Politics as War by Other Means

In 1976, Michel Foucault delivered his Society Must Be Defended lectures, where he turned Carl von Clausewitz’s famous dictum that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” on its head. For Foucault, it was politics that continued war, not as a metaphor but as an underlying reality within supposedly peaceful societies. In his view, our political structures, laws, and norms don’t end conflict; they mask and continue it, shifting the front lines into social institutions and ideologies.

Foucault’s reading here defies 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who posited that establishing a sovereign ends the 'war of all against all.' Hobbes believed a unified state absorbed individual struggles into a peaceful collective existence. But, as Foucault pointed out, civil wars and resistances never truly vanish; they transform, resurfacing as localized battles - protests, revolts, and quiet resistances against the ‘peace’ imposed by state power. This shift from externalized war to internal struggle underlines Foucault’s inversion: politics does not merely emerge from war; it weaponizes social order.

One of Foucault’s most compelling moves is his historical approach to the “struggle of races,” not in the modern biological sense but as group struggles - Saxons against Normans, Franks against Gauls. For some seventeenth- and eighteenth-century historians, history wasn’t a cohesive national myth but a series of power struggles, invasions, and conquests that had forcibly united diverse groups under ruling systems. The state, rather than a natural body, was a construction, assembled atop the corpses and ruins of displaced peoples. What the law would call peace was, in Foucault’s terms, simply a masked conflict, preserved through mechanisms of order and discipline.

The transition to modern states, Foucault argued, did not bring peace but, instead, evolved power structures that impose discipline. Through this process, the power of the state shifted from monarchs to abstract structures claiming to represent ‘the people’ but serving to subdue them under the banner of collective sovereignty. This was no universal social harmony but a regulated tension, pacified and sustained by the architecture of law and social science.

Foucault’s inversion of Clausewitz’s famous dictum – from “War is the continuation of politics by other means” to “Politics is the continuation of war by other means” - cuts to the heart of what politics truly represents: not peace but the perpetuation of conflict. This provocative shift challenges our understanding of power, social order, and the very idea of peace. Instead of seeing politics as a process aimed at reconciling differences or achieving harmony, Foucault frames it as an unceasing, coded warfare where power dynamics and conflicts remain, albeit more subtly orchestrated.

For Foucault, the essence of political power is not in its ability to create order but in its ability to mask ongoing struggles under the veneer of peace. In this view, the state doesn’t replace or resolve conflict; it reconfigures it, transforming visible battles into embedded forms of control. Law, institutions, social norms, and language become battlegrounds where power relations are constantly played out and reasserted. Power, as Foucault sees it, is not a commodity or asset transferred through social contracts or exchanges. Unlike the traditional “juridical” view of power, where it operates as a right that can be shared, traded, or relinquished, Foucault insists that power is something exercised and sustained through unceasing “relationships of force.”

This is where Foucault departs sharply from the idea that political power serves primarily to stabilize or benefit the economy, as Marxist thought often suggests. Instead of viewing power as subservient to economic ends, he sees it as a pervasive force embedded within every aspect of society, constantly in motion, and working to sustain the imbalances established by past struggles. Political power, in this sense, finds its purpose not in facilitating economic production but in organizing and reinforcing a social hierarchy that originated from historical conflicts. In Foucault’s terms, these conflicts form the “matrix” of power; they don’t disappear but rather live on in institutional forms, as residues and reminders of past battles.

The notion that politics is a continuation of war suggests that the fundamental inequalities and dominations resulting from past conflicts are not eradicated by peace but are instead institutionalized. Law and governance, for Foucault, do not neutralize conflict or create a harmonious order. Rather, they become tools to codify and sustain the relationships of domination established by prior confrontations. War, in this view, is not eradicated by politics; it is reconfigured as part of the order that we mistakenly interpret as peace.

