BALIBAR Etienne Balibar Politics as War, War as Politics

7/23/2019 BALIBAR Etienne Balibar Politics as War, War as Politics

1/23

Etienne Balibar: Politics As War, War As Politics

Etienne Balibar is professor in Paris X Nanterre and University of California, Irvine. He

was invited to participate in the first edition of the Dictionary of Warbut unfortunately

could not a!e it to "ran!furt. Instead he has sent us as his contribution an essay entitled#

$Politics %s &ar, &ar %s Politics ' Post'Clausewit(ian )ariations$. It is the te*t of a public

lecture he +ave at the %lice Berline aplan Center for the Huanities, Northwestern

University, Evanston, on -ay , /001.

We seem to be really living in a post-clausewitzian era, in a double sense of this expression.

First, there is a lively ongoing debate, which is not restricted to the narrow range of

polemologists, concerning the clausewitzian or non-clausewitzian character of

contemporary wars. his debate started about !" years ago, when the typical #old-War era

obsession with mutual destruction of the $reat %owers gave place to a &een interest among

military experts and political theorists for low intensity conflicts, mainly located in the

hird World 'a category still very much in use after the (econd World as such had

collapsed), involving interventions from technologically sophisticated armies from the

*orth against guerrilla-type adversaries, therefore highly dissymmetrical.

+artin van #reveld from srael and (amuel untington from the ( seem to have been

among the first to launch the slogan of non-clausewitzian warfare in a post-clausewitzian

political environment. hen came the ethnic wars in former /ugoslavia and other parts ofthe world, which prompted the 0ritish peace theorist and politologist +ary 1aldor and

others to launch the idea of *ew Wars versus 2ld Wars, involving historical sub3ects

which are not *ation-(tates with their regular armies, again suggesting that the explanatory

value of ideas deriving from #lausewitz4s celebrated wor& 2n War 5 even generalized and

adapted to new circumstances, new strategic interests and new technologies, which had

been a ma3or preoccupation of War theorists for 6"7 years 5 had reached its limit, and was

henceforth unable to account for the &ind of interaction now arising between war and

politics, but also religion, race, economy. 8ust as, at a certain point, after a glorious career,

9uclidian $eometry had to give way to *on-9uclidian $eometry to describe the real

physical world, #lausewitzian strategy and polemology should give way to a new non-#lausewitzian understanding of the historical world, allowing another type of

calculations.
http://dictionaryofwar.org/http://dictionaryofwar.org/http://dictionaryofwar.org/


2/23

his did not prevent some analysts of contemporary wars to advocate a continuous use of

#lausewitzian schemes and concepts, both analytical and normative, am particularly

thin&ing of :lain 8oxe in his remar&able ;49mpire du #haos 'translated as 9mpire of

namely the fact that, in the pure #lausewitzian model, the

sub3ect of the defensive strategy which in the end became victorious, to use a

philosophical category, could be identified with a certain typically modern unity of army,

people and state, either already given, or formed in the war process itself. his was also the

case for the =ietnamese resistance to the :merican invasion, but remains more than

doubtful and probably inade?uate in the case of the war in ra?, where nobody except some

abstract ideologues of popular resistance or anti-imperialist 8ihad could identify thesub3ect of the anti-( operations in any simple manner, and the very existence of an

ra?i (tate and unified people is at sta&e.

: similar difficulty seems to be affecting the other way of bringing bac& clausewitzian or

?uasi-clausewitzian ideas, or words, into the reading of the current situation, which

concerns the representation of a duel 'at world scale) between two adversaries, each of

which seems to be see&ing the annihilation of the other, called by the ( :dministration

the War on error. n spite of the blatant dissymmetry of the two enemies, it is tempting

to evo&e #lausewitz4s idea of the rising to the extremes, which according to him is the

law of the pure war. 0ut again the analogy stumbles on the fact that, in #lausewitz4smodel, the mobile of this rising to the extremes of violence is the will of each enemy to

reach a certain vital political goal through the acceptance of a higher ris&, which is

presented as a rational wager.


3/23

herefore it also involves a principle of limitation, or self-limitation. War for the sa&e of

war or at the expense of the destruction of one4s power is ruled out from a #lausewitzian

point of view, and so is the idea of a war without limits, either in space or in time, against

an indeterminate enemy identified with evil as such. %erhaps this could be conceived, but

then it should not be called war> another name, less political and more theological or

mythical, should be loo&ed for.

owever simplistic and abstract such considerations may sound, they can give us an idea of

the reasons why, today as in previous situations along the 6"7 years that passed since the

publication of =om 1riege by +arie von #lausewitz after the manuscript left by her late

husband, the reflection on the intrinsic, perhaps constitutive, relationship between war and

politics remains profoundly post-clausewitzian, but this time in a more critical sense,

notwithstanding the necessity to revisit and possibly reverse, or alter each and every of

#lausewitz4s propositions and definitions. f had time would try and argue on the model

of what #laude ;efort and :lthusser have written on +achiavelli that there is a never

ending labor or perlaboration of #lausewitz4s text within contemporary political theory

that goes along with a permanent trouble produced by the reading of #lausewitz on

theorists who, at the same time, do not recognize in him their definition of the political, and

cannot deny that he touches the heart of what ma&es politics thin&able, albeit not always, or

not entirely rational. 0ut this would pre-empt conclusions deprived of a sufficient textual

basis. ;et us therefore return, precisely, to the texts, and examine in a schematic mannersome of their conceptual singularities.

will divide my presentation in two rather une?ual parts, each of which would indeed

deserve a much more developed treatment > the first and longest dealing with some

problems of interpretation, or better said, reconstruction of #lausewitz4s theory of the

articulation of war and politics@ the second with a derivation from #lausewitz and a

reply to #lausewitz that, in different ways, can be found, either explicitly or implicitly, in

the +arxist tradition, where a class counterpart to the #lausewitzian conception of

national wars can be retrieved. :fter which, in a conclusion inevitably very brief, will

return to the issue of the conception of the sub3ect 'or the non-sub3ect, or the impossiblesub3ect) which is implied in these ways of articulating War and %olitics in an intrinsic unity.


