Paul Leroy-Beaulieu

The nature of the State

What is the State? This is an awkward question to answer. We are familiar with Ernest Renan's fine lecture on the subject: What is a nation? The nature and essence of the State are no less difficult to unravel. The answer must not be sought in a purely philosophical conception. Only through the examination of historical facts, of human evolution, by the attentive study among various peoples of the way in which society lives, moves and progresses, it is possible to discern with some clarity the concrete State, which is, moreover, a very different reality according to countries and times.

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The concrete State, as we see it functioning in all countries, is an organism that manifests itself by two essential characteristics, which it always possesses and which it is alone in possessing: the power to impose by coercion on all the inhabitants of a territory the observance of injunctions known as laws or administrative regulations; the power, moreover, to levy, also by coercion, on the inhabitants of the territory, sums of money of which it has the free disposal.

The organism of the State is therefore essentially coercive: coercion manifests itself in two forms, laws and taxes. Legislative or regulatory power and fiscal power, both accompanied by coercion, either actual or potential — these are the distinguishing marks of the State.

Whether the body that possesses these powers is central or local, it is always the State. Provincial and municipal authorities, which hold regulatory and tax powers by delegation or remote transmission, are just as much the State as the central body.

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The activity of free social associations

In almost every sphere of human activity we see free groupings of individuals originally responsible for organising various services of general interest, which the State then, sometimes after many centuries, regularise.

This is the case for viability: for military reasons, the States, whether ancient or modern, built a few rare roadways before the 18th century. By doing so, they were discharging not an economic function, but a strategic one.

Private associations did the rest: the ferries, created by these special brotherhoods, which, particularly in the South of France, were called pontifices; the toll roads in England and in many other countries; the toll bridges too, primitive instruments if you like, but which preceded by a long time the public works carried out by means of taxes; even ports and docks, the work of companies, founded and maintained according to strictly commercial principles. All these spontaneously hatched creations have left, even today, interesting traces especially in Great Britain and, by a singular contrast, also in some primitive countries.

The only road that exists in Syria, the one from Beirut to Damascus, is the work and the property, sufficiently remunerative, of a private company, a French company.

Undertakings which, because of their even more eminently disinterested nature, seem to be unpalatable to private initiative, have nevertheless, on many occasions, been accomplished by it with resounding success. Stuart Mill still classed scientific exploration, de jure and de facto, as one of the State's rights. Could he say so today? Even thirty years ago, he should have been more circumspect. He forgot that the earliest and perhaps the most remarkable of Europe's travellers, Marco Polo, was the son and nephew of merchants, who accompanied his father and uncle on a trading voyage to the court of the great Khan of the Moguls, and from there extended his journeyings throughout the whole of Asia.

Above all, he was unaware of our incomparable René Caillié [a French explorer], who, at the beginning of this century, without any resources or support, crossed the dreaded corner of North-West Africa from Senegal to Morocco, passing through Timbuktu, a perilous journey which was only repeated half a century later by a young German traveller.

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What I want to demonstrate is that, among the attributions that certain giddy theorists claim as a monopoly for the State, there are many that have been and still can be exercised in the happiest manner by free groupings, whether of wealthy men, of learned men, of devoted men, of curious men, or of men who have thrown into a common stock their share of wealth, devotion, education and curiosity.

Far from the State being at the origin of all the great works of general utility, we can observe, on the contrary, that historically, free associations have constantly lent their energies and resources to the State for the services which, most indisputably, were subsequently devolved to the latter.

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The historical account we have given, no doubt leaves us with a major difficulty. We have seen that most of the attributions, now considered essential to the State, did not originally belong to it, but remained for a long time in the hands of private individuals or free associations, and only gradually were devolved to the State through the slow application of the principle of the division of labour. And this because a great collective entity, armed with the power of compulsion, is more capable of generalising them than the small spontaneous and variable organs which possess scarcely more than the power of persuasion. It is then necessary to see how are we to fix, either in the present or in the future, the limit of the State's attributions.

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The State as a machine without creativity

The first observation which is impossible to ignore is that the State is totally devoid of the spirit of invention.

