Violence and its Alternatives: An Interdisciplinary Reader
Manfred B. Steger and Nancy S. Lind, eds.
New York: St. Martins Press, 1999, 403pp.
reviewed by MC5, March 21, 2001
With a wide variety of authors from the 20th century including substantial ethnic and gender diversity, a heavy sampling of the most famous Marxologists, a selection of anarchists and a selection of famous post-modernists, this book's editors probably thought they came up with a remarkable collection for a peace studies book and a great all-inclusive case why peace studies should not be confined to grants from the U.S. Army.(p. 349) To MIM, this book proves that we cannot rely on academic institutions for the question of the study of violence, a question at the foundation of MIM's existence.
While the "Black Book of Communism" represents the wailings of the pre-scientific intelligentsia ready and willing to clear the way for fascism, this book is the last gasp of the non-fascist, pre-scientific intelligentsia. What the two books have in common is an instinctive unwillingness to present the overall statistical picture of violence in the world of the last century. Sadly, a medical student or epidemiologist is much more likely to do deep research on the types and causes of violence than someone who spent great lengths of time studying this sort of book.
Even though most of the articles in "Violence and its Alternatives" are from a time before post-modernism's dominance of academia, the effect of the book is still post-modernism of the most maddening sort. While we thought we or potential beginning peace studies students deserved to have recent and historical types and causes of violence categorized and measured for us by this book, instead we will have to settle for the diversity of "who" the authors are instead of the substance of war or starvation for instance. Deaths by war or other forms of violence simply are not tallied, categorized or explained in this book. Instead, we are left with long philosophical and religious discussions--the type of which Marx properly dismissed as "The Poverty of Philosophy" a long time ago.
The choice is very simple. There are those, like the authors and editors of "Violence and its Alternatives" who believe that the statement "the ends don't justify the means" pretty much sums up what peace studies is about. Then there are others who believe eradicating violence is problem-solving more akin to finding a vaccine for HIV.
People attempting enlightenment through discussions that often end up being word games believe that consistent and timeless moral principles are the solution--such people taking this road are pre-scientific and include the Christians, Hindus and Kantians who dominate the book. People who believe eradicating violence is a scientific question should be Maoists, but they may include many epidemiologists or other medical or public health professionals. By saying this we do not mean that the scientific intelligentsia is limited to these professions entirely but we mean to characterize bases for the two camps in their approach to peace studies. By way of summary, the pre-scientific intelligentsia finds its passion in thinking about contradictions in ethical thought without connection to measurement or the real world, except to damn measurement and the flaws of the real world relative to their Jesus or Hindu authorities. The Maoists and other scientists of violence will insist on measurement and comparison of violence statistics within the real world and the choices implied by those comparisons.
"Non-violence" as a rubric for the status quo's violence: multiple hypocrisies
Out of 35 essays in the book, zero are about categorizing and finding the underlying factors of the largest global quantities of violence. When the authors and editors use the buzzwords "the ends do not justify the means," it is never to compare the use of two sets of means. It is always to condemn the violence of the oppressed and exploited and to leave it at that.
Those who argue in terms of good versus bad without addressing causation easily contribute to militarism. When the National Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized U.$. war preparations, the Pentagon used the moral criticism as a reason to build a new series of nuclear weapons, missiles and subs that could be more accurate and less "indiscriminate."(p. 343)
Hypocrisy of selectively applying "the ends don't justify the means"
These Kantians and Christians look down on us as "utilitarians" (e.g., p. 29) and in truth, we'd rather be associated with utilitarians who were at least trying to be scientists than be religious like our critics. However, if our critics applied their own "golden rule," they'd never mention the means of communist movements to overthrow institutional violence without mentioning the means of capitalist society to protect property. The reason these pacifists, Kantians and Christians do not ever mention the means of capitalism's status quo is that they have internalized and accepted the violence of the status quo and measure themselves against God in heaven not by choices of social organization on this earth. Such people should hurry to meet their makers or at least not bother those of us concerned first of all by this world.
