State and Mafia
What is the difference between states and organized crime organizations? American sociologist Charles Tilly (here), in his famous essay War Making and State Making as Organized Crime argues, “If protection rackets represent organized crime at its smoothest, then war making and state making-quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy-qualify as our largest examples of organized crime.”
In order to support this powerful statement Tilly gives an account of the development of the European modern state to demonstrate how, at their origins, there is nothing substantially different between the State and Organized Crime. “Early in the state-making process, many parties shared the right to use violence”, slowly however, certain Princes (Organized Crime bosses) prevailed. It is however false to believe that the elimination of local rivals led to an undisturbed domination of the winners, beyond the territory of medieval European city-states, power alone was not sufficient to rule. Thus in order to assure a stable control over a particular territory the ruler needed to make a pact with the population. In other words his power needed to be legitimate, not in some universalistic understanding of the word, but to the extent it reflected the normative expectations of the population of the given territory.
Thus the difference between the organized crime group and the state is in the level they manage to represent these normative expectations. This is what, in the long run, distinguished the violence produced by states from the violence delivered by anyone else.
Apart from contributing to the theoretical understanding of the concepts of the state and organized crime this debate could serve as a heavy critique of the neo-liberal right wing political attempts to promote, what they consider to be the only legitimate function of the state-that is physical protection. Tilly sees no essential difference between the monopoly of protection and the monopoly of coercion. In the sense of this critique the neo-liberal minimal state ideal is no different than the organized crime group.
Suggested reading:
-Niklas Luhmann, Law as a Social System, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004. (For the definition of law as a stabilizer of normative expectations within a society)
-Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime”, in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Theda Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back in, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985.
- Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Basic Books, New York, 1974.
Saturday, January 08, 2005
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I wish to thank Dynode for his inspiring comment. I am not sure that I really manage to reply to his peace, probably I do not. But let me say something more about the arch-libertarian, for many but not for me, Robert Nozick.
I must say that I am personally still not convinced of whether side, if any of the two, has it right, right-wing, property oriented, ultra-libertarians, or the left-wing concerned state-interventionists. “Trade is a social act” but also “State is a social product”.
I have started my PhD passionately convinced that Nozick has it right, that the minimal state is the right answer, but that was the provocative-me (not the intellectually honest-Me), then the moderate-Me or as others would say the academically mature-me (I am still doubting that I really did or that I ever will mature in this or any sense) learned how to read Nozick in a different light...at this point I will spare you of my own interpretations...look at what Nozick says in his later work.
He describes his work in “Anarchy, State and Utopia” as work of a “young man” and argues,
"Other people in conversation often want me to continue to maintain that young man’s “libertarian” position, even though they themselves reject it and probably would prefer that no one had ever maintained it at all…Once having pigeonholed people and figured out what they are saying, we do not welcome new information that would require us to re-understand and reclassify them"(In Robert Nozick, The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations, Touchstone, New York, 1990, p. 17).
In this way Nozick opens a way to possibly reconsider some rigid assertions in his original work.Nozick cannot escape from the observation that property is not an independent value in his normative system but merely an instrument to further individual’s instinct of self-preservation, which we find in his account on inheritance. Moreover, his account on bequeathing restates the balance between freedom and equality Nozick tackles in his critique of Rawls, contained in his original work. Nozick, argues that the purpose of bequeathing is an expression of emotional link between two persons, as well as it could mark in his view an extension of someone’s identity. Still, often the institution of inheritance outgrows its two aforementioned original purposes and passes material wealth down to generations of anonymous people. Neither, it could be argued that it is an expression of the emotional link between two people, nor that the identity of the original earner is efficiently preserved since his identity would be known only to the devoted fan of genealogy. As Nozick argues, in such a way, the original purpose of this social instrument is perverted as to produce continuing inequalities of wealth and position.” Nozick suggests a comprehensive system of bequeathing that would make this institution correspond to its original purpose, creating limits to the absolute supremacy of private property. Nozick does not develop the application of this revised institute of inheritance to the realm of the state and its enforcement apparatus but it challenges the supreme normative worth of the institute of property. Would this mean an institution of the comprehensive redistribution mechanism like that of Rawls? Not necessarily. However, one is to take this reflection on his previous work as the possible hint to refine Nozick’s political philosophy. In this way one can distinguish between valuable elements of his theory and pure libertarian political ideology. In my thesis at least, I try to do that.
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