[quetzalcoatl]

The State has gotten a lot of bad press, and a lot of it is well-deserved. But a lot of the bad press the state has gotten is simply clever marketing. Well-heeled elites have discovered the usefulness of certain previously obscure political/economic philosophies, and have pumped incredible resources into the promulgation of anti-statism.

So is the state evil?

Let's look empirically at one aspect of badness, human violence, using some of the arguments put forward by Steven Pinker in A Blank State: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. link 1, link 2, link 3

Despite the incredible violence of the twentieth century wars, the actual per capita death rate declines with the introduction of the modern state.

"...So the sequence of human societies (in a long-term historical sense) runs as follows:
(1) stateless hunter gatherers (nomadic and/or sedentary);

(2) stateless agricultural/pastoral populations (the first generally sedentary), eventually leading to rural populations; at the same time hunter-horticulturalist societies also developed and persisted in some regions of the world;

(3) cities;

(4) state societies;

(5) more and more complex state societies (incorporating any or all of the above types of societies).

What is being claimed by Pinker is that as populations moved into (4) and (5) above, the per capita level of death rates by violence fell as a long-term trend..."





Note that even in the 20th century the violence rate diverges sharply between state and non-state societies.

Okay, causation and correlation and all that. Other factors, etc, etc.

But at the very least the persistent narrative that the rise of the state precipitated some incredible increase in violence is empirically false.

Theories of state, like economic theories, need to be realistic. They must be tested against actual history and human experience; similarly, political systems 'deduced' from core ideals related to human freedom, liberty, or non-aggression are invalid, and must necessarily fail.

[Rei Murasame]

It's great that someone finally posted this, although I don't like the emotionally charged word 'evil' that you have chosen.

Steven Pinker: The surprising decline in violence
[youtube]ramBFRt1Uzk[/youtube]

Steven Pinker charts the decline of violence from Biblical times to the present, and argues that, though it may seem illogical and even obscene, given Iraq and Darfur, we are living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence.

Of course, this doesn't say anything about the morality of that arrangement, but it does support the point that the state-based society involves less death overall.

[Andalublue]

The State has gotten a lot of bad press, and a lot of it is well-deserved. But a lot of the bad press the state has gotten is simply clever marketing. Well-heeled elites have discovered the usefulness of certain previously obscure political/economic philosophies, and have pumped incredible resources into the promulgation of anti-statism.

So is the state evil?

Let's look empirically at one aspect of badness, human violence, using some of the arguments put forward by Steven Pinker in A Blank State: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. link 1, link 2, link 3

Despite the incredible violence of the twentieth century wars, the actual per capita death rate declines with the introduction of the modern state.

"...So the sequence of human societies (in a long-term historical sense) runs as follows:
(1) stateless hunter gatherers (nomadic and/or sedentary);

(2) stateless agricultural/pastoral populations (the first generally sedentary), eventually leading to rural populations; at the same time hunter-horticulturalist societies also developed and persisted in some regions of the world;

(3) cities;

(4) state societies;

(5) more and more complex state societies (incorporating any or all of the above types of societies).

What is being claimed by Pinker is that as populations moved into (4) and (5) above, the per capita level of death rates by violence fell as a long-term trend..."





Note that even in the 20th century the violence rate diverges sharply between state and non-state societies.

Okay, causation and correlation and all that. Other factors, etc, etc.

But at the very least the persistent narrative that the rise of the state precipitated some incredible increase in violence is empirically false.

Theories of state, like economic theories, need to be realistic. They must be tested against actual history and human experience; similarly, political systems 'deduced' from core ideals related to human freedom, liberty, or non-aggression are invalid, and must necessarily fail.

Very interesting. Thanks for posting. Pinker's a very thought-provoking writer and a truly original thinker. I haven't read this book, but I shall.

[mikema63]

The state isn't something capable of being good or evil, even assuming such a thing exists.

The state is an abstract concept, it isn't even exactly the same thing as a government, it's more just what we call the force that society imposes, the sum of everyone in that societies actions.

[quetzalcoatl]

Rei and Mike are right - the state can't be "evil." I'm guilty of a little headline hyping, I suppose.

[Kman]

Quetzol, correlation doesnt necessarily imply causation.

[quetzalcoatl]

Quetzol, correlation doesnt necessarily imply causation.

True. Irrelevant, but true.

But since you're going Popper on me, you have to accept the entire logical framework your statement implies. The corollary that never gets mentioned is that even one negative instance disproves a hypothesis.

[quetzalcoatl]

http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogs ... f-our.html

"...Feudalism in its political sense means, not the manorial system or serfdom, but a system of private contractual arrangements where political power and its associated tasks of defence and justice are contacted out to lords and feudal vassals (Freeman 2002: 147–148).

Local political power, justice and defence had essentially been “outsourced” through feudalism (Pinker 2011: 67): the private power of feudal lords was overwhelming. In fact, the kingdoms were divided into vast collections of competing duchies, counties, minor principalities, feudal lords and knights, who were constantly at war: indeed they were little more than warlords.

The result? Fairly terrible and frequent wars where civilians were not spared (Pinker 2011: 67). The homicide rate in the Middle Ages might have been about 100 per 100,000.

Astonishingly, the everyday carnage in late Medieval society was only somewhat lower than the death rate per capita in modern Communist China (1949–1987) which was 120 per 100,000 (Cooney 1998: 58), a country which had a civil war, the Cultural revolution and a terrible man-made famine (1958–1962)...

...murder was in many societies not even a criminal offence – that is, a crime against the state (or against the public good) – in many medieval and tribal societies. Murder was merely an aspect of private law (or “civil law”), in which two relevant parties would negotiate, and the victim’s family would demand “wergild” (“man-money”) from the perpetrator’s (Pinker 2011: 74). If not, revenge killings and blood feuds were the norm..."

In The Better Angels of our Nature Pinker lays out his view of the civilizing process:

(1) the Leviathan state and its creation of a peace through suppression of feudal anarchy and a new law and order;
(2) cultural and civilising changes, and
(3) “gentle commerce” (a modern market economy).

Considering (3) it should be noted that the modern market economy is not a Rothbardian entity - far from it.

“...The two triggers of the Civilizing Process—the Leviathan and gentle commerce—are related. The positive-sum cooperation of commerce flourishes best inside a big tent presided over by a Leviathan. Not only is a state well suited to provide the public goods that serve as infrastructure for economic cooperation, such as money and roads, but it can put a thumb on the scale on which players weigh the relative payoffs of raiding and trading …. The two civilizing forces, then, reinforce each other, and Elias considered them to be part of a single process. The centralization of state control and its monopolization of violence, the growth of craft guilds and bureaucracies, the replacement of barter with money, the development of technology, the enhancement of trade, the growing webs of dependency among far-flung individuals, all fit into an organic whole.” (Pinker 2011: 77–78)..."

The role of free association and voluntarism in a market system are critical, but they cannot be a part of its legal and political substrate.