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Monday, June 16, 2025

Politics, Politicians and the Political

by

20131012

A few weeks ago 11 women from the High­way Re-route Move­ment (HRM) staged a sit-down protest out­side the en­trance of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair. Even­tu­al­ly the women were asked to leave and protest else­where. One who ig­nored the re­quest was forcibly re­moved by po­lice of­fi­cers.Side-step­ping com­pul­so­ry pur­chase or­ders or gov­ern­ment of­fers to buy the lands, one is­sue the protest pub­li­cised is the State's bull­doz­ing of pri­vate lands and build­ings to con­struct the high­way.

Now if we gauge pub­lic opin­ion to­ward the HRM via ra­dio phone-ins and the com­ments on ar­ti­cles about the protests–not the most sci­en­tif­ic method–a ma­jor­i­ty ap­pear to be an­ti. As such the ac­tion of the po­lice against HRM pro­test­ers both in Mon De­sir and St Clair is deemed ap­pro­pri­ate.In sup­port of such think­ing we find a grand­fa­ther of so­ci­ol­o­gy, Max We­ber. For We­ber we can de­fine the mod­ern State so­ci­o­log­i­cal­ly as the le­git­i­mate ar­biter of phys­i­cal force.

In oth­er words, the State is the on­ly en­ti­ty in our mod­ern world that has the right to use vi­o­lence. And of course as We­ber points out, its not re­al­ly vi­o­lence if the State us­es it, it's "force." The po­lice and army use force; those who aren't, use vi­o­lence.

A sec­ond way to think about the State is as a col­lec­tion of in­sti­tu­tions. Nico Poulantzas and Louis Al­thuss­er broke the col­lec­tion in­to two cat­e­gories: "Ide­o­log­i­cal State Ap­pa­ra­tus­es" and "Re­pres­sive State Ap­pa­ra­tus­es." The for­mer in­cludes in­sti­tu­tions like ed­u­ca­tion, the church­es, me­dia, po­lit­i­cal par­ties, and cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions. In the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry are in­sti­tu­tions like the po­lice, army, pris­ons, civ­il ser­vice, and ju­di­cia­ry.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers


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