Hannah Arendt

ON VIOLtrNCtrH A R C O U R T , B R A C E , & \ \ I O R L D , I N C . , N E W Y O R K

Other books by Hannah Arendt

O R I G I N S O F T O T A L I T A R I A N I S N , {

B E T W E E N P A S T A N D F U T U R E

O N R E V O L U T I O N

T F I E H U \ I A N C O N D I T I O N

E I C H ] \ { A N N I N J E R U S A L E M

M E N I N D A R K T I M I ] S

Copyr ight @ rg6g, rgTo by Hannah Arendt

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EFGHIJ

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T H E S E R E F L E C T I O N S r v e r e p r o v o k e d b y t h e

events and debates of the last ferv years as seen againstthe background of the nventietl 'r century, rvhich has be-come indeecl, as Lenin predictecl, a century of rvars andrevoluti<-rns, hence a centrlry of that violence which is

currently believed to be their common denominator.There is, hor'vever, another factor in the present situationwhich, though predicted by nobody, is of at least equalimportance. The technical development of the imple-ments of violence has norv reachecl ttre point rvhere no .,

polit ical goal could conceivably corresponcl to their de- ,

s t ruct ive potent ia l or just i fy thei r actnal use in armed, ,r:onfl ict. Hence, rvarfare-fr-om time immemorial the finalmerciless arbiter in international dispr-rtes-has lost muchof its effectiveness and nearly all i ts glamour. The "apoca-

lyptic" chess game betrveen the superporvels, that is,

betr,veen those that rnove on the highest plane of our civil i-zation, is being played according to the rule "if either' rv ins ' i t is the end of both" ; I i t is a game that bears noresemblance to whatever \var games preceded it. Its"rational" goal is deterrence, n()t victory, and the arms

iHarvey Wheeler, "-I 'he Strategic Calculators," in Nigel Calder,Unless Peace Comes, New York, r968, p. rog.

3

race, no longer a preparat ic>tr for rvar , can norv l re. l t rs t i -

f ied only on the grounds that rnore and rnore deterretrt:e

is the best guarantee <tf pea<'e. 'fo

the questi<rn hou' shall

we ever l>e able t() extricate ottrselves frclnr the olrvious

insanity of this position, there is no anslver.1 Sinc,e violence-as distin<:t from porver, force, or strelrgth

! -a l rvays needs implemenls (as Eng-els pointed ot r t long'"go),' the revolution of technology, a revolr-rt ion in tool-

rnaking, u'as espec:ially marked in r'varfale. Tlte very sulr-

stance of violent action is rtrled by the means-end (:ateg()l 'y,

whose r:hief characteristic, if appliecl ttt httmatr affairs, has

always been that the end is in danger of being over-

rvhelmed by the nleans rvhich it justif ies and rvhich are

needed to reach it. Since the end of human action, as

distinct from the end products of fabrit:rt iott, (an l lever

be reliably predicted, the means used to achieve polit ical

goals are more often than not of greater relevant:e to the

future rvorld than the intended goals.

N{oreover, while the results of men's actions are beyond

the actor.s' control, violent:e harbors within itself an

additional element of arbitrariness; nowhere dtles For-

tuna, good or i l l luck, play a more fateful role in human

affairs than on the battlefield. and this intrtrsion of the

utterly trnexpected does not disappear lvhen people tall

i t a "random event" and find it scientif ically suspet:t; nor'

can i t be e l iminated by s imulat io t rs , scenat ' ios, gar l re

theor ies, and the l ike. There is no cer ta inty in t l tesc t t ta t -

ters, not even an u l t imate cer ta inty of mtr t t ra l destr t t t t ion

under certain calculated circumstances. The very fact that

those er-rgaged in the perfection of tbe means of t lestt 'ttt t iou

have frnally reat:hed a level of technit:al t levelopnlent

rvhere their aim, namely, u'arfare, is on the point of clis-

2 Herrn Eugen Dùhrings Umwiilzung der Wissenschaf t (r87i|), I 'artII, ch. 3.

appear ing a l together by v i l tue of the lneal )s at i ts d is-

posal :J is l ike an i ronical rc 'ur inr lcr of t l r is a l l -penading

rrnprecl i<, ta l l i l i ty , rvh ich rve eu<:ountet- the ln() lnent \ \ 'e ap-

proach the real rn of v io lent e. ' l -he

chief reasotr rvar fare is

st i l l rv i th us is nei thel a se(r -et death rv ish of the hr . t tnan

species, l lor a l l i l repressi l l le inst inct of agg^ressi ( )n, t lor ' ,

f ina l ly aud rnol t - p lausib ly , t l te ser iot ts ecotrotn i t : ancl sot : ia l

dangers inherent in clisarrnament,r lrtrt the sirnple fat't

that no sul )s t i tu te for th is f ina l arb i ter in in ternat i ( )nal

af fa i rs has yet appeared o l ) t l )c pol i t i r :a l s(er)e. \Vas not

Hobbes r ight rvhen he said: "Ct>venants, rv i thot t t the

sworcl, are but rvords"?Nor is a subst i tu te l ike ly to appear so long as nat ional

independence, narnely, freedorn florn foreign nrle, and

the sovereignty of the state, narnely, the clairn t() un-

chet :ked and r rn l imi ted poner in fore ign af fa i rs , are ider t t i -

f ied. (Tlre [Jnited States of Anrerit:a is arnons the ferv

c:ountries rvhere a proper separation of freedrlrn ancl sover-

eignty is at least theoretically possible insofar as the very

3As General André l leaufrc, in "IJattlefields of thc rq8os," pointsout: Only " in thosc parts of thc workl not coverecl by nuclear cle-terrence" is war st i l l possiblc, urncl even (his "conventional war-Ia rc , " t les l> i te i t s hor ro rs , i s ac tua l l y : r l ready l im i te t l by the ever -

Present threat of escalat ion i l r to nuclear war. ( ln Cakler, op. ci t . ,

P. 3.)

a ) lepor t l ron t l ro r r ù lo rn t la in . t r -ew York , rq67, the sa t i re on theIland Corporatior-r 's an<1 othcr think tanks' way of thinking, isprobably closer to real i ty, with i ts "t imi<l glance over thc brink of

l)eace," than rnost "scrious" stu<l ies. I ts chief argument, that war isso essential to the functioning of our society that we r lare not:rbol ish i t unless we cl iscol 'er cvcn more rnurt lerous ways of deal ingwith our problems, wil l shock only those who have forgotten to$'hat an extent the rrnemploynrent cr isis of the Great Depressionwas solved only t lrrough the orrt lrreak of \ \ 'orkl War II , or thoseu' lro convcniently neglect or argue away the extent of present latentrrrremployment behincl various forms of featherbedcl ing.

foundations of the American republic rvould not lre

threatenecl by it. Foreigll treaties, according to the Const"i-

tution, are part and parcel of the lalv of the land, and-as

Justice James Wilson remarkecl in r7o'.t-"to the Cottstitu-

tion of the United States the term sovereignty is totally

unknown." But the times of such clearheacled and proud

separation from the traditional language and conceptual

polit ical frame of the European nation-state are long past;

the heritage of the American Revolution is forgotteu, and

the American governrnent, for better and for rvorse, ltas

entered into tl"re heritage of Europe as though it were its

patrimony-rlnaware, alas, of the fact that Europe's declin-

ing porver r,vas preceded and accompanied by political

bankruptcy, the bankruptcy of the nation-state and its con-

cept of sovereignty.) That rvar is sti l l the ultima ratio, the

old continuation of polit ics by means of violence, in the

foreign affairs of the underdeveloped countries is no argu-

ment againsc its obsoleteness, and the fact that only small

countries rvithottt nltclear and biological rveapons can sti l l

afford it is no consolation' It is a secret from nobody that

the famous random event is most l ikely to arise from those

parts of the world where the old adage "There is no al-

iernative to vicrory" rerains a 6igh degree of plausibil i ty.

Under these circumstances' there are, indeed, few things

that are more frightening than the steadily increasing

prestige of scientif ically minded brain trusters in the coun-

cits of government during the last decades. The trouble is

tnot that thev are cold-blooded enough to "think the un-

I thinkable," but that they do not think.Instead of indulg-

i lng in such an old-fashioned, uncomputerizable activity,

they reckon with the consequences of certain hypo-

theiically assumed constellations withot-tt, however, being

able to test their hypotheses against ar:tual occurrences'

T h e l o g i c a l f l a w i n t l r e s e h y p o t h e t i c a l c o n s t r t t c t i o n s o ffuture events is always the same: what first apPears as a

hypothesis-rt, ith or rvithout its irnplied alternatives, ac-

cording to the Ievel of sophistir:ation-tlu'r)s irnmecliateiy,usually after a ferv paragraplrs, into a "fact," rvhic:h thengives birth to a whole string of similar non-facrs, with theresult that the purely specrrlative character of the lvholeenterprise is forgotten. Needless to say, this is not sciencebut pseudo-science, "the desperate attempt of the socialand belravioral sc:iences," in the u'ords of Noam Chomsky,"to imitate the surface features of sciences that really havesignificant intellectual content." And the mosr obviousand "most profound objection to this kind of straregictheory is not its l imited usefr.rlness but its danger, for itcan lead us to ltelieve rve have an understanding of eventsand control over their f low which rve do not have." asRichar-d N. Goodr.vin recently pointed out in a revierv arti-c le that hacl the rare v i r tue of detect ing the "unconscious

humor" characteristic of many of these pompous pseudo-scientif ic theories.6

Events, by definit ion, are occurrences that interruptroutine processes and routine procedures; only in a worldin rvhich nothing of importance ever happens could thefuturologists' dream come true. Predictions of the futureare never anything but projections of present automaticprocesses and procedures, that is, of occurl.ences that arelikely to come ro pass if men do not act and if nothing un-expected happens; every action, for better or lvorse, andevery accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern inrvhose frame the prediction moves and lvhere it f inds itsevidence. (Prouclhon's passinu remark, .,The

fecundity ofthe unexpected far exceeds the statesman's prudence,', is

5 Noarn Ohomsky in ,4nteùcan potL,er and the Neu À{arr larins, NewYork, r969; Richard N. Coodwin's review of Thomas C. Schell ing's.4rms and Inl luence, Yale, t966, in The New yorher, February i7,r e68.

fortunately sti l l true. It exceeds even more obviously theexpert 's ca lculat ions.) To cal l such unexpet : ted, unpre-dicted, and unpredictable happenings "randonr events" ol"the last gasps of the past," condemning them to irrele-vance or the famous "clustlt in <-rf history," is the oldestt r ick in the t rade; the t r ick, no doubt , helps in c lear ing upthe theory, l lut at the price of rernoving it further andfur ther f rom real i ty . The danger is that these theor ies arenot only platrsible, because they take their evidenc:e fromactually discernible present trends, but that, becatrse oftheit- iuner <:onsistency, they lrave a hypnotic effect; theyput to sleep <ltrr (:()nlmon sense, lvhich is nothing else ltutour mental organ for perceiving, understanding, and deal-ing rv i th real i ty and fa<: tual i ty .

No one engaged in thought about history and polit icscan remain unarvare of the enormous role violeu'e hasalways played in human affairs, ancl it is at first g'lance

rather surprising that violence has been singled out so

seldom for special consideration.6 (In the last edition of

the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences "violence" does

not even rate an entry.) This sholvs to lvhat an extent

violence and its arbitrariness lvere taken for granted and

therefore neglected; no one questions or examines rvhat

is obvious to all. Those who saw nothing brtt violence in

hurnan affairs, convin<:ed that they tt 'ere "altvays lraphazard,

not seriolls, not precise" (Renan) or that Gocl u'as forcvcr

with the bigger battalions, hacl nothitrg more t() say allottt

either violence or history. Anybody looking for sorrlt ' kinrl

of sense in the ïecor(ls of the past was alrnost l l<lttt l<l to See

violence as a marginal phenomenon. Whethel it is Clatrse-

witz call ing war "the continuation of polit ics lry otlrer

6 There exists, of course, a large l i terature on war ancl rvarfarc, but

i t deals with the implements of violence, not wit ir violence as such.

I

means," or Engels defining violence as the accelerator ofeconouric development,? the ernphasis is on polit ical oreconclmic continuity, on the continuity of a process thatremains determined by lvhat preceded vioient action.Hence, students of international relations have helcl unti lrecently that "it lvas a maxim that a military resolution indiscord with the deeper cultural sources of national powercould not be stable," or that, in Engels' rv'rcl.s, ..rvherever

the porver stl 'uct.re of a country contradicts its economicdevelopment" it is polit ical power with its means of vi,_lence that wil l suffer defeat.s

Today all these old verit ies about the relation betrveenwar and polit ics or about violence and porver have becomeinapplicable. The Second World Wai r.vas not follorvedby peace but by a cold rvar and the establishment of themilitary-industrial-labor complex. To speak of ..rhe

pri-ority of u,ar-making potential as the principal structuringforce in society," to rnaintain that ..economi,,

systems, poll it ical philosophies, and corpora juris serve ancl extend thewar sy.stem, not vice \/ersa," to conclucle that .,war

itself isthe ltasic social system, within which other secondarymodes rf social organization conflict or conspire,'_all thissounds much more p larrs ib le than Engels ' or Clauserv i tz ,snineteenth-century formulas. Even màre conclusive thanthis simple reversal proposed by the anonymous authorof the Report from lron A[ottntain_instead of war being"an extension of diplomacy (or of polit ics, or of the pt,rsuiiof economic objectives)," peace is the continuation of .rvarlby other means-is the actual developmenr in the te.t-,- Iniques of warfare. In the r,vords of the Russian physicistSakharov, "A thermonuclear \var cannot be considerecl acontinuation of polit ics by other means (according to the

7 See Engels, op. cit., part II, ch. 4.sWlreeler, op, cit., p. roj; Engels, ibidem.

formula of Clauservitz). It would be a means of rrnivcrsalsuic ide." o

Moteclver, n'e know that "a ferv rveapons cotrlcl 'r '" ' ipc orrtall other sour(:es of national power in a ferv lnornents," r0

that biological rveapons have been devised rvhich rvouldenable "srnall groups of individuals to trpset thestrategic balance" and lvould be cheap enough to be pro-duced by "nations unable to develop nuclear strikingforc:es," 11 that "rvithin a very ferv years" robot soldiersrvil l have made "human soldiers completely cbsolete," 12

and that, f inally, in conventional rvarfare the poor coun-tries are much less vulnerable than the great potvers pre-cisely because they are "underdeveloped," and becarrse tech-nical strperiority can "be much more of a l iabil i ty t l-ran anasset" in guerri l la wars.13 What all these uncomfortablenovelties add up to is a complete reversal in the relation-ship betn,een porver and violence, foreshador,ving anotherreversal in the future relationship between small and greatpowers. The amount of violence at the disposal of anygiven cotrntry may soon not be a reliable indication of thecountry's strensth or a reliable guarantee against destruc-tion by a substantially smaller and rveaker power. And thisbears an ominous similarity to one of polit ical science'soldest insights, namely that porver cannot be measured interms of wealth, that an abundance of lvealth may erodeporver, that riches are particularly dangerous to the porver

3 Andrei D. Sakharov, Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectunl Free-dom, New York, r968, p. 36.ro Wheeler, ibidem.

1r Nigel Calder, "The New Weapons," in op. cit., p. 23g.

12 l\ ' I. W. Thring, "Robots on rhe Nfarch," in Calder, op. cit., p. r69.

13Vladimir Dedijer, "The Poor Man's Power," in Calder, op. cit.,P . 2 9 '

and well-being of republics-an insight that does not lose

in validity because it has been forgotten, especially at a

time rvhen its truth has acquired a netv dimension of

validity by becoming applicable to the arseual of violence

as rvell.The more dtrlr iotts and trncertain an instrtrment vio-

lence has become in internati<lnal relations, the more it has

gained in reputation and appeal in dornestic affairs, spe-

cif ically in the matter of revolttt ion. The strong Marxist

rhetoric of the Ne'lv Left coincides lvith the steady growth

of the entirely non-N'Iarxian conviction, proclaimed by

N{ao Tse-tung, that "Porver gro\vs out of the barrel of a

gun." To be srtre, Nfarx was aware of the role of violence

in history, brrt this role rvas to him secondary; not violence

but the contradictiolts inherent in the old society brought

about its end. The emergence of a new society was pre-

ceded, but not c:attsed, by violent outbreaks, rvhich he

likened to the laÏror pangs that precede, but of course do

not (:alrse, the event of organic birth. In the same vein he

regarded the state as an instrument of violence in the

command of the ruling class; but the actual power of the inrl ing class did not consist of or rely on violence. It rvas I

defined by the role the rtt l ing class playecl in society, or,

rnore exactly, by its role in the process of pr-oduction. It

has often been noticecl, and sometimes deplored, that the

revolutionaly Left trnder the influence of I\{arx's teachings

rr.rled out the use of violent means; the "dictatorship of the

proletaliat"-openly repressive in l\4arx's rvrit ings-carne

after the revolution and was meant. l ike the Roman dicta-

torship, to last a strictly l imited period. Polit ical assassina-

tion, except for a felv acts of individual terror perpetratedlly srnall groups of anarchists, was mostly the prerogativeo[ the Right, lvhile organized armecl trprisines remained

the specialty of the military. The Left rerlrained convinc:ed"that all conspiracies are not only useless but harmful.

l ll 0

They [knerv] only too rvell that revolutions ar.e nor macleintentionally ancl arbitrari ly, but that they rvere alrvaysand everyrvl.rere the .ecessary resrrlt of c:irc.mstnr,.,"ri

"rr-t irely independenr of the rvil l and guidance of partir;ularpar t ies and rvhole c lasses. , '1a

On the level of theory there rvere a fer,v exceptions.Georges Sorel, r,vho at the beginning of the centtrry trieclto combine N,Iarxism rvith Bergson,i philosophy oi l i fe_the resrrlt, though on a nttrch lorver

-level of s,rphistica_

tion, is odclly similar to Sartre's current amalgamation ofexistentialism and Marxisrn_thought of class strtrggle inmilitary terms; yet he endecl by proposing nothin!ïoreviolent than the farnotrs myth oi t 'h" gerr.rol strike, a formof action rvhich rve toclay rvould think of o, tr"tor"rginfrather ro the arsenal of norrviolent polit ics. nifty yea.s""g,ieven rhis modest proposal earned iim the ,"prrtotior. îfbeing a fascist, nonvirhsranding his enthusiast' ic upp.ouàtof Lenin and the Russian Revàlution. Sarrre, who in hispreface ro Fanon's Tlte I,Vre tchecl of th.e Earth goes mu<.hfarther

1 his glorif ication of violence than Sorel in his

famotrs Refler:t ions on I/ iolencc_farther than Fanon him_self, rvhose argument he wishes to bring to its conclusion_sti l l mentions "sorel's fascist utteranàs." This shou,s torvhat extent Sartre is unaware of his basic disagreementwith Marx on the question of violence, especially l,hen hestates that "irrepressible violencehimself," that it ïs tnrough ..mad f,ry,, ,ï";iiri"til11T:iof the earth" can .,become

men.,, .ih.r" notions are allthe rnore remarkable because the idea of man creatinghimself is. strictly in the tradition of Hegelian and Nfarx_ian thinking; i t is the very basis of al l ref t ist h 'manism.But according to Hegel man ..produces,,

himself through14 I owe this early remark of Engels, in a manuscript of Â47, toJacob Barion, Hcger rmrl die ^ni, i*;r t i rr lrc i iaatstehre, Bonn, r969.

r2

thought,ls whereas for NIarx, u'ho tttrnecl Hegel's "ideal-

ism" upsicle dorvn, it las laltor, the htttnan f<trm <lf me-

tabolism rvit lr nature, that fulf i l lecl this futlction' Ancl

though one may argue that all notions of man creating

himself have in common a rebell ion against the very

factuality of the httman condition-nothing is more ob-

vious than that man, lvhether as member of the species or

as an individtral, does rlol on'e his existence to himself-

and that therefore whal Sartre, Marx, and Hegel have in

common is more relevant than the particular activit ies

through rvhich this non-fact should presumably have come

about, sti l l i t cannot be cleniecl that a gtrlf separates the

essentially peaceful activit ies of thinkine and laboring

from all deeds of 'r ' iolence. "To shoot down a European is

to kil l t lvo birds rvith one stone there remain a dead

man and a free man," says Sartre in his preface. This is a

sentence N{arx c:otrld never have tvritten.lc

I quoted Sartre in order to show that this new shift

toward vicllence in the thinking of revoltrt ionaries can re-

main unnoticed even by one of their most representative

and articulate spokesmen,l? and it is all the more note-

rvorthy for evidently not being an abstract notion in the

history of ideas. ( I f one turns the " ic leal is t ic" concept of

thought upside dou'n, one might arrive at the "materialis-

tic" concepl of labor; one wil l never arrive at the notion

of violence.) No doubt all this has a logic of its ou'n, but it

is one springing from experience, and this experience was

trtterly unknown to any generation before.The pathos and the ëlan of the New Left, their credi-

r: ' l t is rluite suggestir,e that Hegel speaks in this context of "Sich-selbstltrorluzieren." See Vorlesnnsen iiber die Gcschichte der Philoso-phia, erl. Hoflmeister, p. r r4, Leipzig, r938.tG See appenclix I, p. 89.17 See appendix II, p. 89.

t 3

bil ity, as it were, are r:losely connected rvith the rveirclsuicidal development of rnodern \veapons; this is the firstgeneration to grow trp under the shadow of the atombomb. They inherited from their parents' seneration theexperience of a massive intrusion of crimi'al viole'ce intopolit ics: they learned in high school and in college abourconcentration and extermination camps, about genocideand t.rt.re,r' abotrt the 'rvlroresale slauehter of r: ivi l ians inwar wi thout which modern mi l i tary oper .at ions are nolonger possible even if restricted to ..conventional, '

rveâp_ons. Their f irst reaction was a revrrlsion against eveiyform of violence, an almost matter-of-course espousal of apolit ics of nonviolence. The very gïeat successes of trrismovement, especially in the field of civit r ights, were fol_lowed by the resistance movement against the lvar in Viet_nam, which has remained an important factor in cleter_mining the c l imate of opin ion in th is counrry. BLr t i t is nosecret that things have changed since then, that the adl-rer_ents of nor-rviolence are on the defensive, and it 'vorrlcl befuti le to say that only the '.extremists"

are yielcling to aglorif ication of violence and have discovered-likc Fanon'sAlgerian peasânts-that "only violence pays., ' ro

]t Tgu* _Chomsky rightly notices amcng the motives for open re-bell ion the refusal "ro take one's prace arongside the 'goocr G..r.rnrr,we have all learned to despise." Op. cit., p. 36g.le Frantz Fanon, The Wretched ot' the Earth eq6r), Grove I)rcss ecli-t ion, rq68, p.6r . I am using th is work because o[ i ts grcat in f lucnceon the present student generation. Fanon himself, howe'er, is m.clrmore doubtful about violence than his adrnirers. It sccnrs thatonly the book's first chapter, .,Concerning Violencc,,, has beenwidely reatl. Fanon knows of the .,.rnmi*ecl anrt total l)ru(ality[which], if not immecliately combatted, invariably leacls to the de_feat of the movement within a lew weeks', (lr. ,+ù.

