Adversaries can understand subaltern political technique better than subalterns

Evidence

Because a “law of reprisal” is essentially casuistic in nature; because the mutually recognized restraints in any form of “limited war” are essentially based on something psychologically and sociologically akin to tradition; and because the received body of casuistry and tradition is often wholly inadequate to the game at hand (say, graduated atomic reprisal on the U.S.S.R. and America while limited atomic war obtains in Europe, or the bombing of grammar schools in an area without recent experience in racial violence, or the introduction of new forms of non-price competition in a particular industry), it seems likely that the empirical part of game theory will include experimental work like that of Muzafer Sherif. He finds that when no norms exist for a laboratory judgment, they are created by the subjects; and when norms are created for two parties in the same process, each player’s developing norm influences the other’s. There is a process of genuine learning with respect to values; each side adapts its own system of values to the other’s, in forming its own. When the supply of available “objective” criteria is incapable of yielding a complete set of rules, that is, when the game is “indeterminate,” norms of some sort must be developed, mutually perceived, and accepted; patterns of action and response have to be legitimized. — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 379 (#responds-to, via linked claim)

As techniques of government, the totalitarian devices appear simple and ingeniously effective. They assure not only an absolute power monopoly, but unparalleled certainty that all commands will always be carried out; the multiplicity of the transmission belts, the confusion of the hierarchy, secure the dictator’s complete independence of all his inferiors and make possible the swift and surprising changes in policy for which totalitarianism has become famous. The body politic of the country is shock-proof because of its shapelessness. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 922 (#responds-to, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Adversaries in indeterminate games mutually construct the norms that govern their conflict — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 379; Confused hierarchies make totalitarian rule shock-proof and command-certain — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 922; Even networked subalterns remain objects of critique rather than speaking subjects — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 1519 (+1 more)

Related

• Adversaries in indeterminate games mutually construct the norms that govern their conflict (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Adversaries in indeterminate games mutually construct the norms that govern their conflict #responds-to (0.78) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 379
• Confused hierarchies make totalitarian rule shock-proof and command-certain #responds-to (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 922