Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Versions of the state

Brad DeLong has a "reaction essay" entitled ""Perhaps. And Sometimes.", to Scott's Seeing Like a State recap discussed in the previous post. What he's reacting to is Scott's contention that the state's interest in so-called "legibility" as a means of ensuring state control comes at a cost to local or vernacular knowledge, systems, and practices, and is therefore often oppressive. Using a classical example, DeLong makes a good point that the control such legibility enables may well be preferable to an alternative in which local lords and warlords become much more oppressive than the central government. But, just as Scott tried to overextend his argument re: standardization, so DeLong overextends his good point -- as he puts it in the terms Scott uses:
A state that makes civil society legible to itself cannot protect us from its own fits of ideological terror, or even clumsy thumb-fingeredness. A state to which civil society is illegible cannot help curb roving bandits or local notables. And neither type of state has proved terribly effective at constraining its own functionaries.
In some ways, the “night watchman” state — the state that enables civil society to develop and function without distortions imposed by roving bandits, local notables, and its own functionaries, but that also is content to simply sit back and watch civil society — is the most powerful and unlikely state of all.
Translating that into more common terminology, he's saying that there are only two likely versions of the state available to us -- either a non-intrusive but weak version (i.e., what's usually called a "failed" state today) or a strong but intrusive, and frequently oppressive, version. But this rather bleak set of binary alternatives is really just an illusion resulting from flattening all versions of the state into a 1-dimensional spectrum, from weak to strong. In reality there are many other dimensions -- states can range along an autocratic to democratic spectrum, for example, and there can be weak or strong versions at either end. They can also vary along a  constitutional to tyrannical dimension, and again display weak or strong, autocratic or democratic versions at either extreme. And once we see that there are more than two possible versions of the state, we can see our way out of the trade-off between freedom and safety that DeLong presents. We can see, for example, that a limited state is not the same as a weak state -- i.e., that there's no inherent reason a state needs to be oppressive itself in order to control and suppress local oppressors.

What DeLong seems really to be talking about is just the perennial tendency toward oppression by rulers everywhere, whatever the scope of their rule -- which is certainly both an old problem and a current one. But that's only to say that the work to achieve, defend, and extend human freedom is as perennial as the efforts to oppress it. In our day, that work takes the form of upholding a version of the state that does indeed, as DeLong indicates, enable civil society without at the same time disabling it through bureaucratic intrusions. It's called making progress.

8 comments:

  1. In some ways, the “night watchman” state — the state that enables civil society to develop and function without distortions imposed by roving bandits, local notables, and its own functionaries, but that also is content to simply sit back and watch civil society — is the most powerful and unlikely state of all.

    That sounds about right, and similar to the "good Federalism" of Madison (at least in his more rational moments). The libertarian/states rights types in love with Freedom and the free market in particular generally overlook the wrong side of state rights--ie, control of cities and regions by "local notables", or by "factions" in Madisonian terms. That might be a "dixie mafia"--say majorities of baptist/mormons on school districts, city councils, so forth. Or maybe it's La Cosa Nostra...or the crips (or Tammany Hall back in the day). That might sound slightly dramatic, but the local control issue remains as problematic now as it was in Madison's day: a school district controlled by baptists and mormons (and maybe one or two token catholics jews and muslims) will hire..baptists and mormons, who will do whatever they can to keep Darwin/evolution out of classrooms, if not modern science as a whole (or french and spanish for that matter, and yr favorite John Steinbeck novel). No biggie to a tenured professor in a cushy Uni such as Dr. Delong--but an hour away in North Sac. it may be.


    The popular vote itself is arguably a type of factionalism and often results in a "tyranny of the majority" . Were the population comprised of Madisons it might not be so problematic. But it's not.

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  2. That might sound slightly dramatic, but the local control issue remains as problematic now as it was in Madison's day: a school district controlled by baptists and mormons (and maybe one or two token catholics jews and muslims) will hire..baptists and mormons,...

    Similarly, a school district controlled by Greens will hire Greens, liberals hire liberals, lefties hire lefties, fascists hire fascists, "progressives" hire "progressives", right? Which is just fine with you as long as the ones in control, doing the hiring, and using that to indoctrinate their particular beliefs and value system are the ones who share your particular beliefs and value system. Right?

    Alternatively, we could work toward a state which constitutionally limited this sort of indoctrination by any ideology/belief system, including liberals, Greens, "progressives", or what have you. This would at least lessen the incentive for "factions", in Madison's sense, to try to use state control, at whatever level, to advance their beliefs. And that's the alternative I'd recommend.

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  4. Well, given that the USA is what 75% WASP not that big of a deal. A "Green" --at least a genuine one, with some science/tech. training--probably has some idea of responsible public education, sans creationism (of whatever type), and certainly would be preferable to...mormons, or baptist biblethumpers. It's the biblethumpers who say that teaching evolution, for example is "ideological"--meaning, they don't get to biblethump. Or some hicks say having kids take espanol is ideological--well, Anglo-only is ideological as well. A few decades ago students had to complete a semester in Latin, or at least french or German. That's most ...vamanos'ed now.

    And if you read my post carefully you would note I did allude to the possibility of "leftist" gangs, though usually they arise (as with say EME) in response to decades, if not centuries of ...WASP control. Im against all mobs and mafias, but the hispanic gangs are hardly more appalling than WASP ones (including the skins, or hells angels, or klansmen, still around in areas of the US) .

    A well-ordered State based on sound Constitutional principles should prevent the rise of any and all factions (including ...oligarchies)--sort of like ...Plato's policy recommendations in the Republic (a book well-known by the American founders ).

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  5. A "Green" ... certainly would be preferable to...mormons, or baptist biblethumpers.

    Yes, I get that people who share your beliefs are preferable for you. The problem is that not everybody does share your beliefs, just as not everybody shares the beliefs of mormons or baptist biblethumpers, etc. The alternatives are either for every belief-system to fight it out with every other one for the power to impose their beliefs on everyone else, or to move toward a state that precludes the use of state power for such purposes.

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  6. Some belief systems are more equal than others, morf. Greens aren't perfect, in fact many are just corporate moderates. But they're much closer to par-tay material than mormonics or baptists--alas, kulaks fit only for gulag-burger. Maybe with some re-education, that is re-reinforcement-- a few libertarian types, at least the non-redneck-- might ...survive. But ...dicey.

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  7. Oh, come to that, I suspect you lefties will be the first to go, to gulags or elsewhere. I don't think you'll have many sympathizers.

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  8. That was slightly facetious , morf, yet...WASPs are hardly the majority in terms of world population (ever hear of China and India?). And the number of hispanic people in California nearly equals that of caucasians. Si se puede.

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