The Idealist Counterattack: Mr. Woolf versus Professor Carr

  • Peter Wilson
Chapter
Part of the Palgrave Macmillan Series on the History of International Thought book series (PMHIT)

The established order of things received more than one deadly blow in 1939. The European political order based halfheartedly on the League received a devastating, though hardly disguised, blow in the shape of Hitler’s invasion of Poland. That part of the European order based equally halfheartedly on the venerable concept of the balance of power, received a sudden and unexpected blow in the form of the Molotov— Ribbontrop Pact. The relatively calm though far from harmonious world of IR received its own blow in the form of ex-Foreign Office official and newly ensconced Aberystwyth professor, E. H. Carr. If on analysis it transpires that Carr’s onslaught consisted less of a series of well-timed and accurate intellectual punches, than an indiscriminate throwing of fists at a none-too-sure academic target, then this served his polemical purpose admirably. Carr’s seminal and infamous text knocked the fledgling field of IR to the ground. It succeeded in discrediting the thought of a whole generation. Though not wholly his intention, Carr succeeded in getting virtually the whole field of IR as it had evolved during the interwar years labeled utopian, and therefore by implication foolish or wrong.

Keywords

Free Trade Common Interest Small State Realist Critique International Theory 
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Notes

  1. 1.
    One small exception is Moorhead Wright, Ieuan John, and John Garnett, “International Politics at Aberystwyth, 1919–1969,” in Brian Porter (ed.), The Aberystwyth Papers (London, 1972), 94–95, which notes Woolf’s response.Google Scholar
  2. 2.
    As expertly analyzed by Charles Jones, E. H. Carr and International Relations: A Duty to Lie (Cambridge, 1998), 46–65.Google Scholar
  3. 3.
    See Peter Wilson, “Carr and his Early Critics: Responses to The Twenty Years’ Crisis,” in Michael Cox (ed.), E. H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal (London, 2000).Google Scholar
  4. 4.
    Morgenthau, “The Political Science of E. H. Carr,” World Politics, 1,1 (1948–1949).Google Scholar
  5. 5.
    Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 21–22.Google Scholar
  6. 6.
    Woolf, “Utopia and Realiry,” Political Quarterly, 11, 2 (April–June 1940); The War for Peace (London, 1940).Google Scholar
  7. 7.
    Woolf, “Unheard of Adventures,” Review of Michael Bakunin by E. H. Carr, New Statesman and Nation, 2 December 1937.Google Scholar
  8. 8.
    Woolf first set out his objections to the “attack on reason” in Quack, Quack! (London, 1935).Google Scholar
  9. 9.
    Woolf, “Utopia and Reality,” 172; War for Peace, 117, 178.Google Scholar
  10. 10.
    Of the many marginal comments expressing puzzlement, disbelief, and consternation in Woolf’s review copy of Twenty Years’ Crisis, only one expresses approval: on p. 279 where Carr discusses the role of morality in peaceful change and argues that a procedure of peaceful negotiation requires “not merely an acute perception on both sides of the strength and weakness of their respective positions at any given time, but also a certain measure of common feeling as to what is just and reasonable in their mutual relations, a spirit of give-and-take and even of potential self-sacrifice, so that a basis, however imperfect, exists for discussing demands on grounds of justice recognised by both.” Leonard’s book collection is housed in the library of Washington State University.Google Scholar
  11. 11.
    For a striking interpretation of this aspect of Carr’s thought see R. H. S. Crossman, “Illusions of Power—E. H. Carr,” in R. H. S. Crossman, The Charm of Politics and Other Essays in Political Criticism (London, 1958), 93.Google Scholar
  12. 12.
    Woolf, “Utopia and Reality,” 172.Google Scholar
  13. 13.
    Woolf, War for Peace, 114.Google Scholar
  14. 14.
    Ibid., 77. A good example of the utopian propensity to “couch optative propositions in the indicative mood.” See Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 17.Google Scholar
  15. 15.
    Woolf, “Utopia and Reality,” 168.Google Scholar
  16. 16.
    Woolf, War for Peace, 59.Google Scholar
  17. 17.
    Ibid., 120.Google Scholar
  18. 18.
    Ibid., 119.Google Scholar
  19. 19.
    Woolf, “Utopia and Reality,” 177.Google Scholar
  20. 20.
    Ibid., 176.Google Scholar
  21. 21.
    Ibid., 178–79.Google Scholar
  22. 22.
    Quoted in Michael Howard, “The United Nations and International Security,” in Adam Roberts and Benedict Kingsbury (eds.), United Nations, Divided World: The United Nations’ Roles in International Relations (Oxford, 1988), 31.Google Scholar
  23. 23.
    This aspect of Woolf’s analysis of world politics—his belief in the futility of traditional, realist, methods of foreign policy in an age of interdependence—is highlighted in Andreas Osiander’s recent article, “Rereading Early Twentieth-Century IR Theory: Idealism Revisited,” International Studies Quarterly, 42, 3 (1998).Google Scholar
