The other function, which grows out of the first one, is to defend and advance all the interests of the ruling class in the community where the State is established, not just its immediate safety from competitors. These concerns often express themselves in procedures for threatening, disciplining, deceiving, and buying off the lower orders, hence we have alms or Welfare or social democracy and "gains" which are actually crumbs from the masters' table. They can evidently be withdrawn at any time when the forces of revolt and potential revolt are in abeyance, or are overshadowed by some worse threat.
Whereas the control of sociopathy is a requirement, the other functions of the State seem vulnerable to question and review, especially its class and caste systems. For instance, do we need to gather the young into concentration camps called schools? Or could they be trained and informed in some better way? Should the poor be whipped and hounded by social-democratic benevolence, or could we establish some kind of convivial order where people get what they need without question? Must everyone's means of production be the private business of elites, whether these are capitalist or "socialist" leaders and bureaucrats?
Thousands of years of authoritarian darkness need to be cleared away before we can even begin to think properly about these problems, but we can start by doubting that anything the State does in its secondary role are necessary or beneficial except by accident, or that we need to live forever in societies, like the present one, based fundamentally on one man pointing a gun at another's head.
I suggest we think radically.
JKSCHW at aol.com:
> In a message dated 9/29/00 10:25:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time, joeG at ieee.org
> writes:
>
> << Government IS the stronger people taking advantage of the weaker people.
> The idea that the state is here to protect us is a myth. It oppresses
> anyone that opposes the ruling class. Look at the repression that's going
> on as a result of S26, racial profiling, the shooting of Amadou Diallo, the
> School of the Americas and all of the other shit they're doing. The state
> has always been used by the ruling class to oppress others. >>
>
>
> This is one-sided even as a description of the bourgeois democratic state. To
> be sure, governments are often repressive and in class societies are more or
> less, but not, in democratic societies, wholly dominated by minorities of
> oppressors, typically the rich in capitalist societies. But the state is also
> an arena of class and other struggle. It cannot retain any legitimacy in the
> eyes of the subordinate groups, and so continue to rule without mass
> resistance, less it makes more or less serious concession to the interests of
> those groups. If it does not do so, if it tries to rule by brute force, it is
> likely to be destabilized by mass resistance. That is why it must claim to
> rule in the best interests of all and must actually do so to some extent.
>
> Of course the extent to which it makes concessions to the interests of
> subordinate groups depends on the organized strength and solidarity of the
> subordinate groups and their ability to threaten the rule of trhe dominant
> groups and the state. When the working class and other groups are weak, the
> state becomes more opperessive. But when they are strong, it can be a way to
> secure real advances for the oppressed groups. That is why the welfare state
> exists, to the extent that it does: and institutions like Social Security,
> Medicare, antidiscrimination law, and the like are genuinely in the interests
> of the oppressed.
>
> Moreover, the state serves other functions as wellL it does not merely
> provide an arena where the comperting group interests are compromised to a
> point of stability (in normal times). The state provides a forum and a set of
> rules for making and enforcing public decisions: in a democratic society, one
> that is more or less democratic. It provides a way to resolve disputes and
> prevent them from deteriorating into vigilantism and feuds, It also provides
> public goods like roads and schools that would not be provided in its absebce
> because each individual has reason to let others provide them while taking
> advantage of them himself. In a class society, the way it serves the roles is
> colored and distorted by the disproportionate influence of a particular
> narrow group, like the rich in capitalism. But the functions are necessary,
> and not merely exercises of domination and exploitation. We do need ways to
> make and enforce collective decisions, to peacably and fairly resolves
> dipsutes, and to provide roads, schools and the like. To say that we can do
> without the state without addressing these concern is not a responsible
> radical position, but merely a yell of anger.
>
> --jks
>