Xinyu Tan’s Reviews > The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age > Status Update

The triumph of the state as the principal vehicle for organizing violence in the world was not a matter of ideology. It was necessitated by the hidden logic of violence. It was...determined not so much by the wishes of theorists and statesmen, or even by the maneuvering of generals, as by the hidden leverage of violence, which moved history in the way that Archimedes once dreamt of moving the world.

It is not necessary to argue that the doctrine and mode of thinking of late-medieval church were insincere to see that they tended to fit closely with the needs of agrarian feudalism, while allowing very little place for commerce,...It was rather a case of the church as a predominant institution shaping moral, cultural, and legal constraints in ways that were closely fitted to the imperatives of feudalism.