So long as there is no general assent as to the origin and essence of states historically known or as to the sociological meaning of the word “State,” it would be futile to attempt to force into use a new name for these most advanced commonwealths. They will continue to be called “states” in spite of all protests, especially because of the pleasure of using confusing concepts. For the purpose of this study, however, we propose to employ a new concept, a different verbal lever, and shall speak of the result of the new process as a “Freemen’s Citizenship.”
This summary survey of the states of the past and present should, if space permitted, be supplemented by an examination of the facts offered by the study of races, and of those states which are not treated in our falsely called “Universal History.” On this point, the assurance may be accepted that here again our general rule is valid without exception. Everywhere, whether in the Malay Archipelago, or in the “great sociological laboratory of Africa,” at all places on this planet where the development of tribes has at all attained a higher form, the State grew from the subjugation of one group of men by another. Its basic justification, its raison d’être, was and is the economic exploitation of those subjugated.
The summary review thus far made may serve as proof of the basic premise of this sketch. The pathfinder, to whom, before all others, we are indebted for this line of investigation is Professor Ludwig Gumplowicz of Graz, jurist and sociologist, who crowned a brave life by a brave self-chosen death. We can, then, in sharp outlines, follow in the sufferings of humanity the path which the State has pursued in its progress through the ages. This we propose now to trace from the primitive state founded on conquest to the “freemen’s citizenship.”
One single force impels all life; one force developed it, from the single cell, the particle of albumen floating about in the warm ocean of prehistoric time, up to the vertebrates, and then to man. This one force, according to Lippert, is the tendency to provide for life, bifurcated into “hunger and love.” With man, however, philosophy also enters into the play of these forces, in order hereafter, together with “hunger and love, to hold together the structure of the world of men.” To be sure, this philosophy, this “idea” of Schopenhauer’s, is at its source nothing else than a creature of the provision for life called by him “will.” It is an organ of orientation in the world, an arm in the struggle for existence. Yet in spite of this, we shall come to know the desire for causation as a self-acting force, and of social facts as coöperators in the sociological process of development. In the beginning of human society, and as it gradually develops, this tendency pushes itself forward in various bizarre ideas called “superstition.” These are based on purely logical conclusions from incomplete observations concerning air and water, earth and fire, animals and plants, which seem endowed with a throng of spirits both kindly and malevolent. One may say that in the most recent modern times, at a stage attained only by very few races, there arises also the younger daughter of the desire for causation, namely science, as a logical result of complete observation of facts; science, now required to exterminate widely branched-out superstition, which, with innumerable threads, has rooted itself in the very soul of mankind.