The State as Machine

Abstract

If one considers the contexts in which Weber talks of the state and state institutions, then we encounter images and analogies that belong to a quite particular field of metaphor. The modern state appears to be a machine, mechanism, apparatus, enterprise or factory. Rational law can be predicted “like a machine”¹; the work done by judiciary and administration are calculable “like a machine,”² the bureaucracy works “like any machine,”³ its officials are links in an “unceasingly running machine”⁴ and political parties are nothing but “machines.”⁵

The machine of itself teaches the mutual cooperation of hordes of men in operations where each man has to do only one thing: it provides the model for the party apparatus and the conduct of warfare. … it makes of many one machine, and out of each individual an instrument to one end. Its most generalized effect is to teach the utility of centralization.

(Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human)