>The courts that are being set up are not the second best thing to "perfect
>abstract justice". They are show trials. Their purpose is to assert that the
>"civilised" West has the authority to judge the rest of the world. In this
>sense it does not matter who they find guilty and who they do not. It is a
>point of moral authority which is at issue. Just because Clinton and Blair
>claim to be acting in the name of humanity doesn't mean we need to give any
>ground on this whatever. They do more than "partly imply" that they are
>acting in our name. They claim to act in our name with no reservation at
>all.
I see your position as an idealist, and a left, anarchist position. But at least we are setting out differences of perspective to each other.
Politically I would say to you, if an international court on crimes against humanity were such a reactionary phenomenon, it is a funny thing that the US government is so opposed to it.
Theoretically and ideologically I would have to take issue with some of the ways you present the question. You suggest that I might see such courts as the "second best thing" to perfect abstract justice. There is no such thing as perfect abstract justice.
>You will not find juries or due process in these courts because their
>purpose is not democratic.
You sound as if you have illusions in due process and in democracy. These are also of course instruments of class rule.
I think your approach is undialectical. All legal processes regulate the use of force to coerce compliance with what is almost always in practice a class dominated system. That is what happens in the US at the moment. And that is what would happen in the world with an emerging system of international courts.
BUT the structures of the state also have to appear to stand above classes and represent a certain concept of justice that is accepted by the society as being appropriate. It therefore has a progressive aspect to it as well as a repressive aspect.
Commuial violence is not in the interests of the unity of workers against capitalism. Even arbitrary legal processes may be more progressive than its continuation, which can go on for generations.
The logic of your position is also to oppose the United Nations, on the grounds that it is made up of bourgeois repressive governments. But the UN is a step towards the unity of the human race and an arena of struggle. However weak, it imposes some restraints on arbitrary action by the US and its allies.
So would the International Court of Human Rights that the US so opposes.
Following the detention of Pinochet, Mrs Thatcher has indeed needed to check legal advice about her own travel arrangements.
Anyway history moves on independent of whether anyone asks us. Of course we do not get asked, except in a very limited sense. What idealist conception do you have of the political process. We were not asked whether we want Serbia bombed, or the Albanians forced to flee their homes and settle as refugees to be doubly (prehaps trebly) oppressed in countries like the US and the UK.
This week there was an announcement of the first billion dollar international legal firm with lawyers from London, the US and Germany.
This development is determined by economic factors ultimately independent of the will of anyone, especially you and me, but also the participants in the firm.
We should demand accountability for all these activities on a world basis.
Workers of all countries unite? Or, workers sulk cynically each in your separate countries?
It is a leftist line that is right in essence, to oppose fighting in arenas of international struggle and to oppose developing them.
IMO
Chris Burford
London