First 10 pages of my new book, Reconceptualizing War's Fifth Chapter

Below is an excerpt from my upcoming book, 'Reconceptualizing War', coming out in April 2025 through Helion & Company Ltd. While the final edits and typeset work will continue, here are the first ten pages out of my FIFTH chapter. The introduction, first through fourth chapters' first ten pages were posted in LinkedIn articles over the last few months, (check my past articles). Register interest in this book by clicking the link here for the publisher website and their newsletter that provides information on upcoming releases: https://www.helion.co.uk/military-history-books/reconceptualizing-war-.php

Chapter 5: "Radical Structuralism: Ushering Species Evolution through Historically Determined, Violent Revolution"

Abstract:? Radical structuralism offers a compelling, normative orientation on both the state of social reality today and where our species must ultimately evolve toward, if we use conflict and war to unlock those pathways that are currently obscured by the existing system of oppression. This is the social paradigm for mature Marxism, reflecting the later theory of political economics and society by Marx and Engels, represented in the last two centuries by communist societies such as the Soviet Union and China.? Marx would posit bold transformation for the industrialized, technologically sophisticated capitalistic states through class struggle, crises, and the necessary education to raise class consciousness, and then revolution. Yet Lenin would manifest Marxist theory in the unexpected backwaters of agrarian Russia, within the global struggles of the First World War. Radical structuralism would then extend, through revolution and further modification of Marxist and Leninist ideas, across China, into South America, Cuba, Southeast Asia, and beyond. Within the radical structuralist paradigm, we will also find non-Marxist frameworks that lack some of the defining characteristics of his political theory of economics, but these conflict theories share in the historical determinism and eschatology for where humanity is destined to develop toward. Rapoport’s alternative war philosophies to those entrenched in functionalism are presented here in the radical structuralist paradigm for war.?

Keywords:? modern war, complexity, positivism, rationalism, systematic logic, international relations

Orcid ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9760-3726

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This is an ambitious chapter that spans the Marxist revolutions in Czarist Russia, Chinese feudal uprisings, the expansion of Sino-Marxism into Vietnam, a Latin American explosion of anti-colonial Communist revolution, and Marxist domestic terror groups rising up throughout the twentieth century. Social paradigm theory attributes multiple social paradigms beyond that of functionalism to some development of Marxist theorization, with the next several chapters illustrating a broad yet varied impact of Karl Marx. Although significant theorization on war in the Western world remains largely functionalist in orientation, to gain a comprehensive and multi-paradigmatic perspective on war itself, we must challenge ourselves to move further.

Those that identify as functionalists may immediately consider all Marxist theory as philosophically interesting, but pragmatically irrelevant in direct application of warfare. Those readers must temporarily set aside the ontological preference to extend functionalist design over all Marxist objections so that they benefit from impartially considering this different war paradigm. The radical structuralist perspective carries significant similarities to functionalism, but these must be considered along with profound ontological differences. Marxists using war are not functionalists in disguise, or somehow subordinate to functionalist war theories regardless of what they might believe. Instead, radical structuralists understand our entire social reality in a different framework where war itself must be reconceptualized.

Readers uncomfortable with whether investing intellectual energy toward certain theories has any strategic value might remind themselves that any serious study of war demands our deepest attention toward the very things we otherwise might inadvertently dismiss. Indeed, when a war paradigm operates smoothly, practitioners sustain their concepts uninterrupted, dismissing all contradictions and paradoxes without further thought. ?Yet it is in these shadowy corners where perhaps the greatest potential lurks for novel opportunity in conflict, and also risk of institutionally encouraged ignorance. The pull of functionalism for its many practitioners orchestrates dismissal of such intellectual ventures as wasteful or irrelevant, meaning that the most fanatical will instead seek to extend functionalist positions as somehow superior to anything else. They may declare ‘Marx obeys Clausewitz’ without ever able to ontologically invert the relationship to ‘what happens when Marx assimilates elements of Clausewitz?’ Gaining a multiparadigmatic approach to conflict entertains both, and the synthesis between them.

