Gian Piero de Bellis

In 1838 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon received a scholarship from the Academy of Besançon following a bequest from a certain Madame Suard. Two years later, in 1840, he began drafting a Memoir on social and economic topics that appeared that same year under the title: Qu'est ce que la propriété?

To prevent it from going unnoticed Proudhon made two masterly decisions:

1. the first was to dedicate his Memoir to the members of the Academy who, in this way, were almost forced to read it and being, for the most part, of a conservative disposition, were scandalised by some of the statements and tried to have the dedication withdrawn; by doing so, as the author had intended, they generated enough uproar to arouse people's curiosity, multiplying the number of readers;

2. secondly, Proudhon produced a definition of property (Property is theft) that has become very famous even among those who know little about Proudhon, have never read a line of what he wrote, and are completely unaware that Proudhon, despite his sweeping definition, can be counted among the great defenders of personal property as an indispensable counterbalance to the expropriating and tyrannical state (see: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Théorie de la propriété, 1862).

A few years later, another French-born author posed an interesting question: What is the state? Frédéric Bastiat, this was his name, considered it so important to answer this question that he thought it would be useful to assign a prize “not of five hundred francs, but of one million francs, with laurel wreaths, merit crosses and ribbons, to reward the person who will offer a good, simple and intelligent definition of this term: the State.” (L’État, 1848)

And, in the wake of this demand, he produced his definition of the State, a definition that remained in the shadows for a long time (none of us ever got acquainted with it in State schools) but which is increasingly circulating through the Internet, in a sort of universal word of mouth, and which is also becoming justly famous, as was Proudhon's definition of property.

Here it is:

“The State is the great fiction through which everyone
tries to live off the backs of everyone else.”

There is no denying that this is an entirely accurate and truthful definition, acute and penetrating to the utmost. In a word, brilliant. I have used it several times in my writings and interventions because it totally captures what is the nature of the State: a fiction made to delude, and then delude, and then delude over and over again.

Yet, and here I want to play devil's advocate, for some time now I have found myself considering this definition too subtle, too nice or, in other words, a too good representation of the State in actual fact.

By saying this, I have nothing against Bastiat who was a noble-minded individual nor against his statement which I still find brilliant.

I only have the feeling that Bastiat has, with his formulation, characterised the State as it was more than 150 years ago, when it was in the process of invading the whole of society but had not yet done so in the extensive, suffocating and intolerable forms and ways of today. The State, in Bastiat's time, had not yet provoked two World Wars, established mass extermination camps, organised the Gulag, engineered famines and mass expulsions. In essence, in his time, the State was not yet the ultimate architect of a methodical policy of mass extermination and oppression.

Hence, if one knew of all the evil produced by this institution called “The State”, from 1850, the year Bastiat died, to the present day, defining it only as a ‘fiction’ could appear almost equivalent to describing Hitler and Stalin as two mischievous and misbehaving garrulous little rascals.

Perhaps we need a new definition of ‘What is the State’, one that has the outrageous force that Proudhon's definition of property had.

May be, we should also institute a prize for this new definition. However, in this case, no money up for grabs, but just the infinite gratitude by all those who will employ the new definition as a weapon against oppression and alienation.

Me too, I have a go at it, but I don't think I am up to the task.

Unfortunately, to devise a short, striking expression, I have to resort to the French language, even though it is a French that everyone understands or at least intuits. To the question : Qu'est-ce-que l'État, I answer :

L’État c'est le Dégât

The State is total disaster, permanent degradation, universal corruption, general commodification.

The State is violence practised as a principle, theft organised by law, cheating practised as a rule of life.

The State is absolute immorality, rambling reason, the permanent and insistent madness that takes over everyone's existence.

Nietzsche in one of his lucid statements called the State “the place where the slow suicide of all is called life.” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883-1885)

The State, in essence, is a senseless reality, a condition of calamity, exploitation, alienation, dissatisfaction and profound and continuous despondency. Hence, those who speak of a ‘sense of the State’ should arouse, in people who still retain a modicum of mental lucidity and moral honesty, an infinite sense of disgust, loathing and nausea. Because the State is the moral and mental death of all. That is why we need shake off the State, to return to life.

But, as Gustav Landauer rightly said, the State “is not something we can shatter into a thousand pieces in order to destroy it. The State is a relationship between human beings ... and we destroy it by giving birth to new forms of relationship.” (Weak Statesmen, Weaker People! 1910)

And coming back to life, generating new social relations between reborn human beings should be our task in the months and years to come.