Angela Blount’s Reviews > Anatomy of the State > Status Update

..."But always, after a greater or smaller time lag, the State has moved into these new areas to cripple and confiscate social power once more."

"While social power is over nature, State power is over man. Through history, man's productive and creative forces have, time and again, carved out new ways of transforming nature for man's benefit. These have been the times when social power has spurted ahead of State power, and when the degree of state encroachment society has considerably lessened." ...

"In war, State power is pushed to its ultimate. And, under the slogans of defense and emergency, it can impose a tyranny upon the public, such as might openly resisted in time of peace. War thus provides many benefits to a State, and indeed every modern war has brought to waring peoples a permanent legacy of increased State burdens upon society."

"When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift. When the government is robbed, the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had before. The notion that they have earned that money is never entertained."

"Furthermore, an attack on conspiracy theories means that the subjects will become more gullible in believing the general welfare reasons that are always put forth by the State for engaging in any of its despotic actions. A conspiracy theory can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the State's ideological propaganda"

"The greatest danger to the state is independent intellectual criticism. There is no better way to stifle that criticism than to attack any isolated voice, any raiser of new doubts, as a profane violator of the wisdom of his ancestors."

"The state, on the other hand, is willing to offer the intellectuals a secure and permanent birth in the state apparatus, and thus a secure income, and a panoply of prestige. For the intellectuals will be handsomely rewarded for the important function they perform for the state rulers--of which group, they now become a part."

"Put simply, we may state that the intellectual's livelihood in the free market is never too secure. For the intellectual must depend on the values and choices of the masses of his fellow men, and it is precisely characteristic of the masses that they are generally uninterested in intellectual matters."

"It is evident why the state needs intellectuals. It is not so evident why intellectuals need the state."

..."The intellectuals are, therefore, the opinion molders in society. And since it is precisely a molding of opinion that the state most desperately needs, the basis for age-old alliance between the state and the intellectuals becomes clear."