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Startseite Franz Oppenhe imer The Idolatry of the State
The Idolatry of the State
by Franz Oppenheimer
Review of Nations, 2, 1927, pp. 13-26.
[p. 13] What is the State? Everyone seems to make
an idol of it. Some regard it as the most beneficent
of deities, which men should worship with all their
heart and with all their soul, while to others it is the
worst of devils, the curse of mankind, and deserves
to be sent back to the hell from which it came.
What is the reality between these two extremes?The answer which I have given in my System der
Soziologie is that it is a mixed form of human
relationships, the bastard offspring of might and
right, ofethos and kratos.
The primitive forms of human relationship are two:
The first I have called the we relationship,
because in it the sense of I falls into the
background, or indeed entirely disappears, givingplace to the sense of we. In his sense of values,
his judgement and his actions the individual
combines with his comrades in his group as an
indivisible unity, a whole of which he feels himself
not a part, but a member. In primitive times this
collective consciousness and collective interest
existed within the tribe, in the relations between the
members of the same horde or clan. The second
form of relationship, the not-we relationship,
existed between one tribe and another, in the
relations between the men of a clan and strangers,
or members of another horde or clan. In this
relationship the individual ego and the group ego
standin strong opposition to the ego of the strange
clan.
The we relationship stands for peace, morality
and natural justice. The group within which it prevails
corresponds more or less to what Tnnies calls thenatural community, of which he writes: "Communal
life is reciprocal possession and enjoyment, and
possession and enjoyment of common goods. [p. 14]
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The willto possession and enjoyment is the will to
defence and unity." Where this is the case, the
relationship of the members is that of co-operation.
The not-we relationship, on the other hand, is
characterised by the sense of foreignness. This
means that the foreigner has no rights for us, and
we have no duties to him. This does not howevernecessarily result, in primitive times, in that constant
warfare of all against all which the Epicureans and
Hobbes held to be the beginning of the history of
mankind, or in that absolute hostility which
Ratzenhofer imagined. On the contrary, we have
evidence, in Australia for example, of numerous
cases of peaceful intercourse between different
clans or tribes. At this stage war has not yet
become an end in itself; it is avoided as far aspossible, not out of any regard for the interests of
the foreigner, but in the best interests of the tribe
itself. The clans are still so small that the loss of
even a few men in war may weaken them seriously,
and in some cases even endanger their existence.
Thus, originally, it is not hostility which constitutes
the not-we relationship, but rather that cold
indifference which primitive man also feels towards
animals - a complete lack of interest in the weal or
woe of the stranger. Where my or our interests
are at stake, his do not count at all. The stranger can
be deprived of his property or his life without sin. Sin
only comes into play in a man's dealings with his
comrades.
The transition between prehistoric and historic
times is the age of migration and conquest. At this
stage the clans have become larger, and have
either developed or combined so as to form tribes,and in many cases even associated groups of
tribes. Here and there their own territory becomes
too small for their primitive methods of cultivation,
and a tendency to expansion arises. A more
numerous or better armed tribe, or one which is
capable of better tactical co-operation or more
perfect discipline, attacks and conquers another
tribe. This, in all parts of the world, is the origin of
the State. The active factors in the formation of theState are in the Old World the pastoral peoples and
the sea-faring peoples which proceed from them; in
the New World the active factors are the more
highly-developed hunting peoples. The passive
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factors are as a general rule the less highly
developed cultivators, those who still cultivate their
land by hoeing it by hand. The use of the plough for
cultivation only begins in the State, when the draught
animals introduced by the pastoral peoples -
horses, oxen or camels - are harnessed to the
instrument used for tilling. The object of conquest
and the subjection of other clans is everywhere thesame: it is exploitation. The conquered are
compelled to work for their conquerors without
recompense, or to pay them tribute. The form
assumed by exploitation is mastership, which must[p. 15] not be confused with the leadership of earlier
times, which did not involve any kind of exploitation.
Mastership is leadership combined with
exploitation.
Two institutions are created for the purposes of
mastership: the separation of classes and the large-
sale ownership of land. These two form an
indivisible whole. The large-scale ownership of land
has no real economic meaning (because only then
does it bring in income), except where there is a
dependent labouring class which tills the land for the
benefit of an owner who does not work himself.
