Towards a critical concept of the statesperson
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| Author | Richard Beardsworth |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088216671736 |
Journal of International Political Theory
2017, Vol. 13(1) 100 –121
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088216671736
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Towards a critical concept
of the statesperson
Richard Beardsworth
Aberystwyth University, UK
Abstract
This article considers convergence between classical realism and critical theory in relation
to pressing political problems. It argues that the spirit of both traditions can help develop
critical reflection on the state as an agent of change. I suggest that too much recent critical
theorization has avoided the state in its attention to social movements, but that a critical
concept of state leadership is now required to address global threats and challenges. The
article rehearses this critical concept in three stages. It considers, first, how the concept
of national interest drives statecraft in the authorship of Hans Morgenthau and how
complex this concept is both in its own terms and with regard to the political effects
of the nuclear revolution. It develops, second, a multi-layered concept of responsibility
as the guiding concept of statecraft in a world of increasingly incompatible demands.
It argues, third, that these concepts of national interest and responsibility need to be
aligned with global imperatives so that a greater marriage between the global and the
national is possible. I conclude that it is the task of contemporary critical thought to
address this present through a reimagined political realism.
Keywords
Classical realism, critical theorizing, state leadership
Introduction: The present of theory
One important meeting-place between classical realism and critical theory from the per-
spective of modernity, crisis and humanity is an understanding of the present and of
political responses to it. Both trivial and non-trivial, the point requires explanation in
order that the guiding concept of this article, a critical concept of the statesperson, is
appropriately understood.1
Corresponding author:
Richard Beardsworth, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth SY23
3FE, UK.
Email: rib17@aber.ac.uk
671736IPT0010.1177/1755088216671736Journal of International Political TheoryBeardsworth
research-article2016
Article
Beardsworth 101
That classical realism and critical theory meet in an understanding of, and political
response to, the present may seem perplexing, particularly to those studying international
relations (IR) through the lens of critical theory or to those in classical realism that have
recently emphasized its more meta-theoretical credentials.2 Indeed one might precisely
argue that where classical realism and critical theory meet is in a particular distance to
the present. This distance affords a critical approach to dominant modes of thought and
behaviour, one lost if ‘truth’ comes too close to ‘power’ and loses extra-systemic lever-
age on structures of domination. This judgment is intellectually pertinent, informing part
of the critical gesture behind the recent retrieval of classical realism from the IR schools
of structural realism and neorealism. That said, I consider it equally critical to re-empha-
size the importance of the present in both classical realism and critical theory given
contemporary need for political imagination.
For the classical realists of the 1940s and 1950s (in particular, E.H. Carr, John Herz,
Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr and Arnold Wolfers), theoretical reflection always
stemmed from, and was rooted in, a practical context. Reflection on the tenets of political
realism, on national interest and power dynamics and on the security dilemma and
nuclear weaponry were made in the immediate context of what was interpreted to be
contemporary international reality: the failure of liberal internationalism, a system of
states, and an ideologically polarized world of nations. The ‘classical realism’ of this
period constitutes a family set (in the Wittgensteinian sense) of theoretical responses to
this international predicament. The political morality of prudent statecraft, with which
this set is closely identified, constitutes, in turn, the practically oriented theoretical out-
come of these responses (Brown, 2012; Lang, 2004; Molloy, 2009; Williams, 2005). In
these two respects – without being either presentist or subservient to present political
actors or power structures – classical realism is a theory of, and for, the present.
As for critical theory, the temporal modality of its disposition towards political real-
ity is more complex, but also oriented towards the present. In ‘Traditional and Critical
Theory’, Max Horkheimer (1937) makes four claims for critical theory. First, in distinc-
tion to positivism, it is comprehensive in its understanding of social processes (hence,
the Frankfurt School’s debt to critical political economy on the determining contradic-
tions of capitalism). Second, in distinction to both abstract theory and the theorizing of
successive periods of history, it works ‘with time’ (Horkheimer, 1937: 233) in the sense
that it is both aware of its historical conditions and aware of its temporal relation to the
historical practices of contemporary society. Third, as practical theory, it considers itself
‘an element in action leading to new social forms’, as a ‘force stimulating social change’
(Horkheimer, 1937: 215–216). Fourth, in distinction to the policy dimension of positiv-
ist theory and science, this practical nature is geared to the normative end of emancipa-
tion: a society of peoples free from domination (Horkheimer, 1937: 230–231). In sum,
in comparison with previous conceptions of theory, Horkheimer defines ‘critical’ theory
as comprehensive, historical, practical and normative. Critical theorizing entails,
accordingly, addressing present societal problems in such as way as not to repeat the
present, but open it up to the future, to seek, that is, the present’s normative ‘transforma-
tion’. While rightly refusing a political agent of historical transformation, critical theo-
ry’s theoretical and practical force regarding the present has, however, become
increasingly dissipated for internal and external reasons. Externally, the functional
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