Is it possible to bring an end to violence through violence itself? Walter Benjamin argues that a practical answer to this question rests on distinguishing types of violence. In investigating the distinctions of violence Benjamin makes in Critique of Violence, greater questions about the meaning and function of violence emerge especially in relation to the law. Benjamin’s philosophy of violence and the law offers a language through which the Molly Maguires can be properly investigated as an ethical and historical question. Using the concepts from Critique of Violence in conjunction with Anthony Bimba’s 1932 The Molly Maguires, the legal and historical perception of terror is shown to be an artifact of the state’s monopoly on violence. In accordance with Benjamin, the violence attributed to the Molly Maguires was part of an existential struggle for the lives of all against the violence of law itself and therefore exemplifies divine violence.
Benjamin on Violence
First, it will prove useful to give a general summary of Critique of Violence. In order to understand Benjamin’s discussions of violence, it may be crucial to discuss differences in language with the source material. Writing in German, Benjamin originally uses the word “Gewalt,” which can mean “violence” or “force” (252). This difference in meaning from Benjamin’s linguistic context can itself allow us to understand some of the broader connections to state and law that Benjamin makes in the essay. Violence, for Benjamin, does not operate solely on a physical level but rather on a legal and social level as opposing forces.
Benjamin begins his Critique of Violence by discussing the language of ends and means as it applies legally and philosophically to violence. He states that “the most elementary relationship within any legal system is that of ends to means” and that “violence can first be sought in the realm of means” (236). Here, Benjamin frames the discussion around the legal and ethical understanding that violence is not acceptable as a goal in itself. Violence cannot be judged ethically in general based on the ends it brings. Benjamin observes that such understandings of law and ethics do not consider “whether violence, as a principle, could be a moral means” at all (236). He asks if violence can in an ideal case be moral. The answer he provides to this question is that “a more exact criterion is needed” that can ethically distinguish between “means themselves, without regard for the ends they serve” (236). This is Benjamin’s way of countering the natural law based understanding of ends justifying means.
Benjamin describes the legal philosophies of natural law and positive law to further prepare for his own perspective. Natural law, which he connects to Darwinism, conceptualizes violence as an inherent right and tendency of life that is given to the state in a social contract. Darwinism “regards violence as the only original means” and thereby assumes it as part of the fabric of life itself (237). Consequently, the natural law perspective distinguishes between violence on the basis of just and unjust ends.
Opposed to this perspective is positive law. Positive law “sees violence as a product of history” rather than a fact of nature (237). Put simply, positive law judges based on means rather than the ends they achieve. Benjamin elaborates on how these two legal philosophies are invoked to create a false paradox. Specifically, natural and positive law may suggest that “justified means on the one hand and just ends on the other were in irreconcilable conflict” (237). However, this is not the case if we create “mutually independent criteria both of just ends and of justified means” (237). Importantly, Benjamin follows this by stating that the focus of his Critique of Violence will be on establishing criteria of justified means. The task of analyzing ends is “excluded for the time being from this study” and consequently the framework of positive law is favored by Benjamin insofar as it emphasizes the distinction of means (237). Despite favoring the positive law perspective for this work, he emphasizes that to truly understand “the meaning of this distinction” between just and unjust violence, we must approach the question more broadly through a “philosophico-historical approach” (238). Through philosophy and history a greater understanding of the meaning of violence can emerge. The pursuit of ethical criteria for the use of violence gives a greater understanding “by the fact that such a criterion or distinction can be applied to it at all” (238). For Benjamin, the project is perhaps more about illuminating broader truths about the function of violence through the discussion of its justified use as a means.
He continues to discuss how legal systems and individuals’ desires function as forces with sometimes conflicting interests. Here he uses the language of “legal ends” to convey the legal system and its conflicts with individuals and their “natural ends.” Legal ends are actualized exclusively “by legal power” in order to control the natural ends of individuals (238). Natural ends that use violence are of particular interest for legal systems to “deny.” Interestingly, the ends of individuals can even be denied when ostensibly they are permitted. When permitted natural ends are pursued with “an excessive measure of violence,” the legal system seeks to limit them (238). That is unless the desired violence overlaps “with legal ends if pursued with a greater or lesser degree of violence” (238). Benjamin argues, similar to Max Weber, that the legal system seeks to create a “monopoly of violence” (239). That means if violence contradicts the legal system then the legal system will oppose it. Likewise, if violence reinforces the legal system it will be permitted by that legal system. This is because violence challenges legal hegemony through lawmaking violence, or maintains it through law preserving violence.
