Historicity of the State

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Historicity of the State

• Carlo Lottieri
• Leuven (Belgium), IES
• July 16th, 2007

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1. Three Lectures

• State.
• Libertarianism.
• Europe Federalism.

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2. Common (Incorrect) Opinions about the State

• STATE LAW.
• STATE SOCIABILITY.
• STATE PEACE.

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3. Max Webers Definition

• A state is a human community that (successfully)
  claims the monopoly of the legitimate rectius,
  legal use of physical force within a given
  territory (Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation,
  1918).
• FOUR ELEMENTS
• a group of rulers,
• a monopoly of the coercion,
• a legal order,
• a territory.

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4.Elitism, Austrian School, Public Choice

• Italian elitism Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto,
  Roberto Michels (but also Moïsei Ostrogorski and
  Joseph A. Schumpeter).
• Austrian School Ludwig von Mises, Murray N.
  Rothbard.
• Public Choice James B. Buchanan, Gordon Tullock.

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5. Ideology and Realism A Phenomenological
Approach

• If we analyze ALL THE MEN (State bureaucrats,
  rulers, judges, private individuals) with the
  same criteria
• a) Tax is Theft
• b) An Act of War killing innocent people is
  Murder
• c) A Regulation (rent-control, for instance) is
  a Threat.

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6. Political Behaviour as Aggressive Behaviour

• Rulers A Separate Group?
• The Great Dichotomy Public Law and Private Law.

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7. The State Gives Rise to Wars, Desorders, and
Tensions

• The Desire to Obtain the Monopoly.
• The Opposition of Different Wills and Cultures
  forced to live together.
• The Class Struggle between Rulers and Ruled, and
  the Just Resistance of the people exploited.

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8. Class Struggle There Are TWO Theories

• Marxian Class struggle proletarian class vs.
  capitalist class.
• Libertarian Class struggle productive class
  vs. political class.

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9. Bastiat Plunder and Property

• Man can live and satisfy his wants only by
  ceaseless labor by the ceaseless application of
  his faculties to natural resources. This process
  is the origin of property. But it is also true
  that a man may live and satisfy his wants by
  seizing and consuming the products of the labor
  of others. This process is the origin of
  plunder.
• Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (1848).

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10. Calhoun taxpayers and tax-consumers

• The necessary result of the unequal fiscal
  action of the government is, to divide the
  community into two great classes one consisting
  of those who, in reality, pay the taxes, and, of
  course, bear exclusively the burthen of
  supporting the government and the other, of
  those who are the recipients of their proceeds,
  through disbursements, and who are, in fact,
  supported by the government or, in fewer words,
  to divide it into taxpayers and tax-consumers.
  (...) the greater the taxes and disbursements,
  the greater the gain of the one and the loss of
  the other and vice versa and consequently, the
  more the policy of the government is calculated
  to increase taxes and disbursements, the more it
  will be favored by the one and opposed by the
  other.
• John C. Calhoun, Disquisition on Government
  (1850).

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11. Spencer Desire to Command and
Civilization(Warriors Merchants)

• The desire to command is essentially a barbarous
  desire. Command is the foe of peace, for it
  breeds war of words and feelingssometimes of
  deeds. It is inconsistent with the first law of
  morality. It is radically wrong. All the
  barbarisms of the past have their types in the
  present. All the barbarisms of the past grew out
  of certain dispositions those dispositions may
  be weakened, but they are not extinct and so
  long as they exist there must be manifestations
  of them. What we commonly understand by command
  and obedience, are the modern forms of bygone
  despotism and slavery.
• Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (1851).

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12. Oppenheimer Economic Means and Political
Means

• There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby
  man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain
  the necessary means for satisfying his desires.
  These are work and robbery, one's own labor and
  the forcible appropriation of the labor of
  others. () This sharp differentiation between
  the two means will be our key to an
  understanding of the development, the essence,
  and the purpose of the State (). All world
  history, from primitive times up to our own
  civilization, presents a single phase, a contest
  namely between the economic and the political
  means.
• Franz Oppenheimer, The State (1906).

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13. Nock Social Power and State Power

• What politician want is an increase of State
  power and a corresponding decrease of social
  power.
• It is unfortunately none too well understood
  that, just as the State has no money of its own,
  so it has no power of its own. All the power it
  has is what society gives it, plus what it
  confiscates from time to time on one pretext or
  another there is no other source from which
  State power can be drawn. Therefore every
  assumption of State power, whether by gift or
  seizure, leaves society with so much less power
  there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of
  State power without a corresponding and roughly
  equivalent depletion of social power.
• Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State (1934).

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14. Rand Parasites and Creators

• Howard Roark () The creator stands on his own
  judgment. The parasite follows the opinions of
  others. The creator thinks, the parasite copies.
  The creator produces, the parasite loots. The
  creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The
  parasite's concern is the conquest of Man. The
  creator requires independence - he neither serves
  nor rules. He deals with men by free exchange and
  voluntary choice. The parasite seeks power. He
  wants to bind all men together in common action
  and common slavery.
• Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943).

