Chapter IX. The Function of Government

CHAPTER IX The Function of Government Since government and power have always been more or less synonymous, and "machine politics" is a popular phrase, it is remarkable that the political agency has never been examined rigorously in that light, as a specific problem o£ engineering. When energy is used in a mechanism the result must be in accord with the type of machine. The source of the energy can be known j the nature of the mechanism is easily discovered in action; and it is absurd to expect any other action than that of which the parts in combination are capable. Even though a contrivance fails to work at all, or effects only destruction, the laws of energy and mechanism have not altered nor varied; the fault is in the appliance. But this has not been fully understood in relation to human affairs, for various reasons implicit in the development of human intelligence. First, energy is a natural phenomenon, calling for no abstract definition at that stage of human association in which energy operates only through the units and modes of conversion found in nature.

Second, in mechanical engineering, dealing with inanimate objects, the prime consideration is so obvious that it does not need to be postulated or given a separate value in conscious calculation. This is the factor of the underlying base. The physical earth is the base of all mechanism. The engineer need only choose a spot and level or solidify it to permit the engine to rest upon it, and of course he must balance, weight, or clamp down his machine so that it will not turn turtle. But he knows the earth is there; all his calculations 8J 82 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE have that factor included as a distributed component; mass, weight, extension, stresses, volume, are measures established from the base. Third, in mechanical engineering, which is confined to material terms, the source of energy is designated; a unit can be determined, and the transmission and load proportioned to the flow. Every factor is capable of measurement.

Finally, and most important in that it obscures the nature of government, fhysics has no name for the exact function which is delegated to government. It is something which does not exist in any manifestation of energy through inanimate material. It is peculiar to living creatures. Energy is pre-existent in the universe, and cannot be created out of nothing; but in a specific energy circuit, it is possible to designate an approximate point at which a moiety of the universal energy is introduced to the circuit; this is the dynamo, generator, converter, or motor. In the social organization, man is the dynamo, in his productive capacity. Government is an endappliance, and a dead end in respect of the energy it uses. Now in principle a mechanism composed of inanimate material, utilizing energy, is wholly calculable. A motor of a certain power will propel a certain load on a certain gradient; if the power is cut off, mass and momentum will determine its stopping point on the level, or an obstacle of a certain resistance will stop it. No similar prediction can be made of the actions of a human being functioning as such. True, his muscular strength can be measured; but while he is moving about under his own power it is not possible to measure and predict what will cause him to start, stop, turn, or accelerate. That depends on what he thinks, a nonmeasurable factor.

He has a faculty for which no equivalent is found in the processes of inanimate nature. He is self-starting, and he can inhibit himself. Energy is the medium of life. An infant is able to move its limbs and absorb nourishment (fuel) when it is born; it THE FUNCTION OF GOVERNMENT 83 grows up in instinctive spontaneous activity and gains the requisite control simultaneously. Thus "in nature" the energy, the mechanism, and the control appear as one, and the individual can function without defining them separately or abstractly. Neither do the social and economic relations of savages necessitate any such distinction. External contacts call the several factors into operation as one. Necessity is immediate; there are practically no deferred consequences, so far as the savage is aware. Since he cannot lay up provision for the future, it is prudent for him to gorge when food is plenty, and thus store up some energy in his body. If he meets a grizzly bear, or quarrels with one of his fellows, he must make the instant decision to fight or run away. He executes his own justice, if there be any, either individually or by a committee of the whole. If he has any form of shelter, he carries it with him. In these matters he is dealing with cause and effect, which are the factors of engineering; but they do not include transactions over time and space.

