the law, equal individuals for the object of facilitating and securing the realization of the life purposes of each individual through the proper authorized agents by means of their jointly created and supervised institutions, laws, and resources.
"Such a definition of the State — and it is the only correct one — at once directs each to the claims that he has to make, but, at the same time, to the task that he has to perform. It makes of him as it were a State business partner, but it also makes the degree of the satisfaction of his claims dependent on his direct and indirect participation in the administration of the business.
"North America is regarded as a ‘democratic' State, and the people in general have learned to put faith in this term. The true significance of this term must become plain to them if, in the contemplation of existing conditions and their power of influencing them, they will take the above definition for a standard. It will appear that we have indeed an authority here, but an authority over the people — a relation that is not improved, but only. made worse, by the fact that the people themselves elect their ruler and are thus under the illusion that they govern. Whoever has made this clear to himself, and surveys the chasm existing between the truly free State, as it has been defined above, and the State we actually have here, he alone will be able to correctly estimate the. consequences of the repeated endeavors to still farther extend
