ABSTRACT
In most countries the abolition of the State seems further away than ever: the common solution to the flaws in current models of schooling has been yet more State intervention, more centralisation. David Graeber observes that much of the bureaucratisation has grown through State control of what was originally undertaken in non-bureaucratic ways outside the State. For instance, the welfare state, infamously bureaucratic, arose as the State took over from trades unions, neighbourhood associations, cooperatives and working-class parties and organisations of various sorts. Some bits of the State can be amputated, but then if unintended consequences reveal the loss to have been mistaken, the bits can be grafted back. The bigger or more radical in scope any newcomer idea might be, the less likely the State can incorporate it, and so the most favoured responses are to ignore it or to ridicule it as unworkable and lacking in public support.
