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James C. Scott on the Perils of State Power (The Good Fight with Yascha Mounk, Persuasion transcript)

James C. Scott · c. 2021

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James C. Scott did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Our reading

    The state will not be abolished: anarchism deserves two cheers, not three

    Their wordsI call myself a sort of “half-assed anarchist,” and that's why the book that I wrote was called Two Cheers for Anarchism, not three cheers. I don't think we're going to abolish the state.

  2. Our reading

    The welfare state has done emancipatory things only with a pistol at its temple

    Their wordsthe thing to remember about the welfare state and the emancipatory things it does is that it has only done that with the pistol at its temple.

  3. Our reading

    Life was better for hunter-gatherers than for subjects of the early state

    Their wordsLife was better for hunters and gatherers than it was for subjects in the early state.

  4. Our reading

    Extreme high modernism needs the absence of democratic resistance

    Their wordsThe modernist vision requires for its high modernism, for its most extreme examples, the absence of the restraining factors of democratic social organization—resistance.

  5. Our reading

    Planners mistake visual order for efficiency and working order

    Their wordsIn the course of writing Seeing Like a State, I was struck again and again by the mistaken assumption that visual order is synonymous with efficiency and working order.

  6. Our reading

    If we must have states, they should be social-democratic welfare states

    Their wordsIf we've got to have states, let's have social-democratic states with functioning democracies and a welfare state.

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