For the recent escalation of violence in ihe str,dent rnovement,see the instructive series ,,Gewalt', in the German news magazine

t4

The nerv mi l i tants have been denounced as a l l i l t t l r t r l r .

n ih i l is ts , red fasc is ts , Nazis, and, r 'v i th considera l l l ) r r r ( ) t ( '

just i f icat ion, "Lucld i te rnachine smashers," :o and t l ) ( ' s l t r

clents have cottntered rvith the equally meaningless slog:trts

of "pol ice state" or " la tent fasc ism of la te capi ta l isrn," i r r r t l ,

rvith considerably more justiÊcation, "constlmer soci'

e ty . " 21 Their behavior has l teen b lamed on a l l k in<ls o l

social and psychological factors-on too much permissivc-

ness in their trpbringing iu America and on an explosivc

reaction to too much atrthority in Germany and Japan, on

the lack of freedom in Eastern Europe and too much free-

dom in the West, on the clisastrous lack of jobs for soci-

ology students in France and the superabundance of

caïeeïs in nearly all frelds in the United States-all of

which appear locally plausible enough but are clearly

contradicted by the fact that the student rebell ion is a

global phenonr.enon. A social common denominator of the

movement seems out of the question, but it is true that

psychologically this seneration seems everl 'rvhere char-

Der Spiegel (Felrruary ro, rq6q ff .) , and the series "Nli t clem Latein

am Ende" (Nos. z6 and e7, 1969).

20 See appendix I I I , p. gr.

2r The last of these epithets woulcl make sense if it were meant de-

script ively. Behind i t , however, stantls the i l lusion of Nlarx's society

of free protlucers, the l ibcrat ion of the procltrct ive forces of society,

which in fact has been accomplished not by t l-re revolut ion but by

science and technology. This l iberation, furthermore, is not acceler-

ated, but seriously retar<lcd, in al l countr ies that have gone through

;r revolut ion. In other words, behint l thcir derrunciat ion of consurnp-

t ion stands the ide:r l izet ion of procluct ion, and with i t the old

idol izat ion of 1>roductivi ty antl creativi ty. "The joy of destnrct ion

is a creativc joy"-yes in<leecl, i f one l ;el ieves that "the joy of labor"

is procluct ive; destruction is about the only " labor" lel t that can be

<tone by simple implements without the help of machines, although

rnachines do the iob, of course, much rnore efficiently.

l 5

acterized by sheer courage, an astounding rvil l to a<:tion,and by a no less astonnding confidence in the possibil i tyof change.12 But these qualit ies ar.e not crauses, and if oneasks rvhat has at:tually brought aborrt this lvholly unex_pected clevelopment in universit ies all over the rvorlcl, i tseems abslrrd to ignore the most obvious and perhaps themost potent factor, for lvhich, moreover, no precedent andno analogy exisr-the simple fact that technokrgicral prog_

, ress" is leading in so many instances straighi into clis-aster; 23 that the sciences, tatrght and Iearned try thisgeneration, seem not merely trnable to unclo the disastrotrsconsequences of their orvn technology but have r-ea<:heda stage in their development rvhere .,there's

no clamn thirrgyou can do that can' t l )e turned into war. , ' rn (To l re sure lnothin.q is more important ro the integrity of the uni_versit ies-which, in Senator Fulbright's rvords, have be_trayed a public trust when they became dependent on gov-

22 This appetite for action is especially noticeable in small and rela_tively harmless enterprises. Sttr<lents struck strccessfully against cam_pus authorit ies who u'ere paving employees in the cafeteria anrl inbuildings and grounds less than tlre legal minimum. The decisionof the Ilerkeley srrrdents to join the fighi for transforming an emptyuni'ersity,owned lot into a .,peoPle,s park,, shoukl lrc co,,ntcilamong these enterprises, even though it provokerl the worsr reactionso far from the authorit ies. To judge fiom the Berkeley inci<lenr,it seems (hat precisely such "nonpoli i icar" acriorrs ,nify thc slrrrrentbody bchintl a radical vang'ard. "A st'dent referencltrm, wrricrr sawthe heaviest turnout in the history of student voting, forrntl Bq, lrcr_cent of the nearly r5,ooo who voted favorirre the uie of t lre làti,asa people's park. See the excellent reporr by Sheldon Wolin anrl .fohnSchaar, "Berkeley: The Battle of pàople,s park,,, New yorlt lleviewof Books, June r9, r969.

23 See appendix IV, p. oz.

2{ Tlrus Jerome Lerrvin, of NI.I.T., in the New york Timcs Maga-z ine,May r8, 1969.

('f l)nlel)t-sP()l lsol-ed researclt projects :5-than a rigorously

crrforced divort:e from lvar-oriented resear(:h and all con-

rret ' tec l enterpr ises; l lu t i t would l re naïve to expe( ' t th is t r l

< hange the nature of moclern science or hincler the rvar

. f f , r r i , naTve a ls t> to c leuy that the restr l t ing l i rn i ta t ion

rnight rvell leacl to a lolvering of ttniversity standards'16-flre

only thing this divorc:e is not l ikely to lead to

is a general n'it l lclrarval of fedelal funcls; for, as -ferome

Let tùn, of NI . I .T ' , re(re l l t ly pointed ot t t , "The Clovern-

rnent can't afforcl r)ot t() support l.,t":z-just as the univer-

sit ies cannclt afforcl l l()t to a(:cept federal ftrnds; lrtrt t l t is

m e a n s n o m o r e t h a n t h a t t l r e y . . m t r s t l e a r n h o r v t o s t e r i l i z e

financial support" (Henry Steele Commager), a diffrctrlt

lxrt not impossible task in view o[ the enormotts intrease

of the potv;r of universit ies in moclern societies') In short'

the seemingly irresistible proliferation of technitlttes and

machines, far from only threatening ceÏtain classes rl ' i th

unemployment, menaces the existence clf rl 'hole nations

and conceivably of all mankind'

It is only natuïal that the ne\v generation should l ive

rvith greater atrvareness of the possibil i ty of doomsday th-an

those "over thirty," not because they are yotlnger l lut be-

cause this $'as their f irst decisive experien<-e in tlre worlcl '

(What are "problems" to tts "are buik into the flesh and

l>lood of the yottng.") 38 If you ask a memller of this gen-

eration fivo simple questions: "Flolv do you lvant the

world to be in fifty years?" and "What do you want your

life to be l ike five years from now?" the ansrvers are quite

2; See appendix V, p. 93.

ro.fhe stearly clrift of lrasic rcsearch from tire universit ies to the

industrial lal.roratories is very sigrl ihcant ancl a case in point'

27 Loc . c i t .

' :8 Steplren Spencler, The l 'ear of the Young Rebels' New York' r969'

P . r 7 9 .

l 6 r7

often preceded by "Provided there is sti l l a rvot-Id," aucl"Provided I am sti l l alive." In Georpçe Wald's rvords,"rvhat rve are up against is a generation that is by no means

sure that it has a future." 2e For the future, as Spender

puts it, is "l ike a time-bomb buried, but t icking arvay, in

the present." To the often-heard question Who are they,

this nerv generation? one is temptecl to answer, Tlrose rvho

hear the ticking. And to the other question, Who are they

rvho rrtterly deny them? the ansl'er rnay rvell be, Those

rvho dt> not knorv, or reftrse to face, things as they really

are.The student rebell ion is a global phenomenon, but its

manifestations vary, of course, greatly from country to

country, often from university to university. This is espe-

cially true of the practice of violence. Violence has re-

mained mostly a matter of theory and rhetoric where the

clash benveen generations did not coincide rvith a clash of

tangible group interests. This was notably so in Gertnany,'rvhere the tenured faculty had a vested interest in over-

crorvded lectures and seminars. In America, the stttdent

movement has been seriotrsly radicalized wherever police

and police brutality intervened in essentially nonviolent

demonstrations: occrrpations of administration builcl ings,

sit-ins, et cetera. Serious violence enterecl the scene <lnlylvittr the appearance of the Black Pr-r'rver movement on the

campuses. Negro students, the majority of them admittedlvithout academic qualif ication, regarded and organizedthemselves as an interest group, the representat.ives of theblack comrnunity. lfheir interest was to lor,ver academicstandards. They rvere more cautiotrs than the rvhite rebels,but it was clear from the beginning (even hefore the in-cidents at Cornell University and City College in NervYork) that violence rvith them r,vas not a matter of theoryand rhetoric. Moreover, while the stuclent rebell ion in

2e George Wald in The New Yorker, Nlarch zz, 1969.

Western r:ottntries can notvhere count on popular supPort

outside the universit ies and as a mle encotlnters open

hostil i ty the rnoment it uses violent means, there stands a

large rninority of the Negro commtrnity behind the verbal

or actual violenr:e of the l l lack sttrdents.;ro Black violence

can indeed be trnderstoocl in analogy to the lallor vinlence

in America a generation ago; ancl althougl-r, as far as I

knor,v, only Stauehton Lynd has drarvn the analogy be-

tween labor riots and stttdent rebell ion explicit ly,sr it

seems that the academic establishment, in its curious

tenclency to yield more to Negro demands, even if they are

clearly sil ly and outrageous,'t2 than to the disinter-ested

and usually highly moral claims of the rvhite rehels, also

thinks in these terms and feels more comfortable rvhen

<ronfronted rvith interests plus violence than 'rvhen it is a

matter of nonvioleut "participatory democracy." The

yielding of university authorit ies to black demands has

often been explained by the "gtri l t feelings" of the white

community; I think it is more l ikely that faculty as well

as administrations ancl boards of trustees are half-con-

sciously aware of the obviorts truth of a conclttsion of the

official Report. on Violence in America.' "Force and vio-

lence are l ikely to be successftrl techniques of social con-

trol ancl persuasion rvhen they have rvide popular sup-

po r t . " : sThe neu' uncleniable glorif ication of violence by the stu-

dent movement has a curious peculiarity. While the rheto-

no See appendix VI, p. 04.

3rSee appendix VI I , p . q5.

32 See appendix VIII, p. 95.

33 See the report of the National Commission on the Causes andPreuent.ion of Violence, June, r969, as quoted frorn the New YorkTimes, June 6, r969.

l 8 l 9

r ic of the ncrv mi l i tants is c lear ly inspi red l l1 ' Fanotr ' t l ic i r

theoret.i<:al argtlments t 'ontain usually trothitrg lrttt a

hoclgepoclge of all kinds of N{arxist leftovers. -I"his is in-

deeà q*ite ltaffiing for anySody 'ivho has ever reacl l\'Iarx

or F,ngels. Who could possibly call an icleology Nlnrxist

that hàs put i ts fa i th i ' "<: lass less ic l ler"s , " Sel ic 'es t5at " i t - t

the lunrpenproletariat the rebell ion rti l l f ir lr l i ts ttrlratt

speaïltead," and trusts that "gangsters rvil l l iglrt thc rvay

for the people"? 3a Sartre lvith his great felicity $'ith rvrtrds

has given expression to the nerv faith. "Violen<:e," lrc t lorv

believes, o.t th. strength of Fanon's book, "l ike A<'hil les'

lance. can heal the rvounds it has infl icterl." If this lt 'ere

true, revenge rvould l>e the Cure-all for nrost of orrr i l ls.

This myth is more abstract, farther removecl from reality,

than Sorel's myth of a general strike ever lvas' It is on a

par rvith Fanon's rvorst rhetorical excesses, such as, "hun-

ger with dignity is preferable to bread eaten it.t slaverY'"

No history and no theory is neecled to reftrte this state-

ment; the most strperficial observer of the processes that go

on in the human body knorvs its untruth. Brrt hacl he said

that bread eaten lvith dignity is preferable to (rake eaten

in slavery the rhetorical point would have been lost.

Reading these irresponsible grandiose statcttrctrts-and

those I quoted are fairly representative, except that Fanon

stil l manages to stay closer to reality than most-and look-

ing at them in the perspective of what rve knol' allottt the

history of rebell ions and revolutions, one is tempted to

deny their significance, to ascribe them to a passine mood,

or to the ignorance and nobil ity of sentiment of people ex-

posed to unprecedented events and developments rvit l lout

any means of han<ll ing thern mentally, and ',vlro tlrercfore

curiously revive thoughts and emotions from rvhich Marx

had hoped to l iberate the revolution once and for all '

34Fanon, op. ci t . , pp. rBo, rz9, and 69, respectively

20

Who has ever doubted that the violated dream of violence,that the oppressed "dream at least once a day of setting"themselves up in the oppressor's pla<:e, that the poor clreamof the possessions of the rich, the persecuted of exchanging"the role of the quany for that of the hunter," and thelast of the kingdom where "the last shall be first, and thefirst last"? 35 The point, as Marx sarv it, is that dreamsnever come true.36 The rarity of slave rebell ions ancl of up-risings amons the disinherited and dorvntrodden is no-torious; on the ferv occasions rvhen they occurred it rvasprecisely "mad fury" that turned dreams into nightmaresfor everybody. In no case, as far as I knorv, was the forceof these "volcanic" outl)ursts, in Sartre's lvords, "equal tothat of the pressure put on them." To identify the nationall iberation movements with such outbursts is to prophesytheir doom-quite apart from the fact that the unlikelyvictory lvould not result in changing the world (or thesystem), but only its personnel. To think, f inally, that thereis such a thing as a "l lnity of the Third World," to whichone could address the new slogan in the era of decoloniza-tion "Natives of all underdeveloped colrnrries unite!"(Sartre) is to repeat Marx's lvorst i l lusions on a greatlyenlarged scale and with considerably less justif ication. TheThird World is not a reality bur an ideology.3?

35 Fanon, op. cit.. pp. 37 tr., 59.

36 See appendix IX, p. 96.

37 The stuclents caught between the two superpowers and equallytl isi l lusioned by East and West, "inevitably pursue some thirdicleology, from Nfao's China or Castro's Cuba." (Spender, op. cit,.,p. 92.) Their calls for N,Iao, Castro, Che Guevara, and Ho Chi N{inhare Iike pseudo-religious incantations for saviors from anotherworld; they would also call for Tiro if only Yugoslavia were fartherau,ay and less approachable. The case is different rvith the BlackPower movement; its i<Ieological commitrnent to the nonexistent

zr

The qrrestion remains rvhy so many of the ner'v prcat h-

ers of violence aïe unaware of their decisive disagr-eement

rvith Karl Marx's teachings, or, to Put it another rvay, rvhy

they cling with such stubborn tenacity to concrepts and

doctrines that have not only been refutecl by factual de-

velopments but are clearly inconsistent r 'vith their own

polit ics. The one positive polit ical slogan the new move-

àent has put forth, the claim for "participatory demo-

cracy" thai has echoed around the globe ancl constitutes

the most signifrcant common denominator of the rebel-

l ions in the Èast and the West, derives from the best in the

revolutionary tradition-the council system, the always de-

feated but only authentic outgrowth of every revolution

since the eighteenth centruy. But no reference to this goal

either in rvord or substance can be founcl in the teachings

of Marx and Lenin, both of whom aimed on the contrary

at a society in ' ivlrich the need for pul>lic action and parti-

cipation in public affairs lvould have "rvithered arvay," 38

"Unity of the Third \{rorld" is not sheer romantic nonsense' They

have an obvious interest in a black-white dichotomy; this too is o[

course mere escapism-an escape into a dream world in which

Negroes would consti tute an overwhelming majori ty of the world's

populat ion.

38 It seems as though a similar inconsistency coulcl be charged to

Nlarx ancl Lenin. Did not Marx glori fy the Paris Commrttrc of t87r,

ancl did not Lenin want to gi ' r 'e "al l Power to the sozriels"? Rtrt for

I\,[arx the Commune was no more than a transitory orgatr of rcvolu-

t ionary action, . 'a lever for uprooting the economicrt l fountlat ions

of . . . class rule," which Engels r ightly iclenti f ied with the l ikewise

transitory . . t . l ictatorship of the Proletariat." (see The cit t i l l l 'ar in

France, in Karl Marx and F. Engels, Selected l lorhs, Lontlon, tq5o,

Vol. I , pp. 474 and 4.1o, respectively.) l fhe case of l 'enin is more

complicarcd. sr iu, i t was Lenin who emasculated the sozriels and

gave all power to the Party.

together with the state. Becâuse of a curious timidity intheoretical matters, contrasring oddly with its bold couragein prac:ti<:e, the slogan of the Nerv Left has rernained in acleclamatory stage, to be invoked rather inarticulatelyagainst Western representative democracy (which is aboutto lose even its merely representative function to the hugeparty machines that "represent" not the party member-ship but its functionaries) and against t l 're Easrern one-party bureaucracies, which rule olrt participation onprinciple.

Even more suprising in this odd loyalty to the past isthe Nerv Left 's seeming unawareness of the extent to rvhichthe moral character of the rebell ion-norv a rviclely ac-cepted fact 3e-clashes rvith its Marxian rhetori<:. Nothing,indeecl, about the movemenr is more striking than itsd is interestedness; Peter Ste infe ls , in a remarkable ar t ic le onthe "Frenr :h revol r r r ion rq68" in Commonweal ( fu ly 26,r968), n'as quite right lt,hen he lvrote: "péguy might havebeen an appropriate patron for the cultural revolution,with his later scorn for the Sorbonne mandarinate [and]his formula, 'The

social Revolurion wil l be moral or it wil l

se "Their revoltrt ionary idea," as Spender (op. cit.. p. rr4) srates, ., ismoral passion." Noam Chomsky (op. cit., p. 368) quotes facts: ,,Thefact is that most of the tho.sancl draft carcls ancl other clocumentsturned in to the.fust ice I)epartment on October zo [rq67] camefrom men who can escape mil i tary service but wlto insistecl on shar-ing the fate of those who are less privileged." The sarne was truefor any number of draft-resister t lemonstrat ions ancl si t- ins in theuniversit ics ancl col leges. The sit .at ion in other counrries is similar.Der Spie gel describes, for instance, the frustrat ing ancl often humil i-at irrg condit ions of the resear.ch assistants in Germany: , ,Angesichts

dieser I 'erhi i l tnisse nimmt es geradezu uunder, dass t l ie Assistentennicht in der uordersten Front der Radihalen slehen." (June 23,r969, p.58.) I t is always the same srory: Interest groups clo not jointhe rebels.

23

not be.'" To be stue, every revolutionary movement has

been led by the disinterested, who were motivated by com-

passion or by a passion for justice, and this, of cottrse' is

àlro ,rn" for lUarx and Lenin. But N'Îarx, as lve knorv'

hacl quite effectively tabooed these "emotions"-if today

the establishment dismisses moral arguments as "emo-

tionalism" it is much closer to Marxist ideology than the

rebels-and had solved the problem of "disinterested" lead-

ers rvith the notion of their being the vanguard of man-

kind, emtroclying the ultimate interest of htrman history'ao

Stil l , they too had first to espouse the nonspeculative'

down-to-earth interests of the working class and to identify

with it; this alone gave them a firm footing outside society'

And this is precisely what tl 're modern rebels have lacked

from the beginning and have been unable to find clespite

a rather desperate search for all ies Outsicle the trniversit ies.

The hosti l i fy of the workers in all countries is a matter of

record,al and in the Unitecl States the complete collapse

of any co-operation with the Black Power movement'

whose strtdents are more firmly rooted in their own corn'

munity and therefore in a better bargaining position at

the universit ies, was the bitterest disappointment for the

white rebels. (Whether it rvas wise of the Black Porver

people to refuse to play the role of the proletariat for "dis-

interested" leaders of a dif ierent color is another question.)

It is, not surprisingly, in Germany, the old home of the

Youth movement, that a $oup of students now proposes

a0 See appendix X, p. 06.

al Czechoslovakia seems to be an exception. However, the reform

-oueirr"ttt for which the stu(lents fought in the frrst ranks was

backed by tlre whole nation, without any class tl istiDctions. xlarxisti-

cally speaking, the students there, and probably in all Eastern

countries, have too mrrch, rather than too little, support from the

community to fit the N{arxian Pattern.

to enl is t "a l l or ' - -anizecl y<l t r th groups" in thei r ranks.a: l - l reabsurclity of this proposal is obvious.

I am nclt srrre rvhat the explanation o[ these inc:onsis-tencies r t i l l eventual ly t t r rn out to be; l t t r t I suspect thatthe deeper reason for th is loyal ty to a typ i<.a l ly n inereenth-century doctrine has something to do rvith the concept ofPropp'ess, rvith an unrvil l ingness to part rvith a notion thatused to uni te L ibera l ism, Socia l isrn, and Commrrnism inrothe "Left" btrt has nolvhere reached the level of plaus-ibil i ty and sophistication we find in the rvrit ings of KarlN{arx. (Inconsistency has alrvays been the Achil les' heel ofl iberal thought; it comllined an unsrverving loyalty toProgress with a no less strict refusal to glorify Flistory inMarxian ancl Hegelian terms, rvhich alone c_-ould iustifvand guaranree it.)

The notion that there is strch a thing as progress oftnankincl as a rvhole rvas trnkn'*'n prior to the seventeenthcentut'y, developed into a r-ather common opinion amongthe e iehteenth-( 'entr l ry hommes de let t tes, ancl l lecame analmost universal ly accepted dogrna in the n ineteenth. Rutthe clifferen.e bet\\reen the earlier notions and their f inalstage is decisive. The seventeenth century, in this respectbest represenrecl by Pascal and Fontenelle, thoueht of piog-ress in terms of an ac('rrm.lation .f kno*,leclge thràugirthe cent'ries, rvhereas for the eiehteenth the *,.rcl impliËdan "eclrr<'ari.n .f manki'd" (Lessi.g's Erziehrms rlt:s i,Ien-schengeschlechts) rvhose end l,otrld coincide with man'scoming of apçe. Progress $ras not trnlimited, ancl Marx'sclassless society seen as the realrn of freeclom that couldl>e the end of history-often interpretecl as a secrrlarization-of christian eschatology or .|elvish messianism-actuallysti l l bears the hallmark of the Age of Enlightenmenr. Be-

{e See the Spiegel-Inte^,ierv with Christoph Ehmann in I)er Spiegel,February ro, r969.

24 25

ginning with the nineteenth centuïy, horvever, all srr< lr

i imitations disappeared. Nolv, in the r'vords of Pr.trcl6'tt,

mcrtion ts "le fait primitif" and "the larvs of movelncnt

alone are eternal." This movement has neither lteginnine

nor end: "Le morruement est , ; uoi là tout ! " As to man, a l l

we can say is "rve are born perfectible, l)ut we shall t lever

be perfect." a3 N'Iarx's iclea, l lorron'ed from Hegel' that

every old society harbors the seeds of its strccessors in the

same way every l iving organism harllors the seeds of its

offspring is indeed not only the most ingenious lnt also

the only possible conceptual gtlarantee for the sempiternal

continuity of progress in history; and siuce the motion of

this progress is supposed to come about through the clashes

of antagonistic forces, it is possil l le to interpret every "re-

gress" as a necessary but temporary setl lack.

