GROWTH OF THE STATE 247 



the personality of the primitive social aggregates by substituting 

 for them a State infinitely greater in extent, which absorbs them. 

 Thus, after the destruction of the family as the pivot of 

 poUtical hfe, after the destruction of the primitive territorial 

 aggregates, we fijid the modern State constituted by the numerous 

 and infinitely varied activities of these primitive groups which 

 it has absorbed.^ But the modern State, in its turn, threatens 

 to be destroyed, and to lose its personality in a vast international 

 organisation. The system of capitalist production is essentially 

 international ; and the State being to-day first and foremost an 

 economic institution, and the pohtical interests of the State 

 being identified with its economic interests, the frontiers of the 

 State tend to disappear, and to be merged into a single world- 

 embracing economic institution. But at the same time as the 

 State extends its boundaries to a point such that the State as 

 we know it must disappear ; at the same time that the develop- 

 ment of production and the extension of the markets tend to 

 efiace more and more completely the heterogeneous national 

 States, and to merge them into one homogeneous international 

 State whose limits will be those of the international market 

 itself ; at the same time the State endeavours to embrace within 

 its sphere of action an ever greater part of the individual's life. 

 The old doctrine of laissez-faire, which presided at the foundation 

 of the modem economic edifice, has itself become antiquated by 

 reason of the proportions assumed by this edifice. Everywhere 

 to-day we find the doctrines of State Socialism in favour ; the 

 State endeavoujs to bring home to the individual the essential 

 identity of the interests of both ; and with this aim in view the 

 State undertakes to envelop the individual's life in such a way 

 that the individual shaU at every moment be reminded of the 

 fact that the State is interested in his welfare. Already as a 



1 We are, of course, merely indicating the principal phases of social 

 evolution. We are not to be taken as implying that the modern State is 

 the immediate successor of the ancient city ; there were, of course, numerous 

 intermediary and transitional stages. 