  24. 24.
    Woolf, War for Peace, 124–26.Google Scholar
  25. 25.
    Ibid., 129.Google Scholar
  26. 26.
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  27. 27.
    Ibid., 142.Google Scholar
  28. 28.
    See C. A. W. Manning, The Nature of International Society (London, 1962); Hidemi Suganami, “C. A. W. Manning and the Study of International Relations,” Review of International Studies, 27, 1 (2001); Peter Wilson, “Manning’s Quasi-Masterpiece: The Nature of International Society Revisited,” unpublished paper.Google Scholar
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  30. 30.
    Ibid., 164–75; “Utopia and Reality,” 180–81.Google Scholar
  31. 31.
    Woolf, “Utopia and Reality,” 180.Google Scholar
  32. 32.
    Woolf, War for Peace, 200–01.Google Scholar
  33. 33.
    Ibid., 176. This assumption also underlies Carr’s view of “peaceful change,” i.e. self-sacrifice by the “haves” in order to appease the “have-nots.” See Twenty Years’ Crisis, ch. 13, 264–84.Google Scholar
  34. 34.
    Woolf, “Utopia and Reality,” 176.Google Scholar
  35. 35.
    For a clear example of this (“unsophisticated realism” in Manning’s terms) see War for Peace, 147–49.Google Scholar
  36. 36.
    See Fred Halliday, “State and Society in International Relations: A Second Agenda,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 16, 2 (1987); and Hidemi Suganami, “Halliday’s Two Concepts of State,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 17, 1, (1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  37. 37.
    Woolf, “Utopia and Reality,” 170.Google Scholar
  38. 38.
    Ibid., 174.Google Scholar
  39. 39.
    Ibid., 170–71, 181–82. Woolf was not alone among Carr’s critics in conceding his brilliance. See Wilson, “Carr and his Early Critics,” 165–83.Google Scholar
  40. 40.
    Bull, “The Twenty Years’ Crisis Thirty Years On,” 627–28.Google Scholar
  41. 41.
    Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 26, 86, 88, 113–19, 148–49, 289–92.Google Scholar
  42. 42.
    Ibid., 8–11.Google Scholar
  43. 43.
    Ibid., 33.Google Scholar
  44. 44.
    Ibid., 34. Carr held Benthamism and “nineteenth century liberalism” to be largely synonymous.Google Scholar
  45. 45.
    Ibid., 37.Google Scholar
  46. 46.
    Ibid., 36.Google Scholar
  47. 47.
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  48. 48.
    Ibid., 50–53.Google Scholar
  49. 49.
    See, further, chapter 2 and my “Myth of the First Great Debate,” 8–13.Google Scholar
  50. 50.
    See Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 113.Google Scholar
  51. 51.
    Ibid., 13–15, 113–19, 282–84, 287–307.Google Scholar
  52. 52.
    This has since become firmly established in the secondary literature on Carr. See L. Susan Stebbing, Ideals and Illusions (London, 1941), 6–26; Morgenthau, “The Political Science of E. H. Carr,” 134; Bull, “Twenty Years’ Crisis Thirty Years On,” 637–38.Google Scholar
  53. 53.
    Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 16–19, 24–25, 39, 87, 110–11, 123–30.Google Scholar
  54. 54.
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  55. 55.
    Ibid., 91–96. Count Walewski was the French foreign minister during 1855–1860.Google Scholar
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    Ibid., 110–11.Google Scholar
  58. 58.
    See e.g., Trevor Taylor, “Power Politics” in Trevor Taylor (ed.), Approaches and Theory in International Relations (Harlow, 1978), 122–31; Robert Gilpin, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” International Organization, 30, 2 (1984); Gene M. Lyons, “The Study of International Relations in Great Britain: Further Connections,” World Politics, 38, 4 (1986), 627–28; Steve Smith, “Paradigm Dominance in International Relations: The Development of International Relations as a Social Science,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 16, 2 (1987), 193. The recent crop of literature on Carr has succeeded in putting the record straight. See especially Ken Booth, “Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice,” International Affairs, 67, 3 (1991); Paul Howe, “The Utopian Realism of E. H. Carr,” Review of International Studies, 20, 3 (1994); Jones, E. H. Carr and International Relations; and Peter Wilson, “Radicalism for a Conservative Purpose: The Peculiar Realism of E. H. Carr,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 30, 1 (2001).Google Scholar
  59. 59.
    Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 14–15, 113–19.Google Scholar
  60. 60.
    Ibid., 68.Google Scholar
  61. 61.
    Ibid., 69.Google Scholar
  62. 62.
    Ibid., 69–77.Google Scholar
  63. 63.
    Stebbing, Ideals and Illusions, 9. A point voiced also by Woolf, War for Peace, 60 (Carr “contradicts in the latter part of his book almost everything that he says in the first part”).Google Scholar
