THE STATE AS PATRIARCH The Stoic Doctrine holds that the State is an organization of human community life, which originates by reason of a social instinct implanted in men by nature; or else, under the Epicurean Doctrine, is brought about by an irresistible impulse to end the “war of all against all,” to coerce the savage, who opposes organized effort, to a peaceable community life in place of the anti-social struggle in which all budding advancement are destroyed. These two apparently irreconcilable concepts were fused by the intermediation of medieval philosophy. This, founded on theologic reasoning and belief in the Bible, developed the opinion that man, originally and by nature a social creature, is, through original sin (the fratricide of Cain and the transgression at the tower of Babel) divided into innumerable tribes, which fight to the hilt, until they unite peaceably as a State. As I have demonstrated in my essays on the Bible, nothing could be further from the truth. Man is by nature a social creature that comes together to create Society through cooperation. As a result of prosperity, man then becomes proud and develops a jealous love of mammon. Man becomes anti-social. Man in competition with Society creates the State, or be it, the tower of Babel. The State does not bring peace, but is the institutionalized fratricide of Cain. In a King, it is a war of one against all and in a democracy it is the war of all against all. The organization of human community life is found in the market, in the family and in voluntary, private institutions absent force and violence. Society precedes the State. The State does not create Society. The State is not Society. Man is inherently good, but when he becomes prosperous, he is tempted to become proud. What began as a Society of individuals cooperating in a market for the general welfare soon turns into the anti-social State of specific welfare where some individuals prey on all other individuals of Society or where all individuals of Society prey upon each other in legal competition. The State promotes individualism because it does not like competing loyalties individuals have to marriage, family, church, guild or business. The Law of Previous Accumulation Aristotle had taught that the State had developed, by gradual growth, from the family group or tribe. The Stoics and Epicureans held that individuals formed the State—with this difference, that the former viewed the individual as being socially inclined by nature and the latter that the individual must be coerced to be social. To the Stoics, therefore, the “State of Nature” was a peaceful union; to the Epicureans it was a war of each against the other, with the Society as a compelling means for the decent modus vivendi. With the one a Society was conditioned “physei,” by nature; with the other it was “nomo,” by decree. In spite of this fundamental difference between these schools, both assumed the premise that, at the beginning, individuals were free, equal politically and economically, and that it was from such an original social order there had developed, through gradual differentiation, the fully developed State with its caste hierarchy. For the Stoics, the State was Society. For the Epicureans, the State created Society. We would err to believe that these hypotheses were originally intended as historical accounts as most legal theorists presume. Rationalism is essentially unhistoric, even anti-historic. On the contrary, the thesis was originally put forward as a “fiction,” a theory, a conscious unhistorical assumption. It was under this form it acquired the name of natural law. It was under this name that it came into modern thought, tinctured stoically in Grotius and Puffendorf, and epicureanally in Hobbes. It became the operative weapon of thought among the rising estates held by capitalists, who in their jealous love for mammon, create the State as a benevolent patriarch, first in feudalism and then in socialism, and to destroy all competing loyalties of individuals with the hope of destroying all self-interest except for the growth of the State and the power and authority of those invested in the State. Independent Critical Thought If the Stoics and the Epicureans are correct, that the State is a patriarch and not a predator, then the State is a patriarch who irritates his children, first by beating them when they misbehave, then by forcing them to associate with and be preyed upon by delinquent children while confined in the basement for months or years on end and, finally, by denying the children means of temporal survival, either through education or employment, even after repenting. Were any parent to treat a child this way as a modus operandi for discipline, the State would charge the parent with child abuse. The State could also be charged with neglect and a deliberate abandonment of familial responsibilities by becoming profligate and bankrupting the family. Obviously, the State is a froward and idolatrous patriarch over society. As a nurturing wife, the church instructs the children to remain respectful and to patiently suffer these abuses in love and forgiveness, as she should. The question arises whether the wife should instruct the children to enforce the patriarch’s will when he commands them to fight against each other (either in a democracy or through the judicial system) or when he commands them to murder, enslave or steal from the neighbor? When the patriarch starts a fight, instead of protecting the children, should the wife carry out the commands of the patriarch to instruct the children to protect the patriarch? Should the wife instruct the children to either participate in or take the fall for the sins of the patriarch? Or should the wife protest behind closed doors against the evil designs of the patriarch to corrupt the children? And so I hold to the belief that the Saints are to be observers of the law, suffering offense if it is required of them, but in no way engaging in the sins of the State as enforcers of the law.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 04:01:00 +0000
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