The previous two chapters presented the functionalist paradigm, which attempts to explain all human conflict within a scientifically rationalized, positivistic, and Westphalian state-based system for how war is a normal, natural part of how civilization confronts disagreement. Many functionalist interpretations of the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of Mao’s Communist China, or the Vietnam War between France and then the United States exist and often present the dominant view on explaining the nature of these conflicts from a western, functionalist lens. Further, many western examinations of Marxism, socialism, and communism steer either toward a pure functionalist perspective or otherwise attempt to posit intellectual disinterest. ?There is a chronic risk of being labeled a Marxist or perhaps a communist sympathizer, even when merely applying intellectual rigor toward evaluating these ideas.[1] Although we in modern society hold critical thinking as an essential quality in professional development and necessary self-improvement, the academic dive into Marxist theories often carries a tinge of ‘dangerous thought.’

Using Burrell and Morgan’s social paradigm thesis, this chapter introduces radical structuralism and how in the mid-nineteenth to twentieth century, a different and paradigmatically incommensurate way of framing conflict and organized violence between populations emerged. While there are clear philosophical overlaps between functionalism and radical structuralism, the paradoxes and clear distinctions between how operators of each paradigm understand what war is (and is not) propel dissimilar interpretations of how and why war occurs in social reality. One social paradigm is not necessarily ‘better or worse’ than another, although how and why one paradigm might produce greater accuracy in critical information and convey these concepts more effectively may be a significant advantage in conflict.? Readers, particularly if they assume some affiliation in the functionalist paradigm after reading the last two chapters, might consider holding an agnostic position so that in this chapter, they might entertain not the possibility that radical structuralists are “right” about war, but that a combined understanding of both these paradigms offer significant value. Marxist readers are urged to do the same.

The radical structuralist paradigm came into existence in the nineteenth century as a philosophical critique of the dominant paradigm (that of functionalism) in worldwide social affairs. Functionalists employ their war paradigm to explain what conflict is, while radical structuralists use the history of war as part of rationalizing their future outlook of what war becomes, as humanity transforms social reality itself. Put another way, radical structuralists use this perspective not just to understand the world, but to change it.[2] This social paradigm is home to those that seek a radical transformation of reality, where all of humanity is currently held back within the existing social structures of the dominant social paradigm governing human affairs and behaviors.? The world, for radical structuralists, consists of a vast system of domination that benefits a minority elite. Those in the majority are oppressed, humiliated, and imprisoned in the social reality that carries a cycle of violence, war, exploitation, and oppression.? War, used by defenders of this system, is a systemic tool of repression, while the emancipation of humanity from this framework becomes the only necessary and logical transformation. Radical structuralists rationalize revolutionary and civil war that must transform all of social reality. Thus, war in the functionalist sense of perpetual, natural cycles of politics and organized violence is rejected.

Instead, war’s nature is that of social construction and nested within a historically determined pathway of human development. War is part of how various systems gain power, sustain themselves, and ultimately, unlock societal evolution to the ultimate economic and political expression of civilization. Such a utopia is the ultimate realization of global communism for radical structuralists. Whereas functionalists attribute war’s enduring nature in some scientific framework, whether Newtonian inspired such as the Napoleonic war theorists (Jomini, Clausewitz), or more recently using sociobiological arguments of genes and evolutionary forces (Gat), radical structuralists see war as economicallydriven.[3] The modern nation state, established upon earlier feudal and earlier religious and mythological forms of society, uses elite status in the hierarchical arrangement to dominate the masses of oppressed classes beneath them. They control armies, police, the justice system, trade, property, and the means of production. War, used by this state-based system of capitalistic domination, sustains their power while expanding capitalist markets and gaining access to necessary workers and resources.

