Anatomy of the State

These notes are old and were written while reading — they don’t necessarily reflect my current views.

We are not the government. Action compelled by the government is therefore not voluntary. The government is an organisation which attempts to hold a monopoly on violence and power in the society. It is the only organisation that does not gather its resources from voluntary transaction.

He points out that every government (not only democratic ones) need at least the passive acceptance of the majority of its people.

Control is kept by giving key people economic incentives to maintain the governance and by convincing the public that the government is good (usually through intellectuals, who are often dependent on the state, as their service is not often paid for by the public). Nationalism can be a very potent strategy (especially in the western context).

“For while individual persons tend to indulge in “selfish greed,” the failure of the State’s rulers to engage in exchanges is supposed to signify their devotion to higher and nobler causes—parasitic predation being apparently morally and aesthetically lofty as compared to peaceful and productive work.”

He sharply criticises the connection between the judicial system and the rest of the government (in the US). His main objection is that there is no real independence and that the Supreme Court therefore might legitimise the actions of government in the eyes of the people, even tho its basically just one structure agreeing with itself. The illusion of independence is what makes it so dangerous. The turning point in the US history in his eyes is the New Deal decision.

He has a very Buchananesque take that government naturally tends to enlarge it self.

De Jouvenel, On Power, p. 171. is cited with a great piece on how the Power games (Foucault) of the government are inherently anticapitalist.

“Compare the degree of zeal devoted to pursuing the man who assaults a policeman, with the attention that the State pays to the assault of an ordinary citizen. 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.”

I believe that the state is certainly an evil, but that anarchy is just no stable situation, as other states will soon claim the land and rebellion would only again happen if the intrusion in peoples lives becomes too great. There will almost certainly arise an equilibrium where the government do just as much as they can get away with.