On Violence - Robert Wolff Flashcards
Wolff’s three propositions about violence
- Concepts of violence and non-violence are inherently confused and depend ‘for their meaning in political discussions on the fundamental notion of legitimate authority’ which is also confused.
- Questions like ‘when is violence acceptable in politics’ and ‘whether anything good in politics is accomplished by violence’ are also confusions with no coherent answers.
- The dispute over violence and non-violence is ‘ideological rhetoric designed either to halt change and justify the existing distribution of power and privilege or to slow change and justify some features of the existing distribution of power and privilege or else to hasten change and justify a total redistribution of power and privilege’.
Power is the ability to…
What does Wolff define power as?
What example does he give to show the difference in power of two groups?
Power is the ability to make and enforce decisions about matters of major social importance.
The difference btw the ability of he parliamentary majority to enforce decisions against the will of the minority, and the ability of a rebel military clique to enforce decisions against parliament as a whole.
Authority is not…
How does Wolff define authority, and what does this differ from?
How is the state different from an occupying army?
Not an ability but a right to command and to be obeyed. Claims to authority must be ‘sharply differentiated’ from threats/enticement and from advice. State can use the threat of punishment or reward for compliance, but it can’t use this only.
It differs in ‘its insistence, either explicit or implicit’ on its right to be obeyed.
What is de jure authority, and how are claims to authroity normally defended?
De jure authority is the right to command and to be obeyed. Claims to authority are defended on many grounds such as appeal to God, to tradition, to expertise etc. Not all are justified and he suggests that few if any are, but people still accept those asserted against them.
What is de facto authority, and what impact do threats have?
What does Max Weber say about authority?
De facto authority refers to the ability to get one’s authority claims accepted by those against whom they are asserted. According to Max Weber it is he principal means on which states rely to carry out their decisions.
Threats and inducements are important in the enforcement of political decisions but if a state relies on them entirely, then effectiveness will be massively impacted.
Force is the ability to…
How does Wolff write about force in general and in terms of politics?
What does he say about social opinion and force?
Force is the ability to work change by expenditure of physical effort, and is a means to power but not a guarantee of it. However, mere possession of it is often perceived as a guarantee of political power.
It is the ability to rearrange the world in ways that people find appealing or distasteful, of which money is the principal measure.
De facto is the ability to elicit obedience as opposed to compliance.
Social opinion is the ‘symbolic’ use of force, because we are social creatures and value symbolic interactions with others, and are influenced by them as well as normal force/authority.
How does Wolff describe violence, and what is his issue with the term in relation to force?
Violence is ‘the illegitimate or unauthorised use of force to effect decisions agains the will or desire of others’. Murder is therefore violence but capital punishment by a legitimate state is not. It is both normative and descriptive bc involves implicit appeal to principle of de jure legitimate authority.
He thinks ‘violence’ is often wrongly restricted to uses of force that involve injury or damage, but this isn’t sharp enough to be of analytical use and ‘usually serves the ideological purpose of ruling out, as immoral or politically illegitimate, the only instrument of power that is available to certain social classes’.
Political violence depends upon the concept of…
What does Wolff write about political violence?
Political violence depends upon the concept of de jure/legitimate authority, and if there is no such thing then there is no way to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate uses of force.
General moral philosophy can be used to distinguish between right and wrong/justified and unjustified uses of force, but the only way to find a ‘distincitive political concept of violence’ is to appeal to the doctrine of legitimate political authority.
What does Wolff write about state legitimacy and obedience?
He concludes that philosophical anarchism is true, and that there couldn’t ever be a state that has a right to command and whose subjects have a binding obligation to obey.
Some would say that in a democracy there is shared authorship of laws and that obedience is thus autonomous and not heteronymous. This would then provide a genuine grounds for distinction between violence/nv political actions.
However, he thinks this is invalid, as neither majority rule nor other method of decision-making can preserve autonomy. ‘The autonomous man is of necessity an anarchist’.
There may be arguments for submitting completely even if a state is not fully legitimate, but ‘the acts of police and the commands of legislatures have no particular legitimacy or sanction’.
What is the ‘paradox’ of violence and force, and what is his overall argument of this?
If violence means an unjustified use of force, then the answer to the question ‘when is it permissible to resort to violence in politics’ is obviously never, and if using force were permissible it wouldn’t be violent.
