Emergence of the State

Economics Political Theory
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.