Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/172

158 There remains the last aim of the State: the combination of the powers of all to execute certain works for the benefit of the individual, which the individual alone could not accomplish. This task is fulfilled by the State, it must be acknowledged. But even this is performed in an offensive and imperfect way. The State as at present organized, is a machine which works with an enormous waste of power. Only a small and constantly diminishing portion of the original force, obtained at such an incredibly high cost, remains for actual production; the rest is lost in overcoming the internal friction or else escapes in the smoke and noise of the steam whistle. According to the way in which all the European states of today are governed, the sums exacted from the citizens are squandered on foolish, frivolous and criminal undertakings. The whims of certain men, the selfish interests of certain small minorities, determine only too frequently the purposes to which the efforts of the community shall be directed. Hence the individual citizen labors and bleeds so that wars may be carried on which put an end to his life or his prosperity, that fortresses, palaces, railroads, harbors or canals may be built, from which neither he nor nine tenths of the nation will ever derive the slightest benefit, so that new offices may be created to make the machinery of State more complicated, to increase the friction between its wheels, in which he will lose still more of his time and leave still another piece of his liberty, so that office holders may be paid high salaries, who have no other aim in life than to lead an ornamental existence at his expense and lay another burden upon his shoulders, in short, he spends his life laboring and bleeding to add with his own hands to the weight of his yoke and the number of his chains and to create the possibility for new demands upon his labor and blood. Only in very small states or in