I didn't actually even mean to raise issues like control of sociopathy--crimes that are, as we in the law biz say, malum in se, murder and the like. I listed among what you call primary functions:
(1) Means of peaceable dispute resolution that avoid people, as one says, taking the law intio their own hands,w hich needn't be sociopathic in the way that murder is,a lthough it may be very bad;
(2) Means of arriving at and enforcing collective decisions, i.e,. democracy;
(3) Providing what economsits call public goods.
We might also add your (4), preventing sociopathy, taht is policing crime.
You object to the idea that welfare and other concessions wrung from the state and the ruling classes are positive benefits because they are linked to systems ogf domination and oppression. I agree they are, and I explained them that way. That does not mean they are not positive benefits. You say we need to think beyond a situation where domination exists, to where there will be no subordinate and dominant groupsm and Ia gree there too. But none of this means that in the world as we know it we should not fight for the state to give us more of a welfare state, better antidiscrimination laws, etc. That was my point. Calling for the state to just back off here and now is counterproductive. We want the state to do things _for the oppressed_. This is only part of fighting for a day when there are no more oppressed for the state to help.
--jks
In a message dated 9/30/00 11:50:01 AM Eastern Daylight Time, gcf at panix.com writes:
<< I think you're conflating two different functions of the State.
One is one of several possible social strategies for handling
significant sociopathy -- the vigilantism, feuds, crimes, and
so on that you mention. By inventing slavery, some people
discovered the method of incorporating and institutionalizing
certain kinds of sociopathy as an antidote to the others,
hence we have government, the unique monopoly of force. This
invention does not prove that better strategies for the control
of sociopathy are not possible, but it does meet an undoubted
need.
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.
>>