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.
The foundational aspect of the state—any state—is violence.
@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?
@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.
@HeavenlyPossum yes, my argument is that that violence doesn't originate from the Icelandic state.
Capitalist doesn't make up the Icelandic state, they are foreign investors. Which they have to let im to follow international agreements.
Iceland didn't choose to be a member of the EU, in fact they aren't. They had to join when the rest of the nordic did, unless they wanted to live on fish and warm rocks. They found a compromise.
It's not their violence.
I’m sorry, but this is all gibberish and I’m not sure how to keep talking to you about this.
“The Icelandic state violently enforces its borders [to achieve any goal]” is agnostic about that goal. The fact remains that the Icelandic state, like every state in existence, violently interferes with the free movement of people around the world.
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
@ekg @HeavenlyPossum “I choose to define terms based on my own imagination, therefore *you* are using the terms wrong.”
Let us know when you are able to travel between countries without armed police deciding whether you’re allowed to.
@Moss @HeavenlyPossum I never said anything of the sort. I said I mean something else by the same word. And yes that happens all the time while traveling.
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 me, disagreeing with a point I didn't make, on someone else's post
Them: okay, fine,
Me: WELP, THIS IS GOING NOWHERE
@neonsnake @HeavenlyPossum no.
I said that the specific violence reference is not universal. And only a select few state has the capacity for that kind of violence.
Me saying that a debate on whatever a state necessary means violence is me ending that debate before asking an related question to the topic.
Every state, everywhere, that has ever existed, has been violent every single day of its existence.
A “capacity for that kind of violence” might be unique to a handful of states that can project force globally. That does not somehow mean that other states are not intrinsically, fundamentally, pervasively violent.
@HeavenlyPossum @neonsnake this is only true because you in part define a state as violent. Which might be appropriate, but it's not the definition I am used too.
The state is not violent because I define it that way; “the state” is a name we give to an intrinsically violent social form.
This isn’t a “he said, she said” situation. There are these things out there, these socio-political institutions of elite rule through violence, and the name we give them is “the state.”
@HeavenlyPossum @neonsnake language is restrictive. By calling these organisations for violent, or evil, it becomes harder to see them as anything else.
I don't want to dismiss all acts of what we might traditionally call state's as violent before understanding what lead to those decisions being made, and the consequence they might have.
Not everything every state does is violent. But every state is, fundamentally and pervasively and continuously, violent. Violent in service of elite rule and exploitation.
I do not struggle to “see them as anything else” by correctly identifying and assessing the state.
@HeavenlyPossum @neonsnake okay, that doesn't mean that it doesn't makes it harder.
I truly want to give every subject as much benefit of the doubt as possible.
@ekg @HeavenlyPossum @neonsnake
I think five thousand years has been more than enough time to give states a chance to show that they can be benevolent, non-coercive, non-hierarchical, non-exploitive, sustainable institutions.
They've given the answer, it's louder and clearer every day, all around us.
I think they think “violence” means solely “interstate conflict,” in which case, sure, plenty of states don’t aggress against each other.
Which completely misses the point that the state constitutes an elite that monopolizes violence against the rest of the society over which it rules to perpetuate its rule and exploitation.
@RD4Anarchy @HeavenlyPossum @neonsnake the idé that invitation can't occur because it hasn't magically solved all problems is bad. What we should look at is the trend, are states today's getting less violent?
@ekg "By calling these organisations for violent [..] it becomes harder to see them as anything else."
Well, they aren't anything else. A state is literally defined by its successful claim of a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within a given territory. That is what makes a state a state.
@31113 the state is in part defined by it's ability to call certain kind of violence legitimate. That doesn't mean it is violent.
An organisation that successfully called all violence illegal, would still be a state.
@ekg No, it does mean it is violent.
Every border, every law, every claim of private property is enforced by state violence or the threat of state violence. If your state has laws, lawmakers, courts, law enforcement, prisons, borders, it is violent. If it doesn't have any of those, by what metric is it a state?
You can say that you like or agree with certain uses of violence (like "any person who does x should go to prison") and you'll find plenty of people agreeing with you, after all political ideologies mostly just differ on who gets to do what kind of violence upon whom and for what reason, but you cannot deny that it is violence.
@31113 what you are describing isn't violence, but institution to manage violence. With the exception of prisons, that are inheritantly violent.
But law enforcement isn't, it can be done voluntarily.
@ekg Laws and borders are threats of state violence. Everyone creating a law or drawing a border, is issuing a threat of state violence. Every court judges which person is to be subjected to which kind and severity of state violence and police, prisons, military and border patrol enact state violence.
"But law *enforcement* isn't, it can be done *voluntarily*."
Say that again, but slowly. How do you force someone to do or not do something voluntarily?
