Research Information System
in: Ensyclopedia of Human Geography , Barney Warf, Editor, Springer Nature, Zug, pp.1-4, 2024
The state is a centralized authority that directs its power toward society. According to Weber, “It is a human community that can legally and successfully exercise the monopoly of violence for its own interests within specific national boundaries” (1919). In our current context, this community includes the capitalist class. Thus, the state is not born out of “the necessity of coexistence” as Plato suggested nor it is a “natural formation” as Aristotle argued (Oppenheimer, 1954, p. 37). It is a political establishment, with a monopoly over violence, that acts in service of the capitalist class. Following Lenin, the state protects and facilitates capital’s expansion as a “machine for maintaining the dominance of one class over another.”
The state, from ancient tribute-based empires to modern nation-states, secures the capitalist class through its regulating power (Lacoste, 2014). The primary function of the state in capitalist society is to mediate interclass conflict to legitimize and...