Reflections on Violence

This art icle was downloaded by: [ Murzban Jal] On: 30 April 2012, At : 02: 16 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions for aut hors and subscript ion informat ion: ht t p:/ / www.t andfonline.com/ loi/ rcso20 Reflections on Violence Murzban Jal Available online: 20 Apr 2012 To cite this article: Murzban Jal (2012): Reflect ions on Violence, Crit ique: Journal of Socialist Theory, 40:2, 235-259 To link to this article: ht t p:/ / dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 00111619.2012.664729 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Full t erm s and condit ions of use: ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm s- andcondit ions This art icle m ay be used for research, t eaching, and privat e st udy purposes. Any subst ant ial or syst em at ic reproduct ion, redist ribut ion, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, syst em at ic supply, or dist ribut ion in any form t o anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warrant y express or im plied or m ake any represent at ion t hat t he cont ent s will be com plet e or accurat e or up t o dat e. The accuracy of any inst ruct ions, form ulae, and drug doses should be independent ly verified wit h prim ary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, act ions, claim s, proceedings, dem and, or cost s or dam ages what soever or howsoever caused arising direct ly or indirect ly in connect ion wit h or arising out of t he use of t his m at erial. Critique Vol. 40, No. 2, May 2012, pp. 235
259 Reflections on Violence Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 Murzban Jal This essay is on Marxist theory of violence, keeping in mind Marx’s idea of Gewalt that he first drew in his 1843
1844 critique of Hegel. Gewalt, an almost untranslatable term, is translated as force, sometimes also as violence. But Marx’s Gewalt is immediately related to humanity in ferment, which is in the grips of revolutionary theory. Gewalt becomes an ethical idea, a revolutionary categorical imperative. Later Marx in Capital brings in again the idea of Gewalt, this time as the midwife of revolutions. We are taking these two readings of Gewalt and attempting to understand whether Gewalt as revolutionary violence has meaning in the contemporary era of the imperialist Empire, or whether the Stalinist and imperialist counter-revolutions devour this revolutionary repertoire. In the background of this problem we are also reflecting on Marx’s idea of the human essence as also psychoanalytic deliberations on these themes, deliberations carried out in the epochs of Lenin’s reading of imperialism and Negri’s understanding of the New Imperial World Order: the (dis)order of Empire-ism where the warfare economy has monopolized politics and henceforth rendered unnecessary the process of critical and revolutionary thinking. Keywords: Violence; Empire-ism; Just War; Alienation; Lenin; Psychoanalysis War is not only a continuation of politics. It is the epitome of politics. (V.I. Lenin, ‘Report to the 7th All Russian Congress of Soviets, December 5, 1919’) If we are to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensible nation. (Madeline Albright, Today, NBC interview with Matt Lauer, 19 February 1998) Politics itself is increasingly becoming war conducted by other means. (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude) Violence as Technological Reason Reflections on violence take us back, not only from the contemporary age of the global state of perpetual war to Auschwitz and the gas chambers, nor merely to the pickaxe that smashed Trotsky’s skull, or to the Stalinist massacre of the Bolsheviks. One goes further back to colonialism and the primitive accumulation of capital where Western Europe was able to stamp its footprints all over the world. Even these antecedents have ISSN 0301-7605 (print)/ISSN 1748-8605 (online) # 2012 Critique http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2012.664729 Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 236 M. Jal a prehistory that itself is quite long. Just as European fascism has a history that could be located both in the dictatorship of finance capital and in what Wilhelm Reich called the ‘orgone’ that we transcribe after the young Marx as the estranged human condition,1 so too the new policeman turned emperor, Uncle Sam, has a history that cannot be located merely to William Casey and Robert Gates, nor simply to the Platt Amendment of 1901, to the colonial policy of John Quincy Adams, or to George Washington and Franklin Pierce. Instead one will understand the histories of violence unleashed by Auschwitz and Uncle Sam in a different and deeper context. A certain sense of philosophical reflection necessitates going back to the origins of the problem. In this sense reflections on violence necessitate reflection on four simultaneous themes: (1) the questions of the genesis of class societies with the breakdown of primitive communist societies and the emergence of the state as the organ of coercion; (2) the dominance of capitalism, imperialism and the warfare economy over our contemporary life-worlds;2 (3) the classical philosophical question: ‘What is humanity?’, added with a very Marxist question, ‘How is free humanity possible?’; and (4) the very important political question, ‘Is revolutionary violence possible when one is talking of communism as being classless, stateless and nationless realized as the ‘union (Verein) of free individuals’?3 Keeping these questions in mind, one further asks: ‘Would these free individuals be violent individuals and the union a violent union?’ Or, ‘Is revolutionary violence inexorably caught in a bourgeois trap where the liberator would inevitably imitate the oppressor?’ It is with these intertwined themes that reflections on violence can proceed. There are three basic structures in this essay: the first on violence, and wars as a manifestation of violence; the second on the historical conjuncture of class struggles, the nature of transition to socialism, universal suffrage, mass action and the need for armed struggle against imperialism; and the third on Marx’s critique of alienated humanity. Let us see the first part: violence, so the classical socialist texts of the 20th century went, is of two types*the bourgeois predatory type of imperialist violence where, for the sake of gold, imperialism kills and maims millions of people and brings in devastation, starvation and death; and the proletarian liberating type that brings peace, bread and freedom, and ‘uses gold for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets’.4 1 The term ‘cell-form’ we have taken from Marx’s Capital, Vol. I, transl. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1983), p. 19, whilst the estranged human essence appears in his early works, most notable the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. In order to understand the orgone, see Charles Kelly, ‘What is Orgone Energy?’ in The Creative Process, Vol. II, Nos 2
3 (September 1962). However it is important to note that, whilst we are using this Reichean term, we do not subscribe to Reich’s almost metaphysical inversion of his early research, especially his pioneering work on fascism. 2 In philosophical terms, this dominance of capitalism implies studying the etiology of the alienated human essence and the dominance of the reality principle of capital accumulation over the pleasure principle of labor, love and life. 3 Marx, op. cit., p. 83. 4 V.I. Lenin, ‘Importance of Gold Now & After Complete Victory of Socialism’ in Lenin. Selected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), p. 649. Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 Critique 237 To understand the various Marxists on the use of revolutionary violence, one needs to understand that there are no smooth curves, but zigzags, contradictions and breaks in the theories of violence. One also needs to understand the dialectics of Aufhebung (an uprising of preservation and abolishment) and Auflösung (dissolution) of the state, and thus the abolishing and dissolution of the state as an instrument of violence, and the consequent transfer of power (Gewalt) to the Soviets and the proletarian communes. The abolishing of the state is intrinsically tied down to the immediate abolishing of commodity production and the money economy, which directly involves the abolishing of the imperialist cartels and the Military Industrial Complex as the raison d’être for imperialist wars. Thus when Lenin talked of ‘violent revolution’ and claimed that Engels wrote a ‘panegyric on violent revolution’,5 the dialectic of abolishing and dissolution of the state, commodity production and classes governed his philosophy, where the abolishing and dissolution of the state was translated into the dictum: ‘convert the imperialist war into a civil war’.6 Since the abolishing of the state and commodity production is the practical reason for the Marxist theory of violence, it must be kept in mind that the post-Lenin Bolsheviks (from Trotsky to Bukharin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, et al.) became trapped in the bourgeois cycle of violence and counter-violence, primarily because commodity production and the state (the cause sui of violence) were reinforced as the essential aspects of socialist society. It is this feature that is the main cause of the Stalinist counter-revolution, the restoration of capitalism in Soviet Union in 1928, the return of the Oriental Despot in the USSR and the collapse of Marxist critique into bourgeois theory of violence. Not only was Preobrazhensky wrong about his theory of ‘primitive socialist accumulation’, and not only were Stalin and Mao outrageously incorrect in keeping commodity production and value as the essentials of socialist economy,7 but so too was Trotsky wrong in talking of the ‘gradual dying away’ of state and money.8 It is in this materialist perspective that we shall be able to reflect on violence. To reflect on violence, one needs to reflect on the political economy of violence, and as we shall see in the course of this essay, to reflect on the etiology of alienation. Although post-Lenin Marxists claimed to predicate their theories of violence on this materialism of commodity production, class struggle and the state, in the last resort they would forget the dialectics and historicity of commodity production and the state, and thus in the last resort be determined by the old theories of war*from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to Clausewitz’s On War. Since Marxist critique of political economy was confused with bourgeois economics, and since one forgot the 5 V.I. Lenin, ‘State and Revolution’ in Lenin. Selected Works, op. cit., pp. 275
