What Is the State? The State’s Birth in the Age of Ultra-Violence and Its Eventual Death

I usually talk about fringe topics on this channel, things you might not have heard about. However, today I want to address a topic, a concept that is crucial for understanding politics, law and society: The state. Please bear with me: This is not another college class type video, where some politics mayor is rephrasing a political science textbook he has memorized for class in college. We will talk about the idea and concept of the state, its birth in the age of ultra-violence and its eventual death.

I. When There was no State

The state is the greatest creation of mankind, originating in Europe. Europe, like the rest of the world, was organized as a feudal system during the medieval period. The downfall of European feudalism gave birth to the modern state. What is feudalism? In short, it’s a system totally foreign to our modern understanding, where there was no separation between private and public space, no clearly defined rule or power but a system of individual relationships, that determined life, duties and responsibilities of every single denizen.

These relationships varied greatly between any member of medieval society, there was almost no common denominator. Two peasants within the same village could live a totally different life, one could be a freeman, owning his own land, only responsible to the king far away, another could be a serf to a local lord, working on the lord’s fields. Switching perspectives, the village priest was situated in an entirely different relationship, with the local bishop being his superior. There was no central administration or central oversight, or a central court; depending on the circumstances, various authorities might be petitioned in case of disputes, ranging from an assembly of locals, the thing, to the king’s court or the church.

Also, borders weren’t a thing: Nowadays, when you cross a border, everything changes: suddenly, a whole new set of laws applies, you switch from being a citizen to foreigner, your money becomes somewhat useless and your college degree may not be recognized anymore. Of course, the whole of Europe was partitioned into lots owned by different nobles and others, but these possessions were understood and treated the same way we treat private possessions today. Crossing from the King of France’s domain into Spain via Andorra, the oldest set of European borders established in 1278, did not feel much different then going from your lot into your neighbor’s.

This system worked quite well for a 1,000 years. Then, something changed and an age of ultra-violence ensued.

II. The Age of Ultra-Violence

In 1572, King Charles IX. of France invited the leaders of the Huguenots, a powerful and influential Protestant group in the Kingdom of France, to Paris. The reason for the invitation was the marriage of Henry of Navarre, the future King Henry IV of France, and the incumbent King’s daughter in Paris. There had been brutal wars between the Catholic Kings of France and the Huguenots, thus, since Henry of Navarre was a Protestant himself, the invitation to the wedding was understood as a peace offer.

However, things turned sour during the wedding and the King became afraid that the Huguenots were preparing an attack. In the night of 23th to 24th of August 1572, the eve of the feast of Bartholomew the Apostle, the King of France ordered his retainers to kill the leaders of the Huguenots, leading to a massacre where the Parisian mob killed much of the Huguenots who had come to the celebration. The massacre had dire consequences for the young King Charles IX who had ordered it, more on that later.

The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre was far from being unique; Sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants was common and culminated in the 30 years war, the first total war in a modern sense, mostly fought on German soil. When the war ended in 1648, some areas in Germany had lost most of their population to starvation and marauding soldiers.

The religious division in Europe was caused by the so called reformation: In the early years of the 16th century, some rouge clerics left the Catholic church and started own churches, which found support with local lords and lead to various sects, together known as Protestantism, which the Catholic church, with support of most of the European nobility, fought against.

At least that is what most history textbooks will tell you. Truth be told, during the medieval period, various sects challenged the Catholic church, often supported by local lords who sought to undermine their king’s power. All these groups were crushed in bloody wars, the most noteworthy being the crusade against the Cathars in the 13th century. The Cathars were a sect that believed in starving to death to become pure, like … let’s say … vegans. They found wide support with local nobles, who stood up in rebellion against the King of France.

The true reason for the downfall of feudal Europe were massive societal and economic challenges that teared apart the fabric of European society. To understand these challenges, we have to look at the general idea of feudalism: Individuals were seeking protection by those who are strong and powerful, those demanding obedience in return. This obedience meant paying tithes and otherwise supporting their master, who would use these resources to defend his serfs. However, after the heyday of medieval Europe in the 13th century – remember, the same century when the Cathars were struck down – the various lords and masters became unable to provide protection: The onset of the so-called small ice age, when temperatures dropped across Europe, lead to less food for a growing population. Moreover, the black death raging through Europe killed many farmhands, leading to another agricultural decline.

