Comrades Fall Out
Interesting. Eric at Drink-soaked Trots notices an early stirring of (let us call it) Eustonism, in an article called ‘Afghanistan: a Just Intervention’ that appeared so long ago as 2002. He helpfully highlights some passages.
The attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 were terrible events, they were also acts of barbarism…In attacking New York, the Islamo-fascists of Al Qaeda attacked one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world…Moreover, it was an attack mounted by people who hate the United States of America not only (and probably not even mainly) for its inequality or its acts of injustice in the world or for its place in an unequal international order, but rather because of its democracy, its pluralism, its sexual libertinism, and all the other things that the left ought to like about the United States. By and large, the left discredited itself by its reaction…Some on the left, have gone even further, appearing to urge backing for the radical Islamists…Why then, did the British left react in such a manner? Partly, it did so because of an ingrained cultural anti-Americanism…But the moral stakes are now very high and many of the ‘facts’ deployed by the left in recent debates are, at best, of dubious character. (They are the kind of ‘facts’ that support conclusions people have already reached.)
The surprising thing about that is who wrote it. It’s surprising because the author, who is a blogger, frequently writes posts about Eustonism which seem to betray (before reading Eric’s post I would have said simply ‘betray’) intense hostility and anger. For instance there was this post a couple of weeks ago on Ted Honderich’s tv appearance (a discussion of which among a few Bristol philosophers will appear in the next TPM), which included this bizarrely (I thought) gratuitous remark:
Honderich repeatedly tells the viewer that 9/11 was a crime, but rather gives the impression that this is because people were killed without his pet principle being advanced…The whole thing ended up being rather a gift to the Euston Manifesto crowd. God knows whether any of them watched it, but it will have given them no end of material to moan about: endless whataboutery and apologetics for appalling acts. Just what we don’t need, in fact.
The same person wrote those two passages. That surprises me – indeed, it puzzles me. Why the contempt for a ‘crowd’ that would endorse everything in that first passage? I don’t know. The hostility to preEuston Eustonism (let’s call it) has puzzled me for a long time, and now it puzzles me even more.
Read the comments on the Trots post, too; they’re very meaty.
Ophelia:
Ten out of ten for selective editing there. “The whole thing” referred to the totality of Honderich’s programme, which dealt not only with 9/11 but with the entire recent history of the middle east.
I’m not sure why it should be a great mystery to you that I should feel contempt for people who would endorse one passage I wrote. After all, that hardly exhausts the territory. The constant moralizing invective against opponents of the Iraq war on some of the “decent” websites coupled with the seemingly endless apologetics for Israeli actions and policy (occasionally qualified by merely pro-forma expressions of regret about this and that), the frequent imputations of bad faith (or worse) to reasonable critics, and the endorsement of the Paul Berman view of the world, are all reasons why I feel contempt for some of the “decents”.
In addition, I could mention the willingness of some of them to entertain friendly relations with people like Michelle Malkin, David Horowitz, Melanie Phillips, Ronald Radosh, and Andrew Bolt. I continue to find the politics of someone like Honderich repellent, not to mention the likes of Jon Pilger. But my judgement of the political landscape has never been distorted to the point where hostility to the latter group leads me to take an indulgent attitude to the former.
As for “hostility and anger”, which has “puzzled you for a long time”. Well, what can I say? Persons associated with the website you link to in this post have, variously, vandalized Wikipedia sites in order to abuse myself and dsquared,and referred to me with various terms, of which “insect” was one of the more polite. I’m supposed to have warm and friendly feelings towards them and others who have acted similarly?
Since the entire point of the DSTPFW site is that they are all about expressing disgust for former comrades and despairing over the betrayal of originally sensible values in the aftermath of the war on terror, I find it odd that they might be surprised anyone else thinks it is them, rather than the Left which has moved.
And I am flat out amazed that someone could read the Drink Soaked Trots site and decide that it was *Chris* who was full of barely concealed hostility and rage!
