 How the state preserves itself Once a state has been established the problem of the ruling group or caste is how to maintain their rule While force is their modus operandi their basic and long-run problem is ideological For in order to continue in office any government not simply a democratic government must have the support of the majority of its subjects 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 But support in the sense of acceptance of some sort it must be Else the minority of state rulers would eventually be outweighed by the active resistance of the majority of the public Since predation must be supported out of the surplus of production It is necessarily true that the class constituting the state the full-time bureaucracy and nobility Must be a rather small minority in the land Although it may of course purchase allies among important groups in the population Therefore the chief task of the rulers is always to secure the active or resigned acceptance of the majority of the citizens Of course one method of securing support is through the creation of vested economic interests Therefore the king alone cannot rule he must have a sizable group of followers who enjoy the prerequisites of rule For example the members of the state apparatus such as the full-time bureaucracy or the established nobility But this still secures only a minority of eager supporters and even the essential purchasing of support by subsidies and other grants of privilege Still does not obtain the consent of the majority 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 Promoting this ideology among the people is the vital social task of the intellectuals 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 an age-old alliance between the state and the intellectuals becomes clear It is evident that the state needs the intellectuals. It is not so evident why intellectuals need the state Put simply we may state that the intellectuals livelihood in the free market is never too secure For the intellectual must depend on the values and choices of the masses of his fellow men And it is precisely characteristic of the masses that they are generally uninterested in intellectual matters The state on the other hand is willing to offer the intellectuals a secure and permanent birth in the state apparatus And thus a secure income and the panoply of prestige For the intellectuals will be handsomely rewarded for the important function they perform for the state rulers of which group They now become a part The alliance between the state and the intellectuals was symbolized in the eager desire of Professors at the University of Berlin in the 19th century to form the intellectual bodyguard of the House of Hohenzollern In the present day let us note the revealing comment of an eminent Marxist scholar concerning Professor Witt Vogel's critical study of ancient oriental despotism The civilization which Professor Witt Vogel is so bitterly attacking was one which could make poets and scholars into officials Of innumerable examples We may cite the recent development of the science of strategy in the service of the government's main violence wielding arm the military a Venerable institution furthermore is the official or court historian Dedicated to be veying the rulers views of their own and their predecessors actions Many and varied have been the arguments by which the state and its intellectuals have induced their subjects to support their rule Basically the strands of argument may be summed up as follows a The state rulers are great and wise men They rule by divine right They are the aristocracy of men. They are the scientific experts much greater and wiser than the good but rather simple subjects and Be rule by the extent government is inevitable Absolutely necessary and far better than the indescribable evils that would ensue upon its downfall The union of church and state was one of the oldest and most successful of these ideological devices The ruler was either anointed by God or in the case of absolute rule of many oriental despotisms was himself God Hence any resistance to his rule would be blasphemy The state's priest craft performed the basic intellectual function of obtaining popular support and even worship for the rulers Another successful device was to install fear of any alternative systems of rule or non-rule The present rulers it was maintained supply the citizens an essential service for which they should be most grateful Protection against sporadic criminals and marauders For the state to preserve its own monopoly of predation did indeed see to it that private and Unsystematic crime was kept to a minimum The state has always been jealous of its own preserve Especially has the state been successful in recent centuries and instilling fear of other state rulers Since the land area of the globe has been parceled out among particular states One of the basic doctrines of the state was to identify itself with the territory it governed Since most men tend to love their homeland the identification of that land and its people with the state Was a means of making natural patriotism work to the state's advantage If ruritania was being attacked by wall davia The first task of the state and its intellectuals was to convince the people of ruritania that the attack was really upon them And not simply upon the ruling caste In this way a war between rulers was converted into a war between peoples And each people coming to the defense of its rulers in the erroneous belief that these rulers were defending them This device of nationalism has only been successful in western civilization in recent centuries It was not too long ago that the mass of subjects regarded wars as irrelevant battles between various sets of nobles Many and subtle are the ideological weapons that the state has wielded through the centuries One