I stumbled upon this interesting interview with Yale Professor James C. Scott who teaches political science and anthropology.
Here is an interesting piece... (bold highlights mine)
``The state, or centralized political organization, has been with us for the last 4000 years. Even when this state was not all-pervasive or all-powerful everywhere, it was always there. So even if certain spaces or people were ‘outside’ the state—in the so-called state of nature—they always coexisted with the state and interacted with it dialectically. So saying that there are people living inside and with the state, and others outside and without it, and that supposedly they will behave completely different, is a difficult hypothetical.
``I have, for instance, the idea that life was not ‘brutish, nasty and short’ outside of the state as Hobbes argued, partly because the population levels were so low that the way of dealing with conflict was simply moving out of the way. A lot of the things people struggled and died over, were essentially commodities. So if by the state of nature we mean people living outside the state in a world in which states already exist so they are at the periphery of states, then this is a completely different thing.
``We know, for instance, that pastoralism is in fact always organized in order to trade with agrarian states; it is not some previous form of subsistence that is superseded by agriculture. Another example: in the 9th century the people in Borneo were considered to be very backward and they were a typical example of a hunting and gathering society. What were they gathering? Certain kinds of feathers and resins and the gall bladders of monkeys, all stuff hugely valuable in China at the time! So they were gathering these things for international trade with an already existing state; their hunting and gathering is a hunting and gathering performed in the shadow of states. So which ‘state of nature’ are we referring to? When Rousseau speaks of the savages he has met, he sees people that strategically respond to representatives of an organized state, pursuing their interests and behaving politically. So the concept, perhaps, hides more than it reveals."
read the rest of the interview here
my comment:
Professor Scott, who ironically is a "'Marxist' inclined towards anarchism by convictions", suggests that people operate in the same manner in and out of the state, aside from the groups at the periphery ("living outside the state") interacting with the state.
In other words, people instinctively operate on the basis of trade under a spontaneous political order, similar to what we pointed out in our earlier post, Are People Inherently Nihilistic.
Again, arguments that assert that people are endemically atavistic and self destructive beings that require government is simply not proven by facts.
Here is an interesting piece... (bold highlights mine)
``The state, or centralized political organization, has been with us for the last 4000 years. Even when this state was not all-pervasive or all-powerful everywhere, it was always there. So even if certain spaces or people were ‘outside’ the state—in the so-called state of nature—they always coexisted with the state and interacted with it dialectically. So saying that there are people living inside and with the state, and others outside and without it, and that supposedly they will behave completely different, is a difficult hypothetical.
``I have, for instance, the idea that life was not ‘brutish, nasty and short’ outside of the state as Hobbes argued, partly because the population levels were so low that the way of dealing with conflict was simply moving out of the way. A lot of the things people struggled and died over, were essentially commodities. So if by the state of nature we mean people living outside the state in a world in which states already exist so they are at the periphery of states, then this is a completely different thing.
``We know, for instance, that pastoralism is in fact always organized in order to trade with agrarian states; it is not some previous form of subsistence that is superseded by agriculture. Another example: in the 9th century the people in Borneo were considered to be very backward and they were a typical example of a hunting and gathering society. What were they gathering? Certain kinds of feathers and resins and the gall bladders of monkeys, all stuff hugely valuable in China at the time! So they were gathering these things for international trade with an already existing state; their hunting and gathering is a hunting and gathering performed in the shadow of states. So which ‘state of nature’ are we referring to? When Rousseau speaks of the savages he has met, he sees people that strategically respond to representatives of an organized state, pursuing their interests and behaving politically. So the concept, perhaps, hides more than it reveals."
read the rest of the interview here
my comment:
Professor Scott, who ironically is a "'Marxist' inclined towards anarchism by convictions", suggests that people operate in the same manner in and out of the state, aside from the groups at the periphery ("living outside the state") interacting with the state.
In other words, people instinctively operate on the basis of trade under a spontaneous political order, similar to what we pointed out in our earlier post, Are People Inherently Nihilistic.
Again, arguments that assert that people are endemically atavistic and self destructive beings that require government is simply not proven by facts.
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