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The Immorality of the State
by Mikhail Bakunin [1814-1876]
From "The Political Philosophy of Bakunin" by G.P. Maximoff
1953, The Free Press, NY
Ethics: Morality of the State
The existence of a single limited State necessarily presupposed the
existence, and if necessary provokes the formation of several States, it being
quite natural that the individuals who find themselves outside of this State
and who are menaced by it in their existence and liberty, should in turn
league themselves against it. Here we have humanity broken up into an
indefinite number of States which are foreign, hostile, and menacing toward
one another.
There is no common right, and no social contract among them, for if such
a contract and right existed, the various States would cease to be absolutely
independent of one another, becoming federated members of one great State.
Unless this great State embraces humanity as a whole, it will necessarily have
against it the hostility of other great States, federated internally. Thus
war would always be supreme law and the inherent necessity of the very
existence of humanity.
Every State, whether it is of a federative or a non-federative character,
must seek, under the penalty of utter ruin, to become the most powerful of
States. It has to devour others in order not to be devoured in turn, to
conquer in order not to be conquered, to enslave in order not to be enslaved -
for two similar and at the same time alien powers, cannot co-exist without
destroying each other.
The state then is the most flagrant negation, the most cynical and
complete negation of humanity. It rends apart the universal solidarity of all
men upon earth, and it unites some of them only in order to destroy, conquer,
and enslave all the rest. It takes under its protection only its own
citizens, and it recognizes human right, humanity, and civilization only
within the confines of its own boundries. And since it does not recognize any
right outside of its own confines, it quite logically arrogated to itself the
right to treat with the most ferocious inhumanity all the foreign populations
whom it can pillage, exterminate, or subordinate to its will. If it displays
generosity or humanity toward them, it does it in no case out of any sense of
duty: and that is because it has no duty but to itself, and toward those of
its members who formed it by an act of free agreement, who continue
constituting it on the same free bases, or, as it happens in the long run,
have become its subjects.
Since international law does not exist, and since it never can exist in a
serious and real manner without undermining the very foundations of the
principle of absolute State sovereignty, the State cannot have any duties
toward foreign populations. If then it treats humanely a conquered people, if
it does not go to the full length in pillaging and exterminating it, and does
not reduce it to the last degree of slavery, it does so perhaps because of
considerations of political expediency and prudence, or even because of pure
magnanimity, but never because of duty - for it has an absolute right to
dispose of them in any way it deems fit.
This flagrant negation of humanity, which constitutes the very essence of
the State, is from the point of view of the latter the supreme duty and the
greatest virtue: it is called patriotism and it constitutes the transcendent
morality of the State. We call it the transcendent morality because
ordinarily it transcends the level of human morality and justice, whether
private or common, and thereby it often sets itself in shard contradiction to
them. Thus, for instance, to offend, oppress, rob, plunder, assassinate, or
enslave one's fellow man is, to the ordinary morality of man, to commit a
serious crime.
In public life, on the contrary, from the point of view of patriotism,
when it is done for the greater glory of the State in order to conserve or to
enlarge its power, all that becomes a duty and a virtue. And this duty, this
virtue, are obligatory upon every patriotic citizen. Everyone is expected to
discharge those duties not only in respect to strangers but in respect to his
fellow-citizens, members and subjects of the same State, whenever the welfare
of the State demands it from him.
The supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost. And since
all States, ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned
to perpetual struggle - a struggle against their own populations, whom they
oppress and ruin, a struggle against all foreign States, every one of which
can be strong only if the others are weak - and since the States cannot hold
their own in this struggle unless they constantly keep on augmenting their
power against their own subjects as well as against the neighborhood States -
it follows that the supreme law of the State is the augmentation of its power
to the detriment of internal liberty and external justice.
Such is in its stark reality the sole morality, the sole aim of the
State. It worships God himself only because he is its own exclusive God, the
sanction of its power and of that which it calls its right, that is, the right
to exist at any cost and always to expand at the cost of other States.
Whatever serves to promote this end is worthwhile, legitimate, and virtuous.
Whatever harms it is criminal. The morality of the State then is the reversal
of human justice and human morality.
This transcendent, super-human, and therefore anti-human morality of
States is not only the result of the corruption of men who are charged with
carrying on State functions. One might say with greater right that corruption
of men is the natural and necessary sequel of the State institution. This
morality is only the development of the fundamental principle of the State,
the inevitable expression of its inherent necessity. The State is nothing
else but the negation of humanity; it is a limited collectivity which aims to
take the place of humanity and which wants to impose itself upon the latter as
a supreme goal, while everything else is to submit and minister to it.
