Emergence of the State

Economics Political Theory
1

I have a two-part question for anarcho-capitalists:

A. At one time in the past human beings lived in stateless societies. States emerged from these stateless societies. In your view, what conditions in general allowed for states to first emerge?

B. Would these conditions be present in an anarcho-capitalist society? Is there a reason to believe that the emergence of a state from an anarcho-capitalist society is less likely than was the emergence of states from actual stateless societies in prehistory?

2

A. At one time in the past human beings lived in stateless societies. States emerged from these stateless societies. In your view, what conditions in general allowed for states to first emerge?

States emerged after civ emerged, which emerged from the need to manage agriculture. Domestication of animals lead to people enslaving each other which lead to the state. Religion also played a role.

B. Would these conditions be present in an anarcho-capitalist society? Is there a reason to believe that the emergence of a state from an anarcho-capitalist society is less likely than was the emergence of states from actual stateless societies in prehistory?

An anarcho-capitalist society will only happen after a societal collapse. By that time theres no way the state would be able to re emerge.

3

States emerged after civ emerged, which emerged from the need to manage agriculture. Domestication of animals lead to people enslaving each other which lead to the state. Religion also played a role.

I agree with all your points, but I was hoping for a rather more universal/ahistorical explanation of state-emergence from the perspective of anarcho-capitalism. I’ve read Oppenheimer, and I take it you have as well. But suppose there were no species of animals on Earth capable of being domesticated, there would no doubt still be states, and I expect they would still have emerged shortly after civilization emerged, as a result of one group enslaving another.

Let’s focus on that, the “people enslaving each other” part of the story. What are the necessary conditions for this to occur?

  1. There must already exist a sufficient demand for labor for slavery to be worthwhile, and/or (what amounts to the same thing) a society which produces enough surplus to be worth subjugating and extracting rents from.

  2. There must be a sufficient imbalance of power between the would-be ruler group and the would-be ruled group - with power being defined as the capacity to employ violence against others.

No other conditions come to mind, though no doubt I’m forgetting something. For now, let’s consider only these two conditions. Aren’t they ubiquitous? In what society in the world today, excluding a handful of tribal societies, are these two conditions not in effect right now? Moreover, haven’t these conditions been in effect more or less continuously in all civilized countries since the dawn of civilization? So then, one can ask: why are states not arising all the time all over the place? The obvious answer is: because there are already states all over the place, which do not tolerate the emergence of new states within their territory. What prevents the emergence of the state? The preexistence of another state. So we add another condition:

  1. There must not be an existing state on the territory where the new state is to emerge.

The implication of this is that a state can emerge from an anarcho-capitalist society, as all three conditions are in effect in such a society.

An anarcho-capitalist society will only happen after a societal collapse. By that time theres no way the state would be able to re emerge.

As for the first claim, I hope you’re wrong. As for the second, why shouldn’t the state be able to reemerge after a collapse? Will the three conditions for the possibility of the emergence of the state as outlined above not be in effect? Granted, if this post-collapse scenario means subsistence living with very low demand for labor and very little surplus production, then the state will not emerge. But what kind of a world is that to live in?

4

Great post.

A) I think that the rise of agriculture is pretty-much coincidental with the rise of the State. Agriculture created the first “capital stocks” and created the possibility of a full-time, professional parasitic class in whatever guise. Looked at from the point-of-view of the first agriculturalists, taxes are protection payments paid to a gang which has become very powerful because of the many, large, soft targets (other agricultural stocks) which can be raided. Each agriculturalist has to pay because all the others are paying.

Capital stocks explain the “why then” but it does not explain the “why ever”… why did the State ever arise. This I think has to be explained in terms of human nature. Human beings did not evolve in a vacuum and family/clan/tribe loyalty and social structure has been a part of humans from very far back in our evolutionary history. Peer pressure, group loyalty, deference and respect for elders, alpha/beta/zeta-male hierarchies, and so on are all “hardcoded” into our brains.

As protection rackets that targeted the (necessarily) territorial agriculturalists began to increase in size and strength, they began to parasitically leverage these “hardcoded” social codes in our brains. Instead of peer pressure, we have statutes, instead of group loyalty, we have nationalism and king-worship, instead of deference and respect for elders, we have rule-by-fear/terror, instead of alpha/beta/zeta-male hierarchies we have social classes, militaries, fraternities, and so on.

