The Liberal Defence of Murder
A war that has killed more than a million Iraqis was a "humanitarian intervention", the US army is a force for liberation, and the main threat to world peace is posed by Islam. These are the arguments of a host of liberal commentators, including such notable names as Christopher Hitchens, Kanan Makiya, Michael Ignatieff, Paul Berman, and Bernard-Henri Lévy.
In this critical intervention, Richard Seymour unearths the history of liberal justifications for empire, showing how savage policies of conquest—including genocide and slavery—have been retailed as charitable missions. From the Cold War to the War on Terror, Seymour argues that colonialist notions of "civilization" and "progress" still shape liberal pro-war discourse, concealing the same bloody realities.
In a new afterword, Seymour revisits the debates on liberal imperialism in the era of Obama and in the light of the Afghan and Iraqi debacles.
Paperback, 384 pages
ISBN: 9781844678617
July 2012
$24.95 / £12.99 / $31.00CAN
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Other Editions
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Hardback, 358 pages
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ISBN: 9781844672400
October 2008
$29.95 / £16.99
Reviews
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A powerful critique of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and of those liberal intellectuals who support it.
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A great deal of damning material on the apologists of recent illegalities.
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Among those who share responsibility for the carnage and chaos in the Gulf are the useful idiots who gave the war intellectual cover and attempted to lend it a liberal imprimatur. The more belligerent they sounded the more bankrupt they became; the more strident their voice the more craven their position. As the war they have supported degrades into a murderous mess, Richard Seymour expertly traces their descent from humanitarian intervention to blatant islamophobia.
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An excellent antidote to the propagandists of the crisis of our times.
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A powerful counterblast against the monstrous regiment of ‘useful idiots.’
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Indispensable ... Seymour brilliantly uncovers the pre-history and modern reality of the so-called ‘pro-war Left.’
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[Seymour] delves into areas that are usually politely ignored, carefully uncovering liberalism and reformism’s own shameful record of collaboration with mass murder…essential reading.
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We need to understand where these ideas comes from and how to fight them. This book is a major contribution to this understanding.
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The Liberal Defence of Murder is an important and scrupulously researched book with much to offer those who want to know why the likes of Christopher Hitchens have gone so loopy.
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The most authoritative historical analysis of its kind … [Seymour] displays a welcome critical engagement, meaningful intellectualism and unabashed factual analysis.
Blog
On liberalism and property rights: a review of Losurdo's Counter-History
In a post entitled 'Liberals and Reactionaries,' Lenin's Tomb reviews Domenico Losurdo's acclaimed Liberalism: A Counter-History. Richard Seymour, author of The Liberal Defence of Murder, focusses on the relationship between property rights and liberal ideology. Seymour emphasises that, whereas Marxist thinkers generally see private property as the mainstay of liberal ideology, Losurdo seems rather to point to "the logic of exclusion"—that is to say, to those subjects who did not benefit from liberal rights and freedoms.
According to Seymour, Losurdo's approach does not question the revolutionary essence of liberalism itself—it rather underlines the distance between its ideals and practice. The socialist blogger instead stresses the interrelation between capitalism and liberalism:
Property rights have always been structured in such a way as to allow white Europeans to expropriate non-white non-Europeans, from Locke to Vattel onward. After Katrina, the property rights of working class Americans, especially African Americans, were cancelled by fiat—but this didn't disturb the basic politico-legal order of property rights. In fact, I would bet on the idea that the state authorities and companies who carried out this expropriation worked very hard on devising a legal justification for this theft. Moreover, it is the nature of capitalist property relations, to which liberalism is committed, that builds exclusions into liberalism.
Double Standards: Richard Seymour on Press TV
Richard Seymour appears on the programme Double Standards to discuss key events of recent weeks, from the escalation of NATO bombardment in Libya to the phone hacking scandal. Seymour, author of The Liberal Defence of Murder , explores the reasons for and consequences of the involvement of Western powers in conflicts and politics around the world, and describes Murdoch’s media empire as the vehicle of neo-liberal ideology and the American economic crisis as the consequence of savage capitalism.
Visit Double Standards to watch this and other programmes.
Richard Seymour and Tim Holmes advance the debate over Libyan intervention
Richard Seymour, author of The Liberal Defense of Murder is adding to his recent contributions to the intervention debate this week through an interview with the New Left Project. Inspired by Seymour's thoughts on the issue, the NLP's Tim Holmes put forward what looks like the first step in constructing a comprehensive examination of the situation to date.