To be sure, a guaïantee that in the final analysis rests

on litt le more than a metaphor is not the most solid basis

to erect a cloctrine upon, l lut this, unhappily, I\{arxism

shares with a great many other doctrines in philosophy.

Its great aclvantage becomes clear as soon as one compares

it with other concepts of history-such as "eternal recur-

rences," the rise ancl fall of empires, the haphazard se-

quence of essentially unconnected events-all of which

can equally be documented and justif ied, but none of

which lvil l gtrarantee a (ontintttrm of l inear time and

continuotts progress in history. And the only competitor in

the field, the ancient notion of a Golden Age at the begin-

nine, from lvhich everything else is derived, implies the

rather unpleasant certainty of continrtotrs clecline. Of

course, there are a ferv melancholy side effects in the reas-

suring irlea that we need only march into the ftttttre,

a3 P.-.f. Protrdlton, Philo.sophie du Progrês (r85a), r916, pP. 27-3o, 49'and De Ia ltrstice (r858), ro3o, I, p. 238, respectively. Scc also Wil-l iam H. Harbold, "Progressive Htrmanity: in the Philosophy of P.-J.Proudhon," Reuiew of Polit ics, Janr.rary, r96q.

lvhich we cannot help doing anyhorv, in order to fincl abetter lvorld. There is f irst of all the simple fact that thegeneral ftrture of mankind has nothing to offer to indi-vidual l i fe, rvhose only <:ertain future is death. And if oneleaves this out of acr:ount and thinks only in generalit ies,there is the obvi<lus argument against progress that, in thervords of Flerzen, "Human development is a form ofchronological unfairness, since late-r:omers are able toprofit by the labors of their predecessors without payingthe same price,"', or, in the words of Kant, "It wil lalways remain bewildering . . . that the earlier genera-tions seem to carry on their burdensome business only forthe sake of the later . . . and that only the last should havethe good fortune to drvell in the [completedJ building." +r

However, these disadvantages, which were only rarelynoticed, are more than outweighed by an enormous ad-vantage: progress not only explains the past rvithout break-ing up the time continuum but it can serve as a guide foracting into the future. This is what Marx discovered when the turned Hegel upside down: he changed the direction ofthe historian's glance; instead of looking toward the past,he now could confidently look into the future. Progressgives an ânsr"et to the troublesome question, And rvhatshall we do now? The answer, on the lowest level, says:Let us develop what we have into something better,greater, et cetera. (The, at f irst glance, irrational faith ofl iberals in grorvth, so characteristic of all our present poli-t ical and economic theories, depends on this notion.) Onthe more sophisticated level of the Left, it tells us to de-velop present contradictions into their inherent synthesis.

aa Alexander Fferzen is quoted here from Isaiah Berlin's ,'Introduc-tion" to Franco Venturi, Roots of lTevolutions, New York, r966.

ar "Idea for a flniversal History with Cosmopolitan Intent," ThirdPrinciple, in The Philosophy of Kant, N{odern Library edition.

2726

In either case we are assured that nothing altogether ne\vand totally unexpected can happen, nothing but the "ner:-essary" results of what we already knorv.a6 Horv reassuringthat, in Hegel's words, "nothing else will come out btrtwhat rvas already there." a7

I do not need to add that all our experiences in thiscentury, which has constantly confronted us with thetotally unexpected, stancl in flagrant contradiction to thesenotions and doctrines, whose very popularity seems to con-sist in offering a comfortable, speculative or pseudo-

I scientific refuge from reality. A student rebellion almosr

1 exclusively inspired by moral considerâtions certainly be-

I longs among the totally unexpected events of this century.' This generation, trained like its predecessors in hardlyanything but the various brands of the my-share-of-the-piesocial and political theories, has taught us a lesson aboutmanipulation, or, rather, its limits, rvhich we would dowell not to forget. Men can be "manipulated" throughphysical coercion, torture, or starvation, and their opinionscan be arbitrarily formed by deliberate, organized misin-formation, but not through "hidden persuaders," tele-vision, advertising, or any other psychological means in afree society. Alas, refutation of theory through reality hasalways been at best a lengthy and precarious business. Themanipulation addicts, those rvho fear it unduly no lessthan those who have set their hopes on it, hardly noticewhen the chickens come home to roost. (One of the nicestexamples of theories exploding into absurdity happenedduring the recent "People's Park" trouble in Berkeley.

a6 For an excel lent discussion of the obviotrs fal lacies in this posit ion,see Robert A. Nisbet, "The Year 2ooo and All That," in Commen.lzzryr, Jtrne, 1968, and the ill-tempered critical remarks in the September issue.

rz Hegel, op. ci t . , p. roo ff .

When the pol ice and the Nat ional Guard, wi th r i f les, un-sheathed bayonets, and helicoptered riot gas, attacked therrtrarmed students-few of them "had throlvn anythingmore dangerous than epithets"-some Guardsmen frater-nized openly with their "enemies" and one of them threwclown his arms and shouted: "I can't stand this any more."What happened? In the enlightened age we live in, thiscould be explained only by insanity; "he was rushed to apsychiatric examination [and] diagnosed as sufiering frorn'strppressed

aggressions.' ") nt

Progress, to be sure, is a more serious and a more com-plex item offered at the superstit ion fair of <tur t ime.ae Theirrational nineteenth-cenruïy belief in unlimited progresshas found universal acceptance chiefly because of theastounding development of the natnral sciences, rvhich,since the rise of the modern age, actually have been .,uni-

versal" sciences and therefore could look forward to anunending task in exploring the immensity of the universe.That science, even though no longer l imited by the fini-ttrde of the earth and its nature, should be subject tonever-ending progress is by no means certain; that strictlyscientif ic research in the humanities, the so-call ed Ceistes-tL,i.çsenschaTten that deal rvith the products of the humanspirit, must come to an end by definit ion is obvious. Theceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in anumber of f ields, where only erudition is now possible, has

a8 The inciclent is reported without comment by worin and Schaar.op. cit. See also Peter Barnes's reporr ., ,An Outcry,: Thoughts onBeing Tear Gassed," in Newsuteek, June z, r969.ae Spender (op. cit., p. 45) reporrs that the French srudents duringthe l\Iay incidents in Paris "refused categorically the icleology oï'o.tput'

frendernentl, of 'progress' and such-called pseudo-forces."In America, this is not yet the case as far as progre.ss is concerned.\ve are still surroundecl by talk about "progressive" and ..regressive"forces, "progressive" and "repressive rolerance," and the like.

led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famcltts ktton'itts- ()l

more and more about less and less, or to the rlevclol>tnctrt

of a pseuclo-scholarsl-rip rvhich actually destroys its olr.f et t. i" '

It is noter.vorthy that the rebell ion of the yotrng, to tlte

extent that it is not exclusively morally or polit i<ally mo-

tivated, has been chiefly directed against t lte aca<lenric

glorif ication of scholarship and science, both of rvhich,

though for different reasons, are gravely compromisecl in

their eyes. And it is true that it is by no means irnpossilrle

that we have reached in both cases a turning point, the

point of destructive returns. Not only has the progress of

science ceased to coincide with the progress of mankincl(rvhatever that rnay mean), btrt it could even spell rnan-

kind's end, just as the further progress of scholarship rnayrvel l end wi th the destrnct ion of everyth ing t l la t rnade

scholarship worth our while. Progress, in other u'orcls, carrno longer serve as the standard by which to evaluate thedisastrously rapid change-processes lve have let Ioose.

Since we are concerned here primarily'r.vith violence, I

must warn against a tempting misunderstanding. If rvelook on history in terms of a continuous <:hronologicalprocess, whose progress, moreover, is inevitable, violencein the shape of war and revolution may appear to con-stitute the only possible interruption. If this \vere true,if only the practice of violence rvould make it possible tointerrupt automatic processes in the realm of htrmanaffairs, the preachers of violence would have n'on an im-portant point. (Theoretically, as far as I knotv, the pointwas never made, but it seems to me incontestaltle that thedisruptive student activities in the last ferv years areactually based on this conviction.) It is the function, how-

50 For a splendid exempli f icat ion of these not merely superl luous butpernicious enterprises, see Edmund \{ i lson, The Fruits of the MLA,New York, 1968.

ever, of all action, as distinguished from mere behavior, tointeffupt ' ivhat othenvise lvould have proceeded automa-tically and therefore predictably.

3 l80

I T I S against the background of these experiences thatI propose to raise the question of violence in the politicalrea!g1, This is not easy; rvhat Sorel remarked sixty yearsago, "The problems of violence stil l remain very ob-scure," 51 is as true t()day as it rvas then. I mentioned thegeneral reluctance to deal with violence as a phenomenonin its orvn right, and I must nolv qualify this stacement. If _..we turn to discussions of the phenomenon of polver, wesoon find that there exists a consensus among politicaltheorists frôiri Left ro-Righi to the effecr rhat violènce isnothing more tii ian ihe;osr flagrant manifestation ofpower. "All politics is a'struggle fàr power; the uliiÂatekind of power is violence," said C. Wright I\Ii l ls, echoing,:,as it were, Max Weber's definition of the state as "the rule$of men over men based on the means of legitimate, that is r

allegedly legitimate, violence." 52 The consensus is very

51 Georges Sorcl, Reflections on Violence, "Introduction to the FirstPublication" (19o6), New York, rq6r, p. 6o.

s2The Pouer Etire, New York, rq56, p. r7r; I \ fax Weber in the frrstparagraplrs of Pol i t ics as a Vor;at ion (rgzr). Weber seems to havebeen aware of his agreement with the Left. He quotes in the conrexrTrotsky's remark in Brest-Litovsk, "Every srate is basecl on violence,"and adds, "This is indeed true."

"tlre porver of man clver n)an." 5(i -I-o go back to Jotrvenel:

"To comrnand and to l-re olteyed: rvithout that, there is no

Porver-u'it l 'r i t no other attribute is needed for it to be. . . .

The th ing rv i thout which i t cannot be: that essence is com-

mand." 5i If the essence of p<trver is the effectiveness of

<'ornmand, then there is no greater Potver than that rvhich

grorvs out of the barrel of a gun, and it rvottld be diff i-

r:ult to say in "rvhich rvay the order given by a policeman

is different from that given by a gunman." (I am quoting

frorn tlre important ltook 'fhe

Notion of the ,State, by

Alexander Passerin d'Entrèves, the only author I knolv

rvho is aware of the importance of distinguishing benveen

violence aud power. "We have to decide whether and in

lvlrat sense 'power' can be distinguished from 'force', to as-

certain holv the fact of using force according to lar'v

c-hanges the qtrality of force itself ancl presents us rvith an

entirely different picture of human relations," since"force, by the very fact of being qualif ied, ceases to be

foru:e." But even this clistinction, by far t lte most sophis-

ticated and thougl'rtful one in the l iterature, does not go

'- '6 See Karl von ClausewitT,, On l 'Var (1832), New York, rq43, ch. r;Robert Strausz--Htrpé, Poz.tcr and Cornrnunjty,, New York, r956, p. 4;tlre cluotation lrom ]\[ax Weber: " LIacht bedeutet iede Chance,innerhalb einer sozialen Reziehung den eigenen l l i l len auch gegen

Itr ' iderstand durchzuset:en " is drawn from Strausz-Hupé.

57 I chose my examples at randonr, since i t hardly matters to whichauthor one turns. I t is only occasional ly that one hears a r l issentingvoice. - l-hus R. NI. N'fclver states, "Coercive power is a cri terion ofthe state, btrt not i ts essence. I t is true that there is no state,wherc there is no overwhelming force. . But the exercise of forcer loes no t n rake a s ta te . " ( In The L Iodern . \ la le , London, rq :6 , pp .zzz-zzg.) How strong the force of this tradit ion is can l le seen inRotrsseau's attempt to escape i t . Looking for a government of no-rule, he frncls rrothing better than "une lorme d'associat ion . parIaquelle chacun s'unissan.t , i torts rt 'obëisse pourtant qu'à lui-tnême."-I 'he

ernphasis on obediencc, and hence on command, is unchanged.

87

strange; for to equate polit ical power with "the orgall iza-

tion of violence" makes sense ()nly if one follorvs N{arx's

estimate of the state âs an instrument of opPression in the

hands of the ruling class. Let us therefore turn to authors

who do not believe that the body polit ic ancl its larvs ancl

institrtt ions are melely coercive superstructures' sec:()ndary

manifestations of some underlying forces. Let t ls tLlrn, for

instance, to Bertrand de Jouvenel, whose book Pozrrer is

perhaps the most prestigious and, anyway, the most inter-

esting ïecent treatise on the subject. "To him," he writes,

"$'h<> r:ontemplates the trnfolding clf the ages war presents

itself as an activity of States which pertains to their es-

sen(e." r)r This may prompt us to ask rvhether the end of

rvarfare, then, would mean the end of states. Would the

disappearance of violence in relationships between states'spell

the ênd of power?The answer, it seems, wil l depend on what we under-

stand by power. And porver, it turns out, is an instrutnent

of rule. rvhile rule. we ale told, owes its existence to "the

instinct of dominati,, l l ." r5'r We are immediately reminded

o[ ' lvhat Sartre said about violence when we read in

.|ouvenel that "a man feels himself more of a man when he

is imposing himself aud making others the instruments of

his r.vil l ," rvhich gives him "incomparable pleastrrc'" 55

"Polver," said Voltaile, "consists in making others act as I

<:hoose"; it is present rvherever I have tlre chance "to as-

sert my own rvil l against the resistance" of others, said N{ax

Weber, reminding tts of Clatrse'rvitz's clefinit ion of lvar as

"an act of viri lence to compel the opponent to do as we

r.vish." The word, we are told by Strausz-Hupé, signifies

t'3 Power: The Natural History of lts Growlh (rq45), London, rq52,

P . r22 .

5a Ibiden, p. gg.

55 Ib ident , p. I ro.

36

is being done. It is this state of affairs, making it irnpos-

s ib le to local ize responsib i l i ty and to ident i fy the enetny,

that is amonە the most potent causes of the ctrrrent rvorld-

rvide rebell iotrs unrest, its chaotic nature, and its danger-

ous telrdency to get out of control and to rtrn amuck.)

N{oreover, this ancient vocabulary was strangely con-

firmed and fortif iecl by the addition of the Hebrerv-

Chr is t ian t radi t ion and i ts " imperat ive concept ion of law."

This concept rvas not invented by the "polit ical realists"

l)ut \\ 'as. rather. the result <lf a mtr<:h earlier. alrnost alrto-

matic generalization of Gocl's "Commandments," accord-

ing to rvl"rich "the simple relation of comtnand and obedi-

ence" indeed suffic:ed to identify the essence of larv.seFinally, more modern scientif ic and philosophical convic-

tions concerning man's nature have further streugthenedthese legal and pol i t ica l t radi t ions. The many recent d is-

coveries of an inborn instinct of domination and an innate

aggressiveness in the human animal rvere preceded byvery similar philosophic statements. According to JohnStuar t N{ i l l , " the f i rs t lesson of c iv i l izat ion [ is ] that ofobedience," and he speaks of "the two states of the in-

clinations . . . one the desire to exercise power over others;the other . . . disinclination to have po\ver exercised overthernselves." 60 If rve 'rvould trust our orvn experiences in lthese rnatters, we should know that the instinct of sub- imission, an ardent desire to obey and be rulecl by some lstrong man, is at least as prominent in human psychology Ias the rvil l to power", and, polit icirl ly, perhaps more rele-

'

vant. The olcl adage "Horv fit he is to sway / That can sorvell obey," some version of which seems to have been

5s Ib idem, p. r2g.

û0 Consirlerati.ons on Representatiue Cotternn're ri l (r86r), LiberalArts Library, pp. 59 and 65.

39

to the rclot of the matter.Porvet' in Passerin cl ' l ' .ntrùvcs's

understanding is "qualifred" <lr "instittrt ional izecl force."

/ In other rvords, rvhile the autltors qtroted alrove cleliue

lviolence as the most f lagrant manilestation of p,,rvei'

i Passerin d'Entrèves defines power as a kind of mitigated

violence. In the final analysis, it comes to the saure.) 58

Shor.rld everybody from Right to Left, Êrom lJertrand de

Jouvenel to i\{ao Tse-tung agree on so basic a point in

polit ical philosophy as the nature of power?

In terms of otrr traditions of polit ical thought, these clefi-

nit ions have much to recommend them. Not only do they

derive from the old notion of absolute po\\rer that ac-

companied the rise of the sovereign Ettropean nation-state,

rvhose earliest and sti l l greatest spokesmen r'vere .|eanBodin, in sixteenth-century France, and Thomas Holtbes,

' in seventeenth-century England; they also coincide rvith

\ th_e ter:ms used since Greek antiquity to define the forms

of government as the rule o[ man over man-of one or thefew in monarchy and oligarchy, of the best or the rnany

; in aristocracy and democracy. Today we ought to add thelatest and perhaps most formidable form of such domin-ion: bureaucracy or the rule of an intricate system ofbureaus in rvhich no men, neither one nor the best, neitherthe few nor the many, can be held responsible, and'r.vhichcould be properly called rule by Nobody. (If, in accordwith traditional polit ical thought, rve identify tyranny as

. governmenr rhat is not held to p;ive account of itself, ruleby Nobody is clearly the rnosr tyrannical of all, since thereis no one left lvho could even be asked to answer for rvhat

58 The Notion of the Stale, An Introduction to Polit ical Theory wasfirst published in Italian in 196z. The English version is no meretranslation; written by the author himself, it is the clefinit ive editionand appeared in Oxford in r967. For the quorations, see pp. 64, jo,and ro5.

38

knclwn to all centuries and all nations,6r ntay ;xrint tr> apsychological truth: namely, that the lvil l to porver andthe wil l to submission are interconnected. ,,Ready

sub-mission to tyranny," to use N{il l once more, is }>y no rneansalrvays caused by "extreme passiveness." Conversely, astrong clisinclination to obey is often act:ompaniecl by anequally strong disinclination to dominate ancl <:ommancl.Historically speaking, the ancient institution of slaveeconomy would be inexplicable on the grotrncls of l\{ i l l ,spsychology. Its express purpose lvas to l iberate cit izensfrom the burden of household affairs and to permit thernto enter the ptrl l l ic l i fe of the community, where all rvereequals; if i t were true that nothing is sweeter than to givecommands and to rule others, the master would never haveleft his household.

However, there exists another tradition and anothervocabulary no less old and time_honored. When theAthenian city-state called its constitution an isonomv. orthe Romans spoke of the civitas as their form of g.rrr"rrr_ment, they had in mind a concepr of power and law whoseessence did not rely on the command_obedience relationshipand which did not identify porver and mle or larv and com_mand. It rvas to these examples that the men of theeightecnth-cerrtury revolutions turned rvhen they ran-sacked the archives of antiquity and constitured a form ofgovernment, a repnblic, . lvhere the rule of larv, resting onthe power of the people, woulcl put an end to the nrle ofman over man, which they thought was a ..government

ûtfor slaves." They too, u4happily, sti l l talkeà abour obecri-ence-obedience to larvs instead of men; btrt rvhat theyactually meant rvas support of the laws to which the

6rJohn M. Wallace, Destiny His Choice: The Loyalism of AndrewMane.ll, Cambriclge, ro6g, pp. gg-gq. I owe this reference to the kindattention of Gregory Des-fardins.

r:it izenry hacl given its consent.62 Strch support is neverunquestioning, and as far as reliabil i ty is concerned it can- rnot match the indeed "unquestioning obedience" that an iact o[ violence can exact-the obedience every criminalcan count on rvhen he snatches my pocketbook with the ,help of a kni fe or robs a bank wi th the help of , g , r r , . 'It is the people's support that lends power to the institu-tions of a country, and this suppoït is but the continuationof the consent that brought the laws into existence tobegin with. l lnder conditions of representarive govern-i1ment the people are supposed to rule those rvho governthem. All polit ical institutions are manifestations and:materializations of porver; they petrify and decay as soonas the l iving power of the people ceases to uphold them.This is what Madison meant lvhen he said "all govern-ments rest on opinion," a word no less true for the variousforms of monarchy than for democracies. ("To suppose thatmajority rule functions only in democracy is a fantasticil lusion," as Jouvenel points out: "The king, rvho is butone solitary individual, stands far more in need of thegeneral support of Society than any other form of govern-ment." 63 Even the tyrant, the One rvho rtrles againstall, needs helpers in the business of violence, though theirnumber may be rather restricted.) Flolever, the strength r,of opinion, that is, the power of the government, dependson numbers; it is "in proportion to the number withwhich it is assôr:iared," èn urld tyranny, as Monresquieu idiscovered, is therefore the most violent and least pàwer-ful of forms <lf government. Indeed one of the most ,obvious distinctions betwee_n power and- violeiice is thâî

'

62 See appendix XI, p. 97.63 Op. cit., p. 98.âa The Federalrt. No. 49.

4 l

It is, I think, a rather sad reflection on the present state

of polit ical sc:ience that our terminology does not distin-guish arnong such key words as "porver," "strength,""force," "authority," and, f inally, "violence"-all of rvhichrefer to distint:t, different phenomena and rvould hardlyexis t unless they d id. ( In the rvords of d 'Entrèves, " rn ight ,

power, authority: these are all lvords to whose exact im-

plications no great rveight is attached in current speech;even the greatest thinkers sometimes use them at random.Yet it is fair to presume that t lrey refer to clifferentproperties, and their meaning should therefore lte care-fully assessed and examined. . . . The correct use of theseworcls is a question not only of logical grarnrnar, but ofhistoric:al perspective.") ot To use them as synol)yms notonly inc l i t :a tes a ( :er ta in deafness to l ingrr is t ic meanings.which rvould be serious enough, but it has also resulted ina kind of blindness to the realit ies they correspond to. In

such a situation it is always tempting to introduce newdefinit ions, but-though I shall briefly yielcl to tempta-tion-rvhat is involved is not simply a matter of carelessspeech. Behincl the apparent r:onfusion is a firm convic-tion in lvhose light all distinctions .lvould lte, ar best, ofminor importanc 'e: the convict ion that the most cruc ia lpolit ical issue is, and ahvays has been, the question ofWho rules Whom? Power, strength, force, anthority,violence-these are but words to indicate the means bywhich man rules over man; they are held to be synonymsbecause they have the same function. It is only after one

65 OIt. cit., p. ?. Cf. also p. r7r, where, discussing the exacr meaningof the wonls "nation" ancl "nationality," he rightly insists that "theonly competent guides in the jungle of so many clifferent meaningsare the l inguists and the historians. It is to them that we must turnfor help." And in distinguishing authority and power, he rurns roCicero's potestas in populo, auctoritas in senatu.

