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As a reaction to my comment here, I received these two replies, the first of which I cannot work with, as I neither know the commentator nor his standards of persuasiveness, the second of which providing more surface to dock on to.
You have said nothing persuasive yet.
States win the monopoly on sovereign violence. That’s all.
Immediately followed by:
And they win because someone has to win. And the state wins because we call,the winner of the competition “the state.”
To which I replied:
We may describe one among many aspects of the state as the possession of a monopoly of coercion. Mind you, that "monopoly" consists of a bundle of competencies that change all the time and are subject to acute competition among powerful and resourceful parties trying to add or subtract to that bundle. In some places in the US, the state is not even able to exercise its right to carry out capital punishment - because it is subject to severe contestation on that central matter of "monopolistic" coercion.
More generally, I cannot convince myself of the state being a uniform entity with a uniform utility function against which it might make sense to speak of the state as "the winner of the competition."
Also, the state is often tasked with facilitative projects rather than the pursuit of a final aim. The state is not supposed to decide an election but facilitate its implementation - in fact, one wonders, if the state is to be conceived of as a uniform winner-entity, what political party does "the state" belong to?
The state consists of individuals, factions, departments etc that represent differing and often competing notions of success.
Large and important parts of the state are specifically set up to accommodate competitive and compromise-building processes, including players with very different goals, values and notions of success.
The state is, among its many functions, a set of institutions with the purpose of having the most diverse opinions and interests compete among each other; it is itself open to permanent contestation and competition for temporary governance - on countless levels down to municipal affairs.
Personally, I find it hard to conceive of the modern liberal state as anything but a means for preventing total or permanent victory by any one person, group or institution.
The Achilles heel of libertarianism is (1) a preconception according to which the state is evil, dysfunctional and destructive, (2) an attendant attitude according to which "we know all about the state," and (3) a practice according to which one does not bother to look carefully at the complex phenomenon of the state with its innumerable surprises and subtleties - and its outstanding significance for freedom.
The source.
See also A Modern Story - Politics and the State in Ancient Greece.
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