Deconstructing the State
For the sensibility of the contemporary Left, the State (generally capitalized) assumes the aura of a sacred object, revered as idols were once worshiped in the pagan world. That what is meant by the State is merely a conceptual abstraction, a phenomenon that has no material existence as a locatable entity — in effect, a disembodied idol — does not register. This error of understanding, of course, is not confined exclusively to the mentality of the Left, but it is there that it gains most traction.
Francis Bacon in the Novum Organum isolates the four chief causes of error in human thinking. He defines these as Idols of the Tribe (weakness of understanding in the whole human race), Idols of the Forum (faults of language in the communication of ideas), Idols of the Cave (individual prejudices and mental defects), and Idols of the Theater (faults arising from received systems of philosophy).
The notion of the State seems to partake of all four cognitive delinquencies: “tribal” weakness, miscommunication, individual frailties, and questionable political/philosophical theory, a quadra-faced idol before which multitudes continue to bow in misplaced supplication, as President Obama bowed before the Saudi monarch. For the Left and liberal progressivists in particular, the State is idealized as a beneficent and autonomous institution that increasingly intervenes in everyday life to regulate the economy and improve the lot of ordinary people. The idea of the State, however, inflected as it is by the three prior inadequacies Bacon enumerates, is best construed as an Idol of the Theater, which carries the prestige of a long and persuasive cultural tradition. Thus, it is rarely challenged and tends to command absolute fidelity, a form of secular adoration of a philosophical misconception.
True, for Marx the State is both an evolving principle and an instrumental agency rooted in class distinctions, which organizes society in such a way as to consolidate its own power and that of the socioeconomic sector it proxies for. It must therefore, according to communist doctrine, be abolished (see Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program) — or as Engels put it in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, the process of its “withering away” allowed to run its course. Nevertheless, the State is considered as a concrete institution with an independent character, a kind of organism in its own right — or in technical terms, as a quiddity rather than an epiphenomenon.
Similarly, the influential Leftist ideologue Antonio Gramsci’s notion of “the state that is not a state,” fleshed out in his Prison Notebooks as a replacement for “the integral state,” is no less palpable and self-subsistent. Again, Dutch Marxist theorist Anton Pannekoek in his major contribution to political thought, Workers’ Councils, labels the State as an “apparatus of oppression.” But the “State” remains for him an “apparatus,” a sort of monad, integral and monolithic, and not a troupe of actors invested in a performance tailored to receipts. Such thinking is typical even of those who are skeptical of the State’s hegemony.
For the State as a tangible object does not exist. It is a reified abstraction that festers in the minds of its votaries, a theoretical construct that resists disenchantment. How easily we forget that the State, whether in its theological or political guises, is nothing more than a congeries of favored or ambitious individuals who have put on the mantle of corporate authority, men and women who hide, Wizard-of-Oz fashion, behind the screen of altruism, wisdom, superior knowledge, or utilitarian power. They are for the most part commonplace and fallible individuals bristling with all the imperfections, desires, contradictions, and weaknesses of run-of-the-mill humanity. Pope, primate, president, savior, dictator, revolutionary hero, legislator, minister, they are just people.
Some of them are blessed — or cursed — with a force of personality or a strain of moral ruthlessness that enables them to exercise control over their peers and ultimately to monopolize an administration, a consistory, or even an entire nation. Others are corrupt or debauched beyond the norm — Boris Yeltsin urinating on the tarmac on a visit to Washington, D.C., is a pungent illustration — and still others suffer from a deficiency of intelligence that augurs poorly for the implementation of effective public policy. Some are predators, some epicureans, some toadies, some careerists. Most are average human beings with the pedestrian qualities of mind and spirit that all of us share. They are generally uninspired and often subject to the manipulations of the craftier exemplars among their number.
Such is the essence of that metaphysical oracle we call the State, a group of people who have, whether through legitimate or illegitimate means, acquired the privileges and prerogatives of instrumental preeminence. They flourish in the belly of the Leviathan. This is equally the case for the police state or the nanny state. The truth about the fictive identity of the State is almost inexpressibly simple; even so, it customarily resists recognition as we proceed to concretize, animate, or deify it into something it manifestly is not.
