John Stuart Mill on the State as
the Predatory Class (1848)
In a chapter on the
function of government in The Principles of Political
Economy (1848)
John
Stuart Mill observed how the state (or the predatory class) forces
the productive classes into a condition of uncertainty, insecurity,
and dependence:
There is no need to expatiate on the influence exercised over the economical
interests of society by the degree of completeness with which
this duty of government [the protection of person and property]
is performed. Insecurity of person and property, is as much as
to say, uncertainty of the connexion between all human exertions
or sacrifice, and the attainment of the ends for the sake of which they
are undergone. It means, uncertainty whether they who sow shall reap, whether
they who produce shall consume, and they who spare to-day shall enjoy to-morrow.
It means, not only that labour and frugality are not the road
to acquisition, but that violence is. When person and property are to a
certain degree insecure, all the possessions of the weak are at the mercy
of the strong. No one can keep what he has produced, unless he is more
capable of defending it, than others who give no part of their time and
exertions to useful industry are of taking it from him. The productive
classes, therefore, when the insecurity surpasses a certain point, being
unequal to their own protection against the predatory population, are obliged
to place themselves individually in a state of dependence on some member
of the predatory class, that it may be his interest to shield them from
all depredation except his own. In this manner, in the Middle Ages, allodial
property generally became feudal, and numbers of the poorer freemen voluntarily
made themselves and their posterity serfs of some military lord.
The full paragraph from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):
§ 1. [Effects of imperfect security of person and property] Before we
discuss the line of demarcation between the things with which government should,
and those with which they should not, directly interfere, it is necessary
to consider the economical effects, whether of a bad or of a good complexion,
arising from the manner in which they acquit themselves of the duties which
devolve on them in all societies, and which no one denies to be incumbent
on them.
The first of these is the protection of person and property. There is
no need to expatiate on the influence exercised over the economical interests
of society by the degree of completeness with which this duty of government
is performed. Insecurity of person and property, is as much as to say,
uncertainty of the connexion between all human exertions or sacrifice,
and the attainment of the ends for the sake of which they are undergone.
It means, uncertainty whether they who sow shall reap, whether they who
produce shall consume, and they who spare to-day shall enjoy to-morrow.
It means, not only that labour and frugality are not the road to acquisition,
but that violence is. When person and property are to a certain degree
insecure, all the possessions of the weak are at the mercy of the strong.
No one can keep what he has produced, unless he is more capable of defending
it, than others who give no part of their time and exertions to useful
industry are of taking it from him. The productive classes, therefore,
when the insecurity surpasses a certain point, being unequal to their own
protection against the predatory population, are obliged to place themselves
individually in a state of dependence on some member of the predatory class,
that it may be his interest to shield them from all depredation except
his own. In this manner, in the Middle Ages, allodial property generally
became feudal, and numbers of the poorer freemen voluntarily made themselves
and their posterity serfs of some military lord.
Nevertheless, in attaching to this great requisite, security of person
and property, the importance which is justly due to it, we must not forget
that even for economical purposes there are other things quite as indispensable,
the presence of which will often make up for a very considerable degree
of imperfection in the protective arrangements of government. As was observed
in a previous chapter, the free cities of Italy, Flanders, and the Hanseatic
league, were habitually in a state of such internal turbulence, varied
by such destructive external wars, that person and property enjoyed very
imperfect protection; yet during several centuries they increased rapidly
in wealth and prosperity, brought many of the industrial arts to a high
degree of advancement, carried on distant and dangerous voyages of exploration
and commerce with extraordinary success, became an overmatch in power for
the greatest feudal lords, and could defend themselves even against the
sovereigns of Europe: because in the midst of turmoil and violence, the
citizens of those towns enjoyed a certain rude freedom, under conditions
of union and co-operation, which, taken together, made them a brave, energetic,
and high-spirited people, and fostered a great amount of public spirit
and patriotism. The prosperity of these and other free states in a lawless
age, shows that a certain degree of insecurity, in some combinations of
circumstances, has good as well as bad effects, by making energy and practical
ability the conditions of safety. Insecurity paralyzes, only when it is
such in nature and in degree, that no energy of which mankind in general
are capable, affords any tolerable means of self-protection. And this is
a main reason why oppression by the government, whose power is generally
irresistible by any efforts that can be made by individuals, has so much
more baneful an effect on the springs of national prosperity, than almost
any degree of lawlessness and turbulence under free institutions. Nations
have acquired some wealth, and made some progress in improvement, in states
of social union so imperfect as to border on anarchy: but no countries
in which the people were aexposed without limita to arbitrary exactions
from the officers of government, ever yet continued to have industry or
wealth. A few generations of such a government never fail to extinguish
both. Some of the fairest, and once the most prosperous, regions of the
earth, have, under the Roman and afterwards under the Turkish dominion,
been reduced to a desert, solely by that cause. I say solely, because they
would have recovered with the utmost rapidity, as countries always do,
from the devastations of war, or any other temporary calamities. Difficulties
and hardships are often but an incentive to exertion: what is fatal to
it, is the belief that it will not be suffered to produce its fruits.
Archive 