4/23

;et us now retrieve some of the problems raised by the reading of #lausewitz4s boo&. o

find an internal consistency, either at the philosophical level or at the pragmatic level, in

what 'we should never forget that) remains an unfinished wor&, whose status has affinities

with the %ensAes of %ascal or the %rison *oteboo&s of :ntonio $ramsci, and whose author

has declared himself that he wanted to rewrite it entirely to ta&e into account a crucial

rectification that occurred to him in the middle, is a hard tas& that has produced hundreds of

commentaries. *ot ignoring them, or rather some of them, will cut through and propose a

procedure of interpretation perhaps incomplete or biased, but hope not artificial, which

relies on the observation that some of #lausewitz4s proposition never ceased to raise

difficulties or call for renewed understanding. (electing four such propositions, will try to

assemble them into a &ind of system or axiomatics, and will describe #lausewitz4s

theoretical pro3ect as a continuous attempt at controlling their excessive conse?uences,

either ta&en separately, or reacting one upon the other. :nd it is the same group ofproblematic theses that will suggest post-clausewitzian thin&ers tried to understand in a

different way, or to reformulate, or to dissociate from one another.

#lausewitz4s most famous and most fre?uently discussed propositions 'at least today), well

beyond the circle of military experts, are the proposition which defines or characterizes war

as the continuation of politics by other means 'sometimes > the mere continuation, the

$erman term being Fortsetzung), and the proposition which states that defence as a

strategy 'what is a strategyB this ?uestion is also clearly involved) has an intrinsic

superiority over attac& or the offensive, to which alluded earlier. ;et me briefly

comment on each of them, but also suggest that they should be completed by two otherpropositions. 2nly this system or axiomatics of four virtually independent theses, will

suggest, allows us to understand where the intentions and the difficulties lie.

he continuation thesis is repeated twice, with some significant nuances, in two separate

places, 0oo& and 0oo& = of =om 1riege, which not only find themselves at the two

opposite ends of the text, but also, according to the author4s indications, correspond to

different conceptions of his ob3ect.

2n the one side, the accent is put on the idea that war is indeed a way to continue to

pursue political goals, to pursue political goals by other means, or through theintroduction of other means, which are the means of actual violence, or even of extreme

violence 5 not only threat or constraint. mplicit here seems to be the idea that the usual or


5/23

normal means of politics are non-violent, which in certain circumstances becomes

insufficient, therefore political action would find its absolute limit if it were not for the

possibility of using other means 'violent means) beyond the normal ones, thus expanding

the possibilities 'and the power) of politics, and achieving its goals, but perhaps at the ris&

of an uncontrollable situation, of entering a dangerous field, and a limit domain, where not

only the existence of the political sub3ect is in danger, but the political nature of the action,

or political logic of politics itself, can become subverted. t is in the same context that

#lausewitz would bring in the idea that the use of violent means 5 the means of war, and

the means of these means> the institution of the military, the development of patriotism, etc.

5 reacts upon politics itself, or modifies politics. %olitics cannot ma&e use of the violent

means of war without being transformed itself by the use of these means, and perhaps

radically transformed, denatured. he problem of the articulation of politics and war is

therefore immediately posed in dialectical terms, in terms of a process where the identity ofthe initial terms is at sta&e.

0ut then, there is a second formulation, in which the accent is put on the idea that war is

nothing else than the continuation of politics by other means, therefore not a trespassing

of the normal limits of the political, but 3ust another possibility within these limits, a

shifting from certain political instruments to others depending on the circumstances, the

forces and the interests at sta&e '#lausewitz explicitly uses the term instrument) for the

political sub3ect, who in turn becomes precisely characterized by its capacity 'which we

may call a sovereign capacity) to use of both &inds of means, violent and non-violent, or

not to limit itself to the use of non-violent means. With such a formulation comes indeed acertain representation of the rational character of politics, particularly illustrated by the way

in which it ma&es use of violence to achieve some of its goals or handle some situations,

but again this proves to be a dialectical notion, or to involve a latent tension and a notion of

ris&. (ince it can be read both ways, or either as a description or as a prescription, either as

an assertion that politics ma&es use of the violent means of war without changing its nature,

trespassing its limits, or as a warning that the violent means of war remain political means

only if their own conse?uences and, again, retroactive effects on those who use them, their

own logic do not escape the political rationality or subvert it, i.e. does not become an

independent logic. 0ut in fact would this be an independent logicB What #lausewitz

seems to imply is that you either have an instrumentalization of war by politics, or an

instrumentalization of politics by war, and since the second is impossible or utterly

undesirable, it must be the first, therefore #lausewitz writes that there is a political logic

and only a grammar of war, and the first has a primacy over the second.


6/23

*ow it seems to me that the difficulty involved here, which is anything but easy to solve

either for us or for #lausewitz himself, and which pushed him alternatively to different

formulations, can be identified through the following considerations. What seems to be the

case is that war, with respect to politics, has to be considered twice, from two different

angles. t is not the whole of politics 'since politics has other procedures than war, e?ually

necessary), but it concerns and affects the essence of politics, which is revealed and,

practically, determined by the ways in which it recurs to war, and the conse?uences on

politics itself of the political use of the violent means of war. #ertainly what #lausewitz

wants to avoid 'and we will see that it is not without difficulties, and that the ?uestion &eeps

haunting his successors) is to assert that recurring to war is the essence of politics, that the

use of the violent means of war, with its logical and existential implications 'such as the

necessity to designate one or several enemies), defines the concept of the political, which

in turn can lead to the reversal of the initial statement 'namely that politics is the

continuation, or the conse?uence of war). 0ut #lausewitz wants 'or needs) to be able to

ma&e the ?uestion of the use of war as an instrument, and the ?uestion of the converse

effects of this use upon politics itself its crucial characteristic.

t would be tempting to see #lausewitz4s formula as a modern reformulation of the old

Coman 3uridical and political principle > cedant arma togae, the armed activities of war and

the military institution shall obey the primacy of the civil magistrate, but this formula

which has a normative value, does not account for the problem that obsesses #lausewitz,namely the fact that war used as a political means reacts upon politics and transforms it, not

into something else but into something new, a new political form where it meets with its

most profound and difficult problems, and where its very possibility is at sta&e, and at ris&.

2n the other hand, to permanently sub3ect war to the primacy of the political is to assert

that war is 'and can remain) rational, this rationality being essentially expressed in a

practical relationship between means and ends, which form a chain, therefore being a

teleological rationality which comes from the political itself, which sets a measure for the

rationality of war. his is all the more remar&able because #lausewitz is insistent on the

fact that war reaches the extremes of violence.

