STATO

STATE. – The term has not always been used in the sense currently attributed to II. For a long time, it served to indicate the personal condition of individuals, according to whether they were free or slaves, citizens or foreigners. Traces of this usage still remain today in expressions such as “personal status” or “family status.” By extension, it later came to designate the condition of certain social classes, as, for example, in France, where, until the Revolution of 1789, the assembly of the estates was called the *États généraux*. From the 15th century onward, the modern meaning appears in the history of political doctrines, introduced by Machiavelli into the Italian language and from there passed into other European languages. French has *État*, English *State*, German *Staat*, Spanish *Estado*, and in all these languages the term carries the same fundamental meaning of a supreme, more or less independent political society.

Apart from this generally accepted generic meaning, the rest is a matter of controversy in contemporary doctrine. The State may be subjected to a twofold inquiry. The first considers it as a social formation, actually existing on the plane of reality, which appeared at an unspecified time in human history, and investigates its origin by tracing the historical causes from which the fact arose. From this perspective, the State falls within the scope of sociology, understood, however, as an empirical science, lest it be confused with social philosophy. The second inquiry examines its constituent elements, traces its origin to natural and constant causes, determines its end, and endeavors to establish the laws of its operation in relation to the essential purposes it pursues. This is the province of legal science, commonly referred to as the general doctrine of the State.

The first task of an organic doctrine consists in the precise determination of its object through a substantial definition that expresses its concept and essential elements, which must be present in any social formation for it to be recognized as a State. Theorists, however, are deeply divided on this point. The definitions they give of the State are as numerous as the theories from which each proceeds.

Despite this extreme divergence of opinion, one cannot subscribe to Bastiat’s exaggeration, who promised a prize to the writer capable of proposing an acceptable definition of the State. Various currents and theories agree on certain elements from which one can reconstruct, with some approximation, the most common concept. Bluntschli, for instance, defined the State as the political and organized personification of a nation in a given territory; Jellinek, as a territorial and organic community that acknowledges no superior authority; Orlando, as a politically organized society for the protection of law. The differences among these definitions are notable, and the influence of particular theories is evident; yet they contain some common elements that may be reduced to the following: the State is an organized and independent society living in a defined territory.

I. CONCEPT AND NATURE OF THE STATE

It is sufficient to transfer these first data to the State to obtain its generic element. The State, in the first place, requires a plurality of human individuals, whether isolated or already grouped into smaller societies, the whole of which is called the people. There is no State without a people, be it more or less numerous, since quantity does not affect its nature. States include both large political entities, such as modern nations, and small republics, of which a few examples still survive. Nor does its existence require a people homogeneous in language, customs, traditions, and culture, as is claimed by the principle of nationality (v.), for its emergence and affirmation are sufficient grounds in the universal similarities of human nature and the identity of fundamental human aspirations, which effectively stimulate and guide the instinct of solidarity. The State is not identical with the nation, but it can and does exist independently of II.
Nevertheless, the plurality of subjects alone is not sufficient for the formation of the State unless they are united by an inner principle of mutual cohesion, by virtue of which the original dispersion gives way to the rapprochement of parts and their integration into a higher entity. This principle consists in the convergence of wills toward a common end. A people morally united is a State. The internal unity that the State requires as a constituent element is neither, nor can it in any way be, of a physical or biological order, since upon rational subjects, who represent the matter to be unified, only a cause of a moral order can act—namely, a common ideal toward which individual wills spontaneously and freely converge. The State is consequently an essentially moral entity.

It must be noted, however, that not every moral union forms a State. For its existence, a stable and permanent union is required. Just as individuals casually gathered in a crowd or voluntarily assembled in a square do not form a society, so too several subjects cooperating temporarily on an enterprise do not form a State, which, as the very etymology indicates, requires a union indefinite in time and ideally perpetual in the intention of the members, who, precisely because of this perpetuity of the bond, feel themselves bound to a common destiny. The State, therefore, is not identical with the individuals, nor does it result from their arithmetic sum. It is rather a distinct moral entity, albeit inadequately, possessing its own being, separate and distinct from the being of its component parts; it is a subject in itself and thus a bearer of its own ends, which are not the ends of isolated or summed individuals. This being, upon which its moral subjectivity rests, consists in the bundle of relations that constitute the fabric of social life and is therefore a relational, not a substantial, being, emerging from an ordering principle and not from a physical cause.