On the other hand, in personal relations, even the savage will recognize intentions as qualifying to some degree the appropriate response or retaliation. An intention is an imponderable; it belongs to a non-mathematical order of abstractions. Thus, though it is a proper consideration in human relations, it must delay formulation of the principles of physics, or engineering. The absence of this distinction is the main difference between primitive and scientific thought; and is a sufficient explanation of the origin of the belief in magic. Since it is possible for one person to propitiate another, or persuade him to action, by means of words, it is not altogether irrational, though mistaken, to imagine that beasts, or objects, or disease, or the weather, might be influenced by a similar approach. This unfortunate assumption is almost inextricably embedded in the mental habits of mankind. Science begins by barring it from the field where it is irrelevant. Science is aware that inanimate objects do not heed what is said to them, nor care about intentions. Yet the 84 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE name of science has been used to carry the error one step further, into a sequence where it is even more subtly false and difficult to eradicate, with the proposition that man is no more than a physical mechanism 5 and that since he may be induced to release his energy by words or compulsion, he must needs respond infallibly by formula if previously "conditioned," as the machine must answer to controls. What is forgotten is the fact that even if regarded as mechanism, man is a genuinely automatic machine, self-starting and selfacting, in the sense that no inanimate mechanism can be automatic.

He is so by virtue of initiative and the inhibitory faculty. Initiative is life itself. Complete inhibition is death. Yet a living creature incapable of inhibiting itself would speedily destroy itself. As has been seen, the inhibitions required by savage life are directly operative, just as the result of initiative returns directly to the individual. The hunter makes a weapon for himself, keeps it in possession, eats the game he kills; and his woman makes the hide into clothing. In civilization, the processes of getting food and shelter are protracted. It takes at least a year's foresight to cultivate the soil and reap the fruits 5 grain has to go to the mill, hides to the tanner, textiles to the weaver, before they are ready for use. When a civilized man builds a house, the plans must be laid out and materials assembled over a considerable period, and paid for by savings involving exchange of labor with many other persons. He must therefore impose restraints on himself for objectives distant in time and needing to be directed through space. He lives in the past and future as well as the present.

His initiative will be wasted unless he also inhibits himself j and further, he must be able to count upon others who participate in the exchange to observe like long-term inhibitions. At an early stage in trade it becomes inconvenient to depend upon barter of goods from the hand of one owner to another. With objects of unequal worth, or in a series of exchanges, THE FUNCTION OF GOVERNMENT 85 or in case of deferred deliveries, a medium of value is wanted 5 this is money. And throughout the series, a succession of inhibitions must be maintained; otherwise at some point the goods will be consumed and no return made. The energy circuit is broken. This is why savages have no occasion for formal government, while it is necessary to civilization. For a civilized economy, which consists of production and exchanges in a sequence extending through time and space, there must be an agency to witness long-term contracts and see that they are fulfilled in the absence of either of the parties, or to enforce an agreed penalty in case of default. The appropriate authority for this purpose is therefore delegated to government.

As the word indicates, the inhibitory faculty is a function of the individual; strictly speaking, it cannot be delegated. No faculty can be delegated. One man may bestow the product of his labor and talent upon another voluntarily 5 one man may deprive another of his product by force or fraud y or men may trade their labor or product. But a man cannot transfer his strength or intelligence to another man's physical frame. What can be done, in case an individual fails to inhibit himself as he has agreed to do, or if he infringes the liberty or takes the property of another, is to exact a forfeit or impose external restraints -y and officials can be empowered by delegated authority to execute the seizure. By the same means, such officials can take a cut from production, in taxes, to support themselves and pay the expenses of their organization. That is what government does, and all it can do. It is a prohibitory and expropriative agency.

Its type of mechanism necessarily corresponds to its function. Exception will be taken to the above statement if the whole process is not kept in view. The following quotation is a clear and concise exposition of the point at which misunderstanding occurs. "The governor of a steam engine is not merely a prohibitory mechanism, but turns on more steam 86 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE when needed $ and various electric controls work the same way5 why cannot political government so function? The Lewis and Clark and other government exploring expeditions in the West were not prohibitory actions. The role the government played in the development of the Western public lands was not merely prohibitory." When the governor of a steam engine turns on more steam, obviously the steam (energy) must be there to turn on$ and it must have been previously confined. The governor has no part in getting up steam, producing energy; and as mechanism it is a release instrument, which implies previous restraint. A prohibitory mechanism can be so made that it will subsequently let go 5 a brake can be lifted after it has been applied, or take effect only when some force rises against it, so that the pressure lessens if the force subsides. Contract law is a selfadjusting brake of this type. But the function of the brake is nevertheless prohibitory. In such a single mechanism no "function" can be attributed to the cessation of the function. The governor of the steam engine, or the electric control, as described, are different; the confusion arises from the term "governor." If it must be used, the exact statement of their function is that they govern the government j they place a limitation on government. In a political organization, this function is performed by a constitution, which establishes a limit beyond which government has no legitimate power.

