Weber Tentative Response: State Violence

“The state has a monopoly on violence.  That’s why breaking a few windows is viewed as violent but denying people healthcare is not.” — @FurlinNick, 1/20/17

This tweet from the day of this year’s presidential inauguration has stuck with me ever since I first saw it in January, and after doing today’s reading, I realize that it encompasses a key Weberian idea.  In defining the modern state, Weber writes that such a body cannot be defined by its ends but only by its idiosyncratic means—namely, the use of “physical force.”  Like Trotsky, who argued that “‘every state is founded on force,’” Weber defines the state as a body that holds a monopoly of the “legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” and is the only entity that has the so-called right to use violence.  While such a state monopoly on violence continues to hold true in the United States, the lynchpin of Weber’s argument is the idea that such violence is merely physical.  Although systemic violence against black and brown bodies, women, and queer and trans individuals can take the form of police brutality, for example, which fits into Weber’s definition of physical force, the violence of the modern state extends far beyond the strictly physical realm.  Forms of state violence that do not strictly include physical brutality include setting minimum arrest requirements in order for municipalities to profit from fines; the federal government’s indifference towards the HIV epidemic; environmental racism in cities like St. Louis, where lead levels in water in overwhelmingly black neighborhoods have reached up to 300 ppb, with the minimum safe level being 15 ppb; and, as cited in the above tweet, denying millions of citizens healthcare, especially reproductive healthcare.  While Weber’s observations about state violence are important, it is crucial to remember that such force does not always have to be strictly physical to cause irrevocable harm.