the plunder of the rich, and set up both their liberty and their country to sale to the best bidder. The republick,270 which was the common prey to both, was thus rent to pieces between the contending parties. As an universal selfishness is the genuine effect of universal luxury, so the natural effect of selfishness 230 is to break through every tie, both divine and human, and to stick at no kind of excesses in the pursuit of wealth, its favourite object. ”

“ But of all the ancient republicks, Rome in the last period of her freedom was the scene where all the inordinate passions of mankind operated most powerfully and with the greatest latitude. There we see luxury, ambition, faction, pride, revenge, selfishness, a total disregard to the publick good, and an universal dissoluteness of manners, first make them ripe for, and then complete their destruction. ”

“ It is not at all strange that Rome thus circumstanced should fall a victim to the corruption of her own citizens: nor that the empire of the universe, the toil and labour of ages, to which the Romans had waded through seas of blood, should be destined to feed the detestable vices of a few monsters, who were a disgrace even to human nature. The total change of the Roman constitution, the unlimited tyranny of the emperors, and the abject slavery of the people, were all effects of the same cause, extended in degree by a natural progression. ”

“ It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. ”

“ Where is here the elevation of society, pure feeling, pure thoughts?
The same train of thought may be exemplified by a reference to those nations of antiquity, where now the "spirit of decay" has its abiding place. The history of ancient republics is familiar to every one; their unequalled greatness, their decline and fall are the schoolboy's tale. And what does this history tell him? That in times of great political excitement there was less virtue, less elevation of mind, less real patriotism; that what is noble or excellent in our nature, was lost amid the whirl of party dissensions ”

“ There are people whom a lowered position degrades morally, to whom loss of connection costs loss of self-respect: are not these justified in placing the highest value on that station and association which is their safeguard from debasement? If a man feels that he would become contemptible in his own eyes were it generally known that his ancestry were simple and not gentle, poor and not rich, workers and not capitalists, would it be right severely to blame him for keeping these fatal facts out of sight—for starting, trembling, quailing at the chance which threatens exposure? ”

“ Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another’s harm; ”

“ Tyranny springs from democracy much as democracy springs from oligarchy. Both arise from excess; the one from excess of wealth, the other from excess of freedom. 'The great natural good of life,' says the democrat, 'is freedom.' And this exclusive love of freedom and regardlessness of everything else, is the cause of the change from democracy to tyranny. The State demands the strong wine of freedom, and unless her rulers give her a plentiful draught, punishes and insults them; equality and fraternity of governors and governed is the approved principle. ”

“ Even when they are geographically concentrated, like the Irish, they may fail to obtain their wishes, because they arouse some hostility or some instinct of domination in the majority. Such a state of affairs is the negation of all democratic principles.
The tyranny of the majority is a very real danger. It is a mistake to suppose that the majority is necessarily right. On every new question the majority is always wrong at first. In matters where the state must act as a whole, such as tariffs, for example, decision by majorities is probably the best method that can be devised. ”

“ The outcome was equally fatal, whether the country fell into the hands of a wealthy oligarchy which exploited the poor or whether it fell under the domination of a turbulent mob which plundered the rich. In both cases there resulted violent alternations between tyranny and disorder, and a final complete loss of liberty to all citizens--destruction in the end overtaking the class which had for the moment been victorious as well as that which had momentarily been defeated. ”

“ Under Claudius and under Domitian there is a deformity of baseness corresponding to the ugliness of the tyranny. ”

“ Tyranny had usurped the place of equality, which is the soul of liberty, and destroyed publick courage. The minds of men, terrified by unjust power, degenerated into all the vileness and methods of servitude: Abject sycophancy and blind submission grew the only means of preferment, and indeed of safety; men durst not open their mouths, but to flatter. ”

“ The effects of protracted tyranny, the terror, the degradation, the blighted affections, the stunted intellects, the pining of the heart, the premature decay of the frame, are evils less obvious, but equally certain; and, when continued through successive generations, make up a greater sum of human misery than was ever indicted in the paroxysm of any revolution. ”

“ 'Is it not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings? ”

“ The Federal Government, at least, does ample justice to the proclivities of Maryland. The system of coercion, hourly more and more stringent, speaks for itself. The State is at this moment subjected to a military despotism more irritating and oppressive than was ever exercised by Austria in her Italian dependencies; more irritating, because domestic interference and all sorts of petty annoyances are more frequent here; more oppressive, because it is considered unnecessary to indulge a political prisoner with even the mockery of a trial. ”

