Power and violence
Power and Violence is a study by the political theorist Hannah Arendt , first published under the title On Violence in 1970 in the United States and Great Britain. She had started to work on this essay in the summer of 1968. The German version was also published in 1970. It deals with the then current texts and practices of the student movement (up to and including 1969), especially in France, the Federal Republic of Germany and the USA with regard to the question of violence. In addition, Arendt presents a political theory of the concepts of power and violence . It examines their historical change in meaning and their mutual relationship. Arendt defines these terms , which are often used synonymously , differently. In addition, she critically examines the contemporary political world situation.
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Description and demarcation of violence and power
The author states that the role of violence in history and politics has become the focus of public attention due to the worldwide rebellion at universities and the discussions about violent and peaceful resistance. She describes the immense technical development of the means of violence after the Second World War as the deeper cause of this, the potential of which can lead to the destruction of the world. Therefore there are no winners in possible armed conflicts with these nuclear or biological weapons and in the arms race.
According to Arendt, today's (1969) European concept of the state equates political freedom with national independence and sovereignty. Theoretically, the USA could stand out from this, since its constitution based on the American Revolution does not contain such a nation-state idea. But according to Arendt, the United States has now adopted the European nation-state concept and is no longer acting in the spirit of the American Revolution. The journalist describes the difference she perceived between the French and American revolutions in her work On the Revolution from 1963. According to this, the League of American Revolutionaries granted free citizens more opportunities to participate politically than the social overthrow of the French Revolution allowed citizens held ready.
Arendt puts forward the thesis in Power and Violence that - through the "scientific belief" of the governments - politics has replaced thinking about war and peace with machine-controlled predictions by computers on the basis of assumed constellations and has thus distanced itself from reality. Science is therefore being replaced by pseudoscience. This creates the dangerous illusion that events can be understood and controlled. On the other hand, events do not run automatically, but just interrupt automatic processes or procedures that have become habitual. Here she turns again to her old theme of the unpredictability of future history when she writes:
- "Future prognoses [...] predict what will in all probability occur if people do not intervene and if nothing unexpected happens."
Distinguishing herself from futurological prognoses, she argues with Proudhon that the fertility of the unexpected far exceeds the wisdom of the statesman. She polemics against Engels and Trotsky , who underestimated the unpredictable, and describes inferences from the present about the future as “projections” with which historians become “prophets”. This has a hypnotic effect, common sense disappears, and people can no longer understand each other and orientate themselves acting in reality.
She sees the difference between violence and power in the fact that the former requires tools to achieve its political goals. She considers the means to be considerably more important than the respective purposes due to the rapid technical development. A nuclear war, for example, can become a “means of suicide” for the whole world, the use of biological weapons as a weapon for individuals or small groups. Acts of violence always have something accidental and arbitrary about them. Against the background of experiences with total domination , the author postulates that the tendency to submission, the drive to obedience and the cry for the strong man play at least as big a role in human psychology as the will to power. However, she understands power as an “organization of equals within the framework of the law” in the sense of the Greek tradition . She continues:
- "What gives power to the institutions and laws of a country is the support of the people, which in turn is only the continuation of the original consensus that brought institutions and laws into being."
Obedience does not confer power. Arendt emphasizes that power arises from the human ability to join forces with others. No individual has power. Only groups can have power.
From Arendt's point of view, power and violence usually occur together in different constellations. Only in extreme cases does violence have absolute superiority. Even total domination requires a power base. So the rule over the slaves was secured by the solidarity superior organization of the slave owners. The publicist describes the widespread notion that revolutions are the result of an armed uprising as a “fairy tale”. As an example of the fact that revolutions cannot be “made”, she cites the Hungarian People's Uprising in 1956, where it was not violence but the intellectual superiority of the rebels who won when the police and the army were no longer willing to use their weapons. She concludes:
- “Where violence is opposed to violence, state authority has always proven to be victorious. But this absolute superiority only lasts as long as the power structure of the state is intact, that is, as long as orders are followed and the police and army are ready to use their weapons. "
As in other works, she again advocates the political participation of citizens in the state. Because: "Power is indeed part of the essence of all state communities, [...] but not violence." Violence is instrumental and always serves a purpose. On the other hand, she describes power (like peace) as something "absolute", as an "end in itself". The power structures then precede goals and outlast them. If the state - as Arendt defines it - is organized and institutionalized power, the question of its "end purpose" makes no sense. According to Arendt, power needs legitimacy , but violence can never be legitimate. Violence can "destroy" power, but it cannot "create" it.
