One more formal expression of what is involved in sociology may be added, viz.:

a) The problem of all social science is discovery of the meaning of human experience.

b) The sociologists attempt to do their part toward this discovery by contemplating human experience as a totality of group situations.

c) Sociological technique has developed as analysis of group situations considered, first, under the aspect of status, i.e., the group relationships viewed as relatively permanent; second, under the aspect of movement, or the group relationships viewed as processes; third, under the aspect of value, or group processes viewed with reference to the types of persons and types of interpersonal relationships which they tend to produce; fourth, under the aspect of control, or group process-situations presenting alternatives for constructive effort.

Any adequate introduction to the study of sociology will, among other things, furnish a content for such generalizations as the foregoing.

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE STATE? II

VICTOR S. YARROS

Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy

So far the discussion has dealt with certain recent indictments by humanitarians and philosophers of so-called state nature-indictments based on the foreign policies of the great nations-and the criminal, aggressive wars directly or indirectly attributable to those policies. The attempt has been to point out the superficiality of those indictments and the necessity of a very different analysis of the international situation than that which underlies the notion that the state as such, or state nature, is somehow responsible for the diplomacy of intrigue, conquest, aggression, and greed.

In the following pages the alleged responsibility of "the state" for political, social, and economic evils "at home" will be discussed. Shall we abolish the state? Can we abolish it? Should we get rid of the evils and maladjustments complained of by liberals and radicals if we could, and did, abolish the state?

First of all, what is the state? A correct answer is clearly essential, yet is hardly ever given. The proper answer is, The state is another name for compulsory co-operation. A certain community, or state, or nation, organizes itself, a government is created, legislation adopted, and the individual, or the minority, has no choice, no alternative, but to obey the law of the state. In the freest and most democratic modern state, despite such devices as the initiative, the referendum, the recall, local home rule, the element of compulsion is necessarily always present. If all co-operation were voluntary; if the majority had no right to coerce the minority; if government actually, and in the literal sense, rested on the "consent of all the governed," there would be no state. There would be spontaneous collective action along many lines, no doubt, just as today there is

co-operation for religious, social, ethical, political, and aesthetic purposes sans the slightest suggestion of physical force or compulsion. But the state, as we know it, would have disappeared.

Now, this is exactly what the pacific and philosophical anarchists mean by "abolition of the state." They would gradually restrict the authority of the state, increasingly free the individual and the minority, and at last make even taxation and military service entirely voluntary under all conditions. They accordingly insist on the right of the individual to secede from, or ignore, the state. They would, of course, use force to prevent aggression or invasion by any individual; they would punish "crime"-that is, violations of the principle of equal freedom and equal opportunitybut with the inoffensive, peaceable individual, no matter how selfish, unsocial, unyielding he might be, they would not interfere except, possibly, to the extent of boycotting him and impressing upon him the fact that he is deemed an unpleasant and undesirable neighbor.

This is the general idea Thoreau, the New England recluse and intense individualist, vaguely entertained when, for example, he wrote the following lines:

I heartily accept the motto (of Thomas Jefferson): "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe: "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. But is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further toward recognizing and organizing the rights of man?

There never will be a free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a state at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellowmen. A state which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious state which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

Who will object to these ideals and conceptions? But the difficulty with them as expressed is their strange, complete irrelevance to any actual problem of which we are conscious and which presses for a solution. Suppose we accept the view that the society of the future will be held together in the way outlined by the logical and uncompromising individualists. What follows? What is the bearing of that admission on our own situation? What practical program is suggested by the ideal of a free, state-less society? What are the steps to be taken today-this year, next year, the year after, ten years hence, and so on-with a view to reaching, at some distant day, the remote goal?

We know what the answer is: "Repeal, repeal, and again repeal." Society can become free only by removing one restriction after another, destroying one barrier after another, to the freest human intercourse. Free trade, free access to land, free banking, free issue of notes to circulate as currency, free association for any and all purposes not inherently immoral or criminal-this is the individualist platform.

Sound or unsound, this platform is certainly definite. But how many of the men and women who are discontented and rebellious, and who talk about radical changes in the organization of "the capitalistic state," accept the individualist views concerning protection, monopoly, banking, currency, and land tenure? Metaphysical discussion of the nature of sovereignty, limitations upon the power of the state, or the natural rights of the individual throws no light whatever on questions of economics. So great is the confusion of thought that a man may in the same breath urge the abolition of the state and propose high protective duties, or a government monopoly of coinage and currency! It is futile to paint alluring pictures of a free, state-less society when, as a matter of fact, only a most insignificant minority is prepared anywhere to take the first steps toward the alleged goal-namely, to repeal tariff laws, banking laws, currency laws, patent and copyright laws, and a hundred other regulative and restrictive laws supposed to be necessary for the protection of the poor, the uneducated, the credulous, the weak!

The problems of our period are primarily economic. The revolt being witnessed is a revolt against poverty, gross inequality in the

distribution of wealth, chronic unemployment, and the like. How many of the radicals believe that "the abolition of the state" in the anarchistic sense would do away with these evils? To be sure, socialists of the Marx school, too, have attacked "the state" and professed a desire to kill it. Under socialism properly understood, we have been assured in books and periodicals, the state dies, or dissolves into something totally different. When we analyze these affirmations, what do we find? A totally arbitrary assumption that the state is a capitalistic device, an instrument of oppression and enslavement, and that to abolish capitalism, nationalize industry, make everyone an employee of the community, is to kill the state.

Nothing can be more absurd and empty than this. The implied definition of the state in the socialist declamations against it is erroneous. Granted that there is such a thing as a capitalistic state, as there was such a thing as a military and aristocratic state, it clearly does not follow that to destroy any particular type of state is to destroy the state. There is also a democratic state, and a socialistic state. The Russian Bolshevik leaders are Marxian socialists, but they have certainly not destroyed the state. They lost no time in setting up a proletarian state, as they called their nonproletarian tyranny. They dispossessed and disfranchised the bourgeois elements, but they had the decency to refrain from pretending that they were abolishing the state. They admitted that they were setting up a dictatorship, a despotism, a state after their own heart. They had all manner of excuses, of course; the dictatorship was to be temporary; the revolution had to be saved at any cost, and the enemies of socialism were wicked counterrevolutionists, who deserved condign punishment and effective restraint. The intention was to usher in a reign of brotherhood and equality, to replace capitalism by harmonious co-operation. Meantime Lenine and his fanatical followers were to be "the state" and a ruthless state in truth it has been.

Let us, however, recognize the distinction between emergency, or war, policies on the part of socialist or communist reformers, and permanent policies that are to obtain under normal conditions. Would socialism under normal conditions dispense with the statekill the state? "No," is the answer, if, as has been shown, the