THE STATE is the public power of coercion. It makes and administers the laws. It is controlled by the social class that is economically supreme. In antiquity it was the slave owners, under feudalism the feudal proprietors, today the capitalist class.

The state had its beginning with the birth of private property, and commenced with the limitations of property within the tribe. Members of the tribe were appointed to guard the rights of property. The extension of the operations of the private owners outside the tribal limits extended their functions.

As tribal society disintegrated the incipient state was personified in the warrior chief and his followers. These chiefs over-ran other territories and, like the Spartans and the Normans, established themselves as ruling bodies. In the early civilisations of Babylon and Egypt the military rulers became 'both priests and lawgivers, and the laws were administered at the gates of the temples.

The growth of trading and the splitting up of society into classes strengthened the influence and power of the growing state. It was the only body that stood apart from the various sections of society and the obvious body to promulgate laws with power to enforce them.

The early form of the state was rude and barbarous and exercised open force. It was also an object of Struggle between the social classes, because the class that was paramount had the power to enforce its will. It was a state form in harmony with the old arrangements of people living in fortified villages surrounded by agricultural territory.

The growth of the small Roman state into the overlordship of a multitude of similar states throughout Europe and part of Africa and Asia, brought up a host of administrative problems that caused a vast growth of officials, and a bureaucracy that covered with a net-work the whole unwieldy Roman empire. It was largely a tax-gathering machine. It was also a spur to the study of the use and abuses of private property. It brought about the production of a vast mass of laws and methods of procedure, a good deal of which has lasted to the present day.

Very little progress was made in the development of the State from Roman times until the modern state began to emerge in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the opening up of world markets and the rise of capitalism.

The growth of the state in England is a fair specimen of its growth elsewhere.

England was settled by different nomadic tribes both before and after the Roman conquest. The population was small and the country covered with woods. In Anglo-Saxon times the early kings were leaders of war bands, but, as consolidation developed, tribal kingdoms became administrative districts of larger kingdoms until, in the 9th century, the country was brought under the control of one king. The king was elected by leaders sitting in council.

By 1066 the local government divisions of shire, hundred, borough, and township had grown out of the swallowing up of earlier tribal kingdoms by larger ones, but the local settlement of disputes under the manorial system left 'little room for royal intervention.

During the middle ages the King's Council ruled. The offshoots of the council - the Star Chamber, the Court of High Commission, the Councils of the North and of Ireland and Wales, were the centres of public business.

The differentiation of function necessary for efficient administration brought about control of the police by officers appointed by the Crown and responsible to it alone. This also inspired the tendency to delegate work to specialised commissions - for piracy, coinage, etc. - but also the strengthening of central control, and the system of uniformity of weights and measures.

The Black Death of 1348 wiped out a large part of the population, and war with France spread confusion and disorder. Local control was further weakened by the disintegration of the manorial system and the effect of the crusades. Henceforth the central government undertook the regulation of economic matters by proclamations and statutes. In 1526 the Privy Council' was established.

The breaking down of old financial resources compelled the Crown to call together members from the boroughs and shires to advance money to help the treasury. This led to the Crown having constantly to explain its difficulties to the Houses of Parliament through the mouths of members of the House.

After the English revolution and the Restoration the heads of departments never returned to their old dependence on the Crown. The Cabinet Council first appeared in the time of Charles I, it later supplanted for executive purpose the Privy Council and the committees of the council. The practice of governing by departments was reached by the middle of the 18th century. Then the state grew up into what it is today - the executive of the capitalist class.

Through working class pressure and the disagreements between sections of the capitalist class the workers have obtained the vote, and therefore the capacity to get control of state power and reorganise society on a different basis. At present they simply vote supporters of the capitalists into power to rule in the interests of the capitalist class.