Re: [Marxism] Theory of Violence

[<daniel.evans920@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Below is the reply I got from Clausewitz.com.  I think it's a little mealy 
mouthed and misses the point somehow.  I'm not sure that it is a point that is 
frequently made, not so explicitly anyway and it's a theory of violence not 
politics. Still, nice to get a reply and nice that he mentioned Lenin:

Daniel:

Yes, that point is frequently made. Lenin, for example, said in his 
discussion of Clausewitz that peace is the continuation of war by other 
means. That there are uses of violence in politics other than those 
manifested in war is also widely noted, and any good definition of 
politics has to apply to all human social constructs, not just the 
state. Clausewitz himself, however, was not writing about either 
violence or politics--his subject was the conduct of military operations 
in war.

Clausewitz.com

---------------------------------

298558.303391 wrote:
> Reply-to: daniel.evans920@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Below is the result of your feedback form.  It was submitted by
>
> daniel.evans920@xxxxxxxxxxxx on August 25th, 2007 at 09:45AM (EDT).
>
>
> Comments: Hi there,
>
> I believe that there is an unfinished syllogism in the work of Clausewitz 
which if he had completed would have made him even more renowned today than he 
already is.
>
> He made two statements about war, politics and violence when he perhaps 
should have made three.  He said: war is the continuation of politics by other 
means and war is violence.  As he was writing about war it is understandable 
that he did not think to make the concluding statement: violence is the 
continuation of politics by other means.
>
> The implications are that all violence, every single example of it however 
seemingly insignificant, is an expression of or a continuation of an 
individual's, group's, organisation's or state's politics.  From wife-beating 
to rape to mugging to gang wars to battering protestors to terrorism to world 
war, all are explained by this theory.  Of course, it doesn't absolve the 
researcher from painstakingly getting to the roots of the perpetrators politics 
in each separate instance but it give the framework from which to begin.

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