Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard

The book is by Murray Rothbard. He was a scholar and advocate for Libertarian principles.

The book is about the 'State'.

The author writes "German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer pointed out that there are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth; one, the above way of production and exchange, he called the “economic means.” The other way is simpler in that it does not require productivity; it is the way of seizure of another's goods or services by the use of force and violence".

"one-sided confiscation, of theft of the property of others. This is the method which Oppenheimer termed 'the political means' to wealth. It should be clear that the peaceful use of reason and energy in production is the 'natural' path for man: the means for his survival and prosperity on this earth".

"Having used force and violence to obtain its revenue, the State generally goes on to regulate and dictate the other actions of its individual subjects".

The book(and the role of the State) can be summarized in a few lines.

Expecting anything more from the State is inviting end to your freedom and prosperity.

The State has no business getting involved in education, healthcare, pensions, social security, infrastructure building, price controls, and subsidies.

What the State is not

The author says that the State is considered an institute of good and 'social service'. It is known to be inefficient, but still regarded as an amiable entity.

In the age of democracy, almost anything the State does is justified as it has mandate of the majority.

This is completely incorrect.

The author explains it well with examples. "'we' are not the government; the government is not 'us'".

"even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder".

What the State is

A better title for this section can be 'What the States have become'.

Whatever the lofty ideals, States have descended to something much worse.

People have developed myths and wishful-thinking about the role of the State. They want Big Government with cradle to grave help as most people are not capable of taking care of themselves.

The author says "One would think that simple observation of all States through history and over the globe would be proof enough of this assertion; but the miasma of myth has lain so long over State activity that elaboration is necessary".

So what is the State?

Confiscatory: State confiscates people's wealth and natural resources as it has no source of income and cannot produce.

Involuntary and without justification: State confiscates people's wealth without any justification and without explaining. It just assumes it has a natural right to take as much of people's wealth as it wants.

Use of force and violence: State confiscates people's wealth by use of force and violence.

Conquest and exploitation: "The State has never been created by a “social contract”; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation.".

Demoralizing: Actions of the State "lowers the producer’s incentive to produce beyond his own subsistence".

Mind-control: All States employ various techniques for mind-control of their citizens to ensure citizens remain ignorant, fearful, subservient, isolated, polarized, and compliant.

"Having used force and violence to obtain its revenue, the State generally goes on to regulate and dictate the other actions of its individual subjects".

Necessary Evil: The State is a necessary evil that is required for a very narrow limited set of functions that cannot be delegated to free market: foreign policy; army(external defense); justice system consisting of the lawmakers, courts and police. However, the State must be kept as small as possible if people are to have any chance of freedom and prosperity.

Why States survive

Nation-States have been around for hundreds of years. There is no real threat to their existence either. Why do they survive inspite of all the confiscation and mind-control of its citizens?

"This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm; it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature".

"Therefore, the chief task of the rulers is always to secure the active or resigned acceptance of the majority of the citizens".

Mind-control is the cheapest, most-efficient, most invisible way to ensure States survive.

As Henry Kissinger says in his book 'On China', "Almost all empires were created by force, but none can be sustained by it. Universal rule, to last, needs to translate force into obligation... Empires persist if repression gives way to consensus".

Other techniques employed by the State to justify its existence in the minds of its citizens are:

Tradition

Worship of one’s ancestors and ancient rulers

"deprecate the individual and exalt the collectivity of society". "'Listen only to your brothers' or 'adjust to society' thus become ideological weapons for crushing individual dissent".

"make its rule seem inevitable; even if its reign is disliked, it will then be met with passive resignation".

inducing guilt

Pseudo-science: make the State look Scientific and driven by reason.

And when all else fails, there is monopoly of violence.

States and the Intellectuals

"For this essential acceptance, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives".

"For the masses of men do not create their own ideas, or indeed think through these ideas independently; they follow passively the ideas adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals. The intellectuals are, therefore, the “opinion-molders” in society. And since it is precisely a molding of opinion that the State most desperately needs, the basis for age-old alliance between the State and the intellectuals becomes clear".

Intellectuals also benefit from this patronage by the State.

Threats to the State

"War and revolution" is what State considers as biggest threats to itself.

Limiting State Power

There is no easy or proven answer to limiting State power.

The author explores the value of a written constitution in limiting State power. "A written constitution certainly has many and considerable advantages".

He highlights the limitations of written constitution:

Imbalance between resources of State and Citizens: Citizens have limited means and cannot fight the State. Therefore, "it is a great mistake to suppose that the mere insertion of provisions to restrict and limit the power of the government, without investing those for whose protection they are inserted with the means of enforcing their observance will be sufficient to prevent the major and dominant party from abusing its powers".

Interpretation: "Professor J. Allen Smith. Smith noted that the Constitution was designed with checks and balances to limit any one governmental power and yet had then developed a Supreme Court with the monopoly of ultimate interpreting power. If the Federal Government was created to check invasions of individual liberty by the separate states, who was to check the Federal power?"

concurrent majority: The author explores "the famous doctrine of the 'concurrent majority". "If any substantial minority interest in the country, specifically a state government, believed that the Federal Government was exceeding its powers and encroaching on that minority, the minority would have the right to veto this exercise of power as unconstitutional".

This could be used by state government to protect its citizens from Federal government, and also be used maliciously to override Federal government protection of citizens from the state and local governments. So it is double edge sword that does as much harm as good.

"Let us not forget that federal and state governments, and their respective branches, are still states, are still guided by their own state interests rather than by the interests of the private citizens. What is to prevent the Calhoun system from working in reverse, with states tyrannizing over their citizens and only vetoing the federal government when it tries to intervene to stop that state tyranny? Or for states to acquiesce in federal tyranny?

What is to prevent federal and state governments from forming mutually profitable alliances for the joint exploitation of the citizenry?"

State has no business getting involved in roles that can be performed by private sector and free market more efficiently. Private sector and free market also bring choice for the consumers as opposed to monopoly of the government run services.

The only role State should have is in drafting carefully thought out rules that govern how free market provide these services.


The author says that History is a race(conflict) between State Power and Social(Individual) Power.

"On the one hand, there is creative productivity, peaceful exchange and cooperation; on the other, coercive dictation and predation over those social relations".

"The last few centuries were times when men tried to place constitutional and other limits on the State, only to find that such limits, as with all other attempts, have failed. Of all the numerous forms that governments have taken over the centuries, of all the concepts and institutions that have been tried, none has succeeded in keeping the State in check".

"If the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries were, in many countries of the West, times of accelerating social power, and a corollary increase in freedom, peace, and material welfare, the twentieth century has been primarily an age in which State power has been catching up—with a consequent reversion to slavery, war, and destruction".

This is the age we live in.










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