Rather belatedly, I’ve signed up for the Euston Manifesto. The reasons I didn’t before are (a) that I've been busy and (b) that I’m not really much of a Popular Frontist. Although I’m happy with voting tactically against the Tories, the BNP or Respect at election time, something deep inside of me clings to the belief that clarity of critique is what matters most. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I share a lot of Socialism in the Age of Waiting’s reservations about Euston’s fudging of questions I don’t want to fudge.
But I’ve been convinced by the idiocy of the assault on Euston from the cretino-left, particularly the Communist Party of Britain's Andrew Murray — I'd link but Comment is Free won't allow me — that it’s worth leaving reservations to one side for a bit and putting my name to “the most conservative document that I have ever initialled” (as Christopher Hitchens described it while contemplating the possibility of signing).
Because the crucially important thing that the manifesto gets right is that the left needs to go beyond arguing about whether or not the Iraq war was right. Should the US and Britain have taken out Saddam Hussein by force? A fascinating question – as is, let’s say, “Should the Soviet Union have signed a pact with Nazi Germany in 1939?” – and a legitimate subject for argument. But it happened, three years ago, and now, for better or worse, the people of Iraq are living and dying with the consequences.
What matters most is what happens next. The manifesto’s position, with which I agree, is that, regardless of what we thought about the Iraq war, the left throughout the world should now be supporting those people in Iraq who want to create a tolerant secular democratic society. And they are not the people who have taken up arms against the occupation.
The schism on the left is not between “pro-war” and “anti-war” leftists, but between anti-totalitarian secular democrats and those whose overweening anti-imperialism leads them to support any opposition to capitalist pig Amerika. I cannot see Ba’athism, the Iraqi “resistance” or radical Islamism as in any sense “progressive”. And I believe that democracy is the best answer to imperialism.
So I signed.
20 comments:
Paul: "Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I share a lot of Socialism in the Age of Waiting’s reservations ...": You calling us old-fashioned or what? How about some clarity here? ; )
Thanks for at least considering our considerations, though - and we fully understand your reasons for signing up anyway.
It's "Socialism in an ...", by the way (though we had to go back to our own blog to check).
I'd like to point out that the use of the word 'cretin' to characterize your oponents is juvenile at the least. Please reread Orwell's 'Politcs and the English Language'
SIAW comrades: apologies for mistyping your name. But like you I'm pretty much United Front at best.
I'm disappointed; I think it's entirely possible to be an anti-totalitarian secular democrat and reject the EM. (See my posts on the topic, or Robert Jubb's.) More to the point, the tendency of the EM initiative is to paint those who reject it as actually opposing either democracy or secularism, and hence as being either wicked or stupid. This kind of loyalty-oath politics is bad news - it's a mirror-image of Chomskyan 'anti-imperialism'.
Phil,
There are plenty of people on the left who regard themselves as democrats, but reject liberal democracy as a stepping stone to any 'real' democracy. If that is your viewpoint, then the EM would be hard to sign.
But if you regard liberal democracy as the least-worst option on offer, and one that is the only viable stepping stone to a more economic democracy, then I'd find it hard to understand why a socialist of that stripe wouldn't be prepared to sign it (apart from, perhaps, omissions on personal hobby-horses, or an understandable general irritation with being asked to endorse someone else's script).
The thing is, having read your blog, I'd suggest that you aren't actually a democratic socialist in the way that it is usually understood. And that's fair enough. The EM was written partly to draw a thick black line where a fuzzy one used to be. But if it's your view that a the worst democracy is better than the best tyranny, then what's to argue about?
“it's entirely possible to be an anti-totalitarian secular democrat and reject the EM”: Indeed. We’ve rejected the manifesto too, but we certainly haven’t found ourselves being painted “as actually opposing either democracy or secularism”, nor can we detect any hint whatever of “loyalty-oath politics” in the manifesto. After all, the Euston Group is just a bunch of commentators, not a congressional committee, and its members are protesting against (among many other things) exactly the kind of kneejerk tribalism that is typified both by McCarthyism in the 50s and by left-liberal conformism today (“You supported the liberation of Iraq? Then you can’t possibly be on the left!”). Phil’s somewhat paranoid over-reaction to the document, which leads him to see “neocon” tendencies within it that simply aren’t there, says more about him, and the rest of his tribe, than it does about any of the Eustonites (a few dubiously "progressive" signatories apart, but they didn't write it and aren't at all typical of its supporters).
As for Paulie’s powerful point about liberal democracy being defensible “as a stepping stone to any 'real' democracy” (Karl Kautsky is not dead!), Phil has already ruled himself out of using that argument. We too have read his blog - notably the (untypically) straightforward assertion that “Taking up the cudgels for one relatively undemocratic status quo against another is a mug's game.” It must be nice to be so au-dessus de la melée that you can flatly deny there is any melée taking place, or anything of value in the liberal democracy that allows and even encourages people like Phil to woefully misread a political statement and stupidly defame its authors.
