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Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice

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Violent Utopias
Hans Achterhuis Version of record first published: 19 Aug 2010

To cite this article: Hans Achterhuis (2002): Violent Utopias, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 14:2, 157-164 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10402650220140175

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Peace Review 14:2 (2002), 157164

Violent Utopias
Hans Achterhuis*

Philosophy does not have a single outlook on violence and aggression. If it did, that outlook would be extremely violent. Instead, we need multiple philosophical perspectives on the origins of violence. But even though I shall argue for plurality instead of unity in what follows, let me warn you against two possible misconceptions. First, while Ill examine the views of several different thinkers, it will not produce a de nitive idea of how to theorize philosophically about the origins and effects of violence. This cannot be accomplished even for the leading philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, much less for those before then. Instead Ill focus on a number of texts and thinkers I have collected in response to personal experiences, questions, and emotions. Over the years, they have helped me answer pressing questions I have had about the nature of violence. While my academic participation in philosophical issues and debates has revealed to me the ways that violence has been thematized, my entry into these views is always personal and existential. Over the years, Ive deepened my understanding of certain violent periods and episodes in the past, including the violence of the 1960s. Discussion of the latter has recently arisen again, in Germany, in response to the rise of the former stone-throwing rebel Joschka Fischer to become the German Foreign Minister. Other contemporary debates, such as over NATOs use of violent intervention to provide humanitarian relief in Kosovo, provide some perspective, as well. To guard against a second misconception, let me mention that the philosophers Ill mention below have struggled to articulate the causes and functions of violence with varying degrees of success. I do not suggest that any of these theories succeeds more so than the others. Were that the case, we would be back to having a single outlook on violence, which arguably would itself be inherently violent. That paradox is the rst of two important lessons I have learned in my explorations of the origins of violence; the second I shall relate in my conclusion.

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y rst important insight on violencethe need for multiple outlooks stems from a text whose meaning emerged only a long time after I had read it. In Paul Valkenburghs Four-Way Dialogue on the Nature of War and Peace, the ctive interlocutors include a politician, an informed citizen, a scientist, and a sociologist. This combination gave Valkenburgh an effective forum for highlighting his own views, enlightening the concerned citizen and correcting the scientists narrow and exclusively logical reasoning. Thus the dialogue was staged and emphasized rhetorical ourishes. Still, this ctive set-up crystallized
* Translated by Robert P. Crease, State University of New York, Stony Brook. This essay is adapted from a longer work that will appear in the Netherlands Journal of Social Science. ISSN 1040-265 9 print; ISSN 1469-9982 online/02/020157-0 8 DOI: 10.1080/1040265022014017 5 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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for me an appreciation for the multiple perspectives people hold on issues such as violence, war, and peace. There is no proper standpoint from which to view these issues. Different perspectives are possible and inevitable, they have no single cause or explanation, and these complementary and mutually correcting perspectives are necessary. If I possessed the rhetorical skill, I would have composed this contribution as a multiple dialogue, as well. At base, each person who hasor claims to havea single account for violence is proceeding in an extremely violent manner. Those who claim to know the origin of violence, to know the root of all evil, give themselves at the same stroke the moral right to reach back and root it outthus providing, via a chain of reasoning with which we are all familiar, the justi cation for using violence in order to drive violence from the world. If we know where its origin lies, what could be wrong with using violence for the (sole) purpose of obtaining eternal peace and prosperity? This is a violent chain of reasoning. Implicitly or explicitly, it entails the call for a relentless struggle against the discovered origin of evil, whether that be said to lie in a particular class, nation, or ethnic group; a particular social structure such as capitalism or socialism; or a particular condition such as poverty. Whenever or wherever such an origin is posed, violence is already present, for it inevitably sets up the argument that violence is permitted in order to achieve peace. It is a meansends logic: the noble ends sanctify the violent means. From Valkenberg I learned that we cannot think about violence as a meansends logic, but only in the form of a dialogue between human beings. If readers sense a strong reaction on my part against monocausal theories, I readily admit that the reaction is rst of all directed against myself. For it is a lesson I learned only through trial and error. Once upon a time I, too, thought that I had located the origin of violence and could thus revolutionize the world. But this, in my opinion, is the greatest temptation for the political thinker. Many political philosophers have proposed totalitarian therapies based on philosophical analyses that attribute the origin of social evil to a single root. But single philosophical answers to the question of violence can never be more than partial. Such answers are but pieces of a dialogue.

