The Spirit of Leviathan: The Political-Theological Thought J. Neville Figgis

J. Neville Figgis (1866-1919) was an English presbyter in the Church of England, a monk (the Anglican Community of the Resurrection), historian, and political theorist (studying under lord Acton). He was one of a few lone voices in the turn-of-the-century that rejected the move towards the monopolization of all social organizations under the state, which was defined as Utilitarian machine to maximize bureaucratic efficiency (whether under hard-nosed liberal capitalism of free-trade, the new liberalism of state management, or Fabian evolution towards managerial socialism). Figgis believed in the existence, and "personality", of social bodies that preexisted, or coexisted, with the state. He feared the mechanical Leviathan would try to swallow up all of these entities, whether church, family, or labor union/guild. These societies had a real character that the state recognized, but did not create, through fictive legal personhood.

Figgis depended heavily upon the work of a German legal historian Otto von Gierke, who studied the development of political sovereignty. He argues sovereignty emerged with the Greek city-state, which existed as an omnicompetent unity through the ekklesia. All other social relations were judged by, dependent on, or dissolved by the state. Athens' democratic revolution saw a radical reorganization of family relations (creating the demes), to curb the power of oligarchic clan attachments. Sparta's Lykurgus created a constitution that subjected the life of the polis to a rigorous military regime, with well-organized checks and balances to prevent family cliques from challenging the state. Drawing upon these kinds of social change, Plato's imagined Republic involved the total dissolution of all social bonds outside of the state so as to achieve a philosophic utopia (if that is what The Republic is really about).

This model was pushed to the utmost limits with Rome, where a city-state not only forged an empire but became an empire. Rome never had the kind of revolutionary restructuring that happened in Greek cities, where family ties helped keep the Republic as an oligarchy (with concessions to the plebs in an early constitutional crisis). Yet, as any other city-state, all cults, guilds, and social bonds, existed in service to the state. As the empire expanded, the ability to synthesize or develop was taxed. The earlier period (before Christian establishment) superficially seemed more tolerant because many cults could be absorbed within a larger matrix. The worship of whatever ancestral or city gods could be integrated with prayers to the emperor, Rome, and the traditional gods. It was for this reason that Jews (and then Christians) came under such harsh punishment. As the empire became Christian, the idea of unified cult for a unified state became more aggressive (though it went in stages, pagans were generally allowed to do what they want if they didn't disturb the court).

It is thus, under Roman empire, that Christians developed a similar paradigm. For the first few centuries, God's People constituted a distinct social polity that exceeded the boundaries of Rome. One could be a Christian and a Roman, or a Christian and not a Roman. It was for these reasons that Roman emperors occasionally persecuted Christians: their unwillingness to subsume their organization to the state, to conform Christian doctrine and worship within the imperial genius, was borderline treason. Imperial administrators accused Christians of atheism and anarchy. But with the advent of Christian emperors (especially after the Theosian establishment of the Christian church as the sole cult for the empire) a Christian veneer was placed over the structures of an ancient pagan city-state. While this change could take on nearly millennarian dimensions, the main position imagined a thoroughly Christianized Rome, exhibiting a limited, but still extensive, view of a single society (Augustine's civitas dei). While there may be plurality of institutions (but their independence was something undertheorized; the idea of Christians outside of Rome was hard to fathom for most) they operated as a single social organism: Christendom. In the classic notion of the Gelasian dyarchy, the church and state operated as a whole with different jurisdictions. They could be distinguished, but differentiated (hence the idea of conflict, without attributing strict wickedness, was hard to fathom). This flowed from the classic notion of society as an undifferentiated organic whole.

However, for Gierke, as Roman Christianity spread, it encountered the tribal social organizations of the Germanic people. Some of the ground level conflicts in western Europe involve the process of Romanization, seeking to crack down on these organic, and seemingly self-sustained, societies and bring them under the purview of Christendom, whether pope or emperor. Sometimes distance from the hierarchy of the Roman church started a process of deviation and differentiation, where monastic groups or break-away "heretics" rejected the all encompassing power of the pope. Medieval society held several tensions, as the power center of Rome crumbled before competing polities. Instead, various smaller organizations emerged that would both claim power in their own zone, but also acknowledge powers outside of their own dominion. It was this awareness of both inside and outside power that saw the rise of feudalism, patchwork polities built on personal loyalty and links through shared, but not monopolized, channels of legitimacy. One may pay respect to the papacy or the "Roman" heritage, but it was not for a single group to claim. However, as the wealth of stately figures (like the Holy Roman Emperor, the city-states of Italy, or the king of France) grew, so too did their ambitions. Similarly, the papacy underwent organization reforms that not only flexed papal claims to a new height, but also reorganized the episcopacy to claim greater papal control over church-lands. These rival power centers, each developing towards the dream of the old Roman imperium in Christian garb led to conflict. The Middle Ages could be seen as working these developments out. The unity of the social organism was not questioned, only who was to rule. The Investiture Controversy was a paragon event, marking out the fundamental contradiction of medieval Christendom between pope and emperor.

