Norman Geras

[Bernie Gunther]

Is it worth pointing out that the Iraq War is not a left/right issue?

The BNP and Micheal Howard are anti-Iraq war, for fucks sake

There are any number of military commentators who think it's a total mess and who are by no means on the left. oi2002 has posted a wide variety of them, but here are a couple I've found particularly enlightening.

http://d-n-i.net/lind/lind_archive.htm

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/

 

[Fullyplumped]

Oh yeah, it's a total mess, but it was the right thing to do, and better than the alternatives. And that's a left position.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

There appears to be a functioning (islamic) state in southern Iraq at least, which enjoys broad local acceptance. Why are the British troops still there?

 

[rebel warrior]

Oh yeah, it's a total mess, but it was the right thing to do, and better than the alternatives. And that's a left position.

If thats a 'left position', I hate to see what a 'right position' might look like...

It is true that you can be right wing and opposed to the war (on nationalist grounds - the war is not in British interests etc), but that does not mean conversely that you can be pro-war and still on the Left. The Left has to oppose imperialist wars as a matter of internationalist duty - you cannot support state power being used to further the interests of British (and American) capital and still be somehow 'on the Left'.

This is why I disagree with Bolshie's point otherwise above - but I do not know much about the Workers Party. Stalinism does not qualify you automatically for the 'Left'.

 

[Fullyplumped]

If thats a 'left position', I hate to see what a 'right position' might look like...

A 'right position' might be "keep well out and let Johnny foreigner fight it out till they're all dead, what's it got to do with us".

you cannot support state power being used to further the interests of British (and American) capital and still be somehow 'on the Left'.

But you can and should say our states should use military power to get rid of a horrible blood soaked regime like Saddam's. Right enough, you can and should say this should happen elsewhere as well.

Does anyone want to condemn the recent vicious imperialist British intervention in the sovereign state of Sierra Leone, by the way?

 

[rebel warrior]

But you can and should say our states should use military power to get rid of a horrible blood soaked regime like Saddam's. Right enough, you can and should say this should happen elsewhere as well.

No - because the West put the bloodstained Saddam regime in power and armed it while it was killing people. Saddam's regime was bloodstained, but he is a small gangster compared to say Henry Kissinger, who has far more blood on his hands.

Does anyone want to condemn the recent vicious imperialist British intervention in the sovereign state of Sierra Leone, by the way?

Read this - http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/archive/1697/sw169715.htm

 

[Fullyplumped]

No - because the West put the bloodstained Saddam regime in power and armed it while it was killing people. Saddam's regime was bloodstained, but he is a small gangster compared to say Henry Kissinger, who has far more blood on his hands.

Just so I'm clear - is that an argument for not removing Saddam? That the Yanks have done worser things? Or is it an argument for keeping the UN sanctions regime?

Read this - http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/archive/1697/sw169715.htm

I was really hoping that the Trots would have something like this.

Essentially, 'leave Johnny foreigner to his own devices.'

 

[JHE]

Essentially, 'leave Johnny foreigner to his own devices.'

That's a better rule of thumb than 'stick our military oar in to make the world a better place' or 'stick with the US, even when plainly wrong or unwise, coz their military might can make the world a better place'.

 

[Fullyplumped]

That's a better rule of thumb than 'stick our military oar in to make the world a better place' or 'stick with the US, even when plainly wrong or unwise, coz their military might can make the world a better place'.

Well like I said, I would characterise that as a 'right' position, or rule of thumb. I think that my position fits fine on the left, and I think that people on the left who truly think it's wrong to fail to make war on horrible regimes like Saddam's, or who prefer the ruinous sanctions that were used instead of overt war before 2003, or who would have let Saddam get away unscathed to do more of the same, have to convince the rest of us that there's anything progressive in their position. Not in my name, comrades!

 

[Fisher_Gate]

There are plenty of precedents for Geras' trajectory.

