Six Principles of Political Realism
Toward a Class-conscious Theory
Now, no philosopher will be in any doubt as to the type of perfection in politics; that is Machiavellianism. But Machiavellianism pur, sans mélange, cru, vert, dans toute sa force, dans toute son âpreté [pure, without admixture, crude, fresh, with all its force, with all its pungency], is superhuman, divine, transcendental, it will never be achieved by man, at most approximated.
Nietzsche, The Will to Power 2.2.4 § 304
Preamble.¹
Political realism is an ancient and illustrious discipline. It is replete with Greek genius, Italian majesty, and American industriousness — and, too, with Greek disunity, Italian fratricidalism, and American arrogance. The augustness of the names which it can claim are almost without equal. Its theory has done much to bring politics, not to heel, but to apprehension. For this, all mankind is indebted to it. But political realism in its orthodox forms gives insufficient weight and attention to the critical issue of class struggle, which underlies and determines, in the strong sense, all the social formations which it has studied and participated in. Rectification of this is absolutely critical if the theory is to progress to its next stage. The following essay is an initial exploration of this, and an attempt to indicate what a class-conscious realism might look like. Its guiding motivation and perspective is the conviction that the development, for the first time, of an explicit and self-conscious politics of class struggle (proletarian socialism) and the inauguration of a materialist conception of history which this has necessitated has not foretold the impoverishment but the enrichment of realism; that it has furnished the requisite analytical tools to push the theory further than it has ever gone before. Realism and socialism are not antagonistic: any socialism which is not realist is merely a (bourgeois) moralism and doomed to failure; any realism which is not conscious of class is critically incomplete in its understanding of its subject. It is time for realism to pass into the hands of a new class, as it has done twice before, and in so doing announce a third renaissance of its thought and practice. The proletariat is yet to produce its own Machiavelli; when it does, humanity will be able to add to that small list of brilliance about whom it can spend eternity in adoration. Thoukydides bequeathed us his genius ‘as a possession for all time’.² It has served this function admirably for over two thousand years. It is up to us to ensure that it will remain so for two thousand more.
1. Laws and facts.
Political realism holds that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws. These laws have various points of origin, including: the biological specificities of a given species engaging in politics³; biological generalities of broad categories of life; and historically contingent facts about a given social formation, such as its dominant mode of production. In order to improve society and have a deliberate and conscious impact on its development, it is necessary to understand these laws by which it operates.⁴ The operation of these laws being impervious to our preferences, men will challenge them only at the risk of failure.
Realism, by virtue of its insistence on the existence of objective laws of politics, must also believe in the possibility of developing a theory that reflects, however imperfectly and one-sidedly, these laws. It believes, therefore, that a mature (though by no means necessarily complete) political theory can distinguish between fact and opinion in politics — between, on the one hand, what is objectively true or otherwise in principle capable of being true, and on the other, what is merely a matter of subjective preference — irrespective of the status which these claims may purport to have. Realism is precisely this project.
In believing that there exists, and in striving towards the possibility of, a political theory and therefore political action grounded in truthful knowledge of laws, realism must inevitably draw a normative distinction between facts and opinions, a distinction which necessarily privileges the former. Realism prefers, for rational and objective reasons which are themselves factual and objective, what is true and supported by evidence, both theoretical and empirical, to that which is subjective and a matter of taste — be it moral, legal, religious, or aesthetic — and therefore necessarily informed by prejudice and wishful thinking more than it is by sombre contemplation of reality.
For realism, a successful political theory consists in discovering political facts, subjecting them to rational-theoretical deliberation, and by this process producing workable imperatives for concrete political action. It believes that the purpose and quality of any policy, be it domestic or international, can be ascertained — and can only be ascertained — through the examination of political activity and the foreseeable consequences thereof. In so doing, it can discover (through the examination of political activity) both what, as a matter of fact, political agents⁵ have done, and (through the examination of the probable consequences of these actions) infer the objectives towards which they were pursued.
2. The concept of power.
The defining theoretical principle offered by realism is that of power, or, more properly, interest defined as power. This concept provides the link between the theoretical study of politics and the concrete actions of political agents, allowing as it does the former to make sense of the latter and the latter to deliberate at all. We find this concept first properly expounded in the works of the Greek political theorists, foremost amongst them Thoukydides. It saw a revival during the Renaissance and Enlightenment, spearheaded by Machiavelli and Hobbes respectively, and a modern exposition by, principally, the theorists of postwar US foreign policy, dominated as it was by great power competition.