277. V.I. Lenin, Socialism and War (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), p. 23. 7 J.V. Stalin, ‘Problems of Socialism in the USSR’ in J.V. Stalin Selected Writings, Vol. II (Calcutta: National Book Trust, 1976), p. 301; Mao Tse Tung, A Critique of Soviet Economics (London: Monthly Review Press, 1977), p. 144. 8 Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed. What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going? (Delhi: Aakar Books, 2006), p. 78. 6 Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 238 M. Jal dialectical materialist dictum*money economy determines (bestimmte) war*one not only made violence a free-floating signifier, but one also confused the bourgeois and Marxist theories of violence. Mao would be, in a certain sense both the culmination of these pre-Marxist theories of violence and war and the author of the left-messianic theory and practice of violence. Consider his most bourgeois and almost Clausewitzean understanding: ‘Military action is a method used to attain a political goal’.9 One will see in the course of this essay how the fetishism of war and violence is deeply rooted in this type of discourse, a discourse that would not merely give way to the Maoist school of protracted war, but also appropriate the George Sorel school of violence (realized best in the Shining Path movement and the contemporary Indian Maoist movement that celebrates the ‘annihilation of class enemies’). It must be noted that the metaphysics of violence that Sorel theorized gave way to the right-wing school of Italian fascism, which would then be taken over by messianic Islamism of the Hezbollah type.10 Since Maoism talks of ‘liberation’, but does not critique commodity production and the state, one will also see how there is more of Sun Tzu in Maoism and thus more of the discourses of Oriental Despotism and the ‘Moral Law (which) causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger’,11 than Marx’s philosophy of human liberation. As Mao’s politics-incommand replaces Marx’s union of free individuals, and since the Stalinist and Maoist state replaces the free activity of the multitude, one must note that, not only are the Stalin and Mao schools wrong, but they are essentially counter-revolutionary. If for Mao there was the fetishism of messianic wars deeply etched in his theory and practice, for the Soviet school there was the fetishism of class reductionism. It seemed as if the Soviet bourgeoisie had never read Lenin’s critique of ‘economism’. Yet, it must be noted that there is a difference in these two fetishes: the Maoist fetish was a movement for a united China independent of both Japanese occupation and the rule of the Chinese comprador, whilst the Soviet fetish of violence was built on the fear of revolutionary Marxism, the decomposition of revolutionary Bolshevism and the triumph of the Stalinist counter-revolution. What one finds in the Chinese and the Soviet decomposed schools was a Faustian dilemma that could never be resolved. For just as two souls dwelt in Faust’s breast and just as two hostile classes exist in contemporary society, so too we were told by the Soviet and Chinese apparatchiks that two types of violence inexorably exist in the breast of capitalism. The militarization of socialism and consequently the bourgeoisiefication of socialism would be the necessary consequence. Since violence was articulated as a mimicking superstructure of a given historical class, and since classes are the fundamental reality of capitalism, violence was also noted as being an inevitable part of Marxist discourse. Violence was henceforth 9 Mao Tse Tung, On War (Dehradun: Natraj Publications, 2008), p. 79. It must be noted that, for Shiite Islam (especially for the Hezbollah), the concept of the oppressed (Mostazafin) in messianic war with the oppressor (Moztakberin) is fundamental. 11 Sun Tzu, The Art of War, ed. James Clavell (New York: Delta, 1983), p. 9. 10 Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 Critique 239 articulated merely as a type of technique, or technological reason wielded by a particular class, and if violence was to be understood as a technique or as technological reason, then reflections on violence as technological reason implied that reason as violence was basically nonhuman reason and nonrational reason, if not antihumanist and irrational altogether. In this case one has to stress that rigorous Marxism has to theorize in the terrains of Classical German Philosophy that demarcates the zones of technological reason* which exists in the site of understanding (Verstand)*and humanist reason*which exists in the site of reason (Vernunft) itself. One is thus claiming that there is a site that lies beyond violence itself*the site of Vernunft*a site that seems to be concealed despite the works of Marx, Lenin, Freud, Reich, Erich Fromm and Raya Dunayevskaya. After all, as Habermas says, technological reason is both ideological and domineering, for it does not seek to know, but seeks to control both nature and humanity.12 In this case one has to seek a type of reason that goes beyond technological reason. It seems that the type of post-technological reason was found, but because of the lack in the understanding of Hegelian dialectic, this was submerged in a Faustian dilemma. This led to a certain type of tragedy that haunts the left movement even today. So in addition to these two types of rationale of violence (the real bourgeois one and the mythical messianic one), a third type of reason emerged with the emergence of a nonviolent action type, reminiscent however not of revolutionary Marxism, but of pacifism and the radical utopians. The pacifist forgot Lenin’s dictum: ‘wars are inevitable as long as class rule exists’.13 Here the two souls in oblivion to class society take an altogether different course, recalling the celebrated Faustian dilemma: Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast, And each will wrestle for the mastery there. The one has passion’s craving crude for love, And hugs a world where sweet the senses rage; The other longs for pastures fair above, Leaving the murk for lofty heritage.14 We are thus left with three types of action types: the two types of violent ones followed by the tragic Gnostic-pacifist one, a type reminiscent not only of Faust but also of Hamlet, the bourgeois existentialist par excellence and the Modern Prince of late imperialism in crisis, who not only abjures from reflecting on Gewalt, but falls down before the state machine contemplating: ‘to be or not to be . . .’. Yet one will not be dismissive of any one of them, neither the bourgeois one, nor the proletariat one, nor even the Faustian
Hamletean one. To these three types one will have to recall the 12 See Jürgen Habermas, ‘Technology and Science as Ideology’ in Towards a Rational Society, transl. Jeremy Shapiro (London: Heinemann, 1971), p. 82. 13 V.I. Lenin, ‘The Fall of Port Arthur’ in Lenin. Collected Work, Vol. 8 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1962), p. 54. 14 Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust, Part One, transl. Philip Wayne (London: Penguin Books, 1949), p. 67. 240 M. Jal Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 most important one that Marx theorized in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 as the appropriation of humanity as humanity15 and then christened in the Theses on Feuerbach as revolutionary praxis of authentic humanist society, or ‘socialized humanity’.16 It must be noted that the classical theorizing on violence in 20th-century Marxism from Trotsky to Mao and Che Guevara seemed somehow to lack this Marxist dialectic of the philosophy of praxis.17 Our thesis is based on the radical idea of praxis that transcends the reductionist and a-historical ideas of violence. It also transcends the ideologies of pacifism. Although pacifism is itself a wide and complex field of operation, it inevitably gets caught up in the fetishism of capital accumulation and in the last resort serves the capitalist class. Consider Gandhi, the classical pacifist: I am working for the co-operation and co-ordination of capital and labor and of landlords and tenants . . . Class war is foreign to the genius of India which is capable of evolving a form of communism broad-based on the fundamentals of all and equal rights of all. The Ramrajajya of my dream ensures the rights alike of prince and pauper. You may be sure that I shall throw the whole weight of my influence in preventing class war . . . I know, however, that no member (of the Parliamentary Board) will talk of expropriation and extinction of private property . . . Our socialism and communism should therefore be based on non-violence and on the harmonious co-operation of labor and capital and the landlord and tenant.18 In this essay we shall take five themes in order to reflect on Marx’s idea on violence: (1) the classical 20th-century Marxist texts on violence derived from Clausewitz’s theory of war, especially his theory that war is a continuation of policies by other means and that war is business and commerce carried out with bloodshed;19 (2) the continuation and reversal of the first proposal where capital accumulation becomes war carried out with violent means; (3) the pacifist theme of violence as being the other side (namely the Hamletean side) of violence; (4) Lenin’s theory of war as the epitome of politics, which has to be differentiated from 15 Marx’s words are ‘the appropriation of the human essence’ (die Aneignung des menschlichen Wesen). See Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982), p. 109 and Karl Marx, ‘Nationalökonomie und Philosophie’ in Karl Marx. Die Frühschrifte (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner, 1964), p. 264. 16 Karl Marx, ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ in Marx. Engels. Selected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 30. 17 Yet one must note that the first generation of 20th-century revolutionaries did not have access to the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, which were published only in the mid 1920s by David Ryazanov. 18 M.K. Gandhi, ‘Answers to the Zamindars, 25 July, 1934’ in Radungshu Mukherjee (ed.), The Penguin Gandhi Reader (New Delhi: Penguin, 1993), pp. 238