43

power alrvays stands in need of numlters, whereas vi<llencerip-to à"point cran manage without them ltecatrse it relieson implements. A iêgally unrestricted maiority rtrle, that

!-s.,..4- demo*c-racy rvithout a constitution, can be very for-midable in the suppression of the rights of minorities andveiv êffectivè in the suffôi:âtion cif clissent rvitl'rotrt any useof violence. But that does not mean that violen(re andpower are the same.

The extreme form of power is All against . One, theextreme form of violence is One against All. And thislatter is never possible rvithout instruments. To claim, asis often done, that a tiny unarmed minority has strc:t:ess-fully, by means of violence-shouting, kicking Lrp a row,et cetera-disrupted large lecture classes whose overwhelm-ing majority had voted for normal instruction proceduresis therefore very misleading. (In a recent case at someGerman university there was even one lonely "dissenter"among several hundred students who could claim such astrange victory.) What actually happens in strch cases issomething much mole serious: the majority clearly refusesto use its power and overpower the disrupters; the academicprocesses break dolvn because no one is willing to raisemore than a voting finger for the stetus guo. What theuniversities are up against is the "immense negative unity"of which Stephen Spender speaks in another context. Allof which proves only that a minority can have a muchgreater potential power than one would expect by count-ing noses in public-opinion polls. The merely onlookingmajority, amused by the spectacle of a shouting matchbetween student and professor, is in fact already thelatent ally of the minority. (One need only imagine whatwould have happened had one or a few unarmed Jews inpre-Hitler Germany tried to disrupt the lecture of ananti-Semitic professor in order to understand the absurdityof the talk about the small "minorities of militants.")

ceases to reduce public affairs t<l the business of clotniniotr

that the original data in the realm of hrrmau affairs rvil l

appear, or, rather, reappear, in their authentic diversity'

These data, in our context, may lle enumerated as

ro.lJexs;.- Pozuerlorresponds to the human abil ity not just to act

but to ait in concert. Por,ver is never the property of arr

individual; it belongs to a grollp and remains in existence

only so long as the group keeps together. When we say

of somebocly tlrat he is "in porver" u,e at:tually refer to his

being emporvered by a certain number of people to act in

their name. The moment the group, from r,vhich the

power originated to begin rvith (polestas in potttt lo, ' ivith-

out a people or group there is no por,ver), disappears, "his

power" alscl vanishes. In current trsage, rvhen rve speak of

a "pol'r'erftrl man" or a "powerful personality," we already

use the rvclrd "porver" metaphorically; rvhat we refer to

rvi.tkorrr-mqtaphor is " stren gth. "

Strength)uneqtrivocally designates something in the

singrrtarl-ân individual entity; it is the property inherentin an object or person and belongs to its character, whichmay prove itself in relation to other things or persons, btrtis essentially independent of them. The strength of eventhe strongest individual can always be overporvered by themany, rvho often wil l combine for no other purpose thanto ruin strength precisely because of its peculiar inde-pendence. The almost instinctive hosti l i ty of the manytorvard the one has alrvays, from Plato to Nietzsche, beenascribed to resentment, to the envy of the weak for thestrong, but this psychological interpretation misses thepoint. It is in the nature of a group and its po\ver to turnaSg,gftinclependence, the property of inclivi<lual streneth.'Force.)which 'rve often use in daily speech as a synonymfor viôlence, especially if violence serves as a means ofcoercion, should be reserved, in terminological language,

l 'or the "forces of nature" or the "force of circumstances"

(Ia force des r:hoses), that is, to indicate tIç ",Uç.fgy

rçlgased

lrv nhvsical or socia l movements./ r -il{:sTr-. -

' frrthorit\, relating to the most elusive of these pheno-rnenâ ârid iherefore, as a terln, most freqtrently abused,66

r:an be vested in persons-there is such a thing as persotral

atrthority, as, for instant:e, in the relation l)etrveen parent

and child, between teacher and pupil-or it can be vested

in offices, as, for instance, in the Roman senate (auctoritas

in senattt) or in the hierarchical offices of the Church (a

priest can grant valid absolution even though he is drunk).I1s !a!lma1k is unqr:estioning recognition by those rvho are

T-L"q -9o obey; -neither coercion nor persttasion is needecl'(A father can lose his authority either by beating his childor by starting to arts^ue rvith hirn, that is, either by behav-

ing to him like a tyrant or by treatinpç him as an equal.)T<l remain in authority requires respect for the person or

the office. The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is

contempt, and the srlrest way to undermine it is laughter.GT

eB There is such a thing as authoritarian government, but it cer-tainiy has nothing in comrnon with tyranny, dictatorship, or totali-tarian rule. For a cliscussion of the historical background andpolit ical signiÊcance of the telm, see my "What is Authority?" inBetzueen Past and Fulure: Exercises in. Poli l ical Thought, New York,rq6B, and Part I of Karl-Heinz Lûbke's valuable study, Attctoritas beiAttgttstin,Stuttgart, rq68, with extensive bibliography.

67 Wolin and Schaar, in op. t it., are entirely right: "The rules arebeing broken because University authorit ies, administrators andfaculty alike, have lost the respecr of many of the students." Theythen conclucle, "\Vhen authority leaves, power enrers." This too istrue, but, I am afraicl, not qrrite in the sense they meant it. Whatentered first at Berkeley lvas student power, obviously the strongestpower on every câmpus simply because of the students' superior-numbers. It was in order to break this power that authorit ies re-sorted to violence, and it is precisely because the university isessentially an institution based on authority, and therefore in need

44 45

,,,"Pe\

Violenc,l, f inally, as I have said, is distinguished by its

instrumental character'. Phenomenologically, it is close -t-osfiéngth, , irr." ' i ir" implements of violence, l ike all other

tools, are designecl and used for the pur-pose of multiply-ing natural strength unti l, in the last stage of their d-c-

velopment, they can substitute for it.It is perhaps not superfluous to add that these distinc-

tions, though by no means arbitrary, hardly ever cor-respond to watertight compartments in the real rvorld,from which nevertheless they are drarvn. Thtrs institution-alized power in organized communities often appears in

the guise of authority, demanding instant, unquestioningrecognition; no society could function r,vithout it. (Asmall, and sti l l isolated, incident in Nerv York shows whatcan happen if atrthentic authority in social relations hasbroken down to the point where it cannot work anvlonger even in its derivative, purely ftrnctional form. Aminor mishap in the subrvay system-the doors on a trainfailed to operate-turned into a serious shutdolvn on theline lasting four hours and involving more than fiftythousand passengers, because when the transit authorit iesasked the passengers to leave the defective train, theysimply refused.) 68 Moreover, nothing, as rve shall see, is

of respect, that it finds ir. so difficult to deal with power in nonvio-. lent terms. The university today calls upon the police for protectionexactly as the Catholic church used to do before the separation ofstate and church forced i t to rely on authority alone. I t is perhapsmore than an oddity that the severest crisis of the church as aninsti tut ion should coincit le with the severesr crisis in the history ofthe university, the or-r iy secular inst i tut ior-r st i l l based on aurhority.Both may indeed be ascribed to "the progressing explosion of theatom 'obedience' whose stabi l i ty was al legedly eternal," as HeinrichBôll remarked of the crisis in the churches. See "Es wird immerspâter," in Antwort an Sacharow, Zùrich, 1969.

68See the New York Times, January 4, 1969, pp. r and 29.

nrore common than the combination of violence and

lx)wer, nothing less frequent than to find them in their

pure ancl t l-rerefore extreme form. From this, it does not

follorv that authority, power, and violen<:e are all the

same.

Stil l i t must be admitted that it is particularly temptingto think of power in terms of command and obedience,and hence to equate po\\rer rvith violence, in a discussionof what actually is only one of po\.ver's special cases-namely, the power of government. Since in foreign rela-tions as well as domestic affairs violence appears as a lastresort to keep the por,ver structure intact against indi-vidual challengers-the foreign enemy, the native criminal-it looks indeed as though violence were the prerequisiteof porver and polver notl-ring but a façade, the velvet glovewhich either conceals the iron hand or rvil l turn out tobelong to a paper tiger. On closer inspection, though, thisnotion loses much of its plausibil i ty. For our purpose, thegap between theory and reality is perhaps best i l lustratedby the phenomenon of revolution.

Sinr:e the beginning of the century theoreticians of revo-I r r t ion have to ld us that the chances of revolut ion havesignificantly decreased in proportion to the increasecldestructive capacities oI weapons at the uniqtre dispositionof governments.oe The history of the last seventy yeaïs,

0s Thus Franz Rorkenau, reflecting on the defeat of the Spanishrevolution, states: "In this tremendous contrast with previous revolu_tions one fact is reflectetl. Before these latter years. counter-re'olu-tion usrrally dependecl upon the supporr of reactionary powers,which were technically ancl intellectualiy inferior to the forces ofrevolution. This has cl-rarrgecl with the a<lvent of fascism. Now, e'cryrevolution is l ikely to meet the attack of the most moclern. mostefficient, most ruthless machinery yet in existence. It means thatthe age of revolutions free to evolve accorcling to their own laws isover." This was wrimen more rhan thirry years ago (The Spanish

47

with its extraordinary record of successful and rtnsu<:cess-

ful revolutions, tells a different story. Were people mad

who even tried against such overrvhelming odds? And,

leaving out instan('es of full success, hon' catt even a tem-

porar-y success be explained? The fact is that ttre gap

between state-otvned means of violence and wl"rat people

can muster by themselves-from beer bottles to N{olotov

cocktails and guns-has alrvays been so enormous that tech-

nical irnprovements make hardly any difference. Textbook

instructior-rs on "how to rnake a revolution" in a step-l)y-

step progression from dissent to conspiracy, from resistance

to armed uprising, are all based on the mistaken notion

that revolutions are "made." In a contest of violence

against violence the superiority of the government has

always been absolute; but this superiority lasts only as

long as the power structure of the government is intact-

that is, as long as commands are obeyed and the army or

police forces are prepared to use their rveapons. When thisis no longer the case, the situation changes abruptly. Notonly is the rebell ion not put down, but the arms themselveschange hands-sometimes, as in the Hungarian revolution,within a few hours. (We should know about such things

after all these years of futi le f ighting in Vietnam, where

for a long time, before getting massive Russian aid, the

National Liberation Front fought us with weapons that

were made in the United States.) Only after this has hap-pened, when the disintegration of the government in

power has permitted the rebels to arm themselves, canone speak of an "armecl uprising," which often does not

Cochpit, London, rg37; Ann Arbor, r963, pp. 288-z8q) and is nowquoted with approval by Chomsky (op. ci t . , p. 3ro).He bel ieves thatAmerican and French intervention in the civi l war in Vietnamproves Borkenau's prediction accurate, "with substitution of 'liberal

imperialism' for 'fascism.' " I think that this example is rather aptto prove the opposite.

take place at all or occurs when it is no longer necessary.

W]:glq ._qn.m_4qd,s.. are no longer obeyed, the means of

v io lence are of no use ; -ag{" the.qugst ion of th is obedienceii not clecicled by the .à-"ià"d-ôbêdience relation but byopinion, and, of c()urse, by the number of those rvho

-\- '

share it. Everything depends on the power behind the

_violence. The sudden dramatic breakdown of polver thatushers in revolutions reveals in a flash how civil obedience-to lar,vs, to rulers, to institutions-is but the outwardmanifestation of support and consent.

Where porver has disintegrated, revolutions are possiblebut not necessary. lVe knor,v of many instances rvhen ut-terly impotent regimes were permitted to continue inexistence for long periods of t ime-either because therewas no one to test their strength and reveal their weak-ness or because they rvere lucky enough not to be engagedin rvar and suffer defeat. Disintegration often becomesmanifest only in direct confrontation; and even then, rvhenpower is already in the street, some group of men pre-pared for such an eventuality is needed to pick it up andassume responsibil i ty. We have recently lvitnessed how itd id not take more than the re lat ive ly harmless, essent ia l lynonviolent French students' rebell ion to reveal the vulner-abil ity o[ the rvhole polit ical system, which rapidly dis-integrated before the astonished eyes of the young rebels.tlnknowingly they had tested it; they intended only tochallenge the ossified university system, and down camethe system of governmental power, together with that of .the huge party bureaucracies-"?tne sorte rte d,ësintëgration ,rl.e toutes les hiérarchi(s." ro It was a textbook case o[ a,revolutionary sittration 71 that did not develop into a revo_?0Raymond Aron, La Réuolut ion Int rouaable, rq6g, p.4r . I

7r Stephen Spender, op. cit., p. 56, disagrees: ..What was so muchmore apparent than the revolutionary situation [was] the non_revolutionary one." It may be "difficult to think of a revolution

48

lution because there was nobody, least of all the students,prepared to seize powel and the responsibil i ty that goeswith it. Nobocly except, of course, de Gaulle. Nothing lvasmore characteristic of the seriousness of the situation thanhis appeal to the army, his journey to see Nlassu and thegenerals in Germany, a walk to Canossa, if there ever wasone, in view of rvhat had happened only a ferv years lrefore.

But rvhat he sought and received was support, not obedi-ence, atrd the means were not commands but concessions.T2If commands had been enough, he would never have hadto leave Paris.

No government exclusively based on the means of

, violence has ever existed. Even the totalitarian ruler,whose chief instrument of rule is torture, needs a powerbasis-the secret police and its net of informers. Only the

development of robot soldiers, which, as previously men-

ïioned, would eliminate the human factor completely and,conceivably, permit one man with a push button to des-troy whomever he pleased, could change this fund.amentalascendancy of power over violence. Even the most despoticdomination we know of, the rule of master over slaves,who always olrtnumbered him, did not rest on superiormeans of coercion as such, but on a superior organizationof power-that is, on the organized solidarity of the mas-ters.?:r Single men withclut others to support them never

taking place when . . everyone looks particularly good humoured,"but this is what usually happens in the beginning of revolurions-during the early great ecstasy of fraternity.

?2 See appendix XII, p. 98.

73 In ancient Greece, such :rn organization of power was the pol is,whose chief merit , according to Xenophon, was that i t permittecl the"cit izens to act as bodyguarcls to one another against slaves andcriminals so that none of the cit izens may cl ie a violent cleath."(Hiero, IY, g.)

have enough porver to use violence successfully. Hence,

in dornestic affairs, violence functions as the last resort o[

porver against criminals or rebels-that is, against single

individuals lvho, as it lvere, refuse to be overpowered by'

the consenstrs of the rnajority. And as for actual rvarfare, ,rve have seen in Vietnam how an enormous superiority in'the means of violence can Lrecome helpless if confrontedrvith an i l l-equipped but well-organized opponent rvho ismuch more powerful. This lesson, to be sure, was there tobe learned from the history of guerri l la r,varfare, which isat least as old as the defeat in Spain of Napoleon's sti l l-unvanquished army.

To srvitch for a mornent to conceptual language: Power r

is indeed of the essence of all government, but violence isnot. Violence is by natrlre instrumental; I ike all means, it ,alrvays stands in need of gtridance and justif ication throughthe end it pursues. And lvhat needs justiÊcation by some- ,thing else cannot be the essence of anything. The end ofwar-end taken in its nvofold meaning-is peace or victory;but to the question And what is the end of peace? there isno answer. Peace is an absolute, even though in recordedhistory periods of warfare have nearly always outlastedperiods of peace. Porver is in the same category; it is, asthey say, "an end in itself." (Thii, of coùrte, is not todeny that governments pursue policies and employ theirpower to achieve prescribed goals. But the power srructuret*t_qg_l! pfçc.qdes and ourlasts all aims, so rhar power, farfrom being the means to an end, is actually the very con-dition enabling a grot-rp of people ro rhink and acr interms of ihe means-end category.) And since gou"rrr*.rri i ,essentially organized and institutionalized power, the cur-rent question What is the end of government? does notmake mtrch sense either. The answer wil l be either ques_tion-beggingç-to enable men to live together-or danger-ously utopian-to promote happiness or to realize a

5 l

classless society or some other nonpolit ical ideal, rvhich

if tr ied oLrt in earnest cannot bttt end in sotne kind of

tyranny.Power needs no justifrcation, being inherent in the very

.*[iêr... of political communities; rvhat it cloes need islegitimacy. The common treatment of these trvo lvords assynonyms is no less misleading and confusing than the

6r currerlt equation of obedience and support. Porver springs

..:/ )1,"p rvhenever people get together and act in concert' l lut'f" ' , ' i , derives its legitimacy from the init ial getting together'

| . " * . . . 6 ' " ' ^ ^ ' b

I rather than from any action that then may follow. Legi-

timacy, n'tren challenged, bases itself on an appeal to thepast, wl-rile justihcation relates to an end that lies in thefuture. Violence can be justifiable, but it never will belegitimate. Its justification loses in plausibility the fartherits intended end recedes into the frrture. No one questionsthe use of violence in selÊ-defense, because the danger isnot only clear but also present, and the end justifying themeans is imrnediate.

P_gy_çf and violence, _th,ough thçy a1e distinct phçgo-mena, -usually appe4.r together. Wherever they arecombined, power, we have found, is the primary and pre-

ldominant factor. The situation, however, is entirely difier-ent when lve deal r,vith them in their pure states-as, forinstance, rvith foreign invasion and occupation. We sawthat the current equation of violence with power rests ongovernment's being understood as domination of manover man by means of violence. If a foreign conqueror isconfronted by an impotent government and by a nationunused to the exercise of political power, it is easy for himto achieve such domination. In all other cases the difficul-ties are great indeed, and the occupying invader rvill tryimmediately to establish Quisling governmenrs, thar is, tofind a native power base to support his dominion. Thehead-on clash between Russian tanks and the entirely

nonvicllent resistance of the Czecl-roslovak peçp1s is a text-book case of a confrontation betrveen violençç ancl powerin their pure states. But while dominatioq in such aninstance is difficult to achieve, it is not im possible. Vio- ;lence, lve must remember, does not depend on numbers i,r/or opinions, but on irnplements, and the irnplsments of /

violence, as I mentioned before, like all othgl tools, in-crease and multiply human strength. Thosq rvho opposeviolence with mere polver will soon find that they are con-fronted not by men but by men's artifacls, whose in-humanity and destructive effectiveness increâ.se in propor- ,tion to the distance seParating the opponenls. Violence /can always destroy porver; out of the barrel of a gun grows i ,the most effective cornrnand, resttlting in the most instant i '.-.rand perfect olredienc:e. What never can groç oqt of it ispower.

In a head-on clash between violence aûd power, theoutcome is hardly in doubt. If Gandhi's enormouslyporverful ancl successful strategy of nonviolsnt ïesistancehad met with a different enemy-Stalin's R1155ia, Hitler'sGermany, even prewar Japan, instead of Englancl-t6e

'

outcome rvould not have been decoloqi2nlion, butmassacïe and submission. However, England in India andFrance in Algeria had good reasons for t\si1 restraint.Rule by sheer violence comes into play where porver isbeing lost; it is precisely the shrinking Poweï of the Rus-sian government, internally and externally, that becamemanifest in its "solution" of the Czechoslovak problem-just as it u'as the shrinking power of European imperial-ism that became manifest in the alternative between de-colonization and massacre. To substitute violence forpower can bring victory, but the price is very high; for itis not only paid by the vanquisl-red, it is alss paicl by thevictor in terms of his own power. This is especially truewhen the victor happens to enjoy domesticxlly the bless-

cesses and eventual failures rve knolv perhaps more than

any generation befr:re us. Terror is not the same as vio-

lence; it is, rather, the form of government that comes into

being when violence, having destroyed all porver, does not

abdicate but, on the contrary, remains in full control. It

has often been noticed that the effeôtiveness of tèfÏor de-

pends almost entirely on the degree of social atomization.

Every kind of organized opposition must disappear before

the full force of terror can be let loose. This atomization-

an outrageously pale, academic word for the horror it

implies-is maintained and intensified through the ubi-

quity of the informer, lvho can be l iterally omnipresent

because he no longer is merely a professional agent in the

pay of the police but potentially every person one comes

into contact with. Horv such a fully developed police

state is established and horv it rvorks-or. rather. how

nothing rvorks rvhere it holds sway-can nor,v be learned in

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle, rvhich wil l

probably remain one of the masterpieces of twentieth-

century l iterature and certainly contains the best docu-

mentation on Stalin's regime in existence.?c The decisive ,difference between totalitarian domination, based on :

terror, and tyrannies and dictatorships, established by

violence, is that the former turns not only against its

enemies but against its friends and supporters as r'vell,

being afraid of all porver, even the power of its friends. ;T.he_ climax of terror is reached when the police state

begins to devour its orvn children, when yesterday's exeç.u-

tioner becomes today's victip. And this is also the mgmenl

lvhen power disappears entirely. There exist norv a great

many plausible explanations for the de-Stalinization of

Russia-none, I believe, so compelling as the realization

by the Stalinist functionaries themselves that a continua-

?û See appendix XIV, p. 99.

ings of constitutional government. FIenry Steele C)ortttnageris entirely right: "If we subvert world orcler ancl destroy

world peace rve must inevitably subvert and clestroy ourorvn polit ical institutions first." 71 The mur:h-feared boom-erang effect of the "government of sul-rject rat:es" (LclrdCromer) on the home governrnent during the imperialistera meant that rule by violence in fararvay lands r,vould

end by affecting the government o[ England, that the last"subject race" would be the English themselves. Therecent gas attack on the campus at Berkeley, ' lvhere notjust tear gas but also another gas, "outlawed by theGeneva Convention and used by the Army to flush outguerri l las in Vietnam," rvas laid down while gas-rnaskedGuardsmen stopped anybody and everybody "from fleeingthe gassed area," is an excellent example of this "back-

lash" phenomenon. It has often been said that impotencebreeds violence, and psychologically this is quire true, arleast of persons possessing natural strength, moral or phy-sical. Polit ically speaking, the point is that loss of porverbecomes a temptation to substitute violence for porver-in1968 during the Democratic convention in Chicago wecould lvatch this process on television ?5-and that violenceitself results in impotence. Where violence is no longerbacked and restrained by power, the well-knolvn reversalin reckoning with means and ends has taken place. The

lmeans, the means of destruction. nolv determine the end-with the consequence that the end wil l be the destructionof all power.

Nowhere is the self-defeating factor in the victory ofviolence over power more evident than in the use ofterror to maintain domination, about whose weird suc-

7a "Can We Limit Presidential Power?" in The New Repttblic, April6, 1968.

75 See appendix XIII, p. 98.

tion of the regime would lead, not to an insurrection,against rvhich rerror is indeed the best safegtrard, but toparalysis of the rvhole country.

