Page 32 - The Drucker Lectures

The Myth of the State [ 13

And it is a real myth, according even to the dictionary defini-
tion I gave you at the beginning: “a tale, a fabrication, invoking
the supernatural to explain a natural phenomenon.” We may not
consciously personify the state as supernatural, though the process
that gave us the person of Uncle Sam and the symbolism of the flag
is probably not so very different from that that gave our ancestors
the corn goddess or the sacred oak of Dodona. But even without
the externals of personification, we see the state as a supernatural
being. We endow it with immortality and, though we cannot see
it, we give it reality and effectiveness, which means that we give
it the invisible body of the supernatural. All this, however, does
not mean, as the rationalists thought, that we deal with a mere
superstition, which dissolves before the light of logic and reason.
It means, on the contrary, that we are up against a reality and that
the myth alone makes it possible for us to deal with it rationally.
It makes no sense, then, to question whether there is a state
or whether there should be one. The very fact that we have the
myth of the state shows that the only question that is meaning-
ful is: What myth should we have, and how should we interpret
it, to have a true myth and a true state?
Often the answers have been given in an indirect form—that
is, by changing the title of the myth, by putting a different term
for state: tribe, polis, society, law, nation, race, etc. Of course,
each new title starts out with a different meaning and is brought
in with a definite propagandistic purpose. But very soon the
same old questions come up in connection with the new title,
which, to answer once and for all, the new title had been devised
for. Hence we have always been forced to do the job the hard
way: by working out the answers ourselves.
This job of working out the answers has been the central,
perhaps the only problem of political philosophy over the ages.
Therefore, I can hardly be expected to give you the solution in
the few minutes left to me tonight.