239. 19 ‘War is neither an Art nor a Science in the real signification . . . War belongs not to the province of Arts and Sciences, but to the province of social life. It is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed . . . It would be better, instead of comparing it with Art, to liken it to business competition, which is also a conflict of human interests and activities; and it is still more like State policy, which again, on its part, may be looked upon as a kind of business competition on a great scale’. Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, transl. J.J. Graham, Book I, chap. 3 (London, 1909). Also see his Principles of War, transl. and ed. Hans W. Gatzke (Stackpole Books, 1942). Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 Critique 241 his theory of insurrection, which is to be treated as art;20 and (5) Marx’s revolutionary humanism that emphasizes that ‘an end which requires unjustifiable means is no justifiable end’,21 which is in direct contrast to Clausewitz’s justification of war as ‘an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will’.22 Drawing thus the line of demarcation between the sites of violence and wars as commerce (thus ‘wars as violent commerce’ and ‘violence as war-like commerce’) and insurrection as art*thus differentiating commerce from aesthetics*one will be able to understand the nature of violence and whether revolutionary violence is possible at all in the Marxist repertoire. Keeping these points in mind and then cogitating over the concerns of the young Marx, it could be said that there could be no greater critic of violence than Marx himself. Reflections on violence would then transcend the old socialist idea of differentiating bourgeois violence from the proletariat one. Instead one could say that, according to Marx’s problematic of alienation, violence (both violence as business and business as violence, not to forget nonviolence itself) could be said to emanate from the alienated human condition, a condition that is perfected by late imperialism in permanent crisis. Violence is the raison d’être of estranged society and the spectacle of estranged society. However, as our argument goes, so is nonviolence another spectacle. It is in this context that we begin the classical readings of violence and question how they need to be put in the dialectics of suspicion. Consider Lenin: After expropriating the capitalists and organizing their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world* the capitalist world*attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists, and the case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states. The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic, which will more and more concentrate the forces of the proletariat of a given nation or nations, in the struggle against states that have not come over to socialism.23 Two important issues emerge: firstly, Lenin’s reading of insurrection as art that is differentiated from the business of war and how this proposition would be compatible with Marx’s philosophy of liberation; and secondly, how this Leninist articulation is applicable in today’s changed world, from combined and uneven development to combined and destroyed development, from nation states to post-nation states, and from imperialism to the imperial-ism of the Empire. Here it must be stated that the alleged Leninist opposition (just and unjust wars) was a Stalinist invention. The Leninist opposition is wars vs insurrection, the philistine vs the revolutionary. 20 V.I. Lenin, Marxism and Insurrection (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), pp. 354
358. One may call insurrection the realization of humanism and naturalism of the young Marx. 21 Karl Marx, ‘Debates on the Freedom on the Press’, in Marx. Engels. Collected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 175. 22 Von Clausewitz, On War, op. cit. 23 V. I. Lenin, ‘On the Slogan For a United States of Europe’ in Lenin. Selected Works, op. cit., pp. 155
156. 242 M. Jal Thinking about Gewalt Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 In order to understand the art of insurrection as the realization of humanism, let us begin with Marx’s philosophical reading of Gewalt. Now the Gewalt that Marx drew in his A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction implies a polysemy of meanings: from power, authority and force to violence.24 That Gewalt in the German also has idealist connotations*almost a biblical reading of the ‘act of God’ that should not be forgotten. Marx’s Gewalt is on the other hand the exact inversion of the idealizing messianic meaning common to salvation ideologies. Note the humanist motif in Marx and note also how Gewalt is intrinsic to the question of humanity as humanity. Note also how Marx talks of weapons (Waffen) in his philosophical discourse: Clearly the weapon of critique (die Waffen der Kritik) cannot replace the critique of weapons (die Kritik der Waffen), and material force (die materielle Gewalt) must be replaced by material force. But theory also becomes a material force once it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses when it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp things by the root. But for humanity the root is humanity itself.25 It is from this humanist moment that I propose to read the notion of Gewalt in Marx, keeping in mind Marx’s second reading of Gewalt: ‘Force (die Gewalt) is the midwife of every society pregnant with a new one. It itself is an economic power (ökonomische Potenz)’.26 Now it is well known that this extract has been used in left-wing literature almost without trying to fathom what Marx was trying to say. The immediate picture that one draws is that of the socialist baby that is almost refusing to be born (or its birth is being blocked by the bourgeoisie) and the violent communist midwife trying to ply the baby from the womb of the aging capitalist mother. It is tempting for Marxists to dream of enacting the role of this midwife, but did Marx want to become this violent midwife? Recall the context that Marx is locating the problem*of the genesis of the industrial capitalist and of primitive accumulation. According to Marx, modern capitalism (the baby) emerges like the barbarian with ‘brute force’ (brutalster Gewalt) with ‘the power of the state’ (die Staatsmacht) and with the ‘organized force of society’ (organisierte Gewalt der Gesellschaft).27 Capitalist Gewalt, so Marx claims, is the barbarism of the Christian race, seeping in treachery, bribery, massacre and meanness.28 The theater of this Gewalt is the secret prison.29 We live in the prison 24 See Etienne Balibar, ‘Gewalt’ in Wolfgang Fritz Haug (ed.), Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus (Berlin: Argument, 2001), p. 1271. Also see his Politics and the Other Scene, transl. Christine Jones, James Swenson and Chris Turner (London: Verso, 2002). 25 Karl Marx, ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.Introduction’ in Karl Marx. Early Writings, transl. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton (New York: Vantage Books, 1975), p. 251. 26 Karl Marx, Capital, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 703. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., pp. 703
704. 29 Ibid., p. 704. Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 Critique 243 house of capitalist violence. How is one to escape from it? Which type of Gewalt will one have to use? The response could be both a type of cynicism and economism on the one hand and the realist type of explanation on the other. Both the cynic and realist will say: ‘You want to be a Marxologist, a type of philologist deciphering meanings behind words. But how would one deal with the Kolchaks, Denkins, Hitlers and Khomeinis? Most certainly not with the book of the metaphysics of morality in hand!’ To this cynical response there is yet an opposite response*this time from the liberal who will quote Kant: ‘war is bad in that it produces more evil people than it destroys’.30 To understand both the socialist realist as well as the Kantian response one has to move from the realm of ‘evil’ to the bourgeois Garden of Eden, where one sees this Kantian ‘evil’ nestled in the delicacies of bourgeoisdom: bourgeois freedom, the rights of man and abstract humanity.31 Here the primarily ‘evil’ is not so much the destruction of human rights, but the transfiguration of these rights into the rites of humanity, where Monsieur Capital does his danse macabre over the body of Madame Earth.32 As good historical materialists one will have to see this macabre dance, scripted now in the biblical text of the birth, life, death and resurrection of this very strange and grotesque Monsieur Capital. According to this biblical reading of the resurrection of Monsieur Capital, the good Christian philanthropist was crucified, and after going to the house of his beloved Lord, returned again as the propagandist of the bourgeois warfare economy. Since Monsieur Capital has become Prophet Capital accompanied by the holy warriors of God, gripped by an epidemic of overproduction, we have now become momentary barbarians governed by a ‘universal war of devastation’ that cries out: ‘there is too much civilization!’33 And why is there surplus civilization governed by the momentary barbarians? It is because there is ‘too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce’.34 We were once humans. Now we are waiting to be barbarians once again. In order to understand the genealogy of the momentary barbarians, and also to understand the birth, life, death and resurrection of Monsieur Capital, one needs to see the inner structure of capital accumulation. Here one also understands that the bourgeoisie cannot maintain the capitalist system. Instead violent convulsions are the orders of the day: The commodities which emerge anew from the sphere of production find the market still occupied by the old ones, then it becomes overcrowded, a stoppage occurs, the market is glutted, the commodities decline in value, there is overproduction. Where, therefore, the intermediate stage of circulation acquires independent existence so that the flow of the stream is not merely slowed down, where the existence of commodities in the circulation phase appears as storing up, 30 Immanuel Kant, ‘Eternal Peace’ in The Philosophy of Kant. Immanuel Kant’s Moral and Political Writings, ed. and transl. Carl J. Friedrich (New York: The Modern Library, 1949). 31 Marx, Capital, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 172. 32 Ibid., Vol. III, p. 830. 33 Karl Marx, ‘The Manifesto of the Communist Party’ in Marx. Engels. Selected Works, op. cit., p. 40. 