“ Impracticability of resistance.It is true, amidst all these turbulent means of security to their system, very great discontents everywhere prevail. But they only produce misery to those who nurse them at home, or exile, beggary, and in the end confiscation, to those who are so impatient as to remove from them. Each municipal republic has a Committee, or something in the nature of a Committee of Research. In these petty republics the tyranny is so near its object that it becomes instantly acquainted with every act of every man. It stifles conspiracy in its very first movements. ”

“ That is why when in a social aggregate the impulse of self-preservation becomes limited, inhibited, and lowered by tyranny of social commandments, society is sure to decline, degenerate, and finally dissolve ”

“ Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing-presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity, depend on it, this government cannot last. By such things the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it, and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak to make their friendship effectual. ”

“ In the system of special and class legislation causes of corruption and the downfall of governments may always be found; it is the bane of the nations, whence flows that subtle, entrancing poison that permeates all the arteries and veins of a country—so quietly and alluringly to the people, that, before its effects are suspected, the vital principle of the government is destroyed, and the lifeless form finally falls to rise no more forever ”

“ With respect to coercion by force, I shall suppose that it is so extremely repugnant to the principles of justice and the feelings of a free people, that no man will support it. It must, in the end, terminate in the destruction of the liberty of the people. I take it, therefore, that there is no rational way of enforcing the laws but by the instrumentality of the judiciary. From these premises we are left only to consider how far the jurisdiction of the judiciary ought to extend. ”

“ Sovereigns may send their opposers to dungeons; they may clear out a senate-house with soldiers; they may enlist armies of spies; they may hang scores of the disaffected in chains at every cross road; but what power shall stand in that 136frightful time when rebellion hath become a less evil than endurance? Who shall dissolve that terrible tribunal, which, in the hearts of the oppressed, denounces against the oppressor the doom of its wild justice? Who shall repeal the law of self-defence? What arms or discipline shall resist the strength of famine and despair? ”

“ The seizure and consolidation of the estranged power of community, the State, has become the form of development of productive forces in conditions where earlier forms of Capital accumulation ceased to perform their historical task. Military, administrative and ideological activities—defense, organization, theory—become modern forms of revolutionary activity, archetypes of political engagement, synonyms of radicalism and movement. ”

“ For people as they are now, the absence of subordination, control and managers creates fear, anxiety, despair and desperation, it creates that most painful thing on earth, vacillation - and these are precisely the real conditions for the successful seizure of State power, for it is precisely when the people are close to desperation that Our victory is assured. ”

“ The independent practice that would put an end to the mass psychology of dependence cannot take place once the organization seizes power. The seizure of power by the revolutionary organization puts an end to the anxiety and desperation which gripped the population when dependence relations were disrupted. The seizure and restoration of the State saves people from having to discover and invent the power of community after thousands of years of alienated community, of law and order, of Civilization. ”

“ If this state, then, has state-socialistic functions, it is sure to produce the worst exploitation of man by man which has ever existed; to live under it, and not be in it, would be to suffer a tyranny such as no one has experienced yet.
I should not like to be understood to speak lightly of preaching as a means of awakening the reason and conscience of men to convictions which are universally right and true. Anything which can be gained in this direction is sure to produce manifold fruit in politics and economic policy ”

“ Charters and banks will become the chief objects of state legislation, and if twenty legislatures can outstrip one in this manufacture, the general government may lose its power, and the calamities of a dissolved union will, follow. These will ravage the states,until they ripen the publick mind for the introduction of a steady tyranny by some military adventurer; and the catastrophe of the drama will be the effect of exchanging our system of genuine representation, cautious division, and effectual responsibility, for the monopoly and corruption of a system of backing, charters and paper. ”

“ No one can deny the degrading and injurious tendency of this privilege. It derogates from the sovereignty of a State; tramples upon her laws; injures her revenue and commerce; lays open her government to the attacks of centralism; impairs the property of her citizens; and fastens a vampire on her bosom to suck out her gold and silver. 1. It derogates from her sovereignty, because the central institution may impose its intrusive branches upon the State without her consent, and in defiance of her resistance. ”

“ The one business of Government is to handcuff, and lock up, and scourge, and shoot, and stab, and strangle. It is odious tyranny in a government to attempt to prevent crime by informing the understanding and elevating the moral feeling of a people. A statesman may see hamlets turned, in the course of one generation, into great seaport towns and manufacturing towns. He may know that on the character of the vast population which is collected in those wonderful towns, depends the prosperity, the peace, the very existence of society. ”