A Short Reflection on Violence
Just as everything is political, just as everything is ideological, it is true, or at least, in the current epoch of postmodern capitalism, that everything is violent. But just like the domination of ideology, which pervades every aspect of social discourse, artistic production, and cultural life, just like the dominance of the political, which influences social and cultural developments and relations, and even, just like the economic, which in the classic Marxist paradigm determines superstructural life in the last instance, so too, does violence play a requisite role in society. Here, in this short blog, I wish to explicate on four distinct types/discourses of violence that I find pervasive in society: the violence of the status quo; the justified violence of the past; the lesser violence of our “good” society; and finally, the societal seperation of “good” and “bad” violence. This list is by no means an exhaustive account of all forms of violence that permeate through capitalist society, but rather, this brief inquiry hopes to at least provide introductory insight to an important tool for capital’s domination over society.
First, and maybe, most obvious to those with disposition to radical politics, is that of the violence inherent within the status quo. The state is a fundamentally violent, exploitative, and dominating institution, who first and foremost, serves the role of maintaining the status quo for wealthy elites; upholding a system of exploitation of the working class; and reproducing itself (for the sake of simplicity, I will avoid a deep dive into the Poulantzas-Miliband debate on the nature of the state, for both structural and instrumental views of the state both at the very least, agree about it’s violent nature.) And despite the naive and myopic liberal nonsense, the state, especially in our capitalist epoch, provides no benevolence. By definition, let alone in the more important real conditions of existence, the state is fundamentally violent; a useful definition highlighting this is provided by Raymond Geuss in Philosophy and Real Politics, Geuss defines the state as: “an abstract structure of power and authority distinct both from the population and from the prince, aristocracy, or ruling class, which successfully enforces a monopoly of legitimate violence within a certain territory.” Of course, the definition of the state as a monopoly of violence long predates Geuss’ short and brilliant work, but Geuss provides what I think is a comprehensive and exhaustive yet simultaneously concise definition of the state. But what this long radical tradition all agrees on is that by definition, the state is a violent entity.
In his famous essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” Louis Althusser provides us with the two primary violent institutions that allow the state to reproduce itself: those being the repressive state apparatus and the ideological state apparatus. The repressive state apparatuses are the obvious and most outwardly violent (yet as will be explored later, are so immersed in societal norms that they are not even largely conceived as violent) aspects of the state– the police, military, etc. The violent armed bodies of capital that protect wealth and property; enforce the violence of law and borders; enforce the violence of carcerality; that evict people and arrest the homeless and other forms of structural violence too long to list. But for Althusser, what is arguably more important for the reproduction of the existing order is that of the ideological state apparatuses. Ideological state apparatuses like schools, the church, mass media, political parties, sports and social clubs, etc. are a formal part of the state that engage in epistemic violence to shape the consciousness of the masses and (re)produce the existing order. For Althusser ideology represents the imaginary relationship between the subject and the real material conditions of their existence; ideology is not our experience of reality but our perceived representation of our experience with reality, and said experience is violently manipulated.
As Walter Benjamin in his “Critique of Violence” and Jacques Derrida in his famous reading of Benjamin “Force of Law” both highlight, the nature of law itself is violent. Violence is necessary to maintain legality. As Benjamin points out, violence is the means in which law is instituted, preserved, and then enforced. Derrida further extends Benjamin’s point to the contradictory nature of law, that is, that law is itself “justified” violence, yet at the same time, requires an instance of unjustified rebellious violence to establish itself as “justified” in the first place. You do not have the law and the legal order without repressive violence, and this legal violence (Benjamin uses the difficult to translate term Gewalt) is one of the most societally ingrained and accepted. Even discourse on unjust laws, corrupt police, etc. oft fail to highlight law itself as violent and repressive by its very essence.
The state, how the state maintains itself, and the law itself are all violent, but beyond that, even everyday life under capitalist domination is fundamentally an experience of violence. The United State is violent to the core, as it only exists due to the genocide and stealing of land from the Indigenous populations and then built off the backs of enslaved African labour. Furthermore, the United States is maintained domestically through exploited labour (oftentimes modern day forms of slavery such as prison labour) and abroad through imperialism and neocolonialism. Capitalism itself is naturally exploitative and destructive to the individual, the community and culture, other nations, and the global environment. Structural racism, sexism and patriarchy, queerphobia, etc. all represent forms of experienced violence; climate catastrophe is a form of violence; the prison system is violence, etc. As Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer point out, enlightenment has become ensnared within domination and the result is a historical march towards annihilation filled with utter horrors and atrocities beyond comprehension. As Giorgio Agamben notes, the concentration camp has become the paradigm of political modernity– industrial violence and slaughter are the bedrock of the very order we inhabit. We live in a wretched social order based on the nihilistic disregard for human life.