The State is not a god. It is not a supreme or “higher” or wiser or beatific or somehow omniscient authority. It is not a hypostatic substance. It is not a thing. Indeed, it is nothing. It is, in fact, a figment of iconolatric homage, a subtle and insinuating illusion which derives its power from a combination of its coercive function and the mystique of psychological projection on the part of those it controls. It is what the Greeks called an eidolon, a phantom or apparition, an image like Euripides’ Helen who was fashioned from cloud-stuff while the real Helen spent the Trojan War in Egypt. A moment’s reflection makes this species of necromancy glaringly obvious. Yet we are ruled by specters and chimeras, of which the State is a paramount instance.
There is, indeed, something ludicrous in the elevation of the State, as if it were not only an Idol of the Theater, but a production in the Theater of the Absurd behind which a stubborn and prosaic — and occasionally tumultuous — reality willy-nilly persists. This is the fact, like the poet Rimbaud’s “waterfall [that] echoes behind the comic-opera huts” in Illuminations. Regrettably, its theatrical, or even farcical, nature does not prevent it from being treated with undue respect or errant veneration. Despite its figuring as idol or comedy, the apotheosis of the State is no whimsical or laughing matter, since it disables critics from articulating — without seeming like heretics bent on sacrilege — reasonable ways to reduce its size and influence. We note, for example, that the sacrosanct nature of the State is precisely what the Obama administration and its supporters appeal to whenever they counter Republican efforts to prune it back.
As Hegel pointed out in his Critique of the German Constitution, the chief purpose of the so-called State is self-preservation, which amounts in practice to a clique of self-interested individuals — with some exceptions — who labor chiefly to secure the enjoyment of their perquisites. Far too many of us are prone to give the State absolute ascendancy. We concede it a primacy it does not merit rather than perceive it as only an assembly of people in whom we have put our temporary and often disappointed trust.
In short, a great number of us do not regard the State in the proper sense of a governing body of representative officials elected to serve the people and ensure public order, and who can be dismissed or voted out should they prove venal or incompetent. Too often we regard it as a material entity, an idol, instinct with lustral properties and quasi-magical attributes. The State acts. The State disposes. The State governs. The State knows best. Or so we think. But the State, as such, neither acts nor disposes nor governs nor knows anything at all. Treated as a unitary object, when it actually conceals a multiplicity of discrete subjects, the State is a fungible hallucination to which we have accorded our political obeisance.
And it is precisely this form of laic credulity and intellectual conceit which unscrupulous or parasitical elites rely upon to work their will on those they are determined to dominate.
Although i Agree with Most of your statements one thing i would like to point is.
the definition of a state is clear and recognizable borders, one unified defense foreces, and one common currency. The rest of the terms being used are politics of new and politics of old.
As usual, needlessly verbose and pedantic. Yes, the state is cumbersome and certainly is comprised of flawed humans as Solway notes, but most humans like some religion and some guvment.
In a world of ever increasing complexity, where we are more dependent on others than ever to grow our food, make our computers, keep our grid up, give us chemo and on and on and on, it is difficult to see the role of guvment shrinking substantially. Maybe we can try to keep it at a certain % of GDP, but in tough times when GDP is lower, people “need” more from it.
If some rational person/politician could clearly explain how the current tax/regulatory/guvment scenario does not work as well as a downwardly tweaked one, he may get elected. Think Romney.
I disagree with this analysis of the state. Solway’s definition of the state seems to be that it is made up of individuals, cliques of ‘self-interested individuals’ run by their own Will or agenda, who hide and are focused only on self-ambition. Hmm.
What Solway ignores is, first, the basic characteristic of our species: that our knowledge base is not genetic but is SOCIAL. That is, we are genetically functional both as individuals, via our individual capacities for emotion and reason…and, we are genetically functional as a collective, where we store our knowledge base using the symbolic method of language.
Therefore, second, we must have a collective operating structure – and this exists as a structure….not a gaggle of individuals…but a structure in whic all individual members of the collective function. The state, in my definition, is thus a Constitution and a set of laws. Dr. Solway ignores this structure in his nominalist focus on individual Will.
The Lockean view of the State, as a government, is of course the Social Contract, which means that the individuals who must also live as a collective, have agreed to give up some individual Will, to live within this Rule of Law. But, of course, they never give up the soverign collective right to analyze and adapt these laws.
