This is why studying history is important. It makes clear the dividing line between systems that use violence as a legitimate political tool and those that don’t.
> violence is the fundamental polical tool of the ruling class
A Weberian state is defined by its monopoly on violence [1]. So yes, the state--and by extension, almost by definition, its rulers--will use violence to further their state's political aims. (Mandatory Clausewitz: war is the continuation of politics by other means.)
That's very different from people within a state using violence to further political aims. Politics as a civic activity collapses when the population and its rulers fail to appreciate the difference between the two, which is why perhaps the singular question in designing governments throughout the ages has been how to enable rulers to deploy violence to further the state's collective aims while disabling them from doing so further their personal aims. (Althusser's simplification of the ruling class into a monolith is analytically enabling, but the political scientific equivalent of a spherical cow. You see a similar mistake made by foreigners describing others' political systems; no man rules alone, and no man rules unopposed.)
Also, when the political systems break down, i.e. personal political aims begin being openly pursued through violence, the order of impact starts with the poor. Even in the French Revolution, most of the rich escaped. In modern violent revolutions, the rulers have tended to leave with their wealth intact and egos bruised; the poor lose their lives and the middle class become the new poor.
I think you have misunderstood the term "ruling class". There is only one ruling class in a country, and the ruling class is not a monolithic entity. It is composed of different interest groups. But ultimately, these interest groups belong to the same class.
In a rough analogy, there're many companies, sometimes they unit, sometimes they fight against each other, but they all speak for the board, who rules the company, just an analogy
and, there're no "personal aims" in politics, personal aims can never play a decisive role in politics
Even in the most centralized empires, the emperor could only rely on a specific political group of the ruling class and could not achieve his political goals alone
I found many HN users thinking like this, "what if Xi want to ..." "Putin decided to do ...", in fact, before they do everything, they has to unite at least 100 others, and should be on behalf of majority of the ruling class
> a state using violence to further political aims
all states using violence to further political aims, otherwise there'll not be polices, prisons and army, even the state itself
> Also, when the political systems break down, i.e. personal political aims begin being openly pursued through violence, the order of impact starts with the poor.
personal rebellion is not revolution, because it's not organized, let alone class revolution, black panther movement is more like a class revolution
speak of "violent revolutions", althusser talked abt this:
> When the bourgeoisie is politically in a position to use violence, when it uses it, then the masses can only respond by revolutionary violence. But if, at the end of a long class struggle and heavy sacrifices, the balance of forces is found, in some particular place, to be both highly favourable to the proletariat and united workers, and highly unfavourable to world imperialism and the national bourgeoisie, then a peaceful and even democratic transition becomes possible and necessary.
> ultimately, these interest groups belong to the same class
This is the spherical cow. Different members of a ruling class have different motivations in respect of how the ruling class interfaces with the society it's in.
MLK Jr., JFK and Hoover each belonged to our elite in the 60s. They had vastly different interests, to the point that they were sometimes in open conflict with each other.
> there're no "personal aims" in politics, personal aims can never play a decisive role in politics
This is obvious nonsense. Individuals have pet policy aims. When they're particularly powerful, the system indulges these quirks.
Individual elites also have different levels of respect for constitutional order, drive, risk tolerance, et cetera. Most importantly, individuals typically (though not always) want to maximise their own power; the collecive, on the other hand, typically (though not always) wants to constrain them.
> When the bourgeoisie is politically in a position to use violence, when it uses it, then the masses can only respond by revolutionary violence
The prediction is when the bourgeoisie has the opportunity to stage violent rebellion, it always does? Or always should? Again, this is Althusser playing with sociological lego blocks in a vacuum when empirical reality paints a messier picture. Predicting civic strife isn't as simple as predicting whether it's possible. Humans aren't automotons; they also need to be motivated to engage the severe (and constantly changing) risk-reward calculus that is violent revolution. Particularly in the modern era, when it basically means the elite can leave unscathed while the revolutionaries must pick up the pieces.
