has been in favor of increasing the power of the State, but more or
less hostile to the power of private property. On the other hand,
syndicalism has been hostile both to the State and to private property.
I believe that syndicalism is more nearly right than socialism in this
respect, that both private property and the State, which are the two
most powerful institutions of the modern world, have become harmful
to life through excess of power, and that both are hastening the loss
of vitality from which the civilized world increasingly suffers.
The two institutions are closely connected, but for the present I
wish to consider only the State. I shall try to show how great, how
unnecessary, how harmful, many of its powers are, and how enormously
they might be diminished without loss of what is useful in its
activity. But I shall admit that in certain directions its functions
ought to be extended rather than curtailed.
Some of the functions of the State, such as the Post Office and
elementary education, might be performed by private agencies, and are
only undertaken by the State from motives of convenience. But other
matters, such as the law, the police, the Army, and the Navy, belong
more essentially to the State: so long as there is a State at all it is
difficult to imagine these matters in private hands. The distinction
between socialism and individualism turns on the nonessential
functions of the State, which the socialist wishes to extend and
the individualist to restrict. It is the essential functions, which
are admitted by individualists and socialists alike, that I wish
to criticize, since the others do not appear to me in themselves
objectionable.
The essence of the State is that it is the repository of the collective
force of its citizens. This force takes two forms, one internal and one
external. The internal form is the law and the police; the external
form is the power of waging war, as embodied in the Army and Navy. The
State is constituted by the combination of all the inhabitants in a
certain area using their united force in accordance with the commands
of a Government. In a civilized State force is only employed against
its own citizens in accordance with rules previously laid down, which
constitute the criminal law. But the employment of force against
foreigners is not regulated by any code of rules, and proceeds, with
few exceptions, according to some real or fancied national interest.
There can be no doubt that force employed according to law is less
pernicious than force employed capriciously. If international law could
acquire sufficient hold on men’s allegiance to regulate the relations
of States, a very great advance on our present condition would have
been made. The primitive anarchy which precedes law is worse than law.
But I believe there is a possibility of a stage to some extent above
law, where the advantages now secured by the law are secured without
loss of freedom, and without the disadvantages which the law and the
police render inevitable. Probably some repository of force in the
background will remain necessary, but the actual employment of force
may become very rare, and the degree of force required very small.
The anarchy which precedes law gives freedom only to the strong; the
condition to be aimed at will give freedom as nearly as possible to
every one. It will do this, not by preventing altogether the existence
of organized force, but by limiting the occasions for its employment to
the greatest possible extent.
The power of the State is only limited internally by the fear of
rebellion and externally by the fear of defeat in war. Subject to these
restrictions, it is absolute. In practice, it can seize men’s property
through taxation, determine the law of marriage and inheritance, punish
the expression of opinions which it dislikes, put men to death for
wishing the region they inhabit to belong to a different State, and
order all able-bodied males to risk their lives in battle whenever it
considers war desirable. On many matters disagreement with the purposes
and opinions of the State is criminal. Probably the freest States in
the world, before the war, were America and England; yet in America no
immigrant may land until he has professed disbelief in anarchism and
polygamy, while in England men were sent to prison in recent years for
expressing disagreement with the Christian religion[3] or agreement
with the teaching of Christ.[4] In time of war, all criticism of
the external policy of the State is criminal. Certain objects having
appeared desirable to the majority, or to the effective holders of
power, those who do not consider these objects desirable are exposed
to pains and penalties not unlike those suffered by heretics in the
past. The extent of the tyranny thus exercised is concealed by its very
success: few men consider it worth while to incur a persecution which
is almost certain to be thorough and effective.
Universal military service is perhaps the extreme example of the power
of the State, and the supreme illustration of the difference between
its attitude to its own citizens and its attitude to the citizens of
other States. The State punishes, with impartial rigor, both those who
kill their compatriots and those who refuse to kill foreigners. On
the whole, the latter is considered the graver crime. The phenomenon
of war is familiar, and men fail to realize its strangeness; to those
who stand inside the cycle of instincts which lead to war it all seems
natural and reasonable. But to those who stand outside the strangeness
of it grows with familiarity. It is amazing that the vast majority of
men should tolerate a system which compels them to submit to all the
horrors of the battlefield at any moment when their Government commands
them to do so. A French artist, indifferent to politics, attentive only
to his painting, suddenly finds himself called upon to shoot Germans,
who, his friends assure him, are a disgrace to the human race. A German
musician, equally unknowing, is called upon to shoot the perfidious
Frenchman. Why cannot the two men declare a mutual neutrality? Why not
leave war to those who like it and bring it on? Yet if the two men
declared a mutual neutrality they would be shot by their compatriots.
