Political Rhetoric, Legislation and the Flavours of Violence

"Violence is never the answer."

- My middle school teacher

Well, okay. I get that this is a silly way to start off this piece, but this is relevant, I promise. It's a heavy topic, and never ceases to be timely, unfortunately, no matter where you live and who you are. In fact, it's so ubiquitous everywhere where people gather, that Thomas Hobbes placed it at the foundation of society itself. Back when he wrote his Leviathan, he conceptualized the sovereign state as not only protecting its population from violence, but also as the only legitimate entity to impart it onto an individual. And that second part is the point that likes to disappear in discussions.

In discourse around legislation, there is usually a shared understanding that laws are basically just mutually agreed upon rules. A gentleman's agreement, that, if broken, will incur a proportionate penalty. This is the charitable way of wording it. It makes sense then, to find justification for such rules. Usually this is framed as breaches of the law being detrimental to some aspect of society, hence justifying the penalty. In this scenario, violence goes both ways, otherwise, the penalties applied are not proportionate. Thomas Hobbes did account for this scenario, mind you, it's entirely within the Leviathan's right, to dole out punishment as it sees fit, it would require the likes of Machiavelli to come along and argue why that's not in its interest. Of course, knowing now, how France and Russia have historically dealt with this specific scenario gives the arms of the Leviathan pause nowadays, but with modern problems come modern solutions.

I used to think that Political Rhetoric was largely dead, but I was very much mistaken. It's less of the classical idea of political rhetoric that the sophists employed and has been attributed to many a great leader in its time. Looking at how it's employed nowadays though, I wonder how accurate that latter statement is though, in all honesty. Most political rhetoric nowadays is very subtle and its role isn't necessarily to convince, but rather to explain. In a way, this is the far more effective form to employ rhetoric anyway, since if the audience believes to have understood some natural truth, then there's really no need to convince them of anything. Merely remind them of that truth that will dictate the only remaining solution. I'll not go into the details of rhetoric as it's applied here, but this basic tenet applied to the topic of violence is going to be useful in the understanding of the mechanics, as well as help understand a few very chiefly European problems that now need to be resolved.

The Measure of Violence

Violence goes both ways, but violence does not equal violence. For one, not every person isn't able to inflict the same amount of physical violence against a target, and a window for example can't withstand as much violence as a brick wall can, before it needs to be replaced. Similarly, not every window requires the same effort and resources to replace. A succinct method to measure violence then, could be to determine the damage caused. However, considering the monetary value of objects, medical costs and services are neither isotropic in time and space, nor self-consistent, this measure is not very practical. After all, this would imply that physical violence against a person living in a country without socialized healthcare would be much more grievous, than physical violence committed against a person living in Norway, for example, and while the insurance company might agree with this assessment, I imagine said Norwegian might take issue with the claim. The easy approach here, is to remove money from the equation - at least for now, and rather inspect the effects of violence on a human level.

Survivors of violence often live with trauma, be it the psychological kind, such as PTSD, dissosiative conditions, anxiety disorders or even certain kinds of amnesia effects, or the physical kind, such as chronic pains, illness, or permanent loss of bodily functions or limbs. Similarly, a monetary loss will remove an amount of spending power that will prevent the hypothetical purchase of future goods and/or services. It's then sensible to measure violence in the options removed from the victim. This doesn't yield an approach for compensation and it's not generally possible to translate this measure into another without further assumptions. However, it does provide a rough estimate for comparisons across cases, that - while not scalable - at least identifies cases in which the measures are equal. Think of it as a sort of discrete metric. What this enables, is an equalization between instances while discounting the theoretical differences in capacities. For example, consider an altercation during a political demonstration between a protester and a policeman. In many cases this begins with a relatively benign action (on the part of the protesters), though here the ethical considerations would differ dramatically, if the measure were something along the lines of intent, or monetary value. If the measure were intent, there could be a case made for the protester and the policeman sharing more or less the same amount of intent. Now of course, a policeman at a political demonstration more often than not is wearing some sort of armor, possibly a helmet and a shield, meaning that the intent of the protester scarcely matters in the outcome, because of the difference in resources. If the measure were monetary value a case could be made that the equipment worn by the policeman might be damaged, and hence an interest exists from preventing damages to relatively expensive equipment. Considering the outcomes of such altercations, both these measures then are almost comedically flawed. If we chiefly inspect the outcome, a very different narrative emerges. Then, the greater measure of violence will have been inflicted primarily on the person most grievously injured by the altercation, or the temporarily occupied, provided that is not their intent, or professional occupation to begin with. Now, the role of law enforcement in this space is very interesting, considering that their job is technically prevention of harm done to a community.