Thus far, Figgis follows Gierke (though he departs from him in some major respect that we'll see later) and offers a positive appreciation for the Middle Ages. As an Anglo-Catholic, he wanted to push back against the uncritical celebration of modernity that not only many utilitarian atheists celebrated, but also liberal theologians who saw Luther as the first modern man. But Figgis isn't offering a reactionary fantasy of Feudal Europe. In his series of lectures on what might be termed political theology (From Gerson to Grotius), Figgis defends the social goods of the feudal era:

Whatever be the defects of feudalism, it was a system which recognised the reciprocity
of rights and duties in regard alike to political and economic
power, in a way which, save in a limited sphere, it has been impossible
to do since. We have, it is true, at length secured a recognition of the
duties of government, but it is by an almost complete consecration of
the rights of property, and an entire disregard of moral obligation of the
owner, purchased by the absolute surrender of a portion of his wealth in
the form of taxes. The feudal tie was essentially contractual; and it was
easy to see in the coronation oath the recognition of a similar contract
on the part of the monarch, and in the Baptismal vow a somewhat similar
condition on the part of the Christian. At any rate, the theory of
contract rested on two conceptions which were as a matter of fact operative
in recent history, first, the reciprocity of protection and obedience
implied in the coronation oath and indeed the whole religious ceremony,
second, the nature of the obligations which bound lord and vassal.
We find writers like Du Plessis Mornay actually appealing to feudal
customs as a ground for national resistance. There is no doubt that as a
matter of fact the idea of the contract owes much to the long prevalence
of similar notions in all spheres. We must bear in mind that in all complete
copies of the Corpus Juris Civilis there was the Liber de Feudis.

In other words, feudal Europe preserved social responsibility that didn't degenerate into a defense of capital. Figgis represents a branch of guild-socialism, which was skeptical about the liberating potential of a powerful state or the drive towards revolution. There was something worth recovering from the Middle Ages. The Reformation (or, more properly, its effects) broke down many of these plural and patchwork elements. But Figgis' point is not simply a lament for Christendom, for it was European Christendom that developed the Roman ideal, the spirit of Leviathan, into competing sovereignties of pope and emperor. The Reformation metastasized the contradictions.

However, the Reformation did not start this way. At the level of this social conflict (cutting through Luther's distinct theological program), it was a roaring return of the conciliar movement. While in no way anti-papal, conciliarist theorists wanted to reduce the civil power of the church (i.e. ownership of property) as well as to make the magisterial authority of the church more collegial (pope could only rule 'in' council). Many Reformers were familiar with conciliarist work, though they certainly exceeded it. The point was to solve the contradiction in favor of the emperor. Of course, this was not to deny the spiritual authority of the church, though it did raise questions of what that was. For Luther and his "two-governments" position, the church was simultaneously a civil (left-hand) and spiritual (right-hand) organization. In its role as the former, it existed at the behest of the prince (state); in its role of latter, it was the arbiter of doctrine. Of course the latter is highly ambiguous, and I suppose depended upon a nearly uncritical view of the issues. Luther more or less saw himself as offering the definitive doctrinal interpretation, one obvious to any attentive reader of Scripture. However, one might ask how the doctrinal (and sacramental) independence of the Evangelical-Lutheran churches was supposed to operate when the prince's government hired pastoral authorities and endowed the authorities. 

