ABSTRACT
It is not my purpose to discuss the entire range of issues related to life and death: deviance, suicide, random assassination, crimes of passion. These are being placed to one side, although they are certainly important; indeed, they are central to any sociological definition of the social system. But here I want to examine a specific problem: the possibility of defining the state not in terms of communism, liberalism, or conservatism, but whether and to what degree it permits the official and arbitrary termination of the lives of its citizenry.
