The Ethics of the State

Abstract

On August 23, 1927, the great and heroic state of Massachusetts killed a fish peddler and a cobbler.¹ It had been intending and most intently wishing to kill them quick, but it took 7 years to set its courage to the sticking point. After all the profound and earnest observation and animadversions and protestations so copiously poured out upon it, this episode still awaits the Andersonian terrible infant (or the “little child” of a still older fable) who will make the obvious remark that the emperor is naked, and liquidate the whole affair. Nor is this as much, hardly, a figure of speech as it is literal truth. The “emperor” thus undressed and paraded before the public in what artists call the nude is in fact the political state. The death of a fish peddler and a cobbler has done what a thousand life times of the most intelligent argument could not have done, it has “demonstrated” objectively, the rigorous, scientific truth of the conception which the two men held of the nature of the state, the anarchistic conception. I say rigorous, scientific truth, for it is not yet the pragmatic truth, the time has not yet come to act upon its truth, or even admittedly to recognize it openly and publicly. But it might be recognized on those rare occasions when intelligent persons are speaking in detachment and presumably trying to tell the mere truth.

Citation

Emmett, R.B. (2011), "The Ethics of the State", Emmett, R.B. (Ed.) Frank H. Knight in Iowa City, 1919–1928 (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 29 Part 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 169-183. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-4154(2011)000029B017