As Max Stirner famously says: “The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.” Contemporary thinkers Slavoj Zizek in his book Violence, and Alain Badiou in his book The Rebirth of History both expand upon this dual nature of violence. The structural violence of the state and capitalist society is so normalized that it is not even perceived as being violent or even as happening. People couldn't care less about the millions of people slaughtered every year from the structural violence of capitalism, yet, are shocked whenever an individual commits a crime. Murder may be perceived as abhorrent and publicly decried, but then the masses oftentimes turn a blind eye to industrial-scale murder. In fact, just as Mark Fisher points out that the individualization of mental distress protects the capitalist status quo, so too does the individualization of violence. As long as violence is perceived and portrayed as the violence of unwell individuals as opposed to a social order based on domination, oppression, and violence, that very social order is protected. More so, violence of the establishment is justified but violence of rebellion is not. Despite the violence of capitalism, climate catastrophe, racism, sexism, queerphobia, settler colonialism, ableism, and other forms of oppression structurally embedded in the social order, this violence is normalized and justified, whereas the necessary liberatory and revolutionary violence is frowned upon.
The next three “types” of violence I want to highlight are more discourses around violence, which although may be forms of violence through their manipulation of the subjectivity of people, more so serve the role of legitimizing and therefore hiding the violence as explored above. So the first of these discourses is the role of “past” violence. Violence is oftentimes recognized as acceptable in the past yet despised in the present. Violence is seemingly always justified whenever it was a necessity in the past, but it can never happen again. The conditions of the past allowed for justified violence but those conditions always remain in the past– it is never justified now. The Revolutionary War or the Civil War may be viewed as justified, but never can any such violence be allowed again. Violence was what gave us basic workers rights, civil rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, etc. but even progressives oftentimes shun the thought of violence happening again, even if in the past, it proved so effective. Despite the arguably most successful instance of left-wing politics in the US being the militant labour movement of the 1890s to 1930s, the left often disregards such violence. Benjamin specifically theorizes a “divine” violence fundamentally different from the law-preserving and dominating violence but this is often disregarded.
In Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher cites an interview with Badiou in which he says:
To justify their conservatism, the partisans of the established order cannot really call it ideal or wonderful. So instead, they have decided to say that all the rest is horrible. Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect goodness. But we’re lucky that we don’t live in a condition of evil. Our democracy is not perfect. But it’s better than the bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it’s not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don’t make racist nationalist declarations like Milosevic. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we don’t cut their throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda, etc.
Badiou’s polemic perfectly sums up another important discourse surrounding violence. There is always a violence of some “other” in the world that therefore absolves our current violent society as somehow acceptable, or even, no longer violent. This sort of “lesser evil” thinking serves the role of both maintaining the political status quo as well as justifying and denying the violence of the status quo (the contradictory position is held that violence is simultaneously justified as well as simply not occurring.)
Last but certainly not least in the discourse of violence, is another contradiction that Badiou points out in The Rebirth of History– the conceptions of “good” vs “bad” violence. While Badiou does not use these terms himself, he highlights the ways in which certain riots are perceived as good and justified while others are perceived as violent, bad, and unjustified based on their relationship with capital. Riots against enemies of the West are encouraged while riots against capitalism are execrated. Our own imperialist wars of aggression are justified but wars by our nation's “enemies” are not; our colonial projects are justified yet decolonial violence is not justified. The capitalist state and its propaganda machine will always work overtime to make sure the public view of violence beneficial to capital is always perceived as good, and any threats are disdained.
These four forms/discourses surrounding violence play an important role in maintaining the existing capitalist order. Again, by no means is the list four exhaustive nor are the brief inquiries into each of these four forms/discourses complete in any shape or form. This short blog only serves the purpose of beginning to inform and hopefully create discourse regarding violence– for the very least we can do is begin to attack its foundations and reveal its horror to those who may not be aware of it.