Again Arendt devotes himself to the question of guilt, this time using the example of the contemporary oppression of blacks in the USA. While the white liberals had answered the justified complaints of the “Negro population” with the statement “All are guilty”, the Black Power movement used this avowal to spark a “black anger” against the “white man”. “Where everyone is guilty, there is none; There is no better protection against the discovery of those who are really guilty or responsible who could put an end to grievances than collective confessions of guilt, ”emphasizes Arendt.
From their point of view, violence is only “rational” if it is used to pursue short-term goals. Long-term goals are therefore not predictable for people who act politically, since there is no necessary historical development in any direction. Arendt emphasizes that violence can "dramatize grievances and draw public attention to them". She therefore calls for an amendment to the constitution that should exempt symbolic violence, such as sit-ins (sit-ins), from punishment ( civil disobedience ).
According to Arendt, there have been few authors who have glorified violence for its own sake. She names Georges Sorel , Wilfredo Pareto and Frantz Fanon . These "harbored a deeper hatred of society and made a far more radical break with their moral code than the conventional left, whose main motivation was pity."
Student rebellion and violence
Arendt welcomes the worldwide student rebellion as an originally morally motivated movement that has contributed to the peaceful reform of universities, especially in the USA, but has always been problematic when it used violence or pursued long-term political goals. The author examines published texts, especially those of the German and American movements, and evaluates the practice of the American student and civil rights movement and the Black Panther organization.
In 1968 she wrote to the son of her friend Erich Cohn-Bendit in exile in Paris, the student leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit , that his father would have been proud of him had he been able to follow his son's commitment in May in Paris . Despite her positive attitude towards the student movement, she was so severely criticized that many overlooked her general position. In an interview with Adelbert Reif about power and violence , which is printed in the German edition of the book, she clarified this positive basic assessment, but also the demarcation.
In Power and Violence , Arendt emphasizes: The New Left initially fought with great success without violence for the “civil rights of the negroes” and resisted the war in Vietnam . But soon (1969), she criticizes, there was an "escalation of violence". She characterizes the new generation of rebels as "brave" with a "desire to act". In view of the threat to life on earth from technical progress, this one acts more consciously than the older one. "[...] those who are most violently and uncompromisingly indignant about them [the rebels], (are) mostly also of the opinion that we live in the best of all possible worlds." As a result, they refuse to acknowledge reality .
The student movement is local and therefore diverse, although it is a global phenomenon. Theoretical concepts of violence that determine the rhetoric of the New Left are related to e.g. B. by Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre . There is a risk of declaring violence a “panacea”. Thoughts, emotions and ideas about violence and heroes came to life, which initially expressed themselves in "big talk". Marx believed that he had already buried these ideas , argues the political theorist. The realization of thoughts of revenge and blind anger turn human dreams into nightmares.
- “How seldom have there been slave revolts in history, where do we hear of revolts by the humiliated and insulted. And where such dreams have ever come true, it was the unleashing of 'blind rage' that turned the dream into a nightmare for everyone. "
Even in the event of victory, neither “the world” nor “the system” would change, only “the personnel”.
She sees the impetus for violence at universities and on the streets of the western industrialized countries in the rebels' goals "to tear the mask off the face of the enemy", "to expose his machinations and manipulations that allow him to rule without the use of violence" , d. H. also at the risk of destruction, to provoke actions so that the truth may come to light.
However, she does not see self-defense as irrational violence. She rejects the violent response to state hypocrisy insofar as it provokes the state's “hunt for suspects”. As an example, she cites a pamphlet by German students that Der Spiegel quoted in early 1969 and made the following comments:
- "To believe: 'Only when the state practices violence openly can we fight and destroy this shitty society with appropriate means', one must obviously have gone mad."
This vulgarized variant of the communist politics of the 1930s shows the "political nonsense" of "believers". The author notes that German students are more inclined to theorize than their fellow students in countries with a different political tradition. Therefore, the isolation of the movement in Germany is particularly pronounced. According to Arendt, the German students act as “reminders and reminders” for the elderly, which makes their aversion even greater.
Arendt is particularly critical of the fact that the German student rebels do not seriously advocate recognition of the Oder-Neisse Line , a question that the political thinker considers to be the linchpin of German foreign policy and also the “touchstone of German nationalism ”.
The author deals with the use of collective military and revolutionary violence, whereby - here she quotes Fanon - "individualistic values are the first to disappear". In their place comes the so-called comradeship, which is felt more intensely than all forms of friendship or solidarity.
