Harold Lasswell

To speak of a Garrison State is not to predict something wholly new under the sun. Certainly there is nothing novel to the student of political institutions about the idea that specialists on violence may run the State. On the contrary, some of the most influential discussions of political institutions have named the Military State as one of the chief forms of organized society. Auguste Comte saw history as a succession (and a progression) that moved, as far as it concerned the State, through military, feudal, and industrial phases. Herbert Spencer divided all human societies into the military type, based on force, and the industrial type, based on contract and free consent.

What is important for our purposes is to envisage the possible emergence of the Military State under present technical conditions. There are no examples of the Military State combined with modern technology. During emergencies the great powers have given enormous scope to military authority, but temporary acquisitions of authority lack the elements of comparative permanence and acceptance that complete the Garrison State. Military dictators in States marginal to the creative centers of Western civilization are not integrated with modern technology; they merely use some of its specific elements.

The military men who dominate a modern technical society will be very different from the officers of history and tradition. It is probable that the specialists on violence will include in their training a large degree of expertness in many of the skills that we have traditionally accepted as part of modern civilian management.

The distinctive frame of reference in a fighting society is fighting effectiveness. All social change is translated into battle potential. Now there can be no realistic calculation of fighting effectiveness without knowledge of the technical and psychological characteristics of modern production processes. The function of management in such a society is already known to us; it includes the exercise of skill in supervising technical operations, in administrative organization, in personnel management, in public relations. These skills are needed to translate the complicated operations of modern life into every relevant frame of reference — the frame of fighting effectiveness as well as of pecuniary profit.

This leads to the seeming paradox that, as modern States are militarized, specialists on violence are more preoccupied with the skills and attitudes judged characteristic of nonviolence. We anticipate the merging of skills, starting from the traditional accoutrements of the professional soldier, moving toward the manager and promoter of large-scale civilian enterprise.

In the Garrison State, at least in its introductory phases, problems of morale are destined to weigh heavily on the mind of management. It is easy to throw sand in the gears of the modem assembly line; hence, there must be a deep and general sense of participation in the total enterprise of the State if collective effort is to be sustained.

When we call attention to the importance of the “human factor” in modem production, we sometimes fail to notice that it springs from the multiplicity of special environments that have been created by modern technology. Thousands of technical operations have sprung into existence where a few hundred were found before. To complicate the material environment in this way is to multiply the focuses of attention of those who live in our society. Diversified focuses of attention breed differences in outlook, preference, and loyalty. The labyrinth of specialized “material” environments generates profound ideological divergencies that cannot be abolished, though they can be mitigated, by the methods now available to leaders in our society.

As long as modern technology prevails, society is honeycombed with cells of separate experience, of individuality, of partial freedom. Concerted action under such conditions depends upon skilfully guiding the minds of men; hence the enormous importance of symbolic manipulation in modern society. The importance of the morale factor is emphasized by the universal fear which it is possible to maintain in large populations through modern instruments of warfare. The growth of aerial warfare in particular has tended to abolish the distinction between civilian and military functions. It is no longer possible to affirm that those who enter the military service take the physical risk while those who remain at home stay safe and contribute to the equipment and the comfort of the courageous heroes at the front. Indeed, in some periods of modern warfare, casualties among civilians may outnumber the casualties of the armed forces. With the socialization of danger as a permanent characteristic of modern violence the nation becomes one unified technical enterprise. Those who direct the violence operations are compelled to consider the entire gamut of problems that arise in living together under modem conditions.

There will be an energetic struggle to incorporate young and old into the destiny and mission of the State. It is probable that one form of this symbolic adjustment will be the abolition of “the unemployed.” This stigmatizing symbol will be obsolete in the Garrison State. It insults the dignity of millions, for it implies uselessness. This is so, whether the “unemployed” are given a “dole” or put on “relief” projects. Always there is the damaging stigma of superfluity. No doubt the Garrison State will be distinguished by the psychological abolition of unemployment — “psychological” because this is chiefly a matter of redefining symbols.

In the Garrison State there must be work — and the duty to work — for all. Since all work becomes public work, all who do not accept employment flout military discipline. For those who do not fit within the structure of the State there is but one alternative — to obey or die. Compulsion, therefore, is to be expected as a potent instrument for internal control of the Garrison State.

The use of coercion can have an important effect upon many more people than it reaches directly; this is the propaganda component of any “propaganda of the deed.” The spectacle of compulsory labor gangs in prisons or concentration camps is a negative means of conserving morale — negative since it arouses fear and guilt. Compulsory labor groups are suitable popular scapegoats in a Military State. The duty to obey, to serve the State, to work — these are cardinal virtues in the Garrison State. Unceasing emphasis upon duty is certain to arouse opposing tendencies within the personality structure of all who live under a Garrison Regime. Everyone must struggle to hold in check any tendencies, conscious or unconscious, to defy authority, to violate the code of work, to flout the incessant demand for sacrifice in the collective interest. From the earliest years youth will be trained to subdue — to disavow, to struggle against — any specific opposition to the ruling code of collective exactions.

