Politics as War by Other Means

In 1976, Michel Foucault delivered his Society Must Be Defended lectures, where he inverted Carl von Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means. For Foucault, it is politics that continues war, not as a metaphor but as an underlying reality within supposedly peaceful societies. Political structures, laws, and norms do not end conflict. They displace it, embedding it within institutions and social relations.

This position directly challenges Thomas Hobbes, who argued that the establishment of a sovereign ends the “war of all against all.” For Hobbes, the state absorbs individual conflict into a unified and peaceful order. Foucault, by contrast, insists that conflict never disappears. Civil wars, resistances, and struggles persist, but in transformed ways: in protests, revolts, and more diffuse forms of opposition within the very framework of order. What appears as peace is in fact a reorganization of conflict.

One of Foucault’s key historical moves is his analysis of the “struggle of races,” understood not in a biological sense but as conflicts between groups such as Saxons and Normans or Franks and Gauls. For early modern historians, history was not a unified national narrative but a record of conquest and domination. The state emerged from these struggles, built upon the subjugation of defeated groups. Law, in this context, does not establish peace but stabilizes and legitimizes the outcomes of past conflicts.

Modern political forms do not escape this logic. The transition from monarchy to the modern state does not eliminate domination but redistributes it through new mechanisms. Power no longer appears as the will of a sovereign but as the expression of “the people,” even as it continues to regulate and constrain them. What emerges is not harmony but a managed and normalized tension, sustained through legal, administrative, and scientific systems.

Foucault’s inversion of Clausewitz cuts to the core of what politics is. Rather than a process aimed at reconciliation or equilibrium, politics becomes the ongoing organization of conflict. Power does not resolve differences but structures and channels them. Institutions, norms, and even language function as sites where these struggles are maintained and reproduced.

This also requires a shift in how power itself is understood. Against the traditional juridical view, where power is treated as a possession or right, Foucault describes it as something exercised within “relationships of force.” Power is not held or transferred. It is enacted, continuously and strategically, across a field of tensions.

In this sense, Foucault departs from the idea that political power primarily serves economic ends. Rather than being subordinate to the economy, power operates throughout the social field, organizing and reinforcing hierarchies that originate in historical conflicts. These conflicts do not vanish. They persist as the underlying matrix of institutions, shaping how society functions.

From this perspective, law and governance do not neutralize conflict but codify it. They formalize relations of domination that emerged from earlier struggles, giving them stability and legitimacy. What is called peace is therefore not the absence of conflict but its regulated continuation.

Foucault’s notion of a “silent war” captures this condition. Political order is not opposed to war but is one of its forms. The apparent stability of institutions conceals an ongoing enforcement of inequality and hierarchy. Civil society itself is not a space of harmony but a dense network in which power operates through surveillance, regulation, and normalization.

Carl von Clausewitz

Institutions such as schools, hospitals, and legal systems do not simply serve social needs. They also function to manage populations, to contain and channel potential disruptions. The distribution of resources, access to education, and forms of social mobility all participate in the continuation of underlying conflicts. Politics becomes an endless series of strategic adjustments within this field, not a movement toward resolution.

This also transforms how we understand concepts like security and order. They are not neutral safeguards but active mechanisms that stabilize existing power relations. Security operates to prevent challenges to the established order, maintaining a condition in which conflict is suppressed rather than eliminated. The social contract, far from ending war, organizes it into a structured and enduring form.

The very institutions that appear to stabilize society, then, are engaged in a constant process of reinforcing the power dynamics forged in historical struggles. The distribution of resources, social mobility, access to education, and even legal protection all function as mechanisms through which the underlying conflict is perpetuated. Politics, understood in this way, is an endless series of negotiations, but these negotiations are not aimed at creating balance. They are tactics in a never-ending struggle to preserve and control power. Peace, then, is simply the codified, hidden continuation of this struggle.

Repression, in this framework, is not an anomaly or abuse. It is structural. It belongs to the normal functioning of political systems, ensuring that power relations are maintained. What appears as the protection of society is inseparable from the enforcement of domination.

Foucault’s inversion ultimately challenges the legitimacy of political institutions that present themselves as guarantors of peace. These institutions do not transcend conflict. They manage and perpetuate it, securing the position of those who emerged victorious in earlier struggles. Politics, then, is not the opposite of war but its continuation in another register.

To understand politics in this way is not to abandon the idea of peace, but to rethink it. What we call peace is not a neutral or harmonious state. It is a configuration of forces, a stabilization of conflict that remains active beneath the surface. Foucault’s claim forces us to see that war has not disappeared from modern societies. It has been internalized, coded, and embedded within the very structures that claim to protect us.