Basing your stance on fundamental issues of principle on the basis of how you have been treated by bloggers, smacks of a highly developed lack of self-esteem that exhibits itself as a refined pomposity which is incapable of taking the slightest insult without throwing a tantrum.
Well Eric, you can psychologize all you like, but three points:
(1) If your reading skills were better developed you would have noticed that I have not based my stance on “fundamental issues of principle” on any such thing. My view on Afghanistan is the same as it always was and so is my view on the Iraq war and neither has anything to do with the behaviour of people such as yourself.
(2) As I explained in the comment above, I disagree with the moralizing invective against opponents of the Iraq war, I don’t share the Eustonite view on Israel and Palestine (though I opposed the academic boycott), I profoundly disagree with the Paul Berman worldview and I don’t think hanging out with the list of right-wing reptiles I mentioned above is something self-styled progressives should do. Again, those view are all held independently of how people like you have behaved towards me.
(3) As to the matter of how people treat one another … When one group of people engage in name-calling and insult towards another group, then turn round and ask with feigned innocence why the objects of their insults are reluctant to join them in their shiny new enterprise, most people would suspect bad faith. Those of us with some experience of British Trotskyist politics can recognize Euston for the kind of operation that it is.
Chris B and D^2 are on the money as far as I’m concerned.
Well, there you go. I said I was puzzled, and surprised, and that I didn’t know. Well – for instance, I didn’t know about the Wikipedia thing. Now I know. Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find.
And I have zero experience of British Trotskyist politics, so that’s another thing I don’t know. (I have a minuscule amount of experience of US Trotskyist politics, but I gather that’s a different animal.)
So I’m less puzzled than I was. That’s a good outcome, I would say.
“And I have zero experience of British Trotskyist politics”
This is why you don’t get that there’s such a thing as secular religion. :)
Mind you, I’m still puzzled as to what experience of British Trots tells us about the Euston thing. Nick Cohen isn’t still a Trot is he? He seemed so sane when I met him…
No. His forthcoming book is quite informative about the experience of British Trots – but clearly not so informative that I can make head or tail of all this stuff.
I did finally see what you were getting at about secular religion though!
“but clearly not so informative that I can make head or tail of all this stuff.”
Me neither, and in the dark days of my student past, I could occasionally be found hanging out at Trot-type meetings (though I always thought they were barking mad). Mind you, I was always very confused about the factions – it’s possible that I was hanging out at non-Trot Lefty type meetings. The strange thing was that Lindsay Anderson (the director) would always pop up. It didn’t matter where you were, or what the topic was, there he’d be. Of course, it’s possible he was just following me around. Though that’s probably slightly unlikely…
Especially if you noticed him only at these meetings and not at, say, Safeway or the gym or the pizza place, where you spent far more of your time.
Still, who knows; maybe you narrowly missed being the next Malcolm McDowell. Shame.
And here you have the basic problem. Most of the people who are actually motivated to take a real, active interest in political discussions outside the duckspeaking party-political mainstream turn out, on closer inspection, to be bark-at-the-moon crazy…
[bet I can get at least half of them to agree that at least half of them are crazy. The other half, of course, but that’ll do for a generalisation…]
Jerry
Everybody was made to think it was the ubiquitous Lindsay Anderson – it was a shiftworking team with the same leather jacket.
_____
“I did finally see what you were getting at about secular religion though!”
I once read a certain Trotskyist leader make the statement that “a good Communist is a good Catholic – as they both believe in the infallibility of leadership”.
The British radical left is particularly bad, though. There must have been at least a dozen or more organizations with the term “Communist” somewhere in the party name in the nineties. I’m sure there’s even latter-day Hoxhaites somewhere in the Greater London area…
“to be bark-at-the-moon crazy…”
They really were. I can remember people almost foaming at the mouth debating precisely what Althusser meant when he talked about the economy determining the dominant instance in the last instance.
