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The State and the People

Overview

Alan Jacobs reflects on the profound transformation of the relationship between the individual and the state, prompted by reading A.J.P. Taylor's classic work English History 1914-1945. The essay traces how World War I — "The Great War" — fundamentally remade the bargain between citizen and government in ways that persist and have deepened into the present era of surveillance capitalism.

The Full A.J.P. Taylor Quoted Passage

Jacobs opens with this remarkable passage from Taylor's English History 1914-1945, which captures the pre-1914 condition of English liberty:

Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913-14, or rather less than 8 per cent. of the national income. The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours. The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.

Taylor then describes the transformation:

All this was changed by the impact of the Great War. The mass of the people became, for the first time, active citizens. Their lives were shaped by orders from above; they were required to serve the state instead of pursuing exclusively their own affairs. Five million men entered the armed forces, many of them (though a minority) under compulsion. The Englishman's food was limited, and its quality changed, by government order. His freedom of movement was restricted; his conditions of work prescribed. Some industries were reduced or closed, others artificially fostered. The publication of news was fettered. Street lights were dimmed. The sacred freedom of drinking was tampered with: licensed hours were cut down, and the beer watered by order. The very time on the clocks was changed. From 1916 onwards, every Englishman got up an hour earlier in summer than he would otherwise have done, thanks to an act of parliament. The state established a hold over its citizens which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which the second World war was again to increase. The history of the English state and of the English people merged for the first time.

The Great War as Rupture

Taylor's idyllic depiction of pre-war liberty serves as a before-photograph. World War I brought transformations that became permanent:

  • Identity documents and official numbers — the precursor to the surveillance state
  • Passports — previously unnecessary for international travel
  • Conscription — compulsory military service as a mass phenomenon
  • Rationing — state control of food distribution
  • Censorship — government control of information and media
  • Income tax transformation — from a modest 8% levy to a mass, ongoing extraction mechanism

What had been a nearly invisible state became an omnipresent one. As Taylor memorably puts it, "the history of the English state and of the English people merged for the first time."

Randolph Bourne's Aphorism

Jacobs invokes the American critic Randolph Bourne's famous line from his 1918 essay:

"War is the health of the state."

Bourne wrote this during World War I, observing how the conflict allowed governments to demand unprecedented powers, resources, and loyalty from citizens — powers that rarely receded once the war ended. The full Bourne quote captures the mechanism:

"It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense."

James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution

Jacobs also connects to James Burnham's landmark work The Managerial Revolution, which argued that the comprehensive power of the state would lead to the rise of a managerial class that would take power away from the capitalists. However, Jacobs notes that history has not played out exactly as Burnham predicted — the rise of surveillance capitalism (via Shoshana Zuboff) has created a more complex entanglement of corporate and state power.

Connection to Surveillance Capitalism

Jacobs brings the analysis forward to the present, connecting the wartime expansion of state power to Shoshana Zuboff's concept of surveillance capitalism:

  • WWI–WWII: State documentation, conscription, censorship — national security and war effort
  • Cold War: Intelligence agencies, mass surveillance — national security and ideological competition
  • Present Day: Corporate-state data collection, algorithmic control — profit combined with social control

The underlying pattern: crises (real or manufactured) are used to justify permanent expansions of state reach into individual lives. What begins as emergency wartime measure becomes permanent infrastructure.

Broader Implications

Jacobs's essay — though focused on Britain and drawing on Taylor — raises universal questions:

  • Is the pre-1914 condition of minimal state presence permanently lost?
  • What does it mean for individual liberty when the state (and its corporate partners) know everything about you?
  • Can liberal democracy survive the surveillance state, or are they fundamentally incompatible?

Key References

  • A.J.P. Taylor — English History 1914-1945 (Oxford University Press)
  • Randolph Bourne — "War is the health of the state" (1918)
  • James Burnham — The Managerial Revolution (1941)
  • Shoshana Zuboff — The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019)