Nation-State: the illusion of mass society

Did you know that when France's revolutionary armies invaded Europe, most of its soldiers did not speak French? How is this possible you ask? Well, the primitive state of travel and communications technologies during the Middle Ages meant interactions between villages, manors, and towns, were rare—even among those located in the same kingdom. This physical separation, combined with the passage of time, meant that local dialects could seem like entirely different languages to outsiders.

By the end of the eighteenth century, European states had become centralized clubs for landed elites and were beginning to outlive their usefulness [1,2]. First, over-ambitious monarchs such as Henry VIII, Louis XIV and Phillip II, had either divorced and murdered their way into excommunication or exhausted their state treasuries in dubious wars for personal aggrandizement. This reckless behavior, combined with the fallout from the Protestant Reformation, signaled the end of a unified Latin Christendom.

Second, the means of production began to move away from agriculture to manufacturing. As a result, the burgeoning professional groups that grew out of this new production system could end up wealthier than their aristocratic counterparts. Adding to this was the fact that industrialized production rapidly increased urban populations, creating new lifestyles and political interests that did not easily fit within the existing social fabric.

Although one could easily get bogged down in academic minutiae, the French and American Revolutions basically represented the inability of medieval institutions to address these new realities. By the end of the 19th century, the professional classes, which had chaffed under the constraints of the ancient regime, had either seized control or gained considerable influence in most Western states. They brought with them ideas of using reason and equality to reform governance in favor of all citizens.

Thus was born the idea of the nation. The wealth and power of a state would now be used in the service of the public good. Of course, as individuals such as Robespierre found out far too late, reason is often subjective and the public good is inevitably defined by those in power. More often than not, public schools, central bureaucracies, and mass communications technologies have been utilized to create national sentiments, not reflect them.

If the internet and access to cheap global travel have demonstrated anything in the early years of the twenty-first century, it is that access to information and cross-cultural exchanges will not inevitably lead to a world-wide mono culture. Universal truths (be they religious or secular) and mass societies are manufactured realities, serving the interests of specific social groups. As a consequence, irreconcilable differences in the face of reasoned debate are not necessarily signs of ignorance or political subversion. They simply indicate that geography, history, and local realities will continue to be a source of diverging interests well into the foreseeable future.

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Reasons of State

Previously, I discussed the origin of the state system in Renaissance Italy[1]. Lacking the legitimacy of tradition or religious sanction, Italian governments were forced to replace social obligation with compulsion. This in turn evolved into a rather violent system of territorial consolidation and expansionism. As the Renaissance wore on, this ad hoc institution was gradually imported by the kingdoms of England, Spain, and France. The question is: what was the pay-off to forcing previously autonomous authority structures into a centralized system of government?

First of all, it is important to understand the relationship between social organization and the means of production. Authority structures tend to evolve around the manner in which food and wealth are produced. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the means of production consisted of rural agriculture and urban merchant trade. Not surprisingly, ownership of land represented the main source of wealth and authority. Control over large tracts of real estate meant one could raise revenue from cash crops, rents, and taxes from urban centers located within a landlord’s sphere of influence.

The problem for medieval monarchs was that control over the means of production was diffuse. Although a king or emperor might have a legitimate claim to rule over his respective realm, his ability to project authority was very limited. First, most authority was local, vested in numerous vassals with their own political and financial interests. Second, the primitive state of roads and other transportation technologies meant that news and armies traveled slowly. This, combined with the ability of local authorities to tax their subjects and maintain military forces of their own, meant that medieval kings had to tread lightly in local matters. Third, the king’s authority rested upon the concept of divine right, bestowed upon him by God’s representative on earth: the pope. Any public break with the Vatican could result in excommunication, a form of religious ostracism that effectively legalized open revolt by a king’s vassals.

