The state is the ideal expression of society

Question: What is society?
Position‹3 of 6›: Society is sharing a common goal
Argument‹2 of 2: The state is the ideal expression of society

The most efficient and perfect expression of a society is the state. the state's role is to set collective goals.

The argument

A state can allow societies to work together for the common interest of those in the state. As noted by R.J. Rummel, a state should not be confused with the political power, or government, of the state as those political systems can change over time. Many scholars and philosophers have discussed the connection between state and society. But it is namely the common goals of a society that makes the “state” its ideal expression. Aristotle believed that the state, city-state, could meet the needs and goals of a society’s culture, economy, politics, and religion. Society shapes one's beliefs and therefore one's goals. Societal groups within a state can work together to allocate public resources, protect the rights of citizens of the state, and allow people to organize for social transformation.

Context

The state serves to clearly define our collective goals and enact a set of rules that will foster progress towards these goals.

Premises

[P1]A state lets the people within it work together for their common interest, distinct from the changeable government that runs it. [P2] Aristotle held that the state can meet the shared cultural, economic, political, and religious needs of a society. [P3] Because society shapes people's beliefs and common goals, the state is the structure through which those goals are realised. [C] Therefore, the state is the ideal expression of society, which shows society is sharing a common goal.

Counter-arguments

The state is not an expression of society, it is a crude parasite on societies’ backs. Society can be understood as the sum of all of our voluntary interactions with each other. We form societies naturally by interacting and connecting as individuals. The state grows off the back of these interactions and tries to impose limits on them. This isn’t an “ideal expression” of society, but a gross attempt to control society and the individuals within it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Separating the state from its government leaves the premise describing an abstraction rather than any institution that acts, since states act through governments — and those actions include constraining the cooperation the premise credits them with enabling. [Rejecting P2] Aristotle's polis was a small city-state of enfranchised citizens, so a claim built on it does not transfer to the modern state, and the citation establishes what one philosopher held rather than that the claim is true. [Rejecting P3] Association, exchange and mutual aid realise shared goals without a state, so even if society shapes people's goals it does not follow that the state is the structure through which they are realised, still less the ideal one.