State

The definition is uncompromising and every element of it is functional. A state partitions societies, which are dense networks of interdependent relationships, and the partition is imposed rather than emergent and maintained by militarization. What it produces is economic markets, and the four purposes named are segregating, competing, allocating and establishing property ownership, none of which involves governing in the exosocial sense of caretaker responsibility. The second sentence supplies the structural placement. A state is an endogroup established at the nation-self level, which means it captures a circle of expansion rather than serving one, and the nation-self is described elsewhere as often trapped into a state endogroup. That is the key distinction the framework maintains. A nation is layered and overlapping, exists across borders and generations and is held together by animus in rites, objects, land and culture. A state is a bounded endogroup occupying the same level with a membrane, an endo-ideal and a negative image. Marsh's verdict follows. Today's so-called nation states are nothing of the sort, being economic markets designed to ensure unequal distribution of wealth, and no state is now a pure nation by ethnicity, religious belief or any other common factor. States also enforce the frame globally, ensuring every part of the world is recognized only as another state endogroup, which places even uncontacted peoples inside one.

Weber's definition of the state as the holder of a monopoly on legitimate violence is the standard reference and shares Marsh's emphasis on force while treating the legitimacy as real. Charles Tilly argued that war made states and states made war, describing state formation as organized protection rented to populations, which is close to her reading. James C. Scott documented states reshaping populations to make them legible and taxable. Anarchist theory rejects the state on grounds she shares. Her definition is distinguished by the market clause, since making economic partitioning the purpose rather than a consequence puts allocation at the centre where the standard accounts put violence or order.