The distrust and critical inquiry toward elite classes comes from within Marxist rejection of the functionalist claim for universal norms and analytically rationalized principles that sustain a system of class hierarchical oppression. Mannheim offers: “In our contemporary social and intellectual plight [written in 1930 during the Interwar Period and the rise of fascism], it is nothing less than shocking to discover that those persons who claim to have discovered an absolute are usually the same people who also pretend to be superior to the rest.”[4] While functionalists hold to a positivist epistemology where natural orders and universal scientific laws govern reality, radical structuralists shift these into how Marx declared the deterministic manner of how societies exploit classes. Operators in either paradigm conceptualize reality where these beliefs and assumptions are fixed, permanent, and unquestionably real.

Radical structuralists sustain the positivist epistemology available in functionalism by transforming it to Marx’s external, historically determined economic thesis. Marxists share with functionalists a positivistic epistemology where historical forces must be external, proven phenomena that are validated through scientifically rigorous ‘proof’ within the social paradigm.[5] Within this framework, radical structuralists hold that the elites and, once capitalism emerged out of feudalism, the bourgeoise use war in an authoritarian, brutal manner to sustain a system of capitalistic domination. ?This paradigm employs a macro-level focus on existing social frameworks that force people into certain classes and roles, where an overarching system of domination and oppression acts externally upon humanity due to the objective, value-neutral nature of capitalism. Capitalism does not care who gets to be an elite in power, only as long as some elites always occupy those positions, with the rest subjected to an inferior and oppressed status. Radical structuralists share a positivistic epistemology with functionalists in that they believe such social forces are objectively real and act as direct instruments in sustaining historically specific oppression and domination.[6] Instead of neutral and universal forces that define reality through natural sciences and by extension, into the social sciences used within functionalism, radical structuralists realign positivism to reflect a Marxist adaptation of natural science. Marx employs his political theory of economics for explaining why the world is as it appears at an ontological level dissimilar to that of functionalism.

War is also adapted from functionalism into this new social paradigm for a different purpose complete with a new form. Revolutionary war, once activated by Marxists, can access the same historical determinism to transform humanity through just wars of liberation. Marxist revolutionaries are guided by the same definitive and universal laws of war where, once class struggle leads to class consciousness, the fate of capitalism is set in ultimate defeat and eradication.[7] War itself is implicitly removed from social reality in the eschatological climax of communist forces overthrowing the last remaining capitalist states. It becomes the last war for humanity. All conflict and war previous to the rise of Marxist thought is, according to radical structuralists, a historical pattern of incomplete conflict resolution by political, economic, and social structures designed to keep certain classes oppressed, and the elites of any state system holding onto the reigns of wealth and power.[8] Clausewitz’s maxim of war being politics by other means falls short in this reconceptualization. ?Marxists divide all previous political and military activity as part of an oppressive system, with Marxist political activities and revolutionary war toward communism manifesting an entirely new and evolutionary framework for social change. War, used by dominating states against one another or toward non-state actors, is how the current oppressive economic and state system benefits the bourgeoise-democratic class. They wage war by dominating and exploiting the proletariat (working class). Clausewitzian war becomes merely a tool of the state system, something done to sustain elites in power over all other classes. Radical structuralists reverse this through class consciousness, where the proletariat can use revolutionary war to smash the state system apart, dismantling capitalism and ‘false’ democracy so that the emancipated workers of the world can unite in a new, utopian world that no longer has any need for war. The only way the current oppressive world can possibly be transformed is through some form of conflict,[9] whether civil or revolutionary war or other mode of crisis and destruction so that the existing capitalist system is eliminated and humanity is totally emancipated.

Radical structuralists hold a normative worldview that both explains how things are today, and how reality ought to transform toward some superior form and function. Marxist revolution requires change agents to liberate humans trapped in the existing superstructures. This is what Karl Mannheim termed a utopian epistemology where ideological differences are less significant to what is lurking in the future for humanity. [10]? Marx, whose ideas founded the radical structuralist paradigm (and others) would formulate ‘ideology’ in that strongly held convictions on ideas serve as weapons for social interests.[11]? His development of substructures and superstructures began in what is fully explained in the seventh chapter as the radical humanist paradigm, in that early Marxist theory was abandoned by later Marx and Engels, and is not used in radical structuralism. Young Marx started in what would later flourish well after his death in the radical humanist paradigm, but not until after socialist revolution in World War I unfolded in problematic ways.

