transcribed and translated from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_DnIdhdrmQ

When we speak about the state, we see buildings, prisons, barracks, courthouses, schools, ministries, and so on. Someone might ask: “What is all this?” Well, these are the representatives of the state on earth. But let me explain: I am a believer, and I do not know any believer who derives the existence of God from the fact that there are religious buildings or people who claim to represent Him on earth.

The theological arguments for or against the existence of God are of another kind: the cosmological argument, the ontological argument, philosophical, metaphysical, or theological arguments. But one does not conclude that God exists simply because there are buildings, symbols, or people who claim to represent Him.

Something similar happens with the state. There are buildings, prisons, barracks, courthouses, schools; there are uniformed people, armed people, people who claim to represent the state. But that does not strictly prove that something called “the state” exists as a real entity. What exists are people, symbols, institutions, and practices. The state represents itself through symbols; it is a fictional and collective representation.

And I am speaking about the modern state, not political power in general. That distinction is important, and we will emphasize it later. Political power has always existed; the modern state is a specific historical form of political power.

Nowadays nobody pays taxes “to Molina,” or “to Baldizón,” or “to Colom,” or “to Sandra Torres,” or to any of the candidates. People say they pay taxes “to Guatemala.” But Guatemala, as such, I have never seen. Likewise, I have never seen Spain or Galicia. I have no photograph of them; I have no portrait of what they look like. So how are they represented? They are represented through symbols.

Symbols are, basically, painted pieces of cloth that each person interprets as something sacred, or almost sacred. Just as in religion certain objects acquire symbolic value — pieces of wood, images, relics — something similar happens in politics with the flag. A flag is nothing more than a piece of cloth with colors: some colors for the flag of Spain, others for Galicia, others for Guatemala. Some have drawings, coats of arms, animals, stars, or other elements.

In many states, birds or beasts of prey appear: lions, eagles, wolves, bears, or other animals associated with strength. Guatemala may be an exception in that sense. The state is also represented through music: anthems, scores, sometimes accompanied by poems or phrases that must be sung and recited. All of this serves to visualize, personalize, and sacralize something that is, in reality, abstract.

What really exists is a group of organized people who extract tribute from the rest and then spend it as they consider appropriate. That has always been the state at its core: an organized group that collects resources and distributes them according to its own criteria.

The substantial change brought by modernity is that, in the past, the power that collected tribute was concrete. It was a visible person: a king, a pharaoh, a tsar, a caliph. One could see the caliph, the king with his crown, his robes, his palaces, his servants, his banquets, and his festivities. Taxing power was embodied in someone. People knew that tribute went to a person and to his court.

Now, by contrast, we pay tribute to an abstract and imaginary entity. This is the idea explained by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities: how an imaginary entity called the nation is constructed. The nation and the modern state make it possible to shift loyalty from a concrete person to an abstraction.

It is much easier to make people pay tribute to an abstraction than to a concrete person. When there is a visible person, what we call class consciousness or fiscal consciousness may arise: “We are paying tribute to this gentleman, who lives in opulence, in palaces, at parties and banquets.” Then people resist. Historically there have been many tax revolts.

But if something abstract is constructed and endowed with sacred attributes — as was formerly done with divinity — tribute changes its meaning. It is no longer paid to a fat and opulent king, but rather “to the fatherland,” “to the nation,” “to the state,” “to all of us.” And around this a civic cult is created: standing up when the anthem is played, kissing flags, making certain gestures, treating certain symbols as sacred.

This process is slow. It is constructed ideologically through the education system, the media, public rituals, and political culture. In this way, that imaginary entity to which we end up paying tribute is created.

The first question, therefore, is: does the state exist? If by state we mean something abstract called Spain, Guatemala, or Galicia, my answer is that it does not exist as a real object. It is a shared invention, an idea we have in our heads. Obviously, it has real effects, because people act according to that belief. But it does not exist in the way a table, a person, or a building exists.

When we define ourselves, we often use these identities: “I am Spanish,” “I am Guatemalan,” “I am Galician.” In the past, people might have defined themselves primarily as Catholic, as members of a religious community, as subjects of a king, or even through local affiliations. Today, national definition has become the supreme political definition.

Historically, however, national loyalty was not always the main one. For a long time, people did not fight for “Germany” or for “France” in the modern sense, but for religion, for the king, for the city, for lineage, or for other bonds. National loyalty is a modern construction.

