Transcript Society

Week 1. Theoretical Inspirations
Main Thesis of the Week
• Main takeaway from the week:
Every view of politics presupposes a certain view of
society (implicit or explicit). It may be helpful to think of
metaphors.
Is society like a well-oiled machine?
Is society a broken machine about to
explode?
Is society a network, like a spider’s web?
Is society like a functional organism?
Is society like a dysfunctional organism, out of
equilibrium?
Is society like a chaotic jungle?
Any analysis of the political sphere will depend on the
assumptions and limitations that come with the
presupposed view of society.
Change vs. Continuity
One such assumption – perhaps the single most
important one – about society is about its
dynamism.
Are we primarily
interested in things
changing?
Or, are we primarily interested in things staying
the same?
Conflict vs. Harmony
Another such assumption is about social order.
• Are we considering
society as a
harmonious, stable
equilibrium?
• Are we considering society as disorderly and
crisis-ridden?
Society as Near-Exploding Machine
• Division is inherent, making politics the center of
any objective analysis. Any sociology, you might
say, has to be political sociology.
Typical passage:
“In no period do we therefore find a more
confused mixture of high-flown phrases and actual
uncertainty and clumsiness, of more enthusiastic
striving for innovation and more deeply rooted
domination of the old routine, of more apparent
harmony of the whole society and more profound
estrangement of its elements” (p.600).
Four General Views of Society
Marxian: sees division, inequality, haves and
have-nots, conflict, instability and perpetual change
(often sudden, dramatic, violent).
Weberian: sees tremendous complexity,
contingency, subjectivity, variation (including between
the predominance of politics vis-à-vis economics,
culture, etc.).
Durkheimian: sees harmony, equilibrium, cohesion, consent,
functionality, continuity, conservation,
gradual evolutionary change.
Simmelian: sees reciprocity, interaction, “sociation,” networks,
relational dyads and triads, interconnectedness.
Proper “Unit of Analysis” for Political
Sociology
• For Marx  class (collectivist)
Society is inherently divided, with individuals in different
collectivities restricted by their position in the division.
• For Weber  individual (individualist)
Society is nothing except the aggregate of individual subjectivities
and their meaningful actions.
• For Durkheim  society as a whole (holist)
The social whole is more than the sum of its parts.
• For Simmel  the interaction (interactionist)
We must study neither individuals or collectivities in isolation; it is
their relational interactions that are of interest.
No “true” political sociology
 The differences between approaches do not
make some more “valid” or “true” than others in
some abstract sense. They merely make some
approaches more useful for some purposes than
other approaches, which may be more useful for
other purposes.
Marx Biography
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1818: Born in Trier, Germany. Jewish, but technically a Protestant, he grew up in a
professional middle-class home, and his father, a lawyer, supported the
Enlightenment. French socialism also had supporters in his household.
Studied law at the University of Bonn, later moved by his father to the University
of Berlin to prevent young Karl from socializing too much and running up debts.
In Berlin, it was Bruno Bauer who introduced Marx to the writings of Hegel, who
had been Professor of Philosophy until his death in 1831.
Completed his doctoral thesis on ancient Greek philosophy at the University of
Jena in 1838.
1842: appointed editor of Die Rheinische Zeitung, advocating liberalism. A year
later, paper was banned in Prussia; fear of arrest.
In Paris, he meets Friedrich Engels, beginning a life-long collaboration.
1864: First International formed with Marx as president.
1845: “Theses on Feuerbach”
1845-1846: “The German Ideology,” with Engels.
1848: The Manifesto is published in London, spreads like wildfire.
1852: “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”
After France was defeated by Prussia, the Paris Commune was proclaimed in 1871.
Marx saw it as a heroic, albeit doomed, attempt to storm heaven.
Died in 1883, having lived most of his life in exile and poverty.
MARX
French
Politics
Proudhon
Saint-Simon
Rousseau
German
Philosophy
Hegel
Feuerbach
Bauer
British
Economics
Smith
Ricardo
Mill
Marx is a masterful synthesizer of seemingly
distinct domains: he combines emancipatory
humanism, economic determinism, a
materialist conception of history and dialectical
method.