The conscience imposes feelings of guilt and anxiety upon the individual whenever his impulses are aroused, ever so slightly, to break the code. When the coercive threat that sanctions the code of the Military State is internalized in the consciences of youth, the spectacle of labor gangs is profoundly disturbing. A characteristic response is self-righteousness — quick justification of coercive punishment, tacit acceptance of the inference that all who are subject to coercion are guilty of antisocial conduct. To maintain suspended judgment, to absolve others in particular instances, is to give at least partial toleration to countermores tendencies within the self. Hence, the quick substitute responses — the self-righteous attitude, the deflection of attention. Indeed, a characteristic psychic pattern of the Military State is the “startle pattern,” which is carried over to the internal as well as to the external threat of danger. This startle pattern is overcome and stylized as alert, prompt, commanding adjustment to reality. This is expressed in the authoritative manner that dominates military style — in gesture, intonation, and idiom.

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In the Garrison State all organized social activity will be governmentalized; hence, the role of independent associations will disappear, with the exception of secret societies (specifically, there will be no organized economic, religious, or cultural life outside of the duly constituted agencies of government). Government will be highly centralized, though devolution may be practiced in order to mitigate “bureaucratism.” There is so much outspoken resistance to bureaucratism in modern civilization that we may expect this attitude to carry over to the Garrison State. Not only will the administrative structure be centralized, but at every level it will tend to integrate authority in a few hands. The leadership principle will be relied upon; responsibility as a rule will be focused upon individual “heads.”

We have sketched some of the methods at the disposal of the ruling Elites of the Garrison State — the management of propaganda, violence, goods, practices. Let us consider the picture from a slightly different standpoint. How will various kinds of influence be distributed in the State? Power will be highly concentrated, as in any dictatorial regime. We have already suggested that there will be a strong tendency toward equalizing the distribution of safety throughout the community (that is, negative safety, the socialization of threat in modern war). In the interest of morale there will be some moderation of huge differences in individual income, flattening the pyramid at the top, bulging it out in the upper-middle and middle zones. In the Garrison State the respect pyramid will probably resemble the income pyramid. (Those who are the targets of compulsory labor restrictions will be the principal recipients of negative respect and hence will occupy the bottom levels.) So great is the multiplicity of functions in modern processes of production that a simple scheme of military rank is flagrantly out of harmony with the facts. Even though a small number of ranks are retained in the Military State, it will be recognized that the diversity of functions exercised by each rank is so great that the meaning of a specific classification will be obscure. Summarizing, the distribution of safety will be most uniform throughout the community; distribution of power will show the largest inequalities. The patterns of income and respect will fall between these two, showing a pronounced bulge in the upper-middle and middle strata. The lower strata of the community will be composed of those subject to compulsory labor, tending to constitute a permanent pariah caste.

What about the capacity of the Garrison State to produce a large volume of material values? The elites of the Garrison State, like the elites of recent Business States, will confront the problem of holding in check the stupendous productive potentialities of modern science and engineering. We know that the ruling elites of the modern Business State have not known how to control productive capacity; they have been unwilling to adopt necessary measures for the purpose of regularizing the tempo of economic development. Hence, modern society has been characterized by periods of orgiastic expansion, succeeded by periods of flagrant underutilization of the instruments of production.

The rulers of the Garrison State will be able to regularize the rate of production, since they will be free from many of the conventions that have stood in the way of adopting measures suitable to this purpose in the Business State. The business elite has been unwilling to revise institutional practices to the extent necessary to maintain a continually rising flow of investment. The institutional structure of the Business State has called for flexible adjustment between governmental and private channels of activity and for strict measures to maintain price flexibility. Wherever the business elite has not supported such necessary arrangements, the Business State itself has begun to disintegrate.

Although the rulers of the Garrison State will be free to regularize the rate of production, they will most assuredly prevent full utilization of modern productive capacity for nonmilitary consumption purposes. The elite of the Garrison State will have a professional interest in multiplying gadgets specialized to acts of violence. The rulers of the Garrison State will depend upon war scares as a means of maintaining popular willingness to forego immediate consumption. War scares that fail to culminate in violence eventually lose their value; this is the point at which ruling classes will feel that bloodletting is needed in order to preserve those virtues of sturdy acquiescence in the regime which they so much admire and from which they so greatly benefit. We may be sure that if ever there is a rise in the production of nonmilitary consumption goods, despite the amount of energy directed toward the production of military equipment, the ruling class will feel itself endangered by the growing “frivolousness” of the community.