The rationality of the parts that make up the State requires that another element be highlighted, one that, though not intrinsic, is necessary for identifying and classifying social formations. This element is the common end toward which the free wills of individuals converge: “societies are specified by their end.” The State is an eminently teleological entity. Internal unity could not arise if the intelligence of its parts did not perceive a worthy end to be pursued and attained, and if the will, enlightened by intellectual reflection, did not make that end the object of its aspirations. When acting consciously, man always acts for an end, and he cannot escape this law of his rationality even in the creation of a social being. If, therefore, he desires stable coexistence with his fellows and accepts collaboration, reason, with all the burdens and limitations of freedom that it entails, he desires and accepts it for a well-defined purpose.

As a teleological entity, the State falls under the domain of morality. Its entire operation, governed by an intrinsic and essential finality, is subject to evaluation based on the criterion of whether it draws nearer to or distances itself from the end toward which the wills tend—and this is a moral evaluation. Just as the physical subject is an ethical subject in the sense that all its actions are subject to the laws of its ultimate end, so the moral subject, the State, is an ethical subject—not in the pejorative sense that it is the source of ethics, but in the sense that all its operations are subject to the laws derived from its intrinsic finality.

The complete concept of the State, however, has not yet been reached. The constitutive elements thus far highlighted are also present in other social formations—family, tribe, commune, nation—and thus they offer only the genus or generic aspect of the State. It is therefore necessary to determine its specific aspect. The first and fundamental note that separates and distinguishes the State from other social formations, as Aristotle well intuited, consists in its self-sufficiency, or, as the Scholastics maintained, in its perfection. The State is a perfect or self-sufficient society. This property, however, must be properly understood to avoid misunderstandings. Experimental analysis shows that all social formations, whether natural or voluntary, inferior to the State, have a limited purpose aimed at satisfying certain human needs and, beyond that, lack within themselves all the means necessary to achieve that purpose. The family, for instance—the first human social nucleus—has as its purpose the propagation of the species and the proper education of offspring and is not by itself sufficient to meet its manifold needs. From this limitation and insufficiency arises the necessity for these societies to be incorporated into a broader society that embraces within its end all the goods of human life and possesses the indispensable means to procure them. They are, therefore, essentially subordinate and dependent societies.

The self-sufficiency of the State thus refers to two terms, but not in the same way or to the same extent. The first is the natural end, with respect to which it is autonomous on the temporal plane. The end of the State is comprehensive of all the goods of life; that is, it is universal in scope and content, since it must procure for its subjects a sufficient life. As such, it is not subordinate to other ends; it is supreme in the hierarchy of human values and, on the temporal plane, subordinates to itself the particular ends of individuals and lesser social formations. It remains, however, intermediate with respect to the transcendent end of the person, which it is called to serve. The second term to which self-sufficiency refers is the means useful and necessary for attaining that end, with respect to which it is only relative. The perfection of the State does not require absolute autarchy, a utopian and never attainable ideal, but a relative sufficiency in the indispensable means for an orderly collective life, varying according to the degree of civilization attained by peoples.

This perfection, in relation to the lesser societies living within it and to other societies of equal rank with which it enters into relations, is visibly concretized in its independence, otherwise known as sovereignty. The State is an independent and sovereign moral subject. Since its natural and essential end is not subordinate to any other end of the same human order, neither is it subordinate to any other society of the same order; thus it is autonomous both with respect to the lesser societies that it subordinates to itself and with respect to equal societies, with which it enters into relations on a plane of perfect parity. To autonomous ends correspond autonomous subjects, independent and sovereign within and without. This essential autonomy, however, must not be understood in the absolute sense, as contemporary thought has done with the dogma of sovereignty (v.), but in the relative sense of independence of will and action with respect to societies of the same rank, so that its decisions need not be referred to a higher authority for approval. The State remains subordinate to God, as the author of social life, to His laws and prescriptions; in the temporal order, to the transcendent end of the human person, with respect to which it is a means; and in the supernatural order, indirectly to the Church insofar as spiritual matters are concerned.