Marx matured these ideas and directly tie them to economic theories of social reality, abandoning his earliest ideas and shifting to economically oriented ones that are essential for this chapter. Early Marxist work was more dialectic, where human thought is founded in human activity (labor, as he would later refine it), and through social interactions between people that benefit from this cycle. Social reality is controlled by superstructures, while people sustain and engage within these by generating substructures through their own thought and action. Berger and Luckmann explain: ““substructure” and “superstructure” are best understood if one views them as respectively, human activity and the world produced by that activity.”[12] This cycle today dominates societies and locks people into oppressive psychic prisons that they further reinforce by perpetuating substructures that strengthen these superstructures.

The existing tensions and debates today between legacy systems or existing belief systems that are incompatible with a radical structuralist position are merely what is transpiring currently, and for the normative framework of radical transformation, all situations currently available must be challenged and transformed. The world today is not as important as the future one that must be pulled into reality through activism and revolution. Once this occurs, the present is eliminated, meaning that even now, it may be dominant but simultaneously irrelevant, as the normative worldview is “not at all concerned with what really exists.”[13] If functionalists continue to insist their war paradigm and Clausewitzian theory is relevant now, radical structuralists assert this is irrelevant in the inevitable shifting of the world to the desired communist future. Revolutionary war will, if done correctly and guided by the right hands, transform social reality and liberate humanity so that future society prospers in such ways that currently are impossible to otherwise achieve. Ideology becomes the transformative weapon for shifting social reality from the current state into a normative one. Substructures and superstructures can be broken through crisis and sufficient class consciousness, where revolutionary war ultimately brings forth world breaking and new world formation.

Consequently, radical structuralism rejects the scientifically neutral positivism found in functionalism, where conflict and organized violence operate according to universal and timeless principles that might be mastered by either antagonist in war.? Instead, war must be understood not in scientifically impartial frames, but exclusively in a ‘Scientific Socialism’ stance. ?This weighs the transformation of social reality in clear, historically determined yet (socialist-affiliated) scientifically provable arrangements.[14] Principles of military art within radical structuralism are not grounded in any neutrality of scientific positivism such as in functionalism, but a social reality where armies are infused with Marxist political theory. This Socialist positivism provides historically deterministic principles of how one uses organized violence to transform the world using revolutionary war.[15] Positivist orientation is retained by shifting the objectively neutral scientific reasoning of functionalism into Marx’s economic-based determinism where external forces are historically proven using the same scientific rationalization.[16] This social paradigm is host to a wide range of conflict theories, centered largely on some Marxist interpretation with a structuralist framework for how social reality is experienced by our species.? Those scientists operating in radical structuralism assume a superior position to scientists outside the paradigm, and paradoxically functionalist scientists will dismiss socialist scientists as politically tainted. Both groups would seek to apply different scientific rationalisms toward conflict and war.

German philosopher Friedrich Hegel, whom Karl Marx drew extensive philosophical inspiration from, advocated a dialectic where the first form of anything in existence must also have an opposite, such as an apple automatically supposes there are non-apples existing so we know where ‘apple’ ends and something ‘non-apple’ starts. Hegel uses this dialectic to explore the differences and variations between things and their opposites, suggesting one could synthesize them both into something novel.[17] Marx would draw from Hegel while also departing from his work, just as Hegel drew from Kant while also criticizing him.[18] Marx’s use of the dialectic would directly influence Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and all subsequent radical structuralist revolutionary thinkers.[19] Today, Chinese leader Xi Jinping continues to champion his own modification of Maoist theory, derived directly from Marx, Engels, and Lenin.[20]

Critical theory, in a Marxist configuration, worked to disrupt, deconstruct, and progressively advance Marxist ideas while eliminating imperial, capitalistic thought. Radical structuralism exists in paradigmatic opposition to functionalism. ?in that in a Those political war philosophies that Rapoport positioned most western thinkers into collectively viewed politics and war as some universal, perpetual, and natural form of human activity where states act as those sovereign entities locked in competition.? The political war philosophies in functionalism have no expiration date on war itself. ?Wars come and go, and while there might be unprecedented periods of peace, the potential of war is never extinguished. Radical structuralists invert this ontology by founding their worldview upon the requirement for radical transformation of societies and humanity’s social condition into something new.? How, when and by whom this transformation occurs is dependent upon the theories, models, and methodologies employed by various radical structuralists that occupy this paradigm.