French POLITICS
• Society is a human product, and can thus be transformed through
revolution.
• Coercive and unjust institutions are not necessary or natural. They
are only as moral and just as we make them.
• Humans are self-creating beings, whose freedom depends on the
social world they create through collective empowerment.
German PHILOSOPHY
• History is the ultimate determinate of social reality.
• Society develops teleologically, not arbitrarily.
• Every social reality is an imperfect compromise between competing
forces, many of them ideological.
British ECONOMICS
• Capitalism – with its regulation of markets, production, labor
activity, etc. – is the defining feature of modernity.
• Material conditions – property relations in particular – determine
society.
• Human nature is intimately interrelated with property relations.
Man, created and creator.
Human beings are unique, in that they are
created by the social world that they create.
Hence, a major theme in Marx’s work was
Alienation
Entfremdung in German. Literally: estrangement
Class: A sector of society that shares a common relation to
the means of production. In modern industrial societies,
the bourgeoisie shares its ownership of the means of
production, while the proletariat shares its lack of
ownership over the means of production. The latter - the
"lower" or "working" classes – are those that must sell
their labor under capitalism in order to earn a living.
Capitalism: A system in which the means of production are
privately owned and used for profit.
Relations of Production: The social structures that
regulate the relation between humans in the production
of goods.
Means of Production: The tools and raw materials used to
create a product.
Bottom Line: It’s all about economics
• Economic determinism holds that politics is
epiphenomenal.
• Power comes from your economic position,
i.e. your class.
Eighteenth Brumaire: The End of the
French Revolution
Main purpose: to rethink the French Revolution in terms of class.
• Marx puts forth the idea of historical recapitulation whose main effect is
to underscore the specificity of class formation at different moments in
history. The comparison between the ascent to power of the first
Napoleon and that of his nephew, says Marx, is tantamount to a transition
from tragedy to farce.
Marx recapitulates the phases of the French Revolution:
• February Period: Overthrow of Louis Philippe. Prologue to the Revolution.
Provisional government. Moment of transition. Classes in flux. The
opposition to monarchical power organizes through the alliance of
Orleanists (finance capital) and the proletariat.
• May 4, 1848 – May 28, 1849: Constitution of the Republic or Constituent
National Assembly. This period leads rapidly to the triumph and
constitution of what Marx calls the “Bourgeois Republic” through the
ousting of the legitimate representatives of the proletariat (Bianchi, most
importantly). In Marx’s words, “Whereas [under Louis Philippe] a limited
section of the bourgeoisie ruled in the name of the king, the whole of the
bourgeoisie will now rule in the name of the people.
• May 28, 1849 – December 2, 1851: Constitutional Republic or Legislative
National Assembly. Triumph of the Party of order. Eventual ascent to
power of Louis Napoleon with the support of the lumpenproletariat.
Restoration of the Bourbon monarchical power in the guise of empire.
Tensions, Contradictions, Instability
In this work Marx traces how class
struggles are reflected in the complex web of
political conflicts, and in particular the
contradictory relationships between the outer
form of a conflict and its real social content.
The proletariat of Paris was at this time too
inexperienced to win power, but the experiences
of 1848-51 would prove invaluable for the
successful workers' revolution of 1871.
Determinism & Reductionism
• Marx and Engels, at least in their most systematic
writings, argued that they have uncovered “the
natural laws of capitalist production” and that “it
is a question of these laws themselves, of these
tendencies working with iron necessity toward
inevitable results.”
• Like most of his contemporaries, Marx saw
economics as “a process of natural history,” while
the capitalist production process was said to
operate “with the inexorability of a law of
Nature.”
Weber
“No sociologist should think himself too good, even in his
old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial
computations in his head and perhaps for months at a
time.” - MW
Biography
• 1864: Born to a family of notable heritage – merchants, politicians, public
servants.
• Educated at Heidelberg and Berlin, he abandoned training in law and
jurisprudence to become a public intellectual.
• Weber and his wife Marianne (an intellectual in her own right and early
women's rights activist) soon found themselves at the center of the
vibrant intellectual and cultural life of Heidelberg; the so-called “Weber
Circle” attracted such intellectual luminaries as Georg Jellinek, Ernst
Troeltsch, and Werner Sombart and later a number of younger scholars
including Marc Bloch, Robert Michels, and György Lukács.