Anderson explains this process of creating national identities. The school plays a central role here. One goes to school and learns things, yes, but what is the compulsory curriculum? Language — usually the language of the state — and history — usually the history of the state.

We could study many histories: the history of mentalities, the history of cuisine, the history of art, economic history. But what is taught as compulsory is, above all, the history of the state: its kings, presidents, wars, conquests, defeats, and symbols. Moreover, this history often divides rulers into “good” and “bad.” The good ones are those who enlarged the state; the bad ones, or the less important ones, are those who kept it at peace or did not expand its power.

In Spain, for example, the Habsburg “maiores” — Charles V and Philip II — are studied extensively because they were great emperors and imperialists. By contrast, the Habsburg “minores,” who more or less maintained the apparatus without comparable great expansions, appear as figures of lesser relevance. The implicit criterion is political: those who enlarged the state are magnified.

All of this shows that the state is imaginary, although socially effective. There is an organization of people that collects tribute, monopolizes violence, and administers resources. What does not exist is the abstract entity itself as a real thing.

This debate is not new. It is a variant of the old medieval dispute over universals: nominalists against realists or universalists. Do general ideas have real existence, or are they names we use to order reality? I am a nominalist: these abstract concepts do not exist as independent realities. They are ideas, fictions, imaginary constructions.

If I ask each of you what Guatemala is, each of you will give me a different definition. Each person has an idea, certain smells, feelings, images, experiences. The same happens with Spain. There is no photograph of “Spain” as such. There are maps, flags, anthems, memories, stories, and emotions inculcated from childhood.

This can be studied historically. Until roughly the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, nobody gave their life for a nation in the modern sense. People gave their lives for other things, which could also be symbolically constructed, but which followed another logic.

Therefore, the first debate is whether the state exists or not. The second is its historical origin.

I distinguish between the state and political power. Political power has always existed. The modern state is a contemporary form of political power. It is not much older than the eighteenth century in the sense that it implies obedience, tribute, and a willingness to give one’s life for something abstract, not for a concrete person.

This is linked to the creation of the concept of the nation: a community supposedly united by certain common features. But it is not always clear what those features are. It is assumed that those who live in the same geographical space under one political power must share an identity, and that their supreme loyalty must be directed toward that nation.

The problem, then, is to explain the origin of political power. The state is one form of political power, but there are others: empires, leagues, city-states, confederations, patrimonial monarchies, tribal structures, and so on.

What is the historical origin of political power? I lean toward Robert L. Carneiro’s thesis on the origin of the state. Carneiro argues that the state arises through processes of circumscription or encapsulation: armed groups dominate a territory where populations cannot easily escape.

Historically, many groups of bandits or warriors — often herders, horsemen, mountain peoples, or better-armed groups — plundered sedentary, agricultural, and more vulnerable populations. They came down, plundered, and left. But at some point one of those groups discovers that it is more profitable to stay: instead of plundering once and fleeing, they conquer the peasants, settle over them, and demand periodic tribute.

The logic would be: “Are we going to spend our whole lives running from one place to another? Better to conquer these peasants, put them to work for us, and demand a portion of what they produce.” Thus stable domination is born. The armed band becomes political power.

The historical tribute is often around one-tenth: the tithe. It appears in the Bible and in many ancient texts. The king demands a portion of production and then distributes it among his knights, soldiers, officials, or allies. That is a primitive form of political financing.

But violence alone is not enough to maintain power. It is difficult to live all the time repressing rebellions. That is why all rulers, sooner or later, create an ideological apparatus: poets, singers, artists, priests, jurists, intellectuals. Their function is to justify power.

Jacob Burckhardt, in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, speaks of the state as a work of art. Rulers hire the best poets, artists, and thinkers to beautify, legitimize, and represent their power. It is not only a matter of commanding, but of creating ideological hegemony.

In ancient Egypt, for example, priests justified the divine right of the pharaoh. Among other peoples, the king was not exactly a god, but someone chosen by the gods. In Europe, the theory of the divine right of kings developed: God delegated power to a person. In Rome, the emperor was worshipped. A large part of political rituals, temples, and ceremonies served to reinforce that legitimacy.

From there, several doctrines justifying the state appear.

The first is the identification of power with divinity: the ruler governs because he has a sacred origin, special blood, or divine delegation.

The second is the contractualist doctrine: the idea that the state is born from a pact or social contract. According to this view, at some point individuals would have ceded their sovereignty to a superior authority in order to protect life, property, and order.