The monopoly on violence is reflective of how violence contains a “lawmaking
character” (240). This is related to how peace is declared in law regardless of whether or not peace exists in fact. Military force results in legal realities, which may or may not align with lived realities. The law is confronted with “the threat of declaring a new law” (241). It must legally recognize the lawmaking character of violence when it is forced to, for example, allow “the right to strike.” In opposition to the lawmaking function of violence is the “law preserving” function of violence. The forces of existing law and new law confront one another in this way. This demonstrates more broadly how “from the viewpoint of violence, which alone can
guarantee law, there is no equality but at the most equally great violence” (249). Forces can compete between each other and thereby maintain an equilibrium, but true equality can only come with the end of the historical epoch of violence.
Benjamin adopts Sorel’s distinction between the “political strike” and the “proletarian general strike” and uses them as examples of violent and nonviolent means (245). The political strike is interested in short-term material gain for one sector. It is the hallmark of the “moderate socialist” politicians and functions as a type of violence in that it seeks to maintain the legal monopoly on violence in exchange for concessions or extortions. Benjamin likens this to the fraught political compromises embodied in Germany after World War I. In contrast to this, the proletarian general strike seeks “a wholly transformed work, no longer enforced by the state” (246). Because it seeks to bring an end to the historical epoch of violence, Benjamin considers the general strike to be nonviolent. Furthermore, the political strike “is lawmaking but the [general] anarchistic” (246). This anarchistic, nonviolent nature of the general strike is repeated in Benjamin’s description of divine violence.
Divine violence is situated as opposed to mythic violence (250). Mythic violence is self interested and threatening. The gods of the Greco-Roman pantheon exert power through a near-total control that involves threats between competing forces. Only a hero can defy mythic violence through fate which supersedes the gods. In contrast, the God of Benjamin’s Jewish faith is all powerful and therefore operates from the perspective of embodying life itself. Mythic gods kill for self-interested feuds, but God as Benjamin conceives kills for the sake of life itself. In
doing so, divine violence expiates or forgives the guilt under the law with what is greater than the law. Important to this, too, is Benjamin’s explanation that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” is a law made to operate on the human world as a guideline. Those who disregard the instruction know not their ultimate fate, but perhaps that is the sacrifice made.
In an example of killing in defense of life itself, what killing does “to God and the doer” is a sacrifice made in furtherance of an end to killing on a greater scale (251). Because “divine violence is pure power over all life,” death and sins are arranged by God knowingly “for the sake of the living” (250). It isn’t, as it might appear, that Benjamin is arguing that killing is generally acceptable. Rather, he is emphasizing that it is a means by which “the abolition of state power [and] a new historical epoch is founded” (252). The choice to die in sin for the sake of the living is a sacrifice potentially worth making in furtherance of escaping the cycle of violence.
The Mollies
The Molly Maguires emerged most significantly from the total defeat of the moderate WBA (11). Having existed loosely before as members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians who may have occasionally taken things into their own hands, the actual existence of an organized group called the Molly Maguires is now disputed. Anthony Bimba argues strongly that their creation as organized terrorists was a hoax involving Pinkerton false flags and a media smear campaign both locally and throughout the country. This was, in reality, a narrative of terror that emerged with the help of Pinkerton provocateurs who used criminal framing as a common tactic(102). In fact, the highest levels of coordination in action were shown by creating through the use of paid detectives the legal basis for public executions that function as law preserving violence. Through the legal system, an appearance of violence can be fabricated or exaggerated to preserve the law itself against threats to its existence. Because of this, legal mechanisms were
employed to create the idea of the Molly Maguires as an organized extremist terror group. In giving the ultimate punishment through trials conducted with extreme conflict of interests, the law demonstrated its willingness to kill in order to maintain its monopoly on violence in the extractive region.
It is clear when studying the history of the labor struggles in question that all means of unsavory tactics were used to maintain a legal system of violent exploitation. The struggle for life against the legal monopoly on violence is best illuminated through historical investigation. As Bimba observes, the newspapers of the time conveniently forget to verify the historical accuracy of the claims against the mollies (9). This is perhaps similar to the control by the capitalist system of managerial, bureaucratic, and legally important positions in the anthracite regions through bribes and threats (33). To counter this, a labor organization emerged to fight for a different legal reality.
