SOCIAL ORGANIZATION PROBLEMS WHICH STATES SOLVE
August 25, 2000
Rather than critique
previous thinkers about the origins of the state, we will focus here
on the problems that governments address and the advantages they
offer.
The Problem of
Interpersonal Violence.
Domestic abusers,
schoolyard bullies, and highway bandits all commit forms of
interpersonal violence which are different from socially-orchestrated
warfare. Interpersonal violence, and the fear of it, are strong
motivators for change in beliefs and behavior, including submission
to authority in exchange for protection. Governments typically
suppress interpersonal violence with some form of police. Among the
Historic Pueblo tribes, anonymous societies (koshare) acted as police
in a most unusual fashion described by Adolph Bandelier (1891). Most
ethnographers translated the term koshare as 'clown society;’
Bandelier called them ‘the delight makers’.
The Problems of
Crime: Theft, Fraud, Interpersonal Conflict.
Systems
of mediation
and jurisprudence address crime and interpersonal conflict.
Society-wide governments must compensate for anonymity--they cannot
know the personal history behind every case--by offering impartiality
and consistent application of codified laws. Hammurabi, Ashoka,
Moses, Julius Caesar, and Hiawatha all emphasized the need for
impartial, consistent justice to maintain peace within a society.
Many societies also
offered extraordinary means of redress for grievances. Louis XIV
allowed commoners into Versailles to petition for relief or redress. A
clerk followed the King as he listened to each case, and followed
up on it. Even if only a tiny fraction of problematic cases were
heard and acted upon, the public awareness that this method existed
was tremendous propaganda in favor of the monarchy.
The Problem of Envy.
Inequity can be
measured in terms of access to mates, to food, to preferred space, to
services, to prestige goods, to information, and to the opportunity
to gain even more of these items. Unequal access to some or all of
these items is the basis of class stratification. Morgan, Marx, and
Engels assumed that the organized system of repressive violence used
to defend inequality is the origin of the state; Bakunin, Kropotkin,
and Lenin went further in asserting that this organized system of
violence is the state.
In practice the issue
has proven to be more complex. Violence used to protect private
property is often condoned by members of a community who are quite
poor. In essence, disadvantaged community members want to maintain
the system of property-protection out of enlightened self-interest,
even if it means protecting the interests of elites who are
exploiting them. As long as the system protects poor and rich alike,
the poor—who are also the most vulnerable—prefer the protections
of an impartial system even as it protects inequity.
However, refutation of
the Communist model does not solve the very real problem of envy as a
cause of social conflict. Some form of justification must be given,
and accepted, for inequity to persist. Both the privileged and the
disadvantaged members of the society must believe, each in their own
way, that the privileged ones deserve more mates, better food,
spacious houses, jewels, et cetera.
The Problems of
External Risk.
This is actually
multiple problems, both anticipated and unexpected. Foreign
invasion, droughts, floods, fires, storms, epidemics, famine, and
misfortune were the traditional disasters from which people sought
protection. These remain as lessened dangers, but to them we now add
pollution, climate change, nuclear war, and economic instability.
Awareness of risk causes anxiety which may be less acute than the
intimate fear caused by personal violence, but risk-anxiety is at
least as persistent and therefore an effective motive for belief and
behavior.
Governments offer
protection or mitigation from these large-scale external threats. If
the leader is believed to be sacred, that leader may offer
supernatural protection from risks that seem beyond human control.
Secondly, only
society-wide authority can organize and mobilize human and material
resources on a large scale. Labor-intensive monuments serve as
constant reminders of this inherent advantage to large-scale
organization.
Systems of
redistribution are still used to compensate for misfortune, chronic
poverty, and large-scale disasters. Charity is also used to enhance
the prestige of the elite. Kwakiutl chieftains gave potlatches,
Italian aristocracy patronized the arts and crafts, American
billionaires give endowments.
The Problem of
Engagement.
Why should we submit
indefinitely to this form of human authority? Governments must
answer this question effectively and persistently or the state will
fragment. Typically, the response is a complex blend of promises to
address the other problems listed here, and threats against refusal
to submit. The least costly means of engagement are the most
efficient, a point emphasized by Machiavelli (1495). Rule by fear
can work, but voluntary compliance requires fewer security forces.
Beyond voluntary
compliance there is an even deeper level of engagement: active
support of the state and its institutions. Generally this is
achieved if the members of the society feel some degree of personal
investment in the state institutions, a feeling of enfranchisement.
Election of the leadership by secret ballot is an obvious method of
engagement; underwriting 30-year home loans is a more subtle and
method of binding the individual to the institutions of family and
bank, and giving them a sense of social investment as an ‘owner.’