There are many ways to express this materialism. The student activist learns he or she has to "take a side" and the same idea is expressed in Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach." Even the opportunist politician knows he or she may be judged by "the record." Some grasp the idea that "you are either part of problem or part of the solution." Others of a culture since Lenin in the Soviet Union understand there are those who are "objectively" for institutional violence including those who have other "subjective intentions," such as pacifism. Finally, when the academic philosophers do talk about this idea they call it the "Acts Omissions" or "Actions Omissions" doctrine. All of these ideas expressed in this paragraph are the same thing.
The "Actions Omissions Doctrine" (p. 29) is important in combating the usual conservatism of "the ends do not justify the means" thinking. The idea is that failing to prevent murder that could have been prevented is the same as committing that murder morally speaking. Omitting an action can be just as devastating as incorrect action. In fact, as MIM has shown over and over again, the violence of the world's status quo of property, particularly in agricultural land, is responsible for more than 14 million premature deaths per year. In 25 years of parliamentary democracy India's existence, the status quo kills more people than all the communist movements since 1917--even accepting highly inflated figures of 100 million from neo-fascists promoting the "Black Book of Communism" for instance. Hence, the "Actions Omissions Doctrine" of moral philosophy is doom for capitalism and a boost to communism. More importantly, the doctrine can help a persyn make the permanent leap to scientific thinking, because "Actions Omissions Doctrine" always forces people to count both actions and inactions without discriminating for subjective reasons. In this way, the doctrine facilitates comparisons in the real world which is the materialist method and science.
In contrast, the reaction of an author named Coady to the "negative actions" or "Actions Omissions Doctrine" was typical unscientific individualism: "Although cases can be constructed in which death is immediately consequent upon our refusal of aid, the more common cases involve our negative action being, at most, merely a partial cause of death and injury and hence it is usually left open that, for instance, someone else will aid the beggar."(p. 30) First of all, even morally, this is the equivalent of why bystanders let people be murdered. Second of all, since Coady and others in the book never categorized and enumerated violence, Coady is in no position to say that it is a matter of "cases constructed" and "partial" responsibility. It is now a proven fact that land reform saves millions of lives a year in large countries of peasants. It is not a matter of someone else coming along to help the beggar. That's not how life expectancy advances. The beggar question is just the typical question on the mind of the Western individualist unexposed to scientific knowledge. The Western individualists have supported great nation chauvinism and attacks on Third World peoples so long that they forgot about it and readily think of the whole question as one of beggars.
Pseudo-Christian hypocrisy of criticizing communism despite what the Bible said
Aside from the hypocritical failure of the non-violent Christians to apply "the golden rule" to the idea of the "ends don't justify the means," the Christians have not even read their bibles very carefully. On the Internet, we have already explained this: "Bible: Acts 5:1-10
""A man named Ananias with his wife Sapphira sold a piece of property, and with his wife's knowledge he kept back some of the proceeds, and brought only a part and laid at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God." When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died."
"[mim3@mim.org comments: And these pseudo-Christians have the nerve to criticize Mao with regard to "human-rights" under dictatorship of the proletariat! The Amerikan pseudo-Christians have put together entire Hollywood movies attacking Mao. Where was the humyn-rights of this owner of property mentioned above? It seems that the original Christians had their priorities straight--the basic needs of the people first! Profit second or never!]
"Acts 5:7-5:10
"After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. And Peter said to her, 'Tell me whether you sold the land for so much.' And she said, 'Yes, for so much.' But Peter said to her, 'How is it that you have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? Hark, the feet of those that have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.' Immediately she fell down at his feet and died. When the young men came in they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband."
"[mim3@mim.org: That was a harsh act of proletarian dictatorship. It reminded me of Stalin. It looks like Christian communism would oppose the counterrevolution in China with its private farming, free markets and me-firstism.] " [End of Internet quote on our Contemporary Controversies web page.]
