Satan's World, X.
This will take more than one post to unravel - and my priority today is a visit to Andrea who lives above the Old Pier Bookshop.
The Beginning Of A Response
Do governments monopolize coercion? Yes. What follows? -
that we would be better off without governments?
that they are a necessary evil?
that we will be better off when we have learned to do without them and/or when society has been sufficiently reorganized?
I think that some version of the third view makes sense but not just any version. We should neither wait indefinitely for every individual to be morally transformed nor accept the dictatorship - thus, a new government - of a single ideological group. Major disagreements and struggles are occurring and will have to continue until they are either resolved or not. Issues do at least change and develop. Maybe there is currently less overt climate change denial in the face of the evidence? In some places, tyrannies still have to be overthrown (are we going backwards?) but what should replace them? There is much history and recent collective experience to learn from. Popular movements, remembering betrayals, can resist compromises between professional politicians and military councils. How much power can such movements learn to wield directly, requiring new forms of organization for their implementation? Mass struggles and popular movements generate their own forms of organization. Maybe the problems generate their solutions, at least potentially?
This post has not addressed the relationship between government and the Polesotechnic League but the next will.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Edward GARVER had studied these philosophers advocating the limited state, and unfortunately, he drew the wrong conclusions from them. I do think the philosophers were too optimistic about the Polesotechnic League. Because that institution would remain mostly beneficial only as long as its original ideas/ideals were respected, most of the time, by its members.
Yes, the state is that institution, in no matter what form, democratic or not, which claims the right to a monopoly of violence. And, yes, it is a necessary good which too easily becomes an evil because of how PRONE to folly, bungling, wickedness, etc., flawed, imperfect, corruptible all human beings are. And I see no reason to ever expect that to change.
I do not in the least believe in your third alternative, because you are still asking for what I consider an impossible perfection from fallen, all too corruptible human beings. I do not share your faith in "popular movements."
Yes, huge parts of the world have regressed when compared to the hopes many were expressing in 1914, with their optimistic dreams of never ending "progress." Huge parts of the world, comprising nations like Russia, China, Iran, N Korea, etc., have regressed to various kinds of tyranny. And many other nations have bungling, incompetent gov'ts. Precisely because the people who run them are so flawed and corruptible.
My belief remains that only the limited state, in whatever form it exists, allied with free enterprise economics, has been shown to WORK wherever they have been given a chance to do so.
I hope Andrea is doing better. Have a good time! And you might also ask his brother if any of Russell Kirk's books are now available. I recommended his collection THE PRINCESS OF ALL LANDS to you.
Ad astra! Sean
Necessary evil.
The alternative to the State is the 'lex talonis', blood-feud, constant raiding, and at our level of social organization, the re-emergence of the state -- only as a mass of organized-crime baronies.
Human beings are inherently tribal and inherently political, hence inherently violent.
Only coercion keeps us from the "default state" in which we lived for 250,000 years or more, in which the standard way for an adult male to die was to be killed by another adult male, and that was nearly as common for the distaff side, with the alternative being forceable abduction with ill intent.
That's the level of things coded into our genes. It's always waiting to come back.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolute agreement! And that bit about "organized-crime baronies" reminded me of the ironically named Portland Protective Association in your Emberverse series, at least in its earlier years.
Human beings are inherently prone to violence? Indeed! And for much longer than 250,000 years, if we go by the evidence discovered by Dr. White and his team in Ethiopia, as discussed in Kermit Pattison's book FOSSIL MEN. Hominins and humans were murderously violent and cannibalistic MILLIONS of years ago.
So, yes, we need the state, hopefully in tolerable forms!
Ad astra! Sean
Archaeological note: there's a mass grave from what's now the northern Sudan, dating to about 11,400 BCE, containing the bodies of 61 men, women and children. That's well before agriculture.
They originally (1960's) thought it was a massacre, but a new study using the latest forensic techniques has determined that the bodies were deposited over a couple of decades.
The 61 bodies have -hundreds- of indicators of death by violence; crushed skulls, defensive fractures of the forearms, embedded projectile points, etc. Including evidence of individuals shot in the back as they fled, or beaten to death on the ground. Almost all the older bodies include evidence of -healed- wounds inflicted by violence -- things the individuals had survived and recovered from before meeting their final end.
The bodies skew young and old -- relatively few prime fighting-age individuals -- so they think it was the result of year after year of small-scale ambushes and raids, attackers skulking around until they caught relatively easy targets by themselves.
(This is the technique wolves use, btw.)
Ah, the innocence of nature...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
"Ah, the innocence of nature..."? You are being droll! This grimly fascinating discovery demolishes Jean Jacques Rousseau's bull twaddle about human nature, society, the state, etc.
How might I find out more about this grisly discovery?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89386-y
Kaor, Paul!
I remember first reading that passage about Garver and the modern philosophers maybe forty-five years ago; my mother had spotted an sf paperback while grocery shopping, and bought it as a present for me; I think SATAN’S WORLD was my first Poul Anderson book. At the time, I was a pre-teen leftist, and very much not in agreement with the pro-Polesotechnic League thinkers. I was all in favor of government addressing public needs and redistributing money to the poor, so I was not inclined to be sympathetic to someone like van Rijn. My views have evolved since, as my friends on this blog are aware. The Anderson books I read did not change them directly, on issue of capitalism vs. Communism, but I can credit Anderson with expanding m6 mental horizons.
Best Regards, and Merry Christmas,
Nicholas
Kaor, Nicholas!
Very interesting, these comments of yours. Even as a boy, I found myself almost instinctively anti-leftist, which in the US means disliking the Democrat party, the chief political instrument of the left in this country since at least 1912. So while I don't know how exactly my views would have evolved absent reading Anderson's works, they did directly influence mine, albeit I'm somewhat less libertarian minded than he was.
For me, it was the Chilton Books edition of AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE which was the first of Anderson's works I've read. The rest, as they say, was history! (Smiles)
Regards and Happy New Year! Sean
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