Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.—Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy the State, 1935

"You better watch out for the egg plant that ate Chicago, 'cuz it might eat your city soon."— Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band, 1968

The analogy between the state and an amorphous plant that preys on mankind is apt. 

Consider two serious instances in film art of botanical terror that may be viewed as metaphors for the loss of freedom and psychological independence that occur in extreme statist society: 

• Invasion of the Body Snatchers—Classic 1956 film where "pod people" represent the seductive sirens of collectivist tyranny by erasing the ego, and all its conflicts.  Yet, in doing so, removing the individual mind and the challenges that make us human.
• Alien—All right, the monster is more a giant bird/insect with teeth, but it starts life as a pod, much as in the bean pods in Invasion.  These alien pods are less subtle, they don't wait until you take a nap; they zap your face and burrow into your innards.  Also, your human form is ultimately tortuously destroyed.

What each of them presents is the insidious nature of the statist threat.  Once the disease infects you, it feeds off your healthy tissue and you can't kill it without endangering your own existence. 

As we discussed last column, two distinct classes appear to exist within economic systems, productive and parasitic.  In that column, we confined ourselves to large business systems. 

Now, we proceed from the argument in the previous column—that argument, loosely: human life requires rewarding of productive behavior and discouraging of parasitic behavior—as follows: 

1. defining the state
2. demonstrating a connection between the state and the parasite class in government systems
3. discussing techniques and approaches for eradicating the statist weed from the garden of life

Defining the state isn't new ground. 

The standard central libertarian argument is individuals own themselves and virtually everyone needs to abide by the nonaggression principle (no initiation of force) in order to achieve a rational, benevolent society.  By everyone, the argument also means organizations of people, e.g. corporations, labor unions, professional associations, lynch mobs, posses, and government itself. 

A government acting as an aggressor upon its people is "the State." 

Government aggression lies in many of the activities most people think of as the nature of government itself, such as 1) taxation, 2) coercive monopoly on banking and money 2) wealth redistribution, 3) compulsory schooling, 4) prohibitions on consensual activity (e.g. sex and drug statutes), 5) transportation and utility monopolies, 6) eminent domain, 7) the military draft and nondefensive wars, 8) health care interventions, and 9) innumerable regulations and infringements on production and trade. 

Note  -  Just because the government has usurped otherwise valid economic activity, such as teaching or firefighting, does not mean individuals within a government system who perform that otherwise valid economic activity are members of the parasite class.

Similarly, valid government system activity, e.g. of protection of individual life, liberty, and property, is in the nature of production support.  Ergo, government activity and parasite class are not an identity. 

Clearly, the US government and the its federal subdivisions are "the State" as stipulated.  And equally clearly, as nineteenth-century anarchist Lysander Spooner once penned: our precious US Constitution "has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it."(1)

L'etat, l'etat, l'etat toujours! (a)

So how did we get to the current hyperstatist condition? 

(It should be noted the United States is the only country in which at least some honest attempt was made, during its founding and war for independence, to restrain government to its proper function—defending and securing the natural rights of its citizens against aggression.)

Quoting Nock to the point:

"There are two means ... whereby man's desires and needs can be satisfied.  One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means.  The other is the uncompensated appropriation of the wealth produced by others; this is the political means..."

"The State, then, whether primitive, feudal, or merchant [e.g. corporate], is the organization of the political means.  Now since man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion, he will employ the political means whenever he can—exclusively, if possible; otherwise in association with the economic means."(2)

Referring to my previous column, please note the similarity between the concepts: economic means and productive class, and political means and parasite class. 

Nock would concede that were man fully aware of the consequences of his "taking the easy way out," he would choose the high road and keep the state in the bag.  Resisting the temptations of easy power would be seen as conducive to the long-term general good.  (For example, most guys wanting to ace a test would do their homework vs. reaching for the videogame controller.)

We now live in a dangerously statist society, where the government controls or interferes in the vast majority of our choices.  The war on drugs has made the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment dead letters, and now the so-called war on terror is shredding the remainder of our Bill of Rights.  The same political/parasite class that so cavalierly clobbers our personal freedoms threatens our economic well being, as well. 

Again, why? 

Because we productive classers have been victims of bad information... for a long time now.  We have been unable to distinguish good from evil, what is "pro" us vs. what is "con" us.  So we work harder and harder to advance our own precious living energy, without noticing that such prodigious efforts nourish even moreso the weed class that has enfranchised itself in and around us. 

Rand noted this sacrificial phenomenon and wrote a brilliant novel(3) suggesting a strike of "the men of the mind" as remedy.  That certainly works in literature, and I believe we can adapt it to real life.  As Jefferson purportedly advocated, "we must hate the state constructively."  A humane and effective general strike of the productive class in modern reality means: 

1. withdrawing intellectual or moral sanction for the parasite-weed class
2. holding as a moral goal the state's going bye-bye, for the same reason and with the same passion and urgency we might show toward the cause of ending slavery
3. practically whack the statist weeds in the garden, carefully slashing their sleazy tendrils away from our healthy shoots

The American Way: a) informational, b) moral, and c) practical. 

The grass roots of liberty are spreading worldwide, breaking through the suffocating rough of decades, even centuries.  The roots are strong and will yield healthy growth.  Just as the 20th century became the Century of the State, with wholesale slaughter of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people, the 21st century will witness a New Enlightenment and new life for billions. 

"These are exciting times." 

L'etat, l'etat, l'etat jamais plus! (b)

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1. Lysander Spooner's website: http://www.lysanderspooner.org/bib_new.htm back to text
2. Albert J. Nock, Our Enemy the State, Chapter II, The Origins of State and Class, available Hallberg Publishing, 1983. back to text
3. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Random House, 1957. back to text

1. The state, the state, always the state! back to text
2. The state, the state, the state nevermore! back to text