GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

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' POLITICS
other organizations only by reason of their higher degree
of generality. This view has been powerfully urged by
Professor Laski in his books, Grammar of Politics and Authority
in the Modern State. It will be referred to again and developed
in Chapter XIX. If we can accept the view that the State
is distinguished from other associations only by reason of
the greater generality of its purposes, and not necessarily
by its exercise of force, then the answer to the question,
"Where in a community Sovereignty resides?" is that it
need not reside anywhere at all.
Marxist View of Sovereignty. The doctrine of
Sovereignty is, however, as I have already indicated,
largely obsolete, and it is the prevalence of Marxist theories
of the State which have made it so. According to Marxist
theory, 1 Sovereignty resides in that class in a community
which owns the instruments of production. This class
employs the rest of the community which, lacking the
necessary instruments of production, has no alternative
but to sell its labour-power to their owners. The latter
permit the rest of the community to work for them, on
condition that all the products of its labour, in excess
of such as are necessary to keep the workers alive, are
sequestered by the owning class. Politics, ethics, law,
religion tod art are simply the various contrivances which
the possessing class has devised to justify to men's minds the
system by which it benefits, and to make it appear
the only right and possible system. This it does by prescribing
as lawful, moral, true and desirable whatever
desire, conduct or beliefor thing conduces to the maintenance
of the system by which it profits, and denouncing as
wrong and unlawful whatever threatens the system.
Until Capitalism is overthrown, there can, according to
Marxist theory, be no freedom in a community; for the
freedom to pursue intellectual goods advocated by Mill
is purely academic so long as economic power is monopolized
by a single class ami property is distributed on its
1 See Chapter XVII, pp. 670,699, 700, fort development of this view.