This is a central question of libertarianism: What is the state? The answer is not necessarily simple.
How would you define it?
For example, Bastiat saw the state as 'the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else'.
Ultimately, this is a state of reciprocal theft, robbery and fraud that has become legitimate and even legal.
I would call it an unpleasant state, and a fairly common one. However, this is not the state in the broadest sense.
In the broadest sense, a state is a commonly held and enforced idea of what is right within a territory.
Another term that you raised which is not easy to define is that of anarchism.
What does classical anarchism mean in the sense of Proudhon, for example? I wrote a little about it in the text above. Ultimately, it is a form of small-scale socialism. It is one possible form of a state, but not a non-state.
I was objecting to the postlibertarian characterization of the state, rather than trying advance a specific alternative.
Here is the passage that I object to:
“in the postlibertarian sense, a state is a more general concept: A state is a fixed status between people. It is a stabilised relation: “People relate to each other in a fixed, recogniseable, expected, repeatable manner. All involved parties have to imagine that state, and imagine that the other party imagines it in the same way as they do and so on. It stabilises through feedbacks: Each side observes the actions of the other side and may imply a common idea of a state.”
This sounds more like a description of society, or a community. This is not what anarchists or libertarians object to or wish to abolish or reform. The state is an organization, society is not. The state attempts to affect society, sometimes via persuasion, sometimes via coercion, and often has some success. But society and the state can be distinguished and should be. Other organizations or more spontaneous social phenomena also affect the shape of society, often reinforcing the efforts of the state, sometimes frustrating them.
Perhaps I have misinterpreted the excerpt I quoted. But it would make more sense to me if the word “state” were replaced with the word “society” throughout.
Perhaps i am mistaken to think of the state as a formal organization. Perhaps it is a less formal component of society, composed of various organizations and individuals in alliance on various issues, customs, etc., influencing both the formal and informal expectations of persons. My comment was intended to challenge the idea that the state encompasses everything that fits the description quoted, while ignoring and implicitly denying the existence of other social phenomena that affect the stabikity and coherence of persons' expectations and hence their interactions.
This account of the state seems to conflate it with society. It rules out anarchism by definition.
This is a central question of libertarianism: What is the state? The answer is not necessarily simple.
How would you define it?
For example, Bastiat saw the state as 'the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else'.
Ultimately, this is a state of reciprocal theft, robbery and fraud that has become legitimate and even legal.
I would call it an unpleasant state, and a fairly common one. However, this is not the state in the broadest sense.
In the broadest sense, a state is a commonly held and enforced idea of what is right within a territory.
Another term that you raised which is not easy to define is that of anarchism.
What does classical anarchism mean in the sense of Proudhon, for example? I wrote a little about it in the text above. Ultimately, it is a form of small-scale socialism. It is one possible form of a state, but not a non-state.
I was objecting to the postlibertarian characterization of the state, rather than trying advance a specific alternative.
Here is the passage that I object to:
“in the postlibertarian sense, a state is a more general concept: A state is a fixed status between people. It is a stabilised relation: “People relate to each other in a fixed, recogniseable, expected, repeatable manner. All involved parties have to imagine that state, and imagine that the other party imagines it in the same way as they do and so on. It stabilises through feedbacks: Each side observes the actions of the other side and may imply a common idea of a state.”
This sounds more like a description of society, or a community. This is not what anarchists or libertarians object to or wish to abolish or reform. The state is an organization, society is not. The state attempts to affect society, sometimes via persuasion, sometimes via coercion, and often has some success. But society and the state can be distinguished and should be. Other organizations or more spontaneous social phenomena also affect the shape of society, often reinforcing the efforts of the state, sometimes frustrating them.
Perhaps I have misinterpreted the excerpt I quoted. But it would make more sense to me if the word “state” were replaced with the word “society” throughout.
Perhaps i am mistaken to think of the state as a formal organization. Perhaps it is a less formal component of society, composed of various organizations and individuals in alliance on various issues, customs, etc., influencing both the formal and informal expectations of persons. My comment was intended to challenge the idea that the state encompasses everything that fits the description quoted, while ignoring and implicitly denying the existence of other social phenomena that affect the stabikity and coherence of persons' expectations and hence their interactions.