• 1896: Nervous breakdown.
• 1904-1905: Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
• 1903-1914: Economy and Society
• 1914: WWI breaks out, Weber is staunchly nationalistic and supportive of
the war (like all German intellectuals at the time).
• 1917: Weber campaigns vigorously for a wholesale constitutional reform
for post-war Germany, including the introduction of universal suffrage and
the empowerment of parliament.
• 1919: Lectures in Munich on Science as a Vocation & Politics as a
Vocation.
• 1920: Dies of pneumonia at fifty-six years of age.
What is Weber Rejecting?
What sociology cannot do:
1) Discover universal laws of human behavior
comparable with the natural sciences.
2) Confirm any evolutionary progress in human
societies.
3) Develop any collective concepts (like “the state”
or the “family”) unless they could be stated in
terms of individual action.
4) Reduce society to the economy (or, for that
matter to politics or culture).
Bottom Line: power comes from many places, your
class position being just one of them.
Key Question for Political Sociology:
“Why and when do men obey?” (p.78)
Consider the paradox of power.
“…the generally observable need of any power, or
even of any advantage of life, to justify itself. […]
[People’s] never ceasing need to look upon his
position as in some way ‘legitimate,’ upon his
advantage as ‘deserved,’ and the other’s
disadvantage as being brought about by the latter’s
‘fault.’ That the purely accidental causes of the
difference may be ever so obvious makes no
difference” (p.953).
Sources of Power
• Class (economic order): property,
capital and other material stuff.
Comes with a common market
destiny.
• Status (social order): honor, prestige, respect, dignity in the
eyes of others. “Street cred.”
Comes with a specific “style of life” and
“principles of consumption of goods” (p.193)
Think occupational groups.
• Party (political order): all about “social power” (p.194),
influence. Think “leverege.”
Comes with rationalized
organizational order and staff (ibid).
Weber in Politics as Vocation
Defined very broadly, power is all about the
chance that an individual in a social relationship
can achieve his or her own will even against the
resistance of others (see p.180; p.942).
This is analytically unsatisfying to Weber, so he
wanted to further specify the stakes by discussing
“domination” and “authority.”
Domination vs. Authority
Distinction hinges on the all-important
question of legitimation (p.78-9).
Weber defines domination as the probability
that certain specific commands (or all commands)
will be obeyed by a given group of persons (formal
def. on p. 946). The consent of the subjegated may
or may not be there.
Weber defines authority as legitimate forms
of domination, that is, forms of domination which
followers or subordinates consider to be legitimate.
Here, the “power to command” comes with “the
duty to obey” (p.943).
Bank vs. Village Patriarch
• Bank has “domination” in virtue of its
monopoly position. The people over whom
they exercise power (i.e. debtors) “simply
pursue their own interests [while] acting with
formal freedom”; their acting in accordance
with the will of the bank is “forced upon them
by objective circumstances” (p.943).
• Village patriarch has “authority” in virtue of
the obedience and loyalty of the villagers, who
give tribute in the belief that the patriarch has
the right to make such collections. The
submission of the villagers is neither coerced
nor in their own interest.
Three Ideal-Typical Kinds of Authority
(i.e. of legitimated domination)
• Traditional: “the authority of the ‘eternal
yesterday’” (p.78-9). You obey because it is
simply tradition to obey.
• Charismatic: “the authority of the extraordinary
and personal gift of grace (charisma” (p.79). You
obey because the leader is simply awesome.
• Legal-Rational: “domination by virtue of
‘legality’” sustained by “rationally created rules”
(p.79). You obey because you believe in the
system.
Charismatic
Traditional
Legal-Rational
Type of ruler
Charismatic leader
Dominant personality
Functional superiors or
bureaucratic officials
Position determined by
Having a dynamic
personality
Established tradition or
routine
Legally established
authority
Acquired or inherited
(hereditary) qualities
Virtue of rationally
established norms,
decrees, and other rules
and regulations
Ruled using
Extraordinary qualities
and exceptional powers
Legitimized
Victories and success to
community
Established tradition or
routine
General belief in the
formal correctness of
these rules and those who
enact them are considered
a legitimized authority
Loyalty
Interpersonal & personal
allegiance and devotion
Based on traditional
allegiances
To authority / rules
Cohesion
Emotionally unstable and
volatile
Feeling of common
purpose
Abiding by rules.