The State is a rigid collective entity, which can act only by means of a complicated apparatus, composed of numerous cogs, subordinate to one another. The State is a hierarchy, either aristocratic, bureaucratic, or elective, where spontaneous thought is subject, by the nature of things, to a prodigious number of controls. Such a machine cannot invent anything.

The State, in fact, invents nothing and has never invented anything. All human progress, or almost all of it, relates to specific individuals and groups, to those human beings outside the State machine that an important minister of the Second Empire called ‘individualities without a mandate.’

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In saying that the State essentially lacks the faculty of invention and the aptitude for the prompt application of discoveries, we do not intend to denigrate it, to offer it to damaging sarcasm. We simply note its nature, which has different, opposing merits.

From the social point of view neither the bill of exchange, nor the promissory note, nor the cheque, nor the multiplied operations of the banks, nor the clearing house, nor insurance, nor savings banks, nor those various ingenious methods of remuneration known as profit-sharing, nor co-operative societies, did emerge from the thought or action of the State: all these ingenious combinations have sprung out of the free social environment. Then, what is the State? It is not a creative entity, far from it. It is an organ apt at criticising, capable of generalisation, coordination, vulgarisation. Above all, it is an organ of conservation.

The State is a copyist, an amplifier. In its copies and adaptations from private companies, it is very likely to make a few mistakes or to multiply indefinitely those found in the original from which it is borrowing. It intervenes after discoveries have been made, and can then lend them a degree of support. But it can also stifle them: in the intervention of the State, which can sometimes be beneficial, there is always that capricious, brutal, monopolising element to be feared, that quia nominor leo [because Lion is my name]. It has, in fact, a double power, which is a terrible force: legal coercion and fiscal coercion.

From the fact that the State is thus absolutely divested of the faculty of invention, from the fact that it possesses only, to a very variable extents, the spirit of assimilation and co-ordination, it follows that the State cannot be the primary agent, the principal cause of progress in human society. It can only play the role of an auxiliary, an agent of propagation, which nevertheless risks, through clumsy presumption, to become an agent of disruption. It must therefore descend from the throne on which some have attempted to elevate it.

What is the modern State

An apparatus of coercion, subjecting all citizens to the double constraint of the law, which regulates certain acts in their lives, and the tax, which takes a large part of their resources; a machine, necessarily complicated in proportion to the extension and variety of the tasks for which it is intended, comprising a generally increasing number of superimposed or entangled cogs, able to act only with slowness and uniformity, unless it goes astray: that is what the State essentially is, as soon as society has passed through the first stages of barbarism.

We have recognised that, by its very nature, this organism lacks one of the finest attributes ever to fall to the human being: the spirit of invention.

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Whatever the machinery of government, today the public opinion among all Christian peoples obeys the same general impulses: the idea that the will of the greater number makes the law, that government forces should be employed as far as possible in the relief of the labouring classes. Moreover, most people show a certain disdain for tradition, a naïve confidence in legislative change. Such is the social atmosphere in which the modern people of the Western World live.

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Serious consequences flow from the general characteristics of the modern State. It would be absurd to pass them over in silence as do many who deal with the role of the State. The first is that the modern State, which emerges from the mass of citizens by short-term delegation, is not only in principle no more intelligent than they are, especially the most enlightened among them, but it is subject to all the successive prejudices that dominate humanity and which lead humankind astray. The State is prey to all kind of fads, one after the other The modern voter is rather like the poor devil who used to be snatched up at a crossroads by a rakish sergeant, intoxicated with promises and wine, and made to sign up for the army. The same methods are used. Thus, the modern State generally represents the highest triumph of the momentary infatuation of the majority of the nation.

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In theory, the State represents the universality of citizens. The State is therefore theoretically the impartial being par excellence. However, in the modern State, this impartiality is a pure illusion; it does not exist, it cannot exist. Absolute and undisputed monarchies may claim to have this ideal of sovereign impartiality; it is scarcely possible for them to attain it completely; but there is nothing in their very constitutions to disqualify them from it. On the contrary, constitutionally the modern State, the State based on election, cannot be impartial: this is contrary to its very definition, since it is the government of a party.