Power is to be understood as a fundamentally relative concept, not something which tracks specific and immutable objects of reference. Its content and use are determined by the political and cultural environment. Power consists of anything that establishes and maintains the control of man over man. It covers all social relationships which serve that end⁶, from actualised physical violence, to threatened physical violence, to ideological interpellation which places one agent or structure in a subordinate position to another (there are no other kinds of ideological interpellation). All power rests, ultimately, on the capacity for physical violence, and this is always the dominant form in which it takes. In some societies it is also the most common form; in others, it is only exercised sparingly and with care, once ideological or other such expressions of power have been exhausted. In the most broad historical generalisation, we can say that there is a general progression from the former to the latter as social formations increase in complexity and labour increases in specialisation, with key paradigm shifts identifiable with the development of the state, the development of standing armies, and the development of a formal separation of powers within the state apparatus.⁷ That physical violence may only intervene to establish and maintain power in a minority of cases in no way relegates it to a secondary or subordinate role; if the capacity for physical violence was lost, the ideological apparatus of power would inevitably collapse, not because ideological compulsion is merely an instance of masked repression but because ideological compulsion always exists in the context of a social formation; ideological apparatus could never have been constructed if there hadn’t been an operable hegemony over violence.
Power is, furthermore, to be understood as a fundamentally relational concept. Neither the idea nor reality of power is comprehensible without it being a description of the relation between two or more agents or entities. Because it is relational, and because power is the capacity to control, power demonstrates itself to be zero-sum: in the most basic conceivable power system of two political agents, for one agent to gain a degree of power is necessarily for the other to lose the equivalent degree. This is the underlying source of fear in politics, fear being the prime — both in the sense of being the first and in the sense of being the predominant — motivator of political activity: no political agent exists in a vacuum; all political activity is directed towards maximising power; all political activity by others must, therefore, endanger the political agent, because it reduces their own power; hence, all political activity is to be feared. International relations is the paradigmatic arena in which this relationship is played out because, outside of extraordinary circumstances, a state does not have to fear for its fundamental security in the domestic context; it has exclusive or overwhelming power over non-state elements internally, and so when it loses a degree of power to non-state elements this degree is sufficiently small so as to not disturb the state. Yet no matter how successful its domestic policy, and no matter how totally it dominates its internal affairs, any state is vulnerable to external forces, chiefly other states. Complete success domestically increases the security of a state externally, but only insofar as it allows it to focus its resources, including the attention of its politicians, towards that arena; it does nothing to ensure that there is not a more powerful and/or hostile state in its geopolitical neighbourhood. No state, including and especially superpowers, are ever safe on the international stage; they are, therefore, always afraid, and always act as such — more or less violently, more or less erratically, and more or less desperately.
The concept of interest defined as power provides the basis for the existence of politics as an autonomous sphere of action, and the legitimate subject of theoretical study in its own right, possessing as it does its own unique laws (the laws governing power) as opposed to being merely a particular manifestation of the laws of a more general discipline. The concept of power, therefore, allows politics to insist on its right to subordinate other kinds of interests and motivations — moral, religious, legal, etc. — to its own, not in any abstract sense, or in a universal capacity sub specie aeternitatis, but specifically in the capacity of doing and thinking politically. The politician cannot lecture the moralist in his field; in turn, the moralist cannot lecture the politician in hers. The political is asserted as an irreducible aspect of human societies and, therefore, of the phenomena of the universe; it can be denied or relegated by no one, and any attempt to do so will inevitably result in failure.
Finally, the concept of power both imposes certain responsibilities of analysis upon the theorist and permits the intelligibility of politics to the political agent. For both of them, it instils discipline in thought and action. The theorist is forbidden any excuse to apply non-political considerations to political affairs, such as judging political agents by the hue of their moral character or criticising a state’s foreign policy on the basis of any notion of hypocrisy; the agent is provided with a clear explanation of the real, underlying driver of their actions, and with the sole legitimate criterion by which to judge the viability and profitability of different courses of action. For both the theorist and the agent, it also allows them to comprehend the foreign policy of other states, including those hostile to their own; it allows them to understand and respect the political agents of those states as peers also pursuing power, and therefore to engage in profitable interactions with them free of ideological absolutes which could only contribute to the ruin of all concerned. A realist theory of international politics will, therefore, guard against two dangerous delusions: the concern with motives, whereby the political agent and those scrutinising her are unsure both of what is and what should be her motive, and the concern with ideology, whereby the political agent and those scrutinising her ascribe significance to differences in beliefs between political agents. The elimination of the former allows for the fair and accurate judgement of actions; the elimination of the latter allows for beneficial interaction and cooperation between peers in a heterogeneous environment, and the comprehension of foreign policies with differing non-fundamental goals (the fundamental goal of power being universal). Both eliminations are the eliminations of prejudice in political reasoning; wherever there is any form of prejudice and moralising in politics, there is bad politics.