Rulers and followers
(disciples)
Established forms of
social conduct
Rules, not rulers
Leadership
Rationalization and Modernity
The “waning of charisma” (p.253).
What distinguishes modern politics from traditional politics is the efficient
application of means to ends. Tradition and emotion are, he argues,
weaker forces in the politics of modern society than they were historically.
Industrialization
Rationalization
Bureaucratization
A major concern of his work is to identify factors
that have promoted this shift towards
“rationalization."
Discipline, mother of rationalized
politics
“Discipline in general, like its most rational offspring,
bureaucracy, is impersonal. Unfailingly neutral, it places itself
at the disposal of every power that claims its service and
knows how to promote it” (p.254).
The “sense of duty” and “conscientiousness” that comes with
discipline is often implicit, taken-for-granted by subservient,
obedient people. But consider how much social engineering
had to go into this remarkable achievement!
Defining the State
A state is an entity that has a monopoly
of the legitimate use of physical force
(violence) within a given territory.
Durkheim: “The Secular Pope”
"Sociology can then be defined as the
science of institutions, of their genesis and
of their functioning.“ - ED
Biography
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1858: Born in Lorraine to an Orthodox Jewish family. Father, grandfather, great-grandfather were
rabbis – he also seemed destined for the rabbinate (attended rabbinical school). When he moved to
Paris as a young man, he broke with Judaism.
1870: Alsace-Lorraine occupied by Prussian troops; long-standing Jewish community and the
vicious French anti-Semitism in the area shaped Durkheim’s worldview.
1879: Admitted to prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, after failing the entrance exam
twice. Became a staunch advocate of the republican cause and anti-clerical educational reforms
that later lead to a national system of free, compulsory, secular education.
1887: Appointed teaching position: "Chargéd'un Cours de Science Sociale et de Pédagogie" at
Bordeaux. The "Science Sociale" was a concession to Durkheim, and it was under this guise that
sociology now officially entered the French university system. Uphill battle: he emphasized the
value of sociology to the more traditional humanist disciplines of philosophy, history and law. He
thus aroused (justifiable) fears of "sociological imperialism" and unjustifiable (though
understandable) fears that his particular explanations of legal and moral institutions through
reference to purely social causes undermined free will and individual moral agency.
1898: Founded Année sociologique, the first social science journal in France
1890s – early 1900s: Dreyfuss Affair; happy ending left both sociology and socialism with a more
respectable public image. Called the "secular pope," Durkheim was viewed by critics as an agent of
government anti-clericalism, and charged with seeking "a unique and pernicious domination over
the minds of the young.“
1893: Completes Doctoral Dissertation, “The Division of Labor in Society.”
1895-1897: “The Rules of Sociological Method” & “Suicide”
1912: “Elementary Forms of Religious Life.”
1914: Germany launched its invasion of Belgium and northern France. Despite poor health already
induced by overwork, he devoted himself to the cause of national defense, organizing a committee
for the publication of studies and documents on the war, to be sent to neutral countries in the
effort to undermine German propaganda.
1915: Durkheim’s son is sent to the Bulgarian front and declared missing in January 1916; in April,
he is confirmed dead. Durkheim is devastated.
1917: Died at 59.
Durkheim’s “functionalist” approach to
politics
Durkheim’s approach is characterized by three
chief arguments towards a self-conscious strategy
of empirical reference:
• (1) The distinctive realm of social facts.
• (2) Treat those social facts as things, external to us.
• (3) Be careful to distinguish between “causes” and
“functions” (consequences).
The most significant social facts are collective
representations: these are collective ways of acting
and thinking, noticeable by the fact that they are
sanctioned. Society, in other words, makes
arrangements for the eventuality that they are not
complied with or respected.