The State, as conceived today by the Western peoples, is the real agent, not of the universality of the citizens, but of the mere majority, generally of a small majority, instantaneous, momentary, precarious, variable. Not only is there a party in power, but a party always threatened by the rival party, always fearful of losing that power which it has with difficulty conquered. Moreover, there are not only ideas and feelings, but also interests that, in our bitter contemporary societies, can be favoured by the possession of power.

A famous minister, a great theorist, once said that politics is not the work of the saints. Anticipating this admission, the Scriptures, always so wonderfully perceptive, assigned to the violent the very conquest of heaven: violenti rapiunt illud [the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it. — Matthew 11].

Violence in modern political struggles is most often disguised by cunning and intrigue, but partiality remains. It is further increased by one of the effects of this very active principle, the division of labour and the specialisation of professions. The conduct of State affairs has become a profession, not a gratuitous one. People live off the State, just as they live off the altar; but everywhere there are two rival personnel, if not three or four, vying for this nourishment, one fasting while the other feasts, each with his own clientele and each obliged to satisfy it.

Thus, the modern State, which philosophers and abstract thinkers regard as the most disinterested of all personalities, is, in fact, doomed to partiality, relentless partiality. A few statesmen, of an elevated spirit, of a heart personally detached from purely pecuniary interests, may try to escape this tendency or to moderate it. They hardly succeed. They are obliged to make constant sacrifices to the party which has raised them and supports them. Even if they are not naturally inclined to be partial, they are obliged to become so by tactics and with resignation.

If we were to confine ourselves to simple theory, we would also believe that the State is the least hurried than any other existing personality, the one that has, before it, the longest time to carry out its wishes, that can avoid haste and do everything with measure and ponderation.

This is another mistake. The State rulers know that they have only two, three or four years, rarely seven or eight, to carry out their plans, to satisfy their party. Ministerial tenures lasting ten, fifteen or twenty years, like those of Sully, Richelieu, Colbert and Louvois, are beyond their reach. The current rulers must act quickly, without rest or hesitation, otherwise the rival that treads at their heels, the enemy and presumptive successor, will surprise them and overthrow them before they had done anything. Hence this feverish activity which touches everything at once, which becomes dizzy with its perpetual buzzing.

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We have not exhausted the enumeration of all the particular features which characterise the modern State and which influence all its actions. One of the least known of these features, and one whose consequences are the most serious, is the general way in which the modern State, the elective State, conceives the interests of society, and consequently seeks to satisfy them.

As a result of its origin, which is by incessant election, always disputed and often indecisive, the modern State almost never conceives of social interests in their synthetic form; it sees them only as fragmented, in a situation of antagonism to one another. It has, so to speak, only particular interests in view; the absolutely collective interest escapes it. It shares the very common notion that the general interest is merely the sum of the various particular interests. A proposition which holds good in ordinary cases, but which cannot always be admitted without reserve.

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Just as it is more concerned with particular interests than with the common interests of the nation, the modern State, for the same reasons of origin and precarious power, is also more sensitive to immediate and present interests than to a greater but deferred or distant interest. In this, it contradicts one of the most important missions of the State, which is to preserve the future, even the very distant future.

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I come now to the last of the weaknesses of the State, whether modern or ancient, republican or monarchical, moderate or despotic. The State is removed from the conditions of competition, the most energetic of all social forces, that which tends most to the improvement of society and the individual.

With this dual power of legal and fiscal constraint vested in it, the State, when it acts on the territory of the nation, need not fear that it will be supplanted, annulled or suppressed. Being an unrivalled personality, since it is the only one of its kind, it is safe from that ousting, that annihilation, to which individuals or free associations that perform their task poorly or mediocrely are exposed.

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We have listed the main weaknesses, both of the State in general and of the modern State in particular. These are the many reasons for the State rulers to be modest. If they were to examine their conscience every evening, in the absence of any flatterer and in the quietness that is denied to them, they would realise that they have many faults, that the nature of the State is full of contradictions and inconsistencies, that they should be prudent, reserved, limiting their action to what is indispensable. But no, the modern State rulers are presumptuous, like children, like victors. Those who hold State power have emerged from a relentless struggle, constantly renewed. They have the feelings of triumphers, and the anger of precarious holders.