The Distributed Stateless Society. Liberty, Manorialism and the State

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksei Gudkov
Keyword(s):  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-423
Author(s):  
Daniel Guillery

It is common to think that state enforcement is a restriction on freedom that is morally permitted or justified because of the unfortunate circumstances in which we find ourselves. Human frailty and material scarcity combine to make the compromise of freedom involved in exclusive state enforcement power necessary for other freedoms or other goods. In the words of James Madison, ‘if men were angels, no government would be necessary’ ( 1990 : 267). But there is an opposing tradition, according to which the very idea of freedom in society entails the necessity of state enforcement. However morally good human beings are, or whatever material conditions they find themselves in, on this view, the ideal of freedom we ought to be concerned to realise is such that it cannot be attained without state enforcement. It follows a priori from an important ideal of freedom that a state with exclusive enforcement power is necessary for individual liberty in society. In this paper, I argue against what I take to be the strongest argument of the a priori kind, which begins from the neo-republican ideal of freedom as non-domination, and thereby in (partial) defence of the alternative, Madisonian, view. Insofar as it is true that some sort of problematic domination will inevitably be present in a stateless society, I argue, the introduction of a state can do nothing to eliminate it. For the state to improve on even an ideal stateless society, it would need to give individuals control over the interference of potential dominators of a sort that could not be achieved in the ideal stateless society.


2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 107-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Berent

In a collection of articles based on my Cambridge doctoral thesis (1994) I have argued that, contrary to what has been traditionally assumed, the Greek polis was not a State but rather what anthropologists call ‘a stateless society’. The latter is characterized by the absence of ‘government’, that is, an agency which has separated itself out from the rest of social life and which monopolizes the use of violence. In a recent article Mogens Herman Hansen discusses and rejects my notion of the stateless polis. This paper is a rejoinder to Hansen’s criticism and offers critical analysis of the concept of ‘The Greek State’ which has been employed by Hansen and by other ancient historians. Among the questions discussed: To what extent did the polis have amonopoly on violence? To what extent do the relations between the polis and its territory resemble those of (tribal) stateless communities? Could the State/Society distinction be applied to the Greek polis? How is the Greek distinction between the private and the public different from its modern counterpart and how is this difference related to the statelessness of the Greek polis?


Asy-Syari ah ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusuf Faisal Ali

Abstract: The presence of the Constitution of Medina that was declared by the Prophet Muhammad after His migration did not only manage and organize the internal life of Muslims and unify them with the Jews as well as their allies but also presented a change on social status from stateless society to state society. It addresses an idea that the substance in the Constitution of Media should be overviewed and seen from various aspects of state’s and nation’s life. The purpose of this research is more intended to analyze the political principles in the Constitution of Medina. This study is qualitative with analytical descriptive method from data obtained in the literature. The data is then collected and analyzed inductively and deductively, which is elaborated with constitutional theory. This study resulted that substantially the Constitution of Medina contained the principle of politics that globally included elements of the state formation, model of state, governmental system, and type of power that remained in-progress at Medina based on the existing literatures in governmental science, political science, and developing countries in the whole world. The main aspect revealed in this study concerns the substance and implementation of the Medina constitution in the state administration that is relevant to modern countries that are developing at this time, both sociologically and politically.Abstrak: Kehadiran konstitusi Madînah yang ditetapkan oleh Nabi Muhammad setelah berhijrah, sesungguhnya tidak hanya sekedar menata intern kehidupan kaum muslimin dan mempersatukan di antara mereka dengan kaum Yahudi beserta sekutu-sekutunya, tetapi juga memberikan perubahan status sosial yang mulanya dari masyarakat bukan negara menjadi masyarakat yang bernegara. Ini memberikan gambaran bahwa materi konstitusi Madînah tidak dapat dilihat dari satu sisi atau dua sisi saja, tetapi mencakup berbagai aspek kehidupan dalam bermasyarakat dan bernegara. Adapun tujuan dari penelitian ini lebih dimaksudkan untuk menganalisis prinsip-prinsip kenegaraan dalam konstitusi tersebut. Kajian ini bersifat kualitatif dengan metode deskriptif analitis dari data yang diperoleh secara literatur. Data tersebut kemudian dihimpun dan dianalisis secara induktif dan deduktif, yang dielaborasi dengan teori ketatanegaraan. Hasil penelusuran menunjukkan bahwa secara subtansial konstitusi Madînah memuat prinsip-prinsip kenegaraan yang secara global meliputi unsur-unsur terbentuknya sebuah negara, bentuk negara, sistem pemerintahan, dan jenis kekuasaan yang berlaku di Madînah pada saat itu sebagaimana yang dikenal dalam kepustakaan Ilmu Negara dan Ilmu Politik, dan juga sebagaimana yang berkembang di negara-negara di dunia. Aspek utama yang terungkap dalam kajian ini menyangkut substansi dan implementasi konstitusi Madînah dalam ketatanegaraan yang relevan dengan negara-negara modern yang berkembang saat ini, baik secara sosiologis maupun politis.