erhaps the most notorious text on violence at the end of the 1960s was Jean-Paul Sartres preface to Frantz Fanons The Wretched of the Earthone of the great glori cations of violence. Violence plays a key role in Fanons book, the bible of the black liberation movementbut it also occupies center stage in Sartres preface, which was widely read among those active in Third World movements. Following Fanons lead, Sartre argues that society already contains concealed violence in the form of so-called structural or institutional violence. Even when the violence is not overt in the form of outbursts or threats, it is present everywhere, at least in colonialist, racist, and class-based societies. Social oppression and economic exploitation are but its most readily identi able symptomsbut psychological violence is also present when the oppressors succeed in getting the oppressed to internalize their norms and values. This insight into the nature of institutional violence holds great importance. But what Sartre wants to do about it is supremely short-sighted. For him, the only recourse against institutional violence is overt counter-violence. His most

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famous, and most notorious, sentence in this connection was: For in the rst days of the revolt you must kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man; the survivor, for the rst time, feels a national soil under his foot. Its striking that Sartre, here as well as in his more philosophical texts, describes violence purely as an instrument. Wherever evil is presentwhether it be in racist, colonialist, or capitalist forms of oppressioncounter-violence is the most appropriate and effective means to combat it. But would Sartre have agreed with the following words of Hendrik Marsmans poem Lex Barbarorum?
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Give me a knife. I want to cut this sick black spot out of my body.

The knife of violence cuts both ways; it always ends up also injuring the one who wields it. Fanon, who was a psychiatrist, knew well that violence never leaves the perpetrator unscathed. He knew violences destructive effect often long afterwardsnot only on the victim but also on the perpetrator. Fanon concludes the Wretched of the Earth with clinical descriptions of psychiatric cases involving psychoses and neuroses, which ultimately stemmed from exposure to violence, torture, and murder. It reveals how seriously the exercise of violence damaged not only the French in their oppression but also the Algerians in their liberation struggle. The instrumental outlook on violence predominated during the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. Countless texts from that period show that this view was widespread even outside extreme left-wing circles. Almost no reviews, for instance, of my book, Philosophers of the Third Worldwhich contains lengthy discussions of the views of Fanon, Che Guevara, and othersquestioned the instrumentalist justi cation of violence by these individuals. The sole exception was a review by C. Verhoeven, whose earlier essay Against Violence was certainly not an expression of the Zeitgeist but rather a futile and, at the time, barely noticed protest against it. From the World Council of Churches, which enthusiastically supported the African liberation movement, to a writer such as Harry Mulisch, who unabashedly preached solidarity with Fidel Castro, many people supported violence as a tool to achieve a better society.

ontemporary discussions about the legacy of the 1960s often overlook the climate of the times, which can best be characterized as utopian. It does not matter whether this utopia was put in concrete form as in, say, the New Babylon architectural project by Constant Nieuwenhuys (as J. Kennedy claims in his book looking back at the era) or simply consisted of vague, general longings for a newer and better future. Whats important is that all the main characteristics of utopian thinking since Thomas Mores Utopia of 1517 were present in the life-world and intellectual climate of the 1960s. Yet one of the most frequently overlooked aspects of that utopianism was its violent character. While Ive discussed this in detail elsewhere (in my De erfenis van de utopie), a few remarks here, and an example, will have to suf ce.

