> He doesn't think that
> things like rights, legitimacy, crime, genocide, etc. are creations of
> the state and essential to its maintenance;
> they are not just the bases
> of it. Which is to make the point many have made about him: He's an
> anarchist whose problem with the state is its moral compass, not its
> structural brutality.
I don't yet understand why a state needs to be considered legitimate... but it appears his problem is indeed its structural brutality:
"Well, the nation state is pretty much a European invention, I mean there were similar things, but the nation state in the modern form was largely created in Europe over many centuries. It's so unnatural and artificial that it had to be imposed by extreme violence. In fact that's the primary reason why Europe was the most savage part of the world for centuries. It was due to trying to impose a nation state system on cultures and societies that are varied and if you look at them had no relation to this artificial structure." http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20050518.htm
Incidentally, Charles Tilly's works on the state seem pretty awesome; I'd be grateful for anyone who knows other such authors... His short "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime" seems pretty convincing. https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rohloff/www/war%20making%20and%20state%20making.pdf
Tayssir