B) The conditions under which the State arose were unique and will never be repeated (you can never step into the same stream twice). However, it is correct that a transition from the status quo is not as simple as sprinkling libertarian magic fairy dust on society and preaching the Non-Aggression Principle from every mountaintop. Rather, what is needed is a real evolution away from the status quo. This evolution can be guided by a moral enlightenment regarding the inherently illegitimate nature of taxation and the monopolization of production of law and security.

We have to stop wishing to “re-write the rules from the ground up” and instead take seriously the rules-as-they-are. The way forward on evolving out of our unhealthy social order toward a more healthy social order is to foster a moral enlightenment which will guide the evolution out of the status quo social norms and legal system with an explicitly stated understanding that the end-point of this process may look very unlike what we imagine it will or should look like.

This process of evolutionary change of mores, norms and law should not be confused with the admonition we frequently hear from the political punditry that “if you want to have a say, you have to get in the game.” No, we don’t have to “get in the game” and most certainly should never yield to such horrible advice. Dr. Paul is exemplary of the only moral approach to participation in the political machine - disciplined, principled refusal to join in with business-as-usual. By his own confession, Dr. Paul’s political office has primarily served to give him a pulpit from which to reach people and to be a public person. He said recently (paraphrase) “I realized that the way to get the message out is to try to get elected [to President].” And it’s worked. Dr. Paul is not seeking fame or fortune and does not want political office so he can dish out graft to his buddies. He has decoded the political system and identified the one and only morally justifiable way to participate in politics.

Clayton -

5

I would argue that there needs to be a degree of wealth that makes emigration away from state control more costly than remaining under the state. Natural environment and uncertainty play large roles in this.

6

The conditions under which the State arose were unique and will never be repeated

That is true in a sense, we will never again (barring total societal collapse for some reason) pass through the phase from hunting-gathering to agriculture. However, I think the historical particulars are incidental: what allowed for the emergence of the state was the emergence of a society capable of producing surpluses, which, as you say, can feed a parasitic managerial class. In other words, the reason that the state first arose when it did was that a society producing surpluses first arose when it did - but the state is possible whenever such a society exists, including now, or any time in the future. For example, the only thing preventing the emergence of a state in N. America presently (where there is a surplus-producing society and where the means exist for one group to subjugate another) is the preexistent of the United States. Note that when a state has collapsed it is usually replaced quickly with another state(s).

So, I would ask you: what made the period of the agricultural revolution so unique that the conditions then present for the emergence of the state could never reappear?

7

States emerged after civ emerged, which emerged from the need to manage agriculture. Domestication of animals lead to people enslaving each other which lead to the state. Religion also played a role.

I agree with all your points, but I was hoping for a rather more universal/ahistorical explanation of state-emergence from the perspective of anarcho-capitalism. I’ve read Oppenheimer, and I take it you have as well. But suppose there were no species of animals on Earth capable of being domesticated, there would no doubt still be states, and I expect they would still have emerged shortly after civilization emerged, as a result of one group enslaving another.

Let’s focus on that, the “people enslaving each other” part of the story. What are the necessary conditions for this to occur?

  1. There must already exist a sufficient demand for labor for slavery to be worthwhile, and/or (what amounts to the same thing) a society which produces enough surplus to be worth subjugating and extracting rents from.

  2. There must be a sufficient imbalance of power between the would-be ruler group and the would-be ruled group - with power being defined as the capacity to employ violence against others.

No other conditions come to mind, though no doubt I’m forgetting something. For now, let’s consider only these two conditions. Aren’t they ubiquitous? In what society in the world today, excluding a handful of tribal societies, are these two conditions not in effect right now? Moreover, haven’t these conditions been in effect more or less continuously in all civilized countries since the dawn of civilization? So then, one can ask: why are states not arising all the time all over the place? The obvious answer is: because there are already states all over the place, which do not tolerate the emergence of new states within their territory. What prevents the emergence of the state? The preexistence of another state. So we add another condition:

  1. There must not be an existing state on the territory where the new state is to emerge.

The implication of this is that a state can emerge from an anarcho-capitalist society, as all three conditions are in effect in such a society.

