Comments on: Democratizing the state, rather than smashing it https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/democratizing-the-state-rather-than-smashing-it/2006/10/14 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Sun, 29 Oct 2006 12:22:28 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 By: Michel Bauwens https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/democratizing-the-state-rather-than-smashing-it/2006/10/14/comment-page-1#comment-6807 Sun, 29 Oct 2006 12:22:28 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=517#comment-6807 . In terms of sustaining dynamical balance, though there was periodic conflict, they perhaps fared better than modern ‘states’. We can say, of course, that the population was much sparser and distributed, certainly moreso than in europe. what is often missed in discussions of ‘state’ is the difference between aboriginal and european thinking. in aboriginal thinking, there was no such things as ‘property’ therefore there was no such thing as an INDEPENDENT state. the notion of an independent state constituted by sovereign owned property is a european abstraction or ‘absolutism’ that was totally foreign to the mind of an aboriginal living on turtle island in 1491. ‘states’, in the common western definition of the term, are abstractions which the aboriginals mock because they don’t really exist.]]> Comment sent by email by Ted Lumley:

The aboriginals did not require ‘central institutions’. In terms of sustaining dynamical balance, though there was periodic conflict, they perhaps fared better than modern ‘states’. We can say, of course, that the population was much sparser and distributed, certainly moreso than in europe.

what is often missed in discussions of ‘state’ is the difference between aboriginal and european thinking. in aboriginal thinking, there was no such things as ‘property’ therefore there was no such thing as an INDEPENDENT state. the notion of an independent state constituted by sovereign owned property is a european abstraction or ‘absolutism’ that was totally foreign to the mind of an aboriginal living on turtle island in 1491.

‘states’, in the common western definition of the term, are abstractions which the aboriginals mock because they don’t really exist.

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