ABSTRACT
To define the State is an almost impossible task. At least three types of difficulty are encountered. First, it associates in an arbitrary manner the normative viewpoint and the descriptive viewpoint. For example, when we speak of a constitutional state-the Reichsstaat of the Germans, the constitutional government-is an ideal political organization being put forward? Or is the practice of moderate governments being aimed at? Second, the State can designate an historically defined political form. The evolutionists and the Marxists, in the otherwise arguable sense that Marxism is evolutionary, have emphasized the fact that the appearance of the State is linked to certain circumstances which can be dated, and that its ‘decline’ cannot fail to occur once the conditions have disappeared-notably in the area of productionwhich preceded its coming into being. Finally, the definition of the State poses a problem concerning the listing and morphology of its organs: by State, should only government be understood? Must the bureaucracy, the judiciary also be included in its definition? What relationship do these specialized organs have between themselves? What relationship do they have with civil society? Even if the State is claimed to be only the entirety of governors, and of the resources which they can mobilize to serve their power, should it be said that the State is nothing more than a ‘repressive apparatus’ with the help of which the ‘dominant’ exploit the ‘dominated’? Whatever the situation, whatever answers can be given to these questions, we must take the greatest care to avoid ideological stereotypes about the State such as ‘rational providence’, or of the State as reduced in certain texts by Nietzsche to being ‘the coldest of cold monsters’.