For example, H M Hyndman founder of Britain's first marxist and socialist organisation - the Social Democratic Federation, later the British Socialist Party - was converted to the anti-war perspective while a journalist in the war between Italy and Austria in the 1860s. Like many anti-war 'marxists' however, he swung to supporting the imperialist war in 1914. He split from the BSP to form his own National Socialist Party. (Hyndman's was more of an authoritarian upper class twit though, than a serious intellectual of Geras' standing).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._M._Hyndman

 

[butchersapron]

Marx very much liked his popularisation of Capital though.

 

[In Bloom]

This is why I disagree with Bolshie's point otherwise above - but I do not know much about the Workers Party. Stalinism does not qualify you automatically for the 'Left'.

Ah, so basically, your definition of "left wing" is "whoever happens to agree with me"? How can Stalinists be considered right wing?

 

[Summithop]

Have to say I found Geras' article on aspects of fetishism in Marx's 'Capital' from New left Review(1971) very useful.

 

[bolshiebhoy]

This is why I disagree with Bolshie's point otherwise above - but I do not know much about the Workers Party. Stalinism does not qualify you automatically for the 'Left'.

No you want them not to. But that's not the same. There are despite your anglo centric view pro-imperialist leftists out there. Live with it. Cliff did.

And yes a Stalinist party with in its day more influence in the organised working class than the party you're a member of and I have great respect for could even begin to imagine, is definitely part of the left.

 

[bolshiebhoy]

Hyndman's was more of an authoritarian upper class twit though, than a serious intellectual of Geras' standing).

How can you compare an intelectual diletante likes Geras with Hyndman, a man who helped found the Labour Represenative Committee and then in turn the BSP. Upper class twit? You off your trolley?

 

[articul8]

Marx very much liked his popularisation of Capital though.

Really? I thought Engels treated Hyndman like an intellectually lightweight plagiarist with an unhealthy self-importance.

 

[butchersapron]

Oh, he was undoubtdly all of those things - despite doing some sterling work (and despite his horrible later positions, pro-colonialism, pro-WW1 etc, personal authoritarianism etc) but Marx thought his England For All was a worthwhile effort even if he was pissed off at the lack of reference to himself or his work despite it clearly being based on them.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

How can you compare an intelectual diletante likes Geras with Hyndman, a man who helped found the Labour Represenative Committee and then in turn the BSP. Upper class twit? You off your trolley?

Hyndman was a stockbroker who stood as an independent Tory for parliament. You couldn't do that in Victorian Britain without a lot of wealth - he was upper class, no doubt about it. Whether he was a 'twit' is a matter of judgement, I agree.

Sure he helped found the SDF which later became the BSP, and that was important. But he left the BSP over its anti-war line in 1914 though.

And you are wrong about his role in the LRC - it was actually formed from a TUC resolution, though the SDF attended the foundation conference putting forward a resolution for socialism (heavily defeated). The SDF withdrew from the LRC in August 1901 (according to Milliband) which I think was foolishly sectarian and premature. The BSP later reaffiliated after Hyndman was gone from their ranks.

 

[articul8]

Wasn't there some scandal where a Hyndman supported candidate (SDF?) was found to have received payment from Tory coffers?

 

[butchersapron]

Something like that, i think they stood a candidate after payment in order to split the lib-lab vote.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

Wasn't there some scandal where a Hyndman supported candidate (SDF?) was found to have received payment from Tory coffers?

The 'Tory Gold' scandal of 1885.

Pelling (Origins of the Labour Party, 1965) says:

Maltman Barry, a former marxist and member of the First International, was now working as a Conservative agent. He offered funds to Hyndman and Champion (sec of the SDF and a former Marlborough School pupil) to support two socialist candidates in London - neither in working class areas. The Tories hoped the socialist candidates would split the Liberal vote and let the Tories in. They gave £340, a sizeable sum, but the two candidates only got 59 votes between them. Hyndman and Champion did this without reference to the SDF executive and even the treasurer did not know about it. The scandal came out and even the Fabian Society condemned it. According to Pelling, there was almost 'universal execration' of the SDF. It also encouraged one James Ramsay Macdonald to set up an alternative to the SDF called the Socialist Union but that floundered, ironically because of lack of funds.