It's why Hobbes, who is one of the strongest theorists of state sovereignty, did not dispute the individual's right of conscience. Hobbes simply waived away Luther's ad hoc self-valorizing and reifying (if not fetishizing) the Lutheran confessional symbols. The reality was that the whole could only be restored if the contradiction was ended. Thus Hobbes saw the papacy as "the ghost of the Roman empire enthroned on its grave". It pretended to universal authority, which either meant global governance or the constant threat of civil war. And just as Rome pursued these claims at the universal level, British Presbyterians (mainly in Scotland, but also in England) pursued the same at the national level. Defending the independence of the church, the Presbyterians claimed to be unlike Rome, since they claimed no territory but the spiritual domain of conscience.  However, able to excommunicate and threaten damnation, this set of powers damaged the sovereign's ability to rule. Instead, Hobbes saw the Presbyterians as an oligarchic conspiracy to take over the state, plunging it (until they won) into a state of civil war (which they, arguably, did in 1641). This turn of events was inevitable if the drive towards a unitary organic state was taken as the starting point.

But here, again, Figgis isn't offering a crude argument against the Reformation. It applied to all sides. In the same set of lectures, Figgis argues the spirit of Leviathan transcends most boundaries. It applies to medieval monks, Jesuits, Presbyterians, and Jacobins:

A “Leviathan” like that of Hobbes formed by the
deliberate choice of its members, with absolutely sovereign rights, and
no power of renunciation of obedience, was more nearly paralleled in a
monastic order than in any “national” State. When Melanchthon says
that the true communal life is that of the State and not that of a religious
order, he shows that the analogy of monastic institutions to the State
was one that naturally occurred to the mind. It is possible, though it can
hardy be proved, that the artificial theory of the State may have owed
something of its prevalence to those bodies, in some respects states in
themselves, which did arise by deliberate choice and contrivance. Anyhow
the original sovereignty of the people is a cardinal doctrine of the
Jesuit thinkers, is more emphasized by them than by Protestant controversialists,
and if not separated in practice from some notion of a contract
between the depositary of power and his subjects, is separable
from it in thought. They prepared the way for Althusius and therefore
for Rousseau. The governing thought of Suarez is that the community
has its power immediately from God as a result of the fact of its being a
society, in other words of something like Rousseau’s social contract.
The governing thought of the Vindiciae is that individuals come together
to form a State for certain ends, and surrender some powers but not all
to the body so formed. The Whig State is in fact a limited, the Jesuit and
Jacobin State is an unlimited liability company.

Hobbes was not unique, but in how he applied the idea of the organic and holistic society. The only major thing (which Figgis only slightly adumbrates) is that Hobbes subjected Christendom to rational scrutiny. It didn't depend upon the Augustinian notion of the Church Age or the "time out of mind" constitutionalism of juridical mythicists. Neither revelation nor legend (except in and as much as the "State of Nature" is a political myth) was needed to understand (or even create) the foundations for the State. He represents a kind of development, in the same vein from polis to Roman imperium to Romano-Christian civitas dei, towards the mechanical. He excavates the process through which a state is formed to better protect it. However, this new form of thought has radical implications. It's for this reason that some contemporaries (and some recent scholars) thought Hobbes wrote Leviathan as a very subtle ode to Cromwell and the Protectorate. It was something that had a few similarities with German Reformed jurist and political theorist Johannes Althusius, and would blossom uniquely in Jean Jacques Rousseau. And perhaps stranger still, medieval monasteries were prototypes of the rational and voluntary construction of a state. 

But Figgis doesn't see all as lost. Instead, he appreciates the ironic failures that form the basis of social pluralism. Hagiographies have been constructed about how either the Reformed Presbyterians or the Jesuits (depending on which side the partisan speaking is on) promoted liberty. It is certainly true that texts exist that vaunt freedom to worship, the sovereignty of the people, and a willingness to resist the expansion of royal power. However, these claims depend upon other (far less inviting) theories. Freedom of worship is freedom for orthodox worship, that no state may restrain obedience to God. Of course the problem is what that means: for Reformed as much as Romanist it means curbing the infidel. The right to rebel is the right of a clique, claiming a divine right, to overthrow governments that do not meet their standard. This meant Jesuits in England could claim all royal law was null and void, since the Queen was a heretic (such was in concert with papal declaration). The parti devot in France would agitate to the compromised Bourbon, Henri IV, who was ex-Huguenot (Reformed Protestant) and pursued policies of religious moderation. In the name of the people and godly government, Henri was assassinated. Scots Presbyterians, under the banner of their Covenant, claimed the right to restrain any authority, even the king, if they failed to uphold and promote godly (meaning Genevan-inspired Presbyterian) religion.