Every definition of violence out there defines it as a use of force against someone or something else. Law enforcement is in every sense of the word literally, unavoidably, inherently violent.
@31113 empathy isn't violence. Asking people to mindful of others, one of the most common way to enforce laws, is entirely voluntary. You don't have to listen to the advice.
My mom spoke about how she used this approach with kinder gardeners, literally sitting them down in a cirkel and asking how should we treat each other. Obviously with a lot of guidance.
@ekg @31113 Ok, let's see if I can make sense in a kind way...
Laws are not founded on empathy. Asking people to be kind to each other by following the law is asking people to act in a way that keeps you from sicking the state unto them.That is, you are trying to resolve a conflict *without* involving the state, outside of state supervision. When the state involves itself, the parties are brought into a court by police officers, and the parties are threatened with *punishments* if they don't comply with the state's orders.
You see the violence of the state when a person doesn't want to follow the "rules". The only option there is to force them to do that with some kind of deprivation
@ruakueqche @31113 I don't think toddlers think in those terms, nor do I think those that would hurt others do.
Reality is that crimes can be predicted and prevented with good policy. Many so called crimes are of necessity, you will never convince a starving mother not to steal food for her kids. Solution is TANIF Temporary Assistants for Needy Familys.
Their exist a small number of individuals that doesn't understand empathy, they are called psychopaths.
@ruakueqche I honestly fear the real "conflict" here is when I say state I mean usaid, cia democracy support*, or the state department. While most of these anarchist think about their local school board, hoa, or beat cop.
*democracy support is the practice of going into hostile countries and supporting the opposition with technical support, like computers or stinger missiles.
@ekg I hope this does not sound dismissive, but, if you are going to argue with anarchists about the state, you should use the same definitions as anarchists.
But yes, anarchists have a bigger definition of the state than just those state programs. The state is the whole of government. Local school boards and hoa are state-like, though I would not call them a state because they don't have the monopoly of legitimate violence, the state they are inserted into does. Anarchists still would oppose those institutions because they work through domination and hierarchy.
Opposition to domination and hierarchy are core to anarchy. The state is the biggest institution that is founded on domination and hierarchy, but it's not the only one. Does that make sense?
btw, I'm responding because I find it fun. If you find it frustrating let me know and I'll stop
@ruakueqche I am well awere, I was just referring to what the term brings to mind. I should probably have used term "think" as in when I say state I think... But esl is a thing and mistakes happens.
Play states like the local school board or the hoa are not good representation of a state. They are allowed to exist in part because people don't really care about home owners or children.
@ekg @31113 We agree on this point: most crimes are caused by necessity. The anarchist position is that necessity is mainly caused by domination and hierarchy in our society.
Another common point is that, if we guarantee the basics of life to everyone, then most crime will go away. So it would not be TANF so much as Permanent Access to all Human Needs, PAHN
@ruakueqche @31113 I never argued against support, I referred to support that already exist.
I support UBI but their exist no such thing I can refer to as most support programs are conditional. The world food program is probably the closet, but it's under funded.
@HeavenlyPossum @ekg @neonsnake
Pretty much every living thing exercises violence or the threat of violence to exist. Even trees. Anarchy is violent, States are violent. So it's a facile point.
I don't like violence, but moralizing without describing any alternatives is just patting oneself on the back. We've been doing that for centuries, and look where it's gotten us.
@Phosphenes @HeavenlyPossum @neonsnake you aren't wrong, but it necessary to define what you want to see less of in the world. Saying that states are violent and I don't like it isn't bad.
Where things get iffy is when you denie states the ability to use violence to protect people from it.
Your face is a facile point.
@Phosphenes @HeavenlyPossum @ekg @neonsnake
> Pretty much every living thing exercises violence or the threat of violence to exist.
Unless you think every violence is equal in scope and justification, you've said absolutely nothing here... I find it almost insulting...
@Phosphenes @HeavenlyPossum @ekg @neonsnake I'm confused. Does violence cease to be violence if there is no alternative, and calling it violence nevertheless becomes moralizing?
@ekg @Phosphenes @neonsnake @hllizi
The alternative to the state’s monopoly over violence and the resulting unfreedom of that violence is statelessness and thus freedom. Hence the “anarchist” in my bio but I guess reading is facile.
@HeavenlyPossum @ekg @Phosphenes @neonsnake for the record, I didn't claim you didn't have an alternative in mind, I just pointed out an apparent unspoken assumption of the preceding toot. Not sure whether that's clear.
@Phosphenes @ekg @hllizi @neonsnake
No sorry, I understood—I was just building off what you said. Didn’t mean for it to come across as defensive towards you.
@HeavenlyPossum @Phosphenes @ekg @neonsnake that's what I thought, just wasn't entirely sure.
@ekg
If you expect this to lead nowhere, then don’t engage me about it.