roachboy

ok so i changed my mind about this thread.

the jazz: i do not follow some of the points in your definition.

1. the french revolution "terror" and stalin's "terror" have in common almost nothing beyond the name...which follows (as i am sure you know) from the fact that revolutionary marxists routinely mapped elements of the russian revolution onto the french revolution (the proletarian repeat of the earlier bourgeois revolution)---the french terror was a nebulous phenomenon which is usually defined as reactionary critics defined it: it lasts while the jacobins were in power and does not include the subsequent girondin massacre of the jacobins.
go figure.

the stalinist state apparatus was entirely different. following your own defintion, i would think that the french revolution "terror" could count as "terrorism" while stalin's would not.

why? during the french revolution (1) there was no bureaucratic state in the modern sense (it hadn't yet coalesced--budgeting was not implemented as an aspect of state functioning until napoleon, and without budgets you do nto have a modern state) and (2) the "command structure" was a problem. the terror was, if my memory serves, more a horiztonally organized affair--denunciations could come from any number of quarters---arrests were ad hoc, organizationally---trials were centralized, but that is not the same thing.


so the french terror would probably be "terrorism"---but the stalinist terror would not, yes? stalin's involved a top-down bureaucratic command structure exercised by a legitimate state---so stalin's terror was not terrorist nor would stalin's actions against escapees be terrorism.

this simply because of stalin's position within a state apparatus and the type of command structure he worked within.

(2) i am not sure i understand what exactly you mean by "well organized" militaries exactly. if i understand the argument you are making, it seems nearly tautological in that "well-organized" look like it means "vertically organized" or bureaucratic--which seems to me a repetition of a defining feature of the modern bureaucratic state.

but i might not be getting exactly what you are saying here.

3. i *really* dont understand the equating of bureaucratic organization with the possibility of ethical considerations.

i think max weber is basically correct in defining a bureaucracy as an administrative apparatus geared as a means to an end--and that from the viewpoint of its internal rationality, the nature of the end is not an issue (in other words, it is taken as a legitimate end as a because it is an end)---and if it is the case that professional duty requires that one internalize aspects of an administrative rationality (a bureaucrat who is functional in his job sees the world/information about states of affairs in terms shaped by his position within the bureaucracy--he does not stand outside making judgments--he performs his role within the apparatus), then there is nothing about how bureaucratic functions are carried out that would lead anyone to question the nature or ethical value of the end.

think about state-sanctioned genocide. the extermination of populations can be set up as a legitimate administrative end--this legitimacy is assumed by the apparatus itself---its conditions of possibility are functions of the political context within which that apparatus operates.

so if you have a bureaucratic apparatus in a repressive political context, there is no reason to imagine that the bureaucracy itself will cause actors to consider ethical questions. they will simply do their jobs. and you, as a potential member of a group that is to be administered out of existence, will be dead.

in other words, problems concerning the legitimacy of an administrative end are brought into play from outside the apparatus, as a result of, say, political pressure. otherwise, everything about a bureaucracy is geared toward normalizing the end.

ethical qualms about administering a given end are expressed in turnover rates otherwise. if people within an apparatus object to the end toward which that apparatus is directed, they are generally understood as dysfunctional and are forced out of the apparatus. there is nothing necessarily political about this.

(my apologies for the weberspeak in the last point-i dont know how to say this stuff in a short form without using shorthand. hope what i am asking is clear)

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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