Interesting that you talk about the ability to kill as being linked to sovereignty. Medieval Europe's overactive ability to kill kept it from developing stable states for an extended period. The blood lust of war lords acted as a force driving Europe back toward something tribal and possibly nomadic. In many areas of Europe, skills related to building and governing cities were lost.

Revival of the knowledge of governing states was linked to the development of a class of lawyers who could read the old Roman law. They reintroduced the concept of the corporation and in the process set Europe on the trail to forming integrated states of the sort we take for granted.

Could the opposite narrative also be laid out? Sure. What's interesting to me is why a person would magnify one storyline and ignore the other.

This doesn't really seem to me to address the above.

If you think I'm "magnifying a storyline" or one of the authors I'm citing, why not just specify who it is, what storyline you mean, and what one I or the authors you have in mind you think to be promoting or ignoring? I realize my post wasn't super-specific - but fuck, dude. Grow up. Part of my original post included an appeal for specificity and asked for acknowledgement of my own vagueness and generality.

I reread this with the thought in mind that maybe I misunderstood or missed something somehow. I would like to repeat myself - well not "like to" exactly but it seems warranted - I don't think you addressed my post at all - possibly didn't read it. It wasn't difficult to understand if brevity is your bag.

I suppose I was steering the discussion toward: "What does the capacity for violence have to do with statehood?" or some such.

If you don't like that angle, you could steer it somewhere else. I wasn't trying to de-rail your thread. It just seemed pretty vague and I picked up on what's interesting to me.

That's fair. My post was vague. But I did note that. And that's the question (and a couple others as noted in the OP) I was/am fascinated with. As a question. You didn't counter my current possible example, though, in that regard. I said: Agamben seems to me to think the capacity for violence has something to do with political sovereignty. And I said: The United States seemingly has a lot of capacity for violence bound up with its "superpower" status. And I asked for notes on this, basically. Vague? Sure. I apologize, but I did divulge "where I'm at." Your response? Bizarre.

It's perhaps the most well known definition of the state - first given by Max Weber - that it possesses a 'monopoly on violence'. That is, the state possesses the legitimacy to exercise violence - for the sake of warmaking, law enforcement, etc - while depriving other entities (ordinary citizens, gangs, corporations, etc) from such power. This is said to define a state's sovereignty. Thus the violation of sovereignty happens when there exists the capacity for violence which is not state sanctioned. This is why, for example, no foreign police force can act on another country's soil without express permission from the state. Doing otherwise would be a violation of sovereignty. This conception itself has it's grounding in social contract theory like that of Hobbes, Locke, and rousseau, which is a cornerstone of political philosophy in itself.

Agamben's own work aims at refining this notion of sovereignty to deal with the particular form it has taken on in modern times. Following Foucault, sovereignty for Agamben isn't just about a monopoloy on violence so much as it producing certain forms of life. This is referred to as 'biopolitics'. But that's Agamben's own particular project. If you're more interested in the very notion of the political with it's connotations of inclusion and exclusion, maybe check out something like Bonnie Honig's Politics Theory and the Displacement of Politics, or even Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition.

Agamben seems to me to think the capacity for violence has something to do with political sovereignty. And I said: The United States seemingly has a lot of capacity for violence bound up with its "superpower" status. — MrAntigone

The critical issue here seems not about having a capacity for violence but creating collective ownership of that capacity. And the right framework for analysis would be the usual social science one of a social system having to balance the fruitful tensions of competition and cooperation.

So the cornerstone assumption is that a healthy system is one in which local competition flourishes, yet the whole is regulated in long term fashion by institutionalised constraints. People should have as much individual freedom as possible, but be ruled by collectively sensible laws.

A capacity for violence/sovereignty would be judged against that general dynamic. Should individuals at their whim have ownership of violent actions? Well we let people slash away at their gardens mostly as they please. Or blow up the world on their computer games. Or get acceptable rough in the realms of competitive sport or the competitive market place.

But then there is ultimately a need to collectively regulate violence - naked competition - at the cooperative level of being. We have to create rules to govern marketplace or sports field behaviour.

The cooperative top-level of social order used to span just tribes, then races and faiths. Now we have nations and ideologies claiming this level of sovereignty - a top down control over its people, but together with now a competitive attitude, a willingness to use violence, against rival nations or ideological groupings.

So the logic is that as the world become connected at this level, the job is not done. We need something like a United Nations to take ownershIp of the capacity for collectivised violence in the name of all the folk of the planet.

When someone like the US wants to go off an invade some oil fields, impose a little home-spun ideology on the heathen natives, it ought to be licenced by a higher form of sovereignty.

Of course achieving this level of social integration seems a long way off - although the theory of it is completely accepted by many. So having the US as the global military superpower, the self-appointed world cop, is better than every other available alternative.

It is because the US is on the whole is likely to act for the general good that it is safest to put the ownership of international violence largely in its hands. We can see that the self interests of the US align with our general democratic theory of how to run any flourishing society.

So the capacity for violence is really a local competive freedom - potential of individual actors. What should emerge at the global collective scale of social organisation is the capacity for regulation of violence - a state level capacity for setting its acceptable boundaries. Unfortunately that regulatory action itself can be pretty violent - a symptom of weak democracy. And also notions of sovereignty can see a national capacity for violence being directed against competing stakes.

So theory would say a well balanced society was one in which the level of roughness felt generally appropriate. Violence is always going to be part of the equation as competition is basic to the social dynamic. But cooperation is the other half of the story. So that aims to be a force for smoothness, without wanting to tip things over the other way in the direction of stagnation, blind habit and blandness.

but be ruled by collectively sensible laws. — apokrisis

Yes, without the threat of violence - from the rulers or the threats to the rulers. "How would this work?" is my basic question.

usual — apokrisis

It's 2016.

It's 2016. — MrAntigone

Hmm. Why am I getting the impression this is about as good as it is going to get regarding your grasp of the facts? :)

If you're more interested in the very notion of the political with it's connotations of inclusion and exclusion, maybe check out something like Bonnie Honig's Politics Theory and the Displacement of Politics, or even Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition. — StreetlightX

Sort of, and thank you. But moreso in practical responses to problem. My vagueness acknowledged. I thought what I was referring to would be more obvious than it apparently is. Despite vagueness.

Hmm. Why am I getting the impression this is about as good as it is going to get regarding your grasp of the facts? :) — apokrisis

Fair enough. Wrong crowd, I suppose.

But no government has a real monopoly on violence. You can be violent in defense of a child. You can kill to save yourself.

And why not define sovereignty as the power to collect taxes?

Hey, I'm just relaying the theory here. Actually, now that you mention it, I relayed it wrong. It's the monopoly on the legitimate use of force, generally within a bounded geographic area.

Also taxes can be collected by feudal lords as well as local gangsters; they aren't specific to the state as such.

As I understand it, the standard libertarian line on this would be that gangsters or feudal lords just are little states – or conversely, that the state is just a large gang.