Ian Welsh

Power Comes from the Barrel of a Gun

-Mao

This is part 4 of our Freedom Series. If you missed them, part 1 (Capitalism and Freedom),Part 2 (Freedom And Democracy) and Part 3 (Freedom To, Freedom From) are also available.

In our earlier essays we discussed how the structure of modern life means that we spend most of our time doing what other people tell us to: either in school or work. We are free to choose our masters, but almost none of us are free from having masters. Representative democracy, especially under capitalism tends to really be oligarchy: those with wealth buy the government, and an individual’s vote means much less than the money and votes and influence it can buy that capitalists have.

All of this is underwritten by violence. I live in Canada, some years back a homeless person built themselves a house near town, but on land owned by no one, except the government. You would think this is a good thing, but it wasn’t properly permitted and the land wasn’t hers, so they tore it down. She went back to being homeless.

They were able to tear it down because if she had resisted, big men with guns would have made sure it was torn down.

I’m no libertarian and I don’t think tax is theft, but if you’re American you may have a big problem with paying taxes because you hate that so much of it is used for corporate subsidies and to support a military which regularly engages in genocidal activities and which supports other countries when they commit genocide. (Israel is not the first.)

You’d think that living in a democracy your money would be spent in some semblance of what the public wants, but you’d be wrong. People don’t want to support Israel with massive subsidies, but it happens anyway.Most Americans would like universal health care, but that would mean less corporate profits, so it doesn’t happen. The infamous Princeton study found that what the average citizen wants has zero relationship to what the government does: but the opinions of those with wealth do.

So you might as well not live in Democracy, because a Democracy where what the people want to happen doesn’t happen, isn’t functionally a democracy, no matter how often you vote. This is at heart of the paradox that when polled as to how democratic their societies are, the major society whose citizens think it’s most democratic is—China.

Wait? A one party state is considered by its own citizens to be democratic? What the hell?

But the Communist Party actually does listen to its citizens and often does what they want. It also strives to make them better off, having lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

You may not get to vote, but the government does a lot of what you want and improves your lives.

Of course it isn’t a democracy by the strict definition: democracy is about procedure—how we choose our leaders, not outcomes

But people might be forgiven for thinking that outcomes matter more. Hell, I can’t argue with it. Democracy exists because monarchies and aristocracies sucked for ordinary citizens and we thought that if we could choose our own leaders they’d be more likely to care for our well-being.

And here’s the thing: the CPC is good right now, or more good than bad. But then so was the US (for its own citizens) at various points, most recently from about 1933 to 79 or so. One can be sure that over time the CPC will devolve or be replaced by something worse. We don’t know exactly when this will happen, but its next sub-ideological cycle is about 40 years out.

This suggests the problem isn’t exactly the form of government.

Perhaps it is, as Thomas Neuberger likes to argue, government itself. Or, more accurately, the state, because every society ever has had some form of government.

States, which started existing about eight thousand years ago, first in Mesopotamia and briefly afterwards in Egypt, are noted for having a monopoly of force as Max Weber famously pointed out. In fact a monopoly of force is what makes a government a state. Your municipal government has a police force, but as Trump has shown with his ICE occupations, it does not have a monopoly on force. Tribes generally don’t have a monopoly on force: individuals often use violence themselves to resolve issues.

The early states were extremely nasty kingdoms, usually with the King either claiming to be a God or saying he was God’s chosen.

But Mao isn’t quite right. Power doesn’t come from guns or swords. It comes from control over the minds of the military class, whoever that is. It took about two thousand years for agriculture to produce the first kingdoms, because the actual task was getting the warriors to agree to be an enforcer class against everyone else, and take the King’s orders. That was a hard ideological task, and it took a long time to convince violent men to oppress everyone but themselves and a few nobles. Tribal warriors simply would not do it. (If you want to read about this process at length, see my Politics Series.)

This is at the heart of the question “will the military fire on citizens?” Will they obey that order?

The answer, usually, is yes. When it’s “maybe” you get more freedom. This is why conscription armies are usually not used for internal control: specialized police forces are used, men trained to beat the shit out of, or shoot, those whom power tells them to.