Solway does not examine the conflict and contrast between Sovereign Will (the Hobbesian view of the individual whether in government or not)and the rejection of any notion of Sovereign Will in favor of a structure of laws.
Two great books on this, are Jean Bethke Elshtain’s ‘Sovereignty: God, State and Self’ and Karl Popper’s ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies’.
The notion that the State is Sovereign, and in Solway’s outline, acts as either a Supreme Sovereign (man or dogma) or a clique of Individual Sovereign Wills, is, as I said, not only nominalist (which rejects the collective) but rejects the critical rational powers of men. Such a view considers that we are too emotionally fallible to exist as ‘sovereigns of ourselves within our own governance as a collective’ . I reject this, and the reason I reject it is because of the existence of such documents as the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, and the development of clear rules of law.
I think that you misunderstand Solway’s point. There is no ‘State’ as such. There are only self-interested individuals who use the idea of “State-as-a-real-entity” to hide their schemes and grasping for power over the rest of us. You appear to conflate ‘social’ and ‘society’ with the existance of something other than the aggregation and net result of the acts of the multitude of individuals who comprise what we call ‘society’. There is not a thing there; only another concept, another abstraction, another convenient figure of speech which is commonly mistaken for some real thing or being. Just as a corporation, a partnership or any other association of individuals; the group does not exist as a thing separate and apart from the individuals who make it up and who act in the name of these various legal fictions and illusory entities. To paraphrase the joke about Hindi cosmology, “it’s people, all the way down.” No states, no reified groups – nothing but people and the total sum of their actions, speech and thoughts.
No,I’ll continue to disagree with your, and Solway’s outline. It is, I sugggest, a nominalist or mechanical view, that focuses only on the ‘individual bits’ (people)and their interactions. AND, considers that the State is merely a sum or aggregate of these bits, or, the sum of the most aggressive and dominant bits.
I reject this Hobbesian and mechanical view.
The state DOES exist, not as an abstraction, not as an aggreagate of bits but as a reality-in-itself. This reality is in it operational structure as set up by reason; namely, its Constitution and its Rule of Law. These are real entities; they are not abstractions and they function as the infrastructure, the ‘bones’ so to speak, of a state.
I suggest that Dr. Solway and you, are ignoring this reality.
Oh, and a corporation is not an aggreagate of individuals, but a legal infrastructure, a reality-in-itself, (which is why it can be sued)and operates according to a ‘constitution’ and rule of law.
ETAB, I rarely get a chance to converse with you, most often because I agree with virtually every word you write…as if written from my mind through your hand…so, not much sense in “me too” after you have penned a piece.
In a rare instance, let me splinter off a bit from your viewpoint. Alas, not all that far…but at least enough for you and I to have a decent conversation.
I think I agree with David that the state as an “icon”…or perhaps my favored descriptor…a deus ex machina, sent in by utopian leftists to “save the day”, is a ruthless, cruel hoax on the masses.
It cannot ever and will not ever…achieve such a lofty altar. It can’t. Except as a propaganda machine, it operates not at all with the mythical and miraculous splendor attached to it by the fawning, cooing, drooling toadies that prop it up as such.
The state is made up of tugging forces in opposite directions, or perhaps multiple directions. Currently, the state hucksters, promoters and carny barkers are pulling hard from the left. The state is bloated, overinflated, hyper-infused with all manner of leftist gluttony. The Marxist Mr. Croesote in the Meaning of Life, the Autumn Years…wanting to take “just one more bite” out of the free market.
The state is fluid…not to put too fine a point on my previous analogy, and can be manipulated by those pulling the levers behind the curtain or pulling on the rope in our constant tug of war within.
The state as the focus of adulation and worship is a grave danger. Once we begin to do that…we lose sight of the seminal role of it. Not as the golden calf, but as the yoked oxen.
Thanks for your kind words, cfbleachers – and I usually tend to agree with your posts as well.
I fully agree with Solway’s outline of the leftist view of the state; i.e., that it is, or ought to be, some kind of metaphysical Force of munificent and almost total benefits. This essentially reduces any actions-of-reason, any individual self-governing actions – for the individual in such a Platonic realm doesn’t exist except as a receiver of state Will. Solway sets up an elite set of Rulers (again, Platonic) whom he outlines as ‘individual cut-throats rather than Wise Men.