0ut to reach the extremes of violence, where actual destruction is at sta&e, is not to exist in

the form of pure violence. t is at the level of what #lausewitz call tactics, which he

identifies with the management of combat '$efecht), that the extremes of violence are


7/23

reached> this is where men &ill and die, individually and in masses. 0ut tactics and the

combat are not ends in themselves, as parts of the war they have to be sub3ected to

strategic ob3ectives, which themselves serve political goals. We can already understand

here why the ?uestion of strategy 'its definition, its function) is the most important one in

#lausewitz, and perhaps also the most difficult, which in the end seems to escape. (trategy

articulates within the analysis of war 'both historical and conceptual) the level of extreme

violence 'the absolute means, so to spea&), and the level of political rationality 'the absolute

ends). 0ringing in an anthropological terminology, we might also say that the violence

that #lausewitz associates with politics under the name war is not un?ualified violence

'the formula does not say that violence is the continuation of politics), it is institutional

violence, which has to remain such. herefore #lausewitz4s problem is> how is it possible

for violence to reach the extreme and to remain institutional, within the limits of an

institutionB What happens or would happen if this unity of opposites proved unsustainableB

We may perhaps already understand here how and why post-clausewitzian variations are

generated, each time indeed for practical reason and in a given historical circumstance >

formally they will maintain the principle war is a continuation of politics by other means,

the means of extreme violence, using violence as an instrument hypothetically sub3ected to

the political rationality, or teleology, but they will give completely new contents, either to

the notion of the political, or to the definition of what is a war, or to both, and conversely,

it is only through this new interpretation of the terms politics, war, violence, that they willbe able either to maintain or to ?uestion the idea of the continuation. 0y doing this, they

will exhibit the circularity of the #lausewitzian idea, and also its productivity far beyond

the initial conditions. 0ut would argue that this becomes possible only if we ta&e into

account the other proposition which, already in #lausewitz, is associated with the general

principle in a more specific set of axioms.

he second proposition to be found in =om 1riege that is probably most well &nown

concerns the strategic superiority of the defence over the attac&. :gain it is not located

in a single place and has several reformulations, but the main developments are in 0oo& =

and = which concern defence and attac& and contain reciprocal discussions on this point.


8/23

#lausewitz is eager to ma&e clear that the idea of the superiority of the defensive concerns

neither the tactical level nor the political as such, therefore it is typical for the relatively

autonomous level of strategy and it can be said that the whole ob3ect of a theory of strategy

aims at establishing this thesis and ?ualifying it according to its many conditions and

circumstances. We find here again a typical circle. here is no ?uestion of asserting a

tactical superiority of the defensive in general, much the contrary, the idea is that tactical

attac&s are an essential part of every defensive strategy since they exploit momentary and

local imbalances in the relationship of forces in order to harm the enemy and progressively

destroy its capacity to wage the war, that is to move and decide, which was maximum in the

moment of the initial attac&. :mong the later followers of #lausewitz, +ao Dedong in his

theorization of guerrilla warfare will consistently develop this complementarity, but it is

already clearly there in #lausewitz. here is also no ?uestion of asserting a superiority of a

defensive politics or a politics of defence 'for instance, national defence, or defence ofthe national territory, or independence) as intrinsically superior, and this is probably the

most difficult point. (uch a thesis would amount, it seems to me, to a realistic version of

the 3ust war theory, or one aspect of it, the ius ad bellum, whose modern version is precisely

that only defensive wars, waged by nations to react to an exterior aggression, are legitimate.

n this case they would be not only legitimate, but victorious, at least in the long run, and

all things considered, which means with possibly many exceptions. 0ut this cannot be

#lausewitz4s conception> #lausewitz has no moral or theological conception of war@ he is a

typical advocate of what #arl (chmitt later will systematize as the ius publicum

9uropaeum, the idea that nation-states have an intrinsic right to recur to war to achieve their

political goals or pursue their interests, or what they view as their interests. he idea of thesuperiority of defence does not concern the political goals 'in $erman Dwec&e), it concerns

only, so to spea&, the military ob3ectives 'in $erman Diele) through which these political

goals can be achieved, and it does indeed impose an intrinsic limitation 5 should we say a

material or materialisticB 5 upon the formal rationality of the articulation of politics

and war. his articulation is rational, or displays a rational structure which ma&es it

available for theory, inasmuch as politics imposes the ultimate goals of war 'we might also

say> the ultimate goals of any war are always political, whether consciously or not, whether

the actors are conscious or not of the determinations of their politics), but also inasmuch as

it is the feasibility of the military ob3ectives that decide whether a politics was rational or

not, most of the time in retrospect, and this will be indeed settled in the form of actual

combat. *ow we find ourselves again in a strange situation> there is no doubt that


9/23

strategy is the main ob3ect of #lausewitz4s reflection, to which he devotes most of his

analyses, comparing historical situations, discussing the examples of military genius which

are examples of strategic genius, isolating a specific grammatical concept which is the

concept of war plan or strategic coherence, trying to indicate the geographic and

temporal limits within which such a plan can be devised and testes 'the campaign, the

theatre of war, etc.). owever these efforts are paradoxical> the more they become

precise and substantial, the more the autonomy of their ob3ect seems to escape or become

problematic, or rather involved in a logical paradox, as if the main ob3ective of strategic

thin&ing and planning were precisely to demonstrate on the field, that is, the battlefield, that

there actually can exist, in the long run, something li&e an autonomy of strategy. (trategy

concentrates the inner tensions and perhaps the aporia of the concept of war. t seems to me

that three additional considerations can illuminate this point.

