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Thread: The Conquest Theory of the State

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    The Conquest Theory of the State

    The theory began with Ludwig Gumplowicz with further development by Franz Oppenhiemer.


    Franz Oppenhiemer

    Ideas

    Origins of the State

    Unlike Locke and others, Oppenheimer rejected the idea of the "social contract" and contributed to the "conquest theory" of the state:

    "The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors."

    "No primitive state known to history originated in any other manner. Wherever a reliable tradition reports otherwise, either it concerns the amalgamation of two fully developed primitive states into one body of more complete organisation, or else it is an adaptation to men of the fable of the sheep which made a bear their king in order to be protected against the wolf. But even in this latter case, the form and content of the State became precisely the same as in those states where nothing intervened, and which became immediately 'wolf states'." (p. 15)

    The economic and political means

    Oppenheimer also contributed a vital distinction by which human beings obtain their needs:

    "There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others. Robbery! Forcible appropriation! These words convey to us ideas of crime and the penitentiary, since we are the contemporaries of a developed civilization, specifically based on the inviolability of property. And this tang is not lost when we are convinced that land and sea robbery is the primitive relation of life, just as the warrior's trade - which also for a long time is only organized mass robbery - constitutes the most respected of occupations. Both because of this, and also on account of the need of having, in the further development of this study, terse, clear, sharply opposing terms for these very important contrasts, I propose in the following discussion to call one's own labor and the equivalent exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the “economic means" for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the "political means." (pp. 24-25)
    You will certainly want to read Albert J. Nock and his book, "Our Enemy, the State".
    Last edited by shikamaru; 11-05-11 at 09:00 AM.

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    Senior Member motla68's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by shikamaru View Post
    The theory began with Ludwig Gumplowicz with further development by Franz Oppenhiemer.



    You will certainly want to read Albert J. Nock and his book, "Our Enemy, the State".
    You might like this, Little house on the Prairie television series where a man had been granted a bunch of land to develop, he gave Walnut grove so man days to vacate the land. The towns people decided that they were not going to give him their labors so they blew up the towns structures:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ne4ZOL4wlw

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    Senior Member motla68's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Merrill View Post
    If I recall correctly, that episode was called " injun kid ".

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