At this point in the analysis, the State can be defined, as Catholic thought has always defined it, as a perfect civil society. The terms of this definition should now be easily understood. It is necessary, however, to make explicit an essential note implied within II. The being of the State, as has already been said, results from the bundle of intersubjective relations that compose and sustain II. Now, these relations have the particular characteristic of being juridical, both because they are founded upon a right and because they are regulated by law. Thus, law, both in the subjective sense of faculty and in the objective sense of norm, must be considered coeval with the State. There is no State without law, although law may exist without the State. At the very moment when wills unite to give life to the State, law spontaneously arises within it; an embryonic order, otherwise called the substantial constitution, is born to guide and govern its action, just as the power of government arises spontaneously. The legal order always accompanies the birth of the State and is therefore rightly defined as original. It is not possible, however, to identify the State with its legal order, since the subject is always distinct from the norm that regulates its conduct.

The juridical essence of social relations is reflected in the State itself, impressing upon it the character of a juridical subject holding rights. The legal personality of the State is not a fiction or a formalistic construction but a reality rooted in its moral unity and in the autonomy of its ends and its value. It would, however, be an error to transfer to this personality the concept of person valid for the physical subject or conceived in terms of private law. In this regard, the full force of analogy must be taken into account when transposing concepts to the moral entity that is the State.

The most common doctrine considers the State, besides a juridical subject, a territorial entity, ranking territory among its constitutive elements. This opinion is not accepted by the majority of Catholic theorists, for whom territory is merely an integral element. If, indeed, the State is a social formation whose production requires only a plurality of rational subjects and the convergence of their wills toward the same end, with an embryonic law and a supreme authority, then for its existence and operation a fixed territory is not in itself necessary. Nevertheless, in the present development of civilization, it is impossible to conceive of a State without its territory, from which the people derive the primary means of subsistence and with which it enters into a quasi-vital communion. The bond, however, that connects territory to the State cannot be configured as a right of the State in its own body, nor can it be classified among ordinary proprietary rights. Territory must rather be regarded as an object over which the State exercises its jurisdictional power, a limit to its jurisdictional authority, and a substratum in which it lives and governs. It is not, therefore, a property of the State, nor can the concept of eminent domain, as used by older writers, be applied to II.
II. ORIGIN OF THE STATE — Opinions on the origin of the State are even conflicting within Catholic doctrine itself. The contractualist theory retains only historical value. Criticism has shown that the state of pure nature, as conceived and described differently by Hobbes and Rousseau, has never been historically accurate, and thus the supposed contract by which man would have ended his absolute freedom to create social life is nothing more than a poetic construct without support in reality. Recent thought, particularly outside Catholic doctrine, is oriented in three directions. Some consider the question of the State’s origin futile, asserting that it needs no justification, since it imposes itself as a fact produced by particular political and social conditions, upon which law is superimposed.

Others attribute its birth to the spontaneous evolution to which nature is subject. Under the impulse of immanent forces, nature evolves, giving rise to the variety of beings and organisms, among which the State would be the highest, its genesis thus attributable solely to the physico-biological laws of the cosmos. Still others assign physical force as its cause. The State would be the effect of violent subjugation, to which modern so-called social Darwinism has given support by placing the struggle for existence at the foundation of political life, with the principle of the dominance of the strong over the weak.

Within Catholic thought, two opinions still hold sway: the first traces its origin to a conscious and voluntary act of man, who, together with others, strives toward a common goal. This collective voluntary act, however, is not given the value of a contract, whether tacit or expressed. The second traces it to certain facts from whose mere existence the State would spontaneously arise, its birth not depending on the causal influence of the subjects’ will, though it cannot exclude a subsequent spiritual act of adhesion to the fact. The facts to which this causality is attributed, called associative facts, would be the natural development of the patriarchal family, economic and commercial relations, subjugation following a lost war, and others (cf. T. Tischleder, *Ursprung und Träger der Staatsgewalt nach der Lehre des hl. Thomas*, Gladbach 1923).

Regarding the question of origin, it must first be clarified that it does not refer to the historical origin of this or that State, nor to its remote and ultimate cause, but to its proximate cause, by whose action its being always results. It is beyond doubt that more than one State owes its historical origin to force, just as it is beyond doubt that certain facts may have influenced its appearance. The question, however, is whether these are the true causes or merely occasions in whose presence the true cause operated. With respect to the remote and ultimate cause, no divergence of opinion exists within Catholic thought. It is placed in God, who, having implanted in human nature—created by Him—the insuperable instinct for sociability, stands as the supreme principle of every social formation and thus also of the State. This problem, which is fundamental in social theory, is entirely neglected by contemporary doctrine, within which, as has been seen, there are those who even exclude the question of proximate origin.

