Modern state

“ On the other side, the State, considered as a political power, State-Justice, the Church, and Capitalism are facts and conceptions which we cannot separate from each other. In the course of history these institutions have developed, supporting and reinforcing each other. ”

“ The strong current of eighteenth-century opinion left the State omnipotent, but obliged it to take account of public, as distinct from dynastic, interests. It was employed more or less intelligently, for the good of the people. Humanity contended for the mastery with ambition. ”

“ It was the supreme manifestation of the modern state according to the image which Machiavelli had set up, the state that suffers neither limit nor equality, and is bound by no duty to nations or to men, that thrives on destruction, and sanctifies whatever things contributed to increase of power. ”

“ Hence, that in our own Age more than at any previous time, every Citizen, with all his powers, is subjected to the purpose of the State, is thoroughly penetrated by it, and so has become its instrument ”

“ I would like to underline in the most emphatic way that it is possible to have this Great State, essentially socialistic, owning and running the land and all the great public services, sustaining everybody in absolute freedom at a certain minimum of comfort and well-being, and still leaving most of the interests, amusements, and adornments of the individual life, and all sorts of collective concerns, social and political discussion, religious worship, philosophy, and the like to the free personal initiatives of entirely unofficial people. ”

“ The truth of the matter is that a new impulse was started; the national spirit began to move toward a more democratic goal; the rank and file began to look beyond the narrow hill and dale; women sought wider spheres; the poor demanded constitutional rights; energy began to stir from underneath. The word modern was in every one’s mind. ”

“ He must exhibit the nature of the government, the manners, the administration of law, the state of useful and fine arts, of commerce, of foreign relations. He must let us see the decay and rise of great principles and conditions—till we look on a tottering sovereignty, a rising creed, an incipient war, as distinctly as, by turning to the highway, we can see the old man, the vigorous youth, or the infant child. He must paint—the council robed in its hall—the priest in his temple—the conspirator—the outlaw—the judge—the general—the martyr. ”

“ But when we study a State at its centre, its political action, its organization, its spirit, the management of its institutions of learning and of charity, the tendencies, restrictive or liberal, of its legislation, even the tone of social life and the code of manners, we discover distinctions, individualities, almost as many differences as resemblances. And we see—the saving truth in our national life—that each State is a well-nigh indestructible entity, an empire in itself, proud and conscious of its peculiarities, and jealous of its rights. ”

“ As the Church declined the ancient State appeared, a State which knew no Church, and was the greatest force on earth, bound by no code, a law to itself. As there is no such thing as right, politics are an affair of might, a mere struggle for power. Such was the doctrine which Venice practised, in the interest of a glorious and beneficent government, and which two illustrious writers, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, made the law of modern societies.
The one thing common to the whole Italian Renaissance was the worship of beauty. ”

“ The true structure and government of human society will be clearly hinted by the structure and laws of the universe, and especially by that microcosm, [105] or little universe, the human organization. All the great stirring questions of the day, including the questions of suffrage, woman’s rights, the relations between labor and capital, and the questions of general political reform, will be put into the way of an easy and speedy solution; and mankind will be ushered into the light of a brighter day, socially, politically, and religiously, than has ever yet dawned upon the world. ”

“ And further than this the life of the State in its organic entirety, as a related whole of monarch, government, courts of justice, military control, and general grouping of all the various societies which compose it, no less than the obligations and duties which such arrangements presuppose, the aims and satisfaction to which they are directed, the entire scope of its civic and commercial activities already referred to, in one word the complete organism of a nation's life, is indeed in a genuine State complete in itself, and in a sense rounded off as a real totality. ”

“ Dealing with the most powerful of all our human hungers, as it does, we have not dared to make it fit our modern life. Not only is this true, but the forces of the older state and church which survived, fastened themselves upon this institution and strengthened its resisting power. The church increasingly made marriage into a holy sacrament, so that it not only protected lovers, but became a subtle, inviolable and indissoluble mystery. The state sanctioned the family, and made it an instrument for regulating political and property rights. ”

“ Well, then, what if we tried to rise above the idea of class to the idea of the whole community, the State, and to find our centre of light and authority there? Everyone of us has the idea of country, as a sentiment; hardly anyone of us has the idea of the State, as a working power. ”

“ By the aid of that dim, uncertain light, we are asked to recognize a form of government and society which, under the clearer light of modern researches is seen to bear an equally strong resemblance to institutions more in keeping with the genius of the New World. ”

“ As a preparative to the solution of the problem with which we are more immediately occupied,—What point of its development has the State attained in our own Age?—we have shown, in our last two lectures, though only in the abstract and by speculative reasoning, what the State, both in its Form and its Material, really is ”

“ I call then this commonwealth pre-eminently and emphatically Human Society, and its intellect the Human Mind, and its decisions the sense of mankind, and its disciplined and cultivated state Civilization in the abstract, and the territory on which it lies the orbis terrarum, or the World. ”

“ The State was established for the precise purpose of imposing the rule of the landowners, the employers of industry, the warrior class, and the clergy upon the peasants on the land and the artisans in the city. And the rich perfectly well know that if the machinery of the State ceased to protect them, their power over the labouring classes would be gone immediately.
Socialism, we have said—whatever form it may take in its evolution towards Communism—must find its own form of political organisation. Serfdom and Absolute Monarchy have always marched hand-in-hand. ”

