The Joy of Resistance: Ep. 9 - Violence

What of violent resistance? This is one of the most vexed questions surrounding the ethics and viability of resistance. What constitutes violence? When, if ever, is it justified? Does it actually work? It is clear that it often takes the application of some kind of force to get states to change, yet states claim only the state can deploy force. This fundamental disequilibrium between citizens and states creates a difficult and confusing challenge.

"A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory."— Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation (1919)

"Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man."— Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)

"Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all."— Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651

"Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws..." — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1689)

"The state is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class."— Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)

"Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy."— Hannah Arendt, On Violence (1969)

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