The State by Anthony de Jasay by Anthony de Jasay

republic. As a digression, it is worth remembering, though it may not prove much, that Alexander Hamilton was a convinced royalist. His is a good example of how little the essence of capitalism is understood by the public. If people were asked who was the most capitalist American statesman, some may be tempted to say "Grant" and think of railroad land grants, "Garfield" and think of the Gilded Age, perhaps "McKinley" and think of Mark Hanna and tariffs, "Harding" and the Teapot Dome scandal and the Ohio Gang. Such answers miss the point. These Presidents caused or condoned corruption and scandal by favouring some interests over others, which means using state power for their ends. If any American statesman was good for capitalism, which is not evident, it was Alexander Hamilton.
     
Such a state, then, will make few and simple laws and not enforce many of the laws it may have inherited. It will make it clear that it dislikes adjudicating claims against established situations resulting from people's freely negotiated contracts, will do so gingerly if it must but only as a last resort.
     
It will be reluctant to promote the good of society, let alone to order the more fortunate of its subjects to share their good fortune with the less fortunate, not because it lacks compassion, but because it does not consider that having creditable and honourable feelings entitles the state to coerce its subjects into indulging them. We must leave it at that, and not try to find out (nor could we if we tried) whether it is "belief in laissez faire" or some other, more subtle conviction about the proper role of the state which is holding it back, or simply indifference to the satisfactions that may be found beyond the limits of the minimal state.
     

     
    Author: Jasay, Anthony de Title: The State
     
    Anthony de Jasay
     
    Advanced Search 1. The Capitalist StateIf States Did Not Exist, Should They Be Invented?
     
    People come to believe that because they have states, they need them.
     
Neither individual nor class interest can justify a state on prudential grounds.
     
We have derived some of the characteristic features of a state which would be "best" (alternatively, "least harmful") for capitalism, proceeding from the ideal conditions of capitalist ownership and exchange to how the state fulfilling these conditions might behave, and what reason it could possibly have for doing so. The image which is beginning to emerge is that of an unusual creature, bearing a relatively remote likeness to any real state that ever existed. The few real states I have alluded to in order to illustrate a point were chosen more for their style, flavour, and lack of governing zeal, than for being really close incarnations of the ideal being. The reverse procedure could, perhaps, be used to show that a less bizarre, more likely sort of state would really be more harmful to capital and capitalism, even if it was an unprincipled tool of the Two Hundred Families and
    sent gendarmes or the National Guard to help grind the face of the poor.
     
The real-life states people are stuck with, more often than not because their distant ancestors were beaten into obedience by an invader, and sometimes due to Hobson's choice, to having to take one king so as to escape the threat of getting another, are not primarily "good for this" or "least harmful for that." They are not shaped to meet the functional needs of a system of beliefs, preferences, life-styles or "mode of production." This affirmation of the autonomy of the state and the separateness of its ends does not exclude all scope, over time, for some mutual adaptation whereby the state comes to conform to people's customs and preferences, just as they learn to accept and, from time to time, to enthuse about some of the state's demands upon them.
     
Any real state, given its de facto origin, is primarily an historical accident to which society must adapt. This is unsatisfactory to those who, by both training and