An anarcho-capitalist society will only happen after a societal collapse. By that time theres no way the state would be able to re emerge.

As for the first claim, I hope you’re wrong. As for the second, why shouldn’t the state be able to reemerge after a collapse? Will the three conditions for the possibility of the emergence of the state as outlined above not be in effect? Granted, if this post-collapse scenario means subsistence living with very low demand for labor and very little surplus production, then the state will not emerge. But what kind of a world is that to live in?

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20060204150023328

How can a state emerge after collapse? What resources would a gang of thieves have if ag has bottomed out and we’re all living off the grid?

8

@Minarchist: While we treat human nature as an eternally static given for the purposes of praxeological arguments, the fact is that human nature does slowly change over the generations. States should not exist for the same reason that our bodies do not have the capacity to leech onto one another and suck blood out of each other. The human organism is a social individual. We are individuals (autonomous decision-makers) who are social (cooperative patterns of behavior hardwired into our brains).

I view the State as a maladaptation to the post-agricultural revolution (and all subsequent revolutions) environment. The Hobbesian myth as expounded by Hoppe is, to an extent, true. There is in fact a permanent underproduction of security. But the State is not the solution to that problem, it is the very manifestation of that problem. The first agriculturalist who failed to secure his crops from raiders set us on a path to the modern, tax-slavery Leviathan.

I also want to point out that when we distinguish between “producers” and “parasites”, we are making a purely theoretical distinction for the purposes of moral argument. In reality, the most powerful people and families are precisely those who have most successfully blended both elements. A Mises daily from yesterday explained how Al Capone used bribes not only to protect his alcohol businesses but also to snitch out and destroy the competition.

Ancient armies were well-fed by crops and animals grown at home. The power of such armies arose out of their independence from the spoils they were trying to capture (most importantly in the form of regular tributary payments).

But herein lies the answer to the question of whether States will always be with us. The answer is clearly no and for the same reason we cannot physically leech blood off each other. Those agriculturalists of times past who underproduced security were raided and pillaged by other agriculturalists who did not underproduce security. The underproducers left fewer offspring, thus breeding out the tendency. Evolution works on a long time-scale but it does work nonetheless. A couple millenia seems like a long time but in the evolutionary time-scale it’s the blink of an eye.

As brutal as this all is, it is the same today as it ever was. We have a system of corporate “capitalism” and it is exhibiting itself in the form of imperial American ambition. Those capitalists who take proper protections to fend off American aggression - whether through wit or strength - will be at an advantage vis-a-vis the victims of American aggression. I do not mean this as any kind of justification for American imperialism, it is not.

Systematic aggression must, over time, cause a shift in the population to systematic defense against the aggression. Biologists model this with predator-prey models. It is the same principle in action. We have people who produce and yet permit the product of their labor to be seized by parasites. Some producers are better at keeping the product of their labor than others. Those who are more successful at avoiding parasitism have a reproductive advantage vis-a-vis the more naive. Therefore, the naivete toward parasitism is slowly being bred out of us.

Clayton -

9

My own two cents, without repeating too much of what has been said.

Of by ‘state’ we understand that organization which is largely seen as justly having a monopoly of violence over some territory, states where only invented in the XVI century (approx.) and emerged only in western and central Europe, to further spread by colonization (basically Creveld’s idea).

I see this as the greatest achievement of social evolution: without going into much detail, once you accept that there is something that may justly do as it pleases within the confines of its territory, you discover the idea of private property, which never – let me repeat – never existed before the state. It is no coincidence at all that the most vociferous advocate of state sovereignty vs. Imperial and Papal rule, Bodin, was also a vociferous advocate of capitalism.

The ‘issue’ with the state is that the norms of state formation are still far from what we think would be optimal. We think that state should be formed by homesteading and voluntary transaction, not by convention and historical precedent. I think nukes are slowly pushing us in that direction, but the ‘why’ would take too many words here.

So, of course the state will always be with us: it is a great cultural norm that dampened our imprinted tendency to aggregate in socialist tribes. The enemy is not the state, but any culture that is not NAP-centered.

10

I think the Romans would disagree with you.

Again, I think the Romans would disagree with you.

Where is the state in homesteading and voluntary transaction?

