De mythe van het autoritaire
Over de staat, geweld en autoriteit
Vertaling (klad) · Origineel: Earl Robson · The Pseudonymous Left, 11 april 2023
Dit is een kladversie ter vertaling. Het originele Engelstalige artikel volgt hieronder.
Authoritarianism is a condemnation often hurled about between political opponents, especially at those on both the left and right, who find themselves far outside the safety of neoliberal ideology. The accusation is thought terminating, emotionally charged, and quite often baseless.
Max Weber defined the state as the “human community that claims monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within its territory”. Here, Weber identified the real source of authority. That source is violence.
Violence can be defined as the imposition of the will of one over another by use or threat of force. This necessarily implies the existence of a state in any form is violent. All states have absolute authority over the territory and people they control.
Let us take the most mundane of examples: parking tickets. The authority of the state to impose its will on an individual, even for something as minor as parking laws, is derived from violence.
All states are “authoritarian” — they have absolute power over their people. The distinction between a liberal democracy and a dictatorship rests solely in the utilization of this absolute authority.
This specter of authoritarianism is a malicious construct. It benefits the status quo exclusively. Capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production, is often seen as something independent of the state. This is a gross misrepresentation. How then, is it more authoritarian to use the state to supplant one economic system with another? Undoubtedly, it is not.