Law Enforcement and the Pitfalls of Prevention

It’s tempting to employ a naive approach of establishing a simple formula in order to judge whether an action taken by law enforcement (as well as the remaining judicial system) can be considered justified, within the margin of error of the individual. The statistician will be familiar of the standard deviations σ. Following this, whether an action was justified could be charted as

c - p +/- σ

where c is the violence committed, p the violence prevented and σ the standard deviation of human error. Luckily, neither Gauss, nor nature care particularly for homocentric ideas, and the Gaussian curves find plenty of application in sociological phenomena. Then, since c is visible a posteriori, and σ is a statistical measure, the prevention of violence is then the only unknown variable. Its magnitude however only exists in the hypothetical, so here an ideological assumption must be made. States such as the US and many other countries in the Imperial Core make more or less explicit their allegiances by not implementing a legal recourse for police misconduct. This will become relevant again later. For this section, it’s interesting to inspect the assumptions required to arrive at this result. Implicitly, such a system assumes that whatever harm the hypothetical policeman takes outweighs, or at least matches the harm intended by the person they whose options are reduced.

This, by the way, is in line with the perception of law enforcement as a hero job, meaning a professional occupation that bears so much risks and requires so much courage that they are automatically to be considered heroes in the public eye. These jobs often enjoy extra-judicial privileges, the closer to the state apparatus they operate. Why this is a problem, will be expanded upon later.

Considering misconduct is inevitable in most jobs, whether intentional or not, and often this happens in response to relatively benign crimes, such as shoplifting, loitering, or indeed non-criminal activities (refer to the long history of police violence in the US for examples) the assumption about the intended violence committed must then be maximized. Here, the language around the actual altercation begins to change. Where political protesters involved become “violent protesters”, law enforcement remains just that. Law enforcement. Enforcement as a word implies a necessity and frames the protesters as not only the instigators, but also as actively in the wrong. This is often not the case.

This is historically visible in context of freedom movements in comprador imperialist nations, especially if they have 1. Won the (armed) conflict against the imperialists and 2. Have since joined the imperial core.

As an example, take the relationship between the former British Empire and the US. The British Empire’s direct descendants still have considerable global influence in terms of politics and economics, however, since their glory days they have been superceded by one of its former colonies. The regime of King George III, whose direct descendants still hold a seat of aristocracy in the UK today, is widely accepted as having been absolutist as well as in the wrong, as it pertains to the handling of the US, which has since then moved into the very center of the Imperial Core. There, what would have been law enforcement at the time, are considered foreign soldiers, or royalists at best, stripping them of legitimacy within the sphere. Notice how the implied necessity of their existence has disappeared. On the other hand, what would have been considered militant protesters have taken up the mantle of militant revolutionaries, or maybe republican militias, which also strips them of their role as ill-intending instigators of violence. What these revolutionaries at the time often share with protesters – peaceful or not – is the wish for deep-cutting, often systemic change. It is odd then, that there is a considerable annual number of protests that are suppressed violently by law enforcement, while there are virtually none that actually cause systemic change. The Leninist will tell you at this point that systemic change is never the product of reform alone (and I happen to believe them), however what’s much more interesting to our discussion here, has us return to the formula c - p +/- σ.