I don’t really understand your first sentence. The second I almost agree with, but I’d also say that the state has to violate the NAP in order to exist.

11

I’m still working through Creveld’s book but this sounds completely wrong unless you mean “private property in land”. Even that I think is a mistake to attribute to the State instead of to advances in the technology of land-surveying.

Clayton -

12

To answer the OP directly:

I’ve come to the conclusion that the line between the state and anarchy is blurrier than I used to think. To be clear, I define “state” as “a territorial monopoly over the legitimate use of coercion”. Historically speaking, I see the state as essentially the authoritarian family writ large.

Based on the evidence, the original state for humans was relatively small familial groups. These groups were territorial. Even before agriculture, they occupied “home ranges” that they moved around within. This home range was the property of the group.

Such an arrangement per se isn’t the same as a state. It’s just a form of private property. What gives rise to the state is systematic aggression. For example, the notion that parents own their children is inherently aggressive IMHO, as it requires the former to violate the inherent self-ownership of the latter. One could call that a form of conquest. Other forms of conquest have also occurred throughout history.

Where I think the state comes into focus is in the tension over land ownership. How can it be said that a person owns his land if he can’t dispose of it in some arbitrary way? In that case, the purported landowner is not what he thinks he is - he’s merely a lease-holder for the true landowner, the state. Yet the state apparently prefers to have the lease-holder believe that he’s the real landowner.

Why does this benefit the state? Because, if the true nature of the relationship was made clear to everyone, at the very least there would be lower productivity, and hence less wealth flowing to the state.

In a nutshell, what I think led to states first emerging were certain beliefs - basically any belief that violating self-ownership is legitimate under certain circumstances. Where those beliefs were in a majority, a state was able to arise.

If those conditions are present at all, I think they’d be much less present than historically. In order for an anarcho-capitalist society to arise, I think a clear (if not vast) majority of people must consistently adhere to the self-ownership and non-aggression principles. While I think the vast majority of people are endowed with an instinctive tendency to adhere to those principles, that tendency (like other instinctive urges) can be and is overridden. Unfortunately, even today a clear exception is made by all too many people when it comes to familial authority. As I think the state has its basis in extended familial relationships, I don’t think the state will disappear until people recognize self-ownership in their own children.

13

A) I don’t think it is much concern to look at “states” or anything of the sort before the Enlughtment / Industrial or American-French Revolutions. When we are looking at states, govt, and the way politics is done we are doing it from a reference in relation to Enlightment principles; any look at anything before may be empty speculation.

B) It may be best to look at Ancapism as a form of “progressive” movement - people would just recognize it’s obviousness - it should in no way concern itself with the past.

14

Those agriculturalists of times past who underproduced security were raided and pillaged by other agriculturalists who did not underproduce security. The underproducers left fewer offspring, thus breeding out the tendency.

When the proto-state consisted of one group of people pillaging another group in an ad hoc fashion, causing tremendous disruption and damage, then I would agree that the victims (the underproducers of security) would tend to have fewer offspring and be outbred by their enemies. However, that phase ended a very long time ago; the underproducers were conquered before they were outbred, and conquest (the arrival of the state) changed the evolutionary dynamic.

To use Oppenheimer’s metaphor, the transition from the proto-state to the state proper is the point at which the bear stealing honey realizes that he will get more honey over the long-term if he doesn’t destroy the hive; and then he becomes a beekeeper. Predator-prey models used in biology (where the prey becomes gradually better able to defend itself through elimination of those most vulnerable to predation) do not apply to human kind once the state proper came into being: the state does not prey upon people, it farms them. Big difference.

Systematic aggression must, over time, cause a shift in the population to systematic defense against the aggression. Biologists model this with predator-prey models. It is the same principle in action. We have people who produce and yet permit the product of their labor to be seized by parasites. Some producers are better at keeping the product of their labor than others. Those who are more successful at avoiding parasitism have a reproductive advantage vis-a-vis the more naive. Therefore, the naivete toward parasitism is slowly being bred out of us.

