Politically, peace has always been a highly important normative term. From the ideal final objective of a community to the ways of achieving it, the idea of peace has consistently been in the center of debate. In this short paper I would like to draw attention to the political implications this concept may have. Avoiding the risks of interpreting it as a passive category, the notion of peace can be conceived as a fundamental objective for political struggles.
As with other fundamental social and political concepts, peace can be understood in more than one way, leading to different results. In this case, I would like to examine Isaiah Berlin’s famous “Two concepts of Liberty” (1958), in which at least two different concepts of peace can be found. A negative one, which can be understood as the absence of violence, and a positive one, which I propose to define as the conditions for the free self-development of individuals or communities.
Commonly, the idea of peace is linked to non-violent situations or actions. From this perspective, non-violent action should lead to non-violent situations: as long as there is no violence, we can say that we have achieved peace. Instead, I would like to advocate a positive conception of peace rather than a negative one. In this way a non-violent situation is not necessarily a peaceful one, as the absence of violence does not necessarily entail the presence of freedom, a capacity for development or the absence of coercion. From this perspective we cannot say that a society where people “freely” choose to be part of unfair economic relations, social hierarchies or political structures is a peaceful community. An organization that systematically excludes exploits or discriminates a part of its members cannot be considered a peaceful one merely because it does not turn to violence.
Most importantly, as the focus is no longer on the absence of violence but on the achievement of a situation in which individuals can freely pursue their own development, from this perspective violence may be a possible means of achieving peace. Understanding peace as the absence of violence eliminates the very possibility of excercising violence to achieve a peaceful objective, therefore naively disregarding those situations in which violence is the only option. In doing so, we rely on non-violent alternatives which do not lead to the pursued objective. Thus, this negative conception has essentially conservative effects, as it is more likely to maintain the status quo.
Violence itself should not be abstractly discarded. The Argentinean philosopher Enrique Dussel (1973) has reflected on violence as a mean of achieving emancipation. According to his work, when the Totality of a social system has excluded its Otherness, there is no place left for legal or non-violent actions if we want to go against this order. The ruling legality is imposed by the system, but a system which denies its others cannot be considered a peaceful one. As a result, the legality of the system is nothing but oppression in the eyes of those who are excluded, and their struggle for emancipation is nothing but illegality from the perspective of the system. In this case, after being negated and after having found themselves with no legal alternatives, social subjects may have no choice but to use violence to make their voice heard, to become part of the Totality.
From this perspective – the negative conception of peace – we would have a contradiction of terms, something like an unpeaceful peace; for in the struggle for peace we are resorting to non-peaceful methods. From the positive perspective I wish to advocate, however, that violence can be an additional way of achieving peace, because there are situations in which dominated, excluded or abused groups or individuals have no choice but to turn to violence if they want to subvert their current conditions.
However, it is important to understand that this violence is not any kind of violence, but a particular one. Dussel highlights this difference:
“There are two kinds of violence: ‘dominating’ violence and the violence that I would call ‘defensive’ or ‘liberating’. ‘Dominating’ violence is a violence that kills or enslaves. We might call it a dialectical violence. Whereas the defense of the poor, which is not my defense but the defense of the third person, is the right of the poor and not only of the one who takes up arms. To defend the poor is to defend them in their rights. In this case it’s not only possible, it’s obligatory.” (Dussel in Cabestrero, 1980: 56)
Liberating violence, therefore, is violence in accordance with the positive concept of peace. We cannot consider a situation of domination to be peaceful merely because there is no explicit violence. Even if the dominated group is seen by the system as freely acting individuals, we must oppose that situation and struggle to make it a peaceful order. When Dussel refers to the poor he is not only stating that violence is an alternative but that it is an obligation.
Situations of domination may not appear violent because the fight is over and the current order is lying on the violence of the winners. In struggling to remedy their situation, the liberating forces may seem to be the first to resort to violence, when in actuality they are responding to the violence of their oppressors. Dussel explains it in the following way:
“But there’s more, something that deceives and confuses: the state of domination in an organized ‘whole’ is one of violence, real but ‘implicit.’ As long as the dominated accept that violence, it’s not exercised ‘explicitly.’ But on the day when the dominated become conscious that they are ‘other’ than the system and that there could be a system that was just, that’s when they rise up and stand. And when they stand up and try to march, then violence shows it’s teeth or its fists and ‘implicit’ violence turns into ‘repression’.” (Dussel in Cabestrero, 1980: 57)
From the point of view of the system, the Other, those seeking liberation, have destroyed peace and now, by violent means, are going against the established peace. Yet from the point of view of the Other, it is the other way around: their exclusion meant violence—the denial of peace—and now, through violence, they are struggling for peace.
It is clear that the way in which we define concepts can lead to very different ways of understanding the world and choosing our actions. In this short paper I have advocated a particular conception of peace: a positive one that transcends a mere non-violent, passive definition, and which could be a base for political struggles and emancipatory movements. A conception of peace, which – in apparent contradiction – may include the use of violence in the case that the liberation forces have no choice but to turn to it. The proposal is to transcend a vision of peace, which leads to the maintenance of the status quo and to acquire a different one, which will be usefulfor the causes of the Otherness in our system.
Literature
Berlin, I. (1958). “Two Concepts of Liberty.” In: Berlin, Isaiah (1969). Four Essays on Liberty. xford University Press: Oxford.
Cabestrero, T. (1980). Faith: Conversations with Contemporary Theologians. Orbis: New York.
Dussel, E. (1973). Para una ética de la liberación latinoamericana. Siglo XXI: Buenos Aires.
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