According to Arendt, there is a “magic of collectively violent behavior”. This fascination with "brotherhood" can be found in all such situations, including on the battlefield. Our own death is accompanied by the immortality of the group "to which we belong". It seems as if the immortal life force is current where the violence prevails. However, Arendt notes, these elementary experiences have never led to “permanent political institutions”. Rather, they lead to “false hopes”, namely that “a new community” and a “new person” could emerge from them. She cites Rudi Dutschke as an example , who represents the “ utopian nonsense” of the “formation of the new man”. However, this is an illusion, "because no human bond is more transitory than brotherhood", which "disappears very quickly when life has returned to normal".
Theories of violence are particularly known from Nietzsche's and Bergson's philosophies of life . Against the background of the apologies of violence Georges Sorel and Wilfredo Pareto she sees the doctrines of violence of the 20th century.
She currently (1969) considers the “community of scientists and intellectuals” ( Daniel Bell ) to be the “true elite ” of the modern world because of the enormous increase in production over the last few decades, which can be ascribed exclusively to scientists. This elite is not tied to classes ; it lacks experience in generating and exercising power. According to Arendt, it feels obliged to cultural and thus also revolutionary traditions, but it is scattered and not necessarily aware of its new role in society. This class , Arendt continues, also includes the “most rebellious” of the students, who are now trying to get recognition from those who are hostile to them, “because any disturbance in the smooth functioning of consumer society would hit them most seriously.” Others Stelle emphasizes that the vast majority of young rebels would be only too happy to give up their policies of alienation and would do anything at the first serious opportunity, not to help overthrow the system but to get it going again.
All over the world, Arendt writes, there is one common feature of all student unrest: the fight against bureaucrats . At first glance, the Eastern movements for freedom of speech and thought differ from the Western ones, which already have these achievements and even consider them to be a kind of “fraud,” emphasizes Arendt. The rebels of the East, however, demand the preconditions for political action, whereas those of the West oppose the prevalence of “gigantic”, “anonymous” “administrative apparatus”, “the emergence of huge party bureaucracies” and the lack of opportunity for political action.
Political participation of citizens as an alternative
Arendt refers to Pavel Kohout , who in the spring of 1968, at the height of the Czechoslovak experiment , demanded the free citizen as citizen co-ruler, i.e. H. a participatory democracy that has been opposed to modern representative systems everywhere in the West in recent years . It comes from the best revolutionary tradition: "the council system, this form of government that has been destroyed again and again and is the only authentic form of the revolution;" this does not require violence. Their glorification is rather a consequence of the modern “withdrawal from practice”. Arendt considers it uncertain whether the "riots" in the American ghettos and the "unrest" in the universities are the beginning of something new.
In the USA, she sees the danger that the Senate and the House of Representatives, as legislative institutions based on the separation of powers , will be replaced by the executive , i.e. H. from the president , more and more disempowered. Any loss of power opens the door to violence, "because rulers who feel that power is slipping out of their hands have only very rarely in history been able to resist the temptation to replace it with violence."
Opposite Reif (1970), Arendt speaks about a possible, but very unlikely, new form of government, the federal council state , with a parliament to shape opinion through diversity without party representatives. But it also points out that all historical attempts to introduce a council system have failed.
Circumstances of the time and reception
The Arendt biographer Elisabeth Young-Bruehl (1982) explains the circumstances under which the work was created. According to her, Arendt and her husband Heinrich Blücher were initially enthusiastic about the largely non-violent student rebellion in France . In the USA, too, the thinker spoke out in favor of the most peaceful forms of fundamental protest possible on the basis of her analysis of the difference between power and violence. It turned against the justification of revolutionary violence by Marx, Sorel or Sartre. According to Arendt at an event in late 1967, state violence against civil protest could mean the end of the republic. But the same danger exists if the rebels do not shrink from 'armed revolt'. A little later, she partially approved of violence the role of dramatizing a situation. After experiencing violence, e.g. B. at demonstrations or the occupation of universities, it again took its original position. Arendt never took part in mass actions, rather she commented from the perspective of an observer who wanted to strengthen democracy.
Jürgen Habermas (1981) describes Hannah Arendt's concept of power in contrast to the different purpose-oriented teleological statements about it in Max Weber and Talcott Parsons . Arendt, on the other hand, develops a communicative model of action in which the results of the exchange of equal citizens for the purpose of understanding a common will become an end in itself. Institutions are built and protected because of such power. Arendt's central thesis is: “No political leadership can replace power with violence with impunity; and it can only gain power from an undeformed public. ”Habermas judges Arendt and Karl Jaspers as elitist, but at the same time radical democratic . Critically, he notes that Arendt's narrowing of the political to power generated through communication causes her to negatively identify all strategic elements of power as violence in politics. In addition, she neglects the economy as well as society and can not grasp manifestations of structural violence . According to Arendt's model, according to Habermas 1992, power that emerges through communication produces legitimate law - a system of rights that, according to Habermas, is dependent on sanctioning, organizational and executive functions. Your model explains the origin of political power, but not the “process of exercising power” and the “struggle for positions”.
