The State - (2) - [Draft]

Image credit. Continued from here.

§ 8 - Order, Coercion, and the State

No community without order. No order without rules. No rules without power to enforce them. No enforcement without the ability to exert might to the exclusion of any other contender for power. Certain indispensable features of social order cannot be endurably sustained unless vindicated by a monopolist of coercion – the state.

§ 9 - Structures of Maximal Power

So long as there are genuine possibilities or good prospects to influence in a desired way the relations among human beings by exerting coercion, individuals and groups have strong incentives to develop and apply methods of imposition to the ways in which they relate to one another. Whether driven by offensive or defensive intent, the aspiration for power energises a constant competition for a monopoly of the most effective means of domination by power. In the course of this ongoing competitive process, ever improved structures of maximal power emerge. The modern state is the most differentiated and most effective variant among a set of alternative structures of maximal power. It is the most efficacious power technology to date.

We will shortly see, how and why in the long run – from the Neolithic revolution on, 10,000 years ago, and up to this day - the state, or some arrangement resembling it most closely - becomes the dominant structure of maximal power in the most advanced human communities of any given epoch.

§ 10 - Persistence of the State Since the Neolithic Revolution – Power Can only Be Replaced by Power

Beforehand, let me point out four aspects - (1), (2), (3), and (4) below - explaining the state’s persistence ever since the Neolithic revolution.

(1) If the extant state is to be overthrown or fundamentally re-engineered what is needed are structures of maximal power superior to the ones embodied in the incumbent state. Hence, structures of maximal power can only be replaced by newly manned or entirely new structures of maximal power. In this way, maximal structures of power remain an invariant feature of human society.

§ 11 - Cooperating with the State

For the individual, the enormous power of the state leaves three options - points (2), (3), and (4) below.

(2) She may adapt to the extant structures of maximal power by submission. Which is the strategy employed by most people, most of the time. And as we shall see later, the state may have prospects other than suppression to offer its subjects so as to entice their compliance, or support of and even identification with the state. At any rate, in this way, the state tends to become part of more or less unquestioned reality, appearing as one of the givens of an individual’s life – inducing him to form habits that significantly contribute to the perpetuation of the state. The goods delivered by the state may become just as matter-of-course, unperceived and unappreciated as some of the detrimental results of a state’s actions.

§ 12 - The State Creating Grounds for Cohesion and Compliance

It will be useful to remember our propensity of getting used to the state when later we turn to the question how social cohesion and the compliance of subjects is possible in the absence of

(a) an unanimously approved social contract, or
(b) fully reasoned, intellectually consistent support of a given social and political system.

In short: as long as the state provides a range of minimum services (above all those ensuring peace internally and vis-à-vis the external world), and more so when it offers additional welcome conveniences, citizens will have sufficient grounds to accept the state and play by its rules without demanding a coherent and complete justification of every aspect of statehood.

§ 13 - The State Providing a Framework for Transrational Solutions

The accustoming citizens is a momentous part of my theory of transrationality. The latter term denotes that it is possible to create social arrangements whose existence and beneficial consequences are ranked even higher than some of our most ardently held, rationally argued beliefs. I may rate peaceful life higher than engaging in civil war to assert my convictions relating to abortion. Thus, transrational means that we have ways to achieve toleration and compromise in peace on issues that we cannot amicably resolve by the best application of our faculty to reason and argue rationally. Fortunately, we have habits at our disposal, institutional practices that carry the day when on rational grounds we have no more latitude to accommodate diverging positions.

§ 14 - Resisting the State

(3) Another option open to the individual is to resist and try to overcome the extant state, to which purpose she will have to form a coalition with other individuals. Such a coalition will be effective only if it successfully partakes in the competition for structures of maximal power, ultimately establishing a new regime of maximal power - which brings us back to our earlier insight that maximal power can only be removed by maximal power. Thus, whether comporting himself as a compliant adaptor to the incumbent state, or whether he acts as an agent contriving the successful overthrow of the extant state, either way the individual contributes to the perpetuation of structures of maximal power, thus supporting the persistence of the state - in its raw functions.

§ 15 - In the Evolution of Socially Necessary Power the State is the Attractor, Not Polycracy

On balance, it is more advantageous to have a single agent of maximal power than an ongoing open contention for maximal power by two or more aspirants. Orderly social life depends on the predictability of violence regulated by criteria that favour the use of productive forms of violence and suppress the arbitrary and destructive exercise of force. Polycratic systems characterised by multiple centres of coercive power creating constant insecurity as to which agent is the ultimate wielder of power fail to make the incidence of violence predictable in the manner absolutely required by a productive social order. Constellations of ruinous rivalry actually stoke demand for the state as the productively pacifying monopolist of coercion. Thus, short-term, myopic partisan concerns and sheer feebleness aside, a strong inherent motive in polycratic power struggles is the attainment of ultimately preponderant might by one party - the ability to form a state representing structures of maximal (i.e. unrivalled) power.

§ 16 - The Nexus of Politics and the State

(4) Of course there is a further option available to the individual, which may be regarded as a mixture of the first option (operating within the system) and the second option (resistance and subversion). The individual may be given access to the channels through which the energies flow that mould the state. This alternative is attained by the politics of freedom, to which we turn in the chapter on “Politics.”

There is a very close connection, indeed an intermeshing, between politics and the state. For the time being, suffice it to note that by politics I mean the manner and processes by which human beings endeavour to set the agenda of goals that the state is expected to accomplish.

At the same time, this definition implies that the state is an agency that implements politics. Politics tells the state what it is supposed to achieve. The state puts into effect the objectives that politics commissions it to pursue.

Continued here.