34 Ibid. 244 M. Jal Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 then this is not brought up by a free act on the part of the producer, it is not the aim or an immanent aspect of production, any more than the flow of blood to the head leading to apoplexy is an immanent aspect of circulation of the blood. Capital as commodity capital . . . must not become stationary, it must only constitute a pause in the movement. Otherwise the reproduction process is interrupted and the whole mechanism is thrown into confusion.35 In order to understand how Monsieur Capital got into a state of confusion leading to apoplexy, and how he suddenly got cured; one has to see the metamorphosis of Monsieur Capital, who as an infant promised to be a good fellow, but after getting diseased became a fascist and died, only to be reborn as a liberal draped in the stars and stripes. If we were once momentary barbarians living in Auschwitz, we have now become eternal savages by converting the entire world into Auschwitz. Kant and the early liberals have moved on to let Robert Gates and the postmodern mercenaries script the new scene of history. What do we find in this new site? We find that violence as business and wars is understood in the site of the general contradictions of capital described above. Not only is violence important for imperialism*from Robert Oakley and Nasserudin Babbar (the CIA creators of the Taliban) to Robert Gates and Cameron (the born again Bushes and Blairs)*but violence as imperialist wars now forms the essential political economy of global capitalism. The postmodern mercenary as the bricoleur-technocrat has taken power. If modernity was governed by universal suffrage with periodic coups, the age of Empire-ism is governed by the technocrat mercenary as eternal savage. Democracy has given way to these eternal savages, to the Bushes and Ahmadinejads. In this sense one is compelled to say that ‘there is no such thing as non-violence’.36 Nonviolence is pure fiction, authored not so much by Gandhi, but by Hamlet. Nonviolence becomes the other half of both violence and the warfare economy. Here we are faced with a new problem: We are faced with a global state of war in which violence can erupt anywhere at any time. And most important from the perspective of sovereignty, there is no secure means of legitimating the use of violence today and no stable groupings of that violence into friend and enemy camps . . . Modern sovereignty, we should be clear, does not put an end to violence and fear but rather puts an end to civil war by organizing violence and fear into a coherent and stable political order. The sovereign will be the only legitimate author of violence . . . The current state of war, which has become continuous police activity that supports the regulative foundation of administration and political control, similarly demands the obedience of subjects who are plagued by violence and fear.37 We then come back to our main question: ‘What does Marx’s Gewalt do when the Pentagon, NATO and the international mercenaries have replaced Kant’s three Critiques?’ It is here that we ask the following questions: ‘Is there any way of 35 Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part III (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978), p. 282. Etinne Balibar, Politics and the Other Scene, transl. Christine Jones, James Swenson and Chris Turner (London: Verso, 2002), p. 145. 37 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (London: Penguin Books, 2004), pp. 238
239. 36 Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 Critique 245 delivering mankind from the menace of war?’, and, ‘Why is it that every attempt at its solution has ended in a lamentable breakdown?’38 Since we shall not be enamoured by the theories of good wars and bad wars (the earlier just and unjust wars), we will simply say that ‘a person filled with hate and destructiveness and incapable of loving is not healthy’.39 Yet this humanist thesis of Marx’s radical ‘practical subversion’ (practischen Umsturz),40 of the New Sovereign of Global Empire-ism takes a different form that cannot be predicated on the old logic of ‘revolutionary war’,41 or a ‘bourgeoisprogressive war of national liberation’ where the Kurds fight the Turks, the Palestinians fight the Zionist occupiers, just as once Persia, China and India were told to fight Russia, the Japanese and Britain.42 In this sense one is questioning not only the classical Leninist thesis of revolution in the age of early imperialism. One is also questioning Gramsci’s theories of the wars of maneuver and position, as also Mao’s idea of protracted wars. In this understanding of violence and wars in the age of Empire-ism of late imperialism in permanent crises, one transforms Marx’s idea of the phantom commodity into the concept of phantom wars. Just as the commodity negates its material form as use values to posit a hyper-ideal form of value, so too wars in the age of the Empire of late imperialism negate the material
spatial forms of classical modernity. Phantom wars are wars fought by hyper-technologies. Phantom wars are not only bodiless (from the view of Yankee imperialism). They are primarily mindless. The old (modernist) concept outlined by Machiavelli and Clausewitz where people rule over technology and not vice versa is transcended by phantom wars, wars that are not restricted to material geographical spaces. Like Marx’s value, these new wars are hyper-spatial wars. The problem is not only historical*namely understanding new material conditions, new subject positions and consequently new states of conflicts*but also one that has to be understood within the problematic of Marxist theory that differentiates wars (as business) from insurrections (which are primarily aesthetical in nature). One cannot mimic the bourgeois. One cannot state that, just as the bourgeois has its own wars, the proletariat can have its own. Instead the New International, the International of the 21st century, denounces all types of all wars and subscribes to the very ethical and aesthetical question: how to treat insurrection as art. We thus differentiate wars from insurrection. One cannot collapse one into the other. Now it is well known that just before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution Lenin had posed this question. One needs to treat insurrection as art, just as one treats Beethoven’s music or Goethe’s poetry as works of art. Just as the works 38 Albert Einstein, ‘To Sigmund Freud, Caputh near Potsdam, July 30, 1932’ in The Sigmund Freud Penguin Library, Vol. 12, Civilization, Society and Religion, transl. James Strachey (London: Penguin, 1985), p. 345. 39 Erich Fromm, The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (London: Penguin, 1973), p. 40. 40 Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, The German Ideology (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), p. 61. 41 For ‘revolutionary war’ see V.I. Lenin, ‘The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution’ in Lenin. Selected Works, op. cit., p. 29. 42 V.I. Lenin, Socialism and War, op. cit., p. 15. Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 246 M. Jal of Beethoven and Goethe cannot become works of business, so too insurrection cannot be reified into a commodity that can be controlled by the global monopoly capitalists. Yet the reification of insurrection is continually manufactured by Global Empire-ism, and in the reified shadows of insurrection stands the figure central to Marx’s politics*the figure of the boheme, the pretender revolutionary that lives with the proletariat, but always conspires against it. Those familiar with Marx will recognize the figure of Louis Bonaparte behind this strange character. One will also note how the original Bonapartes went to let Stalin enter the scene of history, and how Stalin went to let the Iranian mullahs dance their macabre dance. The boheme is everywhere. One has to understand this strange character. One also has to understand that the act of this strange character in early 21st century is actually the ‘revolt of the mercenaries’43. In this drama Puccini is not there. Neither are Rudolphe or Mimi present. Instead one will see the boheme marching alongside the Hamas and the Hezbollah. The boheme preaches redemptive violence, and since violence maintains Empire-ism*although pretending to fight the Empire*one will have to look carefully at this scene. Redemptive Violence and Nonviolence: Both as Swindle Let us first mention the so-called radical enemies of the Empire, the Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian quixotic mullahs, not to forget other postmodern theologians, and then let us turn to the young Marx’s reading of the boheme as the professional conspirator. This postmodern boheme is like the alchemists of the revolution44 of classical modernity. He conjures images of revolutions. He fantasizes that the ‘real’ revolution is the Islamic revolution. Just as Charles Baudelaire once shouted: ‘Long live revolution!’, ‘Long live destruction!’, ‘Long live penance!’, ‘Long live death!’,45 so too the postmodern boheme celebrates the theological ‘revolution’ of destruction and death. Consider Marx’s portrayal of this conspirator: The chief characteristic of the conspirators’ way of life is their battle with the police, to whom they have precisely the same relationship as thieves and prostitutes. The police tolerate the conspiracies, and not just as a necessary evil: they tolerate them as centers which they can keep under easy observation and where the most violent revolutionary elements in society meet, as the forges of revolt, which in France has become a tool of government quite as the police themselves, and finally as a recruiting place for their own political mouchards. Just as the most serviceable rogue-catchers, the vidocqs and their cronies, are taken from the class of greater and lesser rascals, thieves, esrocs (swindlers) and fraudulent bankrupts, and often revert to their old trade, in precisely the same way the humble political policemen are recruited from among the professional conspirators. The conspirators are 43 Hardt and Negri, op. cit., p. 48. Karl Marx, ‘Review of Chenu’s les Conspirateurs’, in Marx. Engels. Collected Works, Vol. 10 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978), p. 318. 45 See Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelairre. A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, transl. Harry Zohn (London: Verso, 1992), p. 14. 44 Critique 247 Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 constantly in touch with the police, they come into conflict with them all the time; they hunt the mouchards, just as the mouchards hunt them. Spying is one of their main occupations. It is no wonder therefore that the short step from being a conspirator by trade to being a paid police spy is so frequently made facilitated as it is by poverty and prison, by threats and promises.46 It is here that we need to ask: what is the relation between violence (even so-called ‘revolutionary violence’) on the one hand (knowing that the police spy as advocate of so-called ‘revolutionary violence’ is always present at the scene of revolution), and barbarism and cruelty on the other hand? I am tempted here to recall Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment that seeks the origins of the metaphysics of violence
