The Difference Between Government and State

The Difference Between Government and State

Thomas Allen

In Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov (Charles H. Hamilton, editor; Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1980). Chodorov gives an excellent, concise explanation of the difference between government and state. (Here, state means a political entity and not a territorial entity as commonly used in the United States.) Referenced page numbers to quotations from this book are enclosed in parentheses.
Chodorov defines government as:

a specialized service arising out of community life. It owes its existence to the individual’s interest in himself. Its specific job is to maintain the peace necessary to productive enterprise. Its related job is that of providing such services as may enable each of the specialists in the community to carry on more efficiently. And that’s all (p. 95).

Among the services that government provides are police, courts, and other services that prevent trespass against or endangerment of a person and his property. Government may also provide some services that are beneficial to all members of a community such as a uniform system of weights and measures, road maintenance, and sanitation. Much beyond these, it becomes a state.
He adds:

The distinctive characteristic of government is that in performing its functions it may have recourse to the use of coercive authority. Its particular attribute is power, vested in it by the producing specialists for the specific purpose of maintaining a condition necessary to their production (p. 95).

(Producing specialists are farmers, workers, businessmen, and others who are involved in producing real wealth.)
  Unfortunately, these protective measures can be used against producing specialists. Protectors can use their power to plunder the producing specialists. (For this reason, the producing specialists should always outgun the protectors.) When the protectors use their power to plunder instead of protect, as happens in a welfare state, which is built on plunder, the government “ceases to be a service and becomes a state” (p. 96).
“[T]he the moral basis of political authority is the right of life and the related right of property. But when that political authority is so exercised as to deny these basic rights, it divests itself of all ethical validity; and that is so even if those who so exercise the political authority surround themselves with law, custom, and a desire to do good. . . . [W]hen the exercise of political authority deprives the individual of his rights it ceases to be a service and becomes a disservice” (p. 96).
Chodorov defines the state as “those in whom the political authority is vested and who use it for other than protective purposes — [justifying] its action by invoking a ‘higher law’ (p. 96).” Thus, it replaces the rights of the individual with the rights of the community, nation, humanity, etc. The justification of the state rests on the chimera of a group of people acting together having rights that supersede the rights of the individual.
When the people in power use government to “engage in projects which jeopardize the life or property of the individual, or utilize that power so that either they or a favored group benefits at the expense of the producing public, that government is transformed into state” (p. 295).
Chodorov writes:

The state by virtue of the power of government which it acquires, perpetuates the purpose of conquest; by legal methods it regularizes the exploitation of the producer, in favor of the nonproducer, and by an elaborate system of education it obfuscates the immoral relationship and even covers the exploiters with an aura of respectability (p. 97).

Continuing, he explains:

The state is a person or a number of persons who exercise force, or the threat of it, to cause others to do what they otherwise would not do, or to refrain from satisfying a desire. That is, the state is political power, and political power is force exerted by persons on persons. The superhuman character given it is intended to induce subservience” (pp. 388-384).

Thus, the state is a group of morally responsible people combining together to plunder the wealth of producing specialists and to create and grant special privileges to themselves and their allies.
He notes that government is a social instrument and the state is an unsocial perversion of government. Government is healthy, and the state is pathological. Consequently, the state is the enemy of the individual.
He concludes:

The distinction between government and state, then, is in the use to which political coercion is put. When it is used negatively, for the protection of life and property, with which must be included the adjudicating of disputes among citizens, it is a service; when it is used positively, in the interests of one group of citizens, including politicians, against the interests of other groups, it is a disservice. In the one case it makes for harmony, in the other it is the cause of discord (p. 98).

  Thus, government is used to protect life and property. When government is used to plunder property and to grant special privileges, it becomes a state.
Although the Bible supports civil governments, it does not support the state. When a government degenerates into a state, it ceases having biblical support because the state is a form of idolatry.

An Illustration
Ancient Israel illustrates the difference between a government and a state. During the era of the judges (1441–1065?), Israel had a government, but it did not have a state. Judges, who were usually men of wisdom and integrity, ran their government. Judges ruled by natural selection and common consent. Custom and tradition restricted the judges to applying the laws that Moses had delivered from God and that had become traditional customs (common law). Violations of these laws carried their own penalties. Thus, the judges normally considered only crimes that were mala in se; that is, acts that are inherently immoral, such as, murder, thief, perjury, and adultery (miscegenation) — for God had declared such acts immoral. However, the judges did not execute their rulings; the people executed them usually by public opinion. (Judges also led the Israelites in war against invaders.)

In ancient Israel, the state arises with the kings. Samuel warned the Israelite against establishing a state (having a king). He warned:

11 And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he will take your sons, and appoint them unto him, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and they shall run before his chariots; 12 and he will appoint them unto him for captains of thousands, and captains of fifties; and he will set some to plow his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the instruments of his chariots. 13 And he will take your daughters to be perfumers, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. 14 And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. 15 And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. 16 And he will take your men-servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. 17 He will take the tenth of your flocks: and ye shall be his servants. 18 And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king whom ye shall have chosen you; and Jehovah will not answer you in that day (1 Samuel 8:11–18). (If only the tax level today was just 10 percent.)  

However, the Israelites rejected his advice, and Samuel gave them a king.
What Samuel had prophesied happened. With the rise of the state, enforcement of mala prohibitum became more important than mala in se. Mala prohibitum acts are acts that are illegal because the government declares them illegal. Examples of mala prohibita are failure to file the proper paperwork, failure to pay taxes, failure to obtain the government’s permission (licenses, permits, etc.) before undertaking certain actions, failure to follow regulations, and traffic laws.
Unlike malum in se, which is an act that is wrong in and of itself, malum prohibita is an act that is wrong only because the government prohibits it. (If a country today had a government without a state, which none do, most likely, some mala prohibita, such traffic laws, would exist.)

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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