> MLK Jr., JFK and Hoover each belonged to our elite in the 60s. They had vastly different interests, to the point that they were sometimes in open conflict with each other.
that why I said 'the ruling class is not a monolithic entity', class is not political factions, but all political factions belong to a certain social class
this is a classical misunderstanding abt marxism, although it was explained thousands times
"The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena."
and if you look into history - the topic we are discussing about - History is, in fact, surprisingly new.
"It was not the French bourgeoisie that ruled under Louis Philippe, but one faction of it: bankers, stock-exchange kings, railway kings, owners of coal and iron mines and forests, a part of the landed proprietors associated with them – the so-called financial aristocracy. It sat on the throne, it dictated laws in the Chambers, it distributed public offices, from cabinet portfolios to tobacco bureau posts."
"Owing to its financial straits, the July Monarchy was dependent from the beginning on the big bourgeoisie, and its dependence on the big bourgeoisie was the inexhaustible source of increasing financial straits. It was impossible to subordinate the administration of the state to the interests of national production without balancing the budget, without establishing a balance between state expenditures and revenues. And how was this balance to be established without limiting state expenditures – that is, without encroaching on interests which were so many props of the ruling system – and without redistributing taxes – that is, without shifting a considerable share of the burden of taxation onto the shoulders of the big bourgeoisie itself?"
"The Barrot-Falloux Ministry was the first and last parliamentary ministry that Bonaparte brought into being. Its dismissal forms, accordingly, a decisive turning point. With it the party of Order lost, never to reconquer it, an indispensable position for the maintenance of the parliamentary regime, the lever of executive power. It is immediately obvious that in a country like France, where the executive power commands an army of officials numbering more than half a million individuals and therefore constantly maintains an immense mass of interests and livelihoods in the most absolute dependence; where the state enmeshes, controls, regulates, superintends, and tutors civil society from its most comprehensive manifestations of life down to its most insignificant stirrings, from its most general modes of being to the private existence of individuals; where through the most extraordinary centralization this parasitic body acquires a ubiquity, an omniscience, a capacity for accelerated mobility, and an elasticity which finds a counterpart only in the helpless dependence, the loose shapelessness of the actual body politic — it is obvious that in such a country the National Assembly forfeits all real influence when it loses command of the ministerial posts, if it does not at the same time simplify the administration of the state, reduce the army of officials as far as possible, and, finally, let civil society and public opinion create organs of their own, independent of the governmental power. But it is precisely with the maintenance of that extensive state machine in its numerous ramifications that the material interests of the French bourgeoisie are interwoven in the closest fashion. Here it finds posts for its surplus population and makes up in the form of state salaries for what it cannot pocket in the form of profit, interest, rents, and honorariums. On the other hand, its political interests compelled it to increase daily the repressive measures and therefore the resources and the personnel of the state power, while at the same time it had to wage an uninterrupted war against public opinion and mistrustfully mutilate, cripple, the independent organs of the social movement, where it did not succeed in amputating them entirely. Thus the French bourgeoisie was compelled by its class position to annihilate, on the one hand, the vital conditions of all parliamentary power, and therefore, likewise, of its own, and to render irresistible, on the other hand, the executive power hostile to it."
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. "
> Particularly in the modern era, when it basically means the elite can leave unscathed while the revolutionaries must pick up the pieces.
i'm not going to go further abt this, you can find part of the answer in 18th brumaire too
Italians called themselves fascist. Germans would not have identified as such.
Fascism is difficult to define, even when it does not mean "my current political enemies." I tend to favor Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism traits. Eco is a historian who grew up under Italy's fascism.
If you take a step back and squint a little, almost all of that could apply to the US, regardless of administration. I would hope that would serve as a dire warning and not as a weapon.
The reason you see these kind of takes from people in liberal democracies is that other countries generally do not permit critical analysis of their governments, even if the conclusion is ultimately that it's better than the alternatives.
always see sayings like this from westerners, or americans, to be specific
everytime when something shit happened in the US:
- what are we becoming? DPRK/africa/china?
- at least we are not like Russia
this makes me wonder, were there similar sayings in 1940 german? "at least we are not in communism" "the worst fascism is still better than communism"