The most important collective
representation:
The “Conscience collective”
Social Facts
• Social facts are considered things - they are sui generis, peculiar in their
characteristics: they are the effect or creation of human activities, but they
are not consciously intended. They are the unanticipated consequence of
human behavior/agency.
• Social facts are things because they are outside us - they are a given, preexisting condition for human agency and they cannot be known by
introspection, by reflection.
• The human agency that produced the social facts we confront is not ours; it
was exercised in the past, by collective agents pursuing collective, not
individual goals.
• Social facts are external to all individuals now living; they are given, the
context or condition for thinking and action; they are constraining upon
individuals because they pressure individuals to act in established,
predictable ways.
Sociology as science of society;
Psychology as science of the individual.
• Sociologists should look for the causes of social facts in their social conditions
or social context, not in individual intentions when individuals are considered
in isolation.
POLITICS, ultimately, is about those social facts that regulate the functioning of
authority in society.
How do we identify social facts?
The nonmaterial nature of most social facts
raises the problem of identification. Durkheim
indicates that we can identify social facts by
establishing whether or not they are sanctioned.
If the context within which individuals act takes
notice of whether or not individuals behave in
established ways, following institutional
injunctions, and rewards or punishes according to
whether or not individuals are compliant, then
we can be sure that we have identified a social
fact.
• Sanctions can be formal (e.g., law) or informal
(e.g., social control, shaming, exclusion, etc.).
Our Dual Nature
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Individuals have a dual nature; their mental process contain individual
characteristics mingled with the effects of collective representations; most of the
representations within individual minds have been collectively produced.
Collective representations are not the creation of individuals' intentions or of the
sum of individuals' thought. These collective representations arise from the
interaction of innumerable minds considered as a totality, as a whole from whose
activities these representations emerge.
Collective representations have collective origins, collective functions and they are
sanctioned. There is the expectation that the collectivity will approve or
disapprove of individuals actions. The existence and expectation of sanctions
operates to generate similar patterns of individual reasoning and thinking; it
introduces social elements into individual mental processes and transform us into
social beings.
Collective representations are not, therefore, products of a single mind or of the
simply addition of single minds; as a totality, they are greater than the sum of its
parts.
Political Sociology a la Durkheim
Political society : “formed by the coming
together of a fairly large number of secondary
social groups, which is subject to the same one
authority, where this is not itself subject to any
other permanently constituted superior
authority” (p.191).
Then he immediately asks about the “what the
morals are that relate to it” – the “rules which
specify the relation of individuals to this
sovereign authority” (ibid).
The Durkheimian State as Brain
• Merely the “particular group of officials entrusted with
representing th[e] authority” to which everyone is
subjected (p.191).
“The state is a specialised agency whose responsibility it
is to work out certain ideas which apply to the
collectivity.” These ideas are said to be “more conscious
and deliberate” than others, differentiating them from
other collectivities’ ideas (p.192).
• Notice the repeated description of the state as “organ”
(p.196) and “inner organ” (p.192), along with the
constant use of “function.” Remember metaphor of
society as social organism.
Note Evolutionary Language
“a single society can no more change its type during the
course of its evolution than an animal can change its
species during its individual existence” (p.193-4).
“…as a tree having many branches which differ in greater
of lesser degree. But societies are situated at varying
heights on this tree, and at variable distances from the
common trunk. On condition of treating them in this way,
it is possible to speak of the general evolution of
societies” (p.129).
Division of Labor
Division and specialization of labor was, for
Durkheim and contemporaries, the most significant
feature of modernity.
Durkheim subscribed to the Social Darwinist view
that division of labor is the human variant of a
universal biological process: the progression from
simple forms of life to differentiated, complex ones.
However, he rejected utilitarian explanations which
emphasized individual self-interest as the motor
behind efficient, self-interested ways of organizing
labor.
In the Old Days…
Durkheim believed that early societies were
constituted by the ways they respond to violations of
norms. Such responses took the form of punitive
sanctions, of inflictions of pain on the violators by, or in
the name of, the whole society, in order to reassert
universally shared and inflexible understandings.
More generally, Durkheim’s emphasis on norms (as
opposed to, say, “contracts”) invites us to move beyond
the legalistic, psychological, and “formal rational”
explanations of society.