Science touched on in passing
Four or five essays (Wolff, Barsh, Fanon, Marcuse, Lukacs) are by authors who demonstrate at least briefly that they are scientific-minded. From prior knowledge of the authors, MIM is aware that actually a few more are scientifically- minded, but the editors selected essays which would not prove that.
In general, even when the editors selected articles supposedly inspired by Marx, it was precisely those writers who seemed most philosophical and unconcerned with factual reality that the editors chose to represent Marxism. For example, they printed Walter Benjamin, because he addressed "the ends don't justify the means" from the first page(p. 57) and never mentioned the distribution or extent of violence. This becomes a problem for us communists, because the academic institutions are favoring certain of those calling themselves "Marxist" who are in fact most reflective, idealist and inclined toward philosophy.
The second essay in the book by Richard Paul Wolff may well be the best in the whole book. It proceeds in that philosophical way that will please secular and religious idealists alike, but nonetheless, Wolff ends up in the materialist camp. Among other things, he shows how silly it is to believe in oases of non-violence in the current world.
Wolff's most important point, because only anarchists and communists will make it is that the state is coercion. There is no need to have a state without a need for coercion. According to us communists, in the more advanced stages of socialism, people may no longer die at the hands of the state, but they may still have to be coerced out of causing death on behalf of property or other old ideas of oppression. After imperialism is long gone, and people live together in harmony economically, the state will disappear because there will be no reason for coercion. That's what we call communist anarchism, the last stage of communism.
People playing word games like to prettify the violence of police while poking at that of alleged bandits. In reality, what should be celebrated is the state run by political leaders who can most reduce total violence no matter what it is called--Maoists. Yet even we Maoists will be accountable enough to say we are coercing people, just in such a way that institutional violence will decrease and hence the life expectancy of the people increase. When one group of people has a lower life expectancy than another similar group just living under a different social organization, whether that group of people knows it or not, that group of people is being coerced out of life itself.
We have no tolerance for democratic "contract" theory. According to this theory, if a majority says so, the minority is bound to starve to death by law. Thus our goal is not majority rule. Our goal is an end to coercion.
Other than Wolff's essay, we also like the Peace Studies classic author Johan Galtung. His definition of violence is pretty much the same as ours: "I see violence as avoidable insults to basic human needs, and more generally to life , [l]owering the real level of needs satisfaction below what is potentially possible."(p. 40)
For MIM, to measure violence as defined by Galtung requires a refined understanding of life expectancy statistics. To know what is "potentially possible" knowledge of the real world is necessary. In addition, we must compare like with like. India started ahead of China in life expectancy but it fell behind China once Mao took power.(1) Hence, we say that despite having Gandhi as a leader, India was a more violent place than Mao's China. Humyn needs suffered in Gandhi's India, because Gandhi and other Hindus were not willing to sanction violence against landlords to end starvation. The Indians had Gandhi, parliamentary democracy and private property in land and they suffer several million dead each year compared with China because the Indians never put a Mao in power.
Galtung shows in passing that he understands the true distribution of violence in the world when he mentions malnutrition and diarrhea in the Third World.(p. 42) Nonetheless, Galtung should have stopped with his one sentence definition of violence, because his essay on the whole demonstrates pre-scientific confusion inherent to trying to reduce all questions to one of good versus bad. On the good versus bad plane, Galtung decided it would not do to leave out "cultural violence." Ever since people like Galtung denounced "cultural violence" including language (p. 48), there have been post-modernists rejecting Marxism to settle for working on violence in language. They even place this violence as higher than that of actual violence, which is bodily damage.