Yet this exclusion is unjustified, for a doctrine concerning the being, nature, purposes, and powers of the State remains without foundation if it does not trace back to its source. True science does not accept experimental facts in their present materiality but transcends them to investigate causes and establish universal principles. Granted, then, that the State is a fact, to attain adequate knowledge of it, one must necessarily discover the causes that explain II. Objective analysis of reality allows two essential points to be established in resolving the question.

First, the elements composing the organism of the State are rational subjects possessing an intelligence directed toward the search for truth and a will aimed at the attainment of good; as such, they are free, conscious, and responsible for their actions. From this first datum, which only a myopic materialism can doubt, there follows negatively the exclusion of all mechanistic, evolutionist, and biological theories, which, with their determinism, oppose human spirituality and rationality and freedom, and positively the deduction that the causes of the State must necessarily be of a higher order.

The second point that objective analysis of reality allows to be established consists in determining the deepest and most universal motives that stimulate man’s natural tendency toward social life. These motives are two: the inescapable need to expand one’s own being and personality beyond the narrow circle of individuality through an affective bond by which, while satisfying the feeling of solidarity—which is ultimately nothing other than natural love toward those who share the same nature—one’s person is also extended in offspring or in the exchange of goods; and the necessity of filling, with the help of others, the deficiencies with which man is born. Unable to secure for himself alone conditions of life adequate to his rational nature, nor to achieve by himself the physical, intellectual, and moral perfection toward which his higher faculties naturally tend, man seeks the stable collaboration of his fellows to remedy his own indigence. The motives described are insuperable exigencies of nature, yet at the same time they rise to the plane of moral order, for in the rational creature they are spiritualized, acting upon his free will and effectively stimulating him to emerge from isolation.

The proximate cause of the State resides, therefore, in the will of its subjects, in that act of free and conscious adherence to a common purpose which, by generating unity of intent, produces the being of the State. This conclusion is reinforced by the first of the points established above. If the material part of the State is constituted by rational, free, and conscious beings, and these, by virtue of their essential rationality, always act for an end that is known and willed, then in the production of the political entity they must act in the same way. It follows, once again, that the proximate cause of the State cannot reside in anything other than the will of man. Associative facts are not, therefore, the true causes of the State, but merely external conditions that have more or less facilitated the moral cohesion of wills. The principal among these, the patriarchal family, could not transform itself into the State unless the family relationship was changed into a juridical relationship, and this could only occur when the individual families or individuals recognized in the patriarch a new quality as social leader, no longer invested with a merely private function but with an essentially public one.

At the origin of the State, therefore, stands the free and conscious human person, who, through an act of will, first creates it and then maintains it in being through continued adherence to the collective purpose once accepted. It remains open to the Catholic, however, to uphold the theory of associative facts as a probable explanation of the origin of the State. The theory here expounded was dominant until the 18th century and has since returned to being the most common.

III. THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE — Opinions regarding the natural structure of the State divide into two extreme currents, which may be designated by the names atomism and monism, and into an intermediate one that reconciles the opposing positions of the former two through a synthesis of the individual and the social.

Atomism recognizes in man an autonomous value, with a reason that is the sole criterion of truth and an absolutely free will, an independent source of every law. As such, man cannot be subject to an authority that he himself has not recognized. The State, consequently, is not a unitary entity, the effect of the convergence of individual wills, but the arithmetical sum of individuals, drawn together by the impulse of their private interest, like atoms that do not fuse into a common social being. Its authority is the sum of partial sovereignties, calculated according to the arithmetic of the majority; its end does not differ from the private ends of individuals; its task is exhausted in the protection of private interests and rights. This is, in schematic form, the individualistic conception of the French Revolution and of the liberal current derived from II.
Monism branches into various theories, some spiritualistic, others materialistic, of which it will suffice to outline the general lines. Immanentist monism rests on the concept of the unity of the absolute spirit, which, evolving by virtue of an internal and necessary dialectic, becomes conscious of itself in man and in the State becomes the reality of the ethical idea, which thinks and accomplishes what it knows insofar as it knows II. The State is the reality of substantial will and the rational in itself and for itself; in its appearance, one must see the entry of God into the world. The individual is a transient phenomenon without any autonomous value, destined to serve II. There are no ends that transcend the State, which can only be an end in itself.

