babyhueypnewton posted:

IThe concern is the inaccessibility of divine violence within the profane which nevertheless "may manifest itself in a true war exactly as in the divine judgment of the multitude on a criminal."

yes, but the most important addendum to this is that the inaccessibility within the profane means that we are not able to effectively attribute to particular instances of violence the character of the divine

Less possible and also less urgent for humankind, however, is to decide when unalloyed violence has been realized in particular cases.

benjamin not only doubts the urgency of doing so but its very possibility. this is elaborated further:

For only mythical violence, not divine, will be recognizable as such with certainty, unless it be in incomparable effects, because the expiatory power of violence is not visible to men.

i am simply unsure how you can square what you are suggesting with benjamin's very clear assertion that divine violence will not be visible to man

that the extralegal efforts of the soviet state may not have accorded with the foundation of a new constitutional form is not evidence of a lack of mythic character. benjamin very clearly invokes the pre-constitutional and primitive institution of the "peace ceremony" following lawmaking violence to explicate that mythic violence is not reducible to the codification of legal norms

benjamin did imply that divine violence could be recognised through its "incomparable effects." these effects are what benjamin describes:

On the breaking of this cycle maintained by mythical forms of law, on the suspension of law with all the forces on which it depends as they depend on it, finally therefore in the abolition of state power, a new historical epoch is founded.

the emergence of divine violence can't be identified by man by anything other than the recognition of the abolition of mythic violence and the abolition of state power. this is the only metric benjamin proposes with any surety that divine violence has occurred and this, clearly, is not a point that has been reached

his invocation of the multitude is important here because he proposing the actions of the multitude as distinct to that of the state. all executive violence, in benjamin's understanding, is lawmaking violence in the same sense that all administrative violence is law preserving

But all mythical, lawmaking violence, which we may call executive, is pernicious. Pernicious, too, is the law-preserving, administrative violence that serves it.

this is where your invocation of benjamin's concept is really unclear. you don't elaborate how a particular historical case of violence can be understood as divine in the first place nor do you substantiate how divine violence can be carried out by the executive

babyhueypnewton posted:

I2. Benjamin is specifically concerned with Sorel. That you have removed this removes any reference to the class struggle which is why the mess that comes out is liberal. For Benjamin, revolutionary violence is "the highest manifestation of pure violence by man," a remark on the Sorelian concept of the general strike as pure means. However, this is not divine violence.

no, the sorealian mass strike or the execution of violence based on pure means is not in itself divine violence. however benjamin elaborates that it is indicative of the possibility of the forms of divine violence. here's what he suggests:

But if the existence of violence outside the law, as pure immediate violence, is assured, this furnishes the proof that revolutionary violence, the highest manifestation of unalloyed violence by man, is possible, and by what means.

that is, benjamin suggests revolutionary (divine) violence can be seen to be possible because it is indicated by the instances of violence which exist outside the law. what instances of violence does benjamin identify as being outside the law? the sorelian notion of the mass strike and violence of pure means:

Taking up occasional statements by Marx, Sorel rejects every kind of program, of Utopia—in a word, of lawmaking—for the revolutionary movement: "With the general strike all these fine things disappear; the revolution appears as a clear, simple revolt, and no place is reserved either for the sociologists or for the elegant amateurs of social reforms or for the intellectuals who have made it their profession to think for the proletariat." Against this deep, moral, and genuinely revolutionary conception, no objection can stand that seeks, on grounds of its possibly catastrophic consequences, to brand such a general strike as violent.

i.e. the mass strike, embodying pure means, indicates the possibility of human action outside law because it is an act which rejects any form of program and as such any projection of power in a particular historical sense. a mass strike which paralyses the state on this basis indicates the suspension of myth which benjamin sees as proposing the possibility of the eradication of myth

the sorelian general strike is not in itself divine violence but it indicates the possibility of divine violence. whether that possibility is fulfilled or not is, as benjamin suggests, not discernible by examining the historical event but possibly through its effects - such as the abolition of state and myth

babyhueypnewton posted:

In fact, the concept of revolutionary justice "is false and ignominious, if existence is to mean nothing other than mere life." You have looked at the first part of this sentence without noticing that it is the second part which is significant.

benjamin's point is that justice is false and ignomious if existence is to mean nothing other than mere life. but benjamin asserts just a few sentences later that existence is other than mere life

Man cannot, at any price, be said to coincide with the mere life in him, no more than with any other of his conditions and qualities, not even with the uniqueness of his bodily person. However sacred man is (or that life in him that is identically present in earthly life, death, and afterlife), there is no sacredness in his condition, in his bodily life vulnerable to injury by his fellow men. What, then, distinguishes it essentially from the life of animals and plants? And even if these were sacred, they could not be so by virtue only of being alive, of being in life.

benjamin is suggesting that life itself of man is not sacred, any more so than the life of plants are sacred. if man were only reducible to his condition of life then there could as such be no sacredness in man. however, existence is not reducible solely to mere life because of the possibility of justice

babyhueypnewton posted:

IMy consistent point has been that if violence, excess, and mistakes are immanent to the socialist project than they must be understood philosophically rather than empirically.

this is likely a fair point and one i would be amenable to but i simply think benjamin's ideas can't be used in the particular fashion you are invoking them. unless you can justify how they are applicable in response to the objections i've raised the general thrust of your argument is going to remain mysterious to me. i don't address what is your consistent point because i don't understand it and the invocation of benjamin confused me more than it elucidated

Edited by blinkandwheeze (March 20, 2016 11:03:04)

blinkandwheeze posted:

petrol is australian iirc. What happened to iwc anyway

i guess being prime minister doesnt leave a lot of time for posting