[Marxism] Lesser of evils/evil of lessers

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

In a message dated 12/24/03 8:22:03 AM Pacific Standard Time,
mikedf@xxxxxxxx 
writes:

Your comment begs the question that Kovel actually raises, whether or
not 
THIS cabal, Bush and Company, represent something qualitatively new and 
dangerous... " If the Bushites represent a qualitatively new phenomenon,
our 
response can't be "every four years we  hear the same thing." 


Response (Jim C):

I believe that we are at a unique juncture of history and that the Bush
criminal family represents a threat to move to full-blown fascism that
is unprecedented in degree and qualitatively unique in kind. Of course
Bush is not the first preppy punk, sociopathic narcissist, megalomaniac,
dumb twit, ruthless Machiavellian, pathological liar or outright fascist
to occupy the White House; nor was the last election the first stolen
election even in bourgeois terms. But the monied interests and the sums
they are prepared to advance for "guaranteed results", the degrees of
sophistication of technologies of mind and soul control, the lack of
even bourgeois "checks-and-balances" (that can be useful in tactical
terms on certain issues), the relatively larger percentages of just
plain dumb, ignorant, selfish and bought-off "citizenry", the
sophisticated technologies for engineering election results and having
them accepted as legitimate, and the real damages and misery to real
people that will inexorably occur with Bush's reelection are for me
unprecedented in U.S. history and worthy of some sober--and not just
reflexive or jargon-ladden--thought and consideration.

First of all, the Bushes have been prepared to go even beyond where the
Kennedy's dared to tread. From the early financing of Hitler and the
nazi party from 1924 onward by Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker,
to early involvement in the eugenics movement and pushing for
sterilization laws against minorities and fixation on "genetic
enginering" for continuing white majorities, to involvement in the 1934
plot to overthrow FDR and set up a fascist dictatorship in the U.S., to
selling nazi securities during World War II and operating a coal/synfuel
plant at Auschwitz using slave labor, to aiding in the escapes of wanted
nazi war criminals and placing them at the highest levels of the U.S.
foreign policy establishment, to covert and overt support of
McCarthyism, to using the drug war--and later 9-11--as Hitler used the
Reichstag Fire (while being involved directly in dope trafficking and/or
protecting favored dope dealers), to involvement with a wide range of
fascist organizations and forces (Moonies, World Anti-Communist League,
The White Hand, the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, Guatemalan and other
death squads), to high-level involvement with a wide range of
well-financed and connected fascist or proto-fascist cults and
foundations (Bilderbergers, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign
Relations, Skull and Bones, Bohemian Grove, etc), to a modus operandi of
pathological revenge with no limits--including murder made to look like
"suicide"--against opponents, to willingness to destroy any and all
incriminating evidence or persons with evidence without any concern for
any legal constraints or social approval, to articulating and
implementing a doctrine of pre-emptive and "winnable" nuclear/biological
and chemical warfare...these pathogens have no sense of any limits on
themselves and on what they are prepared to do.

Now I have heard some leftists actually argue for the reelection of
Bush--"Let the games begin, let the dialectic unfold, let the
fundamental systemic contradictions intensify and let the system come
crashing down; some short-term pain and misery is necessary in order to
accelerate the downfall of capitalism and thus alleviate even worse and
more pervasive misery in the future and long-run." Some of the same
types were saying the same things during Hitler's rise to power; and
indeed Hitler talked about--and counted on--divisions between elements
of the left and/or between leftist and non-leftist anti-nazis
(theoretical/doctrinal purity, historical emnities, faction fights,
power plays etc)to facilitate his rise to power. He also counted on the
legal, political, social, cultural, economic and military foundations of
fascism being laid by "conservative regimes" under nominally
"constitutional" and "legal" means and covers--he understood and counted
on the phenomenon of the proverbial "frog in the frying pan." Hitler
also understood--and utilized--the concept of "the perfect as the enemy
of the good or necessary" and knew that some doctrinal purists and
absolutists, with little sense of practical tactics and strategy, could
be counted upon to exacerbate any divisions within the left or between
leftist and non-leftist alliances that could form a united front against
fascism.

Real leftists of course understand that reforms under capitalism often
operate like a bandage on a still-birth, like an aspirin for a brain
tumor or like a skin cream on a syphillitic rash; whereas reforms are,
at best, all that liberals seek. But real leftists, unlike liberals,
really do care about oppressed peoples and the conditions under which
they are suffering and dying--it is about more than some intellectual
exercise, some academic market niche, some cult, some counter-culture,
some family legacy of voting habits or some parlor/internet debating
points. In that sense, leftists do not seek--but will often take and not
eschew--what reforms or tactical maneuvering room as can be gained; we
are capable of stepping one-step backwards in order to advance two-steps
forwards and we are capable of seeing that reforms (or preventing losses
of existing reforms) can make some material differences in the lives of
the oppressed about whom we profess so much concern. In that sense, as
Edward Herman pointed out in an interview in Counterpunch:

The difference between a rotten lesser evil and an extremely dangerous
great evil can be quite significant and can be the difference between
millions of deaths and much pain at home and abroad. At this point it
seems clear that Al Gore would almost surely not have been as terrible
as George Bush, who even his dad is finding a bit hard to take (giving
the annual George Bush Award for Public Service for 2003 to Senator
Edward Kennedy). So what leftists are afraid of is total irrelevance or
possible default support for a greater evil that can be pretty damned
evil.


So I confess that I am torn between "doctrinal purity" that says "the
lesser of evils is still evil" or "there is no choice between the lesser
of evils only evil of lessers" or "reformist capitalism is worse than
unadulturated and no-pretense capitalism" versus the real-world
certainties of a whole lot of very real and very ugly misery and death
for many real people if Bush steals the next election too.

Jim C.



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