Elizabeth Frazer and Kimberly Hutchings, "Violence and Political Theory."

Violence seems to be such that, once it has set in, it is hard to extract.Getting rid of violence appears to require violence.It reproduces only itself.Peace appears but a sheep exposed to predators.If the world were to abruptly become peaceful, it would only await the next Thrasymachus to reimpose tyranny.This sticky nature of violence and how to cope with it are the most potent themes of this much-needed work.It provides a fair though critical overview of the subject of politics and violence through history.Violence and Political Theory examines a judicious selection of political thinkers, from Hobbes and Locke to Gandhi and Ruddick.The volume offers an unprecedentedly thorough, solid, and systematic review of some of the most prominent and influential outlooks on political violence.Twenty-six thinkers are given chapter sections on the role of violence, whether excusing or decrying it.A few other authors, such as Augustine, receive respectful mention.Moreover, while the review sections are conscientious and thorough, they reach beyond passive review, providing critical commentary on how well these theories work individually and compare with one another.By the end, they provide original insight into the ancient debate and possible solutions to problems of understanding and, ideally, one day stuffing political violence into a dusty corner of history.Violence enters political theory at different points in political philosophy.Locke, Marx, and Engels see violence entering politics inevitably in revolution.The only way to overcome oppressive forces permanently is to get rid of them, and they do not relinquish easily.Once these oppressors are vanquished and freedom and justice insured, the ensuing social condition is so fulfilling as to protect from internal disruption.Another plane of violence in the polity is that of retaining statehood, as Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Weber argued.Insofar as life outside of statehood is worse, states must exert some degree of violence.They offer shelters against the blasts of natural and regressive human forces.Law, needed against chaos, must be enforced to sustain itself; enforcement often turns violent.The threat of external incursion means a well-entrenched and disciplined military, which Machiavelli praises, considering the civilization that it preserves.Benjamin and Arendt began reconsidering the role of violence in revolutionary action and state-maintenance.Benjamin aims 'to rethink the deadly logic of revolution' (68).Arendt considers that such endeavor to rethink revolution requires 'a novel conception of political power' (68) that would not descend into totalitarianism and imperialism.Foucault and Derrida dissect the social ontology of violence, revealing how violence ineluctably permeates politics beyond revolution and state formation.These acts only unleash, perpetuate, and exacerbate violence, extending it beyond the direct and structural violence associated with the state and into symbolic and epistemic violence.The psychological violence wreaked through symbols and knowledge control results in injury as profound as direct physical violence.Foucault's analysis leaves the political condition so inexorable, the prospect for individual citizens so hopeless, that it is hard to tell whether he embraces it.Derrida can also seem resigned to the inevitability of politics as the continuation of violence.As Frazer and Hutchins note, to him even 'ostensibly nonviolent philosophy is a sham' (95).But he offers an ethical stance, allowing 'an evaluative distinction between better and worse, greater and lesser violence' (95).Further, 'we (all) must take the measure of the violence that our philosophy or our actions … involve … We should engage with and take responsibility for the lesser violence' (95).The struggle to implement anarchy is another portal into violence's role in political struggle.Anarchists such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, and Tolstoy were also activists.These first three,

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