First, this is where theory and history meet in a problematic unity. #lausewitz is

insistent on the fact that wars are always singular processes, and there can be nothing such

as a deductive science of war. 0ut there can be a reflection on the regularities and the

tendencies of the war-politics articulation, in the 1antian sense of the #riti?ue of 3udgment,

which remains hypothetical. We might say that the concept of the autonomy of strategy,

which is entirely concerned with its own conditions and limitations, and their variations in

history, is a regulative concept, or a category of 3udgment in that sense, it is permanently

testing its own validity. We may also suspect that #lausewitz has an interest, both rationaland sub3ective, in this reflection, which is to decide, in a given historical con3uncture,

whether the lesson to be drawn from history, and more precisely from the history he has

been ta&ing part in, namely the history of the revolutionary and imperial wars between

France and the rest of 9urope, showing that with time a defensive strategy is bound to win,

whether this lesson, repeat, can be extended to the future. :nd whether this means that

wars will remain an instrument of politics, or in some sense, might become 'or already have

become) impossible ?ua continuations of politics, or only at the ris& of annihilating their

logical function. t is stri&ing to see that this ?uestion haunting #lausewitz, which is

involved in his own argument concerning the superiority of the defensive strategy, in the

reasons he gives for this superiority, as a tendencial result of history, will be permanently


10/23

haunting the post-clausewitzian reflections on war 5 today more than ever. #lausewitz

presents his thesis as a paradox 'how come that the strategy which only has a negative

result, defence, can be proved superior to the strategy which has a positive result, attac& or

con?uestB), and he wonders if this paradox signals a latent impossibility that would become

manifest when the means of war are pushed to the extreme.

(econd, we should probably transform #lausewitz4s formulations in order to overcome the

apparent scheme of a comparison between the respective ?ualities of two different

strategies, one of which would be the offensive and the other the defensive, as if they

existed separately, into a more profound ?uestion of the transformation, therefore the

reversal of the defensive into offensive, or the ?uest of the point of inflection where the

defence transforms into attac&. his is a ?uestion of the space and time of the war, therefore

of its history, and a ?uestion of its actors, therefore again of its history in a substantial

sense. War, writes #lausewitz, is a complex form of the duel, which develops over time,

i.e. progressively transforms the relationship of forces between its own actors, who

themselves can be complex actors, since they involve governments and peoples,

institutional and human forces which merge in the typical form of the army 'armies are

the general form in which historical actors present themselves in the domain of war),

alliances and changes in the alliances, etc. :nd the time of war is an oriented time, which

leads from attac& to defence and from defence to attac&@ not a pure logical time, with a

preestablished cycle, but a historical time which is dominated by the tendencial superiorityof all the factors which in the long run reinforce one of the strategic posture. he general

notion used by #lausewitz to summarize these temporal effects is friction. #ontrary to what

the connotations of the term might suggest, it is not a mechanical notion, but a historical

one, which integrates moral and technical, psychological and sociological factors. hus

#lausewitz4s problem, the very ob3ect of a reflective strategy, becomes the possibility to

understand why an attac& that is not immediately successful 'or completely successful) is

bound to progressively yield to its defensive adversary, which means should be used to

postpone this inevitable result, and above all to understand how a defensive strategy is a

preparation for a victorious counter-offensive, which means that the counter-offensive is

prepared from within the defensive itself and the defensive in a sense is continued,prolonged 'fortgesetzt) in the phase of offensive, in an immanent manner. here must be an


11/23

ideal point of inflection, and the whole ?uestion is whether this point can be identified, and

with what &ind of event it should be identified. his ?uestion was not #lausewitz4s absolute

invention, but he gave it a theoretical formulation. t was staged on a grand scale by the

confrontation between the offensive strategy of *apoleon and the defensive strategy of

1utuzov during the #ampaign of Cussia in 6E6!, in which #lausewitz himself too& part,

having decided after the defeat of %russia and its more or less voluntary incorporation into

the coalition led by the victor, to move to the other camp and enrol in the Cussian army as a

staff officer. he dramatic moment, to be commented again and again by war theorists in

the 6th century and beyond, including Friedrich 9ngels and ;eo olstoy who both relied

on the account of the campaign written by #lausewitz before he embar&ed in the writing of

=om 1riege 'and published later by #lausewitz4s sister), was the battle of 0orodino, with

its heavy death toll on the two great armies of nearly e?ual size and strength, which

appeared as a tactical victory but proved a strategic defeat for *apoleon, and although it

immediately lead to the con?uest of the Cussian capital, in fact prepared his final defeat.

0ut this confrontation also displayed some of the typical conditions under which the

inflection ta&es place > not only the duration of the campaign, the immensity of the

geographic environment, the counter-productive effects of the con?uest itself in terms of

raising the hostility of the population, etc., but the combination of regular warfare and

guerrilla warfare 'a new notion, if not reality, imported from (pain), and the incorporation

of the people in arms as the main actor of the war on both sides.

Which leads us to a third remar&, where the dialectical intrication of the three levels, called

politics, strategy, and tactics, becomes even more apparent. his is perhaps

#lausewitz4s most profound dilemma. t concerns the relationship between what he would

himself describe as two logical opposite terms or extremes in the understanding of the

war> on the one side, the fact that where there is war there is a possibility of annihilation

which is sought and has to be faced, and the fact that the proper political capacity within

war itself is the capacity to decide whether a war that has been started should be continued

or not, given the ris&s that it involves and the effects it produces at the political level, or

should be interrupted> when to finish a war, and at what price, in short. :s for

annihilation, #lausewitz clearly believes that there is a limit to it, which should beapproached but not crossed. e considers what he calls absolute war, where the duel rises


12/23

to the extreme, involving all the forces of the state or the nation, but not what has been

called later total war, where the civilians are targeted as well as the armed forces. he

annihilation that is at sta&e in a war that continues politics is the physical annihilation of the

armies, or their reduction to impotency, their disbanding, etc., which ma&es it impossible

for one adversary to resist the imposition of the other4s will, or goals. Which conversely

poses the problem of the capacity to halt a war. he reason why #lausewitz is so admirative

of Frederic& , &ing of %russia, called the great Frederic&, is that he proved able to control

his own victories and ma&e peace at a favourable moment to retain some of his con?uests,

and the reason why *apoleon4s genius was bound to fail and end miserably, pulling his

country with him into defeat, was that he found himself in a logic of con?uest where the

political goals could be achieved only at the cost of extending the scale of war beyond any

preestablished limit, where the defensive should prevail and prepare a devastating counter-

offensive, re-establishing the status ?uo ante. 0ut there is a strong tension between these

two extremes, since the capacity to stop the war 'again a negative strategic notion, given

primacy by #lausewitz in a paradoxical manner) is the greatest when the war only includes

partial forces and resources, i.e. remains far away from the prospect of annihilation for one

or both of the adversaries, whereas the strategic goal of annihilation materially involves the

engagement of forces and resources, above all human forces, which cannot be withdrawn at

will from the battlefield, or only at the ris& of bac&firing on the existence of the state. :gain

what is at sta&e here is a point of e?uilibrium which perhaps does not exist, or is an

impossible point, a point of impossibility for what it ma&es possible, the articulation ofpolitics and war, i.e. which raises the spectre of the impossibility of war, while ma&ing it

intelligible. Which leads me to some final remar&s.

