Thursday, 20 January 2005 - 12:14 PM GMT

Hi Marc

You say: 'What, of course, is missing here is a discussion of how 'capitalism' might be transcended...'

It's missing only because you chopped off the list of items you quote from me where you did. The final item on that list is: 'more abstractly - as this is bound to be today, given the weakened state of the left - asking, in common and sober and non-bullshit forms of inquiry, what meaning we can give to the original goals and aspirations that went under the name of socialism'.

True, I chose to formulate this in a way that leaves open whether or not capitalism has to be 'transcended' - as I myself am on record as thinking, and indeed still do think - but that is because I was referring to an area of debate; an area in which some on the left have doubts on this score or, more actively, don't any longer believe it. It doesn't do to define an area of debate in a way which forecloses its outcome.

Norm

Thursday, 20 January 2005 - 1:10 PM GMT

The 'left' (comprising mainly Weberian liberals and a sprinkling of Marxists) should consider what they mean by 'democracy' and therefore what it may mean to 'sell it out' (I take it Walzer sees 'democracy' of some type as being a pure-ish realm of free and equal citizens engaging in temperate rules-based debate - fine, but whenever was this the case? And when was that actually existing concrete reality 'sold out'? Sorry to be pedantic - but I am easily irritated by lofty hyper-abstract conceptions underpinned by unstated and uncritical bourgeois conceptions of the state and civil society). Humphh!

And while I am in a bad mood - I prefer 'overthrow capitalism' to 'transcending capitalism' - the latter is too vague and potentially politically misleading about what 'we' want and how 'we' get there....

Thursday, 20 January 2005 - 1:55 PM GMT

Norm, as you'll know, has written exstensively about Marxism's need to take liberal democracy more on its own terms, rather than interpreting it as only a disguised class dictatorship. Whether this does violence to Marx's Marxism, I couldn't say.

As you don't insist on a 'pure' realm of democracy, only the pure-ish, I would have thought that you could award the laurels of 'democracy' to modern western societies.

'Transcend' is an unlovely word, admittedly, but I was defining the 'left' widely as a historic category, rather than narrowly, as a 'theoretically sound' programme.

Thursday, 20 January 2005 - 2:53 PM GMT

Liberal capitalist democracy IS a form of class dictatorship - albeit in a manner that many on the left have undertheorised and so tend to present in somewhat vulgar terms. If taking it 'more on its own terms' involves ceding ideological and political ground to its assumptions and practices (as, in my experience, it usually does) - then I must leave that to those who have made some degree of peace with it.

Liberal political theory and practice can and should be studied seriously by Marxists (as Clarke, Panitch, Wood and others have) - without losing sight of its class form and content. Unfortunately, there are some on the left who, lacking a sufficiently clear and rigorous critical understanding of liberalism, fall pray to its warm, comforting embrace. Before you know it, they start talking about 'democracy' in ahistorical, asocial and apolitical terms - as a set of relations devoid of tensions, contradictions and socio-economic content. By so doing the failure to realise liberal political ideals is no longer grounded in the contradictions of capitalism, but becomes the contingent product of the irrational or selfish actions of particular Presidents, Prime Ministers, political cliques, state institutions - and, of course, the poor ignorant masses. Rectifying these failures tends to involve increasingly banal and abstract appeals to (what examples come to mind here...oh yes) 'the republic' and 'society, nation and universality'.

What does the unity of 'society, nation and universality' actually mean? What are the concrete referents for this lazy, speculative rambling? What
recognisable political processes, institutions and experiences are his views grounded in?

Disillusioned Harvard 'radicals': how wearisome.

BTW: my reference to the 'pure-ish' nature of democracy was an estimation of what Walzer regarded it to be prior to it being 'sold out' (whatever that means). I wasn't 'insisting' on anything.

Friday, 21 January 2005 - 11:09 AM GMT

I don't think that there's anything intrinsically conservative about the view that wars don't work; surely it's at base a technical issue of political economy, which is at least in principle susceptible to a factual right-or-wrong answer (and as we know, the historical evidence is piled up pretty high on one side). I suppose that this is why I don't agree that there is any particular problem in the left at the moment; I don't believe that the fact that every generation apparently needs to learn the hard way that "humanitarian wars of liberation" don't work, as a specific problem for the left. I identified this in Nick Cohen a while ago; this all seems much more like a case of Carly-Simon-syndrome-by-proxy on the part of the pro-Iraq-War Left.

Friday, 21 January 2005 - 11:39 AM GMT

I take your point - it was Robespierre, after all, who warned against exporting revolutions on the point of bayonets. However, I'd be inclined to see conservatives' opposition to revolutionary wars and insistence on the imperative of national interest as historically the dominant intellectual trend in this area.

Where's your Nick Cohen article? Crooked Timber?

Friday, 21 January 2005 - 6:18 PM GMT

"humanitarian wars of liberation don't work": If dsquared says so it must be true. On the other hand, it all depends what you mean by "humnaitarian" and "liberation". Millions of citizens of formerly Nazi-occupied Europe, formerly militarist Japan, formerly Khmer Rouge Cambodia and formerly Amin-ruled Uganda, let alone Afghanistan and Iraq, might disagree with dsquared's attempt to impose his own ex-cathedra definitions of these and other terms, but who cares what they think, right?

Friday, 21 January 2005 - 7:47 PM GMT

Nazi-occupied Europe and Japan cannot possibly be relevant because the Second World War was not a humanitarian intervention; you may or may not remember this, but Hitler started it, not us.

