MAIN IDEA

The State power is power of banditry and robbery, which is supported by ideology and bribery and depends on these methods for its maintenance. It is in constant struggle with Social power of productive people who generate all resources available to humans. This struggle usually ends with victory of the state, at least until robbery suppresses Social power to such extent that States fall either to external conquest or to revolution. So far no method was identified to permanently remove or at least limit evils of the state.

DETAILS

1. What the State Is Not
The State is often regarded as social services organization, which it is not. It is also often characterized as “WE” that is completely incorrect because quite often especially in totalitarian regimes of XX century government killed quite a few citizens either Jews in Nazi Germany or Kulaks in Soviet Russia. If government is “WE”, then these people who where a part of “WE” committed suicide, which they did not.

2. What the State Is
The State is organization of political means that is means of violent transfer of resources from one group of individuals to another. In other words it is systematization of predatory process on given territory.

3. How the State Preserves Itself
The State maintains itself by combination of violence, bribery, and ideology. Correspondingly there is army and police to inflict violence, there are intellectuals who develop and promote ideology to support state in some combination of religion, philosophy, and culture, and there is also a part of population that benefits from wealth transfer to them from other people.

4. How the State Transcends Its Limits
The people continuously try to impose limits on the state, but even if they succeed from time to time like in America with its constitution and Bill of Rights, eventually State always breach through these limits and expand. This chapter documents how it happened in America in XX century.

5. What the State Fears
The State is always under the threat of two potential killers: external conquest and/or internal revolution. The reason often cited for state existence is defense of population. However any analysis of any state shows that much higher priority is defense of the state itself.

6. How States Relate to One Another
This chapter analyzes different ways of competition between states, mainly as military competition in Europe demonstrating historic process of substitution of states competition as fight between gangs with fight between populations. During the phase of States being just gangs the winners just get ability to rob population that mainly indifferent to which specific gang robs them. The more advanced State is characterized by success of ideology that makes population self-identify with the state allowing the state completely take over control of all aspects of population’s live. This advancement greatly increases efficiency of robbery at the same time making out of victims of robbery its supporters at least for a time being.

7. History as a Race Between State Power and Social Power
This essay started with statement that there are only two ways to humans to obtain resources: by work exercising power over nature and converting its product to their own use; and by robbery exercising power over other people and taking their resources for robber’s use. The former method is Social power and the later method is State power. The history of humanity is a continuing struggle between powers with State power mainly succeeding in removing any limitations that representatives of Social power able to put in place from time to time.

MY TAKE ON IT

This is one of very few texts that I am completely and fully agree with. The only addition that I want to make is that it seems to be missing full understanding that the state is not thinking and acting entity, but just a hierarchical group of individuals capable to suppress other individuals in a given society to such extent that they do not resist to being robbed. I believe that the way out of this conundrum is to establish real and clear benefit for each individual from participating in voluntary exchange and cooperation system (free market), and demonstrate to them as clear as possible how individuals directly and/or indirectly included into hierarchy of state benefit at his/her expense. The establishment of unalienable, equal, and marketable right on natural resources could achieve this objective relegating coercive organization of state to minimal supporting role in society.