Conversely, a labouring class can only exist where
the large estate as a legal form of land ownership
exists to such an extent that it makes large areas of
land unavailable for free settlement, so that there is
a large landless population which is obliged to take
service on the land of a master in order not to
starve. The identity between land ownership and
class superiority is reflected in language; in the
states created by the conquest of Germanic tribes
the nobility are called Adel; and Adel (Odal)
means nothing else than large-sale land ownership.
The whole process must be presented in terms of
economics if it is to be properly understood. It is an
act of satisfaction of economic needs on the part of
the conquerors. They obtain control of the subject
populations by precisely the same means and for
precisely the same purpose as in earlier times,
when they were predatory nomads, they forcibly
seized the herds of cattle or horses of theirneighbours in order to use them for their own
benefit. Economy requires, however, that acquired
property should be carefully administered so that it
is not lost or spoiled. The human herd must be
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protected just as the herds of cattle which were
carried off were protected from enemies who
wished to seize them; and just as care was taken to
maintain and if possible to improve the state of
health and nutrition of the herd of cattle, so are must
be taken that the human herd does not decrease in
numbers or lose its working capacity. For this
purpose the ruling class which has come intoexistence since the creation of the State must at
once undertake two tasks: frontier defence and the
maintenance of justice. The frontier has to be
defended against other warlike and predatory tribes
of the steppe or of the sea-board; justice has to be
maintained in the face of any attempt at revolt by
those who are now subjects, and not less in the face
of excesses of other members of the ruling class
itself which might diminish the productive capacityof the subjects. The State is thus a society divided
into classes and possessing institutions for the
defence of the frontier and the maintenance of
justice; its form is mastership, its content
exploitation. In other words, the State is the vehicle
of exploitation and mastership.
Sociology has up to the present almost always seen
only one aspect of the historical State. It has only
seen the State as the guardian of peace [p. 16] and
justice. Indeed it is commonly assumed that peace
and justice did not exist until the State came into
being. This is a great error; the community which
preceded the State defended its territory and the
lives and property of its members to the utmost, and
was exceedingly energetic in maintaining internal
equality of rights. The State merely took over from
the community these two tasks, which must be
carried out if any kind of society is to exist at all.This misconception cherished by previous
sociology is the cause of its idolatry of the State,
taking the form of State-worship. Peace and justice
are great benefits to society, and consequently it is
assumed, that the State, which is regarded not
merely as the guardian of peace and justice, but as
the only possible means by which they can be
created, must be the greatest of all benefits. In
reality however the State is nothing but onecommunity living as a parasite upon another. The
victorious group so to speak eats itself into the
subject group just as Baron von Mnchhausen's wolf
eats itself into the horse so that it finds itself in its
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harness and has to draw the sledge. Similarly the
victorious group has to draw the vehicle of society
as a whole by carrying out its most important
functions.
If it is permitted to anticipate a little, it may be said
here that the most extreme social doctrine of the
lower classes, which is anarchism, is based on theopposite misconception. It sees nothing in the State
but mastership and exploitation, and does not see
its function as the protector of peace and justice. It
therefore desires to get rid of the State altogether,
and, grossly overestimating the goodness of human
nature, believes that peace and justice will then
automatically establish and maintain themselves.
This is also idolatry of the State, but the State is
made into a devil instead of a god. The one theoryis as untenable as the other.
As soon as the State is created, sin comes into the
world. For conquerors and conquered now form a
single society, in which - largely under the influence
of the defensive functions of the State - a we
consciousness rapidly comes into being. On the
positive side this we consciousness embraces all
the members of the State, the lower as well as the
upper classes, while on the negative side it
excludes all those who are not members of the
State as not-we. The two groups which constitute
the State become amalgamated by intermarriage or
by connections outside marriage, speak the same
language, worship the same gods, and soon come
to have a common tradition, built up largely out of
the glorious victories which they have jointly won
against foreign enemies; in short, they become what
Mac Dougall calls a highly organised group. In agroup of this kind, however, the spirit of
comradeship ought to prevail; there should be
peace, morality and natural justice - justice based
on the innate sense of what is right; and justice
means [p. 17] that all persons should be recognised
as equal in dignity. This is not the demand of a
philosopher remote from life who wants to arrange
everything according to his own personal ideas; it is
the demand of morality itself, which speaks clearlyand unmistakably in every one of us as the voice of
conscience. Man, trained into humanity in the
prehuman horde, is a social animal, as Aristotle
said long ago. This means that he feels within
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himself the categorical imperative which commands
each man to treat his comrades in his own group as
his equals, to respect each man's personal dignity,
and always to treat him as a free agent and never
as the mere object of another's will. For this reason
mastership and exploitation within any group that
has a we consciousness is sin.
