The Helpless State
I believe the notion that coercive top-down rule is a necessary evil of society has been engrained deep within every inch of our fibres. One can't begin to imagine a society without a system or a state that guides us clueless human beings through institutions that make sure we don’t flip an eye without them noticing. Any, and every discourse begins with the existence of state as a given. If as though, without it, we unfortunate human beings would be equivalent to savages taking to the streets raping our women and killing our men. Only because well read men like John Locke tell us a sentence or two, we tend to rest our conscience and place our trust in them: ‘John Locke said this, so of course we need to be governed.’ Oh, what an erroneous conclusion.
I decided to take a look back at our history, and look what I found. I found the South American Tiwanaku who thrived for 1400 years in Bolivia without nobles or military. I also found nearly 4000 years of early Mesopotamian culture which had similarities with the former. Then there were the Mayans who flourished for 2000 years without top-down hierarchies. I found a lot of other examples, but I believe John Locke doesn’t seem so wise anymore.
Anyways, today with numerous externalities in play, it definitely seems rational to assume that there must be some sort of mechanism that maintains social order and ensures that affairs of a community run unperturbed. However, where this assumption may be rational, it is, in my opinion, also idealistic. According to this assumption, the State ‘represents the permanent interests of the people’, and the sole reason for its existence is the safeguarding of the peoples’ interests. In that sense, we may label institutions built for the public by public money as the ‘safe-guarders’ of the peoples’ interests, and hence the ‘holy’ tools of the state. So, if we are to judge the credibility of the state as a ‘guardian’, it is not in the snazzy scrolls, rules, laws and scripts hailing the state that we will find an accurate assessment, for they are only words, but partially in the performance of these institutions, and partially in an understanding of the goals and objectives of these individual institutions.
Allow me to take a look at big government to elaborate my deeply ‘philosophical’ point. Imagine I’m sitting atop the hierarchy and my subordinate tells me its time to suck blood out of the people…I mean, collect taxes. Would I just not adore my pal Johnny’s big corporation? Instead of sending hundreds of boys to hundreds of SMEs, wouldn’t it be so much more convenient to take a slice out of Johnny’s thousands of employees’ earnings before they even get to see them? So I’d just pass legislation that suffocates start up competition like practically every country has already done. The point is, although the state’s purpose is to collect taxes and redistribute them to the people, it is in its convenience and interest to stifle the weaker and cater to the stronger in order to make this collection more efficient. If you’ve still not gotten it, take a look at the history of our own civil-military relations. The government wanted talks with India so trade would flourish. The army didn’t really care about trade, and for reasons known to itself, opposed talks. Now there are two ‘holy tools’ of the state in direct conflict with each other. Would they have resulted in anything positive? uhmm..
1 comment:
Fascinating post.
In terms of the deep history of alleged classless societies, evaluating the history of those societies is hard to do. But more importantly than that, those societies existed in a fundamentally different era from our own. Their norms, culture, and beliefs were radically different from our own, as were there social structures. If we are to believe your theory that these were truly classless societies - which is debatable - that emphasized different aspects of human "nature", what does this tell us about the intersection between human "nature" and social structures today?
On a related point, I agree with you that Locke might be wrong. In fact, all of these theorists may be 100% wrong. Why? Because it is impossible to prove or disprove what is or is not human nature. Based on the belief of what is or is not human nature, many societies structure their institutions to benefit the masses. But these institutions themselves have vested interests - as you noted about the difference between the business class and the military in Pakistan - which can lead to profoundly different outcomes. So I think it is nearly impossible to untangle what is human nature and how it then impacts our social set-up, but it is an important conversation to be had.
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