This view of power departs significantly from the contract theories that have dominated Western political thought, where social contracts supposedly end the “war of all against all” by vesting authority in a sovereign who provides peace in exchange for submission. Foucault reinterprets this peace as a superficial mask that conceals enduring conflicts. Instead of being a state free of strife, peace is an exercise in the strategic distribution and management of power. In other words, what society considers “peaceful” is actually a carefully organized continuation of past conflicts that continue to govern through subtle mechanisms, shaping bodies, minds, and social relations.

Carl von Clausewitz

Foucault’s notion of “silent war” is key here. While traditional political theories frame peace as a positive achievement of civil order, Foucault suggests that it is only a subdued and controlled extension of war’s violence. What looks like order is in fact the ongoing enforcement of historical inequities and hierarchies. Political institutions do not, therefore, exist to reconcile differences or distribute power equitably; instead, they serve to maintain and subtly enforce the disparities embedded within society. Power doesn’t end conflict; it embeds it, pushing it underground, only to reappear in the institutions and norms that govern everyday life.

This shift in perspective also reframes how we understand civil society. In Foucault’s view, civil society is not a space of harmony but rather a complex network of relationships where power continues to exercise itself through control, surveillance, and regulation. The idea that “peace” is merely a continuation of war means that civil institutions - schools, hospitals, legal systems - function not simply to serve society but to manage it, to keep the latent conflicts subdued.

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.

Foucault’s emphasis on seeing power as an “exercise” rather than as something to be “possessed” also departs from common interpretations of politics as a system of governance designed to protect and improve social welfare. Instead, he suggests that every exercise of political power is a tactical deployment within a broader battlefield. The state’s concern is not harmony but control; it is not equality but dominance. Laws are not mere guidelines for fair play but tools to ensure the subjugation of one group to another, to secure ongoing hierarchies. Power relations, far from being consensual or democratic, represent the subtle, pervasive maintenance of conflict.

Through this lens, even social concepts like “security” and “order” take on a new dimension. They are not simply safeguards for peace but are themselves instruments of warfare, strategies to suppress potential disruptions to the status quo. The social contract, instead of ending war, formalizes it, maintaining a structured inequality that reflects the original dominance established through force. Security becomes a way to pacify dissent, keeping society in a state of suppressed warfare by controlling dissenters, rebels, and any potential disruptors of order.

Foucault’s perspective also asks us to reconsider what we mean by repression. Where traditional theories might view repression as an abuse of political power, Foucault sees repression as an inevitable part of the political framework itself. Repression is not an unfortunate side effect of governance but a structural element, an essential mechanism that enforces submission within society. Rather than being an abuse of political rights, repression underpins the very functioning of social institutions that ostensibly exist to serve the public. It is the means by which power continuously reinscribes its dominance, reminding us that the “peace” we experience is merely a series of quieted conflicts, kept in check by the mechanisms of order and control.

By reinterpreting politics as war by other means, Foucault not only critiques traditional understandings of peace but also challenges the legitimacy of political institutions that claim to serve society. These institutions, in his view, do not end conflicts but manage and perpetuate them, ensuring that power remains in the hands of those who won the initial battles. Civil institutions become instruments in a larger strategy to enforce submission and compliance, a strategy that operates quietly yet pervasively.

For Foucault, the task of understanding politics is thus not to seek out peace but to analyze how conflicts are embedded within the very structures of social life. By looking closely at how power is distributed and exercised through institutions, norms, and laws, we can begin to see that what appears as peace is actually a controlled and coded continuation of war. In this sense, Foucault’s inversion is a call to reassess the ideals we associate with politics and civil society. Instead of aspiring toward an idealized peace, we must recognize the ways in which politics continues the very conflicts it claims to resolve, embedding war within the daily functioning of society.

Ultimately, Foucault’s inversion of Clausewitz demands that we confront the myth of peace that underlies our political assumptions. This peace is not a harmonious state of society but a masked violence, a continuous exercise in domination, regulation, and control. To understand politics as a continuation of war is to acknowledge that power operates not to bring about balance but to sustain a constant state of conflict, embedded within the very structures that claim to protect us.