Firstly, to what extent is “naivete toward parasitism” actually genetic? I would say it’s almost entirely a matter of conditioning, and every generation generally speaking is subjected to more intensive pro-state conditioning than the previous. Therefore, I would say that we are moving toward greater naivete toward parasitism, not less. But supposing there is a genetic component - yes, “those who are more successful at avoiding parasitism have a reproductive advantage” but how does that balance against the enormous reproductive advantages offered by the state to its dependents? Who is outbreeding whom? I would say that the dependents of the state (welfare mothers, et al) are massively outbreeding the independents, not only on an absolute basis, but also on a per capita basis. And keep in mind, this results from the actions of the state, deliberative actions. As the socialists say, they are interested in the self-direction of human evolution: and by “self-direction,” they of course mean direction by the state, for the benefit of the state. Breeding better bees (which means, among other things, more obedient bees) in order to maximize honey production for the beekeeper.

I’d be willing to accept arguendo that human nature is a constant (for most intents and purposes I’d say it is), but if you want to say that it’s significantly variable, then I say the trend is definitely toward greater dependence, greater naivete toward parasitism, etc. Not the kind of trend which makes me think current- or future-man would resist the emergence of the state more than did prehistoric-man, and we know that the latter’s resistance (whatever it was), was futile. The state emerged in every place where the necessary material conditions of life were present, and in short order after those conditions appeared.

15

I’ll try to answer both Clayton and Autolykos,

My idea starts from Creveld’s but it is put differently (I’d even say incompletely) there. I’ll try to summarize the main points, because a full exposition would take far too much time (here I have attempted it though):

  1. let me define ownership as the socially accepted right of an entity to do as it wishes with some piece of owned property. I think any other definition is pointless.

  2. the study of traditional societies will show that customary law has always been very developed, and it often detailed the right of different persons on the same piece of property down to minutiae. The web of such traditional rights was so static and intricate that no one was really an owner of anything. No one could sell a plot of land, or a family house.

  3. all authorities where expected to behave within the Law. The recurrence of revolts in the past is a clear testament that people wouldn’t take a breach of Law even by kings or emperors. Some emperors have claimed to be absolute owners of their realms, but there can be little doubt that the population didn’t lend credence to such bombastic claims. The emperor was entitled to what Law gave him, no more, no less.

4)hence, all traditional pseudo-states have been hierarchical systems, not states at all. Superficial similarities must fool no one: no emperor ever understood the idea of ‘sovereignty’, or if he did, none of his subject indulged him.

  1. the very first socially accepted sovereign over some property has been the post-Westphalian western State. The concept of what has now become the all-powerful state took hold of the minds of the people due to inherent psychological imprints. This did not mean that this new idea could not perform useful functions. The function was to create the concept of a sovereign owner, which could do as he wished with his property without being liable to anyone. That the concept was never fully accepted (or that it may be in steep decline nowadays) need not worry us: it was accepted to a great degree at the time, by both citizens and fellow states.

  2. once the concept of a sovereign has been imprinted, I think it’s a downhill struggle. Changing the concept of a state to finally incorporate what we consider a just property-hold is a matter of evolution, not revolution. Clear signs of such a trend can be glanced in the constant growth of the number of states. Even more importantly, the number of states which no other state would lever dream of agreeing against is likewise growing. Nukes have played the main role in these developments.

So, all in all: traditional societies never had a concept of sovereign ownership: these where static societies entangled in their won customary law. In the west the idea that someone could justly own property and answer to no one but itself for its use arose in what we call the State. Incidentally, this is the precise same concept of a just property-holder under anarchy. The state thus broke the lock of traditional law. The concept can now be expanded by physically reducing the territory of a state until, at some point in the future, any just property holder will be a sovereign. And it all begun with the concept of the state.

If the idea was sketchy, I apologize, but it would really be far too much to squeeze into a post.

EDIT: Forgot the link above.

16

On the one hand, the creation of surpluses also allows for the division of labor. On the other hand, it’s also possible to accumulate surpluses (up to a point) without agriculture. Then again, surpluses don’t even have to exist for one person to take what belongs to another. Surpluses just let such exploitation last longer before its victims are exhausted.

We’ve reached the point where the exploiters try increasingly desperately to make the exploited believe that there’s no exploitation going on. For the most part, they’ve been successful - so far. However, I don’t think the internet is the prime culprit behind their increasing desperation. Rather, I think it’s simply their inability to keep things under control that’s the culprit.