This doctrine appears in different forms from very ancient times, although it becomes more sophisticated with Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and, in contemporary theory, authors such as John Rawls. It also appears in a certain constitutional political economy, for example in James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock with The Calculus of Consent.

The problem is that this pact never took place historically. And even if it had taken place, it would not necessarily bind us, because a contract only binds those who sign it. Moreover, every real contract must have the possibility of dissolution, clauses, arbitrators, and enforcement mechanisms. In the case of the supposed contract with the state, if there is a conflict, the state itself acts as judge. That is not a true contract.

Albert Jay Nock, in Our Enemy, the State, explains very well the legal incoherencies of thinking of the state as the result of a pact. A normal contract involves identifiable parties, consent, and the possibility of independent arbitration. None of that occurs with the so-called social contract.

The third major line of justification is the scientific or economic one. Here we find theories of market failure, public goods, externalities, and other arguments from welfare economics. They are elaborate theories that attempt to demonstrate that the state is necessary for technical or scientific reasons.

I do not believe these justifications work. Many of them are taught in modern economics textbooks as if they were demonstrations of the necessity of the state, but in reality they perform a political function: justifying state intervention.

Against these doctrines there exists another tradition: the predatory theory of the state. It is not a unified tradition in the sense that all its authors recognize themselves as part of the same school, but there are many thinkers who maintain something similar: the state is not born from a pact or divine right, but from force and violence.

Many of these authors are not anarchists. They do not necessarily defend abolishing the state. Some even believe that, once installed, eliminating it could have very high costs. But they do not believe the story of its immaculate origin.

This tradition may include authors such as Alonso de Castrillo, in his Tractado de República, where the idea appears that many forms of domination are born from force. We also find similar intuitions in Benjamin Constant, especially in his reflections on the spirit of conquest.

The French liberals of the nineteenth century, and later authors such as Franz Oppenheimer, clearly defended the idea that the state is a class that imposes itself upon another. Oppenheimer, in The State, distinguishes between economic means and political means: economic means are production and voluntary exchange; political means are the coercive appropriation of another’s labor.

John C. Calhoun, although he was a morally detestable figure because of his defense of slavery, understood with great clarity that the state divides society between those who pay taxes and those who live from them. In his Disquisition on Government, he argues that every fiscal action creates two classes: net taxpayers and net tax consumers.

The predatory theory argues, in short, that an armed band conquers a territory. The chief of the bandits comes to be called king. His companions become dukes, counts, marquises, or nobles. The conquered are put to work and made to pay tribute. This pattern repeats itself again and again in history: Vandals, Ostrogoths, Franks, Visigoths, Normans, Spanish conquistadors in America, and so on.

Colonialism works this way: an organized band conquers a territory, installs itself as the dominant class, and extracts rents. No people on earth are completely alien to this logic. The names, symbols, and justifications change, but the basic mechanism repeats itself.

In modern terms, the state can be understood as a stationary bandit: it does not plunder and leave, but stays, monopolizes the territory, and extracts resources on a regular basis. Mancur Olson developed precisely the idea of the “stationary bandit” to explain why a predatory power may prefer to stabilize its rule rather than completely destroy the source of wealth.

Charles Tilly, in his famous text “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” explains the emergence of the modern European state by comparing it to organized crime: those who controlled violence created threats, offered protection against them, eliminated competitors, and financed their apparatus through taxes.

This is, in general terms, the libertarian or predatory theory of the state. It differs from the more naïve classical liberal view, which tends to see the state as something good, necessary, and of contractual or consensual origin. The libertarian — even if not an anarchist — may recognize that the state has a violent origin and should not be idealized.

And here we reach the important conclusion: the idea of whether the state is good or bad matters greatly. Even if one does not propose abolishing it, if one sees it as something good, one will tend to demand more state. If one sees it as something dangerous or bad, one will tend to want less state.

It also matters whether we believe the state really exists as a superior entity or whether we understand it as a group of organized people. Modernity has managed to spread the idea of the state as a sacred abstraction. This has greatly reduced internal fiscal conflict, because people no longer think that they are paying tribute to a concrete person, but rather “to ourselves.”

The history of humanity was full of tax revolts. The Revolt of the Comuneros in Castile, for example, can largely be understood as a fiscal war: citizens refusing to pay more tribute to the king. By contrast, the modern state manages to neutralize part of that resistance by saying: “You are not paying a king; you are paying yourselves. You elect the rulers. The state is you.”

But that is not exactly the case. In practice, there is still an organized group that decides, collects, and spends. The fiction consists in making us believe that this organization is all of us equally.