3. The concept of power as applied to classes.
The concept of interest defined as power has the further virtue of clarifying the nature of class struggle. Classes, being defined by their antagonistic relations, are always-already engaged in struggle. Theoretical clarification of the nature of this struggle, and above all else the end towards which it is oriented, facilitates more successful activity on the part of political agents. This goal is power, power being the capacity for control of man over man. Antiformist (revolutionary) class struggle is waged for the seizure of state power, the predominant form of power in class societies, and the winning of a favourable balance of power vis-à-vis the hostile class, a balance of power sufficient for the suppression of that class and the elevation of the revolutionary class to the position of ruling class. In the particular case of the proletarian class struggle, this struggle for power is the struggle for a balance of power sufficient for the annihilation of all classes, including itself. The Marxist tradition has grasped this truth fully, its various ethicistic, humanistic, and economistic deviations notwithstanding. Class struggle has nothing whatsoever to do with moral or other doxastic concerns; like all political activity, it has the absolute right and absolute need to subordinate without condition such interests to the political interest of power. The introduction of non-political considerations, that is, considerations other than power, into the question of class struggle, is the introduction of a principle necessarily hostile and damaging to that struggle.
4. The prospect of realism in a non-class context.
The proletarian class struggle and the communist programme which it has produced raises the problematic of a society without classes. It contains the promise of a social formation which is non-antagonistic in its character. Realism, committing itself as it does to the concept of interest defined as power, is seemingly put in a difficult position by this promise, as power is inherently antagonistic.
One possible solution is simply to uphold realism today, and abandon it tomorrow; to affirm it in the context of state societies, and disaffirm it in the context of non-state, non-class societies. This solution is, however, unsatisfying for two reasons. Firstly, having adopted such a schema of the historically determined applicability–non-applicability of realism, the question arises of the fissure between which this transition from viability to non-viability occurs. Power is wielded incessantly by the dictatorship of the proletariat as it wages its class struggle, and then seemingly dissolves along with this superstructure; power destroys itself. How is this to be understood? Power is a relationship, and so cannot subsist in the state apparatus of a society alone; it must exist, principally though not exclusively, in the relationship between these apparatus and the population upon which they exert themselves. With the disappearance of classes and the transformation of the proletarian semi-state into a non-state apparatus of administration, has power — control — vanished? The answer is already implicitly present within the theory, albeit under a different name: authority does not cease with the act of revolution, and nor does it cease with its completion and final victory. The authority of the needs of labour, of regulations of conduct, of the responsibilities imposed upon the subjects of the society, continues on, in different forms appropriate to their historical conditions but no less exercises of authority for that. And so we find that power has in no way vanished: the power of political struggle between classes, and of states upon their citizens, have disappeared; other forms of power have survived in a more or less altered form, and others still, no doubt, have arisen for the first time. Far from being the end of politics, classless society is the horizon below which previously dominant forms of power set and subsequently dominant forms of power rise.
The second question is simply the first in reverse, though it has the added significance that it concerns concrete historical facts rather than hypotheticals about a future society, for it implies that there were once human societies which operated without the presence of power. This proposition is unacceptable to all concerned: to the historian, to the politician, to the theorist, to the partisan, even to the biologist and the psychologist. Only the moralist and the theologian, only non-politicians, can find the prospect of an innocent humanity conceivable, and desirable. All other groups can only view the expansion of irrigation along alluvial flood plains favourably; state power arose, quite literally, as a life-saver and liberator. More pertinently, the idea that pre-class societies existed without the use of power is simply absurd. The specific nexus of power which is the state, and the specific entities which dominate the struggle for this power which are classes, are only historically contingent expressions of power; they are by no means exhaustive instances of it or its “essential” form, if there could exist such a thing. Wherever a man plunges a spear through the chest of another, there is power; whenever there is the administration of labour and the products thereof, there is power; wherever there are discernable social relationships and the organisation thereof, there is power. And, too, wherever there is the incision of the surgeon’s knife into the cancerous tumour, there is power. The myth of an innocent humanity is found to be both theoretically reactionary and historically inaccurate.
