The State

The State

Thomas Allen

The state is an abstraction. So, when we speak of the state doing something, we are really speaking of the elite, either as an individual or a group, who controls and acts in the name of the state. Likewise, when we speak of the rights, privileges, and immunities of the state, we are really speaking of the rights, privileges, and immunities of this controlling elite who acts in the name of the state.

Who is this elite that controls the state? Originally, it was a monarch. Now, it is the oligarchs. The oligarchs consist primarily of plutocrats and high-ranking politicians, bureaucrats, and judges. Accordingly, it is more correct to use the terms “oligarch” or “oligarchy” instead of “state.”

Instead of developing spontaneously, the state is a manmade invention — a manmade institution and political entity. It is not a discovery, nor has God preordained it. (In many respects, the state is idolatry because many people worship it and look at it as their savior.)

The state originated in Europe during the seventeenth century following the breakup of the medieval political order. Before the seventeenth century, the state as such did not exist.

Max Weber defines the state as “a relation of men dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate (i.e., considered to be legitimate) violence . . . [it] is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Yoram Barzel defines the state as consisting of “(1) a set of individuals who are subject to a single ultimate third party who uses violence for enforcement and (2) a territory where these individuals reside, demarcated by the reach of the enforcer power.”

An essential attribute of a state is that it possesses a monopoly on the use of force, either legitimately or illegitimately, to impose its will.  Consequently, it must disarm the people. This assertion of a monopoly of the means of violence gives the government’s claim to provide protection more credibility and makes resistance more difficult.

To exercise its violence, the state establishes a monopolistic organization of violence over its territory and centralizes the control of violence. As a result, it increasingly monopolies public life and absorbs all other centers of power. Specifically, it concentrates power. Such concentration of power is necessary for a state to survive.

Moreover, the state represents both a domestic and international political order. It is a sovereign power.

Another essential attribute of a state is that it is territorial. It is the sovereign of a particular geographical area.  That is, it is a legal entity that occupies a definite space. Its authority is contained within this space. However, to achieve this goal, the state has to deny citizens (or more correctly subjects) all other loyalties. Consequently, the state seeks to destroy all intermediate bodies between it and individuals except associations that it approves.

Before the rise of the state, customs regulated conduct and not the law. Tax collection was difficult and sporadic. Men were not drafted for war or labor. With the arrival of the State, law replaced custom (although the law often codified customs), taxes became more collectible, and men were drafted for war. This ability of a state to demand and easily obtain “blood and money” from its subjects distinguishes it from all other political arrangements.

A great advantage of the state to the oligarchs is privileges, immunities, and other benefits that they and their associates receive that are denied to others.

With the insatiable lust for power, the state is the enemy of freedom. Freedom can only be achieved by restricting and containing the state. Historically, federalism has been highly effective in this endeavor as long as the federation lasted.

Sovereignty is another essential attribute of the state. In Europe, according to Bassani, sovereignty “is eminently juridical and implies the idea of an unlimited and illimitable concentration of power at a given center.” (Bassani, pp. 49-50) Consequently, “sovereignty requires potentially unlimited concentration of power in a territory.” (Bassani, p. 50) Thus, the European concept of sovereignty is statism, absolute political power residing in the state.

For Americans before Lincoln’s War, sovereignty meant the supreme legislative authority or the primary power to make laws. It did not imply or require the concentration and centralization of power, which federalism dispersed. For most Americans before Lincoln’s War, sovereignty resided in the States, i.e., sovereignty resided in the people of each State independent of all other States. Therefore, the American concept of sovereignty has an antistatism function.

Sovereignty is indivisible and illimitable. However, a sovereign power can delegate rights. Nevertheless, these delegated rights do not make the body receiving them sovereign because the sovereign that grants them remains the superior will. In Europe, the sovereign is the state, i.e., the oligarchs. In America before Lincoln’s War, it was the people of each individual state separately. After Lincoln’s War, the oligarchs usurped the powers of the people of the States and concentrated them in the federal government and, by that, made those who controlled the federal government, the oligarchs, sovereign.

Reference

Bassani, Luigi Marco. Chaining Down Leviathan: The Ameican Dream of Self-Government 1776–1865. McClellanville, South Carolina: Abbeville Institute Press, 2021.

Copyright © 2022 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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