In theory, these competing institutions were held together by the common rules and values of their Christian faith. However, as with all social/political arrangements, some individuals tended to end up with more power than others. Those with less inevitably dreamed of getting more (Heroine has nothing on power). Vassals often battled kings and kings had to deflect external encroachments on their regional authority (i.e. popes and other monarchs). Yet, all of this was usually carried out within the moral/legal framework of Latin Christendom.

The only way to truly break this vicious cycle was to step beyond the traditional rules of engagement and that meant using force. The state system offered a way to increase the exterior power of a monarch by consolidating internal legal and production mechanisms. In other words, those who made a king's external policies difficult would have to go. But Unlike their Italian counterparts, European kings could use their traditional authority to justify most of this self-serving ruthlessness.

For instance, trumped up charges of heresy could turn murder or the confiscation of a wealthy vassal's property into the heroic acts of a pious king, defending the sacred institutions of Christendom; a shrewd marital alliance could direct traditionally local revenues into the royal coffers. Increased control over food and wealth production meant a king could pay for his army independently; thus, guaranteeing their personal loyalty. All of these factors served to turn medieval kingdoms into super-statos, whose ability to project military force made them increasingly unresponsive to the constraints of the medieval power structure.

Seen from this perspective, a centralized government enables statesman to exploit a society's military potential. Our modern conception of sovereignty is based on the ability of states to unshackle themselves from external constraints through the threat of violence. This in turn enables the relationship between the government and the governed to be based on practical local realities, as opposed to abstract external narratives. Of course the downside is that interstate relations can often be violent and unpredicatable. Most modern debates on foreign and domestic policies revolve around the trade-offs invoved with mass and local societies; sovereign states vs. regional unions.

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Original Gangsters

In my last article we discussed the current state of American political discourse and its unsettling lack of historical perspective. More often than not, the most contentious political disputes center on the role of the state in society. Yet, it is impossible to discuss the role of the state without a fundamental understanding of what it was designed to do. To that end, a basic question must be asked: does the authority of the state ultimately rest on general consensus or coercion? This article will briefly discuss the origin of the state and its implications for public policy.

The modern concept of the state is based on an institution developed in Renaissance Italy known as the stato [1]. Unlike medieval monarchs, who owed their thrones to the Catholic Church and tradition, Italian rulers during this time period acquired their positions through brute force and cunning. Success depended on a government’s ability to placate or suppress conquered populations and expand its rule at the expense of rivals. In such a volatile atmosphere, legitimacy was determined by longevity; statos capable of balancing or neutralizing challenges to their authority (by whatever means necessary) could allow time, stability, and fear to tie subject populations to their regime.

In this sense, the practice of statecraft has more in common with gangsterism than government. Inhabitants of territory brought under the control of a state were intended to serve the interests of those in power, not the other way around. While the rule of law, the administration of justice, and military protection were byproducts of centralized authority, they were merely institutions of expediency. For on the one hand, killing every internal opponent to a regime is impractical; setting a few harsh examples is usually enough to discourage open defiance. On the other hand, providing social stability instills a sense of loyalty and obligation, thus freeing the hand of the ruling faction to concentrate their efforts on external expansion. Substitute words like taxes with protection money or turf with borders, and you may find it quite difficult to distinguish between the activities of Al Capone and Cesare Borgia.

This depiction of the state is not meant to discredit the institution or label it in terms of good and evil. On the contrary, the state has been a highly effective mechanism for political organization over the past four centuries. The point of this discussion is to ensure that, when we are discussing public policy, it is understood that the state is ultimately a coercive institution. It is a political instrument originally designed to enable 16th century thugs to seize and maintain power illegally.

The extent to which such an institution can rest upon the consent of the governed, depends on the social and economic homogeneity of competing factions within its borders. This is not to suggest that states must be racially or culturally "pure" as some have argued in the past. Rather, the more a government is perceived to benefit one or more social groups to the expense of others, the more coercive and illegitimate its authority becomes; exposing the institution's more mafioso roots [2]. As a consequence, taming a state's more violent nature requires a political relationship where "rulers and ruled [can] see, know, and understand each other" [3].

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