Critique of Violence by Walter Benjamin

Violence is not valid if it is not either a means of lawmaking or law preserving but the question is whether there are not other means for regulating conflicting human interests. There is no non violent resolution to a legal contract, it eventually leads to violence. Violence is part of its origin. Without the consciousness of its latent presence a legal institution perishes example the parliaments of our time, which have disillusioned people about the ideal of a non violent resolution. Parliament can only achieve in vital affairs through legal decrees that are attended by violence in their origin and outcome.

Nonviolence agreement is possible wherever a civilized outlook allows the use of unalloyed means of agreement, there are subjective preconditions like sympathy, courtesy, peaceableness and trust. They do not apply to conflicts between men and are only concerned with objects. There never was any sanction on lying. Now lawmakers have a penalty on fraud. The fear of violence contradicts with the violent nature of law, the ends which people want to achieve are inappropriate to the justified means of law. Law tries to restrict violent measures; it gives people the right to strike because previously workers set fire to factories. The fear of mutual disadvantages arises from violent confrontations. This is clear in the case of private people but in the case of nations higher orders are followed which constitute the most enduring motive for a policy of pure means.

In the case of class struggles a strike can be seen as a pure means under certain conditions. There are two types of strikes as originally pointed out by Sorel, the political and the proletarian general strike. In the first one the state none of its strength and power is transferred from the privileged to the privileged whereas the latter has the purpose of destroying state power. It is anarchistic; the revolution comes as a simple revolt. The violence cannot be assessed by its ends but the law of its means. The state opposes this strike. There is an agreement between private people to resolve conflicts and only occasionally is the legal system modified. Every possible solution to human problems seems impossible without the notion of violence. The question of whether justified means should be used to reach justified ends does not consider the possibility where violence is imposed by fate, this leads to the discouraging discovery of the ultimate insolubility of all legal problems. Reason does not dictate the justified means and ends. The means are used only for a preconceived end. It is not a means but a manifestation. In mythical violence, the action of Apollo and Aremis establishes a law far more than it punishes for the infringement of one already existing.