James Petras — Imperialism and the Politics of Torture

Torture is not publicized domestically even as it is ‘understood’ by ‘knowing’ Congressional committees. But among the colonized, occupied people, through word and experience, CIAand military torture and violence against suspects, seized in neighborhood round-ups, is aweapon to intimidate a hostile population. The torture of a family member spreads fear (and loathing) among relatives, acquaintances, neighbors and colleagues. Torture is an integral element in spreading mass intimidation – an attempt to minimize co-operation between an active minority of resistance fighters and a majority of passive sympathizers.

People often think of torture as applying exclusively or predominantly to interrogation. However, this is not the case. It is also used institutionally for control and also retribution.

In addition to the torture practiced by the US clandestine service documented in the Senate Intelligence Committee report, another "secret" that is seeping out is how torture has been and is used rather prevasively as a tool of control within the United States, especially in the "corrections" system but also in "ordinary" policing. For example, search on "torture" and "solitary confinement," and consult the 2014 United Nations Committee Against Torture that cites the United States.

Why is this significant economically? Because economies are based on law and law is based on enforcement, that is, the use of force for controlling individuals and populations. Certain populations are more susceptible to this than others and realize it through their shared experience. Another class of people does want is in its interests with impunity. The leads not only to inequality and gross inequity but also to fraying the social fabric and periodic social unrest that is a drag on the society socially, politically and also economically.

Where there is no voluntary reciprocity, there is some form of control and therefore the implicit use of force. The question is when force becomes excessive and applied unjustly.

Popular sovereignty and self-determination are supposed to address this on the basis not of the majority view in any case, but rather one the basis of human rights and civil liberties. In a liberal democracy, the basis of this is a constitution establishing the rule of law, equality before the law, and and impartial justice system.

However, modern liberal democracies are republics, that is, representational democracies. Representatives are subject to elite capture, and this has been the history of most republics. When that happens the real seldom matches up with the ideal.

Indeed, I have noticed over the past few days that attention is being called to the similarity between torture of individuals and terrorism of populations through a policy of austerity that undermines the social fabric and benefits only a few. When people are driven to suicide owing to the dire straits in which they find themselves not due to their own fault but government policy that benefits an elite, is this not tantamount to torture?

The James Petras Website
Imperialism and the Politics of Torture
James Petras | Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University