That this is the case can be proved in two ways,
even without venturing on to the heights of abstract
philosophy. The first proof is the following: Let the
proudest aristocrat, the greatest despiser of the
lower classes, be thrown into a dungeon; let him be
starved, ill-treated and insulted. He will not accept
his fate with resignation as a mere misfortune or Act
of God, but he will feel it with angry indignation as an
injustice - thus achieving his own reductio adabsurdum. The second proof is that every ruling
class has invented a special class theory of its own
to justify the prevailing state of injustice, and to
make it appear to itself as well as to the lower class
as a state of justice. Thus the categorical imperative
is recognised even while it is denied.
The formula for this justification was given long ago
by Plato: Equality for equals, inequality for
unequals. That is the sense of all the class theories
of the ruling classes. Wherever it was, or still is,
desired to justify the most extreme form of class
system, namely, slavery, the view which always has
been and still is advanced is that expressed by
Aristotle: The barbarians are slaves by nature and
exist for the purpose of serving the nobler race of
the Hellenes. It is more than probable that although
they had never heard of Aristotle the planters of the
Southern States of the United States said exactlythe same of the negroes, and that all land-owning
magnates have said the same of their serfs and
bondsmen. Even in the Edda we read that in the
beginning of all things the gods created three races,
the slender aristocratic fair-haired jarl, the sturdy
peasant (carl) and the clumsy, stupid, flat-footed
thrall (the born servant). All race theories are some
such attempt to legitimise injustice. This also
applies to the popular anti-Semitism of today.Just as according to the discoveries of modern folk-
lore all national costumes and all folk-songs are
nothing else than costumes formerly worn by the
nobility and former courtly songs which have come
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This attempt at justification is just as unsound as the
legitimist justification of the nobility. In the first place
there is every reason to assume that the distribution
of talent in human society is not essentially different
from the distribution of those qualities such as
physical development, muscular strength, acuteness
of the senses etc. which can be directly measured.Intellectual differences unfortunately cannot be
measured; but if they are to account for the
difference in income and property between a
Crassus and a Sicilian farm slave, or between a
Rockefeller and an East-End proletarian, then the
minds of men must differ from one another not
merely as much as Gulliver from the midgets of
Lilliputia or the Brobdingnagian giants, but [p. 19] as
the Lilliputians from the Brobdingnagians. In thesecond place, even if such immense differences in
mental gifts really existed, they could never have
given rise to differences of income and property of
real importance, and certainly not of sufficient
importance to form classes, until all the arable land
of the earth was so completely occupied by
peasants cultivating small or medium-sized holdings
that, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau puts it, all the
holdings, each touching another, cover the whole
land. This is an obviously true statement which is
accepted by all authorities, whether bourgeois or
socialist. The great Turgot said: So long as the
industrious man can still find land on which he can
work independently, he will not be inclined to work
for anyone else; Adam Smith, the father of
economic science; definitely lays it down that until
the land is fully occupied there an be no working
class, no ground rents and no profit on capital. Karl
Marx expresses exactly the same view in the lastchapter of the first volume of Das Kapital: So
long as any settler can still transform a piece of land
into his private property and his individual means of
production, without preventing future settlers from
carrying out the same operation, there is no class
of wage-earners and consequently no capitalism.
As a matter of fact, however, a working class and
capitalism have existed for the last five hundredyears. Consequently there is no more land freely
available for men without means who need land.
The only question is whether it was really occupied
in the way presupposed by the old wives' tale in
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which Turgot and Adam Smith believed. Did one
free peasant really settle next to another until all the
holdings, each touching the other, covered the
whole land? This question can be answered by a
simple calculation. We know accurately how much
land an independent peasant needs if he is not in a
position to hire paid workers as farm hands; on an
average he requires not more than one hectare perhead, i. e. 5-7 hectares for the whole family, for the
holding. If we divide the cultivable area of the earth
by this figure, we find to our astonishment that the
number of independent peasants who could live on
the earth is from four to eight times (different
geographers' estimates of the cultivable area of the
earth differ very widely) the total population of the
world. If we take one of the most densely populated
countries in the world, e. g. Germany, we shall findthat there is room for independent peasants with
middle-sized holdings to a number equal to double
that of the total rural population; and yet more than
half of the rural population consists of landless
agricultural proletarians, and even among the
holders of land there are immense numbers who
have only dwarf holdings or plots which do not
provide them with a living, and who are obliged to
supplement their income by means of paid work.
