Tight, concise discussion of what the State really is and what it really does, not what we would like it to be.
Thanks to the recent pandemic response, most of us lost once and for all our delusive belief that governments are a force for good, a force for fairness and justice. In this short book, Murray Rothbard shows how the State--no matter how "limited" a government you might set up in the beginning--always, always abrogates its citizens' rights and freedoms. It's just a matter of time.
We also come to understand why the State loves war. It loves it. It gives the State far more power. It provides an easy justification to abrogate still more freedoms. And of course those in the State apparatus who profit politically or economically from war never seem to send their own sons to fight it. An all-too-typical example: note how Benjamin Netanyahu's military-age son lives safely and luxuriously in Miami, his security paid for by Israeli taxpayers.
The fourth chapter, How the State Transcends it Limits, is a fascinating, albeit depressing, discussion on how the State co-opts even those instruments meant to limit its power! See for example the concept of "divine right" which, initially, meant that the king could only rule consistent with God's law. Before long, however, "divine right" was redefined to mean the king had godlike power and infallibility. Parliaments, originally meant to check monarchic power, were gradually absorbed into the state apparatus, extending its power further. Even the USA's court system, meant to limit State overreach, consists of judges appointed by the State itself, morphing it into yet another extension of State power. As Rothbard puts it, "there is no such thing as an umpire outside government."
They'll never teach you this stuff in school. And thinking about why they don't teach you this stuff in school unlocks a new level of understanding the system. This book is a master's degree level course in stuff we should have been taught, but can still learn.
"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it."
--H.L. Mencken
[Readers, you know the drill. Don't read any further. What follows are just my notes and comments from the text to help me remember what I read. Life is too short!]
Notes:
Chapter 1: What the State is Not
9-11 On how democracy has enabled a camouflage of the actual purposes of the state, the key fallacy here is to assume, in democracy, that "we" are the state because we think that's what democracy is, it makes the government's actions on an individual appear voluntary because "we" chose the government. Also a huge government debt can be excused as "we owe it to ourselves." Rothbard does a reductio ad absurdum here and cites the Nazi government (which was democratically elected), saying that this logic makes you arrive at the conclusion that what the Nazi govt did to Jews, they thus must have "chosen" this, because they were part of the "we" who chose the government. "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."
11 Tight definition of the State here: "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."
12 "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."
Chapter 2: What the State Is
13-14 On the creation of value by combining natural resources with labor to form "property" and freely exchanging with 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."
14: Franz Oppenheimer and his two ways of acquiring wealth: "the economic means" (described above) and "the political means" which "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." [We can see here the basis of the phrase "taxation is theft."]
14-15 Rothbard calls this coercive, and contrary to natural law: "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..." and "also lowers the producer’s incentive to produce beyond his own subsistence." [Note that many fail to see this second-order effect (that taxation beyond a certain point causes producers to quit the game), especially if they are not the ones actually producing the things being taxed or seized!]
15 Oppenheimer defines the state: "it is the systematization of the predatory process over a given territory."
16 "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... The State has never been created by a 'social contract'; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation."
17 Rothbard's "South Ruritania" example: a bandit manages to obtain physical control over a territory, declares himself "King of Southern Ruritania" and if he can hold it for a while, he is "transformed into the lawful nobility of the realm."
Chapter 3: How the State Preserves Itself
18 On the ruling group or caste, how it maintains its 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."
19-20 "...the chief task of the rulers is always to secure the active or resigned acceptance of the majority of the citizens." Or having the support of "followers who enjoy the perquisites of rule" like the nobility, bureaucrats, "members of the State apparatus."
20 But this isn't enough: you also need a majority "persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives."
20 Plus, you need intellectuals to "give" the people this idea: "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."
21 "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." [Here's where you find your Thomas Friedmans, your Paul Krugmans, and other gross peddlers of State ideology. Friedman of course embarrassingly peddled support for the Iraq War and relentlessly peddles globalism; Krugman peddles any economic policy that strengthens and empowers the State, etc.]