But this view, held by the left, is essentially Platonic/Hegel/Marx – who all had the same view of man and the state.
My quibble is that Solway didn’t clarify that this view is a political theory and his outlines is of a theory or perspective. It is not reality. My outline that the state exists within and as, a constitution and rule of law, is a different political theory.
I claim that Solway, in his ‘insistence’ that there is EITHER the leftist view of the state as a Magnanimous God, OR, his own view that there is no such thing as the state….is wrong.
There is another analysis of the state, the one I have suggested, which is that the state does exist; it is a rational construct by human beings, to permit our species to live, as it must, within a collective. This rational construct is its constitution and its rule of law. Why do collectives develop such rational documents? To function as their collective or state foundation. Now, our task as individuals is to live within this infrastructure, and, if we see that it needs adaptation, to adapt it – by our rational actions.
As for corruption, greed, envy, dominance etc – those are psychological characteristics of our species and can be found in all our interactions and notjust in the political realm. I applaud the integrity and intelligence of those men who fought against the tribal and Platonic view of the state (based on individual or kin domination)and instead, set up the civic model based on a constitution and rule of law.
ETAB, let me continue our discussion a bit.
I agree in all parts with your analysis. However, I think what David is saying…I don’t wish to speak for him…(he needs nothing from me of the sort), is that there exists a danger in thinking of the State as a “thing”, rather than pieced together, imperfect beings pulling levers and strings.
It is the notion of State as a “being” rather than as a mechanized tool of beings where David draws the distinction.
The State does not think, act, is not not a sentient creature, with a kind and generous soul, sent to mete out human entitlements, toys and goodies…although it may have a list of who is naughty and nice at times…which is more dangerous than magnanimous.
When we build an altar to the state and sacrifice our burnt offerings to it…we lose the grip on the reins of it. It exists to serve us. And to be a vehicle through which we serve each other…or the collective good.
It is NOT the “collective good” itself when we do this. That, ETAB, is all the difference in my mind.
When we glorify the State because WE have chosen to act through it…we mistakenly give it a power, a life form, a beating heart…when it has none.
This is what leftists do. We must not. We may get our cars to talk to us, give us directions on where to drive…but never forget that it does not care one whit whether we crash into a wall or drive off a bridge. It is not the car speaking. The State does not “give” us anything. We take it from ourselves. And sometimes, we allow too much to be taken.
I absolutely agree, cfbleachers, with the danger of reifying, and indeed, giving an intentionality, even a mind, to the State. And, I’d agree that the leftists do this, along with their notion of ‘historicism’, the idea of some essentialist path of development of this material Being, this State. Deeply dangerous, deeply flawed. I ‘got’ that analysis from reading Solway’s outline.
What still bothers me is his Either-Or conclusion: that one can analyze the State Either as this Essentialist Material Force/Being…OR…declare that it is non-existent, a non-Being.
I’m still saying that the State is real, but not as a self-organized Being. It has no separate existence in itself. It is real in itself as a human construct,operating within a collective, it cannot exist on its own. This construct is the infrastructure of societal organization: primarily the constitution, and the laws (which refer to the economic mode as well).
And most certainly, this infrastructure exists to serve us. That is why I said that a constitution and set of laws is a human construct and the power and right to change it, must remain with us, the people. But without this ‘skeleton’, this infrastructure, human beings cannot exist. We do not and are unable to exist as individuals; we live within collectives and a collective is not an aggregate of people but a systemic organized set of ‘normative habits’….Solway ignores the necessity of a continuous set of normative habits; these are the ‘collective rules of life’, and function as ‘the state’.
Albert Jay Nock asked, “what kind of man would enter politics”? I would at least hope for average, a vague word but perhaps here including some intelligence and modesty. However I take it for granted that too many are misfits, burdened with various and/or multiple disorders, but almost all inevitably assuming god like status, destined to rule, shape, and guide we little people, unaware of their gross ignorance as well as the damage they cause.
How easily we forget that the State, whether in its theological or political guises, is nothing more than a congeries of favored or ambitious individuals who have put on the mantle of corporate authority, men and women who hide, Wizard-of-Oz fashion, behind the screen of altruism, wisdom, superior knowledge, or utilitarian power.
