Someone mentioned the monopoly of force in another thread. He was just shitposting, yet this topic is important enough to warrant a response. So, I decided to make a thread about this.
The argument linked to the monopoly of force goes like this: If you don't have an entity with a monopoly of force - the state -, then it will be a war of all against all. And that's about it, the argument didn't get better since Hobbes made it. In fact, Hobbes made it better than most. He actually came up with premises to support his conclusion. Most people just jump straight to the conclusion, which makes it hard to really criticize them, unlike Hobbes, who clearly oversaw a few flaws in his idea. Mainly, if they require to enter a social contract before they're able to cooperate, then how do they enter said social contract without the ability to cooperate? The ability to cooperate is necessary to enter and uphold the social contract, so the social contract cannot be a requirement for cooperation.
This brings me to the fact that the monopoly of force is a legal fiction. It does not describe the actual status quo. It is evident, for one, that everyone is still physically capable of using force, including in ways that are prohibited by the state. How well armed everoyne is compared to the state does not change that. We can still push each other off stairs, beat old people, steal from stores, and so on. To believe that the government took away this ability is delusional.
There are two ways in which the government can interfere, of course, if we do it anyway: With preventive or retributive force. However, the government doesn't have enough resources to prevent every possible aggression, so there must be something else preventing them. Clearly, people are peaceful by default, at least in our current society. Most of them don't think about aggression, even when no enforcers are in sight, because most of the time, no enforcers are in sight. It would do good to remember that for every theft detected by the government, a good ten aren't. I'm not talking about Africa here, but about Western Europe. Most crimes are not detected at all, and when they are, it's because private citizens are giving witness to them. And lest somebody say that the citizens only do that because the government is on their side: The right of self defense is still a thing. People actually do defend themselves and their property with force, and the government knows it. In the US, guns are used in self defense between a half and three million times a year:
https://gunsources.com/guns-save-lives/
As for retribution, like I said, most crimes are not detected at all. When they are, they seldom get punished. Even with homicides, the number is surprisingly low. The purpose of punishment is not so much to eliminate criminals as it is to demonstrate that the law is still valid. Clearly, then, what it requires is that there is a law, that people accept it enough to see punishment inflicted for its sake as legitimate, and that it is applied for punishment. That the state is required for any of these is not evident, and that it is required for the first condition is what I refuted above.
I do not doubt that you can intersect a new reason for why a government is absolutely, positively needed to have a peaceful society. What I do doubt is that these reasons will be more than ad hoc justifications, to be forgotten as soon as this thread is on page 3.