Violence as a political project (3)

Violence plays a huge role in political and historical phenomena and at the same time -there is also a general reluctance to treat violence as a separate phenomena. Many would argue that violence is related to power and appears as an expression of power. Max Weber states that the government is characterized as a "dominion over the people based on legitimate violence - violence that is purporting to be legitimate. "

Power is our ability to conduct meaningful decisions, not only as individuals but also as a group. Power exists in a group just so long as the group stays together. Individuals possess power because they act under authority of a group of people and act in their name. We seem to have problems in differing between power and a host of other key concepts such as strength, force, vigour, energy, might, main, authority and violence. This often leads to a series of misunderstandings, some of which can be downright dangerous.

Strength refers to a powerful personality that shows much individual independence. Authority is a mark of being respected as person, profession or in office. It is an unconditional recognition from other, and where coercion is unnecessary. Violence is distinguished by its instrumental character. A clear distinction between power and violence is that power always has a need for a greater number of supporting people, while violence does well without abundant support, because it needs tools more than people. The extreme form of power is all against one, while the extreme form of violence is one against everyone else.