Poul Anderson's View (we think)
The state controls and reduces violence but we don't have to like it.
My View
The state as bodies of armed men originated when grain began to be stored and had to be protected from its producers.
Dna Broderson's View
"'The welfare state - any state - is an end in itself. It's the way for a few to impose their will on the many. And Judas priest, how those few do want to! Need to.'" (The Avatar, XXII, p. 189)
Comment
Broderson's view is absurd. Society existed without a state but nevertheless a few people conceived the idea of imposing their will on the many and then, in order to do this, they organized a body of men to bear arms, to obey their orders and thus to impose their will on everyone else? Once a state had come into existence for whatever reason, then some people could aim to gain control of it in order to impose their wills on everyone else but that cannot have been how the state originated in the first place.
Broderson equates a modern state with a welfare system to a succession of historical Empires. Surely there are differences as well as similarities between all these social structures?
12 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
No, states take their origins from the need to work out ways of keeping people from killing each other. That is what would allow farmers to cultivate the land, the State keeping farmers from killing each other and guarding against raiders and invaders. And that in turn enabled embryonic states to tax the farmers, so the king could support his army.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
No, states originated as I described.
Paul.
(I do not usually express myself just by saying, "No...," but I am replying in kind!)
Kaor, Paul!
Except, as Stirling pointed out in detail, pre-State societies were violent, with the primary cause of death for most males (and many women) was death by violence. So I don't agree with you.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I don't agree with you.
I do not deny that pre-state societies were violent. I do deny that the state, a body of armed men, came into existence to try to control that violence. It came into existence for the reason I said.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And violence and chaos is exactly what happens whenever a state collapses, as we see in Haiti. The real masters there are rival gang bosses.
We are going to have to agree to disagree on how and why states came to exist.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: the first States occurred between 4000 and 3000 BCE. That's about 6-7,000 years after the invention of agriculture.
Stirling: "first States occurred between 4000 and 3000 BCE"
Does the evidence you are aware of support the hypothesis that it was organizing irrigation systems that pushed people into forming states?
Kaor, Jim!
I don't have Stirling's depth of knowledge, but it seems reasonable to think true states first had to come into existence before any serious irrigation/water control and managing works were possible.
It's significant that the earliest true states arose along the Indus River, Mesopotamia (Euphrates and Tigris rivers), and the Nile valley.
Ad astra! Sean
Ad astra! Sean
Jim: no, it was that if you had a society bigger than a clutch of villages, it required organization.
Once established, the organization let other things happen.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
So, in the earliest days of true states, once a village head man made himself king of four or five villages, other things became possible.
Ad astra! Sean
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