Anatomy of the state - 1. What the state is not

• The state is almost universally considered an institution of social service   * Some venerate the state as the culmination of society   * Others regard it as an amiable though often inefficient organization   * Almost all regard it as a necessary means for achieving the goals of mankind
• "We are the government"   * If that is true, then anything a government does to an individual is voluntary on the part of the individual concerned   * If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that “we owe it to ourselves”
• ==We are not the government, the government is not us==   * The government does not in any accurate sense represent the majority of the people
• the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area   * It is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.   * State obtains its revenue by the use of compulsion; that is, by the use and the threat of the jailhouse and the bayonet.

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