Ian Murray wrote:
>
> From: "Gordon Fitch" <gcf at panix.com>
>
> >
> > sovereign states can have no rights. They
> > exist simply as the result of the exercise of power.
> >
> > -- Gordon
>
> ==========
> Why Hobbes you've aged well. :-) Of course the same logic applies to
> individuals. So no one has the right to say someone else or some
> institution has no rights, which makes Chuck0's assertion meaningless.
> Damn, we're back to paradox again.
>
I think that on individualist premises (individuals exist and existed prior to and autonomously of any social relations) Hobbes has got it right (war of all against all). Clearly on that premise an individual only exists on the basis of power (force) he (she?) can exercise, and all social relations (including nation states) are the result of opportunistic alliances among discrete (isolated) individuals.
But if social relations are prior to (and _relatively_) independent of the concrete or historical individual, then (as Hobbes recognized) freedom _emerges from_ rather than is in contradiction to social relations. Hobbes assumed those social relations must take the form of the absolute state, but that is not a necessary implication. _At the present time_, however, the only possible forms those social relations can take are manifested in (dependent on) the nation state (whatever may be the case in the future). Hence for this historical epoch the rejection of the nation state is the rejection of the possibility of human freedom.
I don't have the slightest idea how much further this argument might be carried, or what slippery slopes it may be situated on.
Carrol
P.S. I don't know whether Chuck0 has retreated from his declared intention of burning any flag anyone brings to his demonstration, but that position illustrates perfectly how freedom is impossible without social organization, for what the position implies is that every demonstration will be a battle of all against all even within the the demonstration. I for example would never myself wave or carry a flag and I would argue against any organization supporting such a practice -- but in the hypothetical circumstances suggested by Chuck0 I would find myself physically protecting the fucking flag. Chaos and unfreedom. Sophocles' Creon was correct in assuming that there was no freedom without order -- he was just tragically wrong in his judgment of the nature of order. Hence his order was in fact disorder -- anarchy.