Violence and the State

Renunciation of Violence

Sovereignty involves the government and the citizenry being fully responsible for internal discontents and tensions—in part because these are intrinsic to necessary change.

There are just two ways to deal with increasing social tensions arising from disagreement about what is fair and what changes to make in society—and both involve deliberate action:

  • Action = destructive coercion i.e. violence

    or

  • Action = thoughtful work = effort and talk i.e. politics

So violence is the antithesis of politics.

Harmony is the key civic value promoted by the tolerance intrinsic to peaceful coexistence. If harmony is the goal, then mature political life in a sovereign society requires each individual member to renounce the use of violence, on the grounds that it:

  • solves nothing or makes matters worse by breeding violence in others,
  • encourages State repression through the staffing of police, military and para-military organizations of the State by those prone to violence.

It is evident that renunciation of violence is a matter of personal willingness and intrinsically uncertain (at least in the current state of human evolution). Given the absence or uncertainty of renunciation, the leaders and government within a sovereign society turn to the State to maintain control and stability.

The State is a defender of the ethical order (PH"6G7) and does not experience itself as constrained by ethical-humane issues or society's values and existing laws. It acts in accord with a pragmatic imperative (PH"6G61). So it is not organised for political activity or submissive to political pressures e.g. lying to the government and the public is viewed as natural, normal and necessary.
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The State takes for granted that stability (= absence of violent social turmoil) may require more or less violent repression even if that fails to address underlying discords and dissatisfactions.

A crucial power claimed by the State is the determination that an emergency exists, so that all legal rules are explicitly suspended and State officials have free rein.

Mass Action & Propaganda

Mass action is the third way that change may come about: and the most direct and powerful. It refers to the way people act as they spontaneously do what they think is right and go about their life.

In the political realm, it should mean that police, soldiers and state bureaucrats would be unable to act as an arm of a rogue State insofar as they naturally and deeply share the views in wider society that they are being asked to ignore, suppress or prosecute.

Mass action determines much of what happens in any society, and, at times, it can bring about change. Especially when there is a big simple idea whose time has come e.g. many of the communist-dominated countries in Eastern Europe changed their regimes without violence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990.

Because of the power of society as a mass, much of the effort of the State is devoted to propaganda, news management, and the manipulation of language. The goal is to homogenize, simplify and shape popular thinking, and so foster mass support for State choices.

Originally posted: August-2009; Last updated: 8-Jun-2015