From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Tue Jul 18 2006 - 16:24:18 EDT
Jerry, Bit of blog - the general norm I learnt from my psychological inquiries is "respect the person, criticize/change the behaviour". This is sometimes difficult to do, I admit, certain behaviours may cause a loss of respect and so on, tempers flare etc. Nevertheless it's not a bad norm to have for general human conduct, consonant with the general moral norm of civil society "don't do to other people what you don't want them to do to you". A person usually cannot help being the persona he or she is, and if you attack that, it's unlikely to generate any positive change, as you can learn from the discourses on racism, and so on. Attacking a person for what he is or isn't, is usually more a puberal thing, reflecting more the identity problems of the attacker. Of course, somebody can pretend/claim to be somebody that he isn't, that's usually what ultra-leftists and far-righters home in on - they want to "expose" people, and so on. As an extreme case, Bernard Shaw wrote about Leon Trotsky that "Like Lessing, when he [metaphorically] cuts off his opponent's head, he holds it up to show that there are no brains in it; but he spares his victim's private character... He leaves [his victim] without a rag of political credit; but he leaves him with his honour intact." (The Nation, London, 7 January 1922, cited approvingly by Deutscher). I don't think this is quite accurate, as Trotsky like his mates could in reality be exceptionally vile at times, but generally speaking that was probably true, and that was a principled approach. I cannot say the same of some Trotskyists I conversed with though... Generally, Marx recommended that you distinguish between what somebody or a group actually does, and the various ideological notions they may have. So, for example, you don't criticise a religious person for his religion, but, as appropriate, for what s/he does in the name of his religion. I do not know Lynn Marcus, didn't he hang out with Tim Wolforth? Nor have I read his book on dialectical economics (didn't Larouche write that?), so I can't say. I tend to judge a book on its own merits, supposing that I have read it, though it often helps to understand the context in which it was written. Terrible people can write good books, and good people can write terrible books. I remember how Althusser was all the rage among leftists, and he strangled his own wife to death in a deranged state (!). Books can be read in all sorts of contexts also, you can also have a pomo or pragmatic view of books as a semiotic "sign". As an Education student in New Zealand in the late 1970s, I had to learn about Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the author of "Le Contrat Social" and "Emile", who sent his own kids to the orphanage, as Voltaire commented "ad hominem" (it's a bit like the Blairites versus the Liberals and the Tories nowadays). Even so, Rousseau's books made a dent, and are they completely invalidated because of his somewhat messy life? I don't think so. Lenin was happy to appropriate findings from Rudolf Hilferding's Finanzkapital, while strongly disagreeing with Rudolf's political views. Rosa Luxemburg was a genuine revolutionary, most people agree, but can you really agree with all her economic theories? Are those theories validated, simply because she was a revolutionary? I don't really like to sit in on judgement about people who have made (ideological) leaps or somersaults in their lives, you gotta do what you gotta do obviously, and it may take considerable personal courage to make that change, but whereas what somebody does later might not invalidate what they did/said earlier (though wildly different), of course you'd prefer not to associate with some in the end, and it is reasonable to regard rapid changes to a substantive point of view opposite to what was held earlier, with a dose of skepticism or cynicism. A job with the World Bank could be a job like any other, or it could be a job where you end up doing the exact opposite of what you originally believed, it all depends on the given case. Sticking to the same point of view all your life might be consistent or show integrity, but it could also be terribly conservative. Particularly the younger leftists, on the way to an independent life, like to pronounce judgement on somebody's "character" or "moral fibre" but personally I am more interested in understanding characters and what they can do, which can be pretty difficult already, and you might be old before you truly understand it anyway, insofar as the understanding you gain, is intersubjective, and thus reflexive in the "it takes one to know one" sense, it is a matter of your experience of life, and some things you'll never understand, simply because you are who you are, or you'd rather not know things. The more substantive analytical issue concerns the developmental processes through which a personal or social radicalisation occurs, the motives forces behind it, i.e. why/how does somebody or some group radicalize, and is that a healthy or an unhealthy radicalism? What is its real or deeper source? How does it relate to the progressive forces in society? If you have a real societal crisis or problem of some sort, it may be relatively easy to understand how somebody radicalizes "organically" in response to conditions; but under conditions of relative social peace, it may be more difficult to understand, and individual (psychological) factors or fads may play a bigger role, including e.g. a rebellious nature, biological factors, a counter-culture or a critical intelligence. Moreover, each generation redefines the terms of what it is all about. You can have a sort of "flash in the pan" radicalism also which is more a personal developmental problem, than something thought through to the end, and consequently is more ephemeral. I don't consider myself especially radical by the way, I've tried to be only as radical or critical as I think the situation warrants, even so, there are no guarantees, I could get it right, or get it wrong, it can be difficult enough to truly probe "to the root" of an issue to one's satisfaction, as K. Marx challenged us to do, often I have more questions on the brain than real answers (you can also read a bit too much for your own good, though a librarian assured me once you could never read enough). Also, sustained political militancy takes considerable stamina, and as they say, "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen". There might be times you can contribute a lot, other times little, being the person you are. This is of course never good enough for some doctrinaires, but because they place impossible demands on people rather than bring out their best, their groups usually stay small, or fracture. Jurriaan
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