To ascertain what was the action of government, its peculiar function, in such a sequence of actions as that of the Lewis and Clark expedition, let all the factors and conditions be noted. The wilderness was there, in the order of nature. Many private persons had explored a great deal of it. The knowledge and skill of the two named explorers had been developed by themselves. Why did they go to the government before making their expedition? To obtain funds and an official commission. What did the government do that Lewis and Clark could not do? Expropriate funds from other priTHE FUNCTION OF GOVERNMENT 87 vate persons, by taxes. The supplies for the expedition came from private production. The action of government was merely expropriative. The official commission was the preliminary notice of a prohibitory claim on the territory traversed. Later private individuals went out at their own expense and did the work of bringing the land under cultivation. The government exercised its prohibitory function to record and enforce the terms on which individuals could establish title to any part of the land. It was for that purpose the prohibitory function was delegated to government in the first place, to establish titles of record; but it is a prohibitory power and nothing else. Its "grant" is a stamped release.

Whenever and wherever the government intervenes in a sequence of actions, it does so with an authorized act of prohibition or expropriation. Whatever else it may "do" is merely an act of release, a cessation of function. That is its nature and function and type of mechanism. This is no less true if it is said that "the government builds a dam," or any other construction. The government expropriates funds and hires persons to do the work. The peculiar action of government is the act of expropriation.* Private persons can and do build dams, but they cannot expropriate funds. Despotic governments, such as that of Egypt when the pyramids were built, expropriate energy at the source by compulsion of persons, forced labor. Where several factors operate in a sequence of actions, the • The post office is usually pointed out as the prize example of government undertaking; but postal service depends entirely on the means of conveyance invented and operated by private enterprise. It is the simplest form of business imaginable, pure routine; yet, even as a government monopoly, it always runs at a deficit; and the lucrative appointments go by party favor, the biggest job being awarded to a man whose time is mainly occupied with collecting votes. Good roads exist only by reason of private enterprise progress in materials and machinery. City water supplies were first provided by private enterprise, and expropriated by government.

For centuries government fostered disease, discomfort, and gloom by window taxes, hearth taxes, salt taxes. Private enterprise dug the Suez Canal and provided the machinery, knowledge, and skill to dig the Panama Canal. Always and everywhere, progress has been made solely by private invention, enterprise, labor, and savings, and in inverse ratio to the extent of government.

88 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE function of each can be defined only by elimination. That which invariably occurs when a given factor is present, and does not occur in its absence, must be its function. Let any sequence of actions in which government is involved be examined. The first thing government does and must do is to issue an edict or pass a law. No edict or law can impart to an individual a faculty denied him by nature. A government order cannot mend a broken leg, but it can command the mutilation of a sound body. It cannot bestow intelligence, but it can forbid the use of intelligence. What is the prime provision to put a law in effect? There must be an "enabling clause," and an enabling clause is one which appropriates money or materials from taxes laid upon private resources, in cash or kind or labor. A private person who seizes the goods of another is a criminal -y this action is reserved to government. Likewise, government by its judiciary branch may try persons accused of capital crimes and put them to death. It is in the physical power of individuals to kill one another 5 but it is never held to be their right to do so unless in self-defense (of which vengeance is felt to be an extension). That a man may not be the judge of his own cause, it is thought proper to depute authority for vengeance, and so far as possible to supply aid in self-defense. That is the power of death. The power of life cannot be deputed or delegated. Government then is solely an instrument or mechanism of appropriation, prohibition, compulsion, and extinction -y in the nature of things it can be nothing else, and can operate to no other end.