said in the beginning that we could arrange #lausewitz4s ma3or propositions in the form of

an axiomatics, whose status itself is hypothetic and problematic rather than apodictic. (ince

now have only evo&ed two of the propositions forming this axiomatics, each of which

poses hard problems. will have to be very ?uic& on the remaining two, but cannot spare

them because the idea that want to defend is that #lausewitz4s discourse ma&es sense only

as a combination of them all, that his ultimate ?uestion, which is a ?uestion about the

sub3ect of war 'or the political sub3ect of war, therefore the political sub3ect as such,as revealed in war), is a ?uestion that circulates 5 perhaps endlessly, in an aporetic manner

5 between these four propositions. :nd this is also where post-clausewitzian discourses

encroach and found their site within his own discourse.


13/23

he third proposition concerns the distinction between absolute war and limited war.

his is precisely the point on which #lausewitz claimed that he had changed his mind while

writing his boo& 'which remind you remained unfinished) and reached a new position

after which the whole theory should become recast. 0ut this is far from clear, and in fact

calls for a symptomatic reading, after interpreters have tried to solve the riddle in all

possible directions@ by pro3ecting on #lausewitz various epistemological schemes

'dialectical, ideal-typical, etc.). First, #lausewitz hesitates between two terminologies to

designate what is not the absolute war> he spea&s of limited war and of real war, but

to 3ump from there to the idea that real war, which actually ta&e place, are always limited,

while absolute wars are only a virtual model, after which we can interpret empirical cases,

but which are not to be observed in practice, is much too simple and in fact contradicts the

text. =ery ?uic&ly said, side her with 9mmanuel erray against Caymond :ron, and

believe that #lausewitz4s theory does not reduce the notion of absolute war to a virtual

case or an ideal type, but concerns historical realities, a change of nature of the war which

has been observed in history, and confronts us with a dramatic dilemma. o be sure,

absolute war 3ust as limited war represent antagonistic poles@ they represent extremes

in the logical sense between which real wars must shift and display various degrees and

combinations. 0ut reality has approached each of them in almost pure fashion in at least

two circumstances 5for which believe that we could find e?uivalents in a more recent

period > the 1abinetts&riege or governmental wars of the absolute monarchies in the 6Eth

century, waged by armies of mercenaries or professional soldiers or recruiting by coercionunder the command of a military caste, which aimed at shifting the balance of forces and

realizing antagonistic interests within the so-called 9uropean e?uilibrium, were limited

wars by definition@ even when they involved bloody battles. 0ut the new wars starting

with the French revolution, the =ol&s&riege that involved a nation in arms first arising out

of a popular insurrection, then transformed by *apoleon into an imperialist instrument of

continental hegemony, then in turn matched and fought against by other nations in arms,

with each side developing a nationalist mysti?ue, and fighting for what they believed was

their very existence, were absolute wars, involving a rise to the extremes in terms of

magnitude and violence. his evolution is s&etched in #lausewitz4s extraordinary account

of the world history of warfare in 0oo& =, a model for many subse?uent attempts

'including 9ngel4s in his articles of the *ew :merican #yclopaedia written and published


14/23

in the 6EG74s). :nd #lausewitz4s ?uestion clearly is> which reasons do we have to believe

that this evolution is irreversible, that history is evolving into the direction of the

absolutization of war, so to spea&, and which possibilities do we have to resist this

tendency, which at the same time ma&es war the most serious of all political matters,

where the very existence of nations and states is at sta&e, and in the end could reverse the

primacy of the political over its own instrumentB t is useful to remember here who

#lausewitz personally was> a %russian officer coming from a family of dubious nobility,

with a philosophical education 'mainly 1antian), who had ta&en the ris& of leaving his

country to continue to fight the arch-enemy, privileging the patriotic interest over the

immediate diplomatic arrangements. e would play a decisive role in the transformation of

the %russian army itself into a national army, in the invention of what would become the

huge armies of the 6th and the !7th century based on popular drafting, but he would

certainly not see without anxiety the possibility that this evolution deprive the military caste

and the state bureaucracy of their unmitigated monopoly of the political decision 5 not to

mention the social ris&s involved in the use of partisan or guerrilla warfare, which in

extreme situations is the ultimate weapon. Which brings us to the fourth and last

proposition.

he fourth proposition is also one of the most disputed ones> it states the primacy of moral

factors, again in the last instance i.e. all things considered, over other strategic factors in

the history of wars. When we start loo&ing at the complex series of elements that are listedby #lausewitz under the notion of moral factors and what they imply in philosophical

terms, we find a very complex system of forces. +oral indeed refers to considerations of

morality, but they are inseparable from a broader problematic of the passions, individual

and collective, which animate sub3ects in history. :nd they refer to the individual as well as

the collective. (o you have to ta&e into account both the courage of the soldiers, which

allows an army to confront the ris& of violent death, and the genius of the commander in

chief, which ma&es it possible to replace the infinite complexity of a situation on the theatre

of war by a single intuition, and decide how to move. 0ut you also have to ta&e into

account what #lausewitz calls the intelligence of the (tate, or its political rationality

embodied in some individuals4 capacity to commensurate means and ends, and the people4spatriotism, which forms the bac&ground for the soldier4s capacity to fight and the nation4s

ability to sustain sacrifices of resources and lives, and which is also political in the new,


15/23

modern, sense. pon reflection, it appears that all these moral factors are dimensions or

instantiations of what might be called collective historical agency, or institutional agency,

which is why #lausewitz most of the time discusses them in relation with the problem

which, as said, mirrors the possibility of isolating a strategic relatively autonomous

level, namely as contributing to the consistency of the army, its resistance to dissolution and

its capacity to overwhelm the violence of the enemy. :nd, conversely, the importance laid

on the moral factor, if it is not a way to ignore other factors 'for instance economic and

technical), is indeed a way to sub3ect their own efficacy to the deeper moral instance 'as in

the case of the capacity of a nation to mobilize its economic resources for war by raising

taxes, etc.). it is on this point that later theorists, who deemed themselves more materialistic

or more realistic, criticized #lausewitz sharply, for instance pointing at his relative lac& of

interest for the development of military technologies and in its influence on the historical

transformation of strategies and the outcome of wars. 0ut even +arxists li&e 9ngels, who

devoted a long study 'the article :rmy of the *ew :merican #yclopaedia) to rewriting

the history of warfare from the point of view of the impact of technological changes

associated with successive modes of production, had to loo& for an e?uivalent of what he

called the moral factors, which they found for example in class consciousness and more

generally the influence of social ideologies on the possibility and the development of wars.

