a government which is not only coercive; but collective
All government then is coercive; we happen to have created
a government which is not only coercive; but collective.
There are only two kinds of government, as I have already said,
the despotic and the democratic. Aristocracy is not a government,
it is a riot; that most effective kind of riot, a riot
of the rich. The most intelligent apologists of aristocracy,
sophists like Burke and Nietzsche, have never claimed
for aristocracy any virtues but the virtues of a riot,
the accidental virtues, courage, variety and adventure.
There is no case anywhere of aristocracy having established a universal
and applicable order, as despots and democracies have often done;
as the last Caesars created the Roman law, as the last Jacobins
created the Code Napoleon. With the first of these elementary
forms of government, that of the king or chieftain, we are not
in this matter of the sexes immediately concerned. We shall return
to it later when we remark how differently mankind has dealt with
female claims in the despotic as against the democratic field.
But for the moment the essential point is that in self-governing
countries this coercion of criminals is a collective coercion.
The abnormal person is theoretically thumped by a million
fists and kicked by a million feet. If a man is flogged we
all flogged him; if a man is hanged, we all hanged him.
That is the only possible meaning of democracy, which can give
any meaning to the first two syllables and also to the last two.
In this sense each citizen has the high responsibility of a rioter.
Every statute is a declaration of war, to be backed by arms.
Every tribunal is a revolutionary tribunal. In a republic
all punishment is as sacred and solemn as lynching.
