dredmond at efn.org:
> War is different from the socialized violence of scarcity.The competition for
> class prestige, position, etc. is fought out in all sorts of other ways; you
> don't get a college degree or build an export-platform economy by shooting
> people.
I'm just going by my experience. Ostensibly, the educational system is just folks learning to do good, interesting and productive things. But I attended a prestigious Eastern university, and many of the people I went to school with, the Brightest and Best, certainly arranged for the shooting of a large number of people. I doubt if things have changed much. I don't see what would have changed them, and the shooting certainly hasn't stopped, although its venue moves from place to place.
> Many of the things which states do fly directly in the face of the
> class system - e.g. free education for all, housing subsidies for workers,
> taxing the rich, trade union rights, guaranteed vacations, etc.
Again, when I've actually observed these things, they've operated to support the class system. "Taxing the rich", for example, only works if you cultivate a certain number of rich people to tax. However much you tax them, you must make sure to tax them less than you do the middle and lower classes, so they can keep on being rich and available for taxation shows -- a valuable political performance which actually suckers the less swift lower-middle-class types into sympathy for all those poor little rich folks, believe it or not. Trade union rights work only if you manage to keep the workers from taking over their means of production. I think I've already given the education rant a few times.
The State is war. Agreed, the cleverer ruling-class types are somewhat subtler about it than Attila the Hun, most of the time.
-- Gordon