Author(s):  
George Crowder

Anarchism is the view that a society without the state, or government, is both possible and desirable. Although there have been intimations of the anarchist outlook throughout history, anarchist ideas emerged in their modern form in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the wake of the French and Industrial Revolutions. All anarchists support some version of each of the following broad claims: (1) people have no general obligation to obey the commands of the state; (2) the state ought to be abolished; (3) some kind of stateless society is possible and desirable; (4) the transition from state to anarchy is a realistic prospect Within this broad framework there is a rich variety of anarchist thought. The main political division is between the ‘classical’ or socialist school, which tends to reject or restrict private property, and the ‘individualist’ or libertarian tradition, which defends private acquisition and looks to free market exchange as a model for the desirable society. Philosophical differences follow this division to some extent, the classical school appealing principally to natural law and perfectionist ethics, and the individualists to natural rights and egoism. Another possible distinction is between the ‘old’ anarchism of the nineteenth century (including both the classical and individualist traditions) and the ‘new’ anarchist thought that has developed since the Second World War, which applies the insights of such recent ethical currents as feminism, ecology and postmodernism. Anarchists have produced powerful arguments denying any general obligation to obey the state and pointing out the ill effects of state power. More open to question are their claims that states ought to be abolished, that social order is possible without the state and that a transition to anarchy is a realistic possibility.


Author(s):  
Lucas De Siqueira Bentes

This paper presents the main attributes of the law with regard to the development and prosperity of an economy, following the principles set forth by the Austrian School. The law has an intrinsic nature with themarket economy and yet is ignored by its researchers. The libertarian legal theories allow us to fully understand that since its inception, the law is a means of structuring the behaviors of individuals. And the stronger and spontaneous were its institutions, the more the society thrived. Nevertheless, the State significantly weakened the pillars of the law, seizing its foundations and making itself its sole operator, rotting its most vital roots. We must treat the State as a player in the vast market of government. In so doing, it will be responsible for its mistakes because only competition in a huge market can drive a nation to prosperity with the right laws.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chee-Heong Quah

This chapter debunks the myth that only the state is capable of handling a pandemic. Instead, without the state, private individuals and entities, when given the full freedom, can better ameliorate the risk and harm of a virus outbreak and at the same time maximize the well-being of the entire society. In particular, this chapter discusses what would have happened in a world without a state and how would the economic laws in the Austrian tradition drive individuals to act in ways that maximize the net benefits not only to themselves but ultimately to every member of the society.


Author(s):  
T. A. Welton

Various authors have emphasized the spatial information resident in an electron micrograph taken with adequately coherent radiation. In view of the completion of at least one such instrument, this opportunity is taken to summarize the state of the art of processing such micrographs. We use the usual symbols for the aberration coefficients, and supplement these with £ and 6 for the transverse coherence length and the fractional energy spread respectively. He also assume a weak, biologically interesting sample, with principal interest lying in the molecular skeleton remaining after obvious hydrogen loss and other radiation damage has occurred.


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