A monopoly on the escalation of force.

I see all these stories about police violence and I realize so few people have considered the ontological basis of government.

The reality is this: at the bottom of the stack, a “government” is the group or agency which has a monopoly on the escalation of force in a society.

That is, a “government” is the group of people within a society who can ultimately kill you for failing to obey–for various flavors of “obey.”

In a polite and sophisticated western society, we may put well defined limits on how a government agent (“the police”) can escalate force, and we may wrap a lot of “use of force” arguments in polite language in order to pretend it’s something more civilized–but the reality is, you can be shot dead for jaywalking if you then refuse to cooperate with a police officer who comes to cite you. (We may phrase this as “resisting arrest”–but the reality is, if you refuse to cooperate with the officer, he has the power to escalate force to force your cooperation–and by resisting, you’ve attempted to usurp that monopoly on the escalation of force. And while the ultimate cause of your being shot by the cop trying to give you a ticket may be your pulling a knife out of your pants to fight the officer off, the original cause of the officer killing you was jaywalking.)

That a “government is the group who has a monopoly on the escalation of force”–and that police officers are the agents commonly employed by government and granted that monopoly to enforce the laws of government–these get lost in the discussions.

But they’re deeply important.

Because they have some ramifications.

First, it means that any interaction you have with the police where you fail to cooperate may result in your death. How quickly this happens depends on where you are in the world; in some less civilized societies cops may resort to the gun or the baton a bit quicker than they do in the United States.

Second, it does not imply that escalation of force will be “fair,” only that a government has a monopoly on that escalation of force.

Third, it implies that when we ask for more laws–when we demand that the government “do something” about something we think is unfair–what we’re really saying is “if those people don’t stop whatever it is they’re doing, I want a cop to go down and potentially blow their brains all over the wall.”

Now as a society sometimes we need this. Even in Nozick’s “minimal state” discussed in “Anarchy, State and Utopia”, there are police officers as security guards who help protect the people against violent anarchy. After all, if there is no government, eventually someone will step forward and claim the power to escalate force against others.

That is, in a pure anarchy, eventually some group will step forward and make itself into a crude government, by our definition above.

Because, at some level, “criminals” are criminals because they want to ultimately violate the monopoly on the escalation of force in some small way, either to avoid being caught, or to impose their own force on others to cause others to bend to that criminal’s will.

And, to be honest, there are certain times where–as a society–we may want to escalate force (and ultimately kill) those who may thwart certain rights of ours: our right to keep what we own, our right to live in peace unmolested by others, our right not to be physically or sexually assaulted. Our right, in other words, to be left alone to live our lives as we may wish, so long as that life does not involve escalating violence against others.

But it does imply that those who constantly want us to pass new laws to control society or to shape society to their desires are essentially promoting the use of violence in order to get their way. They are proposing, in other words, that we may ultimately have to kill those who do not fit the shape of society they wish for.

Think that’s an exaggeration? Simply look back at the entire history of race relations in the United States going back to the 1850’s. Often on one side you have “polite society” and government leadership who have a vision of what that “polite society” is supposed to look like.

On the other side, you have Blacks, American Indians, Latinos, and in earlier times, Irish and Chinese people–none of whom fit into this vision of what a “polite society” was supposed to be.

And back then, “polite society” had a monopoly on the escalation of violent force to enact their vision–a vision that did not include the other side within eyesight of that polite society.

---

The problem, at the bottom of the stack, is that government and escalating violent force against a citizenship are intractably linked.

And any time you think “there ought to be a law”, you’re really saying “shoot those assholes who refuse to obey.”

It implies politicians who want to defund or do away with the police are calling for a sort of governmental suicide: they want to pretend that the government they work within is not somehow sustained and supported by police officers who have the right to blow a random citizen’s brains out against the wall.

And it implies those protesters who are demanding to defund or disband the police may consciously or unconsciously be aware of the fact that they are really calling to disband government.

And, at some level, become a defacto government themselves.

Think that’s an exaggeration? Simply look at the CHAZ–the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, a “self-declared autonomous zone” in Seattle. Within the CHAZ, a certain group of people ultimately wound up with what they perceived as a “monopoly on the escalation of force”–that is, they became a defacto government within the CHAZ.

Then failed to provide the services we minimally expect as a society from a government–despite the fact that there is nothing in the definition of the “escalation of force” that makes this a requirement.

---

The sooner we as a society realize that governments are, by definition, the group who has a monopoly on the escalation of force in a society, but realize also that sometimes governments are a necessary evil (because sometimes you have to escalate force to, for example, stop a rapist and prevent that rapist from doing future harm), the sooner we can have a rational discussion of the role of governmet and the role of the police in a polite society.

But until we do that–we’ll forever have local law makers who don’t understand their part in the play, cowtowing to a mob who has no idea what they’re doing, gutting the trust a government can create amongst a population who sometimes needs a police officer to come out and help resolve a dispute.

The Problem of Philosophy and Politics

Another grand philosophical mistake I think we’ve made–and this one goes back to Plato.

And that is we’ve defined “politics”–the root word behind all philosophies from Plato to the modernists and the post-modernists and the political thinkers of the 20th and 21st century–as “that which bodies of people do when they get together to hash out a thing.”

That is, “politics” is often defined as either the process of hashing things out or by the goods which we gain from that process of hashing things out.

---

It’s why, for example, one of the major critiques of the modern era is that not enough of us are politically involved. That modern society has “deadened” us from our intrinsic “political roots” of the “public square” by giving us television and comfortable chairs and the Internet and good foods and places to play and affordable beer.

Some philosophers and political thinkers even believe that this is why capitalism–which has been quite effective at giving us the things we seem to want–should be destroyed: because a comfortable people are a people not engaged in “politics”, which they take to be our birthright.

