What Government Really Is Statism (or archonism, "belief in rulers")
Statism (or archonism, "belief in rulers") is thus the morally-inconsistent belief that there can be such a thing as legitimate "authority" — the right to initiate violence to enforce authoritarian rules. It is also the illusion, or delusion, that one can delegate a right that oneself does not have — the right to rule — to a 3rd party called a political party, in memetically-consolidated mind-control rituals of acquiescence called "democratic elections". Government is (the illusion of) the institutionalized, outsourced, sanctioned "authority" to commit violence against individuals. The violence and violent coercion is real; the illusion is that its "authority" is legitimate because its subjects are given the illusion of choice, thus that there is "consent of the governed":
- The Biggest Picture
Conceptually, the idea of government is, as Frédéric Bastiat most eloquently put it, "the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Briefly, the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.
- Murray N. Rothbard, The Anatomy of the State
The monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force, commonly but controversially known as monopoly on violence (German: Gewaltmonopol des Staates), is the defining conception of the state as first expounded by sociologist Max Weber in his essay Politics as a Vocation (1919). Weber claims that the state is any "human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory"; thus, "the modern state is a compulsory association which organizes domination." In other words, Weber describes the state as any organization that succeeds in holding the exclusive right to use, threaten, or authorize physical force against residents of its territory. Such a monopoly, according to Weber, must occur via a process of legitimation.
- Wikipedia
Statism is the utopian ideal that just the right amount of violence used by just the right people in just the right way can perfect society.
- Keith Hamburger
The state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The Individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.
- Mahatma Gandhi