23 Summing up the arguments intellectuals put forth to justify supporting the State:
1) "the State rulers are great and wise men (they 'rule by divine right,' they are the 'aristocracy' of men, they are the 'scientific experts'), much greater and wiser than the good but rather simple subjects, and
2) rule by the extent government is inevitable, absolutely necessary, and far better, than the indescribable evils that would ensue upon its downfall.
23 Using the union of Church and State as justification: either claiming the ruler was anointed by god or himself was a god, "hence, any resistance to his rule would be blasphemy."
24 To back up the "any system other than this State would be worse" fear: "For the State, to preserve its own monopoly of predation, did indeed see to it that private and unsystematic crime was kept to a minimum; the State has always been jealous of its own preserve."
24 On using patriotism and the peoples' love of their homeland to justify State control: fomenting enemies in other States, fooling people by identifying the State with the land, and not with the regime itself or the ruling caste. "In this way, a war between rulers was converted into a war between peoples, with each people coming to the defense of its rulers in the erroneous belief that the rulers were defending them. 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." (!!!)
25ff Other ideological weapons the State uses: "tradition" (basically ancestor worship of previous leaders/rulers); deprecating the individual and exalting the collective, making the State's rule seem inevitable; guilt, by claiming those who increase private well-being are being greedy or usurious, while others are somehow more noble: "parasitic predation being apparently morally and esthetically lofty as compared to peaceful and productive work."
26-27 Fascinating sidebar here on how the State uses the epithet "conspiracy theories" to marginalize those who carefully look at history, who ascribe blame to the State, you can thus skillfully marginalize these people and even make them seem gullible for disbelieving State propaganda. [Heurisitic: pay very close attention to anything your State or your regime media calls a "conspiracy theory": the flack is thickest when you are right over the target!]
28 On the State's new god: science, used in today's more secular age. State rule and planning are "ultrascientific."
Amazing how history rhymes...
28 Also using "Science!!" combined with jargon: "A robber who justified his theft by saying that he really helped his victims, by his spending giving a boost to retail trade, would find few converts; but when this theory is clothed in Keynesian equations and impressive references to the “multiplier effect,” it unfortunately carries more conviction. And so the assault on common sense proceeds, each age performing the task in its own ways."
26, 29 Note a couple of good quotes here from H.L. Mencken: "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."
Chapter 4: How the State Transcends its Limits
30ff On how the state absorbs and then employs mechanisms designed to check its powers: using divine right, which initially meant the king can only rule according to divine law, but then co-opted to mean the king could use divine right as a rubber stamp for "legitimacy and virtue." Also co-opting parliaments, which were supposed to be a check on monarchical power: now they are part of the state apparatus.
32 On the unusual problem of the United States, where, quoting Charles Black, "substantive limitations are built into the theory on which the government rests." This requires "a means by which the government can assure the public that its increasing powers are, indeed, 'constitutional.' And this, he concludes, has been the major historic function of judicial review." In other words, the court system likewise is co-opted as yet another State apparatus.
34 "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."
35ff Discussion of the New Deal and the fact that, eventually, the Supreme Court put its stamp on most of it! Quoting Black again: "...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."
36 Rothbard continues: "In this way, the Supreme Court was able to put the quietus on the large body of Americans who had had strong constitutional objections to the New Deal... Charles Black: "We had no means, other than the Supreme Court, for imparting legitimacy to the New Deal."
37 On John C. Calhoun, who saw the "glaring loophole in a constitutional limit on government of placing the ultimate interpreting power in the Supreme Court." See Calhoun's A Disquisition on Government where he demonstrated the inherent tendency of the State to break through the limits of such a constitution."
37 Quoting Calhoun, with Rothbard's italics added: "it is a great mistake to suppose that the mere insertion of provisions to restrict and limit the power of the government, without investing those for whose protection they are inserted with the means of enforcing their observance [my italics] will be sufficient to prevent the major and dominant party from abusing its powers. [It's sobering to realize that I never thought about it this way before, I just assumed the limits to power would... limit State power! What a naive fool I've been.]