  64. 64.
    Stebbing, Ideals and Illusions, 13–14.Google Scholar
  65. 65.
    Ibid., 17. William Pfaff made the same observation of The Twilight of Comintern: “Carr sought to demonstrate, tautologically, that those who were successful were right, as is proved by their success.” Quoted in W. T. R. Fox, “E. H. Carr and Political Realism: Vision and Revision,” Review of International Studies, XI, 1 (1985), 6.Google Scholar
  66. 66.
    Woolf, War for Peace, 125.Google Scholar
  67. 67.
    Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 81–86. Morgenthau argued that Carr’s relativistic and instrumentalist conception of ethics made him a “utopian of power”—superior power being the necessary repository of superior morality. Morgenthau, "Political Science of E. H. Carr,” 136. See also Whittle Johnston, “E. H. Carr’s Theory of International Relations: A Critique,” Journal of Politics, 29 (1967), 874–84.Google Scholar
  68. 68.
    Crossman, “Illusions of Power,” 91.Google Scholar
  69. 69.
    Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 278; W. T. R. Fox, “Vision and Revision,” 4. Also note Carr’s remark in the first edition (p. 277), substantially modified in the second (p. 215), that yielding to threats of force “is a normal part of the process of peaceful change.” For a comprehensive survey of the, pace Carr, quite significant revisions to the first edition see Michael Cox, “From the First to the Second Editions of The Twenty Years’ Crisis: A Case of Self-Censorship,” in the 3rd edition of the book (London, 2001).Google Scholar
  70. 70.
    See chapters 3 and 4.Google Scholar
  71. 71.
    Woolf, review of E. H. Carr, Conditions of Peace, Political Quarterly, 13, 3 (July–September 1942).Google Scholar
  72. 72.
    Ibid., 330. Norman Angell reached much the same conclusion in “Who are the ‘Utopians,’ and Who the ‘Realists’?” Headway, 4 (January 1940).Google Scholar
  73. 73.
    Carr, Conditions of Peace, 36; Woolf, “Can Democracy Survive?” in Mary Adams (ed.), The Modern State (London, 1933), 42–45. See also E. H. Carr and S. de Madariaga, The Future of International Government (London, 1941), where Carr asserts (p. 3) that if liberty is to be “effective in the modern world” it must be defined as “something like ‘maximum social and economic opportunity.’”Google Scholar
  74. 74.
    Carr, Conditions of Peace, 62–66.Google Scholar
  75. 75.
    Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 213–15, 304, 306–07.Google Scholar
  76. 76.
    See Wilson, “The New Europe Debate in War Time Britain,” 45–47.Google Scholar
  77. 77.
    Woolf, “The Future of the Small State,” Political Quarterly, 14, 3 (July–September 1943), 218.Google Scholar
  78. 78.
    Carr, Nationalism and After (London, 1945), 37.Google Scholar
  79. 79.
    Carr, Conditions of Peace, 49. See also Nationalism and After, 54–55.Google Scholar
  80. 80.
    Woolf, “Future of the Small State,” 209, 221–24.Google Scholar
  81. 81.
    Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 295–97; Conditions of Peace, 65, 241. Carr’s views on sovereignty brought a stinging response from Charles Manning. See his review of Conditions of Peace in International Affairs, XIX, 8 (1942), 443–44.Google Scholar
  82. 82.
    Carr, Conditions of Peace, 252, 261, 274. See also Nationalism and After, 47–51.Google Scholar
  83. 83.
    Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 306–07.Google Scholar
  84. 84.
    Ibid., 304.Google Scholar
  85. 85.
    Ibid., 302–7; Conditions of Peace, 236–75. See also The New Society (London, 1951), 98–99. Hayek was not impressed. See The Road to Serfdom (London, 1986 [1944]), 138–41.Google Scholar
  86. 86.
    Woolf, “How to Make the Peace,” 374. Chapter 7, in this book.Google Scholar
  87. 87.
    See W. Olson and N. Onuf, “The Growth of the Discipline: Reviewed,” in Steve Smith (ed.), International Relations: British and American Perspectives Google Scholar
  88. (Oxford, 1985), 24; John Vasquez, The Power of Power Politics (London, 1983), 13–16. Not all writers have ignored these factors: see the works of Hayek and Johnston cited above; Suganami, Domestic Analogy, 100–05; K. W. Thompson, Masters of International Thought (London, 1980), 67–78. Woolf recognized them, as mentioned, in his Conditions review.Google Scholar
  89. 88.
    Carr (Twenty Years’ Crisis, 239) dismissed proposals for world federation or a “more perfect” League of Nations as “elegant superstructures” devoid of foundations. His emphasis on substructure led R. W. Seton-Watson to conclude that he had “succumbed to onesided materialism.” See “Politics and Power,” The Listener, Supplement No. 48, 7 December 1939.Google Scholar
  90. 89.
    Woolf, “How to Make the Peace,” 376.Google Scholar
  91. 90.
    Ibid., 370.Google Scholar

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© Peter Wilson 2003

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