The Question of Violence: Part I

“Violence begets violence.”

These were words used by the American civil rights activist, Martin Luther King Jr. One could argue that though a pacifist, Dr King, believed in these words not only as a reaction to the War in Vietnam but also in relation to the unjust system that was (and continues to this day) to oppress people of colour in the United States.  

In their conclusion of The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, articulate, what some have termed as, a call to violence. They conclude the work by particularly using the following words:

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” (Marx and Engels, 1848, The Communist Manifesto)

Some scholars have interpreted this as a call to violently overthrow the state. Yet without going into a hermeneutical or exegetical interpretation of the text, it is important, at least in this translation, to note that there exists an abhorrence for “…all existing social conditions…” and that the only way to defeat these unacceptable social conditions would be to “…openly declare that [Communist] ends can be attained only by forcible overthrow…” In other words, as Dr King would articulate, the violent system that exists, through abhorrent existing social conditions, can only beget a violent reaction.  

A violence that calls for more violence

In dismissing bourgeois pacifism, Christopher Caudwell writes in his work, Pacifism and Violence, that:

“…the only way to secure peace is by a revolutionary change in the social system, and that ruling classes resist revolution violently and must therefore be overthrown by force.” (Christopher Caudwell, 1938, Pacifism and Violence)

Yet again, in the tradition of Marx and Engels, Caudwell makes sure to distinguish between bourgeois violence and the violence employed by the proletariat. He defines bourgeois violence as that which: “…arises, just as does feudal or despotic violence, from the characteristic economy of the system.” He continues:

“…the whole bourgeois economy is built on the violent domination of men by men through the private possession of social capital. It is always there, waiting ready at any moment to flame out in a Peterloo or an Amritzar within the bourgeois State, or a Boer War or Great War outside it. As long as the bourgeois economy remains a positive constructive force, that violence is hidden.” (Christopher Caudwell, 1938, Pacifism and Violence)

Put differently, Caudwell states that the violence perpetrated by the bourgeois, the ruling class, is one that is primarily about the private possession of that which is supposed to be owned in common but more importantly that this violence is often systemic and therefore subliminal.

By dismissing bourgeois pacifism, Caudwell notes that time and again it is the pacifist who would oppose proletariat violence but at the same time “…refrain from opposing bourgeois violence, [because] he generates it, by helping on the development of bourgeois economy.” Could Dr King have been described as such a pacifist? A discussion we could have on another occasion.

Two types of violence

We are therefore to understand that there are two types of violence. The systemic and subliminal violence, as perpetuated by the existing social conditions of our neo-liberal and capitalist times, on the one hand, and the violence of the oppressed that comes in response to that ruling class violence, on the other.

To clarify this distinction better, we could employ the work of the Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic, Slovaj Žižek. In his work Violence (2008), Žižek makes a clear distinction between subjective violence and objective violence. Subjective violence describes the empirical violence that we might experience e.g. the suicide bomber, assault, murder, rape and war. It is physical violence, as it were, and often we are most fixated with this violence. We believe that peace is the absence of violence i.e. subjective violence.

However, objective violence is the violence that exists through an unjust system. It is symbolic and systemic; symbolic in language and in form, such as racism and sexism whereas it could also be systemic through economic and political systems, such as capitalism and its twin neo-liberalism. These causes of gross inequality and poverty, the exclusion of the vast majority of citizens in the operations of the state (or the market?) and the opportunity to reach their potential given only to a few, and not others, are only three examples of the systemic objective violence that exists in our current social conditions.

Hence Žižek’s thesis, like Marx, Engels and Caudwell, is that subjective violence is but only a response to objective violence. To give a current example, the subjective violence experienced by Syrians today are only in response to the objective violence that exists in the Middle East region: the question of Palestine, Western interests in the Middle East, among others.

At the same time, it is important to note that coupled with this understanding of violence, as subjective and objective, goes the comprehension of the process of ‘normalisation’. Given the subliminal, systemic and symbolic nature of objective violence it is easy for these to be ‘normalised’, i.e. it becomes part of the system, part of life. Why care about race or sexism, people ask these days, when minority rights, homophobia and environmental rights are much more threatened than the life or dignity of a person of colour? It’s much “cooler”, “in” or “fashionable” to fight against nuclear power stations, be a vegetarian and support gay marriage than it is to stand up against racism in Europe or the US.

Poverty, racism and sexism have become normal. People are told to live with it and get on with their lives. These objective violent acts are normalised i.e. made ‘acceptable’ just as the violent act of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is made normal. If we do it long enough, people will just not care any longer, think the Israelis. Given the subjective violent response to this objective violence, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims are then characterised as terrorists, intolerant and fundamentalists; this profiling being an act of objective violence in itself.