Understanding State, Power, and Authority: Key Concepts
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Understanding State, Power, and Authority
State: A group of people within a unified territory, sharing a single market, and organized under a legal framework to ensure social peace and order under a single government.
Power: The ability to impose one's will on others.
Authority: Leadership held by an individual with power.
The Leviathan and the Social Contract
The social contract serves as the foundation of political legitimacy, validating a social order where some rule and others obey. Equal and free individuals, acting rationally, enter into a contract, establishing a government as humanity transitions into society.
Rousseau's Perspective
Rousseau believed that the state of war exists within civil society, leading to inequality, domination, and wealth disparities.
A social order is created to mitigate the effects of leaving the natural state and the loss of equality.
State of Nature: A peaceful, happy, original state.
Civil Society: A conflict arising from technical progress and the division of labor.
The Ideal Republic
Rousseau envisioned a depersonalized sovereign power: the general will, uniting all and subjecting all to each other.
This is embedded in the town as a constituent of the social order (sovereign) and pre-existing contract to act.
Emergence of the Modern State
The modern state's emergence is traced to the 17th century, a period of transition from feudal society to the bourgeoisie and the consolidation of absolutist states.
The birth of the modern state was based on the institution of monarchy.
Force (coercion) alone is insufficient to consolidate stable power. Sustaining a social order requires elements of persuasion.
Modern states need to awaken popular passions and utilize officers as needed.
Civil Disobedience
Industrialized societies must make decisions in a public and collective manner.
Authorities need to be accepted to be considered legitimate.
The ideal is to achieve a balance between progress, industrialization, and social rights. Civil disobedience, while potentially pacifist, can be dangerous. Gandhi was more successful in applying the principle of passive resistance and non-cooperation with British authorities.
Karl Marx
Capitalism and Human Rights: Equality as a defense trait and state law based on the idea that the state represents the area of general interests of any society.
Marx argued that capitalist society is a society of disguise.
The state does not represent the interests of a class, the bourgeoisie.
The state is a tool of oppression for the ruling class, a coercive apparatus.
The state is a product of societal contradictions, emerging as an organ of domination to cushion the irreconcilable contradictions produced by social inequality.
The social organization established on private property creates selfishness.
Althusser
Althusser argued that, in addition to state enforcement tools, there are ideological apparatuses that help to reproduce and naturalize social relations.
This concept refers to a range of institutions, including family, school, and media, that help to reproduce and naturalize social relations.
They instill the roles that individuals must fulfill in society. Max Weber's domination type addresses the issue of dominance as a search criterion for the legitimacy of power.
Weber argues that power operates as an administration. The trend toward bureaucratic rationalization is an irresistible force propelled by the logic of capitalism.
Traditional Domination: Founded on the belief in the legitimacy of an authority that has existed.
Charismatic Domination: Based on a leader or institution possessing charisma.
Rational or Legal Domination: Bureaucratic administration includes an administration based on written documents, a hierarchical structure of authority with clearly defined areas of command and responsibility.
This form maximizes management efficiency but poses a serious danger. Members may meet the standards of a ritual form and tend to obey orders even if they are wrong.
Surplus-cash: Gain favorable to the capitalist.
The Parasitic Bureaucracy
The parasitic bureaucracy can be ineffective or patronage-based. In Argentina, the bureaucracy is ineffective due to corruption, most commonly seen in paperwork.