To sum up: politically speaking, ir is insufficient ro saythat power and violence are not the same. Por.ver and vio-lence are opposites; where the one rules âËso!ùidfy, theother is absent. Violence appears lvhere power. .ls injeopardy, but left to its orvn course it ends in pÇryF-r'sdisappearance. This implies that it is nor correcr ro rhinkof the opposite of violence as nonviolence; to speak of non-violent pâ..t is actually redundantf,Yiolence-can destroyporver; it is utterly incapable of creating it- Hegel's andNfarx's great trust in the dialectial "porver of negation,"by virtue of rvhich opposites do not destroy bur smoorhlydevelop into each other because contradictions promoteand do not paralyze development, rests on a much olderphilosophical prejudice: that evil is no more than a priva-tive modus of the good, that good can come out of evil;that, in short, evil is but a temporary manifesration of astill-hidden good. Such time-honored opinions have be-come dangerous. They are shared by many who have neverheard of Hegel or Marx, for the simple reason that theyinspire hope and dispel fear-a treacherous hope used todispel legitimate fear. By this, I do not mean to equateviolence with evil; I only want to stress that violencecannot be derived from its opposite, r.vhich is power, andthat in order to understand it for what it is, rve shall haveto examine its roots and nature.

ilIl : {

56

:f O S P E A K about the nature and causes of violence inthese terms must appear presumptuous at a moment whenfloods of foundation money are channeled into the variousresearch projects of social scientists, when a deluge of bookson the subject has already appeared, when eminent natural

scientists-biologists, physiologists, ethologists, and zoolo-gists-have joined in an all-out effort to solve the riddle of"aggressiveness" in human behavior, and even a brand-newscience, called "polemolog|," has emerged. I have two ex-cuses for trying nevertheless.

First, while I f ind much of the work of the zoologistsfascinating, I fail to see how it can possibly apply to oluproblem. In order to know that people wil l f ight for theirhomeland we hardly l-rad to discover instincts of "group

territorialism" in ants, f ish, and apes; and in order tolearn that overcrowding results in irritation and aggressive-

ness, we hardly needed to experiment with rats. One dayspent in the slums of any big city should have sufficed. Iam surprised and often delighted to see that some animals

behave like rnen; I cannot see how this could either justify'or

condernn human behavior. I fail to understand rvhy rveare asked "to recognize that man behaves very much likea group territorial species," rather than the other way

59

round-that certain animal species behave u".y ,r..,.h l ik"

men.?? (Follorving Adolf Portmann, these nelv insights into

animal behavior clo not close the gap bet'rveen man and

animal; they only demonstrate that "much more of lvhat

we knolv of ourselves than we thought also occurs in ani

mals.") zs Why should we, after having "eliminated" all

anthropomorphisms from animal psychology (whether weactually succeeded is another matter), nor\r try to discover"holv 'theriomorph' man is"? 7e Is it not ol)viorrs thatanthropomorphism and theriomorphism in the behavioralscien<'es are but trvo sides of the same "error"? Moreover.if rve define man as belonging to the animal kingdom, why

should we ask him to take his standarcls of behavior fromauother animal species? The answer, I am afraid, is simple:It is easier to experiment rvith animals, and this not onlyfor humanitarian reasons-that it is not nice to put us into

cases; the trouble is men can cheat.Second, the research results of both the social and the

natural sciences tend to make violent behavior even more

of a "natural" rea<:tion than lve rvould have been preparedto grant rvithout them. Aggressiveness, defrned as an in-stinctual drive, is said to play the same functional role

7? Nikolas Tinbergen, "On War and Peace in Animals and Man," inScience, r6o: r4rr (June 28, r968) .

18 Das Tier als soziales l| 'esen, Zùrich, rg5g, pp. zg7-238 "l ler sichin die Tatsachen aertieft der zLtird feststellen, dass die neuenEinblicke in die Diflerenziertheit t ierischen Treibens uns zwingen,mit allzu einfachen l/orstellungen uon hôheren Tieren ganz ent-schieden aufzuriiumen. Damit uird aber nicht elua-uie utweilenleichthin gelolgert uird-das Tierisclrc rlem Llenschlichcn immermehr geniihert. Es zeigt sich lediglich, dass uiel mehr von dem,zuas uir aon uns selbst hennen, auch beim Tier aorkommt."

70 See Erich von Holst, Zur Verhaltensphysiologie bei Tieren undIlLertschen, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, Vol. I, Mûnchen, r969, p.239.

in the horrselrold of natule as the nutrit ive and sexrralinstincts in the l ife process of the individual and thespecies. Brrt unlike these instincts, rvhich are acrivated bycompelling bodily needs on one side, by outside stimulantson the other, aggressive instincrts in the animal kingdomseem to be independent of such provocation; on the con-trary, Iack of provocation apparently leads to instinctfrustration, to "repressed" aggressiveness, rvhich accordingto psyr:hologists causes a damming up of "energy" rvhoseeventual explosion wil l be all the more dangerous. (It isas tlrorrgh tbe sensatiorr of hunger in man wotrld increasewith the decrease of hungry people.) 80 In this interpreta-tion, violence without provocation is "natural"; if i t hasIost its rationale, basi<:ally its function in self-preservation,it becomes "irrational," and this is allegeclly the reasonwhy men <:an be more "beastly" than other animals. (In theIiterature we are (:()nstantly reminded of the generous be-havior of rvolves, who do not kil l the defeatecl enemy.)

Quite apart from the misleading transposition of phy-sical terms such as "energy" and "force" to biological andzoological data, lvhere they do not make sense because theycannot be measured,sl I fear there lurks behind these

80 To counter the absurdity of this conclusion a distinction is madebetween endogenous, spontaneous instincts, for instance, aggression,and reactive drives such as hunger. But a distinction between spon-taneity and reactivity makes no sense in a discussion of innate im-pulses. In the world of nature there is no spontaneity, properlyspeaking, and instincts or clrives only manifest the highly complexway in.which all l iving organisms, including man, are adapte(l roits processes.

81 Thc Irypothetical character of I ionrad Lorenz's On Aseression(New York, 1966) is clarif ied in the interesting collection of essayson ag1;ression and aclaptation eclited by Alexander N{itscherlichunder tlre tit le Bis hierher uncl nicht ueiter. Ist clie menschlicheAggressiort unl.tefriedbar?, Nltnchen, r968.

I

I6 l

newes[ "discoveries" the oldest definit ion of the nature of

man-the definit ion of man as the animal raliotrule, accord-

ing to which r\re are distinct from other animal species

in nothing but the additional attribute of reason. Nlodern

science, starting uncrit ically frorn this old assunption, has

gone far in "proving" that men share all other propertiesrvith some species of the animal kingdom-except that the

additional gift of "reason" makes man a more dangerous

beast. It is the use of reason that makes us dangerously"irrational," because this reason is the property of an"aboriginally instinctual being." ez The scientists know, of

course. that it is man tbe toolmaker rvho has invented

those long-range weapons that free him from the "natural"

restraints we frnd in the animal kingdom, and that tool-

making is a highly complex mental activity.ss Hence sci-

ence is called upon to cure us of the side effects of reason

by manipulating and controll ing our instincts, trsually by

finding harmless outlets for them after their "l i fe-promot-

ing function" has disappeared. The standard of behavior is

again derived from other animal species, in which the

function of the l ife instincts has not been destroyed

through the intervention of htrman reason. Ancl the spe-

r:if ic distinction betrveen man and beast is norv, strictly

speaking, no longer reason (the lumen natttrale of the

human animal) but science, the knowledge of these stand-

82von Holst, op. cit., p. z8g: "Nicht, weil uir Verstandesuesen,sondern weil wir ausserdem gnnz urti imliche Triebwesen sind, istunser Dasein im Zeitalter d,er Technik gefiihrd.et."

83 Long-range weapons, seen by the polemologists as having freedman's aggressive instincts to the point where the controls safeguard-ing the species do not work any longer (see Tinbergen, op. cit.),are taken by Otto Klineberg ("Fears of a Psychologist," in Calder,op. cit., p. zo8) rather as an indication "that personal aggressivenessplayed [no] important role as a motive for war." Soldiers, one wouldlike to continue the argument, are not killers, and killers-thosewith "personal aggressiveness"-are probably not even good soldiers.

ards and the techniques applying them. According to this

vierv, man acts irrationally and like a beast if he refusesto l isten to tl"re scientists or is ignorant of their latest f ind-ings. As against these theories and their implications, Ishall argue in rvhat follorvs that yiolence.is neither beastlynor irrational-rvhether we understand these terms in theordinary language of the humanists or in accordance r'vithscientif ic theories.'-înat

viàlenéè often springs from rage is a common-place, and rage can indeed be irrational and pathological,but so can every other human aftect. It is no doubt pos-sible to create conditions under r,vhich men are dehurnan-ized-strch as concentration carnps, torture, famine-butthis cioes not mean that they become animal-l ike; andunder such conditions, not rage and violence, but theirconspicuous absen(:e is the clearest sign of dehumanization.Rage is by no mear)s an automatic reaction to misery andsuffering as such; no one reacts rvith rage to an incurabledisease or to an earthquake or, for that matter, to socialconditions that seem to be unchangeable. Only wherethere is reason to srrspect that conditions could be changedand are not does rage arise. Only when our sense of justice

is offended do we react. with rage, and this reaction by notneans necessarily reflects personal injury, as is demon-strated by the r,r 'hole history of revolution, where invari-ably members of the Llpper classes touched off and then ledthe rebell ions of the oppressed and downtrodden. To re-sort to violence when confronted rvith outrageous events or

conclit ions is enormously tempting because of its inherentirrrmediacy and srviftness. To act rvith deliberate speed pçoesagainst the grain of rage and violence, but this does notmake them irrational. On the contrary, in private as'çvellas public l i fe there are situations in r.vhich the very swift-ness of a violent act may be the only appropriate remedy.The point is not that this permits us to let off steam-

'y ' t6 l . t ; - l

rlt f.,rt{

it has become rather fashionable among white liberals to

lc.lct to Negro grievances with the cry, "We are all guilty,"

ancl Black Porver has proved only too huppy to take ad-

vantage of this "confession" to instigate an irrational"black rage." lVhere all are guilty, no one is; confessionsof collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against

the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of tl-re

t:rime the best excuse for doing nothing' In this Particularinstance, it is, in addition, a dangerous and obfuscating

cscalation of racism into some higher, less tangible regions.

The real rift between black and white is not healed by

lleing translated into an even less reconcilable conflict

between collective innocence and collective guilt. "All

rvhite men are guilty" is not only dangerous nonsense but

also racism in reverse, and it serves quite effectively t<l give

the very real grievances and rational emotions of the

Negro population an outlet into irrationality, an escape

from reality.Moreover, if we inquire historically into the causes

likely to transform engagés into enragés, it is not injustice

that ranks first, but hypocrisy. Its momentous role in the

lateï stages of the French Revolution, when Robespierre'swar on hypocrisy transformed the "despotism of liberty"

into the Reign of Terror, is too well known to be dis-

cussed here; but it is important to remember that this war

hacl been declared long before by the French moralists

rvho saw in hypocrisy the vice of all vices and found it

ruling supreme in "goocl society," which somewhat later

was called bourgeois society. Not many authors of rank

glorified violence for violence's sake; but these few-Sorel,Pareto, Fanon-were motivated by a much deeper hatred

of bourgeois society ancl were led to a much more radical

break with its moral standards than the conventional Left,

rvhich was chiefly inspired by compassion and a burningdesire for justice. To tear the mask of hypocrisy from the

which indeed can be equally well done by pounding the

table or slamming the door. The point is thar under cer-

tain circurnstances violence-acting without algument or

speech and without counting the consequences-is the only

way to set the scales of justice right again. (Bil ly Budd,

striking dead the man who bore false witness against him,

is the classical example.) In this sense, rage and the vio-

lence that sometimes-not always-goes rvith it belong

among the "natural" human emotions, and to cllre man

of them would mean nothing less than to dehumanize or

emasculate him. That such acts, in which men take the

law into their own hands for justice's sake, are in conflict

rvith the constitutions of civil ized communities is un-

deniable; but their antipolit ical character, so manifest in

Melville's great story, does not mean that they are in-

human or "merely" emotional.

Absence of emotions neither causes nor promotes ration-

ality. "Detachment and equanimity" in view of "unbear-

able tragedy" can indeed be "terrifyirg," ar namely, when

they are not the result of control but an evident manifes-

tation of incomprehension. In order to respond reasonably

one must frrst of all be "moved," and the opposite of

emotional is not "rational," whatever that may mean, but

either the inabil ity to be moved, usually a pathological

phenomenon, or sentimentality, which is a perversion of

feeling. Rage and violence turn irrational only rvhen they

are directed against substitutes, and this, I am afraid, is

precisely what the psychiatrists and polemologists con-

cerned with human aggressiveness recommend, and what

corresponds, alas, to certain moods and unreflecting atti.tudes in society at large. We all know, for example, that

8aI am paraphrasing a sentence of Noam Chomsky (op. cit., p. 37r),who is very good in exposing the "façade of toughmindedness andpseudoscience" and the intellectual "vacuity" behind it, especiallyin the debates about the war in Vietnam.

face of the enemy, to unmask him and the devious machin-ations and manipulations that permit him to rule withoutusing violent means, that is, to provoke action even at therisk of annihilation so that the truth may come out-theseare stil l among the strongest motives in today's violence onthe campuses and in the streets.ss And this violence againis not irrational. Since men live in a world of appearancesand, in their dealing with it, depend on manifesration,hypocrisy's conceits-as distinguished from expedient ruses,followed by disclosure in due time-cannor be met by so-called reasonable behavior. Words can be relied on onlyif one is sure that their function is to reveal and not toconceal. It is the semblance of rationality, much more thanthe interests behind it, that provokes rage. To use reasonrvhen reason is used as a trap is not "rational"; just as touse a gun in self-defense is not "irrational." This violentreaction against hypocrisy, however justifiable in its ownterms, loses its raison d'être when it tries to develop astrategy of its own with specific goals; it becomes "irra-tional" the moment it is "rationalized," that is, themoment the re-action in the course of a contest turns intoan action, and the hunt for suspects, accompanied by thepsychological hunt for ulterior motives, begins.Bo

Although the eftectiveness of violence, as I remarkedbefore, does not depend on numbers-one machine gunner

85 "If one reads the SDS publications one sees that they have fre-quently recommended provocations of the police as a strategy for'unmasking' the violence of the authorities." Spender (op. cit., p. gz)comments that this kind of violence "leads ro doubletalk in whichthe provocateur is playing at one and the same time the role ofassailant arrd victim." The war on hypocrisy harbors a number ofgreat dangers, some of which I examined briefly in On Reaolutton.New York , 196g, pp .gr - ro r .

86 See appendix XV, p, 99.

can hold hundreds of well-organized people at bay-none-theless in collective violence its most dangerously attrac-tive features come to the fore, and this by no means be-cause there is safety in numbers. It is perfectly true thatin military as well as revolutionary action "individualism

is the first [value] to disappear"'87 in its stead, we find akind of gïoup coherence which is more intensely felt andproves to be a mtrch stronger, though less lasting, bondthan all the varieties of friendship, civil or private.8s To

be sure, in all i l legal enterprises, criminal or political, thegroup, for the sake of its own safety, will require "that

each individual perform an irrevocable action" in order toburn his bridges to respectable society before he is ad-mitted into the community of violence. But once a manis admitted, he will fall under the intoxicating spell of"the practice of violence [which] binds men together as awhole, since each individual forms a violent link in thegreat chain, a part of the great organism of violence whichhas surged upward." 8e

Fanon's'lvords point to the well-knorvn phenomenon ofbrotherhood on the battlefield, where the noblest, mostselfless deeds are often daily occurrences. Of all equalizers,death seems to be the most potent, at least in the fewextraordinary situations rvhere it is permitted to play apolitical role. Death, rvhether facecl in actual dying or inthe inner awareness of one's own mortality, is perhaps themost antipolitical experience there is. It signifies that rveshall disappear from the world of appearances and shallleave the company of our fellow-men, rvhich are the condi-

8? Fanon, op. ci t . p. 47.

83.|. Glerrn Gray, The lVarrior.r (New York, rg5g; now avai lable in

paperback), is most perceptive and instruct ive on this point. I t

should be read by everyone interested in the practice of violence.

8s Fanon, op. ci t . , pp. 85 and q3, respectively.

67

tions of all politics. As far as human exper.ience is con_cerned, death indicates all extreme of loneliness and im_potence. But faced collectively and in action, death changesits countenance; now nothing'seems more likely to intensifyour vitality than its proximity. Something we are usuallyhardly aware of, namely, that our own death is accom_panied by the porenrial immortality of the group we be-long to and, in the final analysis, of the species, màves intothe center of our experience. It is as though life itself, theimmortal life of the species, nourished, as it rvere, by thesempiternal dying of its individual members, is ,,surgingupward," is actualized in the pracrice of violence

It would be wrong, I think, to speak here of mere senti_ments. After all, one of the outstanding properties o[ thehuman condition is here finding an adequate experience.In our context, however, the point of the -utt", is thatthese experiences, whose elementary force is bevonddoubt, have never found an inst i tui ional, pol i t i .a i ex_pression, and that death as an equalizer plays hardly anyrole-in political philosophy, although human morrality_the fact that men are "mortals," as the Greeks used to iay-was understood as the strongest rnotive for political actionin prephilosophic political thought. It was the certaintyof death that made men seek immortal fame in deed anàword and that prompred them to establish a body politicwhich was potenrially immortal. Hence, politics rui, p."-cisely a means by which ro escape from the equality beioredeath into a distinction assuring some measnre of death_lessness. (Hobbes is the only political philosopher in whosework death, in the form of fear of violent death, plays acrucial role. But it is not equality before death that isdecisive for Hobbes; it is the equality of fear resultingfrom the equal ability to kitl possessed by everyone thatpersuades men in the state of nature to bind themselvesinto a commonwealth.) At any event, no body politic I

krrorv of was ever founded on equality before death andits actualization in violence; the suicide squads in history,rvlrich were indeed organized on this principle and there-lore often called themselves "brotherhoods," can hardlylre counted among political organizations. But it is truethat the strong fraternal sentiments collective violencet'ugenders have misled many good people into the hoperhat a new comrnunity together with a "new man" willarise out of it. The hope is an illusion for the simplereason that no human relationship is more transitory thanthis kind of brotherhood, which can be actualized onlytrnder conditions of immediate danger to life and limb.

That, however, is but one side of the matter. Fanon<:oncludes his praise of the practice of violence by remark-ing that in this kind of struggle the people realize "thatlife is an unending contest," that violence is an elementof life. And does that not sound plausible? Have not menalrvays equated death with "eternal rest," and does it notfollow that where lve have life we have struggle and un-rest? Is not quiet a clear manifestation of lifelessness ordecay? Is not violent action a prerogative of the young-those rvho presumably are fully alive? Therefore are notpraise of life and praise of violence the same? Sorel, at anyrate, thought along these lines sixty years ago. BeforeSpengler, he predicted the "Decline of the Occident,"having observed clear signs of abatement in the Europeanclass struggle. The bourgeoisie, he argued, had lost the"energy" to play its role in the class struggle; only if theproletariat could be persuaded to use violence in orderto reaffirm class distinctions and awaken the frghting spiritof the bourgeoisie could Europe be saved.eo

Hence, long before Konrad Lorenz discovered the life-

tro Sorel, op. cit., chapter z, "On Violence and the f)ecadence of the

l\Iiddle Classes."

promoting function of aggression in the animal kingdom,violence rvas praised as a manifestation of the life forceancl specifically of its creativiry. Sorel, inspired by Berg-son's ëlan uital, aimed at a philosophy of creativity de-signed for "producers" and polemically directed againstthe consumer society and its intelleituals; both groups, hefelt, were parasites. The image of the bourgeois-peaceful,complacent, hypocritical, bent on pleasure, rvithout rvillto power, a late product of capitalism rather than its repre-sentative-and the image of the intellectual, lvhose theoriesare "constructions" instead of "expressions of the will, ', srare hopefully counterbalanced in his work by the imageof the worker. Sorel sees the rvorker as the "producer,"who lvill create the nerv "moral qualities, which arenecessary to improve production," destroy "the parlia-ments [lvhich] are as packed as shareholders' meetings," e2and oppose to "rhe image of Progress the image oftotal catastrophe," when "a kind of irresistible wave willpass over the olcl civilization." e3 The new values turn outto be not very new. They are a sense of honor, desire forfame and glory, the spirit of fighting lvithout hatrecl and"without the spirit of revenge," and indifference to ma-terial advantages. Still, they are indeed the very virtuesthat were conspicuously absent from bourgeois society.ga"Social war, by making an appeal to the honor which de-velops so naturally in all organized armies, can eliminatethose evil feelings against which morality would remain

sr Ibidem, "Introduction, Letter to Daniel Halevy," iv.

sz lbidem, chapter 7, "The Ethics of the producers, ' , I .

ss Ibidem, chapter 4, "The proletarian Str ike, ' , I I .

et lbidem; see especial ly chaprer 5, I I I , and chapter 3, , ,prejudices

against Violence," III.

l rorverless. I f this rvere the only reason this reason

alone would, i t seems to me, be decisive in favor of the

:rpologists for violence." 05

I\Iuch can be learned from Sorel about the motives that

prompt men to glori fy violence in the abstract, and even

rnore from his more gif ted Ital ian contemporary, also of

l-rench formation, Vi l fredo Pareto. Fanon, who had an

inf initely greater int imacy with the practice of violence

than either, was greatly inf luenced by Sorel and used his

categories even when his own experiences spoke clearly

against them.s6 The decisive experience that perstraded

Sorel as well as Pareto to stress the factor of violence in

revolut ions rvas the Dreyfus Affair in France, when, in the

rvords of Pareto, they were "amazed to see l the Drey-

fusari ls] employing against their opponents the same vi l-

s5'Ibit lem, Appendix z, "Apology for Violence."

gG This has recently been stressed by Barbara Deming in her plea

for nonviolent act ion-"On Revolut ion and Equil ibr ium," in , l leuo-

lut ion: Violent and Nonuiolent, reprinted from Liberation, Febru-

ary, 1968. She says about Fanon, on P. 3: "I t is my convict ion that

he can be <luoted as well to plead for nonviolence. Every time

you find the word 'violence' in his pages, substitute for it the

phrase 'radical and uncompromising action. ' I contend that with the

exception of a very fcw passages this substi t tr t ion can be made, and

that the action he cal ls for could just as well be nonviolent act ion."

Even more important for my PurPoses: Miss Deming also tr ies to

distinguish clearly between power and violence, and she recognizes

that "nonviolent disruption" means "to exert force. I t resorts

even to what can only be called physical force" (p. 6). However,

she curiously underestimates the eflect of this force of disruption,

which stops short only of physical injury, when she says, "the hu-

rnan rights of the adversary are respected" 1p. 7). Only the oppo-

nent's r ight to l i fe, but none of the other human rights, is acttral ly

rcspected. The same is of course true for those who advocate"violence against things" as opposed to "violence against Persons."

70 7r

lainous methods that they had themselves denotrnr:ecl." e?

