{"id":16095,"date":"2021-06-26T22:05:02","date_gmt":"2021-06-27T02:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justcharlie.com\/?page_id=16095"},"modified":"2021-06-26T22:05:50","modified_gmt":"2021-06-27T02:05:50","slug":"anatomy-of-the-state","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.justcharlie.com\/highlights\/anatomy-of-the-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Anatomy of the State Highlights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

These highlights were saved with the Kindle version of Anatomy of the State<\/a> by Murray Rothbard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

With the rise of democracy, the identification of the State with society has been redoubled, until it is common to hear sentiments expressed which violate virtually every tenet of reason and common sense such as, \u201cwe are the government.\u201d The useful collective term \u201cwe\u201d has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the reality of political life. If \u201cwe are the government,\u201d then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also \u201cvoluntary\u201d on the part of the individual concerned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We must, therefore, emphasize that \u201cwe\u201d are not the government; the government is not \u201cus.\u201d The government does not in any accurate sense \u201crepresent\u201d the majority of the people. But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If, then, the State is not \u201cus,\u201d if it is not \u201cthe human family\u201d getting together to decide mutual problems, if it is not a lodge meeting or country club, what is it? 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer pointed out that there are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth; one, the above way of production and exchange, he called the \u201ceconomic means.\u201d The other way is simpler in that it does not require productivity; it is the way of seizure of another\u2019s 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. This is the method which Oppenheimer termed \u201cthe political means\u201d to wealth. It should be clear that the peaceful use of reason and energy in production is the \u201cnatural\u201d path for man: the means for his survival and prosperity on this earth. 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The State has never been created by a \u201csocial contract\u201d; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation. The classic paradigm was a conquering tribe pausing in its time-honored method of looting and murdering a conquered tribe, to realize that the timespan of plunder would be longer and more secure, and the situation more pleasant, if the conquered tribe were allowed to live and produce, with the conquerors settling among them as rulers exacting a steady annual tribute.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives. Promoting this ideology among the people is the vital social task of the \u201cintellectuals.\u201d 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 \u201copinion-molders\u201d 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism; there is no better way to stifle that criticism than to attack any isolated voice, any raiser of new doubts, as a profane violator of the wisdom of his ancestors. Another potent ideological force is to deprecate the individual and exalt the collectivity of society. For since any given rule implies majority acceptance, any ideological danger to that rule can only start from one or a few independently-thinking individuals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It is also important for the State to make its rule seem inevitable; even if its reign is disliked, it will then be met with passive resignation, as witness the familiar coupling of \u201cdeath and taxes.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The increasing use of scientific jargon has permitted the State\u2019s intellectuals to weave obscurantist apologia for State rule that would have only met with derision by the populace of a simpler age. 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 \u201cmultiplier effect,\u201d it unfortunately carries more conviction. And so the assault on common sense proceeds, each age performing the task in its own ways.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Certainly the most ambitious attempt to impose limits on the State has been the Bill of Rights and other restrictive parts of the American Constitution, in which written limits on government became the fundamental law to be interpreted by a judiciary supposedly independent of the other branches of government. All Americans are familiar with the process by which the construction of limits in the Constitution has been inexorably broadened over the last century.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2014in 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in protecting itself rather than its subjects by asking: which category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely\u2014those against private citizens or those against itself?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We have seen that the \u201cinternal\u201d or \u201cdomestic\u201d attempt to limit the State, in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, reached its most notable form in constitutionalism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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