While the Trump Team seems slightly more willing to murder random people (ie Mike Walz: “The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed”), but the whole bombing Yemen thing is hardly a new policy. There’s not much daylight between what the Signal group chat is doing and what the Biden administration did.
Too many people are still smitten with the idea that the US state, or any state, can be a force for good if it’s just run by the right, good people in the right, good way, and that the state’s violence will only be used against bad people in the right, good way.
@HeavenlyPossum you do realise that a sate doesn't necessitate a global war on civilisation?
Their exist plenty of states that doesn't have the capacity for indiscriminate bombings against targets they don't like on the other side of the globe.
@HeavenlyPossum I disagree. But I have been down this road before and knows it lead nowhere.
What would you call a higher order social structure that make civilisation possible, if you don't call it a state?
If you expect this to lead nowhere, then don’t engage me about it.
@HeavenlyPossum I am sorry if I was unclear, I meant I don't think a debate on whatever a stat is violence or not is meaning full.
I can still be curious what your perspective is on state on the higher order social organisation that make morden living possible.
The state is one social form out of many. It is a mechanism of elite rule and exploitation, fundamentally through the monopolization of violence. It’s not necessary for anything—“civilization” or “modernity” or whatever you want to call it.
@HeavenlyPossum okay, you have a narrow view of what a state is.
And I agree, it's fundamentally wrong to force anyone to live in a social order they don't agree to.
I define a state by what enables a civilisation, meaning it is literally what is necessary for for civilisation.
No, I have a precise and accurate view of what the state is.
“The state is necessary for civilization” is simply, objectively false. If you want to be imprecise and broadly identify the state with social complexity, you’d still need a specific diagnostic term to identify those socio-political forms—which I have correctly identified as *the state*—that are fundamentally instruments of elite rule through violence.
*Every state* forces people to live in a social order they didn’t choose.
@HeavenlyPossum as long as we agree that the disagreement is about linguistics, I think we are done.
As certain you are that I am wrong about the meaning of a state, I am that you are.
The disagreement is not about linguistics. I honestly don’t care if you think I’m wrong.
@HeavenlyPossum if I say that I define a state as what is necessary for a civilisation. And you then claim I am wrong. How is that not a disagreement on linguistics?
It happens that we both say state we are referring to mostly the same collection of subjects, we disagree about why they belong together.
Because there have been “civilizations” without the state, even if we define civilization in the crass sense of social complexity, urban life, literacy, labor specialization, etc. This is a matter of objective, knowable fact, not a terminological debate.
Is the US somehow not a state? France? Zimbabwe? Are the US, France, and Zimbabwe somehow necessary for “civilization”?
@HeavenlyPossum yes, but their violence isn't. Which is why I don't want to define them by their violence.
Which states are not violent?
@HeavenlyPossum maybe Iceland? But I don't think I have enough insight in their society to say that clearly. And fishing is inherently violent, so if violence against fish count definitely not. I could easily be convinced that violence against fish count.
Iceland lacks police? Border controls? The violent protection of capitalist property rights to the labor of workers?
@HeavenlyPossum they have something they call police. Labour rights should be well protected.
They are part of the Custom Union, they are as much subject to that violence as an any importer, they are also part of Schengen. So any border control isn't their violence but a consequence of their "choice" to have a functioning economy.
I’m not even sure what to do with this mess.
“Labour rights should be well protected” has nothing to do with the state’s violence to protect capitalist property rights of the labor of others.
*Borders are violence.* Every state asserts the right to use murderous violence to decide which side of an arbitrary line you can stand on. It has nothing to do at all with having a “functioning economy,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.
@HeavenlyPossum Iceland is dependant on the EU for basically everything but fish and energy. The EU would make it much harder to access their economy if Iceland didn't agree to enforce the EUs borders. It's not Icelandic violence that enforce their borders, it is the EUs.
Iceland as nordic nation. In the nordic we have long history of collected barging. That is the labours negotiated their labour conditions, that might not have happened in a fair way.
No state on earth allows free movement across its borders. “They have to enforce their borders to get something they want” is tautological and not the exceptional excuse you imagine it to be.
“Bargaining with capitalists so they exploit you marginally less” still requires state violence to empower those capitalists to exploit you.
Violence is intrinsic to states' existence, because its perpetuation depends on it.
To take the current nation-states, they require borders (which carry the threat of violence, starting from expulsion) to separate themselves from the other nation-states and create a us vs them situation where people from outside of the states are "lesser" (they have less rights, less opportunity, are more policed, etc.), an army, to exert violence against other states, and a police force which enforce and maintain the state's authority inside its border and who has the monopoly of violence on its territory. You will notice that this doesn't at all care about the degree or scope of said violence.
In addition to these points, current states are entirely fused with capitalism which is itself violent.
Not all societies are or were state-based and
Girl, y'all looked out the window at what 150+ Nation States of varying harm capacities are doing about the end of humanity due to wrecking the ecosystem itself? Modern living to modern extinction, is what you're hanging your hat on because you simply live at the tail end of it.
And maybe being the last to enjoy whatever States do is good enough for you because screw those bozos that come after, you'll be dead and gone.
But what an endorsement for Statism - shoulda been born at the right time to enjoy that 60 years of whatever this is.
@HeavenlyPossum @ekg yes! Decentralized violence, to be specific.
The state actively enables, as well as provides material resources, tactics, and tools to agents of decentralized violence (which anyone can be).
The only way to address decentralized violence, is through decentralized material support to targeted people.
Decentralized Support!
Centralized supports (that are often touted as solutions by state apologist leftists) are vulnerable to cooptation and state capture.
@ekg
The foundational aspect of the state—any state—is violence.