THE RIGHT TO PUNISH AS A PROBLEM

In this text by Max Weber, the definition of the state and the questions that it raises are evidence of the repercussion of problems opened by Hobbes's political thought through sociology at the beginning of the twentieth century and, beyond that, to our own. Certainly, the perspective and the speculative context within which Weber deploys his analysis are very different from those that animate Hobbes's thought, but this does not prohibit encounters or even revivals since, beyond the diversity of the circumstances of thought, there is the same definition of political order. For us, in keeping to the cited text, we can read that Weber rediscovers Hobbes on the fundamental question of the relation between state and violence. Political domination is not the only important type of domination. Political power [pouvoir] is distinguished from other types of power [pouvoir]. In homogenising the concept of power [pouvoir] and in dissolving it into a network of relations or connections of force that cross social devices and institutions, we lose the political concept of power [pouvoir], and perhaps even that of power [pouvoir] full stop. Not that political power [pouvoir] would be the only kind to make use of violence as a means: in more or less evident ways, all power [pouvoir] supposes or engenders violence (whether it would be physical or not). What is more, we cannot define the power [pouvoir] of the state by the simple exercise of violence. What characterises political domination is another trait: not monopoly on violence, but monopoly on legitimate violence.