I find that there remains a lot of confusion over the nature of the state in these forums, which is surprising considering how everyone seems to be opposed to its existence. I will thus attempt to give a description of the state system, how and why it works, and what to do about it.
The first thing to know about the state is that it is a modern institution which has evolved out of absolutist monarchy. As the kings of Europe grew to acquire bigger and greater domains, their ability to control what took place in these domains weakened in proportion. The traditional solution to this problem of scale was creating fiefdoms, but doing so meant giving up some power to another lord, and the lords’ combined power could easily exceed that of the king. The solution the first statesmen came up with was the creation of the bureaucratic system. Here I quote Mises:
In what does the position of such a provincial governor differ from that of the manager of a business branch? The manager of the whole concern hands over an aggregate to the newly appointed branch manager and gives him one directive only: Make profits. This order, the observance of which is continuously checked by the accounts, is sufficient to make the branch a subservient part of the whole concern and to give to its manager’s action the direction aimed at by the central manager. But if the despot, for whom his own arbitrary decision is the only principle of government, appoints a governor and says to him: “Be my deputy in this province,” he makes the deputy’s arbitrariness supreme in this province. He renounces, at least temporarily, his own power to the benefit of the governor.
In order to avoid this outcome the king tries to limit the governor’s powers by issuing directives and instructions. Codes, decrees, and statutes tell the governors of the provinces and their subordinates what to do if such and such a problem arises. Their free discretion is now limited; their first duty is now to comply with the regulations. It is true that their arbitrariness is now restricted in so far as the regulations must be applied. But at the same time the whole character of their management changes. They are no longer eager to deal with each case to the best of their abilities; they are no longer anxious to find the most appropriate solution for every problem. Their main concern is to comply with the rules and regulations, no matter whether they are reasonable or contrary to what was intended. The first virtue of an administrator is to abide by the codes and decrees. He becomes a bureaucrat.
With such a system, the king sends out agents to execute his power without having to give any of it up, or so he thinks. The state is the system of agents who follow rules of administration laid out by the king or his government in order to exercise power over the kingdom. The power of the king, which was something limited in scope by the necessity of being directly commanded by the king, now becomes indirect, a result of rules defined by the king. The scope of the king’s indirect power is unlimited.
As the state system grows more mature it becomes an institution independent of the king itself. Kings war with each other over territory, and newly conquered territory comes with its own fully-functioning state apparatus. Reordering this new territory is as simple as laying down new rules for bureaucrats and perhaps replacing a few high-level functionaries. These changes transfer the legitimacy of power from the kings to the state itself. Then something unexpected happens: the coup d’état.
Either by exploiting loopholes in the system of rules or simply cheating on them, an alternative government manages to push out the king’s government at the commands of the state. This has been called a revolution, however the revolution is only at the level of government. The state still exists, still applies the rules it has been told to apply and nothing has changed for most of the people until the new government can muster enough power to change the rules the state follows.
The permanence of the state can result in unusual situations such as that of Belgium where recently, although the country had no government, the state continued ruling the country without interruption. In a pre-state society the disappearance of government would have plunged the country into anarchy, but the state in Belgium kept its power intact. The situation of Iraq shows the opposite happening, with the state destroyed by an invading army that quickly established a new government only to find this government impotent to act upon the country without a state apparatus already in control.
There is an even more sinister form of state evolving, I fear, out of the European Union, which is to say a multi-government state. The EU bureacracy follows rules set up by the treaties signed by all members of the Union, but it is unaccountable in-between the treaties. Should the state apparatus fail catastrophically, there is no government powerful enough to steer it.
I think the best course of action for us is the constitution of an alternative government, a shadow government in the sense of the governments-in-exile of WWII, that could have sufficient organization to step in and start commanding the state in a crisis, even if only to dissolve it in an orderly manner. This alternative government would have to meet all the standards of freedom of choice in dispute resolution and exchange, but it must be able to issue new commands for the state to interpret. Such an alternative government would be seen as a real, viable alternative by the public and would be more likely to support a coup d’état than to elect this government in elections which, we all know, are rigged by the previous winners.