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In general, utopias initially strike the reader as peaceful and harmonious societies. This stems largely from how they are narratively constructed. A visitor from the outside somehow turns up in one of these ideal communities, and is warmly welcomed, shown around, and gradually grows familiar with how the strange society works. From the external perspective of this personwhom one might irresistibly call a fellow-traveler, to use an anachronistic termthe place seems full of peace and happiness. But from an internal perspective, from the point of view of an inhabitant of one of these earthly paradises, it would be another storywhich is why such a perspective almost never appears even in classical utopian literature. Only in the past century has this perspective appearedand by way of making an explicit critique of utopian literaturewhich has generated a new literary genre, the dystopia. Although this is rarely remarked upon, books such as Aldous Huxleys Brave New World and George Orwells 1984 are modeled largely on the genre of utopian ction, from which they borrow wholesale their most characteristic features. The great difference between the two genres is simply their competing visions of utopian reality. While utopian ction, as I mentioned, nearly always involves a visitor looking from outside in, dystopian ction nearly always involves an inhabitant from whom we receive a look from the inside out. Dystopian ction typically follows the same plot. At rst praises are enthusiastically sung for the peace and harmony that prevail in the society. Then one of the citizens who stands out as more of an individual among the anonymous numbersthe people in Mores Utopia never have proper namesperceives a few small disruptions in the outward calm. Then he falls in love, and after this decisive step in his individualization he begins to experience the violent side of utopian society. In the ensuing confrontation the rebellious citizen meets a violent fate, and is usually either killed or, as with Winston in Orwells 1984, reprogrammed. The reader, who has identi ed with the protagonist, thus encounters the violence lurking beneath this outwardly harmonious society. For some readers it may sound shocking that each utopia we know from the classical literary tradition is permeated with violence. Of course this starts with the closed society of Platos Politiea, which was criticized by Karl Popper, and it continues up through Ernst Callenbachs Ecotopia, in which the nuclear destruction of the whole world is threatened for everyone who dares to attack this ecological paradise. Still, harsh as it may sound, the shift in perspective provided by the dystopias is usually suf cient to reveal the hidden violence. In Mores Utopia, for instance, one should simply take the view of a protagonist who is married and who falls in love with another man or woman. The penalty for adultery in Utopia, ultimately, is capital punishment. Well, just imagine a couple of lovers concealing their love and trying to escape the panoptical public sphere of this ideal society in which everything you do should be visible for everyone, and you will have a perfect scenario for a sixteenth-century version of an Orwellian story. The violent character of utopia is rmly connected with the instrumentalist vision of violence, which I previously discussed. Each utopia presents us with a recipe for a totally happy and peaceful society. It claims to have discovered the origin of the pests that ravaged the old unhappy society and to offer a single remedy for them. From this perspective it is perfectly

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legitimate to use violence against any obstruction of a program that can realize the nal happiness of humankind. When one looks at the great utopian thinkers of the 1960s, this link between violence and utopianism is revealed. For Sartre the ultimate aim is to conquer scarcity to escape from the realm of necessity in order to reach the realm of liberty that Karl Marx prophesied. He takes the Marxian diagnosis of capitalism as the truthful guide for the struggle to overcome scarcity. Not only in this struggle itself is violence a simple means that Sartre takes for granted, but also in the societies in which the rst steps are taken toward the Marxian goal it is perfectly legitimate to use violence against the bourgeois who obstruct further progress toward the ideal. Sartre knew about the Gulags but it never shook his allegiance to the Soviet Union. Frantz Fanon shared the Sartrian analysis. His personal immersion in the struggle, however, taught him that the instrumentalist and utopian perspective on violence did not hold. In The Wretched of the Earth one discovers a gap between the general ideologically tainted analysis and the empirical observations Fanon made as a psychiatrist. But such awareness of the ambivalent character of violence is missing in the most important utopian theorist of the 1960s, Herbert Marcuse.