When you loo& at the relationship between #lausewitz4s four propositions, you realize that

each of them is at the same time supporting and ?ualifying, or limiting the conse?uences ofthe others, which is why you have to turn in a logical circle indefinitely. (o, for example,

the modern transformation of limited state wars into absolute popular wars gives all its

decisive role to certain moral factors, which in turn prove vital elements of the defensive

strategy and its conversion into counter-offensive, in a sense politicizing the war, but also

producing an ambivalence that threatens political rationality, because patriotism is a

popular passion that the state needs to steer but never masters> patriotism in war becomes

hate of the enemy 5 Feindschaft 5 which includes and overcomes fear, and which is neither

identical with loyalty towards the rulers 'it can even turn against them) nor sub3ectively

controlled by the consideration of interests. t is the realization of politics that can destroy

it. t seems to me that we have here the very secret of #lausewitz4s relentless interrogationabout the sub3ect of war. he immediate sub3ect is the army, but the army is not and can

never be an autonomous being, at least in modern times> it is continuously produced and


16/23

reproduced, and the circumstances of war, as well as their cumulated effects over time,

modify this reproduction. 0ut the army is a monster@ it is the combination and the meeting

point of the state and the people, the two instances into which the idea of the nation splits

again. his was #lausewitz4s dilemma> draw all the conse?uences from the fact that wars

were now possible only in the form of national, therefore nationalistic wars, but control the

new popular power that emerged as such on the historical scene, which might seem to

involve that the state itself permanently run ahead of its people4s passions. his was the

military or strategic e?uivalent of the political problem faced by national states in general>

how to institutionalize the insurrection, or harness the multitude. What is amazing is the

extent to which this problem remained on the agenda beyond the circumstances in which it

had merged as a &ey to the understanding of the political, namely the aftermath of the

revolutionary and imperial wars of the early 6th century.

0ut not without complications, and this is where, in a final part that realize will have now

to be very brief, would li&e to bring in some post-clausewitzian discourses@ limiting

myself for today to the +arxists 'if +arx himself is a +arxistH). he difference here

comes from the fact that +arx had not read #lausewitz, or at least not initially> it is 9ngels

5 nic&named $eneral 9ngels after his brilliant retreat with a detachment of

revolutionaries facing the %russian army in 6EI, and for his permanent interest for military

matters 5 who read #lausewitz with admiration and advised +arx of his importance.

*evertheless, the comparison has to start with a new reading of the #ommunist +anifesto,

and more specifically the phrases in its first chapter which explain that the class struggles

whose successive forms constitute the guiding thread for an understanding of historical

transformations@ and particularly different forms of the state and different institutions of the

political, should be identified with a continuous civil war 'the expression is at the end of

chapter , isolated but conspicuous), whose actors 'or parties) are so to spea& generated in

the process of the war itself, which is now invisible now visible as such, and which can

result, says +arx in an amazing formulation at the beginning of #hapter 2ne, either in the

victory of one of the contending classes, or in their mutual destruction.

ndeed we read these phrases after Foucault4s commentary which establishes the lin& with

#lausewitz 6) by suggesting that #lausewitz has in fact inverted a previous scheme of

interpretation of politics as war, more precisely race war, which was dominating


17/23

9uropean historiography before the French Cevolution and survived it@ !) that the +arxian

notion of the class struggle should be understood as a degenerate form of the race war

'where classes are understood as the continuation of races within :ncien CAgime societies),

3ust as its antagonistic notion in the 6th century, the notion of the race struggle. o

return to the initial idea of the race war, beyond #lausewitz and beyond +arx, would be,

accordingly, to retrieve a certain purity, or authenticity of the political, identified with

conflict as such, or agonism. From this will only &eep the idea that there is a historical and

logical chasse croisA of the notions of war and politics around the emergence of a new

intelligibility of history in terms of class struggles, but will focus, even very briefly,

around what for Foucault is deprived of any interest, namely the precise confrontation

between #lausewitz4s and +arx4s concepts of this articulation.

What is stri&ing first is indeed the fact that, by interpreting class struggles as civil wars,

with their phases of dispersion and concentration, latency and manifestation 'i.e.,

revolutions, in the general sense), +arx is indeed calling a war exactly what #lausewitz

wanted to exclude from the comprehension of the category war. *o more than the

external wars, the national wars, civil wars are forms of pure, indiscriminate violence,

they are also forms of institutional violence, from an anthropological point of view, even if

they can reach degrees of cruelty that seem 'or seemed, before certain contemporary wars)

to bypass the limits of civilization. 0ut civil wars appear 'and have appeared, since the

$ree&s), as the destruction of the typically political institution, the city or the state, andfor this reason in #lausewitzian terms, which clearly anticipate the definition of the (tate as

monopoly of the legitimate use of violence, which could also become phrased as

monopoly of the political use of violence, a civil war is not a political instrument, it is an

anti-political instrument. t is not before (chmitt that anti-political instruments, including

civil wars, are incorporated in the concept of the political in an antinomic manner@ but

leave this aside for the moment. n fact +arx seems to be torn between two concepts of the

political 'and we &now when are familiar with his wor&, and the problems it poses, that this

dilemma was never resolved, and never ceased to weigh upon the development of a

+arxian or +arxist political theory)> if the political means the political state, the

emergence of a separate sphere of the political around the state as public agency, acting inthe interest of the ruling class but seemingly, or 3uridically above class interests as such,

then the class struggle is not political, it is what exceeds the political and, in the end, will

suppress it as a separate sphere 'what +arx calls the end of the political state)@ but if the

political means the conflict itself, its increasing polarization, its becoming conscious and

organized, its role in the production of historical changes, then it becomes defined

precisely in terms of this permanent, trans-historical civil war, which has never exactly


18/23

the same form, but never ceases to exist 'until the end, that is the final confrontation

between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat).

