3
The analysis begins by assessing rival explanations of internal violence in
belligerent states. First, the argument that rising violence at home is a reaction to the
burdens of state interference in society and war-time mobilization. Second, the view that
the very violence of war itself makes latent group hatreds overt and bloody. While the
anti-mobilization thesis fails to account for pro-state and post-war violence, the present
analysis has to take into account the fact violence against subordinate status groups is
infused by heightened wartime nationalism and renewed contests over inclusion and
exclusion in national citizenship. Following a Weberian analysis of wartime internal
violence along economic, social, and political cleavages, I will show dominant group
violence as a response to subordinate groups’ economic gains and political claims.
The second important rival hypothesis is that both the post war violence and the
regime type that emerged can be traced to the interests of capital and the technologies of
production in each of the three cases. In the U.S. the recruitment of black workers by
northern industries coincided with the deskilling of labor and the implementation of the
Fordist homogenization of the labor process. In this context, racial violence among
workers might be seen as the result of capitalists’ strategies to divide and conquer the
labor force. In South Africa, the Chamber of Mines operated a monopsony to depress
African wages, and helped to design state pass laws and taxes to ensure a supply of cheap
African labor. Some see the struggles of skilled white workers to protect their position as
a byproduct of capitalists’ super-exploitation of native African workers. In Ulster,
Unionist elites sponsored the Protestant labor association that expelled Catholics from
skilled employment, and local capitalists who desired to maintain the connection to
Britain accepted the violent segmentation of the labor force. Marxist inspired scholars
Convention