Katha fears some of us would "give away the store." I guess I have to repeat what I already said: I would embark on or support no political course of action that threatened to totally eliminate most access to abortion. I would seek to work with pro-lifers on issues of common interest, and I would compromise on secondary issues for the sake of such cooperation. By secondary issues, I mean such things as parental notification, the very late-term abortions, time delays, etc. I would have let Gov Casey speak at the DP convention, or the LP convention, for that matter. I would continue the LP stance of benign ambivalence. I would accept abortion-omitted national health insurance rather than what we have now.
Katha denies being an absolutist, but insists anyone should have immediate access any time, for any reason. That may be an individualistic principle, but it's still absolutism. None of the big majorities alluded to in her and Yoshie's posts reflect this belief.
Katha said: <<Oh Yoshie, that is so exactly right! I'd only add that often when people are talking about the ambivalence of others toward abortion, and the need to cater to it to achieve some other political goal, they themselves are ambivalent about abortion. I don't want to put words into
anyone's mouth, or extrapolate too far on the basis of half-sentences, but Max, didn't you suggest you felt ambivalent about abortion yourself -- not abortion the political issue but abortion the medical procedure-- when you said you feared that "easier" abortion might have meant no daughter for you?>>
Yes I did, and I also said not only for that reason. But I don't think my personal views are of national, or even list-wide, import. I think my point follows even if my beliefs are identical to yours.
Yoshie sees inconsistency between treatment of, on one hand, POMO's, women, gays, etc., and on the other, pro-lifers and others of religious faith. The difference is that POMO/ID Politics is being elevated to the status of revolutionary doctrine, and that premise is the object of criticism, NOT the feelings of oppression, much less the members, of any of the POMO constituencies. Nobody has been "trashed." Unproductive ideology has been criticized. That this is somehow interpreted as favoritism towards the militias or worse,
"romanticizing gun fetishists, religious fanatics, stalkers and killers?"
Jesus.
One gets the impression that beyond our culturally insulated, little worlds we can glimpse only barbarism: theocracy and Nazism. I don't doubt that I have more in common, in terms of personal beliefs, with KP and YF. than any militia member or pro-lifer. The difference is that we are all of us a marginal social formation, whereas the militiamen and pro-lifers reflect
a significant working class current. And please don't tell me women are
not marginal. You're not representing Womankind; you're representing those minorities who agree that abortion should be available any time under any circumstances.
The definition of ID politics was brought into question. Katha defines it narrowly. I would define it as elevating concerns about discrimination or patriarchy above those of class, or on a par with class. There are both POMO and 'Leninist' variants of this; the latter expressed in the archaic terminology of 'the national question.' In practical terms, I would liken this to the following process, which we've all seen, though with different reactions, many times: a discussion of a universalist demand, say national health insurance, proceeds and is then interrupted by someone who says, first you have to deal with race; or, you forgot to talk about race (or gender, or sexual orientation, etc.), or let's all of us ____ who have been neglected in this discussion caucus separately and discuss a ____ approach to national health insurance.
The left has limited resources, and a failure to focus them on the handful of things that are most important AND politically promising is a failure to exist as a meaningful political force.
KP again:
> Yes -- according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, one in six
> "born-again" women have had abortions. (For the whole population of
> women it's roughly two in five.) And for many of those born-agains,
> there's a born again parent, spouse, boyfriend etc who's helping them
> through the experience. I think these people could be brought to see
> their commonalty with other women who have catastrophic pregnancies.
>
Quite right, and I would applaud such efforts, but how easy will this be
if you demand they sign off on the maximum program?
Speaking of religion, we are assured of no malice towards the religious,
and asked, how in the world can it be said that the left avoids the religious? Mike E's point, that the shortcoming is not failure to break
bread with the National Council of Churches, is apt. (Though YF is right, that Mike and I disagree not on organizational mores, but on doctrine. Mike proposes the employment of finesse, which can't be impeached, but I would go further in terms of substance, as I've already indicated and reiterated. Mike envisions dialogue between those of starkly different values on the very subject of those values. Rather than try to bridge the unbridgeable, I would look for places to forge agreements based on mutual compromise. I've already given examples. Contrary to Wojtek, I think this is more substantive than tactical.)
Yet we are also told:
My friend Wojtek said:
> >I do not think that a bunch of wacky beliefs in a big spook in the sky
> >has any real effect whatever - it does not cause anything, good or bad.
>
and elsewhere described religion as "pure superstition."
Jim F. said: " I think that the 'young' Marx's assertion that the criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism still holds true today."
Dan L said: "Because Americans trust to God or the Founders, they don't look to themselves, i.e. to popular sovereignty, to new-model the American polity and bring it up to level of the 20th century, much less the 21st. This is why America is so awful -- why it's prey to a hyper-commercial capitalist culture, why its cities are in ruins, why the corporations have such untrammeled authority, and so on. U.S. democracy, such as it is, is still stuck in the 18th century."
Mike H refers to Operation Rescue thugs to illustrate the Problem of religion.
Rakesh says, " When I think of religion, I think of a non-unionized, divorced bed nurse who spends the weekends selling the newspaper of the Jehovah's Witness cult, which preaches that quiet suffering (esp of absued women) will be rewarded in
the afterlife and that god's design can be discovered in the chaos of the world, rendering useless any rational empirically based discussion of our society and the possibility of its improvement."
Justin S. says: "Hard-case realists like me, who believe that there is no God and religion is hooey, don't get exercised about the odd supernatural beliefs of my fundamentalist neighbors (I medan the nice people who live next door)."
Yoshie says:
"Most Americans' relationship to their religions, churches, etc. is pretty _consumeristic_. . . .Religion in America can be as alienated, consumeristic, and lonely as other mass cultural products."
We could sum up these remarks as seeing religion -- the most fundamental, core values people hold -- as ignorant, as the foundation for Oppression, as pathological, as the primary target of radical criticism (and by implication, radical politics). But we're your friends, don't forget that!!
KP asks, "you say that "retreat from expressions of religious faith" has
been "a disaster for the left." So do you go to church, mosque or synagogue?"
My answer is, only for Jewish weddings with great catering. I make no claims to religious faith, or to knowledge of it. My interest is in how the left sees and talks to ordinary people, including those who hold religious faith. I also claim that the remarks above reflect an urbane type of bigotry, one from which I have not been immune myself. Religion is philosophy, literature, art, ethics, and a real humanist force in its corporeal, earthly form. To understand it as mere superstition is anti-intellectual, narrow, and patronizing. To limit approval of religion to those who share one's politics is all of the above, as well as manipulative.
Don't bother asking me to explicate the profundity of religion. I've already indicated I'm not qualified. I can recognize something as being substantive without being a part of it.
Yoshie asks: "Are criticisms of religion to be forbidden for American Leftists because we must 'respect' and 'tolerate' the religious thoughts of all believers, including those of the believers who say abortion is murder?"
No, but such criticism should not be understood as politics, except of the marginalist type ('non-anti-imperialists need not apply'). Politics oriented towards the working class will mean taking a few steps back in the cultural arena for the sake of a greater number of steps forward elsewhere, for the sake of women and minorities as much as, if not more than, anyone else.
Cheers,
Max
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