>[Should] states . . . . have a monopoly on the means of violence[?]
Who said they should? I mean, it depends on the circumstances, and the violence and its purpose. In Afghanistan today, I bet the people under Northern Alliance rule wish they was a state with a monopoly on the means of violence. Despite the misbehavior of the Chicago Police, I know for sure that there are a lot of people on the South Side who wish there was a state monopoly on the means of violence. But not in, say, South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, or Niacaragau in the 1970s, etc. The revolution >that made the USA was led by non-state actors. Were their gripes >legitimate or not? Legitimate enough to engage in the agression that >got lots of people killed? Well, "aggression" is loaded word, like "murder." The Amedrican revolutionaries didn't think they were engaging in agression--unjustified initiation of violence. Drop for a moment your focus on the >legality-illegality of aggression and shift to the politics of just >*who* gets to determine what those very terms will mean. Think of >Chomsky's example of the Mafia don. Despite being a lawyer, that wasn't my focus. I don't know enough about international law to know with alot of confidence when international violence is legal. > >Post-Westphalian is a term that's been popping up quite a bit in >international relations literature. It often stands for expressing the >need for scholars to look far more closely at non-state actors in the >shaping of the world-system and how they mold the interests of states. Yah, I studied with Harold Jacobson at Michigan, got an earful of that. He gave me my only A+ in grad school. He was impressed that I figured out a way to operationalize Lenin's theory of imperialism. > >Is there any form of aggression involving the death of significant >numbers of human beings that isn't mass murder? Sure. Leaving aside the word "aggression," a just war is one. "Murder" is illegitimate killing. We _had_ to fight Nazis, even though in doing so a lot of innocent peiople would be killed. Likewise the Vietnamese and Cuban revolutions, or any more or less liberatory revolutioon. If not, then what >legitimates the state's monopoly on violence? You could start with Hobbes and think about the alternative in many circumstances: the war of all against all. >Who gets to decide? Well, we do, don't we? Who do you suggest that we might defer to? And >how does one go about averting the infinite regress problem that >connects epistemology to a theory of authority? This isn't a crucial practical problem, but I do have an elaborate answer to this in Relativism Reflective Equilibrium and Justice, to which I have referred you, and even mailed you a copy. > > >I will add, too, that the specific program of al > > Quaida, the apparent perpetrators of the 9/11 massacre, has nothing >to do > > with advancing any goal that anyone on the left could care to >propose--not > > that it would have been better if it had a left program. jks > > > >============= > >Well on that we all agree. God bless, then. But I could ask you: Who gets to decide? ;) jks _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