Most people don’t pay taxes because they want to. They pay taxes because if they don’t men with guns will eventually show up and hurt them, kill them or throw them in a nasty prison.

There are tons of stupid or unjust laws, and we obey most of them, and will obey more of them in the future as ubiquitous surveillance spreads. Oh, some we obey because we agree with them (hopefully things like “don’t murder and don’t rape”) but plenty we obey because we’re scared.

Everything flows from this. Forget law. Remember that woman who wasn’t allowed to keep a house she made with her own hands on land no one was using?

That’s the core. Your boss can’t, usually, call the cops on you. But he can fire you and you might not get another job or not as good a one. You might wind up homeless. You might not be able to afford health care.

And you can’t take care of yourself because it’s illegal. You can’t just go to some land, build a home and plant some crops, say. If someone has way more than they need, and you don’t have enough, you can’t say “Look Elon, if you had a bit less I wouldn’t die homeless so I’m going to just take some of that and you’ll still be more than OK.”

If you do, the police will shoot you or lock you up.

This isn’t the way that it was for most of human existence. Hoarding was not allowed in most societies that ever existed, till those Kings came along. If you tried, the tribe would talk to you, then shun you, and then if you still kept more than you needed while others were going without, they’d either exile you or kill you.

This for hundreds of thousands of years this is probably how humans dealt with hoarders. Then Kings and states inverted it. The rich steal from the poor, the strong from the weak, and if anyone tries to do anything about it they get dead or worse.

Without violence and the state there are no Billionaires. There are no property rights as we understand them (which is why libertarians still want the State to kill people over property. They want to have lots of stuff, be safe when others are poor and they’re rich, they just don’t want to pay for any part of the State except the violent part.

At the end of the day you go to school for twelve years because the state forces parents to send their kids to school. This is the history, when mandatory universal schooling was introduced, parents who didn’t cooperate were dealt with the law, often violently.

You work for someone else at a shitty job you’d never even consider doing if you wouldn’t be homeless otherwise because some people have a lot and don’t want to share. Oh there’s a whole ideology of how capitalism is necessary for prosperity and progress, just as there was one about how Kings were needed, but that’s gloss. There’s way more than enough, but for us to have rich people there must be poor people.

Occasionally a state will, for a few decades, do good. They’re not all evil. See the CPC these days. But the capacity for state control is always there. The CPC forced a lot of peasants off the land who didn’t want to lead. Sure, it was “for their own good” but perhaps the peasants should have been able to decide that? Same thing with the Brits and enclosure. Or America and all the natives they killed.

This is close to the nitty gritty. The stuff about democracy and capitalism was important: but all of that has as its basis violence. Without violent men willing to do what the state says, none of that occurs.

There’s all sorts of arguments that states are better than the alternative, blah, blah, blah. Perhaps. Sometimes.

But the core of states is always violence: that monopoly Weber talked about. That’s how some people get to have a lot more than everyone else and then justify it saying they deserve it. Nobles said it was because they protected the serfs and were chosen by God. Capitalists say it’s because they create the jobs and technology and everything good comes from them so they deserve much, much more. Communists say they serve the people, same as democrats do. And, again, sometimes, for a few decades or even occasionally a whole century, they do. These justifications matter: the violent men need to be convinced to do what the State says.

But the society is still based on coercion underwritten by violent men and you still aren’t free. You are ruled by fear: fear of poverty in a system where if you try and support yourself in a way society doesn’t agree with, that violates property arrangements the elites like, you will be hurt or killed.

This is always true, of course. It was true in tribes. Hoard and eventually someone will do something about it.

But there’s violence to ensure everyone has enough, and there’s violence to ensure some people have more. There’s violence to take away your right to do what you want with your life, so long as it doesn’t harm others, and there’s violence that forces you to spent 60 to 70 years doing what teacher and boss tells you to—or else.

We need to move past the idea that shit systems are the best we can do. We need to conceive of a better way to live together. We need to stop saying “this is a flawed system, but it’s the best we can do.”

We need to dream and imagine. Only by doing so do we make a better, more free, society possible.

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