“Identify the social with the political is to be guilty of the grossest of all confusions which completely bars any understanding of either society or State.” To equate the State with society is to justify State interference in all aspects of human life.
The Greek City-State was an omnicompetent State, because among the Greeks there was no difference between the State and society. The State was to them all in all and it embraced their entire life. The citizen was nothing except as a member of the State and his whole existence depended on and was subject to the State.
Plato’s Communism was based on the conception that the State was the supreme entity for which the individual must sacrifice all that he had, even his hearth and home. To Aristotle the State was prior to the individual and it continued in existence for the sake of good life.
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The nineteenth century German theory, represented in its highest development in the writings of Hegel, regarded the State as the highest creation of reason and morality.
The individual is moral because he is a member of the State. He should, accordingly, render complete submission to the State. It is, in fact, the moral duty of the individual to obey the State in whatever commands it may issue. There is no limit to its functions. A dictator, too, will pay scant attention to the distinction between the State and society.
There is no sphere of life which his State will not cover. To Hitler and Mussolini there was nothing above the State, nothing beyond it, nothing besides it. The same were the demands of Soviet Russia and other Communist States of her pattern.