I never forget. Each time one of these would be manipulators of thought and painters of false pictures opens his or her mouth, I cringe.
There is a difference between today’s liars and dissemblers and those of 50 years ago or so. The older group at least held a patina of statesmanship and the motivation of performing in the public good. You could more or less trust that at least they wouldn’t sink the ship of state, spend the United States into extinction, etc.
With today’s crowd, you never know. Using sloppy words and puerile arguments, they don’t even have to conceal the slime.
Apparently, the population is sufficiently dumbed down and preoccupied that the sloppiness suffices.
Free and Unaffiliated
Freedom has always been the beacon that has guided America.
Freedom has always been the enemy of those who seek power and plunder.
Freedom has always been the road block to those who fear and or hate.
Freedom is the first truth and first promise of this country.
Registering unaffiliated is more than protest. It is a fight for freedom. The only way to defeat both republican/democrat government parties is take their membership away. Gerrymandering is the weapon they use to maintain their power and plunder.
I feel that the general populace does not know “State”. Does each individual ant know that it is building a colony or does it just go about doing what it does? I think this explains polls, in that when people are asked if the Government is too big they say “Yes”, but when asked if social programs should be cut, they say “No!”.
Perhaps both too verbose and too complicated but also very simple. Every organization is the people controlling it. Personnel is policy. We have reverence for organizations, companies, teams that once performed very well and when they stop performing well, generally due to a change in personnel, we maintain loyalties that are no longer deserved.
Let’s do a simple test about attitudes towards the state. This is for those nearing retirement. Looking back at life, which path would you choose for your children ,if you could choose.
1) they spend their life as a government employee. They have job security, but little chance to earn extreme money. They can plan life, steady hours, steady bankable income. Very little demands on performance, very little downside for failure. They have a benefits package that has a guaranteed retirement date, with dependable income.
2)start and run a small business. You always have work, not necessarily pay. You have no job security, except by being successful. You have a chance to be extremely successful. You have huge downside for failure. You must be flexible with your time. You must manage during emergencies, no matter what you have planned, because failure is so consequential. Retirement usually depends on selling your business, which means finding someone with the money or credit, to purchase it. No retirement date, you must retire on what you have saved. You must pay for the above mentioned employee’s job, and retirement,and any regulations he might decide to burden you with. Note( only 1 in 4 new businesses survive 5 years)
America’s future will depend on how the majority of Americans decide to answer that question. It really boils down to what the country decides to encourage, entrepreneurs ,or civil servants. I find that immigrants invariably choose the chance to run a business because of the chance to be successful, and more and more Americans who choose to live life safely, in the security of government .
It really isn’t the binary risk-taker vs. security seeker that you and many others propose it to be. I’ve done blue collar labor, corporate management, entrepreneurial private business, and government. The only one I didn’t do pretty well in was corporate management; the politics, ass kissing, and inefficiency made government look good. Fundamentally, big, rich, corps can be just as lazy and inefficient and support just as many drones in a much better style than all but the biggest and richest governments. I worked as a blue collar laborer, union, on the TransAlaska Pipeline. If the Great Wall of China had been built by Bechtel and Flour, it would still be under construction and the entire population of modern China would be employed on it, not necessarily working, but employed.
I made a lot of money in private business, drove nice cars, had nice houses, lived a very fashionable lifestyle, except that half the time I was dead broke and faking the necessary lifestyle on a wing and a prayer. I could buy anything I could purchase on the one easy payment plan. Spent half my life begging for credit to start projects or buy equipment or trying to factor contracts to get operating money to start the season. And I’m not one of the many small business people who doesn’t know the difference between profit and cash flow; I made profits, good ones, but the erratic cash flow is hard on your life and hard on your marriage. Sorry, but most women would rather know you had a thousand bucks coming in every Friday than know you have a $100K contract you can bill to over the next three months, or a million dollar project that if you can keep your act together and nothing goes wrong and the weather stays good and no essential employee up and quits, you can pocket a quarter million bucks off in the next few months.