Classless society, then, whether it be a hypothetical post-class society or a historically evidenced pre-class society, is not free of this power. No social formation will ever be free of power. Wherever there are humans interacting, there will be power. Thus there is no formal limit to the continued relevance of political activity and therefore of political theory. Politics no more becomes obsolete with the transition to a post-class social formation than biology does with the mutation of a species into a new form.
5. The theory of the balance of power.
Political realism is chiefly acknowledged for its contributions in the study of international relations. The defining element of realist theory in this field is the theory of the balance of power, inaugurated in Thoukydides’ History in the fifth century BC.⁸ The theory of the balance of power describes the interplay of power on the international stage, an interplay occurring almost exclusively between states, states being, first, the principal political structures in class society, and second, the “highest”⁹ level of political organisation.
Why are states the principal structures of political power? To even schematically answer this question, we must firmly locate the state as a structure at the centre of all class struggles. Non-dominant classes fight to win state power; dominant classes fight to maintain their stranglehold on it. Non-dominant classes fight to destroy the existing state apparatus, both ideological and repressive, and construct their own; dominant classes fight to create and maintain their own state apparatus. All class struggle is ultimately directed towards the question of political power. State power is possessed, exclusively, by one class. All states are states of a particular class. This class will inevitably have distinct fractions within it, any one of which may be dominant over the others at any one time depending upon historical conditions, but the existence of a dominant fraction within the dominant class does not represent the possession of state power by that fraction alone, operated by it over the other fractions of its class. The state is essential for reproducing the conditions of production, all production being characterised by a particular mode of production and its relations thereof. This is its principal role: as a structural guarantor of the reigning mode of production, a guarantee which must necessarily also be a guarantee of the reigning class relations. Hence, all states are class states, both in the sense of state power being possessed by one class and one class alone, and in the sense of all states being determined in their structure and character by the dominant class’ economic position and the process of exploitation through which they subsist.
All of which has the following result: states are sovereign over their internal affairs, sovereignty being the capacity to exercise power without formal restraint. All states recognise their mutual sovereignty over their respective internal affairs; it is the starting premise of contemporary international relations.¹⁰ As such, states do not claim any right to control the internal affairs of other states in return for being granted the same privilege. This forces states to interact with other states, as opposed to with entities within and under that state.¹¹ The result is that international relations are all but exclusively relations between states. Hence, by virtue of their position as the principal structure of power within their own territory, states are also the principal structures of political power on the world stage.
Why are states the highest level of political organisation? Or, what this question amounts to, why is the world system anarchic? It is clear that this is a direct product of the centrality of the state in class struggle and of its status as the principal structure of political power. The anarchy of international relations is a product of states’ refusal, on the one hand, and structural inability on the other, to accept any power superior to themselves. They refuse to accept this possibility because it would subordinate the dominant class’ struggle to some other process: such a risk is unthinkable; the survival of the entire socioeconomic régime depends upon the dominant class holding power, and so it will never be willing to enter into negotiations over this. They are structurally unable to acquiesce to a greater power because there is no mechanism by which such a power could arise: where could a power to subordinate states come from, other than from states themselves?
The theory of the balance of power provides the theoretical tools necessary to make sense of international relations, and therefore for political agents to save any one particular foreign policy from the paralysis of a focus on particularities at the expense of generalities. Only with a theory of international relations does any individual foreign policy make sense at all; otherwise, its meaning becomes indecipherable behind the noise of historical contingencies. The theory of the balance of power is therefore necessary both for the execution of a rational foreign policy and for a serious and legitimate critique¹² of that policy. The theory of the balance of power introduces, with full theoretical weight behind them, such concepts as hegemony, great power competition, spheres of influence, and so on. It explains, drawing on the facts of the primacy of states and the anarchy of international relations, that all political actions undertaken by states are done so in order to better ensure their survival and flourishing. Lacking any “higher” power to regulate and control the affairs of nations, the responsibility for a state’s security falls squarely on itself, and itself alone. There is no justice in politics, only power. This can only ever have the effect of striking terror into the hearts of political agents, and driving the activity of states. States seek to maximise their own power so as best to safeguard their interests and survival. In doing so they necessarily come to threaten other states, power being fundamentally relational and zero-sum; for one state to increase its security is for another state to have its security decreased.
