“That is an illusion,” he replied. “You see, we are a highly intellectual people and it is quite natural for us to formulate regulations. Modern life is necessarily complex, and the chief difference between us and other nations is that we recognise the complexity and organise our activities accordingly. We are simply in advance of other nations, that is all. Take a simple thing like Railways. We organised our Railway system to suit our national purposes instead of leaving them to commercial enterprise. Take the Education of the people. The State took charge of it fifty years before other nations recognised its vital importance. Take the question of Public Health; even those States which prate about individual liberty have had to follow in our wake and organise the medical service. Besides, it is only by organising the activities of the lower classes that the State can maintain its supremacy.”
“I see,” I replied, “the strait-jacket is for the lower classes. I thought it was a garment worn by everybody.”
“The expression was yours,” he said, with an indulgent smile. “We certainly do not regard it as a strait-jacket.”
“That is perhaps because the ruling classes do not wear it,” I replied.
“We do not recognise any classes as ruling classes,” he said suavely. “It is an obsolete expression.”
“But I thought you liked to recognise facts and call things by their proper names,” I replied.
“Certainly we do,” he answered. “But which are the ruling classes? The Super-State is the supreme and only ruler in Meccania.”
“Even in a Super-State,” I said, “I should have thought, from what you have said, that some groups of persons really wielded the power of the State.”
“Under the crude organisation of most foreign States that is quite possible,” answered Count Krafft; “but the essence of the Super-State is that, in it, power cannot be exercised without authority, and only these persons are authorised through whom the Super-State chooses to express its will. It places everybody in such a position as enables him to render the greatest service to the State that he is capable of rendering. Consequently no fault can be found, by any class or section, with the power exercised by any other class or section; because they are merely the instruments of the State itself.”