17

Please support this. I think the Romans would once more disagree with you. Private property was one of (if not the) cornerstones of Roman law. That included selling things like plots of land and family houses. I believe the same was the case with Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, and many other ancient cultures. Medieval England and many other areas also had clear notions of ownership.

Yet the authorities sometimes didn’t behave within the Law, and got away with it - because they were the authorities. Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

Also look into the late phase of the Roman Empire, also known as the “Dominate”.

Absolute monarchy was just a formalization and, more importantly, an overt assertion of the sovereignty that monarchs felt they already possessed. This sovereignty became more overt because absolute monarchs no longer relied upon a system of primary, secondary, tertiary, etc. lease-holders.

18

… in order to prey upon them.

The implication is that the standard-of-living in the absence of “farming” by the State would be X and with the State it is X+1 so, even though the State is skimming off half our productivity for itself, we’re still better off in absolute terms than we would have been without the State. This is simply false. In the absence of the State, we would retain the balance of our productive labor and we would be that much better off. It has always ever been individuals that act and the increase in our standard-of-living is a by-product of technological progress despite the constant nannying and heckling of the State.

You’re missing the point - the welfare moms are the bear, not the bees! We spent most of our evolutionary history in an environment where being neighborly was more conducive to survival than being a possessive miser. Yet the attributes of the possessive miser are precisely what are needed to fend off the parasitism of the State. This attribute of human nature will flourish in proportion to the success of the State. The welfare moms are not “dependent” so much as utilizing the means available to them to make sure they are not exploited but, rather, are the exploiters.

Clayton -

19

Yes but I think the more important point is that it permits the exploitative class to become full-time professionals, that is, to specialize in exploitation. Imagine a roving thief in hunter-gatherer society. First, he has to find a band of people to steal from. When he steals it, the most he’ll get is a couple days’ worth of food and maybe an implement or two (which he might not even know how to use). The rest of the time, he’s still going to have to know how to hunt and feed himself. He cannot devote himself wholly to the art of stealing.

When capital stocks became larger (there was more to steal), the robber could steal enough to last at least until he found his next victim. This permitted him to become a full-time professional and to develop parasitism into a craft. This is the State. No longer is the robber’s attention divided between feeding himself and the desire to steal in order to ease the burden of feeding himself. His attention is devoted wholly to one, specialized task.

From the humble beginnings where the craft primarily concerned itself with the techniques of separating owners from their property (primarily through murder), it has moved to a much more insidious, annuitized approach (taxation). The parasitic class can devote so much time and energy to the ideological battle because it is their craft, it’s what they do. If you’re an experienced car mechanic, you can fix a car very quickly and efficiently. You know how to diagnose the problem, assess the repairs and execute them quickly. If you are entrepreneurial you may even know how to train and regiment others in learning to do what you can do so they can do it on your behalf as employees. The State consists of professional parasites. They are the very best at what they do. That’s why they’re on top.

Clayton -

20

Autolykos,

That general framework must be understood as just that: a general framework. I do not mean to say that in every traditional society no one ever sold a house, or that at midnight on December the 31st 1499 people magically begun to think of kings as of sovereigns, or that ancient despots never broke the law.

I am always referring to trends. Some traditional societies had fewer encumbrances on transaction than others, and clearly so. It is no accident that some of those societies produced great civilizations, and others never progressed beyond the tribal level.

But in general I am under the impression that no one could ever be certain of his possession (even if we assume he could ‘lawfully’ call it his in the first place), and that far more than one’s will was needed to dispose of property. I am under the impression that the price one was allowed to charge was expected to fall within certain limits, and that not just anyone could be the buyer. In general, a hundred traditional encumbrances on free trade. I surely cannot believe that we could consider a Roman citizen to have been as free in the disposal of his property as a XIX century Englander. And fear of the consul is not what I’m referring to. I cannot prove this here, and thus I cannot provide a full academic discussion.

And again, of course ancient kings sometimes broke customary law. But no one was under the impression that what they were doing was anything but lawless. Now, it is certainly true that customary law evolves, and sometimes that evolution is initiated by one such breach. But in general, I think we can agree that ancient despots were far more circumscribed than any modern pen pusher in the exercise of what powers they had.

So, I still find the main tenets of the post to hold, always speaking broadly and generally.