We find the historical confirmation of such a security dilemma wherever we find two empires interacting. The most recent and therefore analysable example is the competition between the USA and the USSR. From before the Second World War had even ended, such as with the so-called percentages agreement between Stalin and Churchill, the leading powers of the new world order were competing for a balance of power acceptable to all sides. Soviet foreign policy from the period in which it became confident of military victory over Germany onwards was dominated by the concern for its security in Europe. Russia’s vast, open country had repeatedly been devastated by a central European army advancing through Poland: Napoléon’s Grande Armée in 1812; the Imperial German Army in 1914; the Wehrmacht in 1941. Each time Russia had been left in ruins, her dead beyond number. Both the Russian psyche and the cold political considerations of its leadership understood completely that the security of the Russian state depended upon the existence of a buffer between her key territories and central Europe. As such, control over Poland and to a lesser extent Romania was pivotal. This was the political motivation for establishing and maintaining friendly governments in the countries of Eastern Europe. Soviet designs were never for an expansion beyond their occupation in Germany; they were always for their own security.
The US foreign policy apparatus, clouded by ideological considerations, completely misunderstood this motivation and believed the Soviet policy to be one of aggressive annexationism. US foreign policy, in turn, was guided by security concerns: it believed the Soviets both inclined towards and capable of a broad military offensive in Europe. On both counts they were entirely incorrect. Nevertheless, the US feared for its geopolitical position, chiefly in Germany, the loss of which would swing the balance of power in Europe decisively in the Soviets’ favour, and if Europe was lost the US would stand largely without allies and on the backfoot in an inevitable long-term geopolitical competition; it feared too for its position in Japan, the loss of which would put the US mainland under threat. US economic control over the colonised world, partly assumed after the First World War, partly established in the wake of the terminal decline of the British empire, was required for it to wage war and maintain hegemony over its own hemisphere; the US installed brutal client régimes in territories across the globe to this end. As such, the US began to adopt a defensive policy of containment in Europe and East Asia in response to the Soviets’ defensive policy in Eastern Europe. Concern for security, and defensive policy, had therefore brought the world’s first two superpowers into hostile competition; out of a desire for safety came a struggle for power which would define the next four decades.
Critically, both camps, but especially and overwhelmingly the American, were operating throughout the early period under a chronic misunderstanding of their opponent’s political means and ends. The result could only ever have been disaster. This is to be contrasted with the following period of détente, during which non-political concerns, such as the phantasmagoria of ideology, were sidelined. In the interest of political stability and peace, many “stumbling blocks” could be overlooked, and previously vast chasms of difference bridged — not collapsed, but bridged. The foundational premise and goal of détente was the existence of a definite balance of power between the two superpowers and their allies, especially over Europe but by extension over the whole world. The balance of power was not considered a coincidental happenstance, or as something detestable; it was seen as the beginning and end of all political activity. This is good politics; it produced good politics. This is how all politics should be conducted. Détente ended when ideology once more gripped the halls of American power and demanded blood and empire without end, unwilling to accept that it did not and could not rule the world and that other political régimes existed neither in the image of nor subordination to the US state. Arrogance in politics always and necessarily leads to ruin.
This is why not all balances of power are equal. Balances of power where one state or group of states has overpowering and oppressive power over others is not stable. These states will, sooner or later, forget themselves, and destabilise the international status quo in pursuit of ideological fantasies, the most enduringly alluring of which being the recreation of the world in its own image. The most stable and preferable balance of power is that in which it is spread to a more or less equal degree between the great powers. Such a situation allows for the great powers to engage with one another near enough as equals, and, as there does not exist any sufficiently insurmountable advantage of one over any other, politicians of all states are forced to act sensibly and with respect. Pragmatic politics is forced upon political agents, because they do not possess the brute strength to push through just any policy. And for smaller states in the peripheries and within spheres of influence, they can exert sufficient influence over the great powers, the great powers being great but not unreachable and therefore dependent upon the support of their allies, that relative subordination does not become absolute submission. It is also possible in such a régime for the established powers to check and counter any one of their number that loses sight of the common interest and begins to strive for total power; together, such an anti-hegemonic coalition would be sufficiently powerful to force the would-be superpower to back down. The international sphere is still unquestionably anarchic, but it is somewhat comprehended and somewhat managed. This situation of considered multilateralism is the one which realists seek to push states towards. Unilateralism and imperialism endanger all states, the superpower included.
