society. This assumption runs contrary to everything we know about individuals.
The individual who has not been ‘socialised’ cannot speak or think, and certainly
cannot identify herself as an individual. Individuals acquire their identity through
their relations with others – they are social beings. Our life develops through an
infinity of relationships – with parents, friends, teachers and, more abstractly, with
people we read about or see and hear on the media.
Sovereignty is an attribute which individuals enjoy, and which enables us to
govern our own lives. This definition frees sovereignty from the problems that blight
it when it is linked to the state. Not only is the search for self-government developed
in our relations with others, but it involves an infinite capacity to order our own
lives. We aspire to sovereignty, but we never reach a situation in which we can say
that no further progress towards sovereignty is possible. The fact that sovereignty
is individual does not mean that it is not organisational, for individuals work in
multiple associations at every level – the local, regional, national and global. Each
of these helps us to develop our sovereignty – our capacity to govern our lives.
Ironically, therefore, the idea of state sovereignty gets in the way of individual
sovereignty as we see from the way in which states often resist demands for the
implementation of human rights on the grounds that they, states, should be entitled
to treat their inhabitants as they see fit. The Chinese authorities object when their
policies are criticised, and the American administration considers that it is entitled
to continue incarcerating prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. When we define sovereignty
as self-government, we place the rights of humans above the power of the state,
and argue that only by locating sovereignty in the individual can it become consistent
and defensible as a concept.Moving to a stateless world
Why are most people so sceptical about the possibility of a world without the state?
Part of the reason, it could be argued, is that people think of government as the
same as the state, but if we make a sharp distinction (as we have above) between
government and the state, then it can be seen that a stateless society is not a society
without government, but rather a society in which an institution claiming a
monopoly of legitimate force becomes redundant. What prevents this from
happening?
People, it seems to us, can settle their conflicts of interest through moral and
social pressures where they have a common interest with their opponents: when
they can, in other words, imagine what it is like to be ‘the other’. This does not
mean that people have to be the same in every regard. On the contrary, people are
all different, and these differences are the source of conflict. Still it does not follow
that because people are different and have conflicting interests, they cannot negotiate
and compromise in settling these conflicts. It is only when they cannot do this that
force becomes inevitable, and even if this force begins outside the state, the state
will soon be involved, since the state claims a monopoly of legitimate force, and is
concerned (quite rightly) about the force of private individuals. We are not,
therefore, suggesting that we should not have a state in situations where people
resort to force to tackle their conflicts.Chapter 1 The state 27