Chapter 7: Acts of Violence as Political Competence? From Ricoeur to Mandela and Back

Abstract

“The people shall govern!”1 These words encapsulate the principle of popular sovereignty and the essence of all democratic constitutions. They state what the people have by right; they do not describe a state of fact. If the people shall govern, they shall have the right to participate in the political life of society and to enjoy a reasonable share of its goods. And if these rights are not upheld, the people shall struggle to set this right: the people shall engage in public debate, they shall elect other representatives, they shall form new political parties, they shall strike, they shall expose abuses of power, etc. This is what democracy should be. However, in so many nominally democratic countries, this ideal is undermined from all sides: how can the people engage in public debate if the system of education does little to equip them with the means to formulate their views in public fora? How are the people to struggle if joblessness relegates them to the margins of irrelevance to social disputes, or when their normal living conditions are so precarious that the only struggle possible is that for their survival? Under such limiting situations, where democracy remains little more than a promise, to what kind of action may people justifiably take recourse? In this chapter, I entertain the question of acts of violence as a form of political competence. I do so with the intention of thinking about democracy with realism, not as a starry-eyed visionary. But I feel some trepidation at doing so. If philosophising is more than merely toying with ideas, one has to recognize immediately the double enormity of this question. It is intellectually enormous in the sense that one cannot cover here the entire range of manifestations of violence2 (not even if we include the extension of the discussion in Chapter 8). It