The Immorality of the State

by Mikhail Bakunin [1814-1876]

Transcribed by The Dak

Holiday Inn, Cambodia BBS  209/456-8584

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   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.


   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 fellowman 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.


   The State has to recognize in its own hypocritical manner the powerful

sentiment of humanity.  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.


   Perpetual war is the price of the State's existence.  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, armistices 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.


   Crimes are the moral climate of the States.  This explains to us why ever

since history began, that is, ever since States came inmto 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.