To avoid this fate they try to shoot each other. If the world loses
the artist, not the musician, Germany rejoices; if the world loses the
musician, not the artist, France rejoices. No one remembers the loss to
civilization, which is equal whichever is killed.
This is the politics of Bedlam. If the artist and the musician had been
allowed to stand aside from the war, nothing but unmitigated good to
mankind would have resulted. The power of the State, which makes this
impossible, is a wholly evil thing, quite as evil as the power of the
Church which in former days put men to death for unorthodox thought.
Yet if, even in time of peace, an international league were founded to
consist of Frenchmen and Germans in equal numbers, all pledged not to
take part in war, the French State and the German State would persecute
it with equal ferocity. Blind obedience, unlimited willingness to kill
and die are exacted of the modern citizens of a democracy as much as
of the Janizaries of medieval sultans or the secret agents of Oriental
despots.[5]
The power of the State may be brought to bear, as it often is in
England, through public opinion rather than through the laws. By
oratory and the influence of the Press, public opinion is largely
created by the State, and a tyrannous public opinion is as great an
enemy to liberty as tyrannous laws. If the young man who will not
fight finds that he is dismissed from his employment, insulted in the
streets, cold-shouldered by his friends, and thrown over with scorn by
any woman who may formerly have liked him, he will feel the penalty
quite as hard to bear as a death sentence.[6] A free community requires
not only legal freedom, but a tolerant public opinion, an absence of
that instinctive inquisition into our neighbors’ affairs which, under
the guise of upholding a high moral standard, enables good people
to indulge unconsciously a disposition to cruelty and persecution.
Thinking ill of others is not in itself a good reason for thinking well
of ourselves. But so long as this is not recognized, and so long as the
State can manufacture public opinion, except in the rare cases where it
is revolutionary, public opinion must be reckoned as a definite part of
the power of the State.
The power of the State outside its own borders is in the main derived
from war or the threat of war. Some power is derived from the ability
to persuade its citizens to lend money or not to lend it, but this
is unimportant in comparison with the power derived from armies and
navies. The external activity of the State—with exceptions so rare
as to be negligible—is selfish. Sometimes selfishness is mitigated
by the need of retaining the goodwill of other States, but this only
modifies the methods employed, not the ends pursued. The ends pursued,
apart from mere defense against other States, are, on the one hand,
opportunities for successful exploitation of weak or uncivilized
countries, on the other hand, power and prestige, which are considered
more glorious and less material than money. In pursuit of these
objects, no State hesitates to put to death innumerable foreigners
whose happiness is not compatible with exploitation or subjection, or
to devastate territories into which it is thought necessary to strike
terror. Apart from the present war, such acts have been performed
within the last twenty years by many minor States and by all the
Great Powers[7] except Austria; and in the case of Austria only the
opportunity, not the will, was lacking.
Why do men acquiesce in the power of the State? There are many reasons,
some traditional, some very present and pressing.
The traditional reason for obedience to the State is personal loyalty
to the sovereign. European States grew up under the feudal system,
and were originally the several territories owned by feudal chiefs.
But this source of obedience has decayed, and probably now counts for
little except in Japan, and to a lesser extent in Russia.
Tribal feeling, which always underlay loyalty to the sovereign, has
remained as strong as it ever was, and is now the chief support for
the power of the State. Almost every man finds it essential to his
happiness to feel himself a member of a group, animated by common
friendships and enmities and banded together for defense and attack.
But such groups are of two kinds: there are those which are essentially
enlargements of the family, and there are those which are based upon a
conscious common purpose. Nations belong to the first kind, Churches to
the second. At times when men are profoundly swayed by creeds national
divisions tend to break down, as they did in the wars of religion
after the Reformation. At such times a common creed is a stronger bond
than a common nationality. To a much slighter extent, the same thing
has occurred in the modern world with the rise of socialism. Men who
disbelieve in private property, and feel the capitalist the real enemy,
have a bond which transcends national divisions. It has not been found
strong enough to resist the passions aroused by the present war, but
it has made them less bitter among socialists than among others, and
has kept alive the hope of a European community to be reconstructed
when the war is over. In the main, however, the universal disbelief in
creeds has left tribal feeling triumphant, and has made nationalism
stronger than at any previous period of the world’s history. A few
sincere Christians, a few sincere socialists, have found in their creed
a force capable of resisting the assaults of national passion, but they
have been too few to influence the course of events or even to cause
serious anxiety to the Governments.