On the whole, Galtung is 49% of the way there. He got the definition of violence and then he lost his way. He needs to connect causation to his definition and categorizations. Given that he reasoned from a good vs. bad perspective, it's not surprising that he ended up attacking socialist revolution and defending apologist for institutional violence Gandhi.(p. 51-2)
Thanks to those pre-scientific intellectuals like Galtung who could not quite hold the line against post-modernism, there is a whole spate of chapters in the book about street crime and gender. The closest we get to a discussion of the distribution of violence is in a chapter on lesbian battering in the United $tates. (See discussion of its causation, p. 124) Even there, the author informs us that it is not really possible to get open statistics. While such chapters belong somewhere, they do not belong in this book, because this book failed its central mission--the study of violence. We are more likely to get from this book a discussion of the causes of 25,000 murders in the United $tates a year including the tiny percentage that are lesbian battering than we are to get an explanation of why millions die of hunger each year. The reason that this happened has everything to do with how Galtung was able to equate cultural violence with actual violence, even while he originally intended to say cultural violence supported actual violence. As a result, when these post-modernists talk about violence, they do not know its underlying distribution by race, class, gender and geography and so take up the subject the way police or sensational media do, not as scientists. For this reason, there is hardly any discussion of world wars anywhere in this book! Certainly there is no sustained discussion of their causes!
Finally, we cannot pass over classic "peace studies" author Gene Sharp, who has proved that non-violence is a fig-leaf for imperialism. After the U.$. war on Serbia, Harvard researcher (at the Center for International Affairs now renamed to avoid the obvious CIA connection) Gene Sharp with his non-violence teaching credentials went to Serbia. That in itself legitimized U.$. violence including its role in causing divisions in former-Yugoslavia. Then Sharp took the side of the imperialist occupiers in trying to oust an elected government. "'My key principle is not ethical. It has nothing to do with pacifism. It is based on an analysis of power in a dictatorship and how to break it by withdrawing the obedience of citizens and the key institutions of society,'"(2) said Sharp.
An aside on the labor aristocracy
A couple of authors appeared to agree with MIM on the question of parasitism in the imperialist countries. Speaking of the "creation of ever more parasitic and unproductive labor,"(p. 271) Famous '60s radical, Herbert Marcuse said, "without putting the affluent society in the framework of the Third World it is not understandable"(p. 273) in his essay "Liberation from the Affluent Society."
Russell Barsh also gets in a few good licks, saying that Quebec's attack on Mohawk Kanesatake was actually meant to bolster French nationalism. The Quebecois apparently feel they have to get the First Nations in line first or the Quebecois's formation of their own country will lead to anti-imperialist revolution by the First Nations. Barsh also gets the general picture right: "Rich countries are still living off the interest from the capital stock extracted from the rest of the world under colonialism. Poorer countries must still overproduce in order to repay borrowed financial capital and technology, requiring an intensified liquidation of natural resources. As a result, the North is still eating the ecological future of the South."(p. 193)
Conclusion
The thrust of this book is to set up intellectual Marxists that the public will not understand, especially as the editors chose only non-empirical discussions of Marxism. Against these Marxists they push simplistic religious and secular idealist types, who they prime to inherit the earth now that communism is supposedly dead. These people who do not discuss the causation of violence are like quack doctors. Instead of castor oil, they prescribe:
*Love (Cornell West, p. 182)
*"Transnational" institutions of the New World Order against elected governments (excuses for capitalism's production
of Eastern European fascism after the Cold War) (Mary Kaldor, p. 208)
*Love and god (Gandhi, pp. 295-6)
*Attacking the means of communism without mentioning the means of capitalism (Martin Luther King, p. 302)
*love (bell hooks, p. 309)
*"Christian principles" (Gene Sharp, p. 319)
With these sorts of ideas, it's not surprising that editor Steger concluded like the neo-fascists applauding the "Black Book of Communism" that communism is guilty of "great crimes against humanity."(p. 285) It's like having a caveman go to a hospital and after seeing great efforts to save tuberculosis patients with the most advanced drugs and techniques, the caveman still sees some deaths and calls it a "crime," when it was only in the hospital that the patients received treatment and survived in higher percentages than those who went to no hospital or received no treatment. Bewildered by modern science, the cave dwellers of politics reject Maoism and take up idealist non-violence.
Notes:
1. See MIM's faq page on this. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/faq/philviolence.html and
http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/mythsofmao.html
2. http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20001126mag-serbia.html For another institution upholding Sharp, see for example, http://www.peace.ca
| Back to bookstore | Home page |