38 "One of the few political scientists who appreciated Calhoun’s analysis of the Constitution was Professor J. Allen Smith. Smith noted that the Constitution was designed with checks and balances to limit any one governmental power and yet had then developed a Supreme Court with the monopoly of ultimate interpreting power. If the Federal Government was created to check invasions of individual liberty by the separate states, who was to check the Federal power?" [Nobody, it turns out.]
39 The solution here was supposed to be "nullification": states could check any invasion of federal power in their territories, likewise the Federal government could check any state invasion into individual rights.
40 But there are structural problems here with nullification: why have nullification stop at states? Why not counties, cities, wards? Or what about "sectional" veto power, like of population subgroups, like taxi drivers or bakers? "This brings us to the important point that the nullification theory confines its checks to agencies of government itself. Let us not forget that federal and state governments, and their respective branches, are still states, are still guided by their own state interests rather than by the interests of the private citizens... What is to prevent federal and state governments from forming mutually profitable alliances for the joint exploitation of the citizenry?" [Here the federal government can use the money printer to forge a collective interest with state and local government.]
41 "In short, Calhoun does not push his pathbreaking theory on concurrence far enough: he does not push it down to the individual himself. If the individual, after all, is the one whose rights are to be protected, then a consistent theory of concurrence would imply veto power by every individual; that is, some form of 'unanimity principle.' When Calhoun wrote that it should be 'impossible to put or to keep it [the government] in action without the concurrent consent of all,' he was, perhaps unwittingly, implying just such a conclusion." [Thus we are defaulted back to the "Well, we have to have some kind of State or the alternative would be unimaginable chaos!" as justification for the State.]
41-42 "But such speculation begins to take us away from our subject, for down this path lie political systems which could hardly be called “States” at all. For one thing, just as the right of nullification for a state logically implies its right of secession, so a right of individual nullification would imply the right of any individual to 'secede' from the State under which he lives."
42 On the state showing a "striking talent" for expanding its powers beyond any limits; on the state being "profoundly and inherently anticapitalist"; Rothbard saying his position is the opposite of the Marxist view that the state is the "executive committee" of the ruling class (Marx was referring to "the capitalists"), but rather of a ruling caste "in permanent opposition to genuinely private capital."
42-3 Quoting Bertrand de Jouvenel from his work On Power: "Only those who know nothing of any time but their own, who are completely in the dark as to the manner of Power’s behaving through thousands of years, would regard these proceedings [nationalization, the income tax, etc.] as the fruit of a particular set of doctrines. They are in fact the normal manifestations of Power, and differ not at all in their nature from Henry VIII’s confiscation of the monasteries. The same principle is at work; the hunger for authority, the thirst for resources..." [Heuristic: you're fucked if you don't know your history, and even more fucked if you only know the history your State propaganda teaches you.]
Chapter 5: What the State Fears
44 [Extended quote here] "What the State fears above all, of course, is any fundamental threat to its own power and its own existence. 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. As stated above, any way must always be used to mobilize the people to come to the State’s defense in the belief that they are defending themselves. The fallacy of the idea becomes evident when conscription is wielded against those who refuse to “defend” themselves and are, therefore, forced into joining the State’s military band: needless to add, no 'defense' is permitted them against this act of 'their own' State."
45 [On the attractiveness of war to the State] 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."
45-6 "The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax.... Yet, curiously, the State’s openly assigned priority to its own defense against the public strikes few people as inconsistent with its presumed raison d’etre."
Chapter 6: How States Relate to One Another
48 "We have seen that the 'internal' or 'domestic' attempt to limit the State, in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, reached its most notable form in constitutionalism. Its 'external,' or 'foreign affairs,' counterpart was the development of 'international law,' especially such forms as the 'laws of war' and 'neutrals' rights.' Parts of international law were originally purely private, growing out of the need of merchants and traders everywhere to protect their property and adjudicate disputes. Examples are admiralty law and the law merchant."
48 "The object of the 'laws of war' was to limit inter-State destruction to the State apparatus itself..."
49 Quoting F.J.P. Veale from his book Advance to Barbarism on fifteenth century Italy and how they conducted "war" which in that era was comparatively harmless: generals would either retreat or surrender if maneuvered into serious disadvantage; also tribute was paid frequently in place of fighting, and no town could be sacked unless it offered resistance.