The Workingman’s Benevolent Association was a nonviolent, nonsectarian union of coal miners led by a man from St. Clair called John Siney. The WBA was one of the earliest coal miners’ unions in the country, and it played a crucial role in the class struggles from 1868 to 1875 (42). In 1875, the wealthy railroad owner Franklin B. Gowan and other operators triggered a strike known as the “Long Strike” in order to crush the union (54). While the Mollies, or actions ascribed to them, had been active prior to this, the crushing of the nonviolent WBA through control of the railroads resulted in a violent response. Gowan and the Pinkertons orchestrated the fabrication of evidence in furtherance of fear mongering in the papers and eventually executions (83). In addition to infiltration, Pinkertons and their associates engaged in murder and framing against key members of the WBA and Ancient Order of Hibernians. The capitalist class, organized by Gowan into a trade association or cartel, used their hegemony to crush the nonviolent element and provoke violent reactions and media exaggerations. The result was a successfully crushed nonviolent union and, to cap it all off, the public execution of the most dedicated labor leaders in what Benjamin would call “law preserving” violence. This was in the wider context of starvation, child labor, and near indentured servitude through company stores.
Even the trials of the executed were effectively a sham. Through Pinkerton spies, Gowan himself was arguably complicit in fomenting assassinations of alleged “Mollies,” and yet he was permitted to conduct trials as state prosecutor. Franklin B. Gowan was the president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad that at the time “already acquired some 70,000 acres” which is enough for “all the coal tonnage that can possibly be transported on the road for centuries” (33). This egregious conflict of interest, along with key testimony resting mainly on a Pinkerton employed by Gowan, demonstrates the full extent of the hoax against those accused. In this, Benjamin’s understanding of the law’s self-preserving nature is demonstrated insofar as the consistency and integrity of the law is flexible and corruptible in the context of existential threats to a legal system.
Prior to discussing the highly important Long Strike, Bimba gives a background on the worker struggles in the region. This includes, in addition to a history of early strikes, a discussion on the long history of Irish oppression at the hands of British landlords (46). Bimba suggests that this struggle, and the resistance tactics sometimes used, were transmitted to the anthracite region as Irish workers migrated to escape famine around 1845 (50). While Bimba discusses how the Irish mutual aid organization called the Ancient Order of Hibernians likely did contain members who engaged in violent resistance, there was nonetheless a concerted effort to depict any violent resistance as organized and endorsed by the WBA.
This, however, was not the case as the WBA leader John Siney emphasized that “all acts of violence are strictly forbidden” and that he stood for “law and order” (42). Unfortunately for John Siney and the workers he represented, the mission of nonviolent organization against the violent legal regime of the coal operators posed an existential threat to the coal operators legal monopoly on violence. Because of this, figures like Franklin B. Gowen used their control of the economy and legal system to crush the nonviolent resistance and remove its status as nonviolent through provocation and slander. This is the context in which slanderous accusations emerge of labor leaders being violent Molly Maguires. This is an accusation whose goal is ultimately the execution of the accused, as a means of violently preserving a hegemonic legal reality. In fact, the statements from Siney throughout show an attempt to control violence both of the operators
and law but also even of the rank and file workers who would use means other than the nonviolent union.
These conflicts came to a head in the form of the Long Strike of 1875. In what might be an unexpected response, the leadership of the WBA and the national MNA did not support the strikes despite being brought about by drastic wage cuts. The WBA “was fearful of open conflict and rather willing to stand a loss of power and worsening working conditions than to stand battle for improvements” (55). John Siney, who had at this time risen from leader of the WBA to the new Miners National Association, released a statement against the decision to strike stating that “the matter of ‘strikes,’ I need scarcely say, is the source of most of our troubles, and in their origin and control is where we find insubordination and disregard to the constitutional law” (56). Perhaps even more revealing, Siney asked his executive board “Is the constitution [of the union] to be sovereign and imperative in the control of the members, or is it to be used merely as a shield” and “[renounced] when the Executive assumes to enforce obedience to its dictates” (56). John Siney appears to be attempting to utilize the union’s legal constitution and liaisons with the state’s legal system to make a new legal monopoly on violence. The dying in the coal mines, despite having these traditionally nonviolent organizations, are being ordered to surrender to the violence of the mines under threat of contradicting the law of the union. John Siney and the WBA therefore appear to be in favor of law preserving violence.
The question of self interest, in the context of Benjamin, is debatable in that such fear of confrontation could be a genuinely held belief about tactics. From Benjamin’s perspective, self interest seems to be determined by the general versus the industry-specific strike (246). This distinction is complicated by the industry monopolies of the combined coal and railroad companies, but nonetheless it is evident from John Siney’s statements that the goal and structure of the WBA and MNA were oriented towards lawmaking and reaffirming the law in exchange for piecemeal gains in policy. They therefore would be oriented towards self interested mythic violence, in that they do not seek to bring an end to law itself and the historical epoch of violence it inflicts.
