First of all, let us be agreed as to what we wish to 

include in the term the State.



   There is, of course, the German school which enjoys

confusing _State_ with _Society_.  The best German

thinkers, and many among the French, are guilty of this

confusion because they cannot conceive of society

without a concentration of the State; and because of this

anarchists are usually accused of wanting to ``destroy

society'' and of advocating a return to ``the permanent

war of each against all.''



   Yet, to argue thus is to overlook altogether the

advances made in the domain of history during the last

thirty-odd years; it is to overlook the fact that humans

lived in Societies for thousands of years before the

State had been heard of; it is to forget that so far as

Europe is concerned the State is of recent origin---it

barely goes back to the sixteenth century; finally, it

is to ignore that the most glorious periods in history

are those in which civil liberties and communal life had

not yet been destroyed by the State, and in which large

numbers of people lived in communes and free

federations.



   The State is only one of the forms adopted by society

in the course of history.  Why then make no distinction

between what is permanent and what is accidental?



   Then again the _State_ has also been confused with

_Government_.  Since there can be no State without

government, it has been sometimes said that what one

must aim at is the absence of government and not the

abolition of the State.



   However, it seems to me that in State and government

we have two concepts of a different order.  The State

idea means something quite different from the idea of

government.  It not only includes the existence of a

power situated above society, but also of a _territorial

concentration_ as well as the _concentration of many

functions of the life of societies in the hands of a

few_.  It carries with it some new relationships between

members of society which did not exist before the

establishment of the State.  A whole mechanism of

legislation and of policing has to be developed in order

to subject some classes to the domination of others.



   This distinction, which at first sight might not be

obvious, emerges especially when one studies the origins

of the State.  



   Indeed, there is only one way of really

understanding the State, and that is to study its

historic development, and this is what we will try to

do.



		from:

		Peter Kropotkin

		_The State---Its Historic Role_ (1897)



		English translation copyright 

		Vernon Richards and Freedom Press 1969

		Angel Alley 

		84B Whitechapel High Street

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