Page 31 - The Drucker Lectures

12 [ The Drucker Lectures

wrong, depending upon the principles, methods, and aims of the
philosopher and theologian.
All this, as you may now have realized, has been by way of in-
troduction to my assignment tonight, to speak on the “Myth of
the State.” The people who first talked of the state as a myth did
not understand the term to mean what I make it mean. On the
contrary, by calling the state a myth they meant to say that there
really is no such thing as a state, that there are only individuals
existing by themselves, and that it is a lie and worse to pretend
that there is a state. Nevertheless, the state is a true myth in the
sense in which I have been using the term.
The experience of belonging to a group, the experience that
the group is real, has existence and has definite qualities and,
you might even say, has a body, is one every one of us has had.
And we also know, beyond rational proof and beyond contra-
diction, that there are situations in which this phenomenon we
call “group” has more reality and more life than the individual,
situations in which the individual is willing to die so that the
group may live. You may try to explain this phenomenon ra-
tionally and develop the state from the biological necessity of
the family to care for infant and nursing mother, or from the
utilitarian principle that half a loaf is better than no bread at
all. But you won’t get very far this way. Certainly you could not
explain rationally that central political experience, the experi-
ence we call “allegiance.” You can only deny that there is such a
basic experience, that there is anything but the individual—but
that makes little more sense than to deny any other basic expe-
rience, such as that of our senses; it also makes you incapable of
any political effectiveness and action. If you are in politics, you
must accept the reality of the organized group as a basic experi-
ence of man’s life. You must accept the myth of the state as a
real myth, as a symbolical expression of a genuine experience,
common to all of us.