6. Realism and moral reasoning.
Of all the various non-political interests which may supplant — and therefore must not be allowed to supplant — interest defined as power in political consideration and activity, the moral interest is particularly poisonous to good politics and, it must be said, to the welfare of the majority with which many realists have identified themselves. Moral reasoning is poisonous because it accepts no limit to its applicability: everything is potentially moral, both action and intent, and the moral law or general interest measured in utility accepts no species of phenomena or particular phenomenon to fall outside its remit. As such, as soon as the moral interest is given even the slightest consideration, it will strive to win for itself the superlative, even total consideration.
Morality does not provide a legitimate goal for political activity, nor a valid criterion by which it can be judged and criticised. It does not provide a legitimate goal because there is no connection between interest defined as power and interest defined as the moral good; there is absolutely no reason to suppose that the moral interest will align with the political interest and, as such, be possible in politics. If morality and power coincide, then the morality of the activity is irrelevant; if they conflict, then the morality is dangerous to the common good and the functioning of the state, a functioning which cannot and must not accept any other principle to which it can be subordinated. Morality does not provide a valid criterion for the judgement of politics because it shares neither means nor ends. It would be akin to judging politics by the standard of the general theory of relativity, or morality by the standard of colour theory. Politics cannot be judged by accordance or non-accordance with behavioural imperatives because politics concerns neither behaviour as such or any imperatives other than that for power, nor can it be judged by whether or not it encourages the flourishing of any individual or collective group of human animals because flourishing does not imply power nor power flourishing.
Realism’s insistence on the unconditional subordination of all moral concerns to political concerns within politics¹³ does not mean, however, that realism disallows universalist policies. There is nothing in realism which suggests that a politician should not work towards the achievement of her policies over as wide a number of people as possible, if this is sensible. Policies of gender, sexual, and racial equality, for instance, are a realist’s concern just as much as a liberal’s. Neither does realism imply a relativistic isolationism whereby no one political community can criticise or object to aspects of another, any concern other than power being supposedly illusory or unimportant. It only requires that such hopes — hopes, after all, for a better world — be subordinated, unconditionally, to politics. Politics does not have to offer any justification for this, for it is simply how the world is, but all the same it can offer one: serious, pragmatic politics is the only way such hopes could ever even conceivably be realised. In the pursuit of profitable political exchanges, the face of the world has been transformed many times over, often to the great benefit of humanity. In practice, this means that realism endorses struggle within the ideological state apparatus; a material, concrete class struggle for power, not an abstract yearning for moralistic convictions. All the same, it is an endorsement of ideological struggle and the pursuit of universalism.
Realism is the theory of politics as an autonomous field of study and action. It constructs itself in the context of a world of horrors. Politics is not a game, and the stakes of political activity are higher than those in any other field of human activity. For these reasons it is especially important that political theory defends the right of political interests to drive political activity, and to provide for political actors the most accurate and utilisable advice and guidance possible. Anything else must be found more or less unacceptable to any reasonable judge. Underlying all of realism’s theory is the understanding that politics is far too important to allow it to be hijacked or misled by alien motivations; that politics is fundamentally rational and comprehensible, and so navigable. It is precisely such navigation that realism provides, not perfectly and not without fail, but more than any other systematic approach to politics. It is the crowning achievement of over two thousand years of political activity and theory. It is disregarded only at extreme peril. The guiding principle of political realism can be summarised as follows: with a sombre understanding of their environment and the laws which govern it, with great effort, and with modesty and impartiality¹⁴, and only with these things, humans can improve their conditions for the benefit of all mankind and the generations to come.
Endnotes
¹ This essay is in large part based on a chapter of the same title by Hans Morgenthau in later editions of his Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Peace and Power.
² Thoukydides (tr. Richard Crawley), The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.1
³ The obvious example is H. sapiens, but we can perhaps add to this other human and maybe even hominid species, at least in a non-state and non-class capacity. More speculatively, we can hypothetically consider political species which may evolve after H. sapiens’ extinction, or possible extraterrestrial species past, present, or future. The significance of the biological basis of politics, traditionally discussed by classical realism under the ideological concept of “human nature”, becomes only increasingly clear when one considers what a politics of a species very different to our own might look like.