The radical structuralist paradigm is unique in its commonality with the functionalist paradigm in how they share an ontological orientation toward an objective reality, yet they differ in how radical structuralism pursues a changing social world that has teleological or purposeful evolution toward superior forms of human existence. ?Marx and Engels provided the primary texts on communism and a radical structuralist paradigm for conflict in the nineteenth century, yet only in the early twentieth century would Lenin implement the first successful revolutionary overthrow of a capitalistic, oppressive autocracy to one that attempted to implement a working communist society.[21] Lenin’s modifications of Marx and Engels requires further explanation, as the Soviet Union would be a very different context for communism than the founders of Marxism intended or anticipated. Lenin adopted a more aggressive, militant approach to how capitalistic societies must undergo crises between social classes and revolution. In the aftermath of the First World War where Lenin viewed the “German bourgeois professors… erstwhile specialists in the demolition of Marx” as a new and dangerous opponent. Capitalists must be destroyed, but those distorting or misinterpreting Marx also became targets for Lenin’s wrath.[22] His form of Marxism took on Russian variations, given the proletariats of the Bolshevik Revolution were largely agrarian, illiterate, and rural. Russia’s long history of being a large, difficult to defend territory and one steeped in paranoia of outsider threats and conspiracies would weigh into how the Soviets organized a new communist society, complete with a reformed Red Army of political design.

This in turn inspired further adaptation, still within radical structuralism. We will consider how Mao Zedong (1893-1976) accomplished Marxist revolution using a Sino-Marxist approach that incorporated eastern philosophy, culture, and history with an almost entirely agrarian society devoid of industry or advanced technology.[23] After Mao and Lenin, subsequent revolutions occurred around the world with the new motivation of class liberation and societal transformation. Socialist revolutions aside, plenty other revolutions and coups sustained traditional (functionalist) processes of swapping one political party of elite leadership with the victorious aggressors in an otherwise unchanging capitalistic state system.

Ho Chi Minh, as one example we will address later in this chapter, extended Marxist-Leninist theory using Mao’s adaptations into eastern and modern feudal societies trapped under colonial oppression.[24] Yet not all communist revolutions are enduring, and the shocking rise of a Russian communist experiment into a global superpower would also not last the entire century. Other societies also oscillated with experimenting and then rejecting some or all aspects of Marxist thinking, with some communist or socialist governments rising and falling.[25] The ascent of a Communist China and the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union in the late twentieth century is also addressed in this chapter, as radical structuralism manifests differently in conflict depending on the theories, belief systems, culture, geography, and economic development associated with the society.? Radical structuralism reflects a dynamic, quite active war paradigm still relevant today in the twenty-first century.

Burrell and Morgan’s Establishment of a Radical Structuralist Paradigm:

Burrell and Morgan center this paradigm in a materialist view of both the natural world and that of social reality.? Materialism posits that ontologically, radical structuralists know the natural world and the social world both have a universal and concrete existence that are independent of the individual observer.[26] People may think a variety of thoughts, believe this or that, and operate with a wide range of artifacts and phenomenon in the physical world, yet all these things are materialistically ordered by universal, natural structures that are above and beyond any individual or even collective consciousness. A materialistic ontology posits a world that is material rather than spiritual in nature, meaning that the ground floor for all of reality is not some divine consciousness or metaphysical abstract phenomenon at work, but tangible matter and objectively realized processes that can be discovered, measured, and usually manipulated.

