Franz Oppenheimer_ the Idolatry of the State

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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.
http://www.franz-oppenheimer.de/fo27a.htm#footnote-1-referrer


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Franz Oppenheimer_ the Idolatry of the State

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