In other words, dear reader, by reading this instead of going out and screaming at people around you for being shitheads, you are trapped in a horrible numbing world, not living your life to it’s fullest potential.

---

But what if the problem is our very definition of “politics”?

And what if the problem is that we’ve taken the hammer (politics) as the goal, rather than looking at the problem that the hammer was invented to solve?

---

If you look back at history–and I mean look all the way back to the formation of societies from tribal bands–you see that the “political structure” of a tribal band consisted of an ‘elder’ or ‘strong man,’ providing ‘leadership’ to a familial group or ‘tribe’–and his primary role was settling disputes.

That was the essential “political” structure of many Native American tribal bands. That is, you had an “elder” who was often selected as someone who was respected for being “wise” but who also had the ability to knock some heads together. And the primary function that elder served was to settle arguments and disputes between people.

Look at the Code of Hammurabi. It’s primary function was to extend this idea to a larger group by giving “judges”–the descendants of these tribal elders or chieftains–a common set of rules from which to operate, in order to provide a common set of resolutions to common arguments and disputes.

And *why* did ancient man do all of this?

In order to keep the peace.

And why is peace so important?

Because without peace and a common framework for interaction, without someone who can help settle disputes, it’s impossible to TRUST your neighbor.

See, even in the earliest tribes, the ‘elder’ was selected because he was TRUSTED by the majority of people in that tribe to settle disputes relatively fairly.

And the Code of Hammurabi extended this by providing a common set of rules, so the people could TRUST that their disputes would be settled in a consistent fashion.

---

This gives us a hint as to the original purpose of politics as practiced in the time of Plato.

People didn’t just get together and practice politics because the practice of politics makes you a fulfilled human being. (As stupid as that sounds, that is actually at the core of a lot of modern and post-modern philosophy. And it’s at the core of the argument against capitalism: being comfortable means you don’t practice politics, and if you don’t practice politics you’re not a fulfilled human being.)

People got together to “practice politics” in order to help shape the systems which assured TRUST in those groups. In order to assure that disputes were resolved in ways which were acceptable to those groups of people.

That is, politics–the hammer–is not the goal. The goal is the house: the smooth interaction of people who can trust their neighbors. Because they trust that, at some level, if their neighbor is shitty to them, there is a means by which they can resolve that dispute without having to resort to murdering their neighbor and burning their neighbor’s house to the ground.

Which, by the way, is not an exaggeration. A lot of medieval homes were constructed in order to prevent neighbors from trying to murder you in your sleep and burning your house to the ground.

---

There are benefits to Trust.

Modern economic systems cannot operate without Trust. I won’t work for you if I can’t trust that you’ll pay my paycheck in a timely fashion. I won’t want to buy milk from you if I can’t trust that when I get home I discover the milk was rotten or was replaced with white paint suspended in water. I won’t want to order a phone from you over the Internet if I can’t trust you won’t send me a brick in an iPhone box.

And modern systems of interaction cannot operate without Trust. I won’t want to go on vacation somewhere if I can’t trust that my home won’t be burned to the ground by marauding gangs of thieves, nor will I want to travel if I can’t trust that I won’t be accosted by highway bandits.

Our entire system of civilization cannot operate without Trust.

---

And if this is the goal: if Politics is not an ends to itself, but a means to the end of generating and assuring Trust, then this has some very profound consequences on all of modern political philosophy.

It actually negates a lot of modern political philosophy.

It gives us a better means to evaluate why democracies tend to work better–but sometimes fall apart: because democracies grant greater numbers of people input as to the values they need established to maximize Trust between people.

It gives us a better reason to evaluate why societies can fail: because Trust becomes a neglected element in the political apparatus of governments. And when a government does everything but generate Trust, eventually people seek to create the stability that Trust would otherwise provide at the end of a gun.

It gives us a better reason why we see totalitarianism: it’s not because enlightenment rationality neglects segments of the population by trying to provide the One True Answer to Life–but because people, seeing perceived failures around them, turn to authoritarianism in a hope that a strong man can re-establish the Trust they think is lacking.

And a strong man cannot provide Trust beyond that of a tribal group.

See, it even answers the question why Rousseau was a fraud: because the natural state of man is one that lacks trust. And once you strip away modernity, you are left with a life that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

But it also answers why Hobbes (in “The Leviathan”) was also a fraud: because an overly powerful nation-state cannot in and of itself generate Trust, unless Trust is an explicit goal of that nation-state. And without Trust, that nation-state cannot remain stable for long, as people seek alternate ways to build the Trust they need to live their lives in relative peace.

---

It even explains why the perceived “breads and circuses” of today’s modern capitalism is a feature and not a bug: because modern capitalism cannot exist without Trust.

But with Trust, people can live their lives and plan for the future. With Trust, people can buy property and take out 30 year loans. With Trust, people can spend years or even decades of their lives building companies which provide goods and services to their fellow man.

The bourgeoise values which lead to people caring more for the welfare of the customers they serve than for their skin color or religious beliefs can only arise when they trust their customers, and their customers trust them.

And only with Trust can we then extend ourselves to look at those beyond us as worthy of help: because we now have the excess social and economic goods to turn to those around us and to the world around us, and, secure on a firm foundation, look to try to improve that which is around us.

---

In other words, modern philosophy, by putting its sights on the tool of politics which is used to generate trust, they’ve completely neglected the *why* we have politics.

They’ve mistaken the hammer for the house it can build.

And down that rabbit hole was two thousand five hundred years of horrors, wars, and barbarism–including the mechanized and sophisticated horrors and mass death that post-modernism is providing us.

---

Worse: post-modernism seems hell-bent on deconstructing the Trust of the past two thousand five hundred years that we accidentally accumulated.

And that will have some very deep and very bad consequences.