[p. 20] Thus if the settlement of the earth or of a
single large country had taken place in the way that
Rousseau believed, then only one-quarter or
perhaps one-eighth of the earth, and in a country
such as Germany barely one-half, would be
occupied; and the formation of a working class and
the consequent accumulation of wealth in a few
hands could not even begin for centuries or perhaps
even for thousands of years, notwithstanding anydifferences in individual talent, however great.
The complete occupation of the land must therefore
have taken place in some other way than Rousseau
believed. There is only one other possibility: the
masses must have been shut out from the land; it
was monopolised by the conquering class under the
legal form of the large estate in order to create a
working class and to make large incomes andaccumulations of wealth possible. It was said above
that there can only be a working class where under
the legal form of the large estate the land is made
unavailable for free settlement to such an extent that
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there is a large surplus population which is
compelled to work on the land of a master in order
to avoid starvation. We have now proved this
statement to be true.
These considerations make the nature and the
method of procedure of the modern State
comprehensible. It has already been said that everyState is the vehicle of mastership and exploitation.
This also applies to the modern State. The form of
exploitation which it both embodies and protects is
capitalism. And capitalism is the direct
consequence of the closing of access to the land.
If this fact has not hitherto been realised, the chief
reason is that capitalism has been far too narrowly
conceived, both as regards its nature and asregards the time of its appearance. Bourgeois
sociology, and still more bourgeois economics -
which in this respect as in so many others is almost
slavishly followed by socialist theory in general -
centres round industry; it is hypnotised by what has
taken place in the towns, and takes no account
whatever of the development of affairs in the country
-although it must surely be clear even to the casual
observer that urban trade, commerce and industry
are merely a secondary growth on the main stem of
national economy, whose growth, prosperity and
decay are closely bound up with the growth,
prosperity and decay of the main stem, which
represents the market for the products of urban
industry. Starting from this erroneous standpoint, it
is believed that historically capitalism begins with
the development of the stock system and of the
factory, and only attains its full development with the
development of power-driven machinery in thetowns. Capitalism is practically identified with the
machine system. In reality, however, capitalism is
much older and much more widespread. [p. 21]
Capitalism exists wherever employers who can
dispose of the labour of exploited proletarians
supply goods to a market under a developed
financial system. The exploited workers need not be
free citizens. They may be slaves; thus it is
customary to speak of the capitalistic slave-systemof Greek and Roman antiquity. They may also be
serfs, bondsmen or an agricultural proletariat bound
to the soil; and in actual fact modern capitalism
everywhere began in the country as a system of
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exploitation of workers bound to the soil. Brodnitz, in
his economic history of England, has conclusively
shown this to be true in the case of England, the
classic example of a capitalist country. In that
country the workers enjoyed personal freedom from
the Middle Ages onwards, but they did not enjoy
freedom of movement because the parochial laws
hindered free movement from the land, while therules of the guilds and corporations made migration
to the towns almost impossible. Thus agrarian
capitalism, the supply of food to the urban markets,
preceded industrialcapitalism by hundreds of
years; the latter only followed very slowly and
hesitatingly, and did not really develop until a time
when freedom of movement had been attained.
What happened in Germany was precisely thesame. Georg Friedrich Knapp has established that
the large estate east of the Elbe is the first
capitalistic undertaking of modern times. In this
case also the agricultural workers were tied to the
soil, or were made so in the course of the process
by open or legally veiled force. Here too agrarian
capitalism came into existence centuries before
industrial capitalism, and here too the latter only
followed slowly and with hesitation, and did not fully
develop until freedom of movement had been
attained - in Germany by the emancipation laws of
Stein and Hardenberg, in Austria-Hungary and
Russia after the freeing of the serfs.
This is in outline the way in which capitalism and the
modern State, which enshrines it, must be regarded
in order to be properly understood.
All previous attempts to explain capitalism havetaken industry as their starting-point. They have
sought the cause of the central phenomenon which
accounts for everything else, namely the constant
surplus of labour on the market, solely in the
conditions of urban industry. All these attempts have
failed, both the bourgeois explanation, the
Malthusian law of population, and the socialist
explanation, the replacement of human labour by
machinery. Of the former there is no need to speak;it is now entirely abandoned, and it is in fact
untenable. The second explanation is contrary to all
the statistical data. The number of workers and
employees engaged in industry and commerce in all
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capitalist countries increases at an enormously
greater rate than the total population. If there were
no influx from without, [p. 22] the average wage
would in these circumstances have risen very much
more than is actually the case.