A more ancient form of
engagement is group ritual. Greek plays, Roman and Mayan games,
religious processions, and Military parades all served the
institutions of state by gathering the public together for a shared
experience. Most governments learn the hard way that a public
gathering can turn into a threatening, anti-government mob. But
early governments were often regarded as sacred. Hence, the rulers
could not imagine such a thing as a popular uprising and did not fear
it. Theocracies therefore used group rituals very effectively to
create and maintain a common sense of community and society.
The Problem of
Consensus-Building and Maintenance.
How do you get all of
the members of a society to accept a new system of authority? Even
if a leadership promises to address all of the problems listed above,
it may fail to convince a society or be crippled by conflicting
demands to address problems with limited resources and time. Working
backward through time, these are a few of the successful solutions:
- The Stated Promise. The U.S. Constitution & Bill
of Rights is a superb example. As a test of its effectiveness, note
that the most divergent political positions within the United States
all agree with the ideals, objectives, and principles in these
documents. Virtually all disagreement within the country is whether the
government has delivered, or will deliver this promise.
This solution is most effective in unifying a society under an
agreed-upon set of objectives. Anyone can be a full member with full
rights so long as they pledge loyalty to the Constitution and its
ideals. This is an exceptionally effective means of engagement.
Presumably it is most vulnerable if a significant portion of the
population rejects those objectives, and therefore Constitutionalists
take great care in trying to draft a document which can endure as a
common denominator. Even so, it allows little room for serious dissent.
- The Ethnic Nation. Fascism is the notorious extreme
example, but in fact most nations today are based at least partly on
this idea. Consider France, Turkey, Japan, Senegal. Nationalism is less
vulnerable to political dissent than Constitutionalism because it is
not defined by specific ideals or objectives. Identity with the state
is strongly established because the state identifies with its members,
regardless of individual opinions. Conversely, Nation-States cannot
expand by incorporation, unless provision is made for assimilating
aliens into the national unity.
- The Popular Monarch. Subjects of a monarch can
disagree widely in their beliefs and goals and still regard each other
as members of a unified community so long as they all submit to, and
identify with, the authority of a single individual.
Monarchies are more flexible than either Constitutional States or
Nation-States, because subjects do not have to be of one ethnicity nor
do they need to agree on common principles and ideals. They do not even
have to speak the same language or practice the same religion. However,
this flexibility comes at the cost of unifying strength and allegiance:
the people of Aquitaine would submit as easily to an English-speaking
monarch as a French one.
- The Common Religion. This may be the earliest form
of consensus-making. Fustel de Coulanges (1868) argued that ancient
families worshipped their own ancestors on their own land. Other
families worshipped their own ancestors, so family-based religion was
inherently mutually exclusive. Ancestor-worship could be expanded to
clan- or even tribe-scale religion, but it could not include people who
had no demonstrable (or fictional) blood relationship. The necessary
step is to establish a form of religion based on an externality: the
earth, immortal beings, or the creator of all existence. Any individual
or group could adopt the common religion, making it possible to expand
the self-identified members of this community indefinitely.
Unique Advantages
the State Can Offer
Political authorities
can do more than address chronic social problems.
The Appeal of
Charisma
The Appeal of Drama
and Glamour
State systems can
gather resources and produce tremendous pageantry. They can build
plazas, temples, and processional avenues as settings for the
pageants. They can extend design control over an entire region, and
employ divine privilege or expropriation to reshape even built-up
areas. They can declare holidays and define sacred time for an
entire society. Such actions can awe, intimidate, and otherwise
impress individuals profoundly, and promote the desire of the
individual to identify with the state.
The Appeal of Myth
and Vision
Why are we here and
where are we going? Leaders have raised these questions and
responded to them in numerous ways from the most literal to the most
metaphoric. Much of literature, in fact the creation and retelling
of history by different cultures is a process of inculcating and
propagandizing myths and a sense of common social purpose. The
process is best illustrated by its failure: Southern Americans do not
accept the myth of the Civil War, which Southerners call the War
Between the States. First, they regard it as an invasion of a
sovereign country that was created by popular vote. Secondly,
Southerners believe the primary motives for this invasion and
annexation were tactical (to thwart the British) and economic.
Northerners flinch at the thought of the Civil War as an invasion,
conquest, and forcible annexation of a sovereign country. And they
are generally taken aback by the challenge to the assumption that the
war was fought for any other reason than to Free the Slaves. Your
reaction to this passage is a good test of the power and
effectiveness of State myth.
|