excellent weapon has been tradition The longer that the rule of a state has been able to preserve itself the more powerful this weapon For then the x dynasty or the y state has the seeming weight of centuries of tradition behind it Worship of one's ancestors then becomes a none too subtle means of worshiping one's ancient rulers The greatest danger to the state is independent intellectual criticism There is no better way to stifle that criticism than to attack any isolated voice Any razor of new doubts as a prevain violator of the wisdom of his ancestors Another potent ideological force is to deprecate the individual and exalt the collectivity of society For since any given rule implies majority acceptance Any ideological danger to that rule can only start from one or a few independently thinking individuals The new idea much less the new critical idea must necessarily begin as a small minority opinion Therefore the state must nip the view in the bud by ridiculing any view that defies the opinions of the mass Listen only to your brothers Or adjust to society Thus becoming ideological weapons for crushing individual dissent By such measures the masses will never learn of the non-existence of their emperor's clothes It is also important for the state to make its rule seem inevitable Even if its reign is disliked it will then be met with passive resignation As witness the familiar coupling of death and taxes One method is to induce historiographical determinism as opposed to individual freedom of will If the ex-Denesty rules us this is because the inexorable laws of history or the divine will or the absolute or the material productive forces Have so decreed and nothing any puny individuals may do can change this inevitable decree It is also important for the state to inculcate in its subjects an aversion to any conspiracy theory of history For a search for conspiracies means a search for motives and an attribution of responsibility for historical misdeeds If however any tyranny imposed by the state or venality or aggressive war Was caused not by the state rulers but by mysterious and arcane social forces or by the imperfect state of the world Or if in some way everyone was responsible We are all murderers proclaims one slogan Then there is no point to the people becoming indignant or rising up against such misdeeds Furthermore an attack on conspiracy theories means that the subjects will become more gullible in believing the general welfare reasons That are always put forth by the state for engaging in any of its despotic actions A conspiracy theory can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the state's ideological propaganda Another tried and true method for bending subjects to the state's will is inducing guilt Any increase in private well-being can be attacked as unconscionable greed, materialism, or excessive affluence Profit-making can be attacked as exploitation and usury, mutually beneficial exchanges, denounced as selfishness And somehow with the conclusion always being drawn that more resources should be siphoned from the private to the public sector The induced guilt makes the public more ready to do just that For while individual persons tend to indulge in selfish greed The failure of the state's rulers to engage in exchanges is supposed to signify their devotion to higher and nobler causes Parasitic predation being apparently morally and aesthetically lofty as compared to peaceful and productive work In the present more secular age the divine right of the state has been supplemented by the invocation of a new god Science State rule is now proclaimed as being ultra scientific as constituting planning by experts But while reason is invoked more than in previous centuries This is not the true reason of the individual and his exercise of free will It is still collectivist and determinist Still implying holistic aggregates and coercive manipulation of passive subjects by their rulers The increasing use of scientific jargon has permitted the state's intellectuals to weave obscurantist apologia For state rule that would have only met with the vision by the populace of a simpler age A robber who justified his theft by saying that he really helped his victims By his spending giving a boost to retail trade would find few converts But when this theory is clothed in kanesian equations and impressive references to the multiplier effect It unfortunately carries more conviction And so the assault on common sense proceeds each age performing the task in its own ways Thus ideological support being vital to the state It must unceasingly try to impress the public with its legitimacy To distinguish its activities from those of mere brigands The unremitting determination of its assaults on common sense is no accident For as Menkin vividly maintained The average man whatever his errors otherwise at least sees clearly that government is something lying outside him And outside the generality of his fellow man That it is a separate independent and hostile power Only partly under his control and capable of doing him great harm Is it a fact of no significance that robbing the government is everywhere regarded as a crime of less magnitude than robbing an individual? Or even a corporation? What lies behind all this I believe is a deep sense of the fundamental antagonism between the government and the people it governs It is apprehended not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population But as a separate and autonomous corporation Mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members When a private citizen is robbed a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift When the government is robbed the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had before The notion that they have earned that money is never entertained To most sensible men it would seem ludicrous