Re: Bush, the lesser evil?

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Ballard" <swillsqueal@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 9:54 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Bush, the lesser evil?


> Chris,
>
> Does this mean that you don't think it mattered
> whether FDR or one of his Republican opponents became
> President in the 30s and 40s?
>
> Cheers,
> Mike B)

I was mainly making the point that the small manoeuvres between
bourgeois, imperialist, candidates are trivial as a lesser evil
argument. I did however point out that other aspects of the NYT
editorial suggested to me, a strategy to put the skids under Bush's
unilateralist war of aggression against Iraq, over a period of months,
by studiously not using the word conscription, but bringing the
argument up to that point.

No I don't know about FDR. The truth is always concrete. But when I
listen to some of Paul Robson's songs from that era it seems to me
there was a scope for progressive politics that there was not at other
times.

I have a soft spot for Ken Livingstone, even though he makes alliances
with the finance capitalism of the City of London for some of his more
socially coherent initiatives.

I cannot see from Google that Lenin ever advocated a lesser evil type
argument for choosing one bourgeois party over another. He did
famously in one concrete political formation call for support as a
rope supports a hanging man.

I do myself think there are sometimes arguments for supporting the
election of one bourgeois party over another provided this is not done
in such a way as to promote any faith or illusion in the bourgeois
party, but for reasons that actually shift the balance of power in
some way towards working people.

A far more difficult concrete situation was at the time of the rise of
Nazism when in retrospect perhaps all progressives got it wrong.
Google brings up the following argument by Trotsky in FOR A WORKERS'
UNITED FRONT AGAINST FASCISM by Leon Trotsky Written in exile in
Turkey, December 8 1931

>>>

IS BRUENING THE "LESSER EVIL"?


The Social Democracy supports Bruening, votes for him, assumes
responsibility for him before the masses-on the grounds that the
Bruening government is the "lesser evil." Die Rote Fahne attempts to
ascribe the same view to me-on the grounds that I expressed myself
against the stupid and shameful participation of the Communists in the
Hitler referendum. But have the German Left Opposition and myself in
particular demanded that the Communists vote for and support Bruening?
We Marxists regard Bruening and Hitler, Braun included, as component
parts of one and the same system. The question as to which one of them
is the "lesser evil" has no sense, for the system we are fighting
against needs all these elements. But these elements are momentarily
involved in conflicts with one another and the party of the
proletariat
must take advantage of these conflicts in the interest of the
revolution.
<<<

In my opinion the difference between Kerry and Bush is not of this
magnitude. It is a policy difference not a class difference. They are
both imperialists and both hegemonic imperialists. But Bush's policy
has been to use the massive preponderance of US military might
unilaterally to impose its hegemony. Kerry would obviously use this,
but appears by his background, his utterances, and his position on
Iraq to favour a more multi-lateralist hegemonic position. This may
matter more outside the US than within it. Even outside it is a matter
of judgement whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for the
progressive forces of the world versus international finance capital
headed by US capital, to have Empire consolidated under the more
complex hegemonic leadership of a Kerry type figure rather than
fragmented and dramatised by a Bush type figure.

Chris Burford