The surprising lack of confidence in strikes by the traditionally nonviolent leadership makes the question of violence and the Molly Maguires even more crucial. Were the actions ascribed to them in defense of self interest or life in general? The conditions in the mines along with the exploitative tyranny of the company stores and court influence amount to a state of indentured servitude (32). Child labor was a major issue and during the economic crisis of 1873, “Whole families perished daily of starvation” (37). Perhaps the Mollies or the radical labor organizers of the time would have accepted a reasonable legal compromise if one had been offered. However, it was the specific intention of Gowan and those he conspired with to prevent compromise by provoking a conflict to use as a pretext to destroy the WBA and their more radical rank and file (54).
This means the Mollies were in fact fighting for their lives and, given the extreme exploitation, life in general as something incompatible with the violence of the law. This is evident when looking at the historical conditions of the resistance under the Long Strike. The miners were told they would not even be permitted negotiation status on wage cuts in the future, much less receive their greater demand for a fixed minimum wage. Bimba concludes from this that “the power of the miners to control the conditions of their work and life was, more even than immediate demands, the center of the strike. It was so recognized by both sides, and as the operators sensed weakness in their opponents, they became more aggressive” (59). The conditions were existential. The courts defined “Any agreement, combination or confederation to increase the price of any vendable commodity” as “conspiracy,” which effectively made unions illegal. This is evident in the logic of the Joyce-Maloney case pronouncement, “I find you, Joyce, to be president of the union, and you, Maloney, to be secretary, and therefore I sentence you to one year’s imprisonment” (59). The law preserves itself by twisting to the defense of the historical epoch of violence. Even the deferential John Siney was arrested and charged with conspiracy, perhaps as a reflection of the weakness sensed in his position by those controlling the courts. Facing this existential threat of legal violence, the Executive Board of the Miners National Association reversed their perspective pleading that “If these men are criminally guilty, so are you — so is every trade unionist in the land and they are few from the flock who are chosen as an expiation for the sins of the whole” (60).
Interestingly, the religious language of “expiation” is one also invoked by Benjamin in divine violence. It is a sacrifice made that absolves legal guilt in working towards the end of law as a tool of violence. It is a selfless act of sacrifice for the greater of all people. Benjamin observes how the state has “the right to declare that a simultaneous use of strikes in all industries is illegal” (Benjamin 240). This is because even rights can appear “violent” to the state if they threaten to overthrow the state that has given the right. Exactly this issue is mentioned in the conclusions Bimba makes. The Miner’s National Association, led by John Siney from the WBA, and the UMWA leadership “failed again and again to call out miners in one field to back a strike elsewhere although this tactic would have been decisive for victory” (130). The general strike was, at the time, obstructed by the legalistic moderate union leadership. Despite this, the strikes still embody a selflessness on the part of the rank and file who overpowered the conciliatory currents of their leadership to force a coordinated response. The strikers “vowed never to return to the pits for reduced wages” (58). The life or death struggle indicates how the law can generate legal guilt in spite of actions taken in defense of life. Church involvement was significant as well, giving miners the options of losing their faith through excommunication or to suffer in the pits without hope. Many chose to sacrifice faith and even their lives in order to fight for the “abolition of state power” so that “a new historical epoch is founded” (252). Because of the nature of this struggle, and the lack of options given by those such as Gowen, the violence attributed to the Molly Maguires accurately fits Benjamin’s concept of “divine violence.” The AOH and WBA members slandered as Mollies and terrorists were in fact arguably the only truly nonviolent actors engaged in a struggle to bring the end of the law itself and its monopoly on violence.
Walter Benjamin theorizes ways of distinguishing and describing violence and the ethical issues surrounding it in Critique of Violence. Using the frameworks of divine violence, lawmaking and law preserving violence, the history of the Molly Maguires can be appreciated as one of existential struggle against the law. The history of John Siney and his capitulations to the law, which ultimately turned against him and his moderate organizations, illustrates Benjamin’s understanding of compromise and self interest in strikes and lawmaking. In analyzing how Benjamin’s ideas of violence apply to the Molly Maguires, it is clear that their existential struggle was in furtherance of bringing an end to the historical epoch of violence and, therefore, falls into the category of self sacrificing “divine violence.”
Works Cited
The Molly Maguires, Bimba, Anthony; 1970 International Publishers Co Inc
Selected Writings, Benjamin, Walter; Jennings, Michael; 1996 Cambridge, Massachusetts;
(236-252)
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