Politics & Power Quote by Thomas Paine

Paine’s provocation is that “society” isn’t the byproduct of the state; the state is the late-arriving compromise society makes when it stops trusting itself. The line is engineered to flip the default story: remove formal government and you don’t get chaos, you get coordination. “The instant” does heavy rhetorical work, implying that cooperation is not delicate or slow-blooming but immediate, almost reflexive. Paine is betting on an Enlightenment faith in self-interest as a stabilizer: people don’t need a king to value their own safety, property, and mutual advantage.

The subtext is a jab at paternalism. If common interest can generate “common security,” then authority’s grand claim - that it alone prevents violence - starts to look like branding. Paine’s diction is telling: “association” sounds voluntary, civic, chosen; “formal government” sounds stiff, imposed, ceremonious. He’s not denying the need for order. He’s arguing that order is first social, then political, and that politics often arrives as a kind of necessary inconvenience.

Context sharpens the point. Writing in the revolutionary era, Paine is helping readers imagine life after monarchy and inherited rule, when the most frightening question was not “How do we reform government?” but “What happens when it’s gone?” His answer is strategic optimism: abolition doesn’t erase power; it redistributes it into networks of mutual dependence. It’s also a subtle recruitment pitch. If security can be built from shared interest, then revolution isn’t a leap into the void - it’s a return to the basic mechanics of how people already survive together.