INTERPRETATION OF THE FORMATION

OF THE STATE.
INTRODUCTION.
To begin with, at first glance we relate the emergence of the State to historical
moments, just as we divide the different ages of history by an event that has
triggered that passage from one age to another. For example, we know that the
Middle Ages began in the year 476 A.D. with the Fall of the Western Roman
Empire and ended in the year 1492 with the Discovery of America or in 1453 with
the Fall of Constantinople, depending on which criterion you want to follow.
It is notorious that we only focus on one event to define a change, which is highly
improbable. When an event occurs that causes a change in history, it is usually
preceded by an ideological change in the population, combined with a political,
social and cultural change. In this paper we will critically analyze the emergence
of the state by assessing these changes.

THE EMERGENCE OF NATION STATES.

The formation of nation states originated during the transition from feudalism to
capitalism. It cannot be explained except by giving an account of the multiplicity
of factors that intervened and that were fed back into a process that took several
centuries. The political, economic, social and cultural factors alone cannot fully
account for the process of consolidation of the national states, which began by
constituting Western Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries.
transformations in the plane of power were fundamental: the passage of the
feudal political power dispersed and relatively limited by the Church and local
feudal lords to a power centralized in the figure of the monarch. The concentration
of the power of kings over the Church, as well as the loss of power of the local
feudal lords as a result of the disappearance of serfdom, allowed the emergence
in the seventeenth century of the so-called absolutist states. Coercion went
beyond the domain of the lordship feudal level to the "national" level, creating a
reinforced power apparatus to control and repress the peasant masses. The
nobility maintained their dominion while "tolerating" or adapting to the emergence
of a new antagonist, the commercial bourgeoisies of the medieval cities. As Perry
rightly points out Anderson, taking up the debate between Maurice Dobb and
Paul Sweezy, in feudalism the development of cities was such a central feature
as the dissolution of the lordship, discarding that it is an external factor to the
decomposition of the agricultural economy.
SOME THEORIES ABOUT THE CREATION OF NATION STATES.
From our point of view there are two main theories to explain social organization
and its "evolution" in all aspects, whether these are infrastructural (economy),
structural (politics) and super structural (ideology and culture). The first of these
two great theories is that of social harmony, understood in the sense that there is
an internal tendency within each society that leads it to reproduce itself within a
scheme of collaboration among its members, correcting, at the same time, those
elements that may tend to imbalance or adapting, according to its needs, those
aspects that are new to it.
The greatest exponents of this social conception are the Functionalist and
Structuralist schools. In the first place, the Functionalist school bases its analysis
on the theory that the social order is based on the harmonious functioning of
society; in the face of the tendency of evolution of that society, it is proposed that
it tends to be functionally balanced, and the social structure functions by basic
needs. The Structuralist school states that the structural cohesion of society can
only be explained thanks to a collective conscience, which translates into a
solidarity that allows for the organization of the distribution of work; society would
be structured thanks to its social conscience (mentality) and its order of solidarity
in organization, with integration taking place in the division of labor. The other
great theory of social organization is the theory of conflict, understood as a
tendency of society to resolve contradictions and tensions, both external and
internal. Spencer sustains the idea that the conflict unfolds in an external
dynamic, being resolved generally by war, when the society is capable of facing,
thanks to a better government, its conflicts with other societies; the adaptation of
all the resources for the achievement of the victory makes possible the
cooperation that allows the fulfillment of the marked objective and likewise, the
repeated victory allows the increase of prestige and power of a leading minority
of the war. Marx and Engels are the proponents of another variant in the theory
of conflict;
The latter is based on the internal dynamics of the same and is proposed as an
attempt to diachronically solve a synchronic situation, which is the appropriation
of the means of production by a minority in society.
These two currents have in common the assumption of the struggle, without ruling
out the use of violence, as a method to achieve social objectives; nevertheless,
they maintain an important difference between them, since while the theory of
conflict as an external dynamic requires the existence of a state or parastatal
structure and even relies on it as a means to achieve its objectives, tending to
repress any action that does not contribute to the achievement of the objective
set, the theory defended by historical materialism has as its objective precisely
the opposite, that is to say: the abolition of the State, which it understands as an
element of repression of society as a whole. As can be seen, both Spencer, on
the one hand, and Marx and Engels on the other, understand the state as a
repressive element, but with the important difference, at the same time, that for
Spencer the state is necessary, and for Marx and Engels it is the element to be
suppressed.
As a concrete example of the above-mentioned trends, we find two completely
opposite conceptions of the State; thus, for structuralists and functionalists, the
State structure responds to the fulfillment of needs arising from greater social
complexity and all of this within a harmonic or supportive framework of society as
a whole; a synthetic example of these theories is provided by the postulates of
Elman Servicie included in his work "The origins of the State and civilization", in
which he proposes the emergence of the State from the need to order the
productive process and the distribution of the benefits of the surplus generated,
among other things, thanks to technological improvement, creating a new class
of bureaucrats who feed on themselves and whose only reason for being and
remaining is the maintenance of social balance
An example of this same current of thought, which from our point of view seems
contradictory, is that of Adam Ferguson. This author maintains that conflict and
rivalry can have the positive function of helping the organization of the state, given
that conflict, danger, and the hostility of strangers strengthen the internal service
to the community; to this idea must be added that the increase in the division of
labor in a society increases its prosperity, size, and complexity.
However, we say that it seems contradictory to us because, although it formally
assumes the theory of conflict, its interpretation of the origin of the State is based
on the harmonic theory that should govern its activity.

IN CONCLUSION.
In conclusion, and after the exposition of the diverse schools of thought on the
origin of the State, we can have a wider vision of the trigger that propitiated the
appearance of the Modern State. We know that the appearance of the Modern
State arose with the French Revolution with the abolition of the absolutist system
(political element), the desire to establish a Republic based on democracy that
includes the values of equality and freedom (cultural element), and the rise to
power of Napoleon Bonaparte, who instilled a desire in the population to create
an iron legal system with the creation of the Napoleonic Civil Code, which served
as the basis for the creation of the European Civil Codes, for example, the
Spanish one.
On the other hand, we see that the typical elements of the origin of the State are
present in the French Revolution, but we must also analyze what school of
thought followed the creation of the State.
In this case, and taking the French Revolution as the origin of the State, we see
that it followed the theory of conflict defended by the Structuralist school, since
we know that the French Revolution was not a peaceful process, but a violent
revolt to reach its end, which was to free itself from the absolutist monarchs