That was natural and easily understood in ancient times when the very
idea of humanity was unknown, and when every people worshiped its exclusively
national gods, who gave it the right of life and death over all other nations.
Human right existed only in relation to the citizens of the State. Whatever
remained outside of the State was doomed to pillage, massacre, and slavery.
Now things have changed. The idea of humanity becomes more and more of a
power in the civilized world, and, owing to the expansion and increasing speed
of means of communication, and also owing to the influence, still more
material than moral, of civilization upon barbarous peoples, this idea of
humanity begins to take hold even of the minds of uncivilized nations. This
idea is the invisible power of our century, with which the present powers -
the States - must reckon. They cannot submit to it of their own free will
because such submission on their part would be equivalent to suicide, since
the triumph of humanity can be realized only through the destruction of the
States. But the States can no longer deny this idea nor openly rebel against
it, for having now grown too strong, it may finally destroy them.
In the face of this fainful alternative there remains only one way out:
and that it hypocrisy. The States pay their outward respects to this idea of
humanity; they speak and apparently act only in the name of it, but they
violate it every day. This, however, should not be held against the States.
They cannot act otherwise, their position having become such that they can
hold their own only by lying. Diplomacy has no other mission.
Therefore what do we see? Every time a State wants to declare war upon
another State, it starts off by launching a manifesto addressed not only to
its own subjects but to the whole world. In this manifesto it declares that
right and justice are on its side, and it endeavors to prove that it is
actuated only by love of peace and humanity and that, imbued with generous and
peaceful sentiments, it suffered for a long time in silence until the mounting
iniquity of its enemy forced it to bare its sword. At the same time it vows
that, disdainful of all material conquest and not seeking any increase in
territory, it will put and end to this war as soon as justice is
reestablished. And its antagonist answers with a similar manifesto, in which
naturally right, justice, humanity, and all the generous sentiments are to be
found respectively on its side.
Those mutually opposed manifestos are written with the same eloquence,
they breathe the same virtuous indignation, and one is just as sincere as the
other; that is to say both of them are equally brazen in their lies, and it is
only fools who are deceived by them. Sensible persons, all those who have had
some political experience, do not even take the trouble of reading such
manifestoes. On the contrary, they seek ways to uncover the interests driving
both adversaries into this war, and to weigh the respective power of each of
them in order to guess the outcome of the struggle. Which only goes to prove
that moral issues are not at stake in such wars.
The rights of peoples, as well as the treaties regulating the relations
of the States, lack any moral sanction. In every definite historic epoch they
are the material expression of the equilibrium resulting from the mutual
antagonism of States. So long as States exist, there will be no peace. There
will be only more or less prolonged respites, armistes concluded by the
perpetually belligerent States; but as soon as the State feels sufficiently
strong to destroy this equilibrium to its advantage, it will never fail to do
so. The history of humanity fully bears out this point.
This explains to us why ever since history began, that is, ever since
States came into existence, the political world has always been and still
continues to be the stage for high knavery and unsurpassed brigandage -
brigandage and knavery which are held in high honor, since they are ordained
by patriotism, transcendent morality, and by the supreme interest of the
State. This explains to us why all the history of ancient and modern States
is nothing more than a series of revolting crimes; why present and past kings
and ministers of all times and of all countries - statesmen, diplomats,
bureaucrats, and warriors - if judged from the point of view of simple
morality and human justice, deserve a thousand times the gallows of penal
servitude.
For there is no terror, cruelty, sacrilege, perjury, imposture, infamous
transaction, cynical theft, brazen robbery or foul treason which has not been
committed and all are still being committed daily by representatives of the
State, with no other excuse than this elastic, at times so convenient and
terrible phrase Reason of State. A terrible phrase indeed! For it has
corrupted and dishonored more people in official circles and in the governing
classes of society than Christianity itself. As soon as it is uttered
everything becomes silent and drops out of sight: honesty, honor, justice,
right, pity itself vanishes and with it logic and sound sense; black becomes
white and white becomes black, the horrible becomes humane, and the most
dastardly felonies and most atrocious crimes become meritorious acts.
What is permitted to the State is forbidden to the individual. Such is
the maxim of all governments. Machiavelli said it, and history as well as the
practice of all contemporary governments bear him out on that point. Crime is
the necessary condition of the very existence of the State, and it therefore
constitutes its exclusive monopoly, from which it follows that the individual
who dares commit a crime is guilty in a two-fold sense: first, he is guilty
against human conscience, and, above all, he is guilty against the State in
arrogating to himself one of its most precious privileges.