Anarchy 31/Randolph Bourne vs. the State

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Randolph Bourne vs. the State

H. W. MORTON

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“War is the health of the State.” Had Randolph Bourne never written another line he would have earned immor­tal­ity from those words alone. “War is the health of the State,” he an­nounced, and went on to explain:

  “It auto­matic­ally sets in motion through­out society those irres­ist­ible forces for uni­form­ity, for pas­sion­ate co-

opera­tion with the Govern­ment in coer­cing into obedi­ence the minor­ity groups and indi­vidu­als which lack the larger herd sense. The ma­chinery of Govern­ment sets and en­forces the drastic penal­ties; the minor­ities are either intim­id­ated into silence, or brought slowly around by a subtle process of per­sua­sion which may seem to them really to be con­vert­ing them. Of course the ideal of perfect loyalty, perfect uni­form­ity is never really at­tained. The classes upon whom the amateur work of coer­cion falls are un­wearied in their zeal, but often their agita­tion instead of con­vert­ing, merely serves to stiffen their resist­ance. Minor­ities are rendered sullen, and some intel­lec­tual opinion bitter and satir­ical. But in general, the nation in war-time attains a uni­form­ity of feeling, a hier­archy of values cul­minat­ing at the undis­puted apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be pro­duced through any other agency than war.”

  Randolph Bourne, a bril­liant cripple, was born in New Jersey in that singu­larly radical year 1886, and died in New York City in 1918. A gradu­ate of Columbia University, and a member of that nebu­lous clique of Green­wich Village Bohemi­ans, he was a fre­quent con­trib­utor to The New Repub­lic, The At­lantic Monthly, The Seven Arts and The Dial. Most of his writing, however, would be of little in­terest to anar­chists—I found “The History of a Liter­ary Radical & Other Papers” (New York, Russell, 1956) so uni­formly innoc­uous that I didn’t even finish it. On the other hand, had this col­lec­tion in­cluded “The State” is the health­iest of Randolph Bourne.

  “The State”, an un­fin­ished essay written at the time of World War I, had long been out of print. It has re­cently been re­issued—in time for World War III—by the Greater New York Society for the Pre­ven­tion of Cruelty to the Human Animal, 150 Nassau Street, New York 38, N.Y. It is well worth the $1.00 price despite a rather bizarre format

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(28 inches wide, 8 inches high when open).

  In its incom­plete form the essay defines the State, de­scribes its activ­ities, and dis­cusses its historic evolu­tion. Since it was never com­pleted, we cannot know what further treat­ment Bourne had planned. He might or might not have in­tended to pro­pose methods of abolish­ingthe State and discuss the pos­sibil­ities of a State­less society. From the content of the work itself, I would infer not.

  He begins with vigour and bril­liance:

  “Govern­ment is syn­onym­ous with neither State nor Nation. It is the ma­chinery by which the nation, organ­ized by a State, carries out its State func­tions. Govern­ment is a frame­work of the ad­minis­tra­tion of laws, and the carry­ing out of the public force. Govern­ment is the idea of the State put into prac­tical opera­tion in the hands of def­inite, con­crete, fal­lible men. It is the visible sign of the in­visible grace. It is the word made flesh.”

Then after this beauti­fully anarch­istic begin­ning, Bourne im­medi­ately dis­appoints us: “And it has neces­sarily the lim­ita­tions inher­ent in all prac­tical­ity.” Imagine attack­ing Govern­ment on the basis of prac­tical lim­ita­tions! I can no more con­ceive of an anarch­ist writing that, than of a paci­fist com­plain­ing that Hydro­gen Bombs are no good because they don’t work.

  However, Bourne im­medi­ately redeems himself by point­ing out that Govern­ment “is by no means ident­ical with” the State. He empha­sizes the fact that the State is an ab­scrac­tion where­as Govern­ment is tan­gible. “That the State is a mys­tical concep­tion is some­thing that must never be for­gotten. Its glamour and its signi­fic­ance linger behind the frame­work of Govern­ment and direct its activ­ities.” Here Bourne has put his finger on a crit­ical dis­tinc­tion—one which few people other than anarch­ists seem to grasp.

  Society is the sum total of all the rela­tion­ships, com­bina­tions, as­socia­tions, insti­tu­tions, etc. of human beings in an inde­term­inate ter­rit­ory. The State is an in­volun­tary legal rela­tion­ship where­by a supreme author­ity has control over all persons and prop­erty in a speci­fic­ally bounded ter­rit­ory. Govern­ment is merely the mechan­ism of that legal rela­tion­ship. In other words, Govern­ment is an opera­ting body, con­stitut­ing only part of the over­all legal rela­tion­ship called the State. Simil­arly the State is but one rela­tion­ship among all the in­numer­able rela­tion­ships which com­prise Society. Con­versely, Society in­cludes the State; and the State in­cludes the Govern­ment. The confu­sion over the terms, and the temp­ta­tion to inter­change them, arises because Govern­ment is the most prom­inent part of the State, which in turn is the most power­ful rela­tion­ship of Society.

  Without a clear under­stand­ing of these terms and their exact inter-rela­tion­ship, anarch­ist theory becomes incom­pre­hens­ible. When we anarch­ists attack the State we don’t want to destroy society, injure govern­ment em­ploy­ees, or even demol­ish their office build­ings. Con­trast­ing the millennia of society’s growth and de­velop­ment without the State to the im­min­ent pro­spect of uni­versal death with it, we have con­cluded that the State is but a re­mov­able malig­nant tumour on the

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body social. There­fore we want to abolish the vicious power ar­range­ment by which we are domin­ated polit­ic­ally, ex­ploited eco­nomic­ally, and jeop­ard­ized phys­ic­ally.

  For the most part Bourne goes along with us. The fol­low­ing, for ex­ample, is fine anarch­istic ana­lysis:

  “What is the State essen­tially? The more closely we examine it, the more mys­tical and per­sonal it becomes. On the Nation we can put our hand as a defin­ite social group, with atti­tudes and quan­ti­ties exact enough to mean some­thing. On the Govern­ment we can put our hand as a certain organ­isa­tion of ruling func­tions, the ma­chinery of law-

making and law-

enforcing. The Ad­minis­tra­tion is a recog­niz­able group of polit­ical func­tion­aries, tempor­arily in charge of the Govern­ment. But the State stands as an idea behind them all, eternal, sanct­ified, and from it Govern­ment and Ad­minis­tra­tion con­ceive them­selves to have the breath of life. Even the nation, espe­cially in times of war—

or at least, its signi­fic­ant classes—

con­siders that it derives its author­ity and its purpose from the idea of the State. Nation and State are scarcely dif­fer­enti­ated, and the con­crete, prac­tical, ap­parent facts are sunk in the symbol. We rever­ence not our country but the flag. We may criti­cize ever so severely our country, but we are dis­respect­ful to the flag at our peril.”