In the Arendt-Handbuch (2011), Winfried Thaa describes the essay, as the quintessence of Arendt's thought, as an introduction to her work.
output
- Hannah Arendt: Power and Violence. (Original edition: On Violence. New York 1970). Piper, TB; Munich, Zurich; 1st edition 1970, 10th edition 1995, ISBN 978-3-492-20001-1 . Appendix: Adelbert Reif : Interview with Hannah Arendt on power and violence, 1970
Secondary literature
- Jürgen Habermas: Hannah Arendt . In: Philosophical-Political Profiles. (1981), Suhrkamp TB, Frankfurt a. M. 1987, ISBN 3-518-28259-X , pp. 223-248, in particular: Hannah Arendts Concept of Power (1976)
- Jürgen Habermas: Hannah Arendt's concept of power. In: Politics, Art, Religion. Essays on Contemporary Philosophers. Reclam, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-150-09902-1 (first: Merkur. Journal for European Thinking , No. 341, 30th year, October, Ernst Klett, Stuttgart 1976, focus: In Memoriam Hannah Arendt. ISBN 3129737014 , Pp. 946–960)
- Winfried Thaa: Power and violence / On Violence. In: Wolfgang Heuer, Bernd Heiter, Stefanie Rosenmüller (eds.): Arendt manual. Life, work, effect. JB Metzler, Stuttgart Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02255-4 , pp. 114-117
- Elisabeth Young-Bruehl: Hannah Arendt. Life, work and time. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2004, ISBN 3-596-16010-3 . Pp. 562-576. (American. Original edition For Love of the World. 1982)
Footnotes
- ^ Elisabeth Young-Bruehl: Hannah Arendt. Life, work and time. Frankfurt a. M. 2004, p. 573
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 10
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 11f
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 12
- ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche coined the term will to power
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 41
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 42
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 45
- ↑ see: Elements and origins of total domination
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 51
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 49
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, pp. 52f, 57
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 65
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 66
- ^ Adalbert Reif: Interview with Hannah Arendt. (1970) In: Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 109
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, pp. 18–21
- ↑ The words best of all possible worlds is the philosopher Leibniz back
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 21
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 23f
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 24
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 66
- ↑ Arendt quotes here from: When and how . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1969, p. 30 ( Online - Feb. 10, 1969 ).
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 99
- ↑ see: Political Religion
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 99
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 100
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 67
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 68
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 69
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 70
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 72f
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 73
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 85
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 80
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 81f
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, pp. 25, 82
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 25
- ↑ Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, p. 86
- ^ Adalbert Reif: Interview with Hannah Arendt. (1970) In: Hannah Arendt: Power and violence. TB; Munich, Zurich 2003, pp. 132f, 131. Arendt here explicitly refers to her work About the Revolution.
- ^ Elisabeth Young-Bruehl: Hannah Arendt. Life, work and time. Frankfurt a. M. 2004, p. 563f
- ^ Elisabeth Young-Bruehl: Hannah Arendt. Life, work and time. Frankfurt a. M. 2004, pp. 565f, 569
- ^ Elisabeth Young-Bruehl: Hannah Arendt. Life, work and time. Frankfurt a. M. 2004, p. 567ff
- ^ Elisabeth Young-Bruehl: Hannah Arendt. Life, work and time. Frankfurt a. M. 2004, pp. 567, 573
- ↑ Jürgen Habermas: Philosophical-political profiles. (1981), Suhrkamp TB, Frankfurt a. M. 1987, p. 229ff
- ↑ Jürgen Habermas: Philosophical-political profiles. (1981), Suhrkamp TB, Frankfurt a. M. 1987, citation p. 234
- ↑ Jürgen Habermas: Philosophical-political profiles. (1981), Suhrkamp TB, Frankfurt a. M. 1987, pp. 336, 240f
- ↑ Jürgen Habermas: factuality and validity. Contributions to the discourse theory of law and the democratic constitutional state. Frankfurt a. M. 1992, pp. 182-186
- ↑ Winfried Thaa: In: Arendt manual. Stuttgart, Weimar 2011, p. 114