It is chiefly tribal feeling that generates the unity of a national
State, but it is not only tribal feeling that generates its strength.
Its strength results principally from two fears, neither of which is
unreasonable: the fear of crime and anarchy within, and the fear of
aggression from without.
The internal orderliness of a civilized community is a great
achievement, chiefly brought about by the increased authority of the
State. It would be inconvenient if peaceable citizens were constantly
in imminent risk of being robbed and murdered. Civilized life would
become almost impossible if adventurous people could organize private
armies for purposes of plunder. These conditions existed in the Middle
Ages, and have not passed away without a great struggle. It is thought
by many—especially by the rich, who derive the greatest advantage from
law and order—that any diminution in the power of the State might
bring back a condition of universal anarchy. They regard strikes as
portents of dissolution. They are terrified by such organizations as
the Confédération Générale du Travail and the International Workers
of the World. They remember the French Revolution, and feel a not
unnatural desire to keep their heads on their shoulders. They dread
particularly any political theory which seems to excuse private crimes,
such as sabotage and political assassination. Against these dangers
they see no protection except the maintenance of the authority of the
State, and the belief that all resistance to the State is wicked.
Fear of the danger within is enhanced by fear of the danger without.
Every State is exposed at all times to the risk of foreign invasion.
No means has hitherto been devised for minimizing this risk except the
increase of armaments. But the armaments which are nominally intended
to repel invasion may also be used to invade. And so the means adopted
to diminish the external fear have the effect of increasing it, and
of enormously enhancing the destructiveness of war when it does break
out. In this way a reign of terror becomes universal, and the State
acquires everywhere something of the character of the Comité du Salut
Public.
The tribal feeling out of which the State develops is natural, and the
fear by which the State is strengthened is reasonable under present
circumstances. And in addition to these two, there is a third source of
strength in a national State, namely patriotism in its religious aspect.
Patriotism is a very complex feeling, built up out of primitive
instincts and highly intellectual convictions. There is love of home
and family and friends, making us peculiarly anxious to preserve our
own country from invasion. There is the mild instinctive liking for
compatriots as against foreigners. There is pride, which is bound up
with the success of the community to which we feel that we belong.
There is a belief, suggested by pride but reinforced by history, that
one’s own nation represents a great tradition and stands for ideals
that are important to the human race. But besides all these, there is
another element, at once nobler and more open to attack, an element of
worship, of willing sacrifice, of joyful merging of the individual life
in the life of the nation. This religious element in patriotism is
essential to the strength of the State, since it enlists the best that
is in most men on the side of national sacrifice.
The religious element in patriotism is reinforced by education,
especially by a knowledge of the history and literature of one’s own
country, provided it is not accompanied by much knowledge of the
history and literature of other countries. In every civilized country
all instruction of the young emphasizes the merits of their own nation
and the faults of other nations. It comes to be universally believed
that one’s own nation, because of its superiority, deserves support in
a quarrel, however the quarrel may have originated. This belief is so
genuine and deep that it makes men endure patiently, almost gladly, the
losses and hardships and sufferings entailed by war. Like all sincerely
believed religions, it gives an outlook on life, based upon instinct
but sublimating it, causing a devotion to an end greater than any
personal end, but containing many personal ends as it were in solution.
Patriotism as a religion is unsatisfactory because of its lack of
universality. The good at which it aims is a good for one’s own
nation only, not for all mankind. The desires which it inspires in
an Englishman are not the same as the desires which it inspires in
a German. A world full of patriots may be a world full of strife.
The more intensely a nation believes in its patriotism, the more
fanatically indifferent it will become to the damage suffered by other
nations. When once men have learnt to subordinate their own good to the
good of a larger whole, there can be no valid reason for stopping short
of the human race. It is the admixture of national pride that makes
it so easy in practice for men’s impulses towards sacrifice to stop
short at the frontiers of their own country. It is this admixture that
poisons patriotism, and makes it inferior, as a religion, to beliefs
which aim at the salvation of all mankind. We cannot avoid having more
love for our own country than for other countries, and there is no
reason why we should wish to avoid it, any more than we should wish to
love all individual men and women equally. But any adequate religion
will lead us to temper inequality of affection by love of justice, and
to universalize our aims by realizing the common needs of man. This
change was effected by Christianity in Judaism, and must be effected in
any merely national religion before it can be purged of evil.