 

[articul8]

aye, that's the one - cheers.

Not exactly a shining example for the British left. Have Respect published their annual accounts yet by the way...

 

[Udo Erasmus]

By whom do you mean when you say "capitalists" in the above..

If you mean the industrial/military complex, they did not want to US to pull out of Vietnam as they were onto nice contracts with the pentagon for supply of military equipment. It was the ordinary people who caused the US to pull out of Vietnam. Them & the North Vietnamese of course. Leading the economy to a crises is not actually true. What caused the US economic slowdown of the mid to late 70's was the oil crisis due to the 1973 Arab/Israeli war.

I don't dispute the centrality of the US anti-war movement and the courageous resistance of the Vietnamese to the defeat of imperialism - but this itself provoked a crisis in the establishment and split it down the middle.

If you read Gabriel Kolko's excellent "Anatomy of a War" on Vietnam, he documents how capitalists and big business who had traditionally supported American foreign policy for obvious reasons began to grow uneasy about the huge resources going into an unwinnable war - such huge resources that it was imbalancing the whole economy.

From the time of the Tet offensive in 1968 to the end of the war, the dollar was in perpetual crisis and America began to experience several economic problems such as inflation. This combined with the fact that the US couldn't hold Vietnam led some sectors of business to begin to look for an alternative

We might see big business start to do the same in Iraq. Naturally capitalists will support a war to secure the oil fields of Iraq so as to continue US dominance of the world economy - but at a certain point, as Iraq becomes a quagmire and the "vietnamisation" fails, with it clear that huge resources are being channelled into an unwinnable war - some capitalists will begin to agitate for the US to cut it's losses and run.

 

[Andy the Don]

I don't dispute the centrality of the US anti-war movement and the courageous resistance of the Vietnamese to the defeat of imperialism - but this itself provoked a crisis in the establishment and split it down the middle.

If you read Gabriel Kolko's excellent "Anatomy of a War" on Vietnam, he documents how capitalists and big business who had traditionally supported American foreign policy for obvious reasons began to grow uneasy about the huge resources going into an unwinnable war - such huge resources that it was imbalancing the whole economy.

From the time of the Tet offensive in 1968 to the end of the war, the dollar was in perpetual crisis and America began to experience several economic problems such as inflation. This combined with the fact that the US couldn't hold Vietnam led some sectors of business to begin to look for an alternative

We might see big business start to do the same in Iraq. Naturally capitalists will support a war to secure the oil fields of Iraq so as to continue US dominance of the world economy - but at a certain point, as Iraq becomes a quagmire and the "vietnamisation" fails, with it clear that huge resources are being channelled into an unwinnable war - some capitalists will begin to agitate for the US to cut it's losses and run.

Thanks for coming back to me & answering the points raised. I will check out that book by Gabriel Kolko.

 

[butchersapron]

Geras died last night.

 

[Wilf]

Geras died last night.

That's sad. I knew him a bit in the mid 80s (he taught me) and liked his stuff on Luxemburg, the stuff on Marx and human nature also. His subsequent trajectory is something else, but not the place for it here. RIP.

 

[Idris2002]

I saw him speak in Belfast on the question of whether or not the Holocaust was unique (short answer: yes, it was) - it must have been before the Iraq war, now that I think of it.

Was able to chat briefly with him after the event. Seemed like one of the good guys at the time - as Wilf says, this isn't the place to debate his "subsequent trajectory".

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

He followed me on twitter, for some reason. I can only think it was due to a shared dislike of the novels of Anita Brookner.