At that juncture they d iscctvered rvhat rve cal l today theE.stablishment and rvhat earlier rvas called the System, andit rvas this discovery that made them turn to the praise ofviolent action and made Pareto, for his part, despair of t l.rervorking class. (Pareto understood tl-rat the rapid integra-tion of the rvorkers into the social and polit ical body ofthe nat ion act t ra l ly amounted to "an a l l iance of l to t r reeois ieand rvorking people," to the "embourgeoisemenr" of thervorkers, rvhich then, accclrcling to him, gave rise to a newsy.stem, 'n'hich lre called "Pltrto-democra(:y"-a mixed formof government, pltrtocracy being the bourgeois regime anddemo<:racy the regime of the lvorkers.) The reason Sorelheld on to his Marxist faith in the rvorking class .lvas

that the rvorkers \vere the "producers," the only creativeelement in society, t l.rose rvho, according to Nfarx, rverebound to l iberate the productive forces of rnankind; thetrouble lvas only that as soon as the rvorkers had reacheda satisfactory level of rvorking and living conditions, theystubbornly refused to remain proletarians and play theirrevolutionary role.

Something else, horvever, rvhich became frrl ly manifestonly in the decades after Sorel's and Pareto's death, rvasinr:ornparably more clisastrous to this vier,v. The enormousgrowth of productivity in the modern rvorlcl lvas by nomeans due to an increase in the rvorkers' procluctivity, butexclrrsively the developmenr of technology, and this de-pended neither on the lvorking class nor on the ltourseoi-sie, btrt on the scientists. The "intellecttrals," much cle-spisecl by .Sorel and Pareto, strcldenly ceased to be amarginal social group and emerged as a nerv elite, rvhose

37 Quoted from S. E. Finer's instruct ive essay "Parero anrl pluto-Democracy: The Retreat to Galapagos," in The American pol i t icalScience Reuietu, .f une, r 968.

72

lork , having chauged the concl i t ions of human I i fe a lmost

lrt ') 'oucl rec<-rgnition in a ferv decades, has remained es-

rcrr t ia l for the f t rnct ioning of sot : ie ty . - I -here

are rnany

r ( ' irs()ns rvl 'ry this new gr()up has not, or- not yet, developed

nr[o a p()rver elite, l-)trt there is incleed every reason to be-

l i t 've rv i th Danie l Bel l that "not only the best ta lents, l tu t

< ' rentual ly the ent i re complex of socia l prest ige and socia l

\ t i l tus, rv i l l be rooted in the in te l lect t ra l and sc ient i f ic

, onrrnut-tit ies." e8 Its mernbers are more dispersed and less

l rorrnd by c lear in terests than groups in the o ld c lass

systern; hente, t l rey l tave no dr ive to organize themselves

;rn<l lar:k experience in all nlatters pertaining to po\ver.

.\ lso, l-reing rnuch tnclre <:losely bound to cultttral tracli-

t ions, of lvhir:h the revolutionary tradition is one, they

r l ing lr, ith greater tena(:ity to categories of the past that

l)levent them frorn understanding the present and their

rxvn role in it. It is often touching to watch with rvhat

nostalgir; sentiments the most rebell ious <tf oltr students

cxpect the "true" revolttt ionary impetus to come fi:om

tlrose erotrps in sot:iety that denounce them the more ve-

lrenrently the rnore they have to lose by anything that

r orrld disturb the smooth functioning of the constlmer

sot' iety. For better or w()rse-ancl I think there is every

r cason to be fearful as lvell as hopeftrl-the really nerv and

potentially revolutionary class in society rvil l consist of

intellectuals, and their potential power, as yet unrealized,

is very greât, perlraps too great for the goocl of mankincl.ee

llut these are sper:ulations.

Horvever that may be, in this context we are chiefly

interested in the strange revival of the l ife philosophies of

l lcrsson and Nietzsche in their Sorelian version. We all

l 's "Notes on the Post-Industrial Society," The Pttblic Interest, No. 6,r r1 ( i7 .

" Sce appendix XVI, p. roo.

t 3

know to rvhat extent this old combination of violence,life, and creativity figures in the rebellious state of rnindof the present generation. No doubt the emphasis on thesheer factuality of living, and hence on love-making aslife's most glorious manifestation, is a response to the realpossibility of constructing a doomsday machine and de-stroying all l ife on earth. But the categories in rvhich thenew glorifiers of life understand themselves are not new.To see the productivity of society in the image of life's"creativity" is at least as old as N{arx, to believe in vio-lence as a life-promoting force is at least as old as Nietz-sche, and to think of creativity as man's highest good is atleast as old as Bergson.

And this seemingly so novel biological justification ofviolence is again closely connected with the most perni-cious elements in our oldest traditions oI political thought.According to the traditional concept of power, equated, aswe saw, with violence, power is expansionist by nature. It

. "has an inner urge to grow," it is creative because "theinstinct of growth is proper to it." 100 Just as in the realmof organic life everything either grorvs or declines anddies, so in the realm of human affairs power supposedlycan sustain itself only through expansion; otherwise itshrinks and dies. "That which stops growing begins torot," goes a Russian saying from the entourage of Cath-erine the Great. Kings, we are told, were killed "not be-cause of their tyranny but because of their weakness. Thepeople erect scaffolds, not as the moral ptrnishment ofdespotism, but as the biological penalty for weakness" (myitalics). Revolutions, therefore, were directed against theestablished powers "only to the outward view." Their true"effect was to give Power a new vigour and poise, and topull down the obstacles which had long obsrructed its de-

l00Jouvenel, op. ci t . , pp. rr4 and ra3, respectively.

velopnrent." 101 When Fanon speaks clf the "creative mad-ness" present in violent action, he is sti l l thinking in thistradition.l02

Nothing, in my opinion, could be theoretically moredangerous than the tradition of r>rganic thought in polit icalmatters by rvhich power and violence are interpreted inbiological terms. As these terms are understood today, l i feand life's alleged creativity are their common denomina-tor, so that violence is jtrstif ied on the ground of creativity.The organic metaphors with which our entire present dis-<;ussion of these matters, especially <lf the riots, is permeated-the notion of a "sick society," of which riots are symp-toms, as fever is a symptom of disease-can only promoteviolence in the end. Thus the debate betrt 'een those whopropose violent means to restore "law and orcler" andthose who propose nonviolent reforms begins to soundominously l ike a discussion betu,'een two physicians whodebate the relative advantages of surgical as opposed tomedical treatment of their patient. The sicker the patientis supposed to l-re, the more l ikely that the surgeon wil lhave the last word. N{oreover, so long as we talk in non-polit ical, biological terms, the glorif iers of violence canappeal to the undeniable fact that in the household ofnature destruction and creation are but two sides of thenatural process, so that collective violent action, quiteapart from its inherent attraction, may appear as naturala prerequisite for the collective l ife of mankind as thestruggle for survival and violent death for continuing l ifein the anirnal kingdom.

The danger of being carried away by the deceptiveplausibil i ty of organic metaphors is particularly greatrvhere the racial isstre is involved. Racism, r,vhite or black,

tot lbidem, pp. r8? and r88.

102 Fanon, op. cit., p. gg,

t 574

is fraught lvith violence by definit ion because it ol)jects to

natural organic facts-a rvhite <lr blat'k skin-lvhich no per-slrasion or power could change; all one can clo, when thechips are dorvn, is to exterminate their bearers. Racism, asdistinguished from race, is not a fact of l i fe, but an ideol-ogy, and the cleeds it leacls to are not reflex actions, btrt cle-l iberate acts based on pseudo-scientifrc theories. Violencein interracial struggle is alrvays murderous, brrt it is not"irrational"; it is the logical and rational consequence ofracisrn, by r,vhich I do not mean some rather vague preju-dices on either side, but an explicit ideological system.Under the presstrre of power, prejudices, as distinguishedfror-n both interests and ideologies, may yield-as \ve sawhappen ' lvith the highly successful civil-rights movernent,which r,vas entirely nonviolent. ("By l964 . . . most Ameri-cans were convinced that subordination and, to a lesserdegree, segregation were rvrong.") 103 But u,hile boycotts,sit-ins, and demonstrations were successful in elimir-ratingdiscrirninatory lalvs ancl ordinances in the South, theyproved utter failures and ltecarne counterproductive rvhenthey encountered the social conditions in the large urbancentels-the stark needs of the black ghettos on one side,the overriding interests of rvhite lower-income eroups inrespect to housing ancl education on the other. All thismode of action could do, and indeed dicl, rvas to bringthese conditions into the open, into the street, lvhere thebasic irreconcilabil ity of interests was dangerously ex-posed.

Rut even today's violence, black riots, ancl the potentialviolence of the n'hite backlash are not yet manifestationsof racist ideologies and their mtrrderous logic. (The riots,

r03 Robert N{. Fogelson, "Violence as Protest." in Urban Il iots:Violence and Social Change, Proccecl ings of the Acaclemy of I 'o l i t ical

Science, Columbia Univers i ty , r968.

,rs lras recently been stated, are "articulate protests against

,lt 'rrrrine grievances"' tor indsgd restraint and selectivity-

()r . . rationality are certainly among [their] rnost crucial

l( ' :rtr lres." 105 And much the same is true for the backlash

phenomena, rvhich, crontrary to all predictions' have not

lr<'cn r:haracterizecl by violence up to norv. It is the per-

It '<tly rational reaction of certain interest groups rvhicl 'r

lrrriously protest against being singled out to pay the full

;rrice for i l l-clesigned integration policies whose conse-

(luences their auth<)rs can easily escape.) 106 Tl-re greatest

<l:rnger cornes from the other direction; since violence

:rlrvays needs jtrstif ication, an escalation of the violence

iu the streets may lrring all<lttt a trtrly racist ideology to

lrrstify it. Black racism, so blatantly evident in James For-

nran's "l\ '{anifesto" is proltall ly more a reaction to the cha-

ot i t ' r io t in .g of the last years t l ran i ts cause. I t could, of

( ( ) r l rse, provoke a real ly v io lent rvh i te l lack lash, tvhose g leat-

('st clanger rv<luld be the transformatiou of rvhite prejudices

ir)to a full-f ledgecl racist icleology for lvhich "larv and

orcler" rvotrlcl incleed ltecome a mere façade. In this sti l l

r rn l ike ly case, the c l imate of opin ion in the cotr l r t ry might

(lcteriorate to the point where a majority of its cit izens

rvould be lv i l l ing to pay the pr ice of the inv is ib le terror

o[' a police state f<lr law and order in the streets. What rve

lrave norv, a kind of police backlash, quite brutal and

hiuhly v is ib le, is noth ing of the sor t .

Beh4vior and arguments in interest confl icts ale not

lrotorious for their "rationality." Nothing, unfortunately,

lras so constantly been reftlted by reality as tlre credo of

"cnlichtenecl self-interest," in its l i teral version as lvell as

t r t Ib idem.

1"i lbi t lem. see also the excel lent art icle "off icial Interpretat ion of

l{ :rcial Riots" by Al lan A. Si lver in the sanre col lect ion'

11" ; See append ix XVI I , P . lo l .

76 t l

in its more sophisticated I\{arxian variant. Some experi-

ence plus a l itt le reflection teach, on the contrary, that it

goes against the very nature of self-interest to be en-lightened. To take as an example from everyday life thecurrent interest confl ict between tenant and landlord:

enlightened interest worrld focus on a br"ri lding fit for

hurnan halritation, but this interest is quite differentfrom, and in most cases opposed to, the landlord's self-interest in high profit and the tenant's in low rent. Thecommon answer of an arbiter, supposedly the spokesmanof "enlightenment," namely, that in the long run theinterest of the building is the true interest of both land-lord and tenant, leaves out of account the time [ac:tor,

which is of paramount importance for all concerned. Self-interest is interested in the self, and the self dies or movesout or sells the house; because of its changing condition,that is, ult imately because of the human condition of

mortality, the self qua self cannot reckon in terms of long-range interest, i.e. the interest of a world that survives its

inhabitants. Deterioration of the building is a matter ofyears; a rent increase or a temporarily lower profit rate arefor today or for tomorrow. And something similar, n1,1t-tatis mutandis, is of course true for labor-managementconflicts and the l ike. Self-interest, when asked to yieldto "true" interest-that is, the interest of the world asdistinguished from that of the self-wil l alrvays reply, Nearis my shirt, but nearer is my skin. That may not be par-ticularly reasonable, but it is quite realistic; it is the notvery noble but adequate response to the time discrepancybetween men's private l ives and the altogether differentlife expectancy of the public world. To expect people,

; who have not the slightest notion of what the res publica,. the public thing, is, to behave nonviolently and argueI rationally in matters of interest is neither realistic nori reasonable.

78

Violgngg, being instrumental by nature, is rational to

tl 're extent that it is effective in reaching the end that mustjustify it. And since rvhen we a('t we never knolv ' lvith any

certainty the eventual consequences o[ rvhat we are -doi3g,violence can remain rational only if i t pursues sl 'rort-term

g1gls. Violence does not promote causes, neither history!nor revolution, neilher progress nor reaction; but it canierve to diâiiiatizè-,$rievances and bring them to publicattention. As Conor Cruise O'Brien (in a debate on the ,legitirnacy of violence in the Theatre of Ideas) once re-

marked, quot ing Wi l l iam O'Br ien, the n ineteenth-centuryIrish agrarian and nationalist agitator: Sometimes "vio-

lence is the only way of ensuring a hearing for modera-

tion." To ask the impossible in order to obtain the pos-qlble- p not alrvays counterproductive. And-- -i.nd"cçd,;.violence, contrary to what its prophets try to tell us, is

'

more the weap.gn of rç.f."91p than of revoluti.on. France .rvould not have received the most radical bil l since Na-

poleon to change its antiquated education system if the

French students had not rioted; if i t had not been for the

riots of the spring term, no one at Columbia tlniversity

rvould have dreamed of accepting reforms; 107 and it is

probably quite true that in West Germany the existence

of "dissenting minorit ies is not even noticecl unless they

engage in provor;ation." 108 jlo doubt, "violence pays," but

r0? "At Columbia, before last year's uprising, for example, a reporton student l i fe and another on faculty housing ha<l been gatheringrlrrst in the president's office," as Fred Hechinger re1>orted in theNew York Tirnes. "The Week in Review" of N{ay 4, r969.

108 Rudi Dutschke, as quoted in Der Spiegel, February ro, rq6q, p.27. Gùnter Grass, speaking in much the same vein after the attackon Dutschke in spring rq68, also stresses the relation between re-forms and violence: "The youth protest rnovement has brougl"rt thefragil ity of our insulhciently established democracy into eviclence.

q!,q_!r_o-ylr_le_ !p - .qhat it pays indiscrinrinately, for "sorrl

_g1lgl.qes" and instruction in Swahil i as rvell as for real_-re-forms. And since the tactics of violence and disruptiontnakc sense only for short-term goals, it is even more l ikely,as was recently the case in the Llnited States, that the

established power wil l yield to nonsensical and obviouslydarnaging demands-such as admitting students rvit l.rotrtthe necessary qualif ications and instructing them in non-existent strbjects-if only such "refomrs" can be made with

comparative ease, than that violence wil l be effective lvithrespect to the relatively long-term objective of structuralchange.l0e Nloreover, the daneer of violence, even if i tmoves conùiousiy within a nonextremist framervork of

short-terrn goals, wil l alrvays be that the means overwhelmthe end. If goals are not achieved rapidly, the result rvil lbe not merely defeat but the introcluction of the practiceof violence into the whole body polit ic. Action is irreversi-ble, and a retrrrn to the status quo in case o[ defeat is

always unlikely. The practice of violence, l ike all action,changes the u'orld, but the most probable change is to amore v io lent wor ld.

In this i t has been successftr l , but i t is far from certain where thissuccess wil l lead; either i t wi l l br ing about long-overdue reforms. . or . . . the uncertainty that has now been laicl bare wil l providefalse prophets with promising markets ancl free advert ising." See"Violencc Rehabil i tated," in , \pcak Orrl l , New York, rq6q.

10e Another question, which we cannot cl iscuss here, is to what anextent tl-re whole university system is still capable of reforming it-self . I think there is no general answer. Even though the studentrebel l ion is a global phenomenon, the university systems themselvesare by no means uniform and vary not only from corrntry to coun-try but often from inst i tut ion to inst i tut ion; al l soltrt ions of theproblem must spring from, ancl correspond to, str ict ly local concl i-t ions. Thus, in some countr ies the university cr isis may even broacleninto a government crisis-as Der Spiegel (. fune 23, rq69) thoughtpossible in discussing the German situation.

80

Finally-to <;ome back to Sorel's and Pareto's earlier

denunciation of the system as such-thg g-I.-_u!çt the btr;

reaucratization of publir: l i fe, the greater wil l be the at-

traction of violence Il a fully develgped bureaucracy

there is nollody left rvith rvhom one can argue, to whom

one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of ,

po,-rver t:an be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of govern-

ment in rvhich everybody is deprived of polit ical freedom,

of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, i

and rvhere all are equally porverless we have a tyranny ,without a tyrant. The crtrcial feature in the student re-

bell ions around the rvorld is that they are directed every-

rvhere aeainst the ruling bureaucracy. This explains what

at f irst glan<:e seenls so disturbing-that the rebell ions in

the East demand precisely those freedoms of speech and

thought that the young rebels in the West say they

clespise as irrelevant. On the level of ideologies, the whole

thing is <:onfusing; it is mtrch less so if u'e start from the

obvious fact that the huge party machines have sttcceecled

everywhere in overruling the voice of the cit izens, cven in

countries where freedom of speech and association is sti l l

intact. The dissenters and resisters in the East demand

free speech and thought as the preliminary conditions for

polit ical action; the rebels in the West l ive under condi-

tions where these preliminaries no longer open the chan-

nels for action, for the meaningful exercise of freedom.

What matters to them is, indeed, "Praxisentz?1g," the sus-

pension of action, as Jens Litten, a German student, has

aptly called it.110 The transformation of government into

administration, or of republics into bureaur:racies, and

the disastrous shrinkage of the public realm that went

with it have a long and complicated history throughout

the modern age; ancl this process has been considerably

rro See appendix XVIII. p. r02.

8 l

'r ,) tf

acceleratecl during the last hundred years throllgh the riseof party bureaucracies. (Seventy years ago Pareto recog-nized that "freedom . . . by which I mean the porver toact shrinks every day, save for criminals, in the so-calledfree and democratic countries.) 111 What makes man apolitical being is his faculty of action; it enables him toget together with his peers, to act in concert, and to reachout for goals and enterprises that would never enter hismind, let alone the desires of his heart, had he not beengiven this gift-to embark on something new. Philosophi-cally speaking, to act is the human answer to the conditionof natality. Since we all come into the world by virtue ofbirth, as newcomers and beginnings, we are able to startsomething new; without the fact of birth rve r.vould noteven know what novelty is, all "action" would be eithermere behavior or preseryation. No other faculty exceptlanguage, neither reason nor consciousness, distinguishesus so radically from all animal species. To act and to be-gin are not the same, but they are closely interconnected.

None of the properties of creativity is adequately ex-pressed in metaphors drawn kom the life process. Tobeget and to give birth are no more crearive than to dieis annihilating; they are but different phases of the same,ever-recurring cycle in which all l iving things are held asthough they rvere spellbound. N_qi,tler violence nor porveris a natural phenomenon, that is, a manifestation of thelife process; they belong to the political realm of humanaffairs whose essentially human quality is guaranteed byman's faculty of action, the ability to begin somethingnew. And I think it can be shown that no other humanability has suffered to such an extent from the progress ofthe modern age, for progress, as we have come to under-stand it, means growth, the relentless process of more and

1rr Pareto, quoted from Finer, op. cit.

nlore, of bigger and bigger. The bigger a colrntry becomes

in terms of population, of objects, and of possessions, the

greater will be the need for administration and lvith it

the anonymous porver of the administrators. Pavel Kohout,

a Czech author, writing in the heyday of the Czechoslovak-ian experiment rvith freedom, defined a "free citizen" as

a "Citizen-Co-ruler." He meant nothing more or less than

the "participatory democracy" of r.r'hich we have heard so

much in recent years in the West. Kohout added that

rvhat the rvorld today stands in greatest need of may rvell

be "a new example" if "the next thousand years are not

to become an era of supercivilizecl monkeys"-or, even

worse, of "man turned into a chicken or a rat," ruled over

by an "elite" that derives its power "from the rvise coun-

sels of . intellectual aides" who actually believe that

men in think tanks are thinkers and that computers can

think; "the counsels may turn otrt to be incredibly in-

sidious and, instead of pursuing human objectives, may

pursue cornpletely abstract problems that had been trans-

formed in an unforeseen manner in the artificial brain." 112

This nerv example rvill hardly be set by the practice of

violence, although I am inclined to think that mr'rch of

the present glorification of violence is caused by severe

frustration of the faculty of action in the modern world'

It is simply true that riots in the ghettos and rebellions

on the calnpuses make "people feel they are acting to-

gether in a way that they rarely can." 11:J We do not know if

these occurrences are the beginnings of something new-

the "nerv example"-or the death pangs of a faculty that

112See Gùnter Grass and Pavel Kohout, Briefe i iber die Grenze'

Hamburg, r968, pp.88 and go, respectivel l ' ; ancl Andrei D. Sakharov,

op. ci t .

113 Herbert .J. Gans, "The Ghetto Rebell ions and Urban Class Con-

f i ict," in Urban Riots, oP. cit .

I

Ii ti

83

mankind is about to lose. As things stand today, when rvesee horv the superpowers are bogged dou,n uncler themonstrous rveight of their orvn bigness, it looks as thoughthe setting of a "new example" will have a chance, if atall, in a small country, or in small, 'rvell-defined sectors inthe mass societies of the large powers.

The disintegration processes which have become somanifest in recent years-the decay of public services:schools, police, mail delivery, garbage collection, trans-portation, et cetera; the death rate on the highways andthe traffic problems in the cities; the pollution of air andrvater-are the automatic results of the neecls of masssocieties that have become unmanageable. They are ac-companied ancl often accelerated by the simultaneous de-cline of the various party systems, all of more or less recentorigin and designed to serve the political needs of masspopulations-in the \,{/est to make representative govern-ment possible when direct democracy would not do anylonger because "the room rvill not hold all" (John Selden),and in the East to make absolute rule over vast territoriesmore effective. Bigness is affiicted rvith vulnerability;cracks in the power structure of all but the small countriesare opening and rvidening. And while no one can say rvithassurance rvhere and when the breaking point has beenreached, we cân observe, almost measure, how strengthand resiliency are insidiously destroyed, leaking, as it rvere,drop by drop from our institutions.