“Mechanical Solidarity”
These early societies followed a “morphological
pattern”:
Small population + low demographic density + large
territory + use of primitive technology to extract
resources =
“Mechanical Solidarity”
Such societies get segmented into even smaller, very
similar subunits which subsist by embodying the same
culture and interacting with the others on ritual occasions,
which renew everyone’s feeling of “togetherness.”
These societies are homogenous and have no major
fissures to be mended.
“Organic Solidarity”
The equilibrium of such a society, according to Durkheim, eventually gets disturbed:
Increase in population + increase in demographic density  increased competitive
pressure over resources.
At this juncture, the society in question either falls prey to strife and disorder or it
spontaneously embarks on sustained change by dividing labor. Many generations later,
we are left with a profoundly different picture:
 Large population operating over large territory making intensive use of
resources + a differentiation process forces development of different skills and
technologies + diverse beliefs, norms, customs guide people within their
differentiated branches = “Organic Solidarity”
In this situation, violation of the norms does not evoke the wrath of the whole society.
Rather, sanctions are typically not punitive but “restitutive” – they seek to remedy the
damage the violation has done to the interests of given individuals, and only if those
request such remedy. Normative bonds of society as a whole become fewer, and
“looser,” so mechanical solidarity is no longer possible.
The “glue” that keeps society together is now due to the fact that the different parts
interact with, and deliver goods and services to, one another. Think of advanced
biological species, which present organs which are diverse in structure and operation
but all subserve the needs of each other and of the whole.
Freedom through (Political) Society
“Man is far more free in a crowd than in a small group” (p.200).
Furthermore, (s)he is freer in a small group than alone.
Simmel reached a similar conclusion (albeit from different premises):
“For within a mass of people in sensory contact, innumerable
suggestions and nervous influences play back and forth; they deprive
the individual of the calmness and autonomy of reflection and action.
In a crowd, therefore, the most ephemeral incitations often grow like
avalanches into the most disproprtionate impulses, and thus appear to
eliminate the higher differentiated and critical functions of the
individual” (p.112).
Society as a Moral Reality
• Society’s continuing existence and welfare depend on the
willingness of individuals to consider each other not as
instruments, but as fellow beings equally entitled to
respect and solidarity. Society is the source of morality.
• Society demands not just obedience but devotion.
• According to Durkheim, all institutions, mundane as their
themes may be, have arisen as articulations and
differentiations of a single great institutional matrix:
religion. It is religion that tells us the sacred from the
profane, and continuously validates constraints on us as
legitimate.
• For instance, a tribe worshiping a totem actually worships
itself. It is the manifestation of the superiority,
powerfulness, generosity of the group that generates in its
members the experience of the sacred – an experience
which myth and ritual continuously revisit and reproduce.
God is Society
Durkheim has drawn criticism from theists for insinuating that religion is, at its
core, an arbitrary exercise in self-delusion, a delirium. But Durkheim’s point
was precisely that it is a well-grounded delirium.
Simmel the Interactionist
s fsvv
Offers us a new set of concepts for
understanding sociological phenomenon
from the perspective of interacting individuals:
social forms | social type | social distance |
sociation | interaction | conflict | exchange |
domination | individuality.
Political sociology is the study of human
interaction, or sociation. In order to be
considered sociation, an interaction has to be
truly reciprocal —the actions of the individuals
must influence one another.
Three Kinds of Subordination
• 1) to an individual
• 2) to a plurality/collectivity
• 3) to an impersonal, objective principle
Reciprocity is Key
The lens of reciprocity for studying social
relations adds a new dimension of nuance to the
study of power and domination that we did not
find in Marx or Durkheim, though in some form
we found it in Weber. Simmel describes how the
dominator and dominated are inter-subjectively
tied together.
Agency of the Subordinated
“Even in the most oppressive and cruel cases of
subordination, there is still a considerable measure
of personal freedom. We merely do not become
aware of it because its manifestation would entail
sacrifices which we usually never think of taking
upon ourselves. Actually, the absolute coercion
which even the most cruel tyrant imposes upon us
is always distinctly relative. Its condition is our
desire to escape from the threatened punishment
or from other consequences of our disobedience”
(p.97).