Unless all protesters are wrong, almost all of the time, there exists a deep imbalance in the democratic process. If course not all protests are justified, but the ratio here would imply that for example most protests addressing the lacking climate policy of predominantly first world countries, protests addressing the causes of what the neo-liberal markets have cheekily dubbed the “housing crisis”, unequal distribution of wealth, access to food and educational resources, and protests calling for the resignations of openly racist, classist or corrupt officials are all so deeply flawed in their message that they don’t require consideration in the legislative process. Considering most of these protests are very much non-violent, attended by liberals or non-class-conscious proletariat, law enforcement employing prevention here is primarily repressive, rather than secure. More importantly, this implies a stark division between the system of government and the people that exist within it, which separates the interest of institutions including law enforcement from that of the vox populi. However, if this is the case, then what exactly does law enforcement actually prevent?

The Flavours of Violence

Legal recourse – the hopefully judicially relevant part of the law enforcement process – exists for a wide spectrum of breaches of the social contract. This is often proportionate to the very extreme of this spectrum, disproportionate to most of the rest. Since the deprivation of capital is also a flavour of violence under the measure defined in the first section, then theft generally can be understood as some form of violence. Exhibit A: Shoplifting. Shoplifting in retail accounts for about 0.4% of annual losses, often combined into a shrink sum [cite: Renegade Cut: Shoplifting]. How severe the legal recourse to this is, is usually dependent on the gross monetary value of the stolen items. In cases where this sum is significant to the entity missing it, this might be proportionate, in the much more common cases – precariat stealing goods to stave off hunger, offset living costs such as rent, or basic hygiene products, usually sold by large multi-billion USD international companies, it tends not to be. Depriving a legal entity such as Walmart of a loaf of bread does not make a measurable difference in any of the income statistics other than shrink, which in itself is more than offset by the profit margin legally reaching 30% in gastronomic branches, and far exceeding that in most other industries. On the other hand, depriving an individual of freedom for any extended amount of time will irreparably shift the relationship of the individual with the state, in the most severe cases causing long lasting psychological trauma, further worsening a presumably already suboptimal living situation.

Exhibit B: Fiscal Fraud, or specifically: tax fraud. Tax fraud is an odd crime in that it’s magnitude only becomes viable once one has access to enough capital that there should exist no anxieties about the continued existence of the individual committing it. At the same time, the nature of tax fraud limits the possible amount of returns to a taxable fraction of the individual’s income. Here, the hypothetical harm done is to the community, whose funds for supposedly altruistic, universally useful projects is drained of the same amount. Such projects tend to fall into the categories of infrastructure, social security or modernisation category [cite spending bill]. The legal recourse here varies widely, depending on the specific circumstances – which theoretically is warranted.

Considering the severity of the outcomes of both these offenses, it seems odd that shoplifters are not only much more frequently confronted with law enforcement than tax evaders, they are then met with more open hostility. Another qualifying factor in violence against the state must then be connected to who is committing it. These can be easily understood as disparate classes. Further, assuming that a certain class isn't meant to be immune, and these signifiers are material, these signifiers should somehow pertain to the subject of violence, as well as the way they are allowed to commit it. However, if inspected, this ability to commit violence increases with proximity to power - especially state power, due to the lack of repercussions beyond losing political favour. This is not the danger it's cracked up to be, outside from countries that are on the brink of revolution, and the often forgotten story about revolutions is the toll this state takes on the people before this can be realized. This means that once again, the ability to commit violence - or have it be committed upon somebody - is a staple of the bourgeois. This accusation however is not one that will stand for very long, if leveled using these words. As such, concepts are introduced that legitimize this disparity, using language that doesn't directly imply violence, but rather frames it as a punishment for a breach of contract.

