Reflections on the History of the State for the State Scientist

Abstract

The initial reflection of this article discusses the possibility of elaborating a History of the State, taking into account the multiple historical-political forms of human groupings and the critical formation of the State Scientist. The organizational structure of human communities is commonly referred to as the State in academic literature and in common parlance, a fact that highlights that conceptualizations of the State are characterized by their plasticity, shaped by political and cultural contingencies, widely variable both geographically and chronologically. It is a polysemic word that refers to distinct realities depending on the discursive context. Although it is acknowledged that Niccolò Machiavelli was the first to systematically employ the term to designate the political reality of his time, we follow a path based on Koselleck’s History of Concepts and criticize reductionist approaches that restrict the history of the State only to the period after the sixteenth century and to the European model. To this end, we propose the generic nomenclature political community as a way of encompassing different types of social organizations, and we emphasize that, by adopting it, we avoid the pitfalls of anachronism and Eurocentrism. On the other hand, history is always the history of something, and a minimum common denominator is proposed in order to serve as the essential framework of historical discourse. This guiding thread is established on the need to understand the specificities of each group within the abstract context that characterizes human societies, that is, their general patterns of cooperation and collective work. The text explores the rational and teleological dimension of human action, contrasting it with the purely instinctive behavior of other animals. The creation of tools and social organization are presented as extensions of rational capacity. Thus, our central thesis is that a General History of the State is possible as an analysis of the historicity of human forms of cooperation and labor, and that political reality does not lend itself to abstract conceptualisms, but rather finds its truth and significance in the concrete manifestation of the human need for the formation of organizational structures of collective labor. This repositioning of history is essential for the State Scientist to reflect upon their role and to be able to operate with greater scientific and intellectual autonomy while remaining attentive to the specific needs of their social reality.