But all of these groups failed to achieve any dominance or mastery. Instead, many opted for toleration. As Figgis is aware, most of these claims are self-serving, a way to buy time until they recover their ground. But, overtime, most of these groups ended up permanently in the minority, and thus they mutated into defenders of a proto-liberal status quo. Figgis isn't exactly a Whig (even though he's sympathetic to lord Acton's liberalism) and so he doesn't believe in the long march of liberty or individualism (freedom for the individual for its own sake). However, like a liberal, he is concerned for the freedom of the individual, which seems only to exist in a state of detente. Minority powers, like the Jesuits or Presbyterians, are able to exact concessions because they, as groups, can bargain levels of independence from the state. Thus, the state must remain a unity forged from plurality if it is to remain free. Hence, Figgis believes in federalism, developed from the feudal era through the fires of Reformation and confessional warfare:

But the point to notice here is that this federalistic idea is to be found in Althusius and through him connects itself with the medieval theory of community life. There is not much difference between that idea of the communitas communitatum which the Middle Ages meant by the commons, and Althusius’ notion of the State as above all else a consociato consociationum. He definitely protests against those who refuse to consider the smaller associations such as the family as any-thing but economic. The novelty in him is his view of the State as entirely built up on the principle of associations.6 Indeed the change of the connotation of commons from the view delineated above to the modern one of the mass of common people is significant of the whole development of thought from medieval to modern times, a development which in part will have to be retraced in face of the actual facts. 

In other words the Selbständigkeit [self-sustaining independence] of the individual, as against an omnipotent State,has been the battleground of liberty for three centuries; this has now given place to that of the Selbständigkeit of societies. What the issue will be or when it will be decided it may not be possible for a historian to say before nineteen hundred has become three thousand. What these lectures have endeavoured to point out is that, as a matter of fact, this achievement of individual liberty was never attained and except for the short period of the Benthamite movement never sought merely for its own sake. Its achievement became feasible only because it was connected with the recognition of the right to exist of some society usually religious, which the civil magistrate did not desire to exist. 

It is often agreed that religious differences are the ground of modern liberty. It is a mistake to suppose, as we have shown, that this is because as a rule any or all religious bodies cared about such liberty. What they desired was the right to be, what they denied was the right of the State to suppress them as societies, and in standing up against State omnipotence they secured individual liberty in spite of themselves. Indeed they secured it so well that we have forgotten how it was secured and have to learn once more the lesson, that the State is something more than a mass of individuals. What is needed nowadays is that as against an abstract and unreal theory of State omnipotence on the one hand, and an atomistic and artificial view of individual independence on the other, the facts of the world with its innumerable bonds of association and the naturalness of social authority should be generally recognised and become the basis of our laws, as it is of our life.

It didn't matter to Figgis whether the monistic state was a Greek ekklesia, the Roman emperor, the pope, the Jacobin Committee of Public Safety, or the imperial liberal Parliament of Great Britain. What mattered was that this push towards Leviathan would destroy human freedom, something Figgis believed was constitutive of human flourishing. Thus, for Figgis, an alternative trajectory must be recovered. It was the goods of feudalism that could be developed into a full-blown federalism. The problem wasn't the state, but how the state's authority could be limited and balanced with directives that exceeded one's political community. Figgis, unlike Gierke, rejects the idea that the state is one of these organic communities, the body which holds the integrity of several organs together as one. Instead, Figgis (far more like a liberal) sees the state as a kind of referee, the communis communitatis (per Althusius), which is an implement to help all the actual communities (families, churches, guilds, etc.) live together in peace. The realm of the state, the public domain, the commons, was a middle-ground between various social groups. One could come to a kind of harmonization through cooperation, overlap, and shared objectives without a single overriding cult for the whole. One didn't need a civil religion, or state altars, to arrive at social harmony. Such was why Figgis not only criticized reactionary throne-and-altar romantics, but also utilitarians and positivists who wanted a secularized theology. It's in this way that Figgis is not a liberal, for her did not advance a universal set of norming norms.

One could almost assess Figgis as a kind of "Tory socialist", in that it is the organic hierarchies of social bodies that protect the liberties of the individual. For Figgis (as for those he later influences) statism and individualism are two sides of the same coin. Without any form of non-state, independently subsisting, group he can belong to, the subject is alone before the withering eye of the state. Perhaps if Figgis lived to see it, he would have easily understood why Lenin conquered the independent worker soviets and integrated them into the Party. It was, in this way, Leninism was as much about building a state as it was building a church. Without these independent bodies, nothing stood between state power and any given individual, stripped of all distinctions outside the Party. Not unlike the fever dreams of the imperial papacy, the church-party was all. A sentence of excommunication meant death, since it was exile to the oblivion of the hell-gulag. Federalism was thus an alternative to Babel, a rejection of the spirit of Leviathan, the dragon that was Rome.