On this monistic foundation have been built many of the nationalist conceptions, immanentist in the case of Fichte, contaminated by materialistic elements in others. According to these latter, society would be a fraction of the human species, and the nation a unifying unity of the series of generations, an organism functioning by means of other organs, governed by immanent laws of life, in which individuals are infinitesimal and transient elements, totally subordinated to its superior ends.

Materialist monism has more numerous ramifications. In general, it rests on the biological concept of the organism. The State would be a living organism, governed by its own laws, within which individuals are nothing more than perishable cells. As substance, being, and living person, the State carries out its activity entirely independently of men, who have value only insofar as they are integral parts of its organism and lose it if detached from it, as a cell from a living body. The crudest organismic theories draw their support from this analogy. Not all those who have embraced it have gone to the extremes of Schäffle, who described the anatomy of the State by designating its muscles, veins, nervous system, and so on, or of Bluntschli, who discovered its sex, but all have used the organic theory to absorb the individual into the unity of the State, annihilating him as an autonomous person. Racism and materialist classism are but variants of this materialism; both, indeed, with different formulations, arrive at the annihilation of the individual in the State identified with race or class.

Of a different nature is juridical monism, which dissolves the State into law. Kelsen and the Vienna school founded by him identified the State with the legal order, to which they attributed sovereignty, thus managing to detach the concept from the human reality on which its existence rests. A few observations suffice to demolish the edifice erected by all these theories.

Atomism shatters the State into its elements and offers no account of its internal unity, the cohesion of wills, or its organic character. Against immanentist monism stands the verdict of conscience, which has never perceived or testified to the existence of a universal substance. On the contrary, it affirms a principle entirely opposed to this, namely, the distinction, separation, and complete subjectivity of each human person, who insists on proclaiming itself the source of its own action and responsible for its deeds—a claim that would have no foundation if spirit were unique and universal. Experience further teaches that the State is not a substance in itself, endowed with its own principle of operation, but an aggregate in which individuals retain their full substantiality and freedom of action.

Biological-organismic monism lacks any scientific foundation. As Sombart observed, soul and organism are bound to life and can be found only where there is a true unity of life, which occurs only in individuals; hence, in the State there is no other subject that is truly and properly organic except the individual components. Physical organism and social organism, Jellinek further affirms, differ substantially in this: that in the State the unity of will is never the work of the creative hand of nature but is the effect of conscious processes; that the will of the State is very often realized through consciously practiced coercion, whereas in unitary organisms neither a will resulting from multiple wills nor the coercion of one will by another is conceivable in any way.

In its less crude forms, social monism depicts the State as an entity distinct from individuals, possessed of its own free and autonomous will. But such a construction proves as fantastic as that of biological organismic theories, since the being of the State is not substantial and results from the bundle of intersubjective relations, and will, as a faculty, resides only in the human person. Only man thinks and wills; the State thinks and wills through persons who place their capacities at its service.

The natural structure of the State cannot be defined by atomism nor by monism, but by a theory that, while preserving intact the two terms of the social relationship—individual and State—subsequently unites them through a moral principle. This is precisely the orientation of Catholic thought, which respects all the values of nature and is chiefly concerned to safeguard the human person, whether stifled by previous conceptions or excessively exalted by them. It accepts the organic nature of the State, but does not attribute to organicism a physical value, only an analogical one, as an image capable of explaining unity. In the State, man does not lose his own being, nor does he renounce his transcendent rights and ends; his personality continues to exist intact with all its rational demands, subordinated only to the ends of the collectivity and its authority, insofar as these concern the common good. He is, however, bound to other men by a tie that is not substantial but accidental, not physical but moral, which gives rise to a higher entity, the State, one in its composition and bearer of its own ends, which are not properly the ends of individuals, yet to which it must serve as a means for attaining earthly well-being.

The analogy in the application of the organicist theory to the State allows one to avoid the twin pitfalls of social atomism, which shatters it into its elements, and monism, which dissolves them into the State, thus resolving the age-old question of the relationship between individual and State with a harmonious conception that neither depreciates the State nor annihilates the individual, but allows both to coexist in the unity of political life as terms that presuppose and complement one another.

Regarding the essential end of the State and political authority—questions or aspects of the general doctrine that still require elucidation—see BENE COMUNE and AUTORITÀ, where they have been treated at length. For the forms of government see ARISTOCRAZIA; AUTOCRAZIA; DEMOCRAZIA; MONARCHIA, etc.