Da ‘levatrice della storia’ a variabile della modernità. Prospettive sociologiche sul tema della violenza, da Marx fino all’Olocausto e ai mattatoi

The article focuses on the relation between modernity and violence in sociological tradition. We propose a reconstruction of main contributions, from Marxist analysis of violence as the ‘midwife of history’ until Bau- man’s work about Holocaust as paradigm of modernity: at the one side violence as a foundational process of modernity, at the other modernity as necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the development of a new spe- cific form of ‘modernist’ violence. Between these two extremities, a number of reflections that can be summed up in a general dichotomy: those who counterpose modernization process and permanence of violence (Elias, Pinker, Touraine); and those who see a correlation of these two elements (Foucault, Frankfurt School). Then, in the last part of the article, we consider a specific form of violence, toward non-human animals, underestimated in literature, and whose characteristics assume typical dynamics of modernity.