arcuse articulated his utopia in 1955 in his book Eros and Culture, but it became most in uential in the 1960s after he composed a new political preface for an edition published in 1966. He argued that, for the rst time in history, it was objectively possible to realize utopia, for the means at last existed to overcome the scarcity that had dogged humanity until now. Liberation is the most realistic, the most concrete of all historical possibilities. Paradise is within reach if humanity only rejects the prevailing productive apparatus that maintains and enforces the reality principle. This, then, is the precondition for the emergence of a truly human city, state, nation. The content of Marcuses utopia was based on a speci c image of the true human being. As a critical philosopher he did not base his thinking on existing facts but on the future, invoking the claims of reason to concern himself with what man can be and with his essential being, not his empirical state. Marcuse took this contrast between being and seeming, borrowed from Hegel, in a utopian direction. Just as More did in Utopia, Marcuse drew a sharp distinction between true and false needs, and, also like More, Marcuse is fond of enumerating and ridiculing the latter. In fact, Marcuse consigns almost everything that human beings seek in their practical lives to the latter category. Most of the prevailing needs to relax, to have fun, to behave and consume in accordance with the advertisements, to love and hate what others love and hate, belong to this category of false needs. Whenever human beings go out and seek satisfaction of the false needs anyway, it is because they have fallen victim to false consciousness. At this point, of course, the philosopher claims the right to step in, thanks to his true consciousness, which gives him insight into the true utopian potential of human beings. Marcuse thus tries to breathe new life into the old Marxist distinction between true and false consciousness, between the proletariat, which is ignorant of its true interests, and the Party, which knows those true

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interests. For ultimately human beings can come to see the difference; they can arrive at true consciousness and see their true interests. The two key concepts of human nature that shape Marcuses utopia are happiness and freedom. The prospect of happiness, according to him, has been opened up by the possibility that abundance has overcome scarcity, ultimately allowing pursuit of the pleasure principle. It is no longer necessary to submit to the reality principle, as Freud believed. Marcuse proposed the existence of a libidinal culture, which would push back work in favor of play and eros. He originated, as well, the explosive idea that not only do human beings seek happiness empirically but that happiness is their due, supporting this notion by and lling its content in with an authentic idea of human beings. The striving for true happiness, Marcuse continues, presupposes freedom. He constructs this concept, too, differently from the usual ideas of freedom of choice. Precisely because human beings do not understand their true needs they are also unable to be free in their choices. In the last analysis, the question of what are true and false needs must be answered by the individuals themselves, but only in the last analysis; that is, if and when they are free to give their own answer. As long as they are kept incapable of being autonomous, as long as they are indoctrinated and manipulated (down to their very instincts), their answer to this question cannot be taken as their own. Freedom comes, according to Marcuse, not from in a situation that provides people with countless possible choices, but rather from making good choices, in the liberation from true needs, in the pursuit of true interests, and in the realization of true humanity. The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual. Thus there appears to be a difference between inauthentic and authentic freedom. Its spelled out most strikingly in the famous concept of repressive tolerance. In the past, according to Marcuse, tolerance was indeed liberating, and a precondition for freedom. But in advanced capitalist societies, whose oppressive apparatus is rmly cemented in place by the majority, this is no longer the case. Toleration in this kind of society ultimately serves to support only the oppressive system itself. A more genuine and profound tolerance, which would be allied with an entirely new social order, would involve intolerance towards incorrect ideas and actions. Society cannot be indiscriminate where the paci cation of existence, where freedom and happiness themselves are at stake: here, certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed, certain behavior cannot be permitted without making tolerance an instrument for the continuation of servitude. Inside the existing system, a free exchange of ideas can never be rational, and all improvements to the system serve only to reinforce it. Liberating forces must be developed that do not shrink from using clearly undemocratic means in the struggle for a pedagogical dictator who is able to educate human beings to understand their true interests. Something ominous lurks in the inde nable character of that certain and so forth. The sentence amounts to an authorization to deprive any and all individuals of their freedom if, according to the new rulers, it serves the true interests of humanity. Clearly Marcuses utopian appeal to an attainable paradise serves to legitimate

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repressive violence. But precisely because violence, once used, is so contagious and irresistible, it is not the simple instrument that he suggests and can never be contained by a utopian logic. It will always be impossible to speak of violence going astray in pursuit of a good end.