barbarism
cruelty in the very structure of class societies. Thus, to overturn the rather fashionable concept ‘Western Reason’, we need to inject the very scientific term ‘Class Reason’, and thus to look at violence in this space of Class Reason. We shall keep this question in mind and proceed to the question of whether redemptive violence is necessarily realized in the theater of cruelty. We shall pick up this theme from Kevin Anderson’s Marx at the Margins47 and recall what Marx called the ‘rule of historical retribution, that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself ’.48 There are two different themes of revolutionary violence that one picks up from Anderson’s text: (1) The anticolonial movement by the Indian masses against British imperialism, a revolt that was, however, bathed in cruelty. Marx notes the ‘cutting of noses and breasts . . . [and] the horrid mutilations committed by the sepoys’.49 Whilst these anticolonial actions horrified the British, European refinement was not affected by ‘the throwing of red-hot shells on canton dwellings by a secretary of the Manchester peace society, or the roasting of Arabs pent up in a cave by a French marshal’.50 So how does one understand the many sides of cruelty? Marx answers: ‘cruelty, like every other thing, has its fashion, changing according to time and place’.51 (2) The second part is more focused on the terror unleashed by the oppressed. Sometimes it appears as a process of destruction ‘without any nucleus of construction . . . [where] a human head means no more than a cabbage to a Taiping’.52 Sometimes it is ‘only negative action . . . merely the rage and fury of 46 Karl Marx, ‘Review of Chenu’s les Conspirateur’s’, in Marx. Engels. Collected Works, Vol. 10 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978), p. 319. 47 Kevin Anderson, Marx at the Margins. On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western societies (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2010). 48 Karl Marx, ‘The Indian Revolt’ in The First Indian War of Independence (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978), p. 79. 49 Ibid., p. 81. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Karl Marx, ‘Chinese Affairs’ in Marx. Engels. Collected Works, op. cit., Vol. 19, pp. 216
217; Anderson, Marx at the Margins, op. cit., p. 37. 248 M. Jal Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 destruction . . . no more significant than cleaving a head of a cabbage or swallowing a draught of water’.53 Whilst one does note the grotesque in these forms of violence and also notes the undialectical fashion of violence, one also agrees with Anderson, who says that, whilst the so-called ‘mystical east’ was involved in revolutionary action (even of the violent type), the bourgeoisie of the ‘rational west’ was (Hamlet-like) obsessed with the fetishism of commodities and its magic and necromancy emanating thereon.54 Yet if this magic and necromancy was noted by Marx in the first volume of Capital as some sort of psychological disorder, it has now become the ideology-in-dominance with imperialism actively transforming the politics of class and multitude into the politics of crowd with Human Rights Watch, the International Republican Institute, National Democratic Institute, Freedom House, the National Endowment for Democracy playacting Bonaparte and Stalin, the magician and necromantic artist, not to forget the mouchard conspirator cum police spy. Look everywhere*to Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, and now West Asia*and one will see this mouchard conspirator cum police spy, negating the multitude as class struggle and positing the crowd as nonclass mass, and advocating both redemptive violence as well as nonviolent conflict resolution despite being financed by the Empire and the warfare economy. The site for the operation of this conspirator is the crowd, a technique that was developed by the Nazis, later taken over by the Shiite mullahs in 1979, and now used with great efficiency by Yankee imperialism. The crowd is almost a sort of metaphysical entity, as against class which is dialectical. The crowd has no shared code, no ‘commonness’, no common interest. That is why the ‘crowd or the mob or the rabble can have social effects*often horrible destructive effects*but cannot act on their own accord. That is why they are susceptible to external manipulation’.55 So in contrast to this delight in swindle and advocacy of both redemptive violence and nonviolence*the Empire-ist claiming to be anti-Empire-ist, the conspirator turned police spy*there is a counter delight, a more authentic one may I say, and that is the delight in what we know after Hegel’s Science of Logic as the delight in the Begriff (Notion) where the praxis of Revolutionary Internationalism as the vehicle of human emancipation is able to free itself from the discourses of capitalism. Let us briefly look at the logical structure of Hegel’s Logic. According to the Logic there is a three-tiered structure*Being (Sein), Essence (Wesen) and Notion (Begriff)*where Being is the basic structure, Essence is the deep structure and Notion is the deep
deep structure. Now what exactly is this Hegelian Notion and how does it help us in understanding violence in the age of late imperialism? At this juncture one will briefly 53 G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, transl. J.B. Baillee (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966), pp. 604
605; Anderson, Marx at the Margins, op. cit., p. 37. 54 ‘The irony is that ‘‘rationalist’’ Europe had in the 1850s lost its revolutionary drive and was instead swept up by mysticism, while ‘‘mystical’’ China was engaged not so much in mysticism as in social revolution’. Anderson, Marx at the Margins, op. cit., pp. 36
37. 55 Hardt and Negri, op. cit., p. 100. Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 Critique 249 move on to the two reflections on Hegel: the one inspired by Raya Dunayevskaya56 and then taken up by contemporary American Marxist Humanists, especially Kevin Anderson’s reading of Hegel’s ‘Idea’,57 where the Idea is no longer read in the Engelsian fashion as the culmination of speculative idealism and world history itself.58 Instead the ‘Idea’ as the prime mechanism of the Notion grasps reality in root form where Marx’s statement ‘to be radical is to grasp things by the root, but for humanity the root is humanity itself ’59 is located in this Hegelian dialectics of world history. One has to grasp this root*that poses these questions ‘What is humanity?’ and ‘How is communism as the appropriation of humanity possible?’*in order for the revolution to flow. To grasps things by the root requires knowledge of both the Hegelian dialectic and humanist anthropology. Once one has grasped this authentic structure of dialectical and revolutionary humanism, one is able to define the core historicist and humanist structure of Marxism. It is here that one is able to clearly demarcate the sites of communism and capitalism, of insurrection on the one side, and violence and wars on the other side. The first treats humanity as species being, and the second treats humanity as sadomasochism. This ‘invitation to intoxication’ (to borrow Adorno’s phrase)60 is sketched in the site of the sadomasochistic character that has lost its human essence. What Einstein called ‘the dark places of human will and feeling’61 are grounded in this very site. One will understand not only bourgeois violence, but also violence as such in this very site. One also understands Martin Heidegger’s passion of ‘the complete Europeanization of the world and all mankind’ (vollständige Europäisierung der Erde und des Menschen) in this site of sadomasochism of Bourgeois Reason. Marxist Strategies: The Weapon of Critique and the Critique of Weapons A cursory glance at the classics of early European liberal literature shows that even abstract propositions like the Kantian moral imperative that goes ‘Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law’,62 whereby the practical imperative should be read as ‘Act in such a 56 Raya Dunayevskaya, Philosophy and Revolution: From Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao (New York: Colombia University Press, 1989). 57 ‘Lenin tends to view the absolute idea chapter as a final grand exposition of Hegel’s revolutionary dialectic rather than a closure’. See Kevin Anderson, Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism. A Critical Study (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995), p. 87. 58 ‘The absolute idea*which is only absolute in so far as he has absolutely nothing to say about it . . .’; Fredrick Engels, ‘Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy’ in Marx. Engels. Selected Works, op. cit., p. 589. On Engels’s critique of the alleged Hegelian ‘end of history’, see ibid., p. 592. 59 Karl Marx, ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction’, in Karl Marx. Early Writings, transl. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton (New York: Vantage Books, 1975), p. 251. 60 Theodor Adorno, In Search of Wagner (London: New Left Books, 1981), p. 100. 61 Albert Einstein, ‘To Sigmund Freud’, op. cit., p. 345. 62 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, transl. H.J. Patton (London: Hutchinson 1966), p. 66. 