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The Nation and State as Opposites
By heilreality ·
Introduction
Libertarians are often mocked for being "social anatomists who don't understand social ties". In this article, I'd like to show that this criticism is not just unfounded, but completely backwards. In this short article, I'd like to show that liberty is the foundation of culture and social cohesion.
The Nation and State as Opposites
The state is "that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly on the use of force and violence in a given territorial area." It obtains its revenue not by voluntary payment, but by coercion. It acts as (and usually claims to be) the source of law.
A nation is essentially a group of individuals united by a certain common identity. The manifestation of this identity is a culture. (I'm including language under culture here.) While individuals within a certain nation will inevitably differ in many (including volitional) aspects, they will still have some shared set of values (those which they act to gain and keep) and norms (means to those values). If this is not the case, then there is no nation to speak of.
As we have defined these concepts, one thing should immediately become clear: while the state is an institution of central planning, the nation is a product of spontaneous order. The motto of the state is aggression, while the motto of the nation is trade, and thus mutual benefit. (Trade is meant in an overwhelmingly non-monetary sense here, such as one person teaching another a useful norm for a common value. The teacher benefits by having another person adopt that norm, while the student benefits by adopting that norm himself.)
A state is built by a certain caste of people successfully normalizing their oppression of another caste of people. A nation is built by free people voluntarily associating with one another and establishing a culture.
We might say that we personally detest a certain nation, but freedom of association allows us to support other ones instead, to reform current ones, or to found new ones altogether. The essence of the state, on the other hand, is that it operates through coercion.
Likewise, we might use freedom of association to maintain social cohesion. In a free-market anarchy, under a patchwork of private covenants, this would be the norm. There would be no crack addicts, would-be child predators, technically non-aggressive lunatics, socialists, or any other kind of degenerates roaming the streets. They would all have been ostracized by any virtuous libertarian nation.
A state can aggressively enforce a culture, but it cannot reprogram the minds of its victims; it can only paralyze them. The best example of this is perhaps North Korea. The "nation-state" should be regarded as nothing more than state-worship.
This should make the dichotomy between state and nation clear. The more state, the less nation, and vice versa.