s this a metaphoric use of the term warB don4t thin& so, and the comparison with

#lausewitz helps understanding why, but it certainly is a reflective use of the concept,

involving its ?uestioning and transformation, not a simple application of a given concept of

war. What we may read in these passages are the following theses, or hypotheses> 6) only

the social war, as a civil war, becomes absolute, or radically antagonistic, reaching the

extremes, where the ris& of annihilation is run, therefore it is the proper war@ !) such a

war is constitutive of politics, it reverses the clausewitzian formula, but also it pushes to

its logical conclusion what remained only a tendency 'and, as we have seen, a fear) in

#lausewitz, namely the idea that violence as a means of politics reacts upon the political

and ma&e it a continuation of the war that was its instrument. ndeed this is inseparable

from a total change in the representation of the sub3ect of war> no longer an institutional

and in fact a 3uridical sub3ect, namely the state, but an immanent social sub3ect, which isnot really to be distinguished from the very process of its historical formation and its

progressive autonomization. *evertheless, this allows +arx 'or would allow a

#lausewitzian reader of +arx 5 we will see that there were ?uite a few) to retrieve

clausewitzian propositions, or rather clausewitzian problems, with due displacement or

translation in the code of the class struggle.

2ne of them concerns the possible representation of the classes as armies> this seems to

be the inevitable conse?uence of a representation of the class struggle in terms of a

confrontation between two antagonistic forces which become increasingly unified and

polarized. n +arx4s presentation, this is sub3ected to ?ualification> it should be the result ofthe class struggle itself, which in this sense does really create or produce its own actors, and

it is a tendency which finds its final realization only in the last stage or figure of the

transhistorical confrontation between exploited and exploiting classes, the capitalist society.

2nly in that society does the state directly function as an organizer of the class struggle on

behalf of the ruling class. 0ut what about its adversaryB /ou might thin& that from the point

of view of the proletariat, the organizing force is the nternational :ssociation, or the

party. 0ut this is precisely where +arx hesitated to push to concept to its last

conse?uences, and returned to a more metaphoric use. We &now that the representation of

the revolution as a class war was very powerful for one century at least in the #ommunist

tradition, but in +arx we find only the possibility of the conception of the revolutionary

%arty on the army type, a class party or an party of the whole class as it were, and will

say why in a minute. 0ut before that have to insist on a second post-clausewitzian or


19/23

?uasi-clausewitzian derivation, which concerns the ?uestion of the defensive. ere we

witness 5 in the #ommunist +anifesto 5 an amazing reversal which prepares for the return

of an impolitical element> +arx does present the struggle of the proletariat, even when it

is preparing the Cevolution and the overthrowing of the capitalist class, as a defensive

struggle, but this defensive character becomes meta-political, and in fact apocalyptic> it is

associated with the idea that the capitalist mode of production while reducing the wor&ers

to absolute poverty and unemployment does threaten their very life, and in this sense the

reproduction and survival of society 'since the wor&ers, more generally the labourers, are

those who feed and sustain society as a whole). here is a nihilistic element in #apitalism

as portrayed here by +arx, which allows it to identify the assault against it as a defence of

society against its internal enemy. 0ut then comes also a more strategic or ?uasi-strategic

consideration, which resides in the idea that the proletarian class struggle derives its own

strength, consciousness, and organization, from the organization of the bourgeoisie against

which it is pitted. nitially at least, +arx would not so much imagine the proletarian class

party as an anti-state, he would rather see it as a negative of the (tate, therefore a negation

of the negation, if the (tate is what suppresses society for the sa&e of the exploiting social

order. :ll this derives from the fact that, contrary to external war situations, the adversaries

in a social war conceived as civil war are not really external, separated from one

another. hey are and remain modalities of evolution of the same social sub3ect in the form

of a division.

Finally the conse?uence for the understanding of the articulation of war and politics is both

crucial and ambiguous> it is by actualizing the unconciliable character of the antagonism

that the model of the civil war reveals the essence of the political in class societies, and

especially in capitalism@ but at the same time it registers this manifestation in the figure of

transition, the vanishing mediator which prepares for the end of the political as such, we

might say its self-annihilation.

What prompted +arx to abandon or neglect this representation in his subse?uent wor&sB

hey would lead him to loo&ing for other models of the development of the class struggle,

but also to retreating in some sense from the acute picture of the political as anti-politicalthat he had exposed in the #ommunist +anifesto> whyB n my opinion a series of positive

factors, including the increasing importance granted to the economic cycles of


20/23

accumulation in the development of capitalism at the expense of the apocalyptic linear

vision of the increasing polarization of poverty and wealth, played a role, but also

negatively a greater experience of the phenomena of wars and civil wars, which made it

difficult or impossible to endorse the analogy of class struggle as such with civil war, and,

conversely, displayed all the negative sides of the model of revolution as civil war pushed

to the extreme 5 absolute civil war if you li&e 'a lesson hotly debated in the +arxist

tradition subse?uently, among reformists and revolutionary). he idea of a limited

civil war, or a civil war refrained, seemed a contradiction in terms. :ctual civil wars, in

6EIE or in 6EJ! 'the %aris #ommune) were tragic experiences of bloodbaths in which the

bourgeois (tate easily implemented the military apparatus formed in external wars

'including colonial wars) to crush the proletariat, which itself was anything but an army

'not even a guerrilla army). :nd beside that the 6th century 'not to spea& of the !7th)

provided overwhelming evidence of the fact that national wars were not giving way to the

class struggle, and remained the proper site of the articulation of politics and war, therefore

strategic thin&ing. n spite of attempts, never completely convincing, to picture national

wars as mere appearances, or simulacra, mas&ing the real and really political process,

which should be the combined effort of the ruling classes of different countries to

exterminate their own wor&ers by throwing them against one another and cheating them

with nationalist discourses, this hard reality of the national wars had to be ta&en into

account, and it called for a return to the direct understanding of #lausewitz and his

problems.

his was prepared by 9ngels, who simultaneously criticized #lausewitz4s allegedly

idealistic emphasis on moral factors, and sought a materialist e?uivalent, which would

prove compatible with an insistence on the technological, economic and social factors of

the wars. his e?uivalent was found in the idea that people4s armies, or mass conscription,

would potentially introduce the class struggle within the army itself 'at least in democratic

republics), thus reversing #lausewitz4s fear of the masses in military matters into a

prophecy of their emerging as new strategic actors at the expense of the (tate and its

military machine. 0ut it was only with ;enin and +ao Dedong that this dialectical principle

would lead to a new articulation of war and politics, displacing the idea of the strategiccombination from the state-army-people unity to a new unity of class, people, and

revolutionary party. ;enin, as we &now, intensively read #lausewitz, ta&ing notes and


