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to do with domination: it has become an instrument of power rather
than of order; a mobilizer of resources, a manipulator of privileges,
feelings, and political support.
Americans had grown to accept the idea that the state was just
one element of the political system, in keeping with Montesquieu's
philosophy of the separation of the three powers. The state was only
the executive branch; the President was elected and the Congress
carried the people's will to the highest level of authority. Last year
in Boston, as I watched the proceedings of the House Judiciary
Committee regarding the question of impeachment, I had the im–
pression that America was once again reliving, almost as in a dream,
this political philosophy. The people, through their representatives,
asserted their sovereignty and condemned the guilty Prince.
Yet who can believe that the state is only the executive branch?
Participation in two World Wars, intervention-often direct–
against national liberation movements in Latin America and else–
where, the rivalry with the Soviet Union, and above all the war
against Vietnam and Cambodia have endowed the United States with
a state both national and imperial in its character. The traditional
leaders (subordinated to the state whose political and military en–
gagement in Vietnam would insure its omnipotence) waged a cam–
paign against it as soon as they could. They won a battle, but
they lost the war.
The leading citizens and the old mechanisms of representation
cannot lead to victory against this power of the state, since they
themselves are more and more closely associated with it. A nation–
wide democratic consciousness must be formed-a determination
to give to the people the ability to act against the ruling elites. In
the United States, at least as much as in European countries, the
power structures have succeeded in fragmenting and dispersing their
adversaries.
A crisis of order may, therefore, make possible a great leap for–
ward for democracy, a flourishing of representative institutions and a
recovery of more direct accountability. But, much more immediately,
