Leo on violence

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Leo's account of the success of his students in competing in a national
public speaking competition is a vivid refutation of racist theories
of mechanically determined intellectual ability.

Nevertheless if is of course relevant that a lot of additional effort
is required to overcome the psychosocial disadvantages, and compete
with students of the most privileged classes.

The resistance of the senators certainly sounds irrational, but would we
expect it to be rational? They sound as if they have a simple link in
their mind between the right to bear weapons and the need to control
the powers of government. Isn't that link likely to have been reinforced
by the gun lobby? What is the information about the amount of campaigning by
the gun lobby?

Leo is surely right to put the question of carrying weapons in a historical
context. Where there is the possibility of some simple democratic structures
in a naturally occuring organic society, then the right to carry arms and form
militias can be a defense against tyranny, as in a city state, and the American
War of Independence. I was a bit surprised to see Paul refer to it
positively but I do not know the nature of the current debate in
Scotland, where I think politics are more radical than in England.

I think this issue is linked also with Yugoslavia. The wide availability of
weapons and the preparations for a popular war of resistance against another
invasion, would undoubtedly have been progressive, should an invasion have
occurred. On the other hand when these weapons fall into the hands of
sectarian groups aiming to dismembers multi-ethnic society, this is
very harmful for the unity of working people, not to say their welfare.

I think the conflict with Brian, (not Bryan, I was glad to note)
may feel tiresome, Leo, but I think there are strategic issues behind it.

I am increasingly interested in the idea that Marx saw civil society as
having a negative aspect as well as a positive aspect. I understand civil
society for Marx to be the social counterpart to commodity exchange -
a mass of atomised individuals, as free as possible of all external constraints
including those of organic sensuous relations of real interdependency.


While marxists, and others, IMHO, must make use of many opportunities
under civil society to oppose oppressive and exploitative pressures of
capitalism, we should not automatically support every libertarian demand.

Total freedom to carry guns, total access to child pornography, whatever.

It is interesting how the total freedom we have on *marxism* to post whatever
we like has created not the desire for an atomised cacophony but a sense
of community even despite some of the bitterest divisions, and a desire for
some coherence in the development of threads.


Guns of course are not isolated objects but are in a social context. I suggest
the theme, like of course violence, is under the wider headi of conflict.

There are many forms of conflict. War is the continuation of politics by other
means and vice versa. Civil liberties demonstrations are a telling form of
managing conflict, as Leo pointed out.

If we were talking about conflict against
the apartheid military, we would support the moderate use of armed struggle that
the ANC employed. If we talk about the handling of conflict with suspected
spies in the Mass Democratic Movement it is hard to support Winnie Mandela's
call that "with our matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate South Africa",
real though the problem of spies was. (BTW I assume Shining Path has had
its Winnie Mandela's.)

I was in favour of the Bosnian government being armed to resist the attacks by
social fascist Serb military groups. I think Marxists should now *accept* the
reform of the arrival of international troops from the imperialist countries
(without promoting it) as preferable to the occupation of large parts of Bosnia
by Serb social fascist troops, but that the US and other imperialist powers 
should
be criticised for their (inevitable) lack of reliance on genuine popular
intiatives, both in terms of peace, and of course in terms of economic
reconstruction.

We should oppose Pesach calling for a simple strengthening of police in New
York, (a civil society type argument) and instead support arguments about
the peaceful management of conflict relying better on local democratic
involvement.

Broadly I would suggest that in the  late twentieth century when
most organic societies have been shattered by capitalism, a simplistic
civil society model fails on the question of handling conflict and violence,
and we need a more sophisticated model about the fostering of socialist
democratic initiatives.

This is not pie in the sky, and it is not prettifying the reality of class
oppression. On the contrary it may help to illuminate it.

I have met members of the ANC who themselves took part in
peace reconciliation committees even at the risk of their lives. The students
whom Leo has been helping to educate could go on to contribute to projects
in New York to enable the different communities to reduce the sort of violence
that has been described on this list all too vividly, and to take just a few
more centimetres control of their own lives themselves. That goes much beyond
being atomised members of civil society.

Regards,

Chris B
London.









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