“ It is a fortunate and satisfactory thing for us, that in the actual position of all cultivated States, and in the whole present Stage of Culture, there are numerous urgent and constraining reasons for every Government striving to attain the clearest possible insight into the true purpose of the State, and acting at all times with all its powers, according to the best insight which it has attained. ”

“ The State, government with its functions and powers, is now the subject of vital interest to every thinking man. Political developments in all civilized countries have brought the questions home. Shall we have a strong government? Are democracy and parliamentary government to be preferred, or is Fascism of one kind or another, dictatorship - monarchical, bourgeois or proletarian - the solution of the ills and difficulties that beset society today? ”

“ It is evident that in understanding the problem of the Social Revolution in this way, Anarchism cannot let itself be seduced by a programme that offers as its aim: "The conquest of the power now in the hands of the State."
We know that this conquest is not possible by peaceful mean. The middle class will not give up its power without a struggle. It will resist. And in proportion as Socialists will become part of the Government, and share power with the middle class their Socialism will grow paler and paler. This is, indeed, what Socialism is rapidly doing. ”

“ Because a State in which law is authoritative and sovereign, a firm and settled course of public order, is requisite if man is to bring to maturity anything precious and lasting now, or to found anything precious and lasting for the future. ”

“ Our own governments, however, were exclusively the evidence of the following declaration; "those intrepid assertors of the rights of mankind, whose philosophy and policy have enlightened the world, in twenty years, move than it was ever before enlightened in many centuries, by ancient schools or modern universities." ”

“ But there are only two ingredients out of which a nation can be formed: one is women; the other is men. Shall woman in her time of need turn to a state made up of other women, or to a state made up of men? Obviously it must be to both; and if woman is to depend on men, she might as well depend on man. No, in the political revolutions we broke up artificial, outworn and unjust combinations; but in this domestic revolution we are breaking up and must readjust the fundamental unit of life.
Men and women must live and work together in the domestic unit, and they cannot do the same things. ”

“ The General Government, strictly confined to its delegated functions, and the State left in the undisturbed exercise of all else, we have a theory and practice which fits our Government for immeasurable domain, and might, under a millennium of nations, embrace mankind. ”

“ Modern principles, that mark a new departure in human progress and in its evidence, Civilisation, took their rise during this epoch of transition, and their development underlies the history of the period, and gives the key to its meaning. ”

“ The policy of such a State means its collective will, the consciousness of its whole population of a purpose, mission, or duty which it must fulfil, with which it is identified, and which, therefore, it cannot abandon. ”

“ Our own importation of men and women is various and enormous. They who come to us poor and ignorant in one generation, are seen comfortable and well educated in the next. The disfranchised and landless man comes to us, and receives political rights, and the title of a farm in fee simple. No inordinate tribute robs him of the product of his industry, be it large or small. He pays to the State what it pays him well to afford, for protection and education. But how is it with the tribute which Europe levies upon us in the shape of our sons and daughters? ”

“ Both wish for self-government; and, however grave the drawbacks under which in one or both it exists, the two have, among the great nations of the world, made the most effectual advances toward the true aim of rational politics. ”

“ The conflict of the ages has been between the state and the individual: central power versus liberty. The more restrained the state and the more emphasis on individual liberty, the greater has been the advancement of civilization and general prosperity. ”

“ Just how great must be the advance of society and just what must be the character of the advance, preliminary to its advantageously assuming the autonomous—republican—form of political organisation, must be admitted to be an open question. ”

“ But moral, political, intellectual improvement are duties assigned by the Author of Our Existence to social no less than to individual man.
For the fulfillment of those duties governments are invested with power, and to the attainment of the end--the progressive improvement of the condition of the governed--the exercise of delegated powers is a duty as sacred and indispensable as the usurpation of powers not granted is criminal and odious. ”

“ No violent changes, no Napoleonic saviours can carry on the task of building the Great State, the civilised State that rises out of our disorders That is for us to do, all of us and each one of us. We have to think clearly, and study and consider and reconsider our ideas about public things to the very utmost of our possibilities. ”

“ It must be obvious that, in a country without an aristocracy or House of Peers, without a State Church or denominational school system, without a standing army, a navy, a foreign policy, or a millionaire class, politics must concern themselves chiefly with economic questions, matters of administration, and reforms aiming at some improvement of public morals. ”

“ The first of these conditions is that there should be a common political idea in the minds of all men, an idea of the state thought of as the personal possession of each individual and as the backbone fact of his scheme of duties. ”

“ Our political methods must conform to life’s methods. We must understand and follow the laws of association that the state may appear, that our own little purposes may be fulfilled. Little purposes? Is there any great and small? ”

“ And Godwin soon understood that a Government, were it even that of the Jacobin "One and Indivisible Republic," would never be able to accomplish the necessary Social, Communistic Revolution; that a Revolutionary Government, by virtue of its being a guardian of the State, and of the privileges every State has to defend, soon becomes a hindrance to the Revolution. ”

“ Within the period of our own century the value of human life to the individual has been greatly increased by the wide diffusion of the advantages of civilization. The value of the individual to the State has become [Pg 69] greatly increased by the multiplication of industrial resources, and by the immense emigration which at times threatens to drain the older society of its working population. The spread of education has at once undermined the blind belief of the multitude in military leaders, and toned down the blind ferocity of instinct to which those leaders are forced to appeal. ”