Post by RedFlag32 on Aug 25, 2007 17:43:06 GMT
Comrades, below is something i came across on the internet recently. It doesnt matter how i noticed it but id like to see what your opinion is in relation to the statement and also if you could broaden on it with your own opinions on the subject.
Get to now the man who he quotes.
www.clausewitz.com/CWZHOME/CWZBASE.htm
`Hi there,
I believe that there is an unfinished syllogism in the work of Clausewitz which if he had completed would have made him even more renowned today than he already is.
He made two statements about war, politics and violence when he perhaps should have made three. He said: war is the continuation of politics by other means and war is violence. As he was writing about war it is understandable that he did not think to make the concluding statement: violence is the continuation of politics by other means.
The implications are that all violence, every single example of it however seemingly insignificant, is an expression of or a continuation of an individual's, group's, organisation's or state's politics. From wife-beating to rape to mugging to gang wars to battering protestors to terrorism to world war, all are explained by this theory. Of course, it doesn't absolve the researcher from painstakingly getting to the roots of the perpetrators politics in each separate instance but it gives the framework from which to begin.
What do you think?'
I know it is not strictly Marxism but I'm pretty sure Marx and Engels approved of Clausewitz. I would like to know what people think, whether it is an interesting theory or old hat or meaningless or too obvious to bother with in order to help me decide if it is worth taking forward. I hasten to add that it is not a moral theory anymore than Clausewitz's original statemnt about war and violence was moral.
Fraternally.
Get to now the man who he quotes.
www.clausewitz.com/CWZHOME/CWZBASE.htm
`Hi there,
I believe that there is an unfinished syllogism in the work of Clausewitz which if he had completed would have made him even more renowned today than he already is.
He made two statements about war, politics and violence when he perhaps should have made three. He said: war is the continuation of politics by other means and war is violence. As he was writing about war it is understandable that he did not think to make the concluding statement: violence is the continuation of politics by other means.
The implications are that all violence, every single example of it however seemingly insignificant, is an expression of or a continuation of an individual's, group's, organisation's or state's politics. From wife-beating to rape to mugging to gang wars to battering protestors to terrorism to world war, all are explained by this theory. Of course, it doesn't absolve the researcher from painstakingly getting to the roots of the perpetrators politics in each separate instance but it gives the framework from which to begin.
What do you think?'
I know it is not strictly Marxism but I'm pretty sure Marx and Engels approved of Clausewitz. I would like to know what people think, whether it is an interesting theory or old hat or meaningless or too obvious to bother with in order to help me decide if it is worth taking forward. I hasten to add that it is not a moral theory anymore than Clausewitz's original statemnt about war and violence was moral.
Fraternally.
