Minimalistic Concept of the State
Nikola Kitanovic - Minimalistic concept of the state destroying drastically human solidarity, extending social differences, giving to the big corporations preference and involving state in very dirty liberal capitalism.
In the last two decades there have been many debates about the state of the third millennium. For most of these discussions, regardless of their theoretical and empirical grounding, we can say that they are above all - tendentious. This is primarily reflected in their blind favouring of liberal capitalism. When discussing this matter one should bear in mind that there is no ideal state. Of course, the notion of the ideal state is as old as the first state that people organised. What the ancient civilizations considered ideal today is very inappropriate and insufficient. One should also keep in mind that state is a necessary evil. The essential purpose of the state structure is to reduce what is evil and enlarge what could be good. However, every single state contains within its core significant elements of injustice and inequity. It seems that the state can not exist without this inequity. Anyway, what is today imposed as the "best" state is a typical minimalist concept of the state. In fact, to simplify (and perhaps a little bit trivialise), such a state should collect the lowest possible taxes and redirect its function solely to the prevention of crime. All other functions of the state (social and other) should not exist because they are the source of corruption, organized crime and evil. It should be added that this kind of theory is forcefully imposed on underdeveloped countries, countries in crisis, in recession – the troubled countries. Maybe I am cynical, but I believe that in this way the state is moving from evil to worse. In this way, troubles are becoming insurmountable. On one hand, the state, the people, the nation, the tradition are losing any sense, and on the other hand, the only sense is that of - profit. Profit becomes superior to the man, family and country. In other words, these theories are trying to destroy and deny what the Humanism and Renaissance managed to win as a common good for the people centuries ago. Liberal capitalism is not under attack, but to the contrary, it is attacking all that is human, forcing us again to slavery. In this case, the slave owners are transnational corporations. A man needs both his left and right hand for normal functioning. In the same way, in a political sense, humanity needs a meaningful Right and a meaningful Left. However, mankind has gone so right that it becomes critical to the survival of many nations and states. Moreover such disproportion could produce a war of global scale. Let us recall the history: two world wars were produced by the Right not the Left! Today's rampage of the Right looks really scary. On the other hand, the Left has not recovered from the shock of the nineties. We still do not have the new left that would be a proper response to the extremism of today's world order. However, a new post-modern left is now needed more than ever. But it seems to be is out of sight.
(Excerpts from the essay)