21/23

writing marginal commentaries on his 2n War at the beginning of WW , after the collapse

of the (econd nternational and its anti-war agenda. e drafted and successfully tried to

implement 'at least in his own country) the motto of the transformation of the imperialist

war into a revolutionary civil war, which describes the moral factor 'the internationalist

class consciousness) as the political result over time of the horrors of a popular war 'i.e.

waged by mass national armies). t gives a completely original interpretation of the idea of

an offensive prepared from within the defensive@ and derives its necessity from the fact

that absolute warfare is, in a certain sense, or rather becomes untenable. t must therefore

destroy the (tate itself, better said it must recreate the conditions of politics at the expense

of the (tate, who in a sense could incarnate politics only as long as it also retained the

capacity to arm the people and control its use of the arms it receives, but would become a

political phantom as soon as it would be deprived of it. 2r, if you wish, as one would pass

from the (tate monopoly of legitimate violence to the #lass monopoly of historically

decisive violence. t is this displacement of #lausewitz, let us note in passing, that forms

the starting point of #arl (chmitt4s impolitical concept of the political 5 where

sovereignty is identified with the capacity to install a state of exception in the core of the

(tate, in order to repress the class struggle in a preventive manner, so that the definition of

the internal enemy, the enemy of the class civil war, is used to recreate the monopoly

of the state and its capacity to wage external wars.

0ut it is only in +ao Dedong4s theory of the protracted war of partisans that we find whatcan be considered at the same time a +arxist rescuing of #lausewitz4s concept of the War

as the continuation of politics by other means and an alternative to #lausewitz4s idea of

the political, which tries to solve the aporia on which, as we have seen, #lausewitz was

permanently hitting his head. n fact tend to believe, not only that +ao Dedong, as several

commentators have ac&nowledged, was the most consistent #lausewitzian in the +arxist

tradition, but that he was perhaps the most consistent #lausewitzian after #lausewitz,

because he re-interpreted all his axioms, and not only one or two of them. t is hard to &now

if he actually had read #lausewitz in the text, or in some adaptation ' should have to chec&

whether #lausewitz was translated into #hinese, the only language read by +ao)> the

references he gives in his various brochures and articles written in the late K74s and I74sduring the :nti-8apanese War 'after the end of the ;ong +arch properly spea&ing), only


22/23

?uote from ;enin4s own references to #lausewitz in his essays on imperialism. Which

seems to indicate that, from these fragments, +ao actually reconstructed the problematic.

is &ey idea is that the defensive strategy which is imposed by the fact that, initially, the

imperialist adversary and the ruling bourgeoisie have armies whereas the proletariat and the

peasants have none will become reversed into its opposite in the end, and lead to the actual

annihilation of the strongest. (o the length of the war, the dialectical e?uivalent of the

friction now called protracted war 'or the long +arch of the war) is the time needed for

the tiny nucleus of revolutionary wor&ers and intellectuals who have sought refuge within

the masses of the peasantry 'who find themselves within the people li&e fishes swimming

in water) to achieve simultaneously a triple result> 6) to arm themselves at the expense of

the adverse forces by performing local guerrilla attac&s against isolated detachments of the

invading army@ !) to learn the art of strategy by expanding the theatre of war to the

national level 'which in the case of #hina is semi-continental)@ K) finally to solve the

contradiction in the people and separate the people from its enemies 'or the party4s

enemyH), by transferring the hegemony from an external power 'either a colonial

con?ueror or a national caste) to an immanent power, representing the common interest of

all national dominated classes. he communist party is supposed to be 'and to remain over

a long period) precisely that immanent power.

he blind spot of this analysis seems today rather clear 'and it was not without

conse?uences on the subse?uent developments)> namely the fact that the internationalglobal context of WW is practically ignored, as if only the national forces would count

strategically in the anti-imperialist struggle. (elf-reliance, the great +aoist motto, has a

latent nationalist dimension itself. 0ut the result remains impressive in terms of a new

historical interpretation of the idea of a rationality of war which is political 5 therefore

implies a political sub3ect. (o, in a sense, we have come full circle, and it is not by chance,

probably, that the closure of this circle particularly consists in the reversal of the hierarchic

relationship established between institutional warfare waged by the state and popular

guerrilla warfare. 0ut it is not the case, in my opinion, that this reversal completely resolves

the aporia that we found in #lausewitz. t rather displaces it. #lausewitz4s difficulty came

from the fact that the (tate could not be said a priori to have become the absolute master ofthe instrument it had to build and use in the course of the transformation of wars into

absolute wars, i.e. wars waged by the people in arms. +ao4s difficulty, or the difficulty


23/23

we read in +ao with hindsight, drawing some lessons from the history of the #hinese

revolution itself, comes from the fact that the immanent power of the organization which,

from the inside, transforms a people into an army, or a popular army with a class

ideology, in given historical circumstances@ namely the revolutionary party, can completely

perform the strategic reversal and remain a political agency only at the condition of

becoming a state itself 'even if a (tate periodically destructed and reconstructed by

revolutionary episodes, in the +aoist vision which led to, or was taught, during the

#ultural revolution). he only thin&able alternative 5 very unli&ely in the circumstances

of war of national liberation 5 would be that it refrained from ta&ing power, or carrying

on the revolutionary war until the Lfinal goal 'Dwec&)@ which is the complete destruction

of the enemy 5 thus somehow scaling down the war from absolute to limited.

(o the sub3ect of the strategic process 'or the sub3ect determined from within the strategic

process) remains in every case a split sub3ect, or a sub3ect oscillating between sovereignty

and insurrection. (ome modern theoreticians and commentators of molecular wars

'9nzensberger) solve the aporia by simply eliminating the category of the sub3ect, or

reducing it to negative or defective figures. 0ut in this case it remains to be explained how

the category of war itself can be maintained.

%ublic ;ecture, :lice 0erline 1aplan #enter for the umanities, *orthwestern niversity,

9vanston, +ay E, !77G

BALIBAR Etienne Balibar Politics as War, War as Politics

Documents