Re: AUT: Iraqi working class 'supports' the 'resistance'

[david.graeber@xxxxxxxx]

Quoting martin hardie <hardie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

> On Wednesday 17 November 2004 07:23, david.graeber@xxxxxxxx wrote:
> > RE: AUT: Iraqi working class 'supports' the 'resistance'
>
> > This discussion strikes me as odd. Even in the absence of
> > any obvious good guys, isn't the basic moral point
> > "you can't just go conquering other countries, and if
> > you try to change the rules and do conquer one, it is best if
> > you are forced to withdraw in humiliation because that's the
> > only way to ensure people are unlikely to try it again;
> > and anyway, you have no right to be there so get out.
>
>
> isnt this a bit old hat? i mean arent you just trying to base your
> moral on
> the logic of a byegone age? Do we need to move a little but beyond a
> the
> vrious guises of liberalism to trya nd find a position on this
> "fucking
> messed up place"
>

  First of all, I'm an anarchist, not a liberal. I'm
opposed to states and militarism generically. Therefore
I'm certainly opposed to conquest and occupation and I'm
not inclined to come up with complicated reasons why
"things are different now" and therefore such morality
does not apply. Any more than I would if some state decided
to revive not, old-fashioned practices as conquest and
plunder (as in Iraq) but, say, judicial torture, plantation
slavery, or the burning of women suspected of witchcraft.
Some things are just bad and always will be.

  Anyway
    a) liberals throughout history did tend to defend
past colonial regimes on exactly these kind of grounds
(they are bad but things are complicated and letting
these savages to their own devices now would be even worse)
    b) reactionary defenders of slavery tended to use
the exact same arguments as liberal defenders of colonialism:
"well, sure, enslaving people might be wrong but only
simpletons think that just because something is wrong, you
should just stop doing it - if we just freed the slaves
now it would be much worse for them"
    c) certain types of radicals - including, occasionally,
Marx, could fall for the same logic (ie, colonialism is
an evil but it's complicated, ultimately it's the only way
to create the conditions for revolution in these benighted
countries so I'm for it),

   it seems to me it's up to you to prove what exactly is
so different now that we know we can now throw out basic moral
absolutes like you shouldn't conquer, enslave, or torture people
and shouldn't support people who do? I don't know about you,
but before I'm ready to abandon my unconditional opposition
to conquest, or slavery, or torture, I'd want some pretty
overwhelmingly convincing argument about what exactly really
is different now and why exactly we know that this different
thing makes an unconditional oppositon to conquest, slavery,
or torture no longer appropriate. Because, you know, the
last time we heard radicals making the argument that because
of new historical conditions, we could toss aside "bourgeois
morality" which generically opposes such practices, things
really didn't work out so well.
    David


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