In practice, patriotism has many other enemies to contend with.
Cosmopolitanism cannot fail to grow as men acquire more knowledge of
foreign countries by education and travel. There is also a kind of
individualism which is continually increasing, a realization that every
man ought to be as nearly free as possible to choose his own ends, not
compelled by a geographical accident to pursue ends forced upon him by
the community. Socialism, syndicalism, and anti-capitalist movements
generally, are against patriotism in their tendency, since they make
men aware that the present State is largely concerned in defending the
privileges of the rich, and that many of the conflicts between States
have their origin in the financial interests of a few plutocrats.
This kind of opposition is perhaps temporary, a mere incident in the
struggle of labor to acquire power. Australia, where labor feels its
triumph secure, is full of patriotism and militarism, based upon
determination to prevent foreign labor from sharing the benefits of a
privileged position. It is not unlikely that England might develop a
similar nationalism if it became a socialist State. But it is probable
that such nationalism would be purely defensive. Schemes of foreign
aggression, entailing great loss of life and wealth in the nation which
adopts them, would hardly be initiated except by those whose instincts
of dominion have been sharpened through the power derived from private
property and the institutions of the capitalist State.
The evil wrought in the modern world by the excessive power of the
State is very great, and very little recognized.
The chief harm wrought by the State is promotion of efficiency in
war. If all States increase their strength, the balance of power is
unchanged, and no one State has a better chance of victory than before.
And when the means of offense exist, even though their original purpose
may have been defensive, the temptation to use them is likely, sooner
or later, to prove overwhelming. In this way the very measures which
promoted security within the borders of the State promote insecurity
elsewhere. It is of the essence of the State to suppress violence
within and to facilitate it without. The State makes an entirely
artificial division of mankind and of our duties toward them: towards
one group we are bound by the law, towards the other only by the
prudence of highwaymen. The State is rendered evil by its exclusions,
and by the fact that, whenever it embarks upon aggressive war, it
becomes a combination of men for murder and robbery. The present system
is irrational, since external and internal anarchy must be both right
or both wrong. It is supported because, so long as others adopt it,
it is thought the only road to safety, and because it secures the
pleasures of triumph and dominion, which cannot be obtained in a good
community. If these pleasures were no longer sought, or no longer
possible to obtain, the problem of securing safety from invasion would
not be difficult.
Apart from war, the modern great State is harmful from its vastness
and the resulting sense of individual helplessness. The citizen who is
out of sympathy with the aims of the State, unless he is a man of very
rare gifts, cannot hope to persuade the State to adopt purposes which
seem to him better. Even in a democracy, all questions except a very
few are decided by a small number of officials and eminent men; and
even the few questions which are left to the popular vote are decided
by a diffused mass-psychology, not by individual initiative. This is
especially noticeable in a country like the United States, where, in
spite of democracy, most men have a sense of almost complete impotence
in regard to all large issues. In so vast a country the popular will
is like one of the forces of Nature, and seems nearly as much outside
the control of any one man. This state of things leads, not only in
America but in all large States, to something of the weariness and
discouragement that we associate with the Roman Empire. Modern States,
as opposed to the small city States of ancient Greece or medieval
Italy, leave little room for initiative, and fail to develop in most
men any sense of ability to control their political destinies. The
few men who achieve power in such States are men of abnormal ambition
and thirst for dominion, combined with skill in cajolery and subtlety
in negotiation. All the rest are dwarfed by knowledge of their own
impotence.
A curious survival from the old monarchical idea of the State is the
belief that there is some peculiar wickedness in a wish to secede
on the part of any section of the population. If Ireland or Poland
desires independence, it is thought obvious that this desire must be
strenuously resisted, and any attempt to secure it is condemned as
“high treason.” The only instance to the contrary that I can remember
is the separation of Norway and Sweden, which was commended but not
imitated. In other cases, nothing but defeat in war has induced States
to part with territory: although this attitude is taken for granted, it
is not one which would be adopted if the State had better ends in view.
The reason for its adoption is that the chief end of almost all great
States is power, especially power in war. And power in war is often
increased by the inclusion of unwilling citizens. If the well-being
of the citizens were the end in view, the question whether a certain
area should be included, or should form a separate State, would be left
freely to the decision of that area. If this principle were adopted,
one of the main reasons for war would be obviated, and one of the most
tyrannical elements in the State would be removed.