250 M. Jal Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an ends’,63 are both more meaningful and humane than the standpoints of both the contemporary neo-conservatives and Obama’s reinvention of the just war theory. Let us for the time being bracket the Marxist question of Gewalt and now turn to the question raised by Kant: how is ‘eternal peace’ possible? The 1795 essay Eternal Peace. A Philosophical Sketch, like his 1785 text Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals), is of crucial importance for the understanding the modern concept of peace. His moral precept guiding his notion of practical reason shall also be the guiding force for the implementation of the peace program. Now with this discovery of the ‘kingdom-of-ends’, the Kantian notion of moral politics and the peace program follows. Kant claimed to have discovered six preliminary articles of an eternal peace between states. They are: (1) No treaty shall be held to be such, which is made with a secret reservation of the material for a future war. (2) No state having an independent existence, whether it be small or great, may be acquired by another state through inheritance, exchange, purchase or gift. (3) Standing armies shall gradually disappear. (4) No debts shall be contracted in connection with the foreign affairs of the state. (5) No state shall interfere by force in the constitution and government of another state. (6) No state at war with another shall permit such acts of warfare as must make mutual confidence impossible in time of future peace, such as the employment of assassins, of poisoners, the violation of articles of surrender, the instigation of treason in the state against which it is making war, etc.64 Now there are three definitive articles of eternal peace: (1) The civil constitution in each state should be republican. (2) The law of nations (Völkerrecht) should be based upon a federalism of free states. (3) The Cosmopolitan or World Law shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitability.65 A number of points come up in the reading of the Kantian text. Firstly the foundations of the principles of peace are grounded on the metaphysics of morals. Here the issue of peace is linked to the ideas of moral politics and the idea that people can unite to form a state in accordance with the principles of ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’, which itself is based on ‘duty’ and not on ‘prudence’.66 One must note that Kant’s Christian 63 Ibid. Immanuel Kant, ‘Eternal Peace’ in The Philosophy of Kant. Immanuel Kant’s Moral and Political Writings, ed. and transl. Carl J. Friedrich (New York: The Modern Library, 1949), pp. 431
434. 65 Ibid., pp. 437
448. 66 Ibid., pp. 466
467. 64 Critique 251 morality interpreted according to the principles of the enlightenment is the dominant feature of this type of liberal inspired political philosophy. Note this metaphysics of peace: ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of pure practical reason and of its righteousness, and your end (the well being of eternal peace) will be added unto you’.67 In contrast is Marx’s categorical imperative: revolution. The oppressor must be overthrown. Whilst an immediate contrast of these Kantian precepts with contemporary neoconservative ideology is obvious, there is also a sharp line of demarcation between Kantian moral philosophy and Marxist revolutionary élan. On the international scene these three lines of demarcation will be the fault lines drawn between imperialism of the Empire, liberalism and Marxism. It is from this juncture that we can recall contemporary reflections on the questions of war and peace: Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 War and peace: in its classical form, the conjunction of war and peace preserves the disjunctive value implied in the chiasm of these two common notions, whilst showing the impossibility of producing*both historically and conceptually*a positive definition of peace. Peace, as disarmament, negatively designates the social state of affairs characterized by the absence of war. This is Raymond Aron’s peace by disarmament: ‘it is said that peace reigns when commerce among nations does not entail the military forms of struggle’ (as Aron says in Peace and War among Nations, 1962). Being neither essential nor existential, peace does not exclude struggles and conflicts (it demilitarizes them) from the moment its principle has become ‘no different than of wars: instances of peace are based on power’ (ibid.) in a world that the imperative of public security already requires us to consider in its entirety (totus orbis). With security at its core, this secular form of political globalization is indissociable from the antinomy: War/Peace, which submits the ‘law of peoples’ (jus gentium) to the universal perspective of power (potestas). Antinomy: this is the term used by Proudhon to explain that ‘peace demonstrates and confirms war’, whilst ‘war in turn is a demand of peace’ (as noted by Proudhon in his 1861 War and Peace, Inquires into the Principle and the Constitution of the Law of Peoples). Despite the striking actuality of this formula, Proudhon is describing here what he calls ‘the alternative conditions of the life of the peoples’, who are subjected to the historical, ‘phenomenological’, alternation states of peace and states of war in a world in which the national logic of state centralization both implies and explains the propensity toward military confrontations.68 The first question is how should one be emancipated from the state of perpetual war*remembering that capitalism is in itself a state of perpetual war? Second, how does one deal with the Empire now having taken the empirical form of the American state, which claims absolute, in fact, divine sovereignty and divine right to declare war on any nation state in order to declare an illusory peace? Negri and Alliez ask further questions that are relevant to this issue: (1) Has Peace become the postmodern label for War? 67 68 Ibid., p. 466. Antonio Negri and Eric Alliez, ‘Peace and War’, Theory, Culture and Society, 20:2 (2003). 252 M. Jal Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 (2) Is it necessary to arm war with the thought of desire of peace ‘so as to lead the enemy, by victory, to the advantages of peace’ (St Augustine, Letter189 to Count Bonifacius)? (3) Can there be a ‘war against war’? (4) What is the difference between ‘the living labor of the world’ which is ‘the globalization of living labor’? (5) How does this transcendental dead labor ‘recompose itself only through war’?69 Now it is this aufgehoben (literally ‘an uprising’) against dead labor and the appropriation of living labor that shall concern us. We call this uprising ‘the appropriation of the human essence’ (die Aneignung des menschlichen Wesens).70 Recall Marx: because capital as dead labor governs living labor, humanity (like Hamlet) is haunted by the ghost of the dead.71 And so it is this difference*the difference between the ontology of dead labor (recomposed as the ideology of death that is transmitted through the culture industry and warfare economy) and the ontology of living labor*that shall concern the investigations on war and peace. A methodological note on the older left theories of war is necessary. Since the theory of alienation and the ontology of dead labor were never taken by both the Second and Third Internationalists, a certain form of cynicism is found in the orthodox Marxist reflections on both violence and war, based more on Clausewitz than on Marx’s repertoire. Recall here both Lenin and Trotsky. Just as there can be nothing called ‘wars in general’, there can be nothing called ‘violence in general’. There are bourgeois wars, the wars waged by the imperialists to loot weaker nations and subjugate them, and revolutionary wars; the wars waged by the oppressed nations to ward out the aggressive imperialists; and the wars of the revolutionary proletariat against the world bourgeoisie. These are what we get from the 20thcentury understanding of war. Thus one must distinguish just wars from unjust wars, a difference that is spelt out not in the site of a phantasmagorical superstructure that advocates Kantian types of moral responses, but in the social structure of class conflict. This has hitherto the raison d’être of the Marxist theory of wars in the 20th century. Whether it has been Lenin, Trotsky, Giap, Fanon, Satre, Merleau-Ponty or Che Guevara, this line of demarcation differentiating just wars from unjust wars runs through 20th-century revolutionary Marxism, because it is grounded in the difference between a predatory capitalist economy and the communist proletariat that actively fights against this predator. But then does the communist proletariat fight with old weapons of not only the bourgeois, but of all class societies? What does Marx’s Gewalt do? That is why we are saying that, besides this political site, there is also the Marxist philosophical site*the site that Marx had seen as the site of free humanity having the 69 Ibid. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, op. cit., p. 109; Marx, ‘Nationalökonomie und Philosophie’, op. cit., p. 264. 71 Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Erster Band (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1981), p. 15. 70 Critique 253 Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 ability to live without classes and nations, and most certainly able to live without the Repressive State Apparatus. It is this philosophical site that grasps the difference between the zones of living and dead labor, the life-world of the sensuous human essence (das menschliche Wesen), and the death-world of capitalism. This philosophical site is now not only related to the old theory of just and unjust wars, but related to the transcendence of the theory of just wars. After all, if one ponders with the aid of Hegelian logic, one will notice that the just wars/unjust wars binary is related to the old Aristotelian logic and has nothing to do with dialectics. But then did Lenin, who chided the comrades of the Second International for not having understood Marx,72 himself regress into the pre-Hegelian framework when reflecting on violence and wars? Or did his idea of insurrection transcend the just/unjust theories of war? Wars as the Metaphysics of the Cruel Geist Let us take the two statements with which we began our essay: the first one from Lenin that says that war is the epitome of politics and the other from Negri and Hardt that claims that politics is war by other means. Relate these to Marx’s theory of communism as the appropriation of humanity as humanity73 and we further deduce that, not only is the transcendence (Aufhebung) of wars (both just and unjust) important, but the transcendence of politics (as we know it at least since the days of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics) combined with the transcendence of the state (Aufhebung des States) itself.74 That is why one needs to state that Marx discovers an entirely different problematic that postulates the world of authentic humanity (to borrow his phrase), ‘the real, corporeal human being’ with its ‘real objective essential powers’ (wirklichen gegenständlichen Wesenkräfte)75 at the center of revolutionary politics. Instead of just wars, we have ‘human essential powers’ (menschlichen Wesenkrafte)76 of the international multitude on this new scene of revolution. The theme of violence and wars is now transcended for a theory of human essential powers. This is why we insist that, when 20th-century Marxism repeatedly claimed that Marx’s fundamental revolution in the domain of human thinking is the sighting of the continents of knowledge*dialectical and historical-humanist materialism*it was getting to the root of the question of Marxist theory itself, as well as getting at the root of the question of violence without being obsessed with theories of war. It literally laid bare the black hole of alienation where Gewalt as humanist Intifada was degraded as the sadomasochism of so-called just wars. It is here that we pose the very important questions: ‘Are just wars at all possible when we have said that the 72 V.I. Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1980), p. 180. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, op. cit., p. 109; Marx, ‘Nationalökonomie und Philosophie’, op. cit., p. 264. 74 Ibid., pp. 90, 235. 75 Ibid., pp. 135
