Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Why is it that left discourse requires so many rehearsals of the
> obvious? That's what I've found exasperating about so many of the
> recent "learning experiences" I've had on PEN-L. I haven't quoted
> Michael Kinsley's remark about how rightists are always looking for
> converts and leftists for heretics in months, but I'm mighty tempted
> to do so right now.
Heretic hunting is indeed a bad business. But I don't think you should
accept Kinsley's question as a rhetorical question. I think you should
seriously consider that there may in fact be good reasons for leftists
to be a bit more concerned about "heretics" than are rightists (if that
is indeed the case).
As I've indicated in other posts, I went way overboard in suggesting or
even seeming to suggest that Justin was a cop or something to that
effect, but the fact is from a couple centuries of history that within
the left what you call "heretics" are in fact apt to be (have been in
the past) a very serious threat to the health and well-being of their
fellow leftists. Could you perhaps consider as at least a hypothesis
worth exploring that what you call heretic hunting or stating the
obvious is part of a very reasonable tradition of ensuring that the
other persons in the room aren't going to feel it their moral obligation
to go over to the other side.
You probably have read the history of the Fisher sitdown strikes. How at
the first meeting planning them (I forget the exact figures but this is
roughly the case) there were about 600 people present and they selected
Plant No. 1 (arbitrary number -- I don't remember the exact
designations) as their target. Everyone in the room knew that that plant
was just a diversion.
Then they held a second meeting with about 30 or so people present --
and they said our real target is going to be Plant No. 2. And they
indeed went through with that -- there developed a full scale battle
inside the plant at the time indicated. The company goons were ready for
them of course.
But there had been a third meeting of only 6 people. The *real* target
was Plant No. 3. And at the time decided on, with the battle going on at
Plant No. 2, those six people (having told no one else) ran through
Plant No. 3 pounding on machines with metal bars and shouting shut her
down. They shut it down. In other words the establishiment of the UAW at
GM depended on the initiators simply assuming that there were heretics
in the ranks and planning around that.
But that kind of small group conspiratorial activity won't work in the
long run. We have to carry out our conpspiracies in public view as it
were. We've got to somehow establish considerable trust, among the
original 600 as it were, not just among the final 6. And the trust
*can't* be based on character estimation -- because the kind of
"betrayal" we are talking about here is betrayal carried out in all
sincerity by those who think they are doing the right thing. Karl
Kautsky was not a depraved character who willed the death of Rosa
Luxemburg. He was a highly moral man of good character who pursued what
he thought was the right course for humanity, and it was merely
unfortunate that that led to a city administration in Berlin that
tolerated a police force that murdered her.
Now all rich traditions have their deviations -- the deviations from the
tradition of which I speak are those cases that do fit your category of
"heretic hunting." It's an old but unfortunately true joke that paranoia
is an occupational hazard of revolutionaries. But amongst this herd of
cats on pen-l we have to operate at a fairly high level of theoretical
abstraction -- so we mostly have to concentrate on the core of the
traditions we uphold, which doesn't mean ignoring the weaknesses of
those traditions but it does mean subordinating consideration of those
weaknesses to consideration of the core traditions themselves.
The main method the left has worked out for building trust among
comrades -- trust that takes care of both actual police spies *and*,
more importantly, honest disagreements which add up to more -- is the
method of debate which you (hunting for *your* version of heresy) choose
to label heretic hunting. As I have suggested intermittently I have
serious doubts about maillists as an institution of the left -- they
seem to encourage magnifying differences and minimizing shared views (in
other words, to some extent it is the maillist form and not leftist
habit that encourages heretic hunting). But that limitation or weakness
of maillists would be partly compensated for if it was simply assumed
that everyone is operating in good faith.
I don't think large comments on "the left in general" (quoted from an
open opponent of the left) with the implcation that the quote fits
someone (in the case at issue, Yoshie) in particular, show you as
operating in good faith. I've never accused you of being a heretic in
fact. I've just argued that you are wrong in your assumptions of how, in
practice, people can be reached. It's a political and intellectual
difference. Why can't you treat it as that instead of suggesting that
anyone who disagrees with you does so because of some moral defect.
Carrol