Despite plague and starvation, the overall population growth in Europe lead to the founding and growth of cities, where many serfs went to, abandoning their lords for a better life. These cities grew in power and quickly rivaled the established nobles, in some cases being able to hire mercenaries to defend and further their interests. Indeed, the feudal war was characterized by few knights fighting, being highly professional killing machines with extremely expensive equipment, supported by their retainers. War was a good business for knights, looting enemies and gratifications by their kings supplemented their income. With the increased use of crossbows and latter firearms, a bunch of simple peasants with little training could easily kill a knight from afar. Imagine training your whole life for combat, riding into battle on the back of a magnificent warhorse, just to be killed by a few untrained dudes. Wars were not fought by knights anymore. Kings, higher lords and wealthy cities hired mercenaries instead.

I know that I have talked a lot by now, let’s cut to the chase: Many small lords and knights, deprived of their subjects’ tithes and the spoils of war, as their kings hired cheaper mercenaries instead, were not able to afford protecting their subjects anymore; even worse, they themselves became robber knights to stay afloat, robbing merchants passing through and peasants of their rivals’ villages alike. While the population was suffering and gangs of unemployed mercenaries and other criminal scum were roaming the unprotected countryside, the reformation caused further wars, bloodshed and chaos. Indeed, to those living in these times, hell had come to earth, the age of ultra-violence.

Obviously, the European kings and high lords had to do something about this, or else their realms would have dissolved in chaos. They came up with an ingenious solution, the idea of the state, embodied by the absolutist rule of the monarch, the king himself. The European kings took matters into their own hands, instead of relying on increasingly unreliable retainers, the aforementioned feudal knights. They started to build their own local administration, supported by an always available army build of mercenaries and hired soldiers. Obviously, neither wealthy cities nor local retainers wanted to pay taxes for this and forgo their privileges, but the kings forced them to do so – citing the supremacy of the monarch as justification, an idea that they deducted from ancient Roman Law, namely the unlimited power of the Roman emperor. Using the brute force of their newly recruited armies, despite the resistance of the various feudal lords, the kings were able to bring peace into their realms.

This left the issue of religion. Those kings dealt with this issue like they had solved the lawlessness: with brute force, like the aforementioned St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Every king determined the Christian creed his realm should adhere to, and would either expel those that followed other creeds or, later on, would tolerate some. Remember, that the reformation had caused chaos, with religious rifts going through families, villages and regions, leading to family members fighting family members, neighbors fighting neighbors. The absolutist polices brought religious unity once again, albeit at a high price.

Suddenly, people who where used to live in a highly complicated system of individual bounds and relationships, saw themselves face-to-face with a centralized administration, headed by an absolutist monarch, the king, who decided on all matters. This system was defined by the areas a monarch possessed, creating the idea and need for borders, to demarcate rule and dominion. Lines appeared on the map, the idea of country and nation was born. Instead of individual lords working as more or less equals, suddenly rule was a team-effort by trained yet replaceable professional officials, many thousands spread across the country, lead by the single will of the monarch. The public administration was born. No more discussions on religion and feudal rights, just clear-cut decisions and guaranteed enforcement.

People looked in the eyes of a giant, to whom many compared the state to, a giant made of humans, with the king as literal “head of state”. The state cut through all individual relationships, and over time two distinct spheres emerged, the public space, encompassing all matters that the state decided on, and the private space, where there was no state but private relationships and each subject could make own decisions.

This distinction is of great importance, since it allowed the state to be neutral, that is, banning certain topics to the private space, to the individual’s discretion. This allowed individuals of different convictions to coexists, since personal convictions did not mingle with public affairs. To each their own. This was not only beneficial to the subjects but also to the state itself, which could avoid being drawn into the various conflicts raging between private groups, restricting itself to just ensuring law and order. People of different convictions might hate each other, but the state prevented them from killing each other. King Charles IX would have been saved if he had stuck to this rule. That being said, let’s have a look at the final chapter of this video, the Death of the state.

III. The Death of the State

We have seen that the state was understood as mortal machine, created by men, and as such, the state can die. I am not talking about individual states that succumb to revolution, because in these cases one state supplants another, often the very same bureaucracy that served the overturned state serves its successor; most revolutions are just a brutal change of leadership.

