Towards a Politics of ‘Pure Means’: Walter Benjamin and the Question of Violence

1. On Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” Walter Benjamin’s essay Zur Kritik der Gewalt or On the Critique of Violence was first published in 1921, in the journal Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik.[1] It was intended to be part of a greater, either lost or uncompleted work on politics, consisting of two parts, The True Politician and True Politics.[2] It is notable that Benjamin’s early work on politics around 1920 was written shortly after the failed German revolution of 1918/1..