The Roots of State Politics
Primitive Power
Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey opens with a scene of apemen living among warthogs. One of the apemen discovers a bone and realizes he can use it to win power. He beats one of his group members to death with it and scares the rest of the pack into submission.
The scene ends when the brute tosses his weapon away, in an apparent ethical insight that such powerful weapons ought not to exist. But in reality, we all know what really happens. Having seen the weapon’s use, others will scramble to find a similar weapon or to take the brute’s weapon away from him.
Power, then, is won either through the innovation of new forms of violence or through the theft of the products of said innovation. Considering a majority of humanoids (still) lacks the intelligence to innovate tools, theft is the easiest option for most. Thievery also comes in the form of copying others’ behavior.
Theft (stealing or copying) is the quickest path to win power, and this explains why people tend to follow authority. The people in authority present themselves as either the keepers of power or as the innovators of power. Naturally, everyone else will want to ‘follow’ these authorities, both for their protection and, secretly, to try to win said power for themselves.
Among human beings, these two principles of power-through-violence and theft-or-innovation still govern the behaviors of states. International politics knows only three types of actors: the brutes, the battered, and the bamboozled majority.
To see the power of theft as a tool to win power, notice how our societies thrive on theft:
Toddlers naturally try to take other kids’ toys away.
In many cases, a state is allowed to confiscate people’s property. In The Netherlands, for example, there is a law that says the state may seize all of private individuals’ gold bullion and gold coins whenever the state sees reason to do so. Without compensation.
Militaries are allowed to command their own people’s property if necessary during war.
If you’ve been to high school, you know that teachers may sometimes confiscate kids’ toys, such as a cellphone. If you’re lucky, you may get it back at the end of class. Sometimes, teachers will hold on to your possessions for days as a form of punishment. Who gave teachers the right to do so?
Many innovators have lost their powers to thieving competitors.
Social media companies may take your accounts away.
Banks may take your accounts away.
Taking power away from others, then, is the easiest way to maintain or win power for oneself. Even police officers do it. They may confiscate certain possessions of people, even if the people haven’t committed any crimes. For example, a banner used at a protest may be taken away.
Stealing property, then, is the core power of the state. This power contains an implicit threat: You may hold on to your possessions only as long as you obey and follow the rules of the state. Religions also promote this principle: You are nothing and your god(s) gave you everything. The saying, God giveth and God taketh away, is a threat.
The American notion of an armed populace who may defend their private property certainly changes the equation, but first, you have to be wealthy enough to win property for yourself and that’s where the state makes American people’s lives absolutely miserable: You can be fired on the spot. Instead of taking your property directly, the state can take your proceeds, your income, your dividends away.
In Europe, most populations have been effectively unarmed since fishing and hunting activities were banned around the 1500s.
In the meantime, of course, state tax collectors may take up to 50% or more of your labor, and without compensation. The promise of better education, jobs, and roads is the carrot on the stick. In reality, most of your taxes flow into the pockets of the billionaire class and their businesses.
Much of the taxes raised during the Apollo Space Program didn’t go to NASA but to other companies that were building long-distance rockets (meant for long-distance wars against Russia, to dominate space and the skies). These companies often overcharged the cost of rocket production by a factor of 10, pocketing a good portion of the taxpayers’ funds.
Corporations are a racket, but so is government. Where does the government get the power to seize people’s labor and assets without compensation? From the military, of course. The state reserves the right to use force to itself. The populace, whether armed or not, may not fight the state.
In the end, though, state power is a formalized form of bullying, and it is almost always directed at one’s own people. No matter the threat of war, wars still rarely happen in one’s own lands, but the common people live under the threat of state security forces (military, police, guards, teachers, etc.) almost every day.
The surveillance state is an extension of that power system. Using a surveillance system, and making almost everything people say or do electronically trackable, the state becomes surgically effective at punishing people and then denying the offenders certain rights, goods, or services.
Only the most slavishly obedient people will win, and indeed, such a state system then becomes an evolutionary drive that will further domesticate humanity, since disobedient citizens may be denied reproductive rights. (Perhaps no one will be allowed to reproduce, and states will create children in factories, all female of course.)
Geopolitical struggle, or wars between states, comes down to nothing more than one state trying to grab the other party’s lands and/or people, namely to strengthen oneself and weaken the other, so establishing a global hierarchy.
In patriarchal systems, it is the “father” who intervenes, using the authority of his voice and physical strength to keep children from fighting each other. Usually, this leads to a religious and/or moral order that remains quite fixed until the alpha (or God) dies.
Among wolves, for example, higher-ranking males will prevent lower-ranking males from mating but they are free to leave the pack and win territory of their own. The wolves who came to live with humans were the lower-ranking wolves, cast out of their packs but unable to win territory on their own. They formed alliances with people because these wolves were rejects.
In matriarchal systems, it is the “mother” who intervenes, usually by denying the offending child love or nourishment and using other sorts of psychological manipulation to punish children. Usually, the matriarchal approach leads to the greatest prevalence of mental health problems among the children (and the populous).
Among the bonobo, moms control their sons’ politics, stunting their psychological development. (Contrary to popular fiction, bonobo do wage war from time to time, and they don’t solve all their problems with sex.)
In conclusion, the affairs of human power rely mostly on theft, rarely on innovation. Authorities win more power by stealing others’ resources. This creates a growing disparity between the State and the Little Guy. The process of power accumulation will not end until the underlying civilization collapses due to over-theft (e.g., ruining the soil, taxing people to death, making people infertile, etc.).