The radical structuralist paradigm is positioned above that of functionalism in Burrell and Morgan’s quadrant model, where both paradigms share in the ontological objectivity or concreteness of reality as associated with the (objective) left side of this framework. Between both paradigms, a positivist epistemology exists spanning radical structuralism and functionalism, although practitioners within each paradigm interpret their positivist epistemology differently and through dissimilar ontological assumptions. Positivism is the pursuit of realizing and studying patterns and regularities which characterize reality, whether the physical natural world or the social world that humans design, curate, and maintain collectively. Positivists are not exclusively those who perform scientifically rational processes. This epistemological framing extends across the functionalist and radical structuralist paradigms with the broader abstraction that any positivistic rationalization pairs a posteriori facts with logical reasoning that must be empirically validated. Both functionalists and radical structuralists assume an external nature of social reality, but rationalize what constitutes ‘scientific objectivity’ via different paradigmatic structures.

Marx and Engels, as primary architects of the radical structuralist paradigm, explain their positivist epistemology by declaring reality as something external to human participants, where their socialist premises “can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.”[27] For them, history is an external, objective, and verifiable force that is ‘natural’ and as unstoppable as gravity, biological processes, or chemical reactions.[28] Due to both paradigms utilizing a positivist epistemology, the radical structuralist believes that they too ‘perform science’ and can render findings in scientifically valid ways.? However, the radical structuralist believes ontologically that ‘science’ exists to bring about entirely different ends than how it functions in the functionalist paradigm. Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese revolutionary Marxist, argued that Europe reached the zenith of capitalism in the late nineteenth century by shifting to imperialism and colonial oppression across the world, able to dominate using the scientific and technological advantages originally developed within functionalism. Minh, echoing Chinese communist sentiments, provides an eastern rebuke of western colonialism and imperialism where ‘science’ is hardly neutral. It is a tool of terror and evil, when wielded by capitalist colonialists.[29]

All scientific endeavors done within functionalism aim to continue this oppression of the world, and within each state, toward demoralizing and humiliating the proletariat and marginalized classes. Marx and Engels theorized that socialism would transform humanity and break the capitalistic cycle of dominance and oppression, including a necessary emancipation of science. ?Socialists, as proper and enlightened scientists, could truly unlock human progress and prosperity using scientific socialism, the zenith of all possible scientific endeavors. To put theory into practice, they needed a successful proletariat revolution. Lenin, leading an unexpected group of disenfranchised Russians, did demonstrate successful revolution to put some of their theory into practice. Marx’s scientific socialism was supposed to chart a superior path for humanity in direct opposition to Imperialism, which after the First World War would need to center around the Soviet Union’s initial successes.[30] In the twentieth century, multiple Marxist revolutionary wars unfolded due to Lenin’s unorthodox revolution composed not of urban, industrialized proletariats, but mostly rural farmers and low-skilled laborers.

Radical structuralism sustains a positivist epistemology as functionalism does, but with significant ontological differences. Marx stated that he discovered the natural law of history, which operated just as the physical laws of reality, but mirror the positivistic objectivity found in the external world upon the social one of humanity. He declared: “This law, which has the same significance for history as the law of the transformation of energy has for natural science- this law gave him here, too, the key to an understanding of the history of the Second French Republic.”[31] This revolutionary force is perpetually in the interests of the oppressed working class in all capitalist societies, where communist leaders must obey this will of the people and seek socialist revolution for the sake of humanity’s future.[32]Marx would speak in the third person self-referentially, telling readers that his discovery of this natural, external law of reality came from his exposure to the events of revolutionary French overthrow of the aristocracy and a brief formation of a constitutional government from 1848 to 1852. His findings were, in a radical structuralist position, entirely scientifically rational, objective, and empirically prove-able within that paradigm’s ontological assumptions on social reality. Capitalism exercised, for Marx, a false form of scientific reason.? Only scientific socialism could manifest a true form of liberation where social reality could be transformed, and proper scientific progress be rendered in direct benefit to all of humanity. All people could “attain a living worthy of man.”[33] Science, when done within a radical structuralist position, becomes a pure version of what science needs to reach, instead of an inferior, polluted, corrupted version used by capitalists, imperialists, and fascists that oppress humanity and hold it back from evolving to a future and superior state of existence. War too would change radically.