It's in this vein that Figgis attempts to diagnose the problem of his contemporary Britain, and why all efforts (whether from Tory romantic reactionaries, whiggish liberals, or Benthamite socialists) to create a unified polity will fail. Figgis advises the Christian to turn away from this path (in Churches in the Modern State):

There is the social question. Moved by the intolerable wrongs and oppressions of our industrial system, with its spectacle of  thousands of lives maimed and wasted and born with an evil environment, men are apt to claim that it is the duty of Christians as such to adopt some particular remedy, and to identify the Gospel with some definite organisation of society. That Churchmen ought to have a conscience in these matters is true ; that it is the province of all who are teachers in the Church to awaken this conscience and to make their hearers far more uncomfortable than they are with the existing regime is certain. They ought to preach to them the duty of forming political or economic opinions with such regard to justice, such careful inquiry, and disinterested zeal for the whole people, and not merely a class, as they may. They may warn -them against the danger of opposition to changes owing to the prejudices of their own environment or the fear of being less well off. They ought to preach, much more than they do, that a Christian ought to be prepared to forego sources of income or methods of business open to others, and to scrutinise the undertakings from which his own income is derived ; to be considerate to employes, to servants of every kind ; to be less extravagant in clothes or ornaments than those who are not Christians. Of this teaching we have all too little. The aver- age layman of the comfortable class seems to have little notion that his standard ought to be, in any way, higher than that of his neighbours over the way who are not Christians ; and his sons, and still more his daughters, have, for the most part, even less. Of course there are exceptions ; but I am speaking of the ordinary churchgoer. But, whereas so much is needed here, too little is given.

So far as many of those who are concerned with these matters go, an effort is made to indicate that he must, as a Christian, be in favour of this or that scheme, the Minority Report of the Poor Law for instance, or else his attention is directed to vast schemes of social reorganisation which he can do little to forward, and, in any case, are unlikely to be realised, save in a far future. I do not say that he should not be directed to consider the evils of the capitalist system or bidden to seek a solution. I wish our congregations were roused to this more and more. But I do not think any policy  ought to be forwarded by the Church as a corporate society, and imposed in its name in a State of which Churchmanship has no longer anything to do with the qualifications of a citizen. Those who take their ethical ideas from Nietzsche or their practice from Gabriele d'Annunzio, are hardly likely to be in favour of Christian solutions ; and they have every whit as much a place in the State as you or I. The evils of capitalism are " gross, open, huge as mountains," and the oppression of the poor cries to heaven; what we need to persuade Church people is of their own duty in regard to their own wealth and the means of getting it. Consider how vast would be the change if every regular communicant in the Church of England — we will omit the rest for the moment — were sincerely to embrace the maxim of St. Paul, that " having food and raiment we ought therewith to be content," and, without descending from the legitimate expenses of his station, were for hiniself or his children to give up thinking of a large income as the one desideratum ; were to cease judging occupations at their cash value ; were to limit himself severely in the matter of motor-cars, hotels, theatres, and clothes for his daughters and to give the rest in charity, and to spend time saved from amusements in some form of social work. If those who have a competence, whether earned or inherited, were no longer to be driven by the ceaseless desire for more and ambition for their children, there would be a revolution in the face of things, and many of our problems would solve them- selves. So much energy would be set free for worthy objects that the tone of the nation and social life would speedily be raised. Now, I do not see how such things can be preached to an agnostic or a hedonist ; they are absurd on his principles. But they ought not only to be preached but practised by all communicant members of the Christian Church. If in no age can we expect perfection in these matters, and must always allow for a fringe of those of lower standard, the quiet worldliness of many and the self-complacent enjoyment of position by really devout Christians are perhaps the peculiar evil of the Church of England.

