The State in Theory and Practice
by
[Viking Press, $3.00]
THIs book is so good, so useful a tract for the times, that one complains bitterly of Mr. Laski for making its excellences so unconscionably hard to get at that none but a pretty well trained reader may hope to sift out more than half of them. By the handsomest concession, all that Mr. Laski’s purposes, or anyone’s purposes, require to be said about the theory of the State can he said in twenty pages, and said in very simple terms. Instead, Mr. Laski takes us through two hundred pages of dubious, irrelevant, and meandering theory, based on what seems to me ext remely had history, in order to arrive at a thoroughly sound thesis and a series of such sound and able analyses as I have not seen elsewhere in modern print. A bowelless editor who had no fear of the academic god before his eyes would have cut down Mr. Laski’s book to half its present length, and thereby earned the imperishable gratitude of readers such readers, that is, as read to live, and do not live to read.
Mr. Laski has such a copia verborum, and employs it with such pitiless plausibility during this excursion, that one’s labors over every page bring to mind Mr. Jefferson’s experiences with Patrick Henry’s oratory. Henry’s speeches ’ were great indeed; such as I never heard from any other man. He appeared to me to speak as Homer wrote ; but, Mr. Jefferson added, ’I have frequently shut my eyes while he spoke, and when he was done asked myself what he had said, without being able to recollect a word of it.’
In all diffidence, for example, I must confess that I cannot make out just what Mr. Laski thinks the State is. At the outset he appears to identify if in some way with society, a view against which all history files a vigorous demurrer. ‘The French State, for example,’he says, ‘is a territorial society ; but no State was ever that, or anything like it. Elsewhere he seems to regard the State as an institution, and there he has history with him; but again he speaks of the State as ‘a way of organizing the collective life of a given society,’ and yet again as ’a special way of exercising power’ — statements which to me are unintelligible.
Nor can I make out what Mr. Laski thinks about the State’s origin. The State is here; well, how did it got here, how did it come about in the first instance, as far as its history informs us? This is an important question; the answer to it would have put a spring-steel backbone in Mr. Laski’s main thesis. Nor am I quite clear about. Mr. Laski’s idea of tho State’s original intention. He finds the actual State functioning in an antisocial way; well, as far as we know its history, is inis not that the way it was invariably designed to function? Is the State essentially, rather than accidentally, antisocial? This, too, is an important question; the historical answer would have saved Mr. Laski a good many pages of elaborate dissertation based on the distinction he draws between the State and officialdom. It would also clear up most it’ not all of the curious anomalies presented by the actual conduct of public affairs; for example, the interesting fact remarked by Lincoln, that whatever his personal integrity, his ideals of public service, the spotless purity of his aims and desires, ‘the way of the politician is a long step removed from common honesty.’
Finally, why does Mr. Laski use terms taken out of a special glossary, in particular the glossary which collectivism has foisted upon our vernacular? He speaks of this-or-that political system as ‘democratic,’ when his context shows plainly that he is speaking of a republican representative system, far from democratic. He also invariably speaks of the prevailing economic system as ‘capitalist,’ which is objectionable for two reasons: first, none but a capitalist economic system ever existed, or can be conceived of as existing; second, the term tends to obscure the fact recognized explicitly by Marx, that economic exploitation is impracticable until expropriation from the land has taken place. As such terms are used currently, and as Mr. Laski uses them, they become what Bentham admirably called impostor-terms. It is as easy not to use them as to use them, and if they are avoided, the reader has the advantage of knowing precisely what the author is talking about; and if not, then not.
Like Dr. Johnson, Mr. Laski may say of my little occasional failures to see what he is driving at that he is obliged to find me in reasons but not in brains. If he does, I shall not resent it. Still, his hook seems to have been written for the benefit of the unlearned rather than the initiate, and therefore I hope he will not take it too unkindly that one of the unlearned should venture to reluct at obstacles put to all appearances gratuitously in the way of that benefit. Severus sit clericorum sermo — how mightily one wishes that in his youth Mr. Laski’s nose had for a year or two been held hard down to the educational grindstone turned by the Jesuits of Brussels or Paris!
Mr. Laski’s thesis is that the actual State puts ‘its coercive power at the disposal of the class which, in any given society, owns the instruments of production there.’ One boggles a little at the faint scent of an impostor-term that hangs around ’instruments of production,’ but otherwise the thesis stands. It follows then, Mr. Laski thinks, that when these ’instruments of production,’whatever they are, are communally owned, the seramble of classes for the command of State power will cease, and with that necessarily the State will cease behaving in an antisocial way. But surely this depends on what is meant by ’communally owned.’ If Mr. Laski means State-owned, one cannot assent to his conclusion; it goes to pieces against the fundamental law of economics, that man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion. As long as the political means of satisfying them is available, he will strive for command of it, and will use it in preference to the economic means whenever he can. By any other mode of communal ownership, Mr. Laski’s conclusion postulates a degree of political decentralization that would put the State out of existence; and this, while quite conceivable and wholly desirable, is obviously impracticable within any future near enough to make speculation worth while.
Hence, while Mr. Laski’s thesis is sound and cannot be too often or too clearly restated, — one wishes that Mr. Laski had made it really precise, — his conclusion from it amounts to very little in a practical way. The value of his work, which, as I have said, is great and deserves cordial praise, is in his analysis of the collisions of State interest in the international sphere, and his analysis of our present situation and the prospects that it holds out. These are admirable; they show clearly what is before us, and what will come of it, and why. My suggestion would be that the intending reader first find out from other sources just what the State is, how it originated, what its primary intention was, and what its historical operation has been; then let him buy Mr. Laski’s book, put a rubber band around the first two chapters as a safeguard against temptation, begin with the third chapter, and read with most devout attention all that follows. This curriculum will equip him with all he needs in order to interpret accurately the conduct of public affairs anywhere in the world; also, with all he needs to keep his mind in a straight course amid the gusts and squalls of controversy blown by politicians, publicists, lobbyists, journalists, jobholders, ‘publicrelations counsel —by the sworn foes, in short, of any kind of intellectual integrity, wherever found.
ALBERT JAY NOCK