In Staatkundige Onwikkeling Bester focuses our attention on the transformation of human beings into dehumanized cogs serving the interests of a carefully constructed state apparatus developed to exploit peoples’ labour power. The inclusion in this work of a migrant worker’s bed draws attention to the massive social and emotional costs that attended this systematic destruction of family life and community relations. Here, as in other works, the inclusion of an image of a bulldozer – which Bester uses to embody this experience of displacement - also serves to highlight the incapacity of ordinary people to resist this increasingly successful and sophisticated state apparatus. Relying on a host of different methods, including a complex system of racial classification, it ‘developed’ the potential of people to serve its own needs.