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

766 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
with governmental machinery, central and local, the
institution is, it is obvious, liable to be captured by interested
parties. Marxists, for example, contend, as we saw in the
preceding chapter, 1 that all existing States are in the hands
of an economically privileged class which uses the State
as an executive organ for administering the affairs of that
class. It is not necessary to subscribe to all the implications
of the Marxist hypothesis to recognize that the machinery
of government can be captured and subverted to personal
or sectional ends. It follows that to idealize the State,
to concede the existence of a State sovereignty which is
entitled to override individual rights, and to insist upon
the real being ofa State personality which informs individual
personalities, is to hand over the individual, bound hand
and foot to whatever party happens to have gained control
of the forces of government, and has the wit to use the
idealist theory of the State to convince the people that it
is "forcing them to be free", and that it alone knows
"their true good ", whenever it wants an excuse for tyranny.
The theory has thus been a godsend to parties which,
succeeding by force or stratagem in obtaining control of
the machinery of government, and seeking to legitimize
an authority which owns no better foundation than the
bayonet and the machine-gun, first identify themselves
with the State, and then proceed to make inordinate
claims upon its members which the idealist theory, by
reason of its further identification between the State and
society, enables them to justify.
THE IDENTIFICATION BETWEEN SOCIETY AND
THE STATE EXEMPLIFIED IN FASCIST PRACTICE.
This transition from the concept of society to that of the
State, and from that of the State to that of the party
which happens to have control of the State, is exemplified
by Nazi Germany. The idealist theory of the State identifies
morality with the State's will, but the pronouncements of
the leaders of the National Socialist movement identify
1 See Chapter XVII, pp. 683-685.