The Pacifist State, its Military and its People

Violence is inflicted onto the proletariat on a daily basis. Be it in form of rent that technically enslaves them into occupations that are neither fulfilling, nor healthy, preventing upward mobility into stable financial situations for a large part of the proletariat and favouring hoarding wealth in forms of private companies or bank accounts, or even the deliberate choice to favour legislation allowing companies to poison people for profit [source]. However, mainstream political talking points place heavy emphasis on pacifism within the civilian's daily life. Often, exceptions are given for extreme cases, such as political radicals and foreign invaders, though of course these two are either defined by the state they act in opposition to, or express inherent hostility towards the state by the act of a military invasion. However, systemic issues within state legislation for example, are to be resolved using pacifist measures. Surely this is a good goal to pursue, if a pacifist solution is an option.

Pacifist solutions are available in issues that can be solved through system reforms that do not require the system abandon any of the basic tenets, spoken or not, which form the base that construct all subsequent laws. This is of course a Kantian ideal and in no way reflective of the actual process of legislature, but if nothing else, a look at the sum of all laws will give an overall impression of said bases. The pacifist option does however not carry the weight of its less popular counterparts. When capital dominates, as is described by Marx and Engels, it is granted autonomy and individuality. The continued accumulation of the same necessitates the objectification of the means by which capital can be accrued, which is the product of proletarian labour, and hence the worker itself. The voices of the workers then, as numerous as they might appear, do not make tangible impact on a legislative system that favours capital over the autonomy of the subjects residing in it. The way to force motion then, is not to file complaints through the channels provided, but rather to attack capital itself.

Vandalism, Reproductive Rights, and Reflexes of the Machine

In 1973 the US Supreme Court sided with the right for pregnant women to abortions in the Court Case of Roe vs. Wade in a decision that at that point had been long time coming and would be hotly debated into the 21st century, where mainly Republican reactionaries would try to shoehorn religious fundamentalist arguments and pseudo-scientific rhetoric into their case into regaining the stranglehold of control over a class of people that had been making slow, but steady steps toward emancipation and equality before the law. In May 2022, drafts to overturn this decision and thus reinstating this stranglehold were leaked to the public by a staffer of a Republican Senator. I will purposely choose not to name him here, in hopes him, as well as this attempt will fail, and then shortly fall into obscurity.

Though the population of the US, as well as critics the world over would condemn the memo, as well as its language, several "Red States" have put so called "trigger laws" into place, that will become part of state-wide legislation the moment, Roe is overturned. As internationalist citizens outside the US, there is little one can do to affect this decision, where even direct protests have so far failed to slow the process. This is one of the more visible acts of violence a state can inflict upon their citizens without actually employing the use of physical threats beyond that implicit in the existence of a law, and an institution to enforce it. It very much limits the bodily freedom of a person, technically equal before the law, for a choice they need not have made on their own. Mind, that pregnancy may be a result of several different factors, not all voluntary, nor do all people have access to means of contraception, regardless of whether they want and/or require it. This is maybe especially transparent, considering the politicians insisting on this are often liable to ignore the well-being of the child post-birth, to the point of denying them basic needs, such as education, safe environments to grow up, and healthy sustenance, if they happen to be part of some class with fewer monetary means [There’s a list somewhere, Joe Biden’s also on it]. At this point, the notion of said law preventing violence committed upon a (hypothetical) person, falls flat, considering a good number of them do succumb to a variety of ailments, before they reach adulthood.

