The State is not The Government (and vice versa)

I find that one of the commonest misunderstandings in modern political discourse is the conflation of the State and the government. Mass media and popular speakers like Stefan Molyneux have only added to the confusion.

Randolf Borne explains in his 1918 essay "The State":

"The State is the country acting as a political unit, it is the group acting as a repository of force, determiner of law, arbiter of justice. International politics is a power politics because it is a relation of States and that is what States infallibly and calamitously are, huge aggregations of human and industrial force that may be hurled against each other in war. When a country acts as a whole in relation to another country, or in imposing laws on its own inhabitants, or in coercing or punishing individuals or minorities, it is acting as a State. The history of America as a country is quite different from that of America as a State. In one case it is the drama of the pioneering conquest of the land, of the growth of wealth and the ways in which it was used, of the enterprise of education, and the carrying out of spiritual ideals, of the struggle of economic classes. But as a State, its history is that of playing a part in the world, making war, obstructing international trade, preventing itself from being split to pieces, punishing those citizens whom society agrees are offensive, and collecting money to pay for all."

Rothbard makes this even more clear in his Lengthy essay, "The Anatomy Of The State". I would encourage my readers to read both the Bourne and Rothbard essays in full. Neither of these men were purely Voluntaryist, but they give us a clear understanding of the State, which is useful to anyone interested in understanding the nature of the beast.