Then after the oil price crash of the mid-eighties, I went to work for government, well up the food chain but not at the top, appointee level, making good money, but there were quite a few months in the private sector that I made more than I ever made a year in government. Those bankers who treated me like the scum of the earth when I was in private business now wanted to be my friend, wanted to “help” me get into that new house, car, boat, whatever. Instead of that one green AX that I busted my butt to always pay off every month so I could keep at least one credit card for travel or emergencies quickly became a pocket full and the mail box was always full of somebody wanting to “help” me with more credit.
And in the upper levels of government, particularly at the appointee level where you have a job and accountability for that job rather than just a position as “friend of the governor,” you work hard and if something goes wrong in your portfolio, you get fired. If you can’t keep the people convinced that you’re giving them pink Bubble-Up and Rainbow Stew, they elect somebody who will promise it to them and you get fired. I’ve seen plenty of those paragons of private sector efficiency take businesses right down the tube and get a multi-million dollar bonus anyway; you ain’t getting that in state government, at least not my state.
Hey, it’s good to see that despite your wild excesses, both you and cfb have your rational, contributing moments and on the same thread, even.
Thanks for your story. Many of your experiences mirror my own. No question, big business is as inefficient as big government. Throw in big union, and production drops exponentially. My concern is small business. I am concerned that too many young people, will look candidly at the risk, reward ratio of small business, and choose government ,union, big business ,career paths. Society itself will lose if that happens, just because of the inherent inefficiency. The big three see small business as a danger to themselves. They can get together and push barriers into place to restrict competition from small business, such as safety issues, etc
I can never tell whether Solway is being sincere, or whether he’s having a good laugh at his readers’ expense. His essays are largely made-up of superficially-dignified-sounding fluff, and the substance — such as it is — consists of obvious straw-men that could not conceivably persuade anybody. Even his denunciations, of leftists, antisemites, etc., for whatever reason, nearly always lack that sting that the author was clearly aiming for.
Just try to parse the logic of the first paragraph above. First, we are told that leftists worship the state like an idol. (Eh, ok…) But in the next sentence, the author asserts that the state is not like an idol at all, because it’s only an “abstraction.” (Well yes, it’s obvious that the state is an abstraction, and your one-sentence comparison of it with a physical idol did not cause us to forget that reality.) Then the author leaps into a duninciation of leftists, attacking them for their “error.” Huh? At this point, the train of thought becomes obscure and we begin to lose interest.
Prose is not like poetry, dude. The goal of prose is to make your thoughts as accessible and as clear as possible. Just because it is easy to read doesn’t mean it was easy to write; and conversely, just because it is opaque doesn’t mean the ideas are “deep.”
First, we are told that leftists worship the state like an idol.
They do. It’s part of the stupidity of the Leftist/Useful Idiot mindset, always wanting to believe that some super body or collection of mortals outside themselves holds the answers and solutions for their own lives. The keys to the kingdom.
It is the way the Leftist stays childlike and irresponsible.
It is a view of themselves that is carefully cultivated and nurtured by their would be masters. Listen to any Obama speech detailing how republicans don’t “care” about people and want to foul the environment, push old people down cliffs etc.
You should get a lot of opportunity to hear that meme in the coming months.
Oath Keepers Launches National Effort to Recall and/or Remove Members of Congress Who Voted for NDAA Military Detention. Merry Christmas, U.S. Congress!
http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/201…
If we look at actual history, and not at “expert” interpreters and philosophers, we see tribal societies (there are still many such societies) which had chiefs. The ancient Hebrews had high priests. The Egyptians had Pharaohs, every society or community had leaders, even in the Americas, notably in Mexico and Peru.
Not even in the much maligned modern industrial age did commercial or industrial enterprises operate without governmental oversight. The notion that a nation is controlled by “Capitalist” greedy managers is Marxist fantasy, supported and promulgated by people who want a society ruled by a king or General Secretary or despot (Kim Jng Il? or Kim Jong Un?), and want to be the prosperous underlings thereof. The Apparatchiki of Bolshevik Russia were quite happy with that system. The thousands of new bureaucrats created by Obama are quite happy with bloated salaries and authority, to bring it all up to date.
Thank you, Mr. Solway, for another delectable essay on the biopsy of the deteriorating “state” of America and it’s leaders.
It is indeed a pleasure to encounter writing like yours and Dr. Hansons in such controversial times.
Happy New Year to you and your family. I look forward to more of your incisive and ornate commentary in the new year.