??????????? That a radical structuralist may claim scientific authority and assume or assimilate many terms and concepts from the functionalist form of science is significant, and presents an obstacle for readers that likely align with the functionalist ontology on what science is (and is not).? In this chapter, we will explore how Marxist military theorists using radical structuralism claim that they are performing warfare in a scientific way. They will use terminology that is familiar to functionalist operators such as how Marx, Lenin, or Mao quote Clausewitz with the same certitude as functionalist war theorists. The difference here will be explored in detail, as radical structuralists may use the same scientific words as functionalists, but they are relying on an entirely dissimilar dictionary. Additionally, how Marxists use the term ‘science’ is centered on how Marx’s entire thesis requires humanity to move from a feudal system to the capitalistic one first as one phase in human development. Next, he declares that industrialization compliments the rise of scientific thinking in functionalist terms, something necessary in these transitions from one historical phase to the next, but limited to relevance within that phase only.[34] Functionalist science is useful only within the historical period where crises accumulate so that the communist revolutions become capable of overthrowing the system...

That was the first ten (and a half) pages from Chapter 5. There are another 95 plus pages in that chapter, and this book will roughly be around 550-600 pages when published in hardcover around 01 APR 2025. Stay tuned for more chapter excerpts, share and link for interested parties, and follow me on social media for more. Endnotes below will likely be footnotes in the final book version. Register interest in this book by clicking the link here for the publisher website and their newsletter that provides information on upcoming releases: https://www.helion.co.uk/military-history-books/reconceptualizing-war-.php

[1] Louis Wirth, “Preface,” in Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, by Karl Mannheim (Eastford, Connecticut: Martino Fine Books, 2015), xvii.

[2] Gibson Burrell and Gareth Morgan, Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis: Elements of the Sociology of Corporate Life (Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1979), 326.

[3] Sini?a Male?evi?, The Sociology of War and Violence (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 58.

[4] Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (Eastford, Connecticut: Martino Fine Books, 2015), 77.

[5] Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, paperback edition (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1990), 63.

[6] Dennis Gioia and Evelyn Pitre, “Multiparadigm Perspectives on Theory Building,” Academy of Management Review 15, no. 4 (1990): 589.

[7] Vo Nguyen Giap, The Military Art of People’s War: Select Writings of General Vo Nguyen Giap, ed. Russell Stetler, Paperback (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 182. Giap explains how those not able to access Marxism are trapped in a mechanistic, false reality that is doomed to fail. Only the revolutionary armies of communism can utilize the general laws of war to advance humanity toward global communist utopian existence.

[8] Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, 133. Mannheim highlights how capitalist and democratic systems craft illusions that conflict could be resolved by diplomacy, debate, and in turn, war that always results in the victor declaring new terms that become political debate.

[9] Gioia and Pitre, “Multiparadigm Perspectives on Theory Building,” 589.

[10] Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, 133.

[11] Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, First Anchor Books Edition, 1967 (New York: Anchor Books, 1966), 6.

[12] Berger and Luckmann, 6.

[13] Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, 36. Mannheim, himself a Marxist, argued on the differences between ideological and utopian belief systems tied to various sociological positions and political philosophies. His work would inspire subsequent paradigm theory, and his stance on utopianism works within radical structuralism in this regard.

[14] Russell Stetler, “Introduction,” in The Military Art of People’s War: Select Writings of General Vo Nguyen Giap, by Vo Nguyen Giap, ed. Russell Stetler, Paperback (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 12. Stetler, in his introduction on Giap’s collective writings, offers American secretary of defense, Robert McNamara as an example of this tension between western, scientific thinking toward war and the Communist one the North Vietnamese held. He quotes McNamara with “Every quantitative measurement we have shows we’re winning this war.” Socialists are able to counter this western scientific assessment of the same conflict by measuring their progress using socialist integration of the same scientific logic. Quantitative measurements linked to Marxism would offer a different analysis to what McNamara was using, although McNamara would dismiss such analysis as unscientific.

