Development of The State

Development of the State
71:0.1 (800.1)THE state is a useful evolution of civilization; it represents society’s net gain from the ravages and sufferings of war. Even statecraft is merely the accumulated technique for adjusting the competitive contest of force between the struggling tribes and nations.

71:0.2 (800.2)The modern state is the institution which survived in the long struggle for group power. Superior power eventually prevailed, and it produced a creature of fact—the state—together with the moral myth of the absolute obligation of the citizen to live and die for the state. But the state is not of divine genesis; it was not even produced by volitionally intelligent human action; it is purely an evolutionary institution and was wholly automatic in origin.

1. The Embryonic State
71:1.1 (800.3)The state is a territorial social regulative organization, and the strongest, most efficient, and enduring state is composed of a single nation whose people have a common language, mores, and institutions.

71:1.2 (800.4)The early states were small and were all the result of conquest. They did not originate in voluntary associations. Many were founded by conquering nomads, who would swoop down on peaceful herders or settled agriculturists to overpower and enslave them. Such states, resulting from conquest, were, perforce, stratified; classes were inevitable, and class struggles have ever been selective.

71:1.3 (800.5)The northern tribes of the American red men never attained real statehood. They never progressed beyond a loose confederation of tribes, a very primitive form of state. Their nearest approach was the Iroquois federation, but this group of six nations never quite functioned as a state and failed to survive because of the absence of certain essentials to modern national life, such as:

71:1.4 (800.6)1. Acquirement and inheritance of private property.

71:1.5 (800.7)2. Cities plus agriculture and industry.

71:1.6 (800.8)3. Helpful domestic animals.

71:1.7 (800.9)4. Practical family organization. These red men clung to the mother-family and nephew inheritance.

71:1.8 (800.10)5. Definite territory.

71:1.9 (800.11)6. A strong executive head.

71:1.10 (800.12)7. Enslavement of captives—they either adopted or massacred them.

71:1.11 (800.13)8. Decisive conquests.

71:1.12 (800.14)The red men were too democratic; they had a good government, but it failed. Eventually they would have evolved a state had they not prematurely encountered the more advanced civilization of the white man, who was pursuing the governmental methods of the Greeks and the Romans.

71:1.13 (801.1)The successful Roman state was based on:

71:1.14 (801.2)1. The father-family.

71:1.15 (801.3)2. Agriculture and the domestication of animals.

71:1.16 (801.4)3. Condensation of population—cities.

71:1.17 (801.5)4. Private property and land.

71:1.18 (801.6)5. Slavery—classes of citizenship.

71:1.19 (801.7)6. Conquest and reorganization of weak and backward peoples.

71:1.20 (801.8)7. Definite territory with roads.

71:1.21 (801.9)8. Personal and strong rulers.