The State - (1) - [Draft]

Image credit. Continued from here and here.

 § 1 - Violence and Distrust

The two single most important challenges to any human community are violence and distrust. If the many other fundamental challenges of communal life are to be tackled with any chances of success, a community must

• keep destructive violence at bay, 

• ensure its ability to operationalise violence for productive purposes (defending against outsiders and policing insiders), and 

• create levels of trust amongst its members, 

• (a) allowing for coordination and cooperation sufficient enough to sustain peaceful coexistence, thus

• (b) guaranteeing the community's survival amidst scarcity, including extruding claims by rival communities.

Ever since the ascent of man, forms of social order have evolved to manage the duplex challenge of violence and distrust. About 10.000 years ago, the evolution of social order has become inextricably linked with the state.

In the process freedom has emerged as a specific variant of a state-based social order. 

 § 2 - Freedom - a State-Based Project

The state can exist without freedom. It has been around for thousands of years in the absence of appreciable freedom as we understand it today.

But there cannot be freedom without the state.

I reserve an entire chapter to show how freedom is necessarily embedded in state structures and how the fundamental features of the state may be marshalled to make it the companion of freedom.

First, though, we must understand the raw, to-be-tamed functions of the state. Then we shall examine how these raw functions may be harnessed for the state to become a partner in the project of freedom.

§ 3 - Freedom Defined: Absence of Arbitrariness

Before we take a closer look at the relationship of freedom and the state, we ought to offer a workable meaning of freedom.

A short and handy definition suggests that freedom is the absence of arbitrariness. Phrased differently:

• freedom is independence from arbitrariness.

§ 4 - Arbitrariness

 

What is arbitrariness?

We may designate as arbitrary any act whereby one person or group uses another person or group as a means to his ends, without concern for the interests of the persons’ or groups’ thus instrumentalised. A person named Adam begins to use the house, car, and other property of another person called Betty without any consultation with or attempt at soliciting permission from Betty.

Obviously, arbitrary action - that is: using another person and her possessions, and ignoring all or some of the basic rights of that person, thus effectively turning her into a hapless means of an alien will - would typically require superior force on the part of the person acting in arbitrary fashion.

Enabling him to simply take over Betty’s house, car, and other possessions, according to his and against her will, Adam is likely to be wielding a lethal weapon that threatens to inflict the severest harm on Betty or even put her to death. Betty complies only because she does not want to die or suffer bodily harm. In denying her any say in the matter, a harsh choice between compliance or death is being imposed upon her. Her ability to express and defend her true will is quashed by raw force. Betty is under duress and robbed of her normal options. She is being thrown into a situation where she does not count as a human being any more, other than in her capacity to oblige the will of the arbitrarily acting individual domineering her.

§ 5 - The State between Arbitrariness and Freedom

Thanks to its superior physical power, the state has evolved as an institution capable of averting the exercise of arbitrariness. The state is stronger than Adam. However, the state is even more capable than Adam of exercising arbitrariness. In its capacity as the supreme wielder of coercion, it could usurp Adam’s possessions and his loot, as well as the personal capabilities of Adam and Betty, forcing them into slavery.

Being both the agent

• (a) most capable of arbitrariness,

as well as

• (b) most capable of thwarting arbitrariness, 

the state is an object of central importance in the study of freedom.

In fact, the state makes the difference between freedom and unfreedom. Equipped with power superior to any other person or group in society, the state controls the extent of arbitrariness among human beings, shifting it on a continuum ranging from tyranny to freedom.

§ 6 - First Paradox of Freedom and the State - the Unrestrainable State Restrains Itself

Freedom is the absence of arbitrariness. The state is the most effective preventer of arbitrariness. Freedom, therefore, cannot exist without the state, as I asserted at the outset of this chapter.

In this chapter, we have already encountered one of the intriguing paradoxes of freedom.

We have seen that he state is the most powerful source of arbitrariness and at the same time a force unrivalled in its ability to thwart arbitrariness.

Why should the state suppress arbitrariness? Why should it put shackles on its ability to subject everyone to its will and greed?

How come the state accepts rules that are absolutely binding on it, when it has the power to cast off any restraints imposed upon it?

§ 7 - Second Paradox of Freedom and the State - the Strength of the State Grows with Its Fetters

The answer comes with another paradoxical twist:

Freedom requires a strong state, capable of foiling arbitrariness. Yet, the detrimental nature of arbitrariness is not restricted to what non-State agents do to one another. An arbitrary state is an oppressing liability. In part because by acting arbitrarily it inflicts harm on its citizens, directly. What is more, the arbitrary exercise of untrammelled and reckless force retards and stifles the strength of the state. Arbitrariness makes for a weak state. Yet, enforcing the conditions of freedom can only be accomplished by a strong state - a state that is trusted by its citizens, not least because it is capable of regulating violence - including its own potential for coercion - in such a manner as to confine overpowering force to its predictable and productive uses.

Therefore, freedom relies on the seeming paradox that a strong and socially capable state depends on judiciously chosen limitations to its power. Only by circumscribing and thereby limiting the state’s competences, we attain the strong state needed to secure a reign of feasible freedom.

Now,we are ready to embark upon a study of the raw functions of the state.

Continued here.