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15. Rothbard The power over nature,and The
power over man

• Social power is the power over nature, the living
  standards achieved by men in mutual exchange.
  State power, as we have seen, is the coercive and
  parasitic seizure of this productiona draining
  of the fruits of society for the benefit of
  nonproductive (actually antiproductive) rulers.
  While social power is over nature, State power is
  power over man. (...). If the seventeenth through
  the nineteenth centuries were, in many countries
  of the West, times of accelerating social power,
  and a corollary increase in freedom, peace, and
  material welfare, the twentieth century has been
  primarily an age in which State power has been
  catching upwith a consequent reversion to
  slavery, war, and destruction.
• Murray N. Rothbard, The Anatomy of the State
  (1965).

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16. What can we do?

• Minarchists reducing and limiting State powers
  (the government has to be forced to protect
  individual rights).
• Anarcho-capitalists promoting a market of
  independent agencies (people have the right of
  choosing their protection).

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17. Is Libertarian Political Realism Really
Satisfying?

• YES. (It demystifies the State power).
• NO. (It identifies State and power, and it
  ignores the historical dimension of statehood).

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18. Feuds, Counties, Poleis etc. Are Not States

• Feuds, counties, Greek poleis, etc. were not
  States.
• Following the proclamation of the sovereign
  State, especially in France during the second
  half of the sixteenth century, historians went to
  work. The present needs a past adaptable to it
  (Niklas Luhmann).

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19. Modernity in Max Weber

• Modernity rationalization and neutralization.
• Modernity capitalism bureaucracy State.
• But what was the origin of Weberian idea of
  bureaucracy?

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20.Weberian Bureacracy Its Features

• In Economy and Society (1922) Weber identifies
  five main elements of bureaucracy
• Hierarchy of authority.
• Written rules.
• Members are paid.
• Bureaucratic tasks are well-separated.
• Resources of the structure are not those of the
  members.

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21. Weberian Idea of Middle Ages

• In the medieval times...
• No hierarchy of authority, but horizontal and
  asymmetric (feudal and/or federal) agreements,
  because the impossibility for the Empire to
  control all Western Europe.
• No written rules, but customary and/or common
  law.
• No employees, but independent castles, cities,
  etc.
• Identification of person and role (no idea of
  function separated by the person).
• The parts of the structure are owned by the
  individuals.

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22. The State is a Modern Invention

• WORD. State has Latin origins (status), but in
  our sense the term emerges at the beginning of
  the XVI century in Machiavel. In fact, in The
  Prince there is no theory of the state
  institutions, but some important elements of our
  (modern) idea of politics. Above all, the radical
  division between the common people ethics and the
  rulers ethics.
• CONTENT. During the XVI and XVII centuries the
  Medieval Order has been destroyed by the success
  of this new entity, imposing radically new
  relationships.

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23. States Features, From an Historical
Perspective

• Perry Anderson (1979) point out these five new
  elements
• Standing Army
• Centralized Bureaucracy
• Regularized Taxation
• A Formal Diplomatic Service
• Some Systematic Public Policies to Promote Economy

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24. A New Political World

• From a more theoretical point of view, the
  essential elements of the modern State can be
  identified as
• Unity
• Territoriality
• Impersonality
• Rationalization
• Perpetuity
• Sovereignty

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25. The Core is Sovereignty

• Sovereignty is that absolute and perpetual power
  vested in a commonwealth which in Latin is termed
  maiestas (Jean Bodin, The Six Books of Republic,
  1576).
• State as secularization of theological notions
  (Carl Schmitt) as God presides over the
  Creation, the State presides over the Society.

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26. Otherwise the State The Predecedents

• BEFORE
• Feuds.
• Kings.
• Empire.
• Church.
• Communes. Etc.

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27. Otherwise the State The Competitors

• DURING
• Italian and Flemish Cities.
• Hanseatic League.
• United Provinces (Holland).
• Swiss Confederation. Etc.

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28. State model and Free-market model

• Nation-States The Economy of Mercantilism
  (France and Spain).
• The Other Institutions The Free-Market
  Capitalism.
• Who were the losers? Who were the winners?

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29. Conclusion 1. State Power needs Religion

• State Power needs Religion.
• Theo-conservatism and Statist Secularism try to
  give a moral/religious support for Government.
• State cannot be lay, because it needs an
  ideology.

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30. Conclusion 2 State Power is Contingent

• The State is not an eternal and unchanging
  element in human affairs. For most of its
  history, humanity got by (whether more happily or
  not) without a State. For all its universality in
  our times, the State is a contingent (and
  comparatively recent) historical development. Its
  predominance may also prove to be quite
  transitory. Once we have recognized that there
  were societies before the State, we may also want
  to consider the possibility that there could be
  societies after the State.
• Christopher Pierson, The Modern State (1996).

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Some Bibliographical Suggestions

• On Libertarian Realism
• Lysander Spooner, The Constitution of No
  Authority.
• Murray N. Rothbard, Power Market, 1973.
• On the Modern State
• Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie, Duncker und
  Umblot, 1922.
• Otto Brunner, Neue Wege der Verfassungs- und
  Sozialgeschichte, Vandenhoeck, 1968.
• Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of National
  States in Western Europe, Princeton University
  Press, 1975
• Gianfranco Poggi, The State Its Nature,
  Development and Prospects, Stanford University
  Press, 1978.
• Christopher Pierson, The Modern State,
  Routledge, 1996.