From the time of its first vague beginnings up till the rise of modern democracy, the state has been nothing but a means of parasitism in the hands of the ruling person or group, and an instrument for the preparation for, and the waging of, war. All the state's tasks, which apparently lie outside the sphere of war, if they are carefully examined, will be found, after all, to aim at efficiency in war, and it has gradually selected these tasks from the simple consideration that their execution increases the guarantees of success in warfare and in government.
The deification of the ruler in Asiatic and Egyptian lands, the unconditional identification of the realm with his person, the uniform enslavement of the whole people, its naïve exploitation for the sole benefit of the sovereign and his assistants are no longer possible in Europe at the present day. The development of the nations to a higher plane of civilization and a clearer consciousness of their own worth forced the state to alter its constitution to a certain extent and to devote itself, at least theoretically, more to the interests of its citizens than the service of its prince. The intellectual constructions of the eighteenth century correspond to no historical reality. The Social Contract, the inception of which J. J. Rousseau described so graphically, was never made. Hutcheson, who had expressed the idea long before the enthusiast of Geneva, conceived it only as the epitome of the principles which the state should embody; according to Hume, the relations of the citizens to each other and to the state are a tacit contract which need not be explicitly formulated, because it originates in human nature; and Fichte even assures us that Rousseau himself did not mean his Social Contract to be taken literally. According to him it was only an idea. But societies must act in pursuance of this idea, and they were founded, if not actually, yet legally upon an unwritten contract. Anyway, the ideas of Hutcheson, Hume and Rousseau have nowadays been assimilated by the general consciousness. The masses believe in the natural, inborn rights of man, some of which he certainly has surrendered in favour of the community; they demand and expect of the state that it should serve their just interests, and they are no longer ready to be made use of by the ruler and a powerful, often very small, minority, for purposes which are foreign to them, which they do not know, and for which they do not care.