Proverbs on the State

November 12, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is politics in honor of Election Day (USA), which falls on November 8.

Today’s poem is a set of proverbs on the nature of the State.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

1. The end of the State is security: of property and person; from conquest, injury, hunger, exposure, and injustice.

2. To obtain security, citizens cede a portion of their liberty. This "social contract" is agreed to every time a citizen recognizes the legitimacy of the State.

3. States are legitimate, therefore, to the extent to which they provide security.

4. States rule through violence, either exercised or threatened. The degree of violence varies inversely with the degree of legitimacy; that is, the more security a state provides, the less violence it needs to rule.

5. States are also, and paradoxically, instruments of oppression, enforcing laws and practices that transfer wealth to the ruling class.

6. These contradictory visions of the State--as provider of security and as oppressor--are and have always been simultaneously true. The tension between them is played out in every decision, act, and pronouncement of government.

7. A state that is too oppressive loses legitimacy so completely that no amount of violence can prevent its overthrow. A state that is too just loses the support of the ruling class, which engineers a change either in policy or in government. Thus all states exist somewhere on a continuum between these two extremes. This is true regardless of their form of government.

8. The advantage of democracy is that the regular replacement of government by majority rule mitigates oppression. The disadvantage is that weak governments may fail to make citizens sufficiently secure.

9. To survive, democracy must provide enough security to make the relative weakness of a divided and restrained government worth the increase in liberty and justice. Otherwise, citizens will be willing to cede additional liberty in return for additional security, and democracy will fail.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/statpr.html . For more poems about politics, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/politicalpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Politics.

November 7: Elections, as You Know, Are Bought and Sold

November 8: After All, the Market Runs on Greed

November 9: Even When There’s Little Choice, We Choose

November 10: Fifty-Eight

November 11: Proverbs for Legislators

November 12: Proverbs on the State