"But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care"
About this Quote
Tucker’s line lands like an accusation disguised as a shrug: the scandal isn’t that the state wages war, but that the public has stopped bothering to distinguish war from “protection.” In a single sentence he flips the usual civic story - that government exists to defend - and suggests the reverse is closer to the truth: defence is the alibi; aggression is the job.
The wording “essential function” is doing quiet sabotage. Tucker isn’t debating this policy or that administration; he’s treating the state as an institution with a built-in purpose. That’s classic nineteenth-century radicalism with an American edge: a suspicion that monopoly power (police, courts, armies, taxation) can’t help but expand, because it’s structurally rewarded for coercion. When he says “few seem to know or care,” the barb is aimed as much at complacent citizens as at politicians. Ignorance might be forgivable; indifference is complicity.
Context matters: Tucker is writing in the wake of industrial consolidation, labor unrest, and a modernizing U.S. state that increasingly married corporate interests to public force. “Aggression” doesn’t only mean foreign conquest; it includes the domestic version - suppressing strikes, criminalizing dissent, enforcing property regimes that radicals saw as rigged. “Defence,” in that light, becomes a rhetorical costume that makes coercion feel like common sense.
What makes the quote work is its moral inversion: it treats “security” not as a neutral good but as a propaganda category. Tucker’s challenge is brutal and contemporary: if you can’t tell protection from predation, you’ll fund both with the same patriotic smile.
The wording “essential function” is doing quiet sabotage. Tucker isn’t debating this policy or that administration; he’s treating the state as an institution with a built-in purpose. That’s classic nineteenth-century radicalism with an American edge: a suspicion that monopoly power (police, courts, armies, taxation) can’t help but expand, because it’s structurally rewarded for coercion. When he says “few seem to know or care,” the barb is aimed as much at complacent citizens as at politicians. Ignorance might be forgivable; indifference is complicity.
Context matters: Tucker is writing in the wake of industrial consolidation, labor unrest, and a modernizing U.S. state that increasingly married corporate interests to public force. “Aggression” doesn’t only mean foreign conquest; it includes the domestic version - suppressing strikes, criminalizing dissent, enforcing property regimes that radicals saw as rigged. “Defence,” in that light, becomes a rhetorical costume that makes coercion feel like common sense.
What makes the quote work is its moral inversion: it treats “security” not as a neutral good but as a propaganda category. Tucker’s challenge is brutal and contemporary: if you can’t tell protection from predation, you’ll fund both with the same patriotic smile.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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