[Marxism] War is hell, we all agree

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

War is hell, we all agree. However, unless you are a pacifist or
perhaps a pacifist anarchist, we have to play the hand that we are
dealt.

There are excesses and terrible mistakes by revolutionists, perhaps
even "payback." But we must go on, for the danger to even the existence
of humankind from the rulers that we now have compels us. As someone
else pointed out: then there was Dresden; today there is Fallujah.

If I read Carlos correctly, he seems to be saying that all war is bad,
however WWII atrocities are acceptable because our side was killing
fascists, who were in fact neo-feudalists.

He also suggests that "atrocities" committed by revolutionists, i.e.,
our side in socialist revolutions or wars of national liberation, are
paybacks that morally are even worse than the acts of imperialism. He
seems to argue that these acts are more questionable than the
firebombing of Dresden and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. I include
Hiroshima, but perhaps Carlos does not. Like others, he may consider
that act beyond the pale.

One of our tasks in the U.S. and by extension Britain, France, and
other countries associated with the allies in WWII is to undermine the
high moral claim of our own imperialism.

World War II included inter-imperialist war, wars for national
independence, a defensive war for the Soviet Union workers state, and
ultimately wars of socialist revolution.

The imperialist war was between the allied "democracies" and the axis
"dictatorships." Independence struggles emerged against the imperialist
states of both sides, achieving various levels of success during WWII
and immediately afterwards. The Soviet Union was defended against the
overturn of its property relations by the Soviet State and the Soviet
people as well as by Marxist parties in other nations. That conditions
for socialist revolution were perhaps even greater in the post WWII era
than post WWI was acknowledged by DeGaulle and other capitalist
leaders.

I don't consider Dresden a payback although Carlos seems to think that
it was and that it was okay. There is a lot of evidence that Dresden
was an example to Stalin; likewise with Hiroshima.

This also brings up the "little Eichmann" argument, with which I
entirely disagree--both with Hannah Arendt and with Ward Churchill. The
ideology of citizens pursuing their own interests is shaped by a moral
climate over which they have no control. Whether revolutionists can
break through and win them over is a question of their own morality,
i.e., the morality of revolutionists. Eichmann is not important or only
marginally. It is the morality of socialists that matters.

Aside from Eichmann not being so "little" after all, his role was minor
compared to the role of the Socialists and Communists that failed to
unite to stop Hitler. The greatest onus has been placed on the
Communists, not because they were worse than the Socialists. If
anything, they were personally more courageous, more determined, and
more devoted to Hitler's defeat and the working class coming to power
in Germany. After all, the Socialist Party was the continuation of a
party that only 15 years earlier had conspired to defeat the German
revolutions of 1919 and 1923. The moral failure of the Communists, and
by this I mean the Stalin leadership, was their failure to think and
act like Marxists.

Thus Marxists usually do not write about Eichmann and sometimes not too
much about social democrats. To the outsider, this presents a distorted
view of what socialists struggle for. Why are they arguing so much with
people with whom they have so much in common?

Marxists think that the highest form of moral courage is to analyze
present reality, use it to point towards the future, and then act on
it. Revolutionists typically discuss "morality" in terms of the
hypocrisy of the ruling class, which claims to hold the high moral
ground. This is why I brought up the Dresden bombing in the first
place.

Trotsky's famous pamphlet "Their Morals and Ours" is a comment on
middle-class attackers of the morality of Trotsky and others. Carlos
seems to fall into the same trap of equating the morality of the
revolutionist with the morality of those who hold ruling-class power

from Brian Shannon
___________________________

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
  And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:
  The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
. . .

Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast
  The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
  Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
http://www.wockyjivvy.com/poetry/acclaim/tg-elegy.html


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