50 On the absolute separation between the private civilian and State wars in eighteenth century Europe, quoting John U. Nef, who shows that communications continued, the people often did even have a notion that they were accountable (or even involved) in the belligerent acts of their rulers. Also, striking: "Passports were originally created to provide safe conduct in time of war. During most of the eighteenth century it seldom occurred to Europeans to abandon their travels in a foreign country which their own was fighting." [Obviously war changed radically in the 20th century; see for example the idea of the "cabinet war" evolving into total war.]
52 It was seen as normal to trade with the enemy in eighteenth century warfare.
52 "How far States have transcended rules of civilized warfare in this century needs no elaboration here. In the modern era of total war, combined with the technology of total destruction, the very idea of keeping war limited to the State apparati seems even more quaint and obsolete than the original Constitution of the United States."
51-52 Discussion of treaties here, how they are not "contracts" in the way we think of an exchange of titles, goods or resources: the State does not actually own title to privately owned property. It doesn't "own" its territorial area. "As a corollary, one government can certainly not bind, by the dead hand of the past, a later government through treaty."
Chapter 7: History As a Race Between State Power and Social Power
53 On the contrasting principles of peaceful cooperation vs. coercive exploitation; production or predation; on economic history as a contest between these two principles; Albert Jay Nock calls them "social power" and "State power."
54 "Social power is the power over nature, the living standards achieved by men in mutual exchange. State power, as we have seen, is the coercive and parasitic seizure of this production--a draining of the fruits of society for the benefit of nonproductive (actually antiproductive) rulers. While social power is over nature, State power is power over man."
54 On the back and forth flux of this power over history; see the 17th and 19th centuries as periods of increasing social power and increase in freedom, but the 20th century as the reverse.
54 Also note the fascinating footnote on p 54: "Amidst the flux of expansion or contraction, the State always makes sure that it seizes and retains certain crucial 'command posts' of the economy and society. Among these command posts are a monopoly of violence, monopoly of the ultimate judicial power, the channels of communication and transportation (post office, roads, rivers, air routes), irrigated water in Oriental despotisms, and education--to mold the opinions of its future citizens. In the modern economy, money is the critical command post." [!!!!]
55 [Boy the book sure closes on a pessimistic note] "In this century, the human race faces, once again, the virulent reign of the State--of the State now armed with the fruits of man’s creative powers, confiscated and perverted to its own aims. The last few centuries were times when men tried to place constitutional and other limits on the State, only to find that such limits, as with all other attempts, have failed. 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. The problem of the State is evidently as far from solution as ever. Perhaps new paths of inquiry must be explored, if the successful, final solution of the State question is ever to be attained."
55 Note also the footnote here on p 55 where Rothbard comments about somehow "sundering" the alliance between the State and the intellectual by creating centers of intellectual inquiry independent of State power: "Christopher Dawson notes that the great intellectual movements of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were achieved by working outside of, and sometimes against, the entrenched universities." [Interesting to think about, as we see today how the USA's university system is clearly an arm of State power]
To Read:
Franz Oppenheimer: The State
***Bertrand de Jouvenel: On Power
Ludwig von Mises: Theory and History
Ludwig von Mises: Human Action
Etienne de la Boetie: Anti-Dictator
Oscar Jaszi and John D. Lewis: Against the Tyrant
F.A. Hayek, ed: Capitalism and the Historians
Josef Schumpeter: Imperialism and Social Classes
Karl A. Wittfogel: Oriental Despotism
Harry Elmer Barnes: The Court Historians Versus Revisionism
H.L. Mencken: A Mencken Chrestomathy
H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: A Selection (see “The Nature of Liberty”)
Charles L. Black. Jr.: The People and the Court
John C. Calhoun: A Disquisition on Government
J. Allen Smith: The Growth and Decadence of Constitutional Government
F.J.P. Veale: Advance to Barbarism
John U. Nef: War and Human Progress
Albert J. Nock: Our Enemy the State
Albert J. Nock: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man