Said Republican reactionaries will cite what they call a “pro-life” argument, which in essence really is more of a patriarchal control argument, and claim they are in essence saving a life, each time an abortion – any abortion – is denied. Let’s assume they are correct, for the sake of the argument, and bodily autonomy is always less important than the life of a conceived child. Even then, banning abortions themselves is not actually the way to go. There are a myriad of studies attesting that once abortions have been banned in any given community, the people affected will often seek help either outside of that community, or will turn to amateur measures, many of which tend to be more dangerous to both the unborn child, as well as the person carrying them. In fact, this would suggest, that in order to avoid attempts at abortions, the number of unwanted pregnancies should be reduced first and foremost. Then, since bodily autonomy is clearly an issue we are willing to step over, a much more efficient solution would be to lower the fertility in of people with testicles. An easy proposed solution to this would be to severely irradiate any testicles on a person. This dramatically decreases the chance of conception, even if technically other forms of contraception would have failed. Statistically then, couples would have to make repeated attempts at conceptions, reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies. I’m not particular about the method. Imagine somebody passing by Matt Gaetz and just hitting him in the crotch with a hammer made of radium. Ta-da! Potential lives saved. Now, this is very obviously some sort of violence, because this version of the solution is not only committed with laws and jailtime, but with an invasive procedure that the affected should have had the final say in. How then, would the male population react to a bill like this even being considered in any courtroom? Rightfully, this will very likely be cause for revolt and I have little trouble picturing armed militias storming ball-removing clinics with semi-automatics to defend their rights.

The reaction to the memo was not silent either. It may not yet have involved the traditional revolutionary core, bound to emerge when one class insists on seizing control over the other to the extent that it undermines their basic human rights. Instead, somebody wrote a message in chalk on the sidewalk in front of Sen. Susan Collin’s house. I know that’s tame, and many structural Marxists will find it hard to approve, but I’m not here to judge an angry, but powerless person’s reaction to their own government discussing one of the greatest humanitarian regressions of the last five decades, I’m here to look at what happened next.

First of all, this act – throwing chalk at a yard – was condemned from both sides of the aisle, democrats advocating for a pacifist solution to this offense, while republicans arguing this being a dangerous anti-American act of domestic terrorism. Police presence around the homes, routes to work, as well as places of employments of said senators was increased. This reaction is so striking to me, because of the relative discrepancy between the initial offense – the attempt at overturning a basic human right – the response – a letter in chalk – and the reaction – armed militarized police officers being deployed. The response here, can barely be understood as a violent act, apart from the most liberal definition of the word. It is of course a veiled threat, albeit a non-specific one. Not only does it state a demand “do not take this choice from us”, but it also serves as a reminder, that the senators that they are not immune to everything. They might be, in the eyes of the law, but in actuality they’re not. No law in the world will stop a handful of chalk in mid-air, nor will it stop a brick. Hence, the deployment of law enforcement. So then why does this reaction not sit right with a lot of people?

Besides this looking so very desperate by the very nature of the action, I believe it’s present somewhere in the onlooker’s mind, that chalk is harmless. It’s not even real vandalism. On the other hand, I also believe that the presence of police as expressly a safety measure always implies some level of violence to a.) have been committed for them to be present, and b.) be committed in the future in the name of safety and/or order. That is their job. Still, the language inherent in things such as vandalism and employment of law enforcement frames it as something it very obviously isn’t.

Answers in Violence

So it is clear, that the trusim of violence never being the answer is very much in line with bourgeois interests and barely tenable, when faced with existential threats from a systemic structure. Not only that, it tends to create genuine confusion in people, when violence does seem like it’s the only answer that grants a chance at continued existence in the first place. Every judicial system does control for this, which probably exacerbates the problem. An individual that inflicts harm to another non-governmental individual during a threat on their life will be granted the “free pass” of self defense. If it is for the continuation of ones own existence, violence very much does seem to be a legitimate answer to a problem. This argument however, heavily favours the ruling classes. Proletarian citizens can’t necessarily make an executive decision to limit any other person’s freedom without the use of physical violence, when self defense is permitted by law and socially acceptable. The ruling class can however decide to say – withhold important medical procedures that would otherwise threaten ones autonomy, or long-time health, make living conditions untenable or deny it at all.

