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Thread: State-formation & Violence After Medieval Times

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    State-formation & Violence After Medieval Times

    State-formation & Violence After Medieval Times is a very long read, so I'll try to summarize with some pictures, and then post the conclusion.

    It's a critical analysis of Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, which claims the formation of the state reduced violent deaths worldwide.

    There's two parts, the first looks at human-on-human violence, and the second state violence. Picker plays up the former and plays down the latter.

    Pinker's claim is based on this data:



    Several critics criticize Pinker for cherry picking data and offer more complete statistics, here's one:



    As we move from band or tribe to chiefdom, that is an increasing social complexity, we see greater and greater violence. This trend does reverse with the emergence of the state, but the causative nature of that correlation is questioned. For one, "Muchembled (1996) notes that the decline of homicide rates in Early Modern Europe does not appear to correspond to the rise of the state. For example, the Low Countries were one of the earliest places characterized by huge declines in homicide rates, yet were exempt from the emergence of centralized power structures during this time. In fact, the political system much more resembled a loosely-knit group of largely independent factions." There's much more.

    The second claim of Picker is based on looking not at absolute numbers but rates of death in warfare. But again, looking at a broader range of data than he picks, we see it's not true.



    If we were to draw a trend line through all that data we would see an upward slope, more inclined if we stop at the WWs, still inclined if we continue after.

    OK, so that's my summary. Now the conclusion of the piece:

    The argument offered by Snyder, in my opinion, hits the argument of Pinker (2011) and co. in its weak spot. In their failure to differentiate between different types and social contexts surrounding the existence of violent death, Pinker (2011) lumps all instances together in order to paint a picture of a past rife with violence: “Nasty, Brutish and Short”. It was only the Leviathan state forcibly monopolizing the legitimate use of violence, which caused violence among humankind to decline. Based on the two following doubtful notions addressed in this thesis, namely that:
    (1) The Hobbesian model of “state power” sufficiently explains the decline of homicide rates all across Europe after the 15th century and onward.
    (2) Non-state societies necessarily engage in more and deadlier types of warfare than do state societies.

    Rests notion (3) stating that—espoused by Gene Callahan—the state doesn’t cause violence due to notions (1) and (2). However, even the doubtful correctness of notion (1) and (2) wouldn’t justify (3) in any real or ethical sense. Pinkerian analysis, based essentially on de-contextualization of violence, would view a medieval village with a population of 500 in which two men die in public knife-fighting during a drunken quarrel over insulted family honor—cheered on by much of the surrounding village—as necessarily worse than a nation-state with a population of 100,000,000 in which 350,000 ethnic minorities are systematically mass murdered by the ruling party. This conclusion would be reached simply and solely because one’s likelihood of dying a violent death is higher in the former case.

    It is essentially the former case—drunken brawls or duels over honor going too far—that typify the type of violent death in medieval Europe. It is in contrast; exactly the systematic and organized mass murder of thousands of “public enemies” that typified the 3% of the world population killed by states during the 20th century. Contextually, it is therefore completely unfounded—as Mr. Catalan does—to claim that the state does not cause violence, murder, and bloodshed based on the doubtful notion that its bureaucratic monopolization of justice also prevented sporadic, widely-distributed homicides.

    The organized displacement and murder of thousands by the decree of a small elite is not only something made possible by the infrastructure that statehood necessitates for its own survival, but also by the multitude mutually-exclusive egalitarian ideologies that sprang out of Enlightenment thought (Malesevic, 2013). In our current day and age, violence might not be as cruel and openly-displayed as in medieval times. Instead, it is hidden from public view, externalized, and most importantly; more organized and dehumanized than ever.
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    I guess it also depends on how one defines "violent deaths". It also depends on the importance ascribed to or implied by deaths that are defined as "violent". Because one could argue that many deaths caused by the state, perhaps the majority of them, were not "violent" in the way they mean it. For example, collectivization of farms in the Soviet Union and Communist China killed tens of millions. Is that violent? If not, then why aren't they included in Pinker's thesis?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ethereal View Post
    I guess it also depends on how one defines "violent deaths". It also depends on the importance ascribed to or implied by deaths that are defined as "violent". Because one could argue that many deaths caused by the state, perhaps the majority of them, were not "violent" in the way they mean it. For example, collectivization of farms in the Soviet Union and Communist China killed tens of millions. Is that violent? If not, then why aren't they included in Pinker's thesis?
    I think graph 2 would include all that but I didn't research the author's sources. He, the author, seemed to focus more on one-on-one homicide and state conflicts.

    On second thought, the criticism probably left that out.

    Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed has a long chapter on the collectivization of farms in the Soviet Union.
    Last edited by Chris; 10-07-2018 at 04:51 PM.
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    On my phone so only a brief comment. I think we often talk past one another and this is a good example. What exactly do we mean by the state here? Leviathan? Modern centralization and bureaucracy? I think it's fairly clear that's exactly what Pinker means but the state per se is millennia older than the entities Pinker admires. What I mean to say here is that these are not arguments for and against the state but rather a particular type of state.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister D View Post
    On my phone so only a brief comment. I think we often talk past one another and this is a good example. What exactly do we mean by the state here? Leviathan? Modern centralization and bureaucracy? I think it's fairly clear that's exactly what Pinker means but the state per se is millennia older than the entities Pinker admires. What I mean to say here is that these are not arguments for and against the state but rather a particular type of state.
    In the article there's many reference to Hobbes and his Leviathan as what Pinker is referring to. So I'd say the modern state. But point taken.

    Nte the third chart starts to rise mid-1600s.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister D View Post
    On my phone so only a brief comment. I think we often talk past one another and this is a good example. What exactly do we mean by the state here? Leviathan? Modern centralization and bureaucracy? I think it's fairly clear that's exactly what Pinker means but the state per se is millennia older than the entities Pinker admires. What I mean to say here is that these are not arguments for and against the state but rather a particular type of state.
    Centralization and bureaucracy are inherent to the state.
    Power always thinks it has a great soul, and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak. And that it is doing God service when it is violating all His laws.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ethereal View Post
    Centralization and bureaucracy are inherent to the state.
    They are potential and contingent.
    Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister D View Post
    They are potential and contingent.
    I know of no state that wasn't centralized and bureaucratized to some extent. I don't see how a state could exist without centralization and bureaucracy. I would agree that the degree to which various states have been centralized and bureaucratized has varied rather significantly, but they were all the same in principle.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    In the article there's many reference to Hobbes and his Leviathan as what Pinker is referring to. So I'd say the modern state. But point taken.

    Nte the third chart starts to rise mid-1600s.
    Probably starting with the Treaty of Wesphalia (1648) which created national self-determination and the modern nation-state. It ended the practice of Kings and other nobles starting wars purely for territorial expansion. It also started a process of solving problems more often via diplomacy.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ethereal View Post
    I know of no state that wasn't centralized and bureaucratized to some extent. I don't see how a state could exist without centralization and bureaucracy. I would agree that the degree to which various states have been centralized and bureaucratized has varied rather significantly, but they were all the same in principle.
    Explain what to some extent means. I would hardly characterize Medieval France or the Holy Roman Empire as centralized or bureaucratized. Would you?
    Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.


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