And I can also remember some woman literally chasing me up at corridor sqwawking “Ah yes, you like Gramsci, all that peace man, let’s get along with the bourgeoisie stuff, peace man, peace!” (I think the point was that I wasn’t revolutionary enough. I thought it probably not politic to point out that I wasn’t revolutionary at all!)
Mad, I tell you, mad! (I think most of them are probably now university lecturers at provincial universities.)
And I can remember, and still have, perfectly sane converations with perfectly sane people who consider themselves Marxists, or Trotksyists, or some derivation thereof.
The project of securing a better world through the self-activity of international organised labour is entirely rational.
“The project of securing a better world through the self-activity of international organised labour is entirely rational.”
It depends what you mean by rational. It’s deluded. But I guess within the confines of the delusion there are more or less rational people committed to it.
Jerry, I would take that as an insult, if it were not true of so many others, at lesser places. And Clive, yes, Marxism, like so many other creeds, is only let down by the quality of some of its adherents. One of my more noble summers was spent bringing food and shelter to homeless people in the company of a Jesuit novice and a practising Trotskyist. Not the same person you understand, the Trotskyist had a beard…
The words ‘Euston Manifesto’ and ‘crowd’ should not appear in the same sentence.
‘Sewing circle of sad middle aged Zionist front-pedlars’, maybe.
The words ‘Euston Manifesto’ and ‘crowd’ should not appear in the same sentence.
‘Sewing circle of sad middle aged Zionist front-pedlars’, maybe.
Well, it’s nice to have one’s point proved, isn’t it?
Perhaps we should stay of the subject of groupuscular politics in future. It does seem to attract more than its fair share of cnuts.
Comrades always fall out – it’s part of being a comrade it seems…
Jerry S
Since a very great deal of what we all think of as the benefits of democracy, welfare provision, equal rights, improved environment and so on are indeed the result (significantly, if not entirely) of the struggles, internationally, of organised labour, going back to the nineteenth century, perhaps not so deluded.
Clive
Not *international* organised labour. These struggles largely were local. Indeed, trade unions, for example, are often not in the least bit concerned that their national success might be at the expense of the workers of other countries.
Also, the relationship between Marxism and the kind of labour movement that produces welfare provision, equal rights, etc., is at best..errr…difficult.
So if Marxists who advocate the rights of the workers and international solidarity are wrong, Jerry, can you tell me what it is that Maryam Namazie needs to be doing that she’s not doing now?
Marxists aren’t wrong *because* they advocate the rights of workers and international solidarity (though I realise you didn’t say that they were).
They’re wrong, amongst other reasons, because they are committed to the view that the material base of society determines its superstructural elements (notwithstanding endless arguments about precisely what this involves); and because they think that the proletariat are the bearers of the emancipatory potential of mankind.
They are also wrong because in one way or another they are committed to the view that humans are either noble savages or blank slates when in fact we’re neither.
They’re wrong for all kinds of other reasons, but you know, Chris, because Marxism is a secular religion, there is really no point in my outlining them all.
I meant, by ‘international’, that it’s the same story globally, not that labour is internationally organised. I think the role of workers’ movements in all manner of democratic struggles – from the Chartists pioneering universal suffrage in Britain, to Solidarnosc, to the role of independent unions in the fall of apartheid – is pretty strong evidence for the emancipatory role of the ‘proletariat’.
I also didn’t suggest Marxists of whatever variety led these workers’ movements (though sometimes they did). The argument rests on the historical record of the labour movement, not of would-be Marxists.
In its broad sweep, I would endorse Francis Wheen’s book about Marx.
“is pretty strong evidence for the emancipatory role of the ‘proletariat’.”
I didn’t say that it didn’t play an emancipatory role. I’m talking quite specifically whether they it is the bearers of the emancipatory potential of mankind, not whether they have been engaged in struggles for greater freedom, etc.
I suspect in the end, though, we’ll just fundamentally disagree about what the historical record teaches us about workers movements.