Hacker News Reader

Comment by smittywerben | Hacker News Reader

> government's monopoly on violence

Can I get a source on this?

Max Weber. However, he stated it as Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.

Politics as a Vocation.

http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/class%20readings/weber/po...

Thanks for a direct link to the [1918] speech. This definition originates from the sociology school in academia.

This is a sort of tenant of the modern state if you look at it a certain way. Ultimately the threat of violence is invested in the state to ensure the law is followed.

It is not a pitchfork and torch mob that should come after you should you appear to have committed a serious crime, but rather the government's police agencies that will come to arrest you, very physically if need be.

I see, monopoly on violence is a legitimate concept in the political/public sciences. I think "monopoly" has several definitions depending on the field.

Thanks for the clarification + source.

It's a full spectrum of monopolies that collectively represent a colonial apparatus...I'm not talking naval and nuclear projection or occupying a foreign country...

Putin has clearly mastered a new type of war that specifically weakens America's monopoly on violence both domestically and internationally.

You can already see the symptoms of an institution slowly coming to gripes to a major espionage campaign that did not stop after the USSR fell but evolved into a criminal state, one that explicitly seeks to include criminal elements to distance the Kremlin.

Americans rely on a network of multi-national corporations to do their bidding, Russians rely on the mob.

that is the accepted definition of State. a State can arm a faction (police, army, etc), and have the freedom to decide how to use it (removing you from some place, keeping you at another place, invading another State, etc). a corporation and citizens can't. hence a monopoly on violence.

And like many social science "theories" it's entirely incongruous with reality. One counter-example suffices to disprove a universal claim.

The United States is that exception, because our constitution explicitly recognizes, not grants, our right to arm ourselves independently of the State (or States really), only with some regulation permitted.

The actual definition of State can easily be found in the dictionary: "a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government."

A monopoly on violence, not guns. The U.S. constitution does not empower you to incarcerate your neighbor.

Actually US citizens can legally perform arrests, we just don't have the same legal presumptions that peace officers do.

Also it's obviously implied that the right to bear arms includes the right to use them under at least some circumstances. It would just be as ludicrous as saying freedom of the press only covers your right to own a press in your house or business and not your right to print things with it.

> Actually US citizens can legally perform arrests...

And in doing so, they are acting as self-deputized agents of the state. They're temporarily "arming" themselves with the state's power to use violence in furtherance of its (legitimate) interests in enforcing its laws. They could not legally do that without the state's sanction.

EDIT: Some countries don't even limit the power of "citizen's arrest" to their own citizens. The UK's relevant statute specifically says "any person", emphasis added, may act thusly.

The rights that citizens protect with violence don’t generally require the state’s authority. I don’t need a law to give me the right to use force to defend myself and my property, that right is naturally mine. It is however very nice that the state’s laws generally respect those natural rights. Now the state can use citizens to enforce its laws irrespective of rights, that’s called conscription, as in for example a sheriff’s posse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com