Also, if ‘violence’ means ‘an illegitimate or unauthorised use of force’ then every political act is violent because there is no such thing as legitimate authority.
If violence is a more restricted term and means ‘bodily interference or the direct infliction of physical harm’ then he thinks violence is permissible when ‘less harmful or costly means fail, providing always that the balance of good and evil produced is superior to that promised by any available alternative’.
Overall his point is that if violence is justified by the senses of legitimate and illegitimate political authority, then there is no debate as ‘there are no legitimate governments, hence no coherent distinction between violence and the legitimate use of force’.
I see no merit in the doctrine…
What does Wolff conclude about violence in terms of protest?
If violence is sometimes justified in protests, then that implies that a line can be drawn between legitimate and illegitimate forms of protest. Wolff thinks this facilitates dictatorships and that people should always have the right to protests even if it goes against the interests of the authorities.
‘I see no merit in the doctrin of non-violence’, nor do I believe that any special and complex justification is needed for what is usually called ‘civil disobedience’.
What are Wolff’s two interpretations of non-violence?
- If violence is seen in the strict sense as political use of force by a legitimate government, then the doctrine of non-violence depends on the assumption that there are legitimate governments, which he believes as false and sees no meaning in.
- If violence is instead the use of force to interfere with someone in a direct, bodily way or to injure them physically, then the doctrine of non-violence is ‘merely a subjective queasiness having no moral rational’.
‘Emotionally, the commitment to non-violence is frequently a severely repressed expression of extreme hostility akin to the mortifications and self-flagellations of religious fanatics.
There is of course always the conflict between the authority claims of a state and the contradictory claims of individual conscience.
What are Wolff’s two distinctions between different modes of social interaction?
- Subjective - settling a dispute through what are considered regular and orderly means as opposed to those considered violent and disorderly. He shows his opposition to this through the example of having to pay medical care for a sick child which he sees also as unjust and violent even though it is considered regular.
- Objective - a person’s primary interest affects what level of force they would consider as violence when they are at stake in conflict. Violence is a rhetorical device for ‘proscribing those political uses of force which one considers inimical to one’s central interests’.
What are Wolff’s four conceptions of violence for the four socioeconomic classes?
- The estabilshed financial and political interests in a country - violence is illegal and all challenges to authority and assaults on the rights of property are beyond the limits of permissible politics.
- The affluent, educated, technical and professional middle class - dissent and demonstration and (within limits) attacks on property in ‘ghetto areas’ are permissible, civil disobedience favourable as interests are identified with what is new in US society, they are confident of coming out on top in competition for wealth. ‘Liberals’ - encourage modes of dissent/disruption that don’t challenge eco and social arrangements on which their success is based, eg rent strikes, certain boycotts with the argument that unemployment and starvation are violence also. In competition with older elite so they see student rebels/black militants as their allies until their own interests are attacked - then they cry violence and call for the police.
- The working-class and lower middle-class (’white backlash’) - perceive principle threat to interests as being from bottom class of ‘ghetto dwellers, welfare clients, and non-unionised labourers’ who demand more. ‘Violence’ is street crime, riots, civil-rights marches into all-whit neighbourhoods and attacks on symbols of patriotism. Classic political alliance with right-wing populist elements as enemy is always the people underneath rather than above.
- Revolutionary counter-definition from the outclass and its sympathisers in the liberal wing of the established order - ‘Connotation of the term ‘violence’ is accepted, but the application of the term is reversed’ as police are violent, not rioters; employers, not strikers; US army, not the enemy. All around the govts claim to rule. Denotation of the term is also held constant and the connotation reverse - violence is good and legitimate. They have scant access to insturments of power of established social classes eg wealth police power leg etc so naturally seek to legitimise the riots, street crime etc which are its only weapons, the rest of society sees such means as ‘violent’ and suppresses them.
What are Wolff’s conclusions?
Having a set concept of violence wont affect the deliberations that lead to a choice between the four classes. No weight should be given to the view that some uses of force are ruled out as illeg and hence violent or the other way round. Violence as in physical injury may be one of the most severe means but it differs only ‘in degree and not in kind from the injuries inflicted by so-called ‘non-violent’ techniques of political action.
He likens the ‘myth’ of legitimate authority to worship and religious faith, and hopes that like atheism, anarchism will slowly become the ‘accepted conviction of enlightened and rational men’.
