The Servile State · Chapter
Appendix on “Buying-Out” explained
This appendix argues that the collectivist proposal to 'buy out' the capitalist class is a vain attempt to avoid the consequences of direct confiscation.
What happens
This appendix argues that the collectivist proposal to 'buy out' the capitalist class is a vain attempt to avoid the consequences of direct confiscation. Using a concrete example of a community of twenty-two families, the author demonstrates that any such buyout scheme ultimately requires confiscatory taxation or other coercive measures, and that the state cannot outflank the fundamental arithmetic of capital accumulation. The only ways to expropriate without confiscation—better management or annuity—are either precarious or insufficient.
Themes in this chapter
Collectivism as a Path to Servitude, Not Socialism
The appendix critiques the collectivist buyout proposal as a deceptive and ultimately coercive measure that leads to the servile state rather than genuine socialism.
Moral Contradiction Between Legal Theory and Social Reality
The author highlights the contradiction between the legal appearance of a voluntary purchase and the underlying reality of confiscation through taxation and state coercion.
Poverty as the Engine of Servitude
The analysis shows how the state's power to tax and coerce is used to extract surplus from capitalists, ultimately reinforcing the servile state dynamic.
Characters to notice
- Collectivism
Collectivism is the proponent of the buyout scheme, which the author argues is futile and ultimately amounts to confiscation.
- Unknown
The narrator presents the logical and arithmetic argument against the buyout proposal, using a hypothetical example to illustrate the impossibility of painless expropriation.
- Citizen A
Citizen A appears in the hypothetical example as one of the two capitalist families who own the farms and receive surplus value.
- Citizen B
Citizen B appears in the hypothetical example as the other capitalist family, alongside Citizen A, who would be subject to the state's buyout scheme.
Key passages
“It is impossible by any jugglery to 'buyout' the universality of the means of production without confiscation.”
No amount of financial trickery can allow the state to purchase all means of production without effectively confiscating them.
This is the central thesis of the appendix, refuting the idea of a painless buyout.
“The matter is one of plain arithmetic, and all the confusion introduced by the complex mechanism of 'finance' can no more change the fundamental and arithmetical principles involved than can the accumulation of triangles in an ordnance survey reduce the internal angles of the largest triangle to less than 180 degrees.”
The arithmetic of capital accumulation is immutable, and no financial complexity can alter the basic fact that buyout schemes are mathematically equivalent to confiscation.
The author uses a geometric analogy to emphasize the inescapable logic of the argument.
“In fine: if you desire to confiscate, you must confiscate. You cannot outflank the enemy, as financiers in the city and sharpers on the racecourse outflank the simpler of mankind, nor can you conduct the general process of expropriation upon a muddleheaded hope that somehow or other something will come out of nothing in the end.”
Ultimately, confiscation cannot be disguised or avoided; any attempt to do so is based on a foolish hope that something can be created from nothing.
This concluding statement reinforces the impossibility of a non-confiscatory buyout.