⁴ Political actors can have a significant impact on the course of history in general and political history in particular without such an understanding of historical, political, economic, etc., laws, but this impact will be imprecise and typically beyond their intentions and comprehension. Consider the ruin which Mongol armies visited on countries across the globe, and, to isolate only one product of this, the drive towards centralisation amongst the Russian principalities which the resulting Mongol hegemony engendered. Neither the Mongols nor the Russians intended for the system of tribute to reshape Russian politics and eventually lead to the creation of an all-Russian state; if they had, and had some degree of understanding about political laws, the Russians could have achieved it more rapidly, more completely, and more peacefully, and the Mongols would have been in a far better position to oppose it and maintain their empire. Man can never become the master of events, but he can become akin to a skilled sailor on a well-built ship; without an understanding of political laws, he is at best an amateur on a serviceable vessel, and can easily find himself adrift and without power, or atop a Medusan raft.
⁵ A political agent is any agent qua political actor, in the same sense that an epistemic agent is any agent qua knower. Hence, the category includes an extremely wide range of agents whose status is determined by their actions and circumstances, not their formal role, and is in no way limited to the quintessential statesman. It includes, for instance, informed voters (uninformed voters, like all voters, are used by political agents, but are not themselves agents), military personnel (it would be superfluous to say that this is only true in circumstances in which the military plays a political role because it always plays a political role; more truthfully it describes circumstances in which the military directly interacts with the political apparatus in a non-subordinate manner), and scientists involved, directly or indirectly, in policymaking (the role, during the COVID-19 pandemic, of figures like Fauci in the US and Witty in the UK are a good example of this). In principle, every single agent, of any kind, within a political society (which is surely a tautology) is a potential political agent. They may occupy this role, this status, intermittently, at various points in their life, or continuously from one point to another, such as from adulthood to retirement or death. Nobody can ever be a priori or ipso facto ruled out of being a political agent. Aristoteles (tr. H. Rackham), Politics 1.1253a: ‘man is by nature a political animal’.
⁶ We leave it to the reader to suggest a social relationship which is not organised towards this purpose.
⁷ This by no means an exhaustive list.
⁸ This theory is universally applicable within politics, and is not restricted to the specific “level” of international relations between states. Nevertheless this is where it is principally applied and the arena in which it is typically thought to have the most significance.
⁹ Metaphors are always a dubious tool in theoretical study and should never be taken too literally and without a sufficient degree of hesitance and suspicion. For our purposes here, it will suffice to say that there does not exist any structure which can compel states to act in a certain fashion, except, perhaps, other states; they are sovereign, and do not answer to any further power.
¹⁰ It has not always been. In mediaeval Europe, for instance, states were rarely sovereign, and typically engaged in highly complex relations of overlapping authority, de jure suzerainty, and various relations of subordination. Critically, the states of mediaeval Catholic Europe were only at best tendentially territorial states; rather, state authority was a relation of personal obligations, not specific territorial possessions. More sophisticated semi-territorial states existed in the Greek and Islamic worlds, the inheritance of the more advanced state forms that existed in antiquity.
¹¹ This is the governing principle of international relations, but, like all principles, it can and will be violated when doing so advances a state’s interests (i.e., its power). One of the characteristic elements of contemporary international relations are the repeated attempts by the USA to undermine the sovereignty of states to which it is hostile by dealing with dissident non-state actors within their territory. This policy, alongside the “responsibility to protect” doctrine which announced the guiding rationale of post-Cold War US policy, is rational from the USA’s perspective and does advance their interests, that is to say, it does better retain the power which they possess (the USA is in a declining period). It also, however, undermines the basis of the entire geopolitical arrangement, to the detriment of all. It must be resisted and the absolute, unconditional sovereignty of states reasserted. To treat with foreign non-state actors is to officially and practically disregard that state’s legal sovereignty. This precedent must be fought if long-term peace and stability is to be won, especially in the context of a declining imperial power.
¹² Recall that only political interests can trump political interests; non-political interests can never supplant them or be a legitimate means by which to oppose politics.
¹³ This specification is often conveniently forgotten by realism’s detractors, who find it easier and preferable to oppose a strawman of an immoralist than a steelman of an amoralist, and an amoralist in only one particular context at that.
¹⁴ That is, without arrogance or prejudice.
This essay as a PDF, with the article “Moral Right and Political Motivation:
Thoukydides and Machiavelli on the Public Good” as an addendum.