We have our own doubts about the details and the likely effects of the manifesto, but we don't doubt the sincerity of its authors' motives, or the real worth of their attempt to launch a serious argument about principles. The fact that their attempt has been greeted with precisely the kind of witch-hunting and name-calling that Phil wrongly claims they advocate speaks volumes about the dire state of the "progressive politics" that they admirably but, perhaps, naively seek to renew.
As a postscript - and craving your indulgence, Paul - we can’t resist quoting S.O. Muffin’s comment at Harry’s Place, back on 18 April: “If a guy says once that he doesn’t really mind that she stood him up and goes on with his life – well, you might believe him. But if he repeats obsessively for days and days that he doesn’t mind, that he never loved her, that he already forgot – well, better buy him a box of tissues. Likewise, if the EM had been unimportant, inconsequential, trivial, self-evidently wrong and intellectually bankrupt, why do its opponents repeat it again and again and again? [...] Well, obviously EM hit a raw nerve. Which is fine and can act as a spur for a serious discussion and serious arguments. But, with a few honourable exceptions, its opponents show themselves incapable of serious discussion. So we get either ad hominem vilification or silly Benjamin-style games.”
On the whole, we prefer the silly games - at least they don’t pretend to be anything else.
I'd suggest that you aren't actually a democratic socialist in the way that it is usually understood
As I was saying, "the tendency of the EM initiative is to paint those who reject it as actually opposing either democracy or secularism".
But I'm really intrigued to know what there is in my blog - excluding for the moment the three posts inspired by the Euston Manifesto - which led you to the conclusion that I'm not, actually, a democratic socialist. Insulted, obviously, but intrigued.
No insult intended Phil.
My reading of your recent postings led me to believe that you are ambivalent about the alleged virtues of liberal democracy.
I'd be pleased if it turns out that I've got the wrong end of the stick.
"...excluding for the moment the three posts inspired by the Euston Manifesto"?
You've got me there. I had in mind exactly those posts, and exactly the quote used by SIAW (above).
Are you saying that you adopted an avatar that regards liberal democracy as being a different (but comparable) variation on the 'undemocratic' scale in order to oppose the EM, and that you aren't responsible for those views EXCEPT when they are needed for that purpose?
This is hilarious stuff. The hackneyed tactic of the Decents is to write platitudinous codwallop and say you have to sign it if you believe in freedom, democracy, motherhood and apple pie - and if you don't you're suspect.
Look, let's get real: the EM is as weak as water and will fail. That's as good a reason as any to not sign it.
Blimey - how many more ways can Benjamin find to say absolutely nothing relevant or interesting about the Euston Manifesto?
I, for one, and very disappointed that Benjamin isn't signing the Euston Manifesto.
I think I can speak for everyone who did so in saying that the main reason that the thing was drafted in the first place was to help reunite the left and end the futile dispute between the 'decents' and the 'tediouses.'
There's no point in uniting with someone who uses the terms 'tosser' and 'cretin' for those who disagree with him.
As Orwell once famously put it, "once a whore, always a whore".
Or Bevan: "lower than vermin".
Paul, I think they were referring to people like you.
'Tosser' is a playground insult.
The use of 'Cretin' as an insult reveals quite a bit more about you as a person than I think you realise. I work with young people with learning disabilities and one more problem they face is abuse on the streets from people like you who should know better.
To quote a disbled person,
'Disabled people have traditionally been ‘named’ by the medical, welfare and charitable powers and described in terms of what is ‘wrong’ with us. Many names which are now seen as insults are derived from medical terminology — mongol, spastic, cretin, idiot — even the more generic ‘invalid’, ‘handicapped’ and ‘disabled’ have roots in negative concepts of being at a disadvantage, being neither valid nor able.'
http://www.healthmatters.org.uk/issue32/arose
A rose by any other name…
by Lorraine Gradwell
From a Unison Website
Unacceptable Terminology
Terms of abuse in language have origins in negative perceptions of disability. Their use contributes to the negative image of disability prevalent in society, and should be not be used. For example:
cretin
spastic
cripple
Mongol
These were originally medical terms but their meaning has now been greatly devalued. We are generally more sensitive today in avoiding use of such words to describe disabled people, but they have not yet disappeared.
http://www.devoncountyunison.org.uk/equalities/applang/dis-lang.html
If you ran a little macro on Paul's database, and deleted every instance of the word 'cretin', it would be a bit like dynamiting the foundations of a tall building.
I know what you're saying Anonymous, but I doubt if there are many people who are still alive who would identify themselves as a 'cretin' and resent the way it is turned into a term of abuse.
Paul's point - that a section of the left have *reaching for a bland euphemism* caught a cold makes sense.
Could not agree more.
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