What I am anxious to emphasize is that, I  primarily, the business of Christians is with the moral standard of their own society and with themselves as its members. The raising of that will gradually bring about the elevation of the great mass of those who do not belong to it. So long as Churchmen do not see, except a few matters, such as Sunday observance and sexual morality, any real reason why they should have any higher standard than the world at large, so long is the Christian Church failing in its mission.— And the attempt to confuse this object with that of securing a better social organisation to be imposed by law on the whole nation seems to me likely to enfeeble the former without ultimately strengthening the latter. We want an enormously heightened public opinion within the Church, and then it is bound to affect the world at large. That is what happened in the early days of the Church, Any attempt to impose the opposite doctrine seems to me partly to be a survival from the regime of the seventeenth century, and from the theocratic ideals which Puritans and Carolines alike inherited from the Middle Ages ; and partly due to the definite effort to  establish an all-embracing humanitarian Church-State, which would ultimately mean the destruction of all freedom in religious bodies. For the unitary doctrine of the State leads only, in very rare in- stances, to the establishment of the claims of the Church (which from this standpoint are always illegitimate), and then they only take the form of supremacy. In nine cases out of ten it means the secularising of the Church, and the dominance of Erastianism. 

We can see this at the present moment. The attempt to force the Church law of marriage on all, the refusal to let the State go her own way provided we can go ours, has led, as a matter of fact, to the strangest indiscretions. Language is sometimes used which appears to mean that the House of Commons as at present constituted is the true interpreter of the words of our Lord about adultery. A recent book by the Dean of Ripon on Natural Christianity shows a desire to admit all persons to its privileges on the ground of nationality, apart from any question of religion. Others raise the cry of sectarianism whenever any attempt is made to enforce a rule of the  Church, oblivious of the fact that unless you definitely enforce religious belief, the Christian Church, however broadly defined, can be only a sect, a part of the modern nation. Sectarianism, in the sense in which it is condemned by Canon Hensley Henson, the Dean of Ripon, or the Editor of the Spectator, is not the evil fruit of High Churchmanship ; it is the result of the principle of toleration. Where all beliefs are held, those who profess any one can be no more than a part, and thus unity in belief will ultimately make them a society, i.e. a sect. Even if you reduce Christianity to a Unitarian Modernism, Christians will still be distinct from those who have no faith in the other world ; and that difference will enormously differentiate their whole life and standards of value. Even if you go further, and identify Christianity with a vague humanitarianism, independent of faith or unbelief in God, still there will be those who do not hold it. For instance, the followers of Nietzsche would certainly have been excluded from any such body ; and then even a Positivist Christianity, with the motto of kindness as  its one maxim, would have to be ultimately separated off, i.e. a sect in a world where no restriction is laid upon opinion. 

 We cannot escape sectarianism even by- sacrificing the creeds ; still less by attempting a wholly unreal identification of the Church with the nation, an identification which had ceased to represent all the facts even in the time of Hooker, and has been becoming less true ever since. Neither, on the other hand, in such a world can you without disaster attempt to impose the standards of the Church on the whole mass of your countrymen, except in so far as they still rule in some matters on other grounds. Every attempt to raise the code of the nation to that of the Church leads, if unsuccessful, to an attempt to lower the code of the Church to that of the world, because it proceeds from a notion that at bottom the two are identical. Thus if the lax party gets the upper hand it will compel the Church to conform to its standards, an attempt which is being made on all hands just now. The two societies are distinct — distinct in origin, in aim, and (if you have toleration) in personnel. The smaller is  never likely, as things are, to control the larger. If she attempt to do so she will be beaten, and in the process be like to lose her own freedom. The Puritans attempted to raise the nation to their own notions of a high morality. The consequence was seen after the Restoration. It is the essence of the Church to be different from the world, and her mission to proclaim that difference.  Whenever men try to sanctify the world by raising it to the level of the Church, they commonly succeed only in lowering the life of the Church to accommodate it to the practice of the world. The two centuries which began with Pope Boniface VIII ended with Alexander VI.

At the end, Figgis doesn't quite demarcate the powers of the state. Many oligarchies of capital promote "freedom" as a means to expand their dominion. Feudal lords could come to disastrous compacts, allowing their dominions to become extremely oppressive. And so what powers does the state, as communis communitatis, have to check the powers of small social organizations? Do corporations like Google or Amazon have the same organic social liberties, qua corporate body, that families or guilds have? How does the state prevent it from becoming a deactivated tool, the way the medieval king of France became a figurehead for the ambitious nobility with their armies of serfs? Pluralism can easily become a prop to defend neoliberalism, with an ineffective state unable to be used for the benefit of the commons. If federalism is to be commended, these warnings need to be properly taken into account. The USA represents this vision gone seriously awry.