The State. Anthony de Jasay

friendly workers, while those rising against the state are either not workers or are “manipulated.” (It is hard to find a more impressive example of the two-fold function of words, the semantic and the magical.) Although all this is no doubt tediously familiar to the contemporary reader, it has the merit of being a replica of, and an aid better to appreciate, the Marxist argument about the absurdity of the capitalist state (i.e. the state which Marxists conceive of as “capitalist”) turning against the capitalist class.

      Turn where he may, the bourgeois as political hedonist is thus stuck in a dead end. At first blush, Marxism seems to be telling him that if the state did not exist, he ought to invent it the better to pursue his pleasure—the exploitation of the proletariat—for which the state is the appropriate instrument. On a closer look, however, the state is a peculiar instrument, for it subjects him to its conception of his best interest and it serves its conception even despite the bourgeois. This is obviously unsatisfactory to each capitalist, taken individually. It may be satisfactory to the capitalist class if, but only if, we admit the existence of a class consciousness which is unrelated to the consciousness of the actual members of the class. Though Marxists have no difficulty admitting this, it is hardly likely to find favour with a member of the class concerned, nor is it designed to do so.

      What, then is the capitalist to do? The state is either indispensable or just helpful to him. If it is indispensable, a necessary condition, if capitalism cannot function without it, the capitalist must invent the state, or embrace it if it has already been invented. If the state is merely a helpful instrument, the capitalist might very well prefer, if he has the choice, to pursue his interest without its help, i.e. perhaps less effectively but also unburdened by the servitudes and constraints which the autonomous state’s conception of the capitalist interest imposes on him.

      On this choice, Marxism gives no clear guidance. The thesis that the state, if it exists at all, must necessarily further class oppression, does not entail that the state must exist if there is to be class oppression. Why not have private, small-scale, home-made, diversified oppression? Though Engels, at any rate, appears to have held that a state must arise if there is division of labour and consequently society becomes complex, he did not really imply that capitalism presupposes a state and that the exploitation of labour by capital could not take place in the state of nature. To assert that he did imply this is to ascribe to him a rigid economic determinism or “reductionism,” and though it is fashionable for modern Marxists to patronize Engels, they would still be reluctant to do that. The bourgeois, wondering whether he must unquestioningly opt for the state or whether he can try and weigh up the pros and cons (always assuming that by some miracle he is given the choice), is really left to make up his own mind.

      The historical evidence points, as is its well-known habit, every which way, leaving it very much up to the capitalist to decide whether the state, with the risk its sovereignty involves for the possessing class, is really a desirable aid for the operation of capitalism. It is revealing of such perplexities to read of how inadequate the state can be as an instrument of class oppression, and of the remedies that were sought at one time. It appears that prior to the repeal of the Combination Acts in 1825, illegal unionism was rampant in Oldham, Northampton and South Shields (and no doubt elsewhere, too, but the account in question is a local one), the Acts being poorly enforced. Through three decades to 1840, unions grow muscle, “frame rules... and inflict punishments”: the state was useless, and an 1839 Royal Commission report on the county constabulary found that “the owners of manufacturing property had introduced arms for self-defence, and were considering the formation of armed associations for self-protection,”³⁸ in some ways a more appealing idea than paying taxes and not getting the state’s help they thought they were buying.

      When hiring Pinkertons to break strikes and “to protect manufacturing (and mining) property,” the Pennsylvania steel industry or the Montana copper mines not only made up for the shortcomings of state and Federal “instruments of class oppression,” but have done so by taking up a private instrument which they could control and which in any case did not have the attributions and the scale to control them. No doubt armed voluntary associations or Pinkertons were only resorted to (in fact surprisingly rarely), when the state utterly failed to come to capitalism’s aid as it was supposed to do. That sometimes it did fail is yet another support for the view that the political hedonist is really quite gullible in thinking that he has made a clever bargain, for there is precious little he can do to make the state keep its side of it.

      Although there may be talk of “armed associations for self-protection” and Pinkertons may be called in to give an expert hand, these devices are essentially aimed at supplementing the services of the state which are inadequate or afflicted by momentary political cowardice and weakness of will. There is no question, except briefly in the American West, of taking the law permanently into one’s hands and getting by without the state, both because the national brand of law and order is felt to be superior or safer, and because making it at home or in the village, without also producing strife and resentment, is a lost skill. This is basically the same misconception as the one identifying the state of nature with bellum omnium contra omnes and which overlooks some potent forces making for reasonably stable, peaceful cooperative solutions if, by a fluke, a learning process gets a chance to start operating. It is at any rate significant that, despite wishful gropings in this direction, there was until quite recently no good intellectual case for holding that one could give up the state without also wholly giving up certain services it renders, without which capitalism would find it awkward to function. There have since been good arguments making it plausible that the interaction of free contracts could spontaneously generate a supply of such services as contract enforcement and the protection of life and property, i.e. most of what the capitalist really wants from the state.³⁹ The point is not whether such voluntary arrangements are conceivable once a state is in place. Most likely they are not, if the very existence of the state breeds a civil society with a diminishing capacity for generating spontaneous civic cooperation. (It is not easy to think of any other good reason for the absence, in contemporary America, of vigilante action by desperate parents against drug-pushers in high schools.) It is, rather, that if they are conceivable and feasible ab initio, there is no compelling need for willingly subjecting oneself to the state. The capitalist who accepts coercion as being, by common knowledge, a cheap price to pay for the benefits he reaps, is suffering from “false consciousness.”

Closing the Loop by False Consciousness

      False consciousness helps people adjust their preferences to what their peace of mind requires, and prepares them for supporting an adversary state.

      The most unselfish state could not pursue other ends than its own.

      The political hedonist looks to the state for “pleasure,” for utility, for the furtherance of his interest. Were he to recognize that the state cannot administer things without also governing men including him, so that he is liable to be coerced and constrained, he would still expect to enjoy a positive balance between the pleasure he derives from the state’s help and the pain he may suffer from being hindered by it.⁴⁰ In fact, his general idea of the state is that it is none other than the professional producer of such a positive balance. If he had a different conception, he could still be a supporter of the state but not a political hedonist.

      The state is equipped with powers to pursue its own pleasure, its “maximand.” Were it to be a near-minimal state, it would still have at least the latent capacity to equip itself with powers to do so. Its maximand may be a sole and supreme end or a “pluralistic” bundle of several ones, weighted more or less heavily. If the latter, it will juggle them as the feasibility of attaining each changes with circumstances, giving up some of one to get more of another, in order to reach the highest attainable index of the composite maximand. Some of these ends may, in turn, perfectly well consist of the individual maximands, pleasure-pain balances or utilities of its several subjects. In good faith, one should imagine an unselfish state which has no other ends in the bundle it seeks to maximize than several individual maximands of its subjects or of an entire class of them (e.g. the capitalists or the workers).