Re: RE: RE: Max tells the "truth"

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Devine, James" wrote:
>
>
>
> BTW, in terms of strategy & tactics, I'm a pacifist. I don't think that the
> left should engage in violence unless it's absolutely necessary. Further, it
> might be okay it's done in a way to promote grass-roots democracy and
> popular power. The latter is really hard -- if not impossible -- to live up
> to.
>

First a couple of minor points. (1) I think it best to keep the word
"pacifist" to name those who oppose any and all war under all
conditions. In this sense Max's term, "selective pacifist," is simple
bad writing. Is there anyone who has ever approved of all wars? Gee.
Pacifism is a set of principles, not an empirical collection. (2)
Actually "the left" (for two hundred years) has very seldom engaged in
violence except in self-defense. Most revolutions are not really started
by revolutionaries. So, most of the time, debate about "engaging in
violence" is, in the bad sense of the word, merely academic. (3)
Academically speaking, then, as soon as you say "unless its absolutely
necessary" you have already granted almost everything that most
revolutionaries have ever argued for. Hence rather than labelling
yourself in any sense a "pacifist" you would do better to say that you
are a non-pacifists who believes (quite sensibly) that the occasions for
valid use of force are few and far between.

More fundamentally. I tend to think in terms not of what is desirable or
possible but of that which is necessary in the sense of unavoidable --
imposed by conditions beyond human control. Claims as to what is
desirable tend to be either truisms or mere fancy and arguments as to
the possible have the aroma of crystal-ball gazing about them. If
revolutions occurred only when self-declared revolutionaries started
one, there never would have been (nor ever would be) a single
revolution. Revolutions are _forced_ on the populace. This is not to say
that committed revolutionaries are not needed, for a number of reason.
First, revolutionaries (freed from utopianism and crystal-ball
ambitions) make better reformers than do reformists, who endlessly put
their faith in such enemy institutions as the Democratic Party. This
superiority of revolutoinaries to reformists _as_ reformists also flows
from the close parallel of real reforms and revolutons: both flow from
mass movements rather than from bureaucratic or legislative
game-playing. And finally, if revolution is forced by the ruling class
and its state on a population, it is well to have had a few people
around seriously thinking about revolution. Those who have not been
politically active at all or who have spent their lives entoiled in the
mazes of the AFL-CIO or Democratic Party are apt to be at a loss under
such circumstances.

Carrol