Similarly, Afghanistan was a war of self-defence and justified entirely on those grounds at the time. Assuming that you're talking about the American invasion of Afghanistan; I seem to remember that the Soviet one was justified on humanitarian grounds, but it wasn't much of a success.

Uganda is also only borderline relevant; there is all the difference in the world between supporting the revolutionary side in an already existing civil war, and starting a war ex nihilo.

Milions of Cambodians might disagree with me, but millions might not, because they are dead; the Black Book of Communism is most likely correct in its estimate that the Vietnamese managed to kill as many Cambodians as Pol Pot did. It also displays quite a bit of chutzpah to head up your list of reasons why the USA ought to be given free rein in the world with an example from South East Asia!

Which leaves you with Iraq, and since we've apparently agreed that you're not going to comment on the Lancet study, I'm not sure I see much point in going on discussing that one.

Saturday, 22 January 2005 - 2:09 AM GMT

Marc: Welcome back to blogging, by the way - but don't worry, we're not going to be taking up much space in your comment boxes this year.

dsquared: ?cannot *possibly* be?, ?justified *entirely*?, ?*all* the difference in the world?: you?re quite fond of the grand sweep, aren?t you? You might consider putting in a few qualifying adverbs here and there - say, an ?arguably?, or a ?perhaps? - and you should definitely change ?is most likely? to ?may well be? (indicating that it equally well may not be).
Stylistic considerations aside, you appear to be incapable either of grasping the possibility that a war may have more than one cause, more than one effect and more than one justification, or of representing our position accurately - there are no grounds in anything we?ve written anywhere for claiming that we think the USA, or any other state, should be ?given free rein in the world? (or, for that matter, outside the world). That kind of lie, coupled with your quite remarkable drive to simplify historical events to the point of absurdity (e.g. ?Hitler started it?, ?starting a war ex nihilo?), indicates why discussing anything at all with you is, as far as we?re concerned, a waste of time (apart from its entertainment value, which is fast diminishing).

Saturday, 22 January 2005 - 2:20 AM GMT

Arguably, perhaps, in my opinion, that looks to me, as if it's most likely, that it may be, that you've just admitted you were talking bollocks. Thanks.

Saturday, 22 January 2005 - 2:37 AM GMT

humanitarian wars of liberation may not work as long-term
political solutions but can avert genocide, admittedly
without ever being surgically precise in their targets.
Kosovo comes to mind. I guess it really depends on what
you mean by "work"?

Saturday, 22 January 2005 - 6:09 PM GMT

dsquared: Whatever ... We still see no point in discussing substantive issues with you, any more than we would bother to try discussing evolution with a creationist, or the non-existence of God with a convinced theist: rational arguments cannot penetrate the armour of faith. (Specimen: if you really believe that ?the Vietnamese managed to kill as many Cambodians as Pol Pot did?, you?ll believe anything.)
Still, like creationists or theists, you deserve at least a little credit for consistency. You believe - or, at any rate, pretend to believe - that the question whether wars ?work? or not is ?at base a technical issue of political economy, which is at least in principle susceptible to a factual right-or-wrong answer?. It follows, within your very narrow and tellingly self-serving logic, that anyone who disagrees with you, and attempts to point out that making judgements about human affairs might possibly involve a little more than simply selecting techniques and facts to suit your unstated but very obvious preconceptions, must necessarily be accused of ?talking bollocks?. (To say that we?ve ?admitted? doing so is just another lie, but that?s OK, we?re used to being lied about by dogmatists and simpletons.) Greater thinkers than you have tried this tiresome rhetorical trick of presenting their own arguments as entirely objective, impartial, factually based, etc., while dismissing others? arguments as mere opinion, but they too have failed to impress anyone other than their co-religionists. You say ?you?re talking bollocks?, we say ?*you?re* talking shite?: if only for the sake of not cluttering up this comments box with another of those non-debates that you seem to enjoy so much, let?s call the whole thing off.

Saturday, 22 January 2005 - 6:13 PM GMT

What Patrick said. It does indeed depend what you mean by the various words you use, but that's apparently too subtle a point for dsquared, the Mr Gradgrind of the blogosphere, to get his head round. ; )

Monday, 24 January 2005 - 11:48 AM GMT

I would just use the standard of "do more good than harm", which standard I'm personally not at all sure that Kosovo met, although I agree that this is a minority point of view.

I think the real issue is that the historical category "humanitarian wars" contains very few wars which have been entered into as good-faith humanitarian interventions (Kosovo being perhaps an exception) and lots and lots of wars like Iraq, where the belligerent party has blundered in out of equal parts humanitarianism, narrow economic self-interest, domestic politics and hubris. Humanitarian interventions are a subset of "wars of choice", and wars of choice have a very bad record.

That's why the Nuremberg principles decided simply to make all wars of aggression by their nature crimes against peace; simply to remove the temptation to come up with self-serving humanitarian justifications for aggression. It's this sound and empirically well-established principle that is at the base of the "International Law" argument against humanitarian wars of aggression, not any strange reverence for Westphalian nation-states; the simple principle that unless you have a blanket ban on wars of aggression, you're going to get lots of wars of aggression, and they're usually going to be bad.

It's probably worth noting in context that the Second World War actually started out as a humanitarian intervention; Hitler's original claim was that he wanted to avert an impending ethnic cleansing of the Sudeten Germans.