Formalism
Notice how many times the words “formal,”
“form,” “forms,” “social formation” and related
derivatives appear (for instance on p.103).
Consider some triadic forms:
TERTIUS GAUDENS
(“the third who benefits”)
DIVISOR ET IMPERATOR
(“divider and conquerer”)
IMPARTIAL MEDIATOR
TERTIUS GAUDENS
Tertius
?
?
INDEPENDENT
CONFLICT
DIVISOR ET IMPERATOR
Divisor/Imperator
?
?
CONFLICT
PROMOTED BY D.I.
IMPARTIAL MEDIATOR
Mediator
?
?
RECONCILIATION
PROMOTED BY I.M.
External Threat: The Best Unifier
“In general common
enmity is one of the
most powerful
means for motivating
a number of
individuals or groups
to cling together”
(p.103).
The State, according to the Big Four
Marx
“The state, along with all
“political power,” “is merely the
instrument of one class for
oppressing another.” It is one of
the tools in the “superstructure”
that protects capitalist property
rights and maintains the
ownership of means of
production in the hands of the
ruling class. But it is a neutral
tool, in the sense that it is not
inherently a capitalist state – it
can be a “dictatorship of the
proletariat.” Thus the Communist
Manifesto calls for complete
centralization of the means of
production and transport into
the hands of the state, so that it
can represent the working class.
Another possibility is that the
state “withers away” altogether
with the installation of complete
communism. “Do away with
Capitalism,” Engels wrote, “and
the State will fall by it-self. Early
and late Marx differ considerably
in conceptions of the state, but
economic determinism is the
common thread: economic
conditions in society  the
state.
Weber
Durkheim
Simmel
“The state is a collection of legal,
administrative, extractive and – above
all – coercive institutions that not only
define the proper boundary between
state and civil society, but impact
relations within civil society itself:
In the Darwin-inspired
evolutionary metaphor, society is
an “organism” and the state is its
“brain” which, “like a human
brain, has grown in the course of
evolution.” It has primarily a
regulative function, keeping the
forces of social disorder at bay:
anomie, forced division of labor,
the failure to replace traditional
with modern norms, etc.
Accordingly, the state’s duty is
The state is roughly as Weber
defined it, but the extractive
function of this institution –
relating to taxes, property
regulation, and involvement in
the money economy – is given
more emphasis than the
coercive, violent dimension. As
the money economy expands,
the “modern state” increasingly
bureaucratizes, rationalizes and
centralizes, becoming “based
upon an extraordinary
collectivization, integration and
unification of all political forces.”
“Of course, force is certainly not the
normal or the only means of the
state--nobody says that--but force is a
means specific to the state. Today the
relation between the state and
violence is an especially intimate one.
In the past, the most varied
institutions--beginning with the sib-have known the use of physical force
as quite normal. Today, however, we
have to say that a state is a human
community that (successfully) claims
the monopoly of the legitimate use
of physical force within a given
territory. Note that 'territory' is one
of the characteristics of the state.
Specifically, at the present time, the
right to use physical force is ascribed
to other institutions or to individuals
only to the extent to which the state
permits it. The state is considered the
sole source of the 'right' to use
violence.”
One of the forces behind the rise of
the bureaucratized, modern state is
democratization, which puts greater
and more diverse demands on
government from increasingly varied
“…to work out certain
representations which hold good
for the collectivity. These
representations are distinguished
from the other collective
representations by their higher
degree of consciousness and
reflection.”
As society becomes more
complex and differentiated, the
need for coordination and
regulation by a higher organ
becomes more intense. In the
economic realm, the state is one
of the non-contractual elements
that prevent the market from
developing self-destructive
dynamics.
What most conceptions of the
state neglect is that “there is
interaction; and in principle,
interaction always contains some
limitation of each party [the
rulers and the ruled] to the
process.” The relation between
the state and its subjects is thus
bi-directional, with the
“reciprocal character of the
contract between rulers and
ruled.” In modern society, the
reciprocity of the state-citizen
contract relates mostly to
monetary relations, which
originated in society.