Its exact definition in action shows how accurate was the phrase "a necessary evil." Seen in this light, it is so horrific— and its actual operations in the past have been so horrible at times—that there is some excuse for failure to realize the necessity. But that also must be acknowledged, to discover its extent. Government is certainly necessary for economic relations over time and space j the necessity derives from the necessity of the inhibitory faculty in the individual. But THE FUNCTION OF GOVERNMENT 89 the basic error of the authoritarian or statist premise consists of making these public and private necessities co-extensive. Government is a marginal requirement, necessary only in so far as the individual inhibitory faculty is not exercised according to agreement and natural right (equal liberty). Beyond that differential, government is an enthronement of paralysis and death. Hence the perversion of logic which affirms that the citizen exists only "for the state" and has no individual right to live. In fact, life can exist only in its own right5 i.e., it is ridiculously futile for the state (or anyone) to order a man to live, if his faculties fail him; nor can a life be created by order. The creative processes do not function to order. But death can be ordered. Thus government is secondary, instituted by agreement 5 life, which pertains to the individual, is primary. Government is an agent, not an entity.

This has to be restated, for the simple meaning of the statement that the right to life and liberty are inalienable has been forgotten or deliberately obscured. Persons unaccustomed to attach exact meanings to words will say that the fact that a man may be unjustly executed or imprisoned negates this proposition. It does not. The right is with the victim none the less j and very literally it cannot be alienated, for alienated means passing into the possession of another. One man cannot enjoy either the life or liberty of another. If he kills ten men he will not thereby live ten lives or ten times as long 5 nor is he more free if he puts another man in prison. Rights are by definition inalienable 3 only privileges can be transferred. Even the right to own property cannot be alienated or transferred j though a given item of property can be. If one man's rights are infringed, no other man obtains them; on the contrary, all men are thereby threatened with a similar injury.

There is no collective good. Strictly speaking, there is not even any common good. There are in the natural order conditions and materials through which the individual, by virtue 9O THE GOD OF THE MACHINE of his receptive and creative faculties and volition, is capable of experiencing good. Let it be asked, is not sunlight a common good? No-y persons do not enjoy the benefit by community, but singly. A blind man cannot see by community. The same degree of sunshine may induce sunstroke in one person while another derives benefit from it 5 although incidentally, it will not even be the same ray of sunlight which falls on both. Alexander the Great, with the power of empire at his command, asked Diogenes: "Is there anything I can do for you?" Diogenes replied: "You can stand aside from between me and the sunlight." Man as an individual is capable of experiencing and inflicting both good and evil, having choice, and also incidental liability to error in judgment. Allowing for error, good is obtained by reception and mastery of the forces of nature, and through voluntary association of individuals in equal free choice. But even in such voluntary relations of individuals, it is possible for one person to receive pleasure while another experiences pain; there is no collective sum or equation of good. "The greatest good of the greatest number" is a vicious phrase; for there is no unit of good which by addition or multiplication can make up a sum of good to be divided by the number of persons. Jeremy Bentham, having adopted the phrase, spent the rest of his life trying to extract some meaning from his own words. He meandered into almost incredible imbecilities, without ever perceiving why they couldn't mean anything. If ten men enjoy playing checkers and only one enjoys a symphony, which is the greatest good in sum? and if a choice must be made which shall be provided, and the symphony could be proved to be eleven times as "good" as the checkers, what then? the allotment must be either the greatest good to the lesser number or the lesser good to the greatest number. In any case, it is impossible to disguise the fact that good accrues only to individuals (the "number" gives that away, for it must be the number of persons); but if the good of one person is supposed to equate with the suffering of another, it THE FUNCTION OF GOVERNMENT 91 is monstrous. It would justify abominable tortures of a minority if the majority claimed to benefit thereby5 for if "good"