136. 76 Ibid., pp. 96, 111, 136. 73 Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 254 M. Jal humanist discourse of human essential powers (menschlichen Wesenkrafte) replaces the theory of redemptive violence?’ ‘Does one agree with Mao’s theory that the aim of war is to eliminate war and that one has to oppose war with war?’77 ‘Does one say that the banner of mankind’s just war is the banner of mankind’s salvation?’78 Or is it the case that one needs to cease being obsessed with Clausewitz’s theory of wars and move to Marx’s critique of human alienation, reification and sadomasochism? Or are we claiming that Mao was himself caught in the bourgeois phantasmagoria and thus unable to replace the weapons of capitalism with the critique of weapons? Since we insist that violence is a form of alienated act and some sort of a false consciousness, and since we have said that the doctrine of just and unjust wars is replaced by Marx’s theory of essential powers (Wesenkräfte)79 and vital powers (Lebenskräften)80 of the masses, we are likewise saying that at the center of revolutionary politics lies the doctrine of natural powers (naturlichen Kräften) of the proletariat. One therefore goes into the young Marx’s site of the dialectics of the ‘estrangement of the human essence’ (Entfremdung des menschlichen Wesens),81 and ‘the transcendence of the estrangement’ (die Aufhebung der Entfremdung)82 in order to understand the genealogy of violence. After all, revolutionary praxis is possible only through a critique of alienation. That is why one states that to appropriate this human essence is the leitmotiv of understanding Gewalt as the realization of communism as humanism and naturalism. What one gets is the principle of left-wing solidarity where we have ‘a philosophical basis for socialism . . . the unity of human with human, which is based on the real differences between people, the concept of the human species brought down from the heaven of abstraction to the real earth.’83 By keeping the concepts of alienation and reification at the basis of Marxist theory, one is able to understand how reification as ‘thingification’ (Versachlichung, Verdinglichung) implies that people have lost their humanity and literally become monstrous things, machines devoid of feelings*thus violent machines. I will pick up this theme of reification as the maker of monstrous machines and link it up with the first of the Theses on Feuerbach, where human activity is noted as being distorted into schizophrenic binaries that even the great philosophers could not fathom. There are two basic parts in this schizoid dualism*the passive-contemplative and voluntaristic-phantasmagorical types. In this schizophrenic process one forgets the essence*human sensuous activity, revolutionary praxis*and instead treats humanity in the form of the terrible object that is confined to pure contemplation.84 It is literally sachliche Gewalt, or ‘violence of things’. 77 Mao Tse-Tung, On War, op. cit., pp. 6
7. Ibid., p. 7. 79 Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, op. cit., pp. 135
136. 80 Ibid., p. 136. 81 Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, op. cit., pp. 127, 134; Marx, ‘Nationalökonomie und Philosophie’, op. cit., pp. 251, 271. 82 Ibid., pp. 109, 264. 83 Karl Marx, ‘To Ludwig Feuerbach in Bruckberg’ in Marx. Engels. Collected Works, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 354. 78 Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 Critique 255 In locating the schizophrenic condition of capitalism, we thus move from the sites of the politics of violence to the ontology of violence itself. We understand how alienation creates private property, which further re-creates human alienation.85 It is at this specific site (of the alienation
private property combine) that we would be able to inquire into the origins of wars and violence. Not only are private property and estrangement created, but also alongside these are created the notions of ‘having’, ‘possession’ and ‘ownership of private property’. To be a member of bourgeois society is firstly to ‘have’, to ‘possess’ and to be an ‘owner of private property’. What one needs to stress is that violence directly emanates from this trio of possession, ownership and private property. Violence first emerged in human civilization to protect and defend private property, and over the centuries has both played this role and perfected it. Violence cannot be removed from private property. It is located in the sites of the ‘loss of objectivity’ and ‘loss of realness’.86 There is no violence innate in ‘human nature’. Human nature in the abstract is pure fiction. One dictum follows: remove private property and violence ends. As we will need to state, the Maoist messianic ideology of ‘wars that will end all wars’ will not be the ideal solution. On the Onto-genesis of Violence Let us for the time being refrain from dwelling on the so-called ‘science of wars’ and instead turn to Marx’s historicism and humanism and locate his problematic of the human essence. Instead of concentrating on wars (just and unjust), let us firstly state that the human essence (das menschliche Wesen) is defined as the fullness of humanity, a fullness that is brought about by the overthrow of capitalism. This fullness of humanity is also understood as the pleasure principle of humanness and naturalness, which is directly in opposition to the reality principle of possession and ownership. Let us proceed into the radical idea of the human essence whereby we can have a philosophical basis for socialism as well as maintaining a rigorous critique of the spectacle of violence continuously generated by global capitalism. Let us thus turn to historical materialism and note how, with the breakdown of the original (the so-called ‘primitive’) communist societies and the formation of human estrangement, private property, class-stratification and the subjugation of humanity by humanity arose. This period laid fertile ground for the growth of the state, standing armies and institutional religions as ideologies of violence, primarily in the defense of private property. We saw that, for Marx, the human being is directly a ‘natural being’ (Naturwesen), endowed with ‘natural powers’ (natürlichen Kräften) and ‘vital powers’ (lebens Kräften), and we also saw how humanity has to be understood as an ‘active natural being’ (tatiges Natürwesen).87 We now see that, with 84 Karl Marx, ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ in Marx. Engels. Selected Works, op. cit., p. 28. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, op. cit., pp. 61
62, 72
73, 83
88, 90, 112
114, 116
119, 120. 86 Ibid., p. 143. 85 Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 256 M. Jal the birth of class societies, these human powers have been distorted. This disturbance of the original human powers and potentialities (similar to Freud’s disturbance of the pleasure principle) one classifies as the reality principle of the triumvirate of estrangement
reification
fetishism. This triumvirate is located in the black hole of alienation in which the love of death (necrophilia) overpowers the love of life (biophilia).88 The dominant ideologies and realities of late imperialism in permanent crises are located at this very site. I would go with Fromm here and proceed into the understanding of how humanity as a natural being is reified into the modern war machine. What one will find is a combination of the male Apollonian life-world combined with the Abrahamic one, as opposed to the life-world of humanity as humanity. In opposition to the Clausewitz-inspired theory of wars, let us have a brief look at the origins of violence in the origins of the master/slave relation, and how the authoritarian figures of Apollo and Abraham yet govern both the policies of the imperialism of the Empire and modern human personality that consumes these ideologies. Here it is necessary to reflect on Marx’s views on noncapitalist societies, especially on his readings of the Iroquois and the early Greek, Roman and German gens (nonstate societies) and contrast these with societies that have private property, the state (as an alien and brutal organization for macrorepression) and the monogamic family (as an institution for microrepression). This is the classical state of the enforced union of enslaved individuals that is governed by the dialectic of lordship and bondage. It is important to locate both enslaved individuals in the master/slave relation, as well as the origins of violence in the birth of private property, patriarchy and the state. With the victory of patriarchy
private property
