The Right to Strike and Legal War in Walter Benjamin's “Toward the Critique of Violence”

The ob ject of this ar ti cle is to show how, at the be gin ning of his essay “Toward the Critique of Violence,” Walter Ben ja min uses the ques tions of the right to strike and law of war to ex em plify the way in which the state mo nop oly has no other goal than to pre serve the law itself. In so do ing, the ques tion of the bound ary be tween vi o lence and non vi o lence is put into con ver sa tion with the dis tinc tion made by Georges Sorel be tween the po lit i cal strike and the gen eral rev o lu tion ary strike. keywords Walter Ben ja min, Georges Sorel, strike, mil i tary law