is quantitative and makes up a sum by majority, there can be no judge of what is good except the majority. This rule is, in fact, the justification alleged by the Nazis for the extermination of the Jews, as of the Russian Communists for the beastly murder of the most productive members of the population. Both have acted on the same theory. The fact that there is no collective good does not controvert the fact that man has natural and social relations, which are also of the spiritual order. And it is this spiritual possibility which the collectivist society forbids expression. The Christian society differs fundamentally from previous forms, being organized for the full development of personality. The cleavage is most clearly evident in the institution of marriage. Under the Christian dispensation, a valid marriage can be made by consent of the two parties, and not otherwise 5 nor can it be nullified by parents, guardians, or the community, against the will of the married couple, because every person is born with a right to a life of his own. And the parental authority, in the Christian society, cannot extend to the power of death or real injury to the child3 it is only co-extensive with the necessity of care and nurture, arising from the natural relationship and the moral obligation voluntarily undertaken in marriage. Natural rights and natural obligations, personal rights and personal responsibilities, volition, and the moral sense, are inseparable.

In primitive collectivist societies, parents had the power of death over their children. In modern reversions to this unnatural rule, the same power is allotted to the state. In Japan, the absolutely collective society, the family had the power to force young people into marriage 5 and indeed there was no way, no legal recognition, of marriage otherwise. Further, divorces could be ordered and enforced by the family j and this might be done for no other reason than that the young couple grew fond of each other. Their per92 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE sonal affection was considered detrimental to the collective interest of the clan-family. Significantly, this feature of collectivism reappeared spontaneously from the same principle, in the Oneida Community, in the United States. To prevent "selfishness," promiscuity was practiced j and if two young people had a strong mutual affection, which was called "special love," it was denounced as anti-social 3 the young couple were separated and persuaded to change partners frequently. The idea is so revolting that it seems hardly credible, but the thing was done. Always collectivism denounces natural affections and relations and suggests shifting personal obligations onto "society." It promises easy divorce, state support of children, the pleasures of promiscuity 3 it ends in slavery and violation of personality.

Then as man has the capacity to do or inflict evil deliberately a device is called for which shall cause the action to recoil upon himself, so far as possible. It must be either a static barrier or a reactive mechanism, or both—prohibition and penalty. This power is found in the collective, and authorized in government, to act by law. The confusion in respect of collective action arises from the initial power of man to do evil, and the consequent nature of law. In proposing any law, the proponent will not realize what he is undertaking unless he asks himself: "Is it my intention to impose restraint or inflict loss or pain on some person in the contingency specified?" Because that is what the law must do. The question follows: "Does the contingency arise from the initial action of that person inflicting injury or loss upon another by intent or negligence?" It is a fundamental error to suppose that a law may do some good and cannot hurt anyone. Whether it does any good or not, a law enforced must hurt someone. The right question is whether or not that person has set the machinery in motion by first injuring another, "The law in its majesty forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges," Anatole France wrote. But THE FUNCTION OF GOVERNMENT 93 that is all the law can do, unless it decrees that both rich and poor may not sleep anywhere else, or must sleep in jail.

Poverty can be brought about by lawj it cannot be forbidden by law. What is called moral legislation must inevitably increase the alleged evil. The only way to prevent prostitution altogether would be to imprison one half of the human race; aside from this, the law can take a share of the prostitute's earnings, with a fine, and thus induce her to earn more and to pay for "protection." The drug traffic is made profitable by prohibition, and thus increased. The acts forbidden are those by which persons injure only themselvesj hence the law can only injure them further. On the other hand, laws which are designed to act in case one person injures another willfully do not necessarily afford any inducement to the perpetrator to continue in his course. If the law forbids murder, it may not be able to prevent murder altogether, but the reasonable presumption is that it must be deterrent. The law can also exact restitution of stolen property—though it must also perform a like action of expropriation by taking a tax on property to enable it to punish thieves. Its limitation is that it must be set or intended to recoil upon an action with like action, evil for evil. Such is the power of the collective, and its use.

Yet it must be borne in mind that the constituent element of government is not force; it is the moral faculty which decides and devises the check by which force must recoil on itself. And the moral faculty is in the individual.