T
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he legitimizationeven glori cationof violence by the leftist youth culture of the time is only understandable in the light of the utopian climate of the 1960s and 1970s. A decisive role was played here by vague de nitions of violence such as those embodied in the notion of institutional violence. The Norwegian peace researcher Johan Galtung, who was very in uential at the time, de ned violence as the cause of the difference between the potential and the actual, between what could have been and what is. Whenever the potential, what could have been, proved unobtainable, one spoke of institutional violence. Whenever inequality was uncoveredof whatever kind and in whatever area Galtung spoke of institutional violence. From the perspective of the instrumental character of violence, it only stood to reason that unjust social structures had to be violently overthrown. Only then could the true human potential be realized. In a recent novel, Detras de las armas nacian las oresMemorias de amor y guerra, Nicaraguan author Gioconda Belli looked back at her revolutionary Sandinista past. In a recent interview promoting the book, she professed amazement over the retrospective controversy about violence, especially in Germany. She minced no words: Naturally we used violence, and tried to use violence to eradicate violence. But she also said at the same time that she has backed away from that position. It doesnt workthats the lesson that we learned, and it holds not only for the left. You cant compromise the individual rights of human beings. In Europe, and certainly in Germany, however, this sort of simple recognition about the meaning of the past has not been easy to digest. Certainly the controversy that has arisen about German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer only concerned what he really did. Did he merely throw stones at a policeman, knock him to the ground, and kick him (as Fischer admits), or did he also advocate the use of Molotov cocktails and even throw a few himself (as he denies)? But more important than the debate over these events is the need to look back at the violent climate from which they emerged. Far more important than the true accounting of the facts of the case is the self-evidence and utter lack of questioning of the legitimacy of violenceeven, for instance, by groups such as the Red Army Factionamong a great number of people. Fischer hardly stood alone. A year after his authorized biography claimed that he had sworn off violence, in writing about the murders by the Red Army Faction of German industrialist Schleyer, German banking chief Ponto, and federal prosecutor Buback, he wrote bluntly that In the case of these three high lords, I must admit quite openly that I cant quite get into the right spirit of mourning. Fischer has learned the same lesson as Gioconda Belli. It would be hypocritical to condemn him simply for his past actions. Unless more telling facts emerge, it appears that he lived that past the same way most members of his generation did. It would be far more fruitful to come to terms with the legacy of such a widely shared past than to transform one individual into a scapegoat for it.

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RECOMMENDED READINGS Achterhuis, H.J. 1975. Filosofen van de derde wereld. Baarn: Ambo. Achterhuis, H.J. 1998. De erfenis van de utopie. Amsterdam: Ambo. Achterhuis, H.J. 1999. Politiek van goede bedoelingen. Amsterdam: Boom. Arendt, Hannah. 1965. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin. Arnoni, M.S. 1986. De overlevenden tellen niet, Amsterdam: Meulenhoff. Fanon, Franz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. C. Farrington (trans.). New York: Grove. Galtung, J. 1975. Strukturelle Gewalt: Beitrage zur Friedens- und Kon iktforschung. Hamburg: Rowohlt. Girard, R. 1977. Violence and the Sacred. P. Gregory (trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hobbes, T. 1968. Leviathan. New York: Penguin. Isarin, J. 1994. Het kwaad en de gedachtenloosheid. Baarn, The Netherlands: Ambo. Kennedy, J. 1995. New Babylon in aanbouw. Amsterdam: Boom. Kolakowski, L. 1978. Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. III. P.S. Falla (trans.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lorenz, K. 1969. On Aggression. New York: Bantam. Machiavelli, N. 1950. The Prince and the Discourses. New York: Random House. Marcuse, H. 1955. Eros and Culture. New York: Vintage. Marcuse, H. 1967. A Critique of Pure Tolerance. Boston: Beacon Press. Marcuse, H. 1969. One-Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press. Marsman, H. 1963. Verzameld werk. Amsterdam: Querido. Niebuhr, R. 1960. Moral Man and Immoral Society. New York: Scribners. Rorty, R. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thucydides. 1972. History of the Pelopponesian War. New York: Penguin. Valkenburgh, P. 1968. Viergesprek over oorlog en vrede. Arnhem: Van Loghum Slaterus. Van Dijk, P. 2000. Anthropology in the Age of Technology. The Philosophical Contribution of Gunther Anders. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Verhoeven, C. 1967. Tegen het geweld. Utrecht: Ambo.

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Hans Achterhuis is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Twente. He writes on themes such as development aid, welfare work, and scarcity. Correspondence: Universiteit Twente, Faculteit WMW, Box 217, 7500AE Enschede, The Netherlands.