In 1939 Edward Hallet Carr published The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919-1939. As the subtitle says, it was meant to be an introduction to the study of International Relations. Being an historian, he reflected on the past of International Relations and on the context that surrounded the scholars who tried to understand and modify the relations between nations. By the time Carr wrote war was a main concern. It acted as the gravitational center for thinkers on International Relations. But Carr realized that this was obviously not enough. Worrying about war and thinking of better days, was insufficient to avoid conflict.
E.H. Carr identifies the infancy of International Relations with the utopian stage of the discipline. Unverified assumptions about the behavior of humans were the main elements for thinking of International Relations. This led to the establishment of good wishes instead of true analysis. But, what does Carr mean by true analysis? In his view, trying to be objective can result on the sterility of thought. That is, an only-realist analysis would lead to comprehension of reality, but it can hardly help to act in solving world’s problems.
That is why Carr proposes a balance between a utopian and a realist way of thinking. It is important to clarify that Carr is not referring (or not only) to International Relations schools of thinking, but he talks about utopians and realists in a broader sense. Despite this, Carr is usually regarded as a realist (from the school of IR) author. This could be mainly because of the criticism that he made on utopians or idealists. However, this does not automatically make him a realist. On the contrary, in his text, one can find several criticisms to realists as well. Above the “taking sides” problem, Carr makes a call for balance. In my view, the combination of both elements can lead to a very interesting reflection: International Relations, in order to be useful, must entail a normative commitment. Describing phenomena is not useful without a normative standpoint. Thinking and action must come together (praxis). Acknowledging one’s normative dimension and political position, does not deny the possibility of creating a balance between realism and idealism, between practice and theory.
This way of thinking can also be found in other books by Carr such as What is history? In this book he reflects, among other topics, on why we select only certain moments (and not others) as historical facts. Historical facts are what we define as such, and we can only do this decision based on a normative standpoint. Among all the things that happen, we only select a bunch of them and take them into account for our “objective” analysis. The same thing happens with International Relations. In this sense, Carr is calling for a discipline that has political commitment, that cannot avoid having a political commitment. How we define reality, defines how we study it and what we judge as positive or negative for the world. This is why Carr ‘s proposal is to balance the (unavoidable) normative dimension with the description and understanding of reality. He sees theory and practice as interdependent, ethics and politics as inseparable.
Carr’s position, as it is enlightening, can also be problematic. What happens when the two elements become both interdependent and also contradictory? This possibility is specially noted when Carr does the identification between utopian/realist and theory/practice with left/right. Although this apparent oxymoron can be troubling when studying International Relations, I think these are precisely the moments when one has to decide between action or description (knowledge or action) recognizing that the highest possible degree of one process is sought in the other.
As we can see in much of the methodology textbooks in International Relations Theory and in social sciences, there is not much agreement on the fundamental elements of the discipline. There are even debates about the debates (metadebates?). International Relations scholars do not have a general agreement on what is the core topic of the discipline or how to study it and through which methods. But this disagreement and lack of homogeneity, I think, works in favor of some elements of Carr’s thinking: Because nothing is given, because facts are not self-evident elements, but instead selected and highlighted by researchers, there is always to be disagreement. This is not only the result of a debate over the discipline, but of an ontological debate on what is important and why. I may add that this is not only unavoidable, but it is healthy and must keep going, because when we lack debate and disagreement it is the time of totalitarianism, of one view imposed over the others. Doubts about what is important and how to understand it is what will allow the discipline to acknowledge new phenomena.
Claudio F.L
October 2018