Much more interesting is the question, whether the idea of the state will die, leading to a political system of rule that is fundamentally different from what we know today. This question is especially interesting since the world has been entirely divided into nations, that is, states. Sure, some nation-states are less state-like than others, but there is no system that is not a state.

Let’s recapitulate the defining characteristics of the state: The state is rule confined to the public sphere, while private issues remain private. There are relationships with the state, like voting or dealing with the public administration, and private relationships, like religion or employment. Nonetheless, the state yields uncontested power and is able to solve any public or private dispute that might arise under its rule.

The idea of the state is dead, if rule in a society is lacking either these characteristics, that is lacking the distinction between public and private space or uncontested rule that ensures peace. Please stay with me on this, because you will be surprised which kind of political system is actually lacking. You are probably living in such a nation.

But first, nations which are lacking centralized rule, in example are torn by civil war, usually have not given up on the idea of the state but are split into small territories governed by different rulers. Even Somalia, the usual example for a failed state – note that we are still talking about  a state – consists of a host of various factions that rule over their respective areas. In these areas, the local war lords or governments exert uncontested rule as in any state, with a distinction between public and private space. Some of these Somali breakaway nation-states are quite successful, like Somaliland, a peaceful and democratic nation in the north of Somalia.

Indeed, the systems that moved away from the idea of the state are totalitarian nations. This is somewhat counterintuitive, because the very idea of totalitarian rule is entwined with the idea of the state. Remember, feudalism was defined by the rule of numerous small lords and chaotic individual relationships, something the new-born states under their absolutists rulers ended in favor of clear-cut decisions. However, these feudal bonds were an important protection against the abuse of power; they prevented any individual lord from wielding too much power, because any of them was dependent on the support of his retainers and equals. Thus, if a lord went rouge and violated his subjects or did something else inappropriate, his equals would just get rid of him and he would lack the means to defend himself, since his retainers would deny their support.

However, with the birth of the state, suddenly a single ruler had almost unlimited power over a nation, thus massively increasing the risk of abuse. Stay with me on this, this might be the most important part of the video: The reason why this power was not massively abused was the separation of private and public spheres: Given the limited interaction between private individuals and the state, officials had little opportunity to abuse their power.

The idea of the state, that is of the powerful, uncontested decision, gave birth to totalitarianism: Why not use these unlimited powers to archive some higher goal, be it a better society or the worker’s paradise? Or just abuse them for personal greed while doing away with any opposition and obstacles? Totalitarianism removes the distinction between public and private space, suddenly everything becomes of public interest. This has two major consequences: First, the state making brutal and unhinged decisions in the most private spaces, violating its subjects. Second, the state becoming responsible for everything.

Please bear with me on this, a last time, because this is of utmost importance: The state becomes responsible for any topic it pics up, thus removing it from the private space. If the state decides to run public education, the citizen will hold it responsible for any abuse that might occur there. If the state takes over the food or energy supply, it becomes responsible for any shortage that might occur. A state that has to many responsibilities must fail somewhere, creating unnecessary tension that will inevitable lead to civil war and revolution. The absolutist rulers that gave rise to the idea of the state did not create the private space because they were saints that respected their subjects’ rights and freedoms  , but because they wanted to avoid to be drawn into conflicts they had little stakes in but much to loose, especially concerning religion. Indeed, tolerating different Christian creeds and banning the issue to the private sphere was way more beneficial than trying to go back to a single national creed again. Remember the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre? After the massacre, King Charles IX, who had ordered it, believed that the ghosts of the murdered were haunting him and lost his sanity, dying at age 23. Violence is always a two-way street.

Since World War I, we have seen a host of states that come close to such a system: Namely, the various Socialist countries around the world, including fascist movements. Last but not least, the growth of the welfare state is also threatening the private sphere in western liberal democracies, with bureaucrats making decisions that massively impact the lives of their citizens. The extreme measures surrounding the latest hysteria – we all know what I am talking about – have shrunk the private space even more.

Thus, to conclude this thought and this video: The idea of the state will die when rule has become all-encompassing, totalitarian, when every aspect of the subjects’ life is subject to the ruler’s whim. In this case, the state itself is torn apart, the great machine crumbling, and we might see the rise of a new feudalism out of the ashes or something entirely new.