Moreover, there is the recent rise of a curious new brandof nat ional ism, usual ly understood as a srving to the Right,but more probably an indication of a grorving, world-r,videresentment against "bigness" as such. While national feel-ings formerly tended to unite various ethnic grotrps byfocusing their political sentiments on the nation as art'hole, we now r,vatch how an ethnic "nationalism" beginsto threaten with dissolution the oldest and best-established

l lation-states. -fhe

St'ots and tlre Welsh, the Bretons and

the Provençals, ethlic gTouPs rvhose successfrrl assirnilatiotr

had been the prereqtrisite for the rise of the nation-state

and had seenred utrnpletely assttred, are tttrning to separat-

isrn in rebell ion against the centralized governments in

[,ond<tn and Paris. And jtrst lvhen centralization, under

tlre impact <lf lt igness, tr.rrned out to be <rltnterproductive

in its orvu terms, tl 'r is country, fotrnded, according to the

federal principle, on the division of porvers and polverful

so l<lng as this division was respecte(I, threrv itself head-

long, 1,, the unanimous applause of all "progressive"

forces, into the nell ' , for America, experiment of central-

izecl administration-the federal government overpowering

state powers and exe(:utive power eroding congressional

porvers.l l{ It is as though this most successful Etrropean

colony wished to share the fate of the mother countries in

their decline, repeating in great haste the very errors the

framers of the Constitution had set out to correct and to

el iminate.Whatever the administrative aclvantages and disacl-

vantages of centralizatiorr may be, its polit ical result is

always the same: monopolization of power causes the dry-

ing trp or o<tzing arvay of all authentic power sources in

the r:ountry. In the flnited States, based on a great plural-

ity of powers and their mutttal checks and balances, we

o.. . 'orrfr,,trtecl not merely rvith tl 're disintegrati<ln of

power structures, but 'rvith power, seemingly sti l l intact

àncl free to manifest itself, losing its grip and becoming

ineffective. To speak of the impotence of power is no

longer a rvitty paradox. Senator Eugene lVlcCarthy's cru-

sacle in rq6B "to test the system" brought popular resent-

ment against imperialist adventures into the open, pro-

vicled the l ink benveen the opposition in tlre Senate and

1r.r see the important article of Henry Steele commager, footnote 74.

that in the streets, enforced an at least temporary spec-tacular change in policy, and demonstrated horv quicklythe majority of the young rebels could become dealien-ated, jumping at this first opportunity not to abolish thesystem but to make it work again. And still, all this porvercould be crushed by the party bureaucracy, r'vhich, con-trary to all traditions, preferred to lose tl 're presidentialelection rvith an unpopular candidate who happened to bean apparatclziÀ. (Something similar happened when Rocke-feller lost the nomination to Nixon during the Republir:anconvention.)

There are other examples to demonstrate the curiouscontradictions inherent in impotence of power. Becauseof the enormous effectiveness of teamwork in the sr:iences.which is perhaps the outstanding American contributionto modern science, we can control the most complicatedprocesses with a precision that makes trips to the moon lessdangerous than ordinary rveekend excursions; but theallegedly "greatest power on earth" is helpless to end awar, clearly disastrous for all concerned, in one of theearth's smallest countries. It is as though rve have fallenunder a fairylând spell rvhich permits us to do the "im-possible" on the condition that we lose the capacity ofdoing the possible, to achieve fanrasrically extraordinaryfeats on the condition of no longer being able to attendproperly to our everyday needs. If power has anything todo with the we-will-and-we-can, as distinguished from rhemere we-can, then rve have to admit that our power hasbecome impotent. The progresses made by science havenothing to do with the l-will; they follorv their orvn in-exorable laws, compelling us to do whatever we can,regardless o[ consequences. Have the l-will and the I-canparted company? Was Valéry right .w,hen he saicl fifty yearsago: "On peut dire que tout ce que nous sal)ons, c'est-à-dire tout ce que nous pouuons, a fini par s'opposer à ce

( l t t ( ' not ts sonrmr:s"? ( "One can say that a l l rve kn<lw' that

is, all we have the power to do, has Ênally turned against

rç l ta t rve are." )

Again, tu. à., not know lvhere these developmerrts rvil l

l<.ud"trs, l)t lt we kntlrv, or shotrlcl knorv, that 'every*dç-

( r 'case .in porver is an open invitation !o yiq-!çn.ce-if <rnly

lrct:ause those rvho hofd pq\aç-I.?nd feel it sl ipping. from

t l rc i r hands, be they the goverulnent ( ) r l le they ' the gov-

t:r 'ned, have alrvays found it diff icult to resist the tempta-

tion to substitute violence for it '

87

Appendices

l , ' lo PAGE r3, NOrn 16Professor B. C. Parekh, of Hull Llniversity, Englantl , kindly drew

nry attentiolr to the fol lowing passage in the section on F'euerbachlronr NIarx's anrl l ingels' ()erman Ideology (r8a6), of which l-ngelslater wrote: "The port ion tnisherl . . . only Proves how inconrpleteat t l r :r t t ime r.r 'as otrr knowletlge of econornic history." "Roth for the

procluction on a rnass scale of t l r is communist consciotrsness, anclfor the success of the cause i tself , the alterat ion of man IdesNlenschen] on a rnass scale is necessary, an alterat ion which can onlytake place in a practical movement, a reuolut. ion; this revolut ion isnecessary, therefore, not only because the rul ing class cannot beovert lrrown in any other way, btrt also becarrse the class ouerthrowingit can only in a revolut ion succeed in r idcl ing i tself of al l the muckof ages and become frt ted to found society anew." (Quoterl from theedit ion by R. Pascal, New York, r96o, pp. xv ancl 6q.) L,ven in these,as i t rvere, pre-Nlarxist utterances, the dist inct ion between NIarx'sand Sartre's posit ions is evident. Nlarx speaks of "the alterat ion ofman on a mass scale," and of a "mass production of colrsciousness,"not of the l iberation of an indiviclual through an isolated act ofviolence. (For the German text, see l \ Iarx/Engels Cesarntausgabe,rg3z, I . Abtei lung, vol. 5, pp. 59 f.)

rr, To PAGE 13, NOTE r7The New Left 's unconscious clr i f t ing away from Nfarxism has been

rluly noticecl. See especial ly recer)t comments on the stu<lent move-rnent by Leonarcl Schapiro in the Neu York l leuieu ol Books(Decenrlrer 5, rq{i8) and by Ravnron<l , \ron in La Rëz,olut ion In-trouuable,I 'ar is, rq68. Both consi<ler the new emphasis on violenceto be a k ind o f backs l i t l i ng c i ther to p re ,N{arx ian u top ian soc ia l i sm(Aron) or to the lLussian anarchism of Nechacv and Bakunin(Schapiro), who "had nruch to sav about thc importance of violenceas a factor of unity, as the bincl ing force in a society or groLrp, a

89

century before the same ideas enrergerl in r lrr : rvorks o[.fean-P:urlSartre and Frantz Fanon." Aron writcs in l l )c s:rnrc vein: " lr : .çchant res de la reuo lu t ion de mai t ro iu t t d / l t t t . ss t r b nurx isme . .i l s oub l ien t un .s ià t le d 'h i .s to i re" (p . , . t ) . ' l o u non- I l r t rx is t such areversion woukl of course hart l ly be arr argrrnrcl l t ; l )ut Ior Sartre,wlto, for instance, writes "Un prétendu ' t lëpussernent' r lu ntarxisrnene sera au pis qu'un retour au prëmarxisnlc, Att nt ieux que Iaredécouuerte d'une pensëe dëjà contenue ( lans la phi losophie qu,ona cru dëpasser" ("Question de l \{éthode" in Crit ique dc Ia raisondialect ique, Paris, r96o, p. t7), i r musr consrirute a formidable objec-t ion. (That Sartre and Aron, though pol i t ical opponcnrs, are in ful lagreement on this point is noteworthy. I t shows to what an extentHegel 's concept of history dominates the thought of Marxists anclnon-l\ Iarxists al ike.)

Sarrre lr imself, in his Crit i r lue ol Dialcct icrù Reason, gives a kint lof Hegelian explanation for his espousal of violence. His point ofdeparture is that "need and scarcity determinecl the N,lanicheist icbasis of action ancl morals" in present history, "whose trtrth is baseclon scarcity [and] must manifest i tself in an antagonist ic reciprocitybetween classes." Aggressior-r is the consequence of r-reed in a worldwhere "there is not enough for all." [Jnder such circumstances, vio-lence is no longer a marginal phenomenon. "Violence and counter-violence are perhaps contingencies, but they are contingent necessi-t ies, and the imperative consequence of any ârtempr to destroy thisinhumanity is that in destroying in the adversary rhe inhumanity ofthe contraman, I can only destroy in him the humanity o[ man, anclreal ize in me his inhumanity. Whether I ki l l , torture, enslave . . . myaim is to suppress his freedom-it is an alien force, de t.rop." Hismodel for a condit ion in which "each one is one too many . . . Eachis redundant for the orher" is a bus queue, the mernbers of whichobviously "take no norice of each other except as a number in aquanti tat ive series." He concludes, "They reciprocal ly deny any l inkbetween each of their inner worlds." From this, i t fol lows that praxis"is the negation of alteri ty, which is i tself a negarion"-a highly wel-come conclusion, since the negation o[ a negation is an aff irmation.

The flaw in the argument seems to me obvious. There is all thedifference in the world between "not taking norice" and ,,denying,"

between "denying any link" with somebody and ..negating" hisotherness; and for a sane person t l lere is st i l l a considerable distanceto travel from this theoretical "negation" to ki l l ing, tortrrr ing, anclenslaving.

IVIost of the above quotations are drawn from R. I). Laing and D.G. Cooper, I l .euson and Violence. A Decade of Sartrt : 's Phi losoplty,r95o-r96o, Lon<lon, rqô4, I 'al t Three. - l-his seems legit imate becauseSartre irr his foreworcl says: "/ 'ai Iu at lenti t ternent I 'ouurage r lueuolts auez bien troulu tnc tort l ier et j 'ui eu le grund plaisir d'ytrouaer urt exposé lrès clair et tràs f ir lèlc t le ma pensëe."

rn, To PAGE t5, NOTE 20l hey are indeecl a mixed lot. Racl ical students congrcgate easi ly

with dropouts, hippies, drug at lcl icts, and 1;sychopaths. ' fhe

situ:rt ionis further coml>l icated by thc insensit ivi ty of the establ ished powersto the often sr"rbt le dist inct ions between crime and irrcgulari ty, cl is-t inct ions that are of great irnport:rnce. Sit- ins ancl occupations oflrrr ikl ings are rrot the same us arson or armetl revolt, antl the cl i f lcr-ence is not just one ol clegree. (Contrary to the opinion of one mern-

, ber of Harvar-t l 's Board o[ ' frustees,

the occupation ol a universitybui lcl ing by students is not the same t l l ing as the invasion of abr:rnch of the First National City Bank by a street nrob, for t l resimple reason that the students trespass upon a property whose r isc,to be sure, is subject to rules, but to which they belong and whichbelongs to them as much as to faculty ancl aclministrat ion.) Evenmore alarmir-rg is the incl ination of faculty as well as administrat ionto treat drug attcl icts and criminal elements ( in City College in NewYork ancl in Clornel l t lniversity) with considerably nrore leniencythan the ar.rthentic rebels.

Helmut Schelsky, the German social scientist, <lescribed as earlyas r96r ( in Der ùIensch in der uissenschalt l ichen Ziui l isat ion, Ki i lnrrnd Oplat len, rq6r) the possibi l i ty of a "metaphysical nihi l ism,"by which he mezrnt the racl ical social anct spir i t tral <leni;r l of "thewhole process of man's scienti f ic-technical reproduction," that is,the no saicl to "the r ising world of a scienti f ic civi l izat ion."

-I-o cal l

this att i t trr le "nihi l ist ic" presupposes an acceptance of the modernworld'as the only possible world. f 'he chal lenge of the young rebelsconcerns precisely this point. There is incleed much sense in turningthe tables ancl stat ing, as Sheldon Wolin antl . |ohn Schaar have donein op. ci t . : "The great danger at present is that the establ ished andthe respectable seem prepared to follow the most profoundlynihi l ist ic denial possible, which is the denial of the future throughclenial of their own chi ldren, the bearers o[ t l ' re future."

Nathan Glazer, in an art icle, "Sttrclent Power at Berkeley," inThe Public Interest 's special issuc ?he Llniuersit ies, Fal l , r 968,

90 9 l

writes: "The stuclent radicals renrint l me rnore of the Ludcl i temachine smashers than the Social ist tracle unionists who achievedcit izenship antl power for workers," irnrl he conclucles from this im-pression that Zbigniew Brzezinski ( in an art icle about Columbia inThe Nezu Repub l ic , . fune r , rq68) may have been r igh t in h is d iag-nosis: "Very lrequently revolut ions are rhe last spasms of the past,and thus are not real ly revoltrt ions l lut counter-revolut ions, operat-ing in the name of revolut ions." Is not this bias in favor of march-ing forward at any price rather ocltl in two authors who aregeneral ly consiclered to be conservarives? And is i t not even oclderthat Glazer should remain unaware of the decisive dif ferences be-tween manufacturing machinery in early nineteenth-century Eng-lanrl and the harclware developed in the middle of the twenrierhcentury which has turned out to be destructive even when i t ap-peared to be most beneficial-the cl iscovery of nuclear euergy, auto-mation, medicine whose healin۔ powers have led to overpopulat ion.wli ich in i ts turn wil l almost certainly lead to mass starvation, airpol lut ion, er cerera?

lv, To pAcE 16, torr z3To look for prececlents and analogies where there are none, to

avoid report ing and ref lect ing on whnt is being done and what isbeing said in terms of the events themselves, under the pretext thatwe ought to learn the lessons of the past, parricularly of the erabetween the two world wars, has become characteristic of a greatmany currcnt discussions. Enrirely free of this form of escapism isStephen Spender's splendid and wise report ol l rhe sruclenr move-ment, quoted above. He is among the few of his generation to befully alive to the present an.d to remember his own yourh wellenough to be aware of the differences in mood, style, thought, andaction. ("Today's studenrs are enrirely different from the Oxbridge,Harvarcl, Princeton or Heidelberg studenrs forty years back," p. r66,.)But Spender's arr i tude is shared by al l those, in no matter whichgeneration, who are truly concerned with the world's and man'sfuture as dist inguished from those who play games with i t . (Wolinand Schaar, op. ci t . , speak of "the revival of a sense of shared destiny"as a bridge between the generations, of "our common fears thatscientific weapons may destroy all life, that technology will increas-ingly disf igure men who l ive in the city, just as i t has already debasedthe earth and obscured the sky"; that "the 'progress' of industry willdestroy the possibility of interesting work; ancl that 'communica-

t ions' wi l l obl i terate the last traces of the varied cultures which have

been the inheritance of all but the most benighte<I societies"') It

seems only natural that this should be true more frequently of

physicists and biologists than of rnembers of the social sciences, even

lhorgh the students o[ the former faculties were much slower to rise

in rebel l ion than their fel low classmates in the humanit ies. Thus

A<lolf Portmânn, the famous Swiss biologist, sees the gap between

the generations as having little if anything to do with a conflict

berween Young and old; i t coincides with the r ise of nuclear science;

"the result ing worlcl si trrat ion is entirely new' [ I t ] cannot be

comparecl to even the most powerful revolution of the past'" (In a

pamplr let enti t led Llanipulat ion r les Menschen als Schicksal und'Bedrohung,

Zi ir ich, rq6q.) And Nobel Prize winner George Wald, of

Harvarcl, in his lamous speech at M.I.T. on March 4, r969,r ightly

stressed that such teachers understand "the reasons of [their stu-

dents'] une:rsiness even better than they do," and' what is more, that

thev "share i t ," oP. ( i l .

The present p.ri,i.i,l,lI iiiJ''i?;"',11i.,, .ign,rv deplored, isusually blamecl on the rebellious students, who are accused of attack-

ing the universit ies beciruse they consti tute the weakest l ink in the

chain of establ ished powel-. I t is perfect ly true thât the universit ies

wil l not be able to survive i f " intel lectual detachment and the dis-

interested search for tr t l th" should come to an encl; and, what is

worse, i t is unl ikely that civi l ized society of any kind wil l be able to

survive the cl isappearance o[ these curious inst i tut ions whose main

social ancl pol i t ical function l ies precisely in their impart ial i ty and

indepenclence frotl social Pressure and political Power. Power and

truth, both perfect ly legit imate in their own r ights, arc essential ly

dist inct phenomena and their pursuit results in existential ly cl i f ferent

ways of l i fe. Zbigniew Brzezinski, in "America in the Technotronic

Age" (Ëncozr l le r , . fan t ra ry , r968) , sees th is danger bu t i s e i ther re -

signed oi at leâst not unduly alarmed by the prospect. Technotron-

ics, he bel ieves, wi l l usher in a new " 'supercultt tre' " under the

guidance of the rrew "organization-orientet l , appl icat ion-mincled in-

tel lectuals." (see especial ly Noam chomsky's recent cr i t ical analysis

"Objectivi ty and Liberal Scholarship" in op. ci t .) Well , i t is much

more l ikely that this new breed of intel lectuals, formerly known

as technocrats, wi l l usher in an age of tyranny and uttel steri l i ty '

However that may be, the point is that the pol i t ic izat ion of the

92 93

universit ies by the students' movement was precedecl by the pol i t i -cization of the universit ies by the establ ishecl powers. The facts aretoo well known to need emphasizing, but i t is good to keep in mindthat this is not merely a matter of mil i tary research. Henry SteeleCommager recently clenouncecl "the University as EmploymentAgency" (The New Republic, F'ebruary 24, rq68). Incleed, "by nostretch of the imagination can i t be al leged that Dow ChemicalCompany, the Marines or the CIA are educational enterprises," orinstitutions whose goal is a search for truth. And lVlayor JohnLindsay raised the question of the university's right to call "itselfa special inst i tut ion, divorced from worldly pursuits, while i t en-gages in real-estate speculat ion and helps plan and evaluate projectsfor the mil i tary in Vietnam" (New York Times, "The Week inReview," NIay 4, rq6g). To pretencl that the university is "the brainof society" or of the power structure is clangerous, arrogant nonsense-if only because society is not a "body," let alone a brainless one.

In order to avoid misunderstancl ings: I quite agree with StephenSpender that it would be folly for the students to wreck the uni-versities (although they are the only ones who could do so effectivelyfor the simple reason that they have numbers, anrl therefore realpower, on their side), since the campuses consti tute not only theirreal, but also their only possible basis. "Without rhe university,there would be no stuclents" (p. zz). But the universit ies wil l remaina basis for the students only so long as they provicle the only placein society where power cloes not have the last word-all perversionsand hypocrisies to the contrary notwithstanding. In the presentsituation, there is a danger that either students or, as in the case ofBerkeley, the powers-that-be will run amuck; if this shoulcl happen,the young rebels woulcl have simply spun one more thread into whathas been aptly called "the pattern of disaster." (Professor RichardA. Falk, of Princeton.)

vr, To PAGE lg, NoTE 30Fred M. Hechinger, in an article, "Campus Crisis," in the New

York Times, "The Week in Review" (M"y +, rq6g), writes: "Sincethe demands of the black studenrs especially are usually justified insubstance . . . the reaction is generally sympathetic." It seems char-acterist ic of present att i tudes in these matters that fames Forman's"Manifesto to the White Christ ian Churches and the .fewish Syna-gogues in the United States and al l other Racist Inst i tut ions,"though publicly read and distributed, hence certainly "news that's

Êt to prirrt ," remainecl unpublished unti l the Neu Yotl t ' I leuieu of

BooÀs (July ro, rqt iq) printet l i t without the Introt luct ion' I ts con-

tent, to" be s.,re, is half- i l l i terate fantasy' and may not be meant

seriously. But i t is more than a joke, and that the Negro commutri ty

moo<lily inclulges totlay in such fantasies is no secret' That the au-

thori t ies shouli l be fr ightenecl is understanclable' What can neither

be unclerstood nor condoned is their lack of imagination' Is i t not

obvious that NIr. I;orman ancl his followers, if they find no opposi-

t ion in the commttnity at large and even are given a l i t t le aPPease-

ment money, will be forced to try to execute a Progrâm which they

themselves perhaps never bel ieved in?

v l l , To PAGE 19, NOTE 3r

In a letter to t l .re New York Tintes ( lated Apri l 9' rq6q)' Lynd

mentions only "nonviolent disruptive actions such as str ikes ancl

sit- ins," igno.ing for his PurPose; the tumultuous violent r iots of

the working ctus itt the twenties, ancl raises the question why these

tactics "accËptecl for a generation in labor'management relat ions ' ' '

are rejected when practicecl on a camPus? ' ' ' when a union organ-

izer is firecl from à factory bench, his associates walk off the job

unti l the grievance is sett lecl." I t looks as though Lynd has accePted

a university image, unfortt lnately not unfreqlrent among trustees

and aclministrators, accor(l ing to which the camPus is owned by the

board of rrustees, which hires the aclministrat ion to manage their

propert)r, which in turn hires the faculty as employees to,serve . i ts

arrà-".r, the stuclents. There is no reality that correspontls to this

"image." No matter how sharp the conflicts may become in the

acadàic world, they are not matters of clashing interests and class

warfare.

vrrl, To PAGE r9' NOTE 3?

Bavarcl Rustin, the Negro civil-rights leader' has said all that

,r".dld to be saicl on the matter: College officials sl-rould "stop capit-

ulat ing to the stuPid demands of Negro stuclents"; i t is wrong i f

o.r" gÀ,,p', "scnse of guilt and masochism permits another segment

o t , o " . i " t y t o h o l d g u n s i n t h e n a m e o [ j u s t i c e ' , ; b l a c k s t u d e n t s w e r e"sufferin! from the shock of integration" and looking for "an easy

way outîf thei. problems"; what Negro students need is "remedial

tral.ning" so that they "can do mathematics and write a correct sen-

tence," not "soul courses." (Quoted from the Daily News' Apri l z8'

1969.) What a ref lect ion on the moral and intel lectual state of so-

94

95

ciety that much courage was requirct l t . t :r lk (onl ' lo. se'se in thesemarters! Even more fr ightening is the al. l too l ikcly prospect that,in about f ive or ten years, this , ,edrrcation,,

in Swahil i (a nineteenth_century kind of no-la-nguage spoken by thc ,\rab ivory ancl slavecaravans, a hybrid mixture of a Bantu cl ialcct with an enorrnousvocabulary of Arab borrowings; see rhe Encyclopaecl ia Bri tannica,r96r), Afr ican l i terat.re, a.cl orher nonexisrcnr s'bjects wilr be in-terpreted as another trap of the white man to prevenr Negroes fromacquir ing arr adequate education.

