Legitimate Coercion and Law as a Resource of State and Social Progress

The subject of this study is the analysis of the nature of the interrelationship between the individual, society, and the state, as shaped by various legal frameworks and the characteristics of political regimes. The objective of the paper is to determine the significance of human capital and law as resources of state and social development, and to define the role of state coercion and violence in the regulation of social relations. The study employs historical, axiological, systemic-structural, sociological, and comparative legal methods, which allow for the comparison of diverse approaches to the understanding of law and provide justification for the Author's conclusions on the issue of state coercion, particularly in the area of combating crime through criminal law. A comprehensive and critical examination of human history – from antiquity to the present – reveals an unbroken sequence of social conflicts, civil strife, revolutions, and both world and local wars. The central resource in civilizational and state development has always been the human being. From its inception, the state has subordinated society and for millennia has employed violence to address both internal challenges (through law enforcement) and external ones (via the military). This subjugation has served both the rational public interest (as in the social contract theory, which seeks to prevent a “war of all against all”) and the private interests of economically dominant classes and groups (as posited in the theory of violence and the materialist theory of economic determinism). Throughout the history of human coexistence – up to the modern era, when the principles of the rule of law, the welfare state, civil society, and popular sovereignty have been enshrined in political practice – ruling elites have articulated the interests of individuals, social groups, and strata as national priorities. This quality of statehood has necessitated specific methods for regulating social relations, among which legal state coercion has held a significant position. Such coercion has often manifested in violent forms, and people have been treated as a renewable resource for the fulfillment of state functions. In the modern state – one that rejects destructive approaches in its relations with individuals and society – people are no longer seen as mere resources for task execution. Rather, they are regarded as capital, the quantitative and qualitative attributes of which – including health, education, intelligence, skills, and social well-being – serve as indicators of the state’s progressiveness. Under these conditions, the primary resource of the contemporary state is law itself: a force that safeguards fundamental values, the individual, and their rights from the harmful and destructive effects of narrowly defined economic, political, and ideological interests.