On a somber note: I understand the wound about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is still fresh, and it hurts for a number of reasons to speak about it. I have avoided talking about it in all other essays until this one, because there’s no way to speak about it delicately without offending somebody, and with somebody I mean somebody reasonable. In many European countries, the ideal of pacifism is being put through maybe one of the hardest stress tests apart from a direct invasion of their own country. However, I will use this opportunity to staunchly position myself behind military supplies for Ukraine. I will carefully voice my support for those that fight against the Russian troops, though I refuse to paint the troops themselves as uncomplicated villains in the story. In the end, it’s still proletariat slaughtering proletariat in the name of a bourgeois vision that should have stayed dead in favour of ambitions for a future of class equality (interpret what you need here), abolition of actual unjust realities such as poverty, global hunger, educational inequalities, hyper-nationalist tendencies, and many many other things one could have spent time remedying instead of a short-sighted attempt at curing a wounded ego. Once this whole thing will have played out, I expect to say my piece in some detail as well, but until then, everything I could say at this point will age poorly with almost absolute certainty, and I fully expect to pull back on several things I’ve said regarding it around friends and family either way. I decided to bring this up, because there has been a new division in many European populations. For this following segment, I will charitably call those arguing against all military involvement “pacifists”, those that argue for military aid in form of material, not troops “moderates”, and those that insist on sending the youth of today to the front-lines “warmongering Neanderthals”. I’m not subtle about being hostile towards the latter of the three takes, as it is the only objectively wrong action I see being presented, coincidentally backed by many a fascist, if that’s not an indication for anything. Although I’m not hopeful for the first of the three camps to change their minds, but I understand the fallacy. They’ve been raised believing that violence really is never a legitimate answer, and they’ve had the luxury – or misfortune, depending on who you’re talking with – to never have to question this. Either way, this problem feels like a tragedy in the making, should Ukraine fall to Russia and add another feather in the hat of modern theodicy, and a fool’s errand, should Ukraine win out. It also feels like a damning symptom of an ideology that only ever rested on capitalist comforts and the active choice to ignore all international conflicts, imperialist or not. As a socialist, I do believe material aid needs to be lent to Ukraine, because the world would be a worse place, if Putin succeeds in this annexation as well, and the rest of the EU as well as NATO should feel a moral obligation to give what they can for rebuilding efforts, if only because they did play a not insignificant part in maintaining the strained global political relations between two equally imperialist and capitalist camps.

I’ve mentioned myself seeing the tragedy of this conflict in the slaughter of proletariat for a cause, neither group has any stakes in. I don’t have any practical answers that will even begin to solve this conflict. However, I will underline the importance of taking to heart the goals set after each war, again and again and again. Never again. Avoiding these kinds of tragedy, isn’t just about finding “good rulers”, building “good governments” and making sure the good guys have the bigger stick, when push comes to shove. The US has tried to tell this story since the 1950’s, and so far all their stick has accomplished is staving off criticism, whenever they decided they were seeing imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction. Putin still annexes Russia’s neighbours on a semi-annual basis. If “never again” is actually going to become one of our top priorities, we will have to let go of “violence is never the answer”, understand the nature of violence on a micro and macro-basis, as well as its role in upholding systems that clearly do not care about the well-being of the general population. There might even be a chance to keep this promise without throwing capitalism out the window as a whole – as much as I’d like to pretend there wasn’t. Wars are not fought by countries, their rulers, or the ruling class in general. They are fought by their people. Like I said, and will say as long as it goes on: It’s proletariat killing proletariat. If they understood violence however, I believe many, many more of them would make the sane decision and step away from what they would have propagandistically been told was their sworn duty in favour of maintaining their own life and humanity, and maybe even turning their resources toward the goal that should never be forgotten: Serve their people (again, interpret whatever you want into this). So no, not only can violence be a legitimate answer, sometimes it is the only answer. As usual, it’s more important what form it takes, and who is the target. For those looking for a hint: A crushing boot tends to come from above.