There is however always such an influx. It can come
from nowhere else than the country. But it does notcome to he same extent from all rural districts, but
chiefly from those where there are large estates and
those, therefore, are alone responsible for the
surplus of labour on the market. This was
established statistically by von der Goltz as early as
1874, and it can also be established deductively.
The day labourers on the large estates are subject
to the law of increasing pressure from one
direction, and this drives them to mass migration.
In this way, and in this way only, the history of
capitalism can be understood in all its phases. First
of all there are the horrors of the early days of
industrial capitalism throughout the world. Before
freedom of movement had been achieved, industry
developed very slowly; there were only few and
small undertakings, and these employed only a
small number of comparatively prosperous and well-
paid workers. The moment that freedom of
movement from the country became possible, a
reservoir of misery which had been accumulating for
ages suddenly poured itself out; for agrarian
capitalism had forced the tied agricultural proletariat
down to and even below the physiological minimum
standard of living. The supply of labour thus created
flooded the labour market, and the wages of the
older working class were dragged down, while
under the influence of low wages urban capitalismshot up as in a forcing-house. Migration, however,
thinned out the rural proletariat, while at the same
time the rapid growth of the towns led to an
increased demand for foodstuffs. Consequently the
price of foodstuffs rose, and agriculture was driven
to adopt intensive methods. This meant not only the
use of machinery, but also an increased demand for
labour. This again resulted in a rise in wages.
Higher wages in agriculture had to outbid the still-growing industries; this in itself resulted in a further
rise of industrial wages, especially as the proportion
between the inflowing agricultural proletarians and
the industrial proletariat already established was
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constantly growing more favourable to the latter;
where previously hundreds of thousands had flowed
in on tens of thousands, now tens of thousands were
flowing in on hundreds of thousands. The pressure
on the labour market grew comparatively easier,
even if the absolute number of rural workers
migrating to the towns had remained the same; but
as a matter of fact it decreased as soon the firstrush of the dammed-up flood had ceased.
This is the perfectly simple explanation of the
appalling misery which accompanied industrial
capitalism in the first decades of its existence, and
the gradual improvement in the wages and living
conditions of the workers [p. 23] in all countries in
which the capitalist order has prevailed for any
length of time. It is not trade unionism, as so manypeople suppose, which has brought this miracle to
pass, but the proportional decrease in the influx of
rural workers; and the result would have been better
still if all these countries had not received a large
stream of immigrants from foreign countries which
were still industrially undeveloped, and where the
large estate and consequently agrarian capitalism
still prevailed.
This contention is fully proved by the amazing
development of capitalism in the United States,
especially in the last ten years. There the wages and
standard of living of the majority of the workers,
those at all events who have acquired the language
of the country and learnt to understand its social
conditions, have risen to an extent that neither
bourgeois nor Marxist theory can even begin to
explain. Twenty years ago, in an essay entitled
What Russian agrarian reform means to us[1], Iwrote as follows: Here, in the feudal agrarian
constitution of the Old World, reside, clearly
recognisable, the roots of the serious evils from
which the New World suffers. Freedom cannot
prosper anywhere so long as slavery still exists
anywhere else. For it is an infection which spreads
across mountain and ocean. Suppose that as a
result of Russian or rather of Eastern European
agrarian reform mass immigration into the UnitedStates ceased even for a decade, what would
become of American capitalism? The already high
wages of urban and rural workers would rise
enormously; the already colossal requirements of
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foodstuffs and industrial products on the home
market would reach giddy heights; labour would
become the rarest of commodities. This prophecy
has been literally fulfilled. I have before me a book
published in 1926 by Thomas Nixon Carver,
Professor at Harvard University, entitled The
present economic Revolution in the United States.
On p. VIII appears the following passage: Notably,because of the stoppage of immigration by the war,
followed by restrictive legislation, our wage workers
have continued to earn a larger share in this
prosperity than wage workers have ever gained.