state combine, one witnessed (what Engels called) ‘the world-historic defeat of the female sex’,89 where the monogamic family as the institution for the breeding of children and the promotion of masculine lust and violence was born. Now what the modern family does is that it contains ‘not only slavery (servitus) but serfdom also, since from the very beginning it is connected with agricultural services . . . [where it] contained within itself in miniature all the antagonisms which later develop on a wide scale within society and its state’.90 One thus seeks the origins of violence much deeper, in the family apparatus (the miniature form of the state), where man and woman are no longer equal and interdependent, but unequal like master and slave. After all, famalus, as Engels mentions, means ‘a household slave and familia signifies the totality of slaves belonging to one individual’.91 Consequently for free individuals to emerge, one does not abolish only private property and the state, but also the family system, which is the cell-form of the violent state itself. 87 Ibid., p. 136. Fromm, op. cit., p. 213. 89 Fredrick Engels, ‘Origins of Family, Private Property and the State’ in Marx. Engels. Selected Works, op. cit., p. 488. 90 Ibid., p. 489. See also Anderson, Marx at the Margins, op. cit., p. 201. 91 Engels, Origins of Family, Private Property and the State, op. cit., p. 488. 88 Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 Critique 257 For it is not merely in private property and the state, but in the family system as the instrument of slave production where the humanist principle of love and life dies and the patriarchal
authoritarian principles of calculation, control and domination are born. Yet it is important that one must avoid the romanticism in Engels’s reading of Morgan, where a singular epoch-moving ‘Event’ seemed to usher in ‘the worldhistoric defeat of the female sex’, as if stratification did not exist in early gentile society.92 Despite the nuanced differences between Marx and Engels on the question of the origins of social stratification, one will stress that the structured violence that imperialism continuously appeals to is the patriarchal form of class-based, race-based violence. Ironically, a similar form of violence is taken up by those claiming to oppose the American project, namely al-Qaeda and the Iranian Shiites, just as in the last century the same biblical-messianic ideology (grounded on the private property
patriarchy
state combine) was the basis of both Nazi as well as Zionist ideologies.93 What it is important to note is that this contemporary (alleged ‘liberal’) imperialist ideology of violence is both a continuation of the fascist theories of violence and rooted in the biblical tradition of the territorialization of the earth, its division between good and evil (similar to the bourgeois division between value and use value), followed by the doctrine of ethnic supremacy, the chosen people and the master race. Let us have a look at the phylogenesis of this unhappy unconscious. In the Babylonian myth of creation, for instance, Marduk, the patron god of Babylon, becomes the supreme god. Yet Marduk does not totally eliminate the other male gods, nor does ‘he’ become like Jehovah (who appears as the first monopolist landlord and capitalist in the Bible), eliminating matriarchy and the tradition of the mother goddess. In the biblical tradition, on the other hand, it is the ideology of the violent male god that is prominent. Here the supremacy of the male (in the form of the estranged ‘Holy Spirit’) not only eliminates mother rights and the matriarchal elements of matrilineal societies, but usurps the feminine domain of procreation. One could say that this is where male-centric violence is clearly detected, where the male as estranged spirit launches a hostile attack on womanhood itself by stating that she was the author of original sin. In this biblical narrative the male god claims that the feminine principle is no longer needed in procreation. Creation is depicted as emerging through the word of the male god. It is not the womb, but the order of the male god whereby ‘creation’ (i.e. a more brutal word for the mode of production) takes place. This will serve as the first principle of the origins of male-centric exclusion and violence. Thus it is no longer sexuality whereby procreation is possible, but through the speech-act of the male. Note how the male robs sexuality from the woman (literally castrating her). 92 Anderson, Marx at the Margins, op. cit., pp. 203
204. The Zionists, like the Nazis, had their racist ‘theoreticians’ based on the discredited pseudo-science of eugenics, and even more disgraceful ‘science’ of Bible studies. Some of these racist pseudo-theoreticians have been Elias Auerbach (Bible scholar and the first German Zionist), Felix Theihaber (German sexologist) and Ignaz Zollschan (German Zionist anthropologist and physician). 93 258 M. Jal The vibrant mother goddess of matrilineal societies is killed. The virgin mother is born. Probably the best-known picture of repression is painted here, and so is the story of the enslavement of humanity. Recall the biblical story of creation again, the castration threat, the monopoly of the male god, the sinful Eve, and the threat to eternal damnation. The rigorous difference and conflict between father (god/state) and son (Adam/civil society) is drawn here. God (the state) forbids the son (civil society) to eat the forbidden fruit (the mother’s breast/surplus product). The son is disobedient, attempts to seize the surplus it itself has produced and is exiled from paradise. Since we are the disobedient and exiled sons and daughters of eternal rebellion, the question remains: ‘what is to be Done?’ Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 Conclusion To my mind one will need to mobilize Marx’s historicism and humanism for understanding the processes of revolution in the 21st century. Firstly one will have to note that this Marxist process is essentially antistate, just as it is essentially humanist and thus antiviolence. It must be recalled that the proletariat ‘cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purpose’.94 Thus we claim that one cannot use the despotic instruments of class societies and wield them for communist purposes. Secondly one will also need to question the two stages of revolution*the so-called ‘lower stage’ (socialism) and the ‘higher stage’. How one jumps the early stage should be the focus of attention, since Stalinism with its totalitarian state power has totally monopolized all discourses of this ‘early stage’. What one needs to do is put the theory of state, force and violence on the backburner and shift attention to the theory of human vital powers (Lebenskräften). The bourgeois understands violence, not humanity. So what one does now is to transform the Marxist theory of humanity as humanity into a new humanist theory of materialist vitalism. Marx’s Gewalt is consequently written in this text of humanistvitalism. The process has started in West Asia. Soon it will engulf the entire world. It will state that, just as the Narodnikis were incorrect in basing their politics on the use of revolutionary violence (remember that Lenin and the Bolsheviks could emerge as a revolutionary party only in the critique of the Narodnikis), so too one will have to state that the romantic and anarchist versions of violence propagated by Sorel are not only false but also outright reactionary. Marxism is not anarchism. Lenin was not Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Petr Chaadev or Pyotr Tkachev. The Bolsheviks were not the Zemlia i Volia (‘Land and Freedom’). The difference between communism and anarchism is that the former insists that the masses make history, whilst anarchism stresses violent acts against the authoritarian state performed by few heroic individuals. Marx’s Gewalt is a search for revolutionary authenticity, a phenomenological process that moves from bourgeois-fetishized consciousness to class 94 Karl Marx, ‘The Civil War in France’ in Marx. Engels. Selected Works, op. cit., p. 285. Downloaded by [Murzban Jal] at 02:16 30 April 2012 Critique 259 consciousness. Yet never does Marx’s Gewalt become sachliche Gewalt, or reified violence. It always remains humanist Gewalt, Gewalt as insurrection. As it is not sachliche Gewalt, it cannot become akin to a Dostoevsky-inspired act, where the chief character of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, playacts a messianic hero by murdering a frail, old woman.95 That is why it is imperative to say that Marxism always concentrates on the issues of people, and that is also why one needs to emphasize that Marxist politics is always peoples’ politics, and its philosophy is necessarily humanism. Neither does Marxism fantasize on some sort of metaphysical world peace, nor does it indulge in romantic adventurism. On the contrary, Marxism claims that capitalism and imperialism have to be overthrown, and with communism as the realization of the will of free individuals and the establishment of classless society, wars can be seen as something of the past. Humanity will be free at last, refusing to live in the nightmare of its own prehistory. The dawn of classless society will light the morning of real peace. Freud’s dictum*where there was id there shall be ego*is transformed into the Marxist dictum*where there are capitalist wars, there shall be revolutions. It also must be noted that revolutions in the 21st century shall not repeat themselves as that of 1789 or the 20th-century revolutions, where the theater of world history was dominated by Dante and Robespierre, Monsieur Guillotine and Napoleon Bonaparte, accompanied by Trotsky, Stalin and Mao. Instead one has to transcend the very structure of class societies by looking into the human basis of society. As Marx says: Communism as the positive transcendence (Aufhebung) of private property as human-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation (Aneignung) of the human essence (menschlichen Wesens) by and for humanity; communism therefore as the complete return (Rückkehr) of humanity to itself as a social (i.e., human) being*a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution (Auflösung) of the conflict between humanity and nature and between human and human*the true resolution (Auflösung) of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be the solution.96 However, look closely at the solution of the riddle of history and one will find the following words inscribed: Combat or death, bloody struggle or extinction. Thus the question is inexorably put.97 95 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985). I would also keep Slavoj Žižek, Revolution at the Gates: Žižek on Lenin, the 1917 Writings (London: Verso, 2002) at this same Dostoevsky
Sorel inspired plane. 96 Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, op. cit., p. 90. 97 Marx is quoting George Sand. See Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978), p. 161.