James Forma",,,, ", "ii,l,i":lË,,:;,i;i,

3,1," N ",ion "r Brack Eco.nontic l)evelopmenr Conference), *tr i . t , t mentione<l before and

which he presented to the Churches and Synagogues us ,,only a be_Sinyin-S of the reparations due us u, peolr le who have been ex_ploited and degraclecl, brutal izecl, ki l lect anri persecure(' , , , reacls l ikea classical exanrple of such fut i le clreams. . , \ccording to him, , . i t fol_lows {rom the laws of revolution that the mosr oppressetl will makethe revolut ion," whose ult imate goal is that , ,we must assume lcader_ship, total control . . . insicle of ihe Url i ted States of everything thate-rists.. The. time has passed when we are seconci i.r commancl anclthe white boy stancls on top." In order to acrr ieve this reversal, i twi l l be necessary ,. to use whatever means necessary, inclucl ing the1se.of j31ce and power of the gun to bring down the colonizer., ,And while he, in the name of t l re commuiity (whicl.r , of course,stands by no means behind him), , .declares

war,, , refuses ro ,,sharepower with whites," and demanrls that . ,white

people in this counrry;. .

. b" î i l !"g

ro accepr black learlership,,, he cal ls at the same t ime"upon al l Christ ians and Jews to practi ie patience, rolerancc, trnder_standing and nonviolence" cluriÀg the period i t nray st i l l take_"whether i t happens in a thousanJ years' is of no consequence,,_roseize power.

x, To PAGE 24, NOTE 40Jrirgen Habermas, one of the most thorjhtf .r l ancl intel l igent so_cial scientists in Germany, is a goocl

"*u_pï" of the cliffic.lties thesetrIarxists or former À{arxists f ind in pr.r ing with any piece of thework of r lre master. ln his recent irrn, i t , und lVissen.scha.ft als' Ideologie'

(Frankfurt, r96g), he rnenrions several t imes that certain"key categories of N{arx,s theory, namely, clars_str.,ggle and ideology,can no longer be applied without ado (umstandslor). , , A compari_

son with the essay ol Andrei D. Sakharov r luotecl abovc showsmuch easier i t is for those rvho look on "capital ism" fromperspective of the disastrotrs Eastern experiments to discardwolr) theories and slogans.

xI, TO PAGE 4r, NOrn 6eThe sanctions o[ the laws, which, however, are not their essence,

are cl irected against those cit izens who-withotrt withholt l ing theirsupport-wish to make zrn exception for themselves; the thief st i l lexpects the government to protect his newly acquirecl property. I thas been noted that in the earl iest legal systems there were no sanc-t ions whatsoever. (See Jotrvenel, op. ci t . , p. 276.) The lawbreaker'spunishment was banishrrrent or outlawry; by breaking the law, thecriminal hacl put himself outsicle the community consti tute(l by i t .

Passerin d' l-ntrèves (op. ci t . , pp. rz8 ff .) , taking into account "thecomplexity of law, even of State law," lras pointe(l out t .hat "there

are indeecl laws which are 'cl i rect ives' rather than ' i rnperatives',

wl-rich are 'accepted' rather than 'inrposed', anrl whose 'sanctions' donot necessari ly consist in the possible use of force on the part of a'sovereign'." Such laws, he has l ikenecl to "the rules of a game, orthose of my club, or to those of the Church." I confonn "because

for me, unl ike others of my fel low cit izens, these rules are 'val id'

rules."I think Passerin d'Entrèves's comparison of the law with the "val id

rules of the game" c:rn be r lr iven further. For the yroint o[ theserules is not that I submit to them voluntari ly or recognize theoreti-cal ly their val idi ty, but that in practice I cannot enter the gameunless I conform; my motive for acceptance is rny wish to play, andsince men exist only in the plural, my wish to play is identical withmy wish to l ive. Every man is born into a community with pre-exist ing Iaws which he "obeys" frrst o[ al l because there is no otherway for him to enter the great galne of tl-re world. I may wish tochange the rules of the garne, as the revolutionary does, or to makean exception for myself, as the criminal does; but to deny them onprinciple means no mere "disobedience," but the refusal to enterthe human community. The common dilemma-either the law isabsolutely val id and therefore needs for i ts legit imacy an immortal,divine legislator, or the law is simply a conrntand with nothing be-hind i t but the state's monopoly of violence-is a delusion. Al l lawsare " 'direct ives' rather than ' im1>eratives. ' " They cl irect humanintercourse as the rules t l i rect the garne. And the ult imate guarantee

how

the

out-

9796

of their val icl i ty is contained in the okl Roman maxim Pacta suntseruandd.

There is ro^".o,,,,o,,]l.i#Tï.ti;",o,"11 de Gauue,s visit. Theeviclence of the events themselves seems to suggest that the price hehad to pay for the army's supporr. was public rehabil i tat ion of hisenemies-amnesty for General Salan, return of Biclault , return alsoof Colonel Lacheroy, sometimes called the "torturer in Algeria." Notmuch seems to be known about the negotiat ions. One is tempred tothink that the recenr rehabil i tat ion of pétain, again glori f iecl as the"victor of Verdun," ancl, more importantly, cle Gaulle's increcl ible,blatantly lying statement immediately after his rerurn, blaming theCommunist party for what the French now cal l les ëuënements,were part of the bargain. God knows, the only reproach the govern-ment could have addressed to the Communist party an(l the tradeunions was tlrat they lacked the power to prevent les ëuënements.

xlrr, To PAGE 54, NoTE 75It would be interesring to know if , and to what an extent, the

alarming rate of unsolvecl cr imes is matchecl nor only by the well-known spectacular r ise in criminal offenses bur also by a definiteincrease in pol ice brutal i ty. The recently publ ished Lrnfform CritneReport lor the United States, by J. Edgar Hoover (Fecleral Bureauof Investigation, United States Department of Justice, rq67), givesno indication how many crimes are acttral ly solved-as dist inguishedfrom "cleared by arrest"-but does menrion in the Summary rharpol ice solut ions of serious crimes decl ined in 1967 by 8f l . Only zr.7(or zt.g)fo of all crimes are "cleared by arrest," and of these only7g/o could be turned over to the courrs, where only about 6olo ofthe indicted were found gui l tyl Hence, the odds in favor of thecriminal are so high that rhe consrant rise in criminal offenses seemsonly natural. Whatever the causes for the spectacular decl ine ofpol ice eff iciency, the decl ine of pol ice powe. i , eviclenr, and with i tthe l ikel ihood of brutal i ty increases. Students and other demonstra_tors are like sitting ducks for police who have become used tohardly ever catching a criminal.

A comparison of the situarion with that of other countr ies isdif f icult because of the dif ferenr stat ist ical merhods employed. Sti l l ,it appears that, thougl'r the rise of undetected crime seems to be afairly general problem, it has nowhere reached such alarming pro_

port ions as in America. In I 'ar is, for inst:rnce, the rate of solvetl

cr imes clecl ined frotn 6zfo in rq67 to 5ô]i , in r968, in Gerlnany from

7g.4To in rq54 to 5z.zo,/o in rq67, and in Sweden 4rlo of cr imes

were solvecl in 1967. (See "Deutsche l 'ol izei," in l)er Spiegel ' Apri l

7, r967.)

xtv. To PAGE 55' NOTE 76Solzhenitsvn shows in concrete cletai l how attemPts at a rat ional

economic t levelopment were wrecked by Stal in's metho(ls, an<l one

hopes this book wil l put to rest the myth that terror and the enor-

mous losses in human l ives were the price that hacl to be paicl for

rapid inclustr ial izat ion of the country. Rapicl progrcss was macle

afier Stal i ' 's t leath, and w6at is str iking in Russia tot lay is that the

country is st i l l backwarcl in comparison not only with the West but

also with most of the satel l i te countr ies. In Russia there seems not

much i l lusion left on this point, i f there ever was any. The yottnger

generation, especial ly the veterans o[ the Second \Vorlcl War, knows

very wetl that only a miracle save<l Russia frorn defeat in rq4r, antl

that this miracle was the brutal fact that the en€my turned out to

be even worse tharr the native ruler. What then turned the scales

wâs that pol ice terror abatecl trnder the pressure of the national

emergency; the people, left to themselves, coulcl again 8âther to-

gether aD(l generate enough Power to t lefeat the foreign invatler '

When tltel' retttrnecl from prisoner-o[-war camPs or from occttpatiotr

cluty they were PromPtly sent for long years to labor and concentra-

t ion camps in orcler to break them of t l re hal l i ts of freetlorn' I t is

precisely this generation, which tasted freeclom during the war and

terror afterward, that is chal lenging the tyranny of the Presentregime.

xv, To PAGE 66, NOrn 86

No one in his r ight senses can bel ieve-as certain German student

groups recently theorized-that only when the governÛrent has been

forcecl "to practice violence openly" will the rebels be able "to fight

against t l r is shit society (Scheissgesellschaft) with adequate means and

destroy i t ." (Quoted in Der Spiegel, February ro, 1969, p.3o') This

I inguist ical ly (though hardly intel lectual ly) vulgarizecl new version

of the olcl Communist nonsense of the thirt ies' that the victory of

fascism was al l to the gootl for those who were against i t ' is either

sheer play-acting, the "revolut ionary" r 'ar iant of hypocrisy, or test i-

f ies to the pol i t ical icl iocy of "bel ievers." Except that lorty years ago

98 99

i t was Stal in's clel iberate pro-Hit ler pol icy and not jusr stupidtheorizing that stood behin<l i t .

To be sure, there is no reason for being part icularly surprised thatGerman students are more given to theorizing and less gif ted inpol i t ical act ion ancl judgment than their col leagues in other, pol i t i -cal ly more fortunate, countr ies; nor that "the isolat ion of intel l igentand vital minds . . . in Germany" is more pronounced, the polariza-t ion more ( lesperate, than elsewhere, and their impact ul)on thepoli t ical cl imate of their own counrry, except for backlash phe-nomena, almost ni l . I also would agree with Spender (see "TheBerl in Youth N,Iodel," ln op. ci t .) about the role playecl in this situa-t ion by the st i l l -recent past, so that the studcnts "are resentecl, notjust on account of their violence, but because they are reminclers. they also have tl're look of ghosts risen front hastily coveredgraves." Anrl yet, when al l this has been said ancl duly taken intoaccount, there remains the strange ancl disquiet ing fact that noneof the new left ist groups in Germany, whose vociferous opposit ionto national ist or imperial ist pol icies of other counrries has beennotoriously extremist, has concerned itself seriously with tl-re recogni-t ion of the Oder-Neisse Line, which, after al l , is the crucial issueof German foreign pol icy and the touchstone of German narional ismsince the defeat of the Hitler regime.

xvr, To PAGE 73, NoTE ggDaniel Bel l is cautiously hopeful because he is aware that scien-

t i l ic and technical work depend on "rheorerical knowletlge [that]is souglrt, tested, anrl codifiecl in a disinterested way" (op. cit).Perhaps this optimism can be just i fred so long as rhe scientists andtechnologists remain uninterested in power and are concernetl withno more than social prestige, that is, so long as rhey neither rulenor govern. Noam Chomsky's pessimism, "neither history nor psy-chology nor sociology gives us any parricular reason to look forwardwith hope to the rule of the new mandarins," may be excessive;there are as yet no historical precedents, and the scientists anclintellectuals who, with such cleplorable regularity, have been foundwilling to serve every governmenr thar happenecl to be in power,have been no "meritocrats" but, rather. social cl imbers. But Chom-sky is entirely r ight in raising the question: "Quite general ly, whatgrounds are there for supposing thar those whose claim to poweris based on knowledge and technique will be more benign in their

100

exercise of power than those whose claim is based on wealth or

aristocratic origin?" (Op. cit . , P. 27.) And there is every reâson to

raise the complementary question: What grounds are there for sup-

posing that the resentment against a meritocracy, whose rule is ex-

clusively based on "natttral" gif ts, that is, on brain Power, wi l l be

no more clangerous, no more violent than the resentment of earlier

oppressed groups who at least hacl the consolat ion that their condi-

t ion was causecl by no "fatr l t" of their own? Is i t not plausible to

assume that this resentment wil l harbor al l the murclerous traits of

a racial antagonism, as dist inguished from mere class confl icts,

inasmuch as i t too wil l concern natural data which cannot be

changecl, hence a conclition from which one coulcl liberate oneself

only by extermination of those who happen to have a higher I .Q.?

Ancl since in such a constel lat ion the nt lmerical power of the dis-

aclvantagecl wi l l be overwhelming and social mobil i ty ir lmost ni l , is

i t not l ikely that the danger of demagogues, of popular leaders, wi l l

be so great that the meritocracy will be forced into tyrannies and

despotism?

xvII, TO PAGI. 77, NOrr ro6

Stewart Alsop, in a percePtive column, "The Wallace NIan," in

Neuszueek, ()ctober zr, r968, makes the point: "I t may be i l l iberal

of the wallace man not to want to sencl his chi ldren to bacl schools

in the name of integration, but i t is not :r t al l unnatural. And i t is

not unnatural either for him to worry about the 'molestat ion' of

his wife, or about losing his equity in his l touse, which is al l he has!"

He also quotes the most effect ive statement of George Wallace's

demagoguery: "There are 535 members of Congrcss and a lot of

these l iberals have chi ldren, too. You know how many send their

kids to the public schools in Washington? Six."

Another prime example of i l l -designed integration pol icies was

recently publ ished by NeiI Nlaxwell in The J|y'aII Street Journal(August 8, rq68). The fecleral government Promotes school integra-

t ion in the South by cutt ing off fet leral {unds in cases of f lagrant

noncotnpl iance. In one such instance, $zoo,ooo of annual aicl was

withhekl. "Of the total, $r75,ooo went direct ly to Negro schools. . .

Whites promptly raised taxes to replace the other $e5,ooo." In short,

what is supposed to help Negro eclucation actual ly has a "crushing

impact" on their exist ing school system and no impact at al l on

white schools.

l 0 l

rn the rnurky .,,*iT':Jlo"*,ill i:ff;ï croubretark of lvest.ern student debate, these issues seldom have a chance of beingclari f ied; indeed, "this community, verbal ly so racl ical, has alwayssought and found an escape," in the words of Gùnter Grass. I t isalso true that this is especial ly noticeable and infuriat ing in Ger-man students and other members of the New Left. , ,They don'tknow anything, but they know it al l ," as a young historian inPrague, according to Grass, sumrned it up. Hans IVlagnus E,nzens-berger gives voice to the general German attitude; the Czechs sufferfrom "an extremely l imited l"rorizon. Their pol i t ical substance ismeager." (See Gùnter Grass, op. ci t . , pp. r38-r42.) In conrrast to rhismixture of stupidity and impert inence, the atmosphere among"theeastern rebels is refreshing, although one shudclers to think of tl-reexorbitant price that has been paid for i t . Jan Kavan, a Czech stu-dent leader, writes: "I have often been told by my friends in west-ern Europe that we are only fighting for bourgeois-democraticfreedoms. But somehow I cannot seem ro distinguish between capitalist freedoms and socialist freedoms. What I recognize are baiiclruman freedonrs." (Ramparts, September 1968.) It is safe to assumethat he would have a similar dif f iculty with the dist inct ion between"progressive and repressive violence." However, it would be wrongto conclude, as is so frequently done, that people in the westerncountr ies have no legir imate complaints precisely in t l .re matter offreedom. To be sure, ir is only narural . , that the art i tude of theCzech to the western srudenrs is largely coloured by envy" (quotedfrom a student paper by Spender, op. cit., p. 7e), but it is alsà truethat they lack certain, less brutal and yet very decisive experiencesin pol i t ical frustrat ion.

102

Algeria, 14, 53, 98Alsop. Stewart, ror

American Poli t ical Science Re'

uieu, The, 7znAron, Raymond, 4gn, 89-9o

Bakunin, N{ikhai l , 89

Barion, Jacob, rzn

Barnes, Peter, zgnBeaufre, André, 5nBe l l , Dan ie l , 73 , roo

Bergson, Henri, rz, 70, 73, 71Berl in, Isaiah, z7nBidault, Georges, 98Bodin, Jean, 38Bôll , Heinrich, 46nBorkenau, Franz, 47n-48nBrzezinski, Zbigniew, 92, 93

Calder, Nigel, 3n, 5n, ron, 6:n

Casro, Fidel, zrn

Catherine the Great, 74China , z tn

Chomsky, Noam, 7,7n' r4rr ' 23n,

48n, 64n, 93 , roo- to r

Cicero, 43nCity College of New York, r8, 9rClausewitz, Karl von, 8-9, ro, 36,

37rrColumbia UniversitY, 79, 9zCommager, HenrY Steele' ry' 54,

8bn' 94

Index

Commonu,ea l , zzCommentary, z9nCooper, D. G., gtCornel l University, r8, 9rCromer, Lord, 54C u b a , z t nCzeclroslovakia, zq, 53, 83, roz

Decli jer, Vladimir, ron

de Gaulle, Charles, 5o, 98Deming, Barbara, 7rnDesJardins, Gregory, 4onDreyfus, Alfred, 7rDutschke, Rudi, 79n

Ehmann, Christoph, z5n

Encounter, qg

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 96Encyclopedia of the Social

Sciences, 8

Engels, Frieclrich, 4, g, r2Yr, 20,

zzn , 89England, 38, 53, 54, 92d'Entrèves, Alexander Passerin,

3i '38' $' 97Enzensberger, Hans l\'Iagnus,

r02Europe, 6, t5, 53, 6q, tos

Falk, Richard A, g+

Fanon, Fran tz , r2 , 14 , 20 , 2 rn ,

6 5 , 6 7 , 6 9 , 7 t , 7 5 , 9 o

103

Feuerbach, Ludwig, 89Finer, S. E., 7zn, 8rnFogelson, Robert M., 76nFontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de,

25l-orman, James, 77, 94 95, 96France. 15, 88, Eg, 29, 99, ggFulbright, Wil l iam, r6-r7

Gandhi, Mahatma, 53Gans, Herberr J., 83nGermany, r5, r8, zgn, z4-2b, 42,

So, gg, 79, 96, 99, roo, ro2Glazer, Nathan, gr-gzGoodwin, Richard N., 7Grass, Gûnter, 79n-8on, 83n, rozGray; J. Glenn, 67nGreece, 5onGuevara, Che, zrn

Habermas, Jûrgen, 96Halevy, Daniel, 7onHarbold, Wil l iam H., z6nHarvard University, gr, gz, 93Hechinger, Fred M., 7gn, 94Hegel, Georg Friedrich, r2-tg,

26, 27, a8, 56, 9oHeidelberg University, 9zHerzen, Alexander, z7Hit ler, Adolf, 4r, 59, rooHobbes, Thomas, 5, 38, 68Ho Ch i Nf inh , z rHoover, J. Edgar, 98Hull University, 89

India, 53

Japan, r5 , 59Jouvenel, Bertrand de, g6, 37,

98, 4r, 74n, 97

Kant, Immanuel, z7Kavan, Jan, rozKlineberg, Otto, 6gnKohout, Pavel, 83

Lacheroy, Colonel, 98Laing, R. D., qrLen in , N iko la i , g , rz , zz , z4Lessing, Gorthold Ephraim, 15Lett.sin, Jerome, r6n, 17L ibera t ion , 7 tnLindsay, . fohn V., 94Litten, Jens, 8rLorenz, Konrad, 6rn, 69Lùbke, Karl-t leinz, 45nLynd, Staughron, rg, 95

Madison, James, 4rMao Tse- tung, r r , 2 ln , 38Nfassu, .facques, 5oN, Ia rx , Kar l , l r , 12 , r3 , r5n , zo ,

2r , 22 , 24 , 2b , 26 , 27 , 86 , 56 ,72 , 74 , 89 , 96

Massachusetts Inst i tute of Tech-nology, 16, r7, 93

Maxwel l , Ne i l , ro rMcCarthy, Eugene, 85-86Mclver, R. I \1., g7ntr{elvi l le, Herman, 64Mil l , John Stuart, 3q, 4oNfi l ls, C. Wright, 35Mitscherl ich, Alexander, 6rnMontesquieu, Charles L. de, 4r

Napoleon Bonaparte, 5r, 79National Black Economic De-

velopment Conference, q6National Guard, zq, 54National Liberation Front, 4g

Nechaer,, Sergey Kravinsky, 89New Lef t , r r , r3 - r4 , 13 , 89 , roeNew Republic, The, b4n, 92, 94New York Daily News, ggNew Yorh Reuieu of Books, r6n,

89 , 95New York Times, r9n, 46n, 7gn,

94' 95New York Times Llagazine, r6nNeu Yorher, The, 7n, r9nNewsweek, 2qn, lorNietzsche, Friedrich, 44, 73, 74Nisbet, Robert A., z8nNixon, Richard, 86

O'Brien, Conor Cruise, 79O'Brien, Wil l iam, 79

Parekh, B. C., 8qPareto, Vi l fredo, 6b, 7t, j2, 8r,

8rPascal, Blaise, zgPéguy, Charles. zgPétain, Henri Phi l ippe, 98Plato, 44Portmann, Adolf, 6o, 93Princeton University, gz, 94Proudhon, P.-J., 7, z6Public Interest, The, 7gn, gr

Ramparts, tozRand Corporation, 5nRenan, Joseph Ernest, 8Rèuieu ol Pol i t ics, z6nRobespierre, Maximil ien, 65Rockefeller, Nelson A., 86Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 37nRussia, 5e-S3, 55-56, 99Rustin, Bavard, 95

Sakharov, Andrei D., g-ro, 46n,83n, 97

Salan, Raoul, q8Sar t re , Jean-Pau l , rs , lB , 20 , 21 ,

36, 89, go-qrSchaar, John, r6n, 2gn, 45n, gr,

92-93Schapiro, Leonard, 89Schell ing, Thomas C., 7nSchelsky, Helmut, grSc ience,6onSelden, John, 84Silver, Al lan A., 7jnSolzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I . , bS,

99Sorel, Georges, r2, 20, A5, 65, 69,

7 o , 7 t , 7 2 , 8 tSpain, 5 rSpender , S tephen, r7n , r8 , z rn ,

s3n, 2gn, 42, 4grt-bon,66n, ge,

94, loo, l02Spengler, Oswald, 69Spiegel, Der, r4n-t5n, 2gn, zbn,

79n, 8on, ggStal in, . |oseph, f i , Sb, 99, rooSteinfels, Peter, z3Strausz-Hupé, Robert, 96-97Students for a Democratic

Society (SDS), 66nSweden, gg

Theatre of ldeas, 79Thring, M. W., ronTinbergen, Nikolas, 6on, 6znTito, Josip Broz, zrnTrotsky, Leon, 35n

Uni ted Sta tes , 5 -6 , r5 , r8 , rg , 24 ,rqn, 48, 8o, 85-86, 98-99

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l e y ) , r 6 n , e 8 ' 2 9 ' 4 5 n ' 5 4 , 9 r '

92' 94Valéry, Paul Ambroise, 86-87

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Verdun, 98Vietnam, 14, 48, 5r, 54' 64n' 94Voltaire, François, 36von Holst, Erich, 6on, 6zn

Wald, George, r8, 93Wallace, Gcorge, tot

Wallace, John IvI. , 4onVl/al l Street Journal, The, ror

Weber, Max, 35, 36' 37nWheeler, HarveY, 3n, 9n, ron

Wilson, Edmund, 3onWilson, James, 6

Wolin, Sheldon, r6n, zgn, 45n

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