Name: Economy and Society
ISBN: 9780674240827

paganelFeb 2020

> He who has the guns and the men to use them makes the rules.

The good old monopoly of violence. Too bad Max Weber is not in the public discussion as much as he should be, he “guessed” a lot of things too damned right in his “Economy and Society”, imho it is the defining book of our modern society, with Marx’s “Capital” a close second.

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dredmorbiusSep 2023

You're misquoting Max Weber's definition of government.

The state's monopoly, qua Max Weber, is on the claim to the legitimate use of violence. That is, the right and legitimacy of that right, is restricted to the state, or an entity acting in the effective capacity of a state, whatever it happens to call itself.

Absent this, one of three conditions exist:

1. There is no monopoly. In which case violence is widespread, and there is no state.

2. There is no legitimacy. In which case violence is capricious.

3. Some non-state power or agent assumes the monopoly on legitimate violence. In which case it becomes, by definition The State.

The state's claim is to legitimacy. A capricious exercise would be an abrogation of legitimacy

Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California Press. p. 54.

<https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mod...>

There's an excellent explanation of the common misunderstanding in this episode of the Talking Politics podcast: <https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/weberonleadership>

The misleading and abbreviated form that's frequently found online seems to have originated with Rothbard in the 1960s, and was further popularised by Nozick in the 1970s. It's now falsely accepted as a truth when in fact it is a gross misrepresentation and obscures the core principles Weber advanced.

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dredmorbiusJun 2023

The state's monopoly, qua Max Weber, is on the claim to the legitimate use of violence. That is, the right and legitimacy of that right, is restricted to the state, or an entity acting in the effective capacity of a state, whatever it happens to call itself.

Absent this, one of three conditions exist:

1. There is no monopoly. In which case violence is widespread, and there is no state.

2. There is no legitimacy. In which case violence is capricious.

3. Some non-state power or agent assumes the monopoly on legitimate violence. In which case it becomes, by definition The State.

The state's claim is to legitimacy. A capricious exercise would be an abrogation of legitimacy

Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California Press. p. 54.

<https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mod...>

There's an excellent explanation of the common misunderstanding in this episode of the Talking Politics podcast: <https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/weberonleadership>

The misleading and abbreviated form that's frequently found online seems to have originated with Rothbard in the 1960s, and was further popularised by Nozick in the 1970s. It's now falsely accepted as a truth when in fact it is a gross misrepresentation and obscures the core principles Weber advanced.

In your comment, what you confuse is capacity for violence (inherent in all actors, state, individual, corporate, or non-governmental institutional, with numerous extant examples of each) with the Weberian definition of a monopoly on the legitimate claim to violence. In practice, enacting violence on virtually any actor will engender some counterveiling response, though the effectiveness will vary greatly depending on the comparative power and/or disinhibition of the entity responding.

There are numerous examples of private corporations or non-governmental actors engaging in violence, with or without state support or sanction. There are the 100 million souls lost, respectively, to the British East India Company's occupation and administration (as a private entity, with military powers) of India, of the transatlantic slave trade by numerous private commercial operators, and of the genocide against the indigenous populations of the Americas, again much by privately-chartered corporations (as the original British colonies were). There are extant mercenary forces such as Constellis (formerly Academi, formerly Xe, formerly Blackwater) in the US, or the Wagner Group presently transacting genocide in Ukraine. There are oil companies who have initiated coups, paramilitary actions, and assassinations throughout the world. There is the Pinkerton Agency, still extant, and with a storied role in violence against labour and civil rights movements. There are railroads, with their own (private) police forces, which are in fact registered as law enforcement despite being nongovernmental.

The truth is that there is no clean distinction between State and Private use of force, lethal or otherwise. What there is in government is, one hopes, legitimacy and accountability to the citizenry rather than to creditors and investors.

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dredmorbiusJun 2023

Again, you are excluding the critical phrase legitimate claim, which is at the heart of Weber's definition. That is, the right and legitimacy of that right, is restricted to the state, or an entity acting in the effective capacity of a state, whatever it happens to call itself.

Absent this, one of three conditions exist:

1. There is no monopoly. In which case violence is widespread, and there is no state.

2. There is no legitimacy. In which case violence is capricious.

3. Some non-state power or agent assumes the monopoly on legitimate violence. In which case it becomes, by definition The State.

You might want to consider what a "state" which lacks a monopoly on the legitimate claim to the monopoly on force would look like. To what other entity would it cede that legitimate claim, and/or how would it prevent other entities from enacting capricious violence, as has occurred from time to time in the world, and even now.

The state's claim is to legitimacy. A capricious exercise would be an abrogation of legitimacy

Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California Press. p. 54.

<https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mod...>

The "monopoly on violence" or "monopoly on force" short-hands are a much more recent emergence, and seem to originate with Murray Rothbard (1960s) and Robert Nozick (1970s), though widespread usage of that phrase really only begins to take off after 1980, per Google's Ngram Viewer: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=monopoly+on+vi...>

That shorthand has become quite popular, and is often cited by Libertarians as key to their adopting that particular ideology.[1] As expressed by them the formulation is both incorrect and misleading.

________________________________

Notes:

1. E.g., Penn Jillette, <https://www.newsweek.com/penn-jillette-how-became-libertaria...> and Charles Koch <https://www.newsweek.com/penn-jillette-how-became-libertaria...>.

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dredmorbiusMar 2023

People are hardly restricted to governments to enact this sort of harm.

Power seeks power, and power exerts power. It does so through markets, through criminal organisations, through militaries (nationally-affiliated, mercenary, or any of a continuum of hybrid forms), and more.

Liberal democratic governments are at least in name and theory accountable to the governed, and even many less democratic forms still reflect the collective will of diverse groups within their societies.

The Max Weber dictum that's so often misquoted and mis-construed doesn't hold that government has a monopoly on force, but that it has the monopoly to the legitimate claim on same.

Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California Press. p. 54.

<https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mod...>

Yes, limit government, and ensure that it is lawful and legitimate (as opposed to capricious and corrupt). But don't eliminate it, as then all that remains is violence used without legitimacy or restraint.

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dredmorbiusOct 2022

The state's monopoly, qua Max Weber, is on the claim to the legitimate use of violence. That is, the right and legitimacy of that right, is restricted to the state, or an entity acting in the effective capacity of a state, whatever it happens to call itself.

Absent this, one of three conditions exist;

1. There is no monopoly. In which case violence is widespread, and there is no state.

2. There is no legitimacy. In which case violence is capricious. This is your condition of tyranny (unaccountable power).

3. Some non-state power or agent assumes the monopoly on legitimate violence. In which case it becomes, by definition The State.

The state's claim is to legitimacy. A capricious exercise would be an abrogation of legitimacy

Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California Press. p. 54.

<https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mod...>

There's an excellent explanation of the common misunderstanding in this episode of the Talking Politics podcast: <https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/weberonleadership>

The misleading and abbreviated form that's frequently found online seems to have originated with Rothbard in the 1960s, and was further popularised by Nozick in the 1970s. It's now falsely accepted as a truth when in fact it is a gross misrepresentation and obscures the core principles Weber advanced.

In your comment, what you confuse is capacity for violence (inherent in all actors, state, individual, corporate, or non-governmental institutional, with numerous extant examples of each) with the Weberian definition of a monopoly on the legitimate claim to violence. In practice, enacting violence on virtually any actor will engender some counterveiling response, though the effectiveness will vary greatly depending on the comparative power and/or disinhibition of the entity responding.

thread