Page:Rise and Fall of Society.djvu/123

 CHAPTER 11

consists of a number of people who, having somehow got hold of it, make use of the machinery of coercion to the end that they might pursue their version of happiness without respect to the discipline of the market place. They batten on Society. Taking into consideration the paraphernalia of coercion—laws, propaganda, and the police—the State might be called an institution; but at bottom it is a gang of people. The character of the State is more evident when the gang is an alien group, a conquering horde or imperialistic power, or where a distinct social class, a nobility, rides herd; then again, as under communism, where a self-anointed and self-appointed group devote themselves to the use of power. Obscurantism sets in and disguises the character of the State when the personnel of rulership is subject to periodic change, and particularly when the oligarchy convinces both itself and Society that it serves a noble purpose. It is in the phrase "social service" that the true character of the State is lost.

There are services which are indeed social, for without them there could not be a Society. The cobbler is a social servicer because he shoes people. So is the manufacturer of toothpicks or the doctor or the entertainer, or any person who devotes himself to satisfying human desires. Whether 99