ABSTRACT
Daniel Bell describes society as an amalgam of three realms: social structure, polity, and culture. The characteristic feature of political relations is that they involve power in one way or another. People living in a society are bound to disagree. The main political institution is the state. The state is a social organization that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Every power is backed by sanctions. But not every political relation implies physical coercion. The modern state is based on law. The state, as an instrument of legitimized violence by the ruling class, is surely not necessary in a classless socialism. The absolute power and arbitrariness of monarchs and the privileges of aristocracy clearly are incompatible with a capitalist organization of the economy. The federation is concerned with defense and foreign relations— in other words, with the relations between the national commonwealth and the rest of the world.
