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?
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.
@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.
@HeavenlyPossum Does border guards that violently protect their nations borders because they want to eat* responsible for that violence? *or stay out of prison as is the case in many places.
The UK invaded Iceland because they didn't think they would protect their borders. Is Iceland responsible for UK troops actions on their island?
Nation states can be as much subject of violence as anyone else.
> “Does border guards that violently protect their nations borders because they want to eat* responsible for that violence? *or stay out of prison as is the case in many places.”
This is just mixing up the principal with the agent.
> “The UK invaded Iceland because they didn't think they would protect their borders. Is Iceland responsible for UK troops actions on their island?”
No.
> “Nation states can be as much subject of violence as anyone else.”
States cannot be the subject of violence; people can.
@HeavenlyPossum which Is why I specified nation state, as the Icelandic state is made up of the Icelandic people.
No state is composed of all the people over which it holds a monopoly of violence. That’s not how states work.
@HeavenlyPossum the rule of thumb is that a half the workforce work for the state, and about half the populous is in the workforce.
How is it different from the border guard exempl; when the the EU tells 75k Icelanders: "enforce you border or eat Icelandic shark"?
The state is not a person and does not operate analogously to a person.
But honestly, it doesn’t matter at all. I asked which state was not violent and you failed to identify a single one. It doesn’t matter what excuse you want to offer for its violence; it remains true that all states are fundamentally, pervasively, and constantly violent.
@HeavenlyPossum The state is a tool to achieve an aim, the Icelandic state is controlled by people. The EU threatens those people to achieve their aims, the Icelandic state is used to achieve that aim.
You might as well ask me me to find an unblooded hammer on a battle field, and on my failure argue that hammers are inherently violent.
