Attempts at Liberty (6) - Themes - Politics ( & Democracy)

Image credit. Continued from Attempts at Liberty (5) - Themes - Government and the State

Interestingly, as I begin to work on the chapter about "The State" (perhaps "Government and the State"), I am suddenly rattled by uncertainty over the demarcation of (the chapters on) "politics" and "the state."

The State

The state is a social technology that probably has emerged with the Neolithic revolution, when settled agriculture allowed the production of a surplus sufficient to sustain new forms of societal division of labour. This brought forth specialists in violence and governance (rulers, bureaucrats, and intellectuals - "the engineers of the mind"). Ever since, the state has proven indispensable for human civilisation, either in scaled down forms (as in the feudal manor and the itinerant power of the emperor) or in large scale fashion effectively relating every member of a population to the political will of a centre of governance.

Politics

Politics is the network of processes by which certain agents determine or attempt to determine what is going to be valid and enforced conduct in a community.

Politics and the State

The state is the ultimate enforcer of politics. The relationship between the two realms of human self-assertion will vary on a continuum between enclosed and elitist, on the one hand, and permeable and fluid, on the other. That is to say, in principle, politics could be entirely determined by a closed circle distinct from the rest of the population - while, of course, effectively there will always be a certain revolution in and out of the centre of political determination, both in terms of personnel and ideas. But the extent, speed, and nature of this revolution makes a huge difference between political regimes that share this feature. Hence, the fundamental difference between closed access societies and open access societies.

Freedom is associated with open access societies. Freedom is the modus in which open access societies are organised. Thus, freedom is a distinct form of organising the relationship between the state and politics. Freedom retains many of the foundational structures of the state (some of its monopoly features, its peacekeeping function etc.) - which is important to recognise because it enables us to in understand that freedom is a state-based enterprise, and does, in fact, liberal claims to the contrary notwithstanding, not square at all with a preponderantly anti-state philosophy.

At the same time, freedom does bring about a change in the nature of the state in that she substantially increases the permeability of the state, making it dependent on and sensitive to pressures and demands from a community of free and equal citizens, people invested with the right to political freedom, i.e. the possibility to choose to enter the competition for influence affecting the ultimate enforcer of politics - the state.

Thus, I suppose, what might justify a separate chapter on "The State" is the need to show how the state evolved certain persistent features and why some of them are still needed in a free society or at least still conditionally instrumental in the modern era, i.e. momentously helpful if constrained by robust conditions of freedom.

In a word: freedom depends on power to sustain her, and the state is the provider of power.

At the same time, we are faced with considerable tension between freedom and the state. In so far as the state is the origin of repression and arbitrariness, it represents the kind of unfreedom from which arises the urge toward freedom. The tug-of-war between unfreedom and freedom accompanies the development of the state and its contemporary evolution. In fact, there emerges a virtual intertwining of freedom and unfreedom, as freedom opens up new possibilities of unfreedom and countervailing new demands for freedom.

Raw Functions of the State - Violence and Trust

At any rate, in the chapter on "The State," I shall be dealing with the state is so far as it is expedient to explain its "raw functions," whereas the chapter on "Politics" is dedicated to explaining how the state is being honed, fine-tuned, directed, instrumentalised by competition for its powers and means.

The "raw functions" of the state are subsumed under its ability to organise and exert power and domination, so as to regulate the kind and incidence of violence in its area of influence. Moreover:

If we regard 

• the task of social order as solving the twin problems of violence and trust, 

• the state defends with its coercive capacities institutions that 

• contain violence and 

• support trust in society. 

The state may exercise this task more or less successfully, but if it is to have a valid function, and if it is to enable freedom it must be able to prevent dysfunctional violence and safeguard, even sponsor, and operate institutions of trust - habits, traditions, procedures, rules, offices etc that give the members of society reason to trust one another.

Mostly, it will fulfil this task indirectly, by establishing, operating, protecting, and improving institutions such as the judicial system, the legislature, executive government, and the political infrastructure.

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I am now beginning to re-read a long chapter (140 pages) on politics and the state that I had abandoned  a little over a years ago. I wonder what kind of surprises I am in for.