Page 213 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

190 Communication and Evolution of Society

directs its ordering achievements to delimiting a subsystem from
its domain of sovereignty, a subsystem that replaces (at least in
part) the social integration accomplished through values and
norms with a system integration operating through exchange
relations.?6
As to the external aspect of the new state structure, the modern
state did not emerge in the singular but as a system of states. It
took shape in the Europe of the sixteenth century, where tradi-
tional power structures were dissipated and cultural homogeneity
was father great, where secular and spiritual authority had parted
ways, trade centers had developed, and so on.** Wallerstein has
shown that the modern system of states emerged in the midst
of a “European world economy,”’ that is, of a world market domi-
nated by the European states. The power differential between
the centers and the periphery did not mean, however, that any
single state had gained the power to control the worldwide rela-
tions of exchange. This means that the modern state took shape
not only together with an internal economic environment but
with an external one as well. This also explains the peculiar form
of state sovereignty that is defined by relation to the sovereignty
of other states. The private autonomy of individual, strategically
acting, economic subjects is based on a reciprocal recognition that
is secured legally and can be regulated universalistically. The
political autonomy of individual, strategically acting, state powers
is based on a reciprocal recognition that is sanctioned by the threat
of military force and thus, despite agreement in international
law, remains particular and quasi-natural. War and the mobiliza-
tion of resources for building up standing armies and fleets are
constitutive for the modern state system as it has existed for almost
three hundred years since the Peace of Westphalia. The construc-
tion of a tax administration, of a central administrative apparatus
in general, was at least as strongly shaped by this imperative as
directly by the organizational needs of the capitalist economy.?°
If one keeps these two aspects of the state structure before one’s
eyes, it becomes clear that the process of state building had to
react upon the form of collective identity. The great empires were
characterized by the fact that, as complex unities with a claim to
universality, they could demarcate themselves externally—from a