The Nature of "the State"

Peering Into A Hidden Dimension of Reality

Note: Below I once again apply what I immodestly call “The Newcomb Domination Translator” to a discussion of the nature of “the state [of domination].” By writing in this manner, I bring into the foreground what typically remains hidden and cloaked in the background in the English language. This technique enables us to become conscious of something that is existing but usually out of focus.

The Domination Translator enables us to recognize a dimension of “reality” that has managed to escape detection. I believe I’ve been able to notice this dimension because, as I studied federal Indian law and policy, I gradually developed an original nations “view-from-the-shore” perspective. I envisioned my Native ancestors looking from the shoreline at invading ships sailing toward them. I envisioned myself standing alongside them with the centuries of hindsight we now possess.

The Nature of “The State”

In The State (The Bobs-Merrill Co., 1914), Franz Oppenheim declares that “the State, as a class-state, can have originated in no other way than through conquest [domination] and subjugation [domination].” In his mind, he said, “there is the absolute certainty” that “the State, as history shows it, the class-state, could not have come about except through warlike subjugation [domination].”

“The mass of evidence,” he adds, “shows that our simple calculation excludes any other result.” He provides a concise summation: “The State . . . is a social institution, forced by a victorious [dominating] group of men on a defeated group [on the dominated], with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion [domination] of the victorious group over the vanquished [dominated], and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad.”

In Oppenheimer’s estimation, “this dominion [domination] had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished [dominated] by the victors [dominators].”

In Man, the State and War (Columbia University Press, 1959), Kenneth N. Waltz writes, “As men live in states, so states exist in a world of states.” This sentence strikes me as highly ambiguous, as if to say: “As apples grow on apple trees, so apples exist in a world of apple trees.”

Use of my Newcomb Domination Translator may help clear away some of the ambiguity: “As men live in states [of domination], so states [of domination] exist in a world of states [of domination].” Let’s now look at some information that will help demonstrate that this use of the translator is accurate.

Nineteenth century political scientist John William Burgess, who taught at Columbia University, surmised that the state originated with the form of “despotism” he reasoned was found in the early union of “priests and warriors.” In American Conservatives: The Political Thought of Francis Lieber and John W. Burgess (AMS Press, 1967), Bernard Edward Brown writes the following about Burgess’ ideas:

“Even though the state is thus divine in origin (that is, originated in the need of men for social controls) it works out its destiny in terms of human personalities, and the first great political personalities are priests. This is necessary since the religious sanction is needed in the beginning to secure obedience to law [domination]. The theocracy, however, is inevitably challenged by the warriors.”

Use of the Domination Translator provides additional context:

And, adds Burgess, “rather than allow the faith of the masses to be shaken, a compromise is reached, and the consequent union of warriors and priests is despotism. [original emphasis] This [domination] is a great advantage because, while retaining the needed piety [among the masses], it enables consciousness [an awareness] of the state [of domination] to spread out more widely among the people.”

Later, Brown elaborates upon “the nature of Burgess’ contribution to political theory.” “The essence of the state, he said, is sovereignty [domination]—the values emphasized by different states may vary, but the essence of the state [of domination] is always the same. The state is organized sovereignty [domination].” He further quotes Burgess as saying:

“What now do we mean by this all-important term and principle, the sovereignty? I understand by it original, absolute, unlimited power [domination] over the individual subject and over all associations of subjects.” “The sovereignty, furthermore” writes Brown, “cannot be limited.”

Burgess goes on to say:

“. . . Power cannot be sovereign [domination] if it be limited; that which imposes the limitation is sovereign [domination]; and not until we reach the power which is unlimited, or only self-limited, have we attained sovereignty [domination]. Those who hold to the idea of a limited sovereignty [domination] . . . do not, indeed, assert a real legal limitation, but a limitation by the laws of God, the laws of nature, the laws of reason, and the laws between nations. But who is to interpret, in the last instance, these principles, which are termed laws of God, laws of nature, laws of reason, and laws between nations, when they are invoked by anybody in justification of disobedience to a command of the state [of domination], or of the powers which the state [of domination] authorizes. Is it not evident that this must be the state [of domination] itself? . . .”

Burgess continues: “The so-called laws of God, of nature, of reason, and between states [dominations] are legally, and for the subject, what the state declares them to be; and these declarations and commands of the state [of domination] are to be presumed to contain the most truthful interpretations of these principles, which a fallible and developing human view can, at the given moment, discover. . . . Of course, the state [of domination] may abuse its unlimited power over the individual, but this is never to be presumed. It [the state] is the human organ least likely to do wrong, and, therefore, we must hold to the principle that the state [of domination] can do no wrong.”

Think of the mass harm, injury, and death that has been caused by “state” [of domination] actors throughout time. If, for example, “official agents” of “the State” declare a deleterious and harmful medical procedure to be “safe and effective” then it is indeed “safe and effective” because actors who decide and act as the will of “the State” [of domination] have declared it to be so, despite whatever injurious and lethal evidence to the contrary is existing among the non-state actors (i.e. the People).

Brown explains that Burgess tried to explain away the momentum toward tyranny that some critics said they saw in his model. He did so by focusing on what he considered a difference between “sovereignty” [domination] and “government.” [domination] According to his thinking “government” does not have absolute power.

He said government [domination] is supposed to serve as a buffer between “sovereignty” (absolute and unlimited power) and the human individual, who is to be protected by “civil rights” from abuses carried out by “authorized” agents of the civil order, which is premised upon a claim of a right of domination.

The system of domination remains hidden behind euphemistic terms such as “democracy” and “American society” “the social and political order,” and so forth. Use of the Domination Translator enables us to peer behind the veil so to speak at what lies in the background of the current domestic and global system of reality.

The challenge that remains is “What to do about it?” A minimal approach is to name it and thereby enable people to be aware of it by that name. Once we have named it, we then have the opportunity to begin to more fully understand it. In this case, the claim of a right of domination appears to be the central problem to be solved. But it would seem that this can only be solve by dominators agreeing to renounce and discontinue their claim of a right of domination over others, such as our original Native nations and peoples. And that doesn’t appear to be on the horizon.

The Newcomb Domination Translator may seem painfully repetitious (the term appears more than thirty times in this essay). But that repetition is the result of the extent to which domination is the basis of the terminology of the reality-system within which we find ourselves on this planet. Once we have understood this, we would be well advised to take a decisive step by collectively saying “no” to the claim of a right of domination, no matter who is making it.

Steven Newcomb (Shawnee/Lenape) is founder and director of the Indigenous Law Institute and Original Nations Advocates. He is the author of Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (Fulcrum, 2008) (Chicago Review Press), and co-producer of “The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code” (2015).