[15] Giap, The Military Art of People’s War: Select Writings of General Vo Nguyen Giap, 178. Giap explains how military principles and military art are, within the Marxist frame, oriented on using political theory to bring forth historically determined changes in economic reality for societies once they undergo communist transformation. Such change must be accomplished in revolutionary struggle and war.

[16] White, The Content of the Form, 63–67. A Marxist treatment of history and objectivity shifts the positivistic epistemology out of functionalism into a different version of ‘objectively neutral’ logic that requires Socialism and the radical structuralist paradigm to function.

[17] This simplification of Hegelian dialectics omits how Hegel considers multiple dialectical arrangements with things in reality, such as ‘now’ and ‘not now’, ‘here’ and ‘not here’, ‘me’ and ‘not me’, going into significant depth that exceeds the scope of this chapter.

[18] Theodor Adorno, “Why Philosophy?,” in Critical Theory: The Essential Readings, ed. David Ingram and Julia Simon, First Edition (Saint Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House, 1992), 22.

[19] Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (Monee, Illinois: Independently published, 2023), 24. Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’ of quotations would emphasize the dialectic as how to advance Marxist thinking and shatter the societal grip the bourgeoisie had over a population.

[20] Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, “In Their Own Words: Translations from Chinese Source Documents; Basic Issues of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” (Montgomery, Alabama: China Aerospace Studies Institute, Fall 2023), https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CASI/documents/Translations/2023-10-30%20ITOW%20Xi%20Jinping%20Thought%20on%20Socialism%20with%20Chinese%20Characteristics%20for%20a%20New%20Era.pdf.

[21] Mentioned in other citations, the loose labeling of Czarist Russia as a modern state is an oversimplification. However, it was Russia and not Great Britain or Germany that would undergo a communist revolution. Marx and Engels anticipated a western, industrialized state to experience this, not the still largely feudal-based Russia.

[22] V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution (Mansfield Centre, Connecticut: Martino Publishing, 2011), 7.

[23] Tse-Tung, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, 27–29.

[24] Ho Chi Minh, Ho Chi Minh on Revolution, ed. Bernard Fall, First (New York: Signet, 1968), 26, 139.

[25] State or ‘vulgar’ Marxism is implied here. This term is used by radical humanists as explained in the next chapter and distinguishes early Marxist theory prior to ~1844-45 as ‘western’, ‘social’, or ‘cultural’ Marxism. These Marxists in the early twentieth century would refer to late Marxist theory (along with Engels) as a vulgar, inferior form of Marxist thinking if compared to earlier work by Karl Marx. ?

[26] Burrell and Morgan, Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis: Elements of the Sociology of Corporate Life, 326.

[27] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Materialism and the Theory of Ideology (1846),” in Four Sociological Traditions: Selected Readings, ed. Randall Collins, Revised and expanded edition of “Three Sociological Traditions: Selected Readings” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 13.

[28] Gioia and Pitre, “Multiparadigm Perspectives on Theory Building,” 589. Gioia and Pitre address radical structuralism in general this way, but not Marx specifically.

[29] Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, “In Their Own Words: Translations from Chinese Source Documents; Basic Issues of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” 41–43.

[30] Minh, Ho Chi Minh on Revolution, 255–56.

[31] Karl Marx, “The Class Basis of Politics and Revolution (1852),” in Four Sociological Traditions: Selected Readings, ed. Randall Collins, Revised and expanded edition of “Three Sociological Traditions: Selected Readings” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 17.

[32] Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, “In Their Own Words: Translations from Chinese Source Documents; Basic Issues of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” 44.

[33] Minh, Ho Chi Minh on Revolution, 256.

[34] W.B. Gallie, Philosophers of Peace and War: Kant, Clausewitz, Marx, Engels and Tolstoy, First Edition (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 71; Minh, Ho Chi Minh on Revolution, 36–37. Ho would advocate that eastern societies under European Imperialism were trapped in a ‘modern feudalist’ system that perpetuates colonial oppression.