The State as a Society

Our societies and States are without our making them, are united without our uniting, are predestined and established, or have an independent standing of their own, are the indissolubly established against us egoists. The fight of the world today is, as it is said, directed against the "established." Yet people are wont to misunderstand this as if it were only that what is now established was to be exchanged for another, a better, established system. But war might rather be declared against establishment itself, the State, not a particular State, not any such thing as the mere condition of the State at the time; it is not another State (e. g. a "people's State") that men aim at, but their union, uniting, this ever-fluid uniting of everything standing. -- A State exists even without my co-operation: I am born in it, brought up in it, under obligations to it, and must "do it homage." It takes me up into its "favor," and I live by its "grace." Thus the independent establishment of the State founds my lack of independence; its condition as a "natural growth," its organism, demands that my nature do not grow freely, but be cut to fit it. That it may be able to unfold in natural growth, it applies to me the shears of "civilization"; it gives me an education and culture adapted to it, not to me, and teaches me e. g. to respect the laws, to refrain from injury to State property (i.e. private property), to reverence divine and earthly highness, etc.; in short, it teaches me to be -- unpunishable, "sacrificing" my ownness to "sacredness" (everything possible is sacred; e. g. property, others' life, etc.). In this consists the sort of civilization and culture that the State is able to give me: it brings me up to be a "serviceable instrument," a "serviceable member of society."