In discussions about the state, sooner or later the conversation turns to its origins. This is understandable: if the state arose naturally, as a result of people’s voluntary practices, then in the debate about its prospects, the position “patch it up, tinker with it, and it’ll do” gains considerably more weight.
It is significant that in these disputes no one discusses the origins of the state’s “social functions” or, say, “industrial policy.” No, the conversation always turns to the monopoly on violence, as the main hallmark that distinguishes an organization as a state and not something else. In economics, the theory that explains how the state “arose on its own” and received its monopoly from the hands of future citizens is institutionalism. Institutionalists, following Hobbes, believe that the natural state of humanity is war of all against all, and that only the state can end this war.
However, this can only be assumed if, all else being equal, the costs of robbery are lower than the costs of free exchange—that is, if taking and appropriating is easier than producing and exchanging. There is a simple contradiction in this thesis. After all, if taking were easier than exchanging, nothing would compel one robber to “protect” someone from other robbers. Such a protector would have no incentive to protect, because robbery costs are assumed to be lower. The fact that the “protector” nevertheless agrees to protection indicates only that in reality robbery is more expensive and, consequently, the entire initial institutionalist premise is wrong.
“He who says it’s easier than taking a candy from a child has never tried to take a candy from a child.” The humorous science fiction writer Robert Asprin attributes these words to Robin Hood, who, apparently, knew a thing or two about such matters. Generally speaking, if taking were easier than producing and exchanging, no society or civilization would ever have emerged; everyone would be busy taking the means of existence from each other.
Also interesting is the argument that the concept of safety logically precedes the need for order protection. Peaceful practice must already be valued in order for the safety of such practice to also be valued. If everyone walks around robbing each other, and peaceful production and exchange are the lot of the last losers, then no safety or order protection can simply appear as a regular sustainable practice.
From the error in the institutionalists’ initial premise follows an error in subsequent reasoning. The institutionalists tell us that the choice of a “stationary bandit” reduces the costs borne by his charges (the “public choice school” speaks unambiguously about this). In reality, the opposite is true: if the costs of robbery are, as a rule, higher, then the bandit’s settling down—the transition from raids to regular institutionalized robbery—first and foremost reduces the costs of the bandit himself, and it is for this reason that the bandit becomes stationary as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
In general, real history bears this out. The state, as a mode of existence for a certain group of people at the expense of the rest who found themselves on that territory, was discovered in the literal sense by nomadic bandits—nomads who transitioned to a settled mode of exploiting territories because raids on them had become less productive. Instructive in this regard is Oppenheimer’s book The State, in which he examines (if one overlooks the specific terminology) the emergence of states using anthropological material that Europeans accumulated while studying “backward peoples” in the nineteenth century. Besides the examples of Vikings (“sea nomads” in Oppenheimer’s terminology) who created several states in Europe, the following argument is interesting. Oppenheimer refutes the popular thesis that states originated in the voluntary association of farmers. With purely German thoroughness, he calculates the area of cultivated lands and various accompanying territories like forests and meadows necessary for the daily needs of settled farmers. This area, even in Germany, already overpopulated at that time, turns out to be significantly below the total area. This is understandable: nomads seize whatever territory they can hold by force. It is not the economic needs of the inhabitants, but the “economic” needs of the conquerors—always more, always better—that determine the size of states.
And one more point. I think there is no need to explain that the natural response to robbery is to arm oneself or hire guards. However, let us note that the assumed response to robbery, which proponents of the natural origin of the state attribute to people, takes a completely unnatural form. Surely between the options “I hired you for protection for a time, for a certain payment” and “I am obligated to pay you regularly and indefinitely under threat of force”—there is a real abyss. Yet proponents of the idea that the state “arose on its own” attribute the second option to people by default.
Moreover, the first state (I pay for protection) cannot in any way “naturally” evolve into the second (I pay taxes). Of course, hired guards may attempt to seize their client’s property. But one must consider that clients are not fools either and understand this threat well. Therefore, while history does know attempts at such takeovers—including successful ones—by hired armies of various cities or even provinces, just as well known are the failures. To assume that states arose as a result of the same error that employers of armed guards made for centuries is, to put it mildly, strong fantasizing. There are no reasons for the practice of hiring guards to naturally develop into a state.