The author sees quite clearly that American
capitalism, which in spite of his rosy optimism he
cannot deny, is only to be explained by immigration:
For forty years preceding the Great War we were
importing manual labourers, literally by the millions.We were not importing any very large number of
employers or capitalists. (p. 37.) This was the
cause of the surplus on the labour market. But
during the last half-dozen years, since we have
removed the disturbing factor, or greatly reduced it -
that is, the importation of vast numbers of unskilled
labourers, - we are gradually relieving [p. 24] the
occupational congestion under which we suffered
for at least two generations. (pp. 45-46.) The
results produced are already extraordinary, even
although the immigration over the Canadian and still
more the Mexican frontier still brings in enormous
numbers of workers who are not only unskilled and
of different race, but quite illiterate and difficult if not
impossible to adapt to the conditions of civilised life
- who are in fact coolies or peons. This is paving the
way for a new negro question. At the same time the
workers who have been assimilated already enjoy a
standard of living which might well be envied byeven the upper middle classes of a country such as
Germany. A mason employed on piece-work in New
York earns as much as 14 dollars a day, or allowing
25 working days to the month, 1,500 marks a
month. All the statistics show that the workers are
not only able to put by something for a rainy day, but
that they can actually accumulate a considerable
capital. One workers' bank after another is
instituted, and these banks are beginning to take anactive part, to the benefit of the class for which they
were created, in the financing of industry. Brady
estimates the sum annually paid as wages to
industrial workers in the United States at the present
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persist. Carver dismisses in a few words the
enormously important fact that in the last two
hundred years the State has made a present of the
immense treasure of the national land to itself, i. e.
to its upper classes, in order to shut the lower
classes out from it and thus to create the working
class which was required. In my System der
Soziologie (III, pp. 540 et seq.) I have describedthis deplorable practice, which has prevailed not
only in America but in all European colonies. This is
the real reason why for a whole generation an
excessive proportion of the European immigrants
have remained in the large towns, and this although
most of the immigrants were agricultural workers.
And whence did these immigrants come? Almost
entirely from the European regions of large estates,
first from Germany east of the Elbe and Ireland, fromEngland, and then from Poland, Russia, Rumania,
Sweden, Southern Italy etc. The peasant countries
of Europe only contributed a few small tributaries to
the immense stream, only a small percentage of the
total number. And what is the position in Mexico?
Mexico is a land of the most enormous estates,
where the land is enclosed to an unprecedented
extent. The consequence is that in spite of its
immense size and extremely scanty population its
people are forced to emigrate because the way to a
livelihood at home is blocked. A further
consequence is that the peons are animals without
souls, like the agricultural workers in all countries
where the large estate prevails. The words of Isaiah
apply to Mexico: Woe unto them that join house to
house, that lay field to field, till there be no place,
that they may be placed alone in the midst of the
earth!
With this the chain of proof may be said to be
complete. It has been said that the State, that
creature of forcible conquest, that parasite on the
body of the community, created two institutions as
soon as it came into existence: the division of
classes and the large estate. The division of
classes has been destroyed by the great revolutions
of 1649 in England, of 1789 in France, of 1848 in
Germany, and of 1917 in Russia; the large estatehas up to the present only been radically abolished
in Russia. In the latter country the revolution was
however bound up with activities which were [p. 26]
not only entirely superfluous but exceedingly
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destructive, and that is the only reason why this
region, which is equal to the United States in natural
resources, is unable to achieve prosperity.
The other nations still have before them the task of
uprooting from their midst this last remaining
creation of primitive violence, of completing the
work of the middle class revolution, and thus ofbringing into the world real freedom, which can
never exist where, as Rousseau puts it, some are
rich enough to be able to buy many, and many so
poor that they have to sell themselves.
We have now ascertained the nature and the future
of the modern State. It is in reality the vehicle of
capitalism; but we have learnt from the history of its
development that capitalism in neither quite sogood nor quite so bad as is still almost universally
believed in Europe. It too in a mixture ofkratos and
ethos.And so the capitalist State does not deserve
to be made into an idol, either good or bad; it
deserves neither apotheosis, nor, if a word may be
coined, apodiabolosis. It is the bastard offspring
of slavery and freedom; and the great task before us
is to get rid of the remaining traces of slavery and
bring full freedom into being. Our descendants will
then live under an order which will still be a State in
so far as it possesses fixed laws and institutions
with the duty and power of enforcing them, but yet
will not be a State because it will not, like all
previous States known to history, represent
mastership and exploitation.
Translated into English from the German
Manuscript
By Miss Monica Curtis-Geneva
Notes
[1] Patria, Jahrbuch der Hilfe, 1906, reprinted
in my Wege zur Gemeinschaft, pp. 163
et seq. The passage quoted appears on
pp. l81-182.
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