Writer's Block: Capital offense

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

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It's barbaric, I would never support a candidate who thought it could ever be OK, and I think the UN should impose economic sanctions on any state which still practices it. Next!

(Bet you're all really shocked at my pro-life views given, you know, my normal pro-life views)

Comments

[plexq.livejournal.com]

Revolutionaries often term themselves that because they feel (appropriately or not) as if they are outside of the process of government and unable to influence the decisions of the state in any way.

If there are citizens who feel that they must label themselves as revolutionaries then I feel that the state must accept some of the blame for that as it is the state who has failed to incorporate them as citizens into the process of government. That process includes all of the things I mentioned that make a useful feedback loop to enable governance that has the mandate of the people it has 'a monopoly of violence' over. I fear a good example of this is the large number of both legal and illegal immigrants in the US who are not officially 'citizens', but suffer under the 'monopoly of violence' of the state they reside in. They are not permitted to be a part of the political process, and thus the people who govern them do not have their support. A day may come when those people get fed up of being treated in such a fashion and decide to become revolutionaries, much like their predecessors did three hundred years ago revolting against the British government to found the very state that is now oppressing them. You cannot regulate against revolution, to do so simply invites it. The safest course of action for both the state and the citizenry (at least in my opinion) is to ensure that all that live within the purview of the monopoly of violence that the state exercises feel included and able to participate in the political process and feel that they are part of 'us' and not members of 'them'. That they can help the state as evolutionaries rather than surplant it as revolutionaries.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess we have different prototypical ideas of what a revolution is; my prototypes are the Russian revolutions of 1917. It is notable that the two revolutions had distinctly different characters. As I remember it: The February revolution was a true popular uprising - basically it was a bread riot that grew until it brought down the government. The October revolution was very different; the Bolsheviks had been a part of the emerging democracy, but the results of the elections tended to favour Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. This would not do for the Bolsheviks, who drew their sense of legitimacy not from popular support but from Marxist ideology, so they launched a second revolution to seize power. Early on in Bolshevik rule, the results of an election for the Constitutional Assembly were basically ignored - the Assembly was closed down after only one day. The revolution was followed by a long period of civil war.

I'm concious that I'm late for work...

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Ooops, that was me, in case you hadn't guessed.

Anyway, there's a difference between genuinely popular revolutions (most of which I seem to be broadly in favour of, the first 1917 revolution being one of these), actions by disenfranchised minorities seeking representation (well, it depends what it is they want), and armed minorities who conceive of themselves as having a right to rule (I would put the second 1917 revolution in this category, although often these are (drawn from) the old guard who were deposed in a previous revolution). Making moves to include the second is a good way of delivering just and stable government; however I think that throughout history there are too many cases of the third to discount. As such, it is important to consider what our last resorts are, and under what circumstances we should consider checking into them.

[plexq.livejournal.com]

A very good point. I suppose this is where the idea of the 4th amendment comes from in the US, that should an armed minority rise up and attempt to seize power, the citizenry has the right to make armed resistance against such an uprising and seek to, by force, restore a government to power who has the mandate of the people. Not sure how well this would work in practice in the 21^st century, but it is at least an interesting idea.

It is certainly very scary to me that there are people out there that believe in ideals so strongly that they trump the lives and well-being of the people. Perhaps that is a somewhat functional description of extremism. I am quite scared that I live in a country (the US, though I am a UK citizen) where this seems to be the prevailing direction.