<< I tend towards the beautiful soul position, but at least I admit it. >>
Once upon at time,w hen there was a movement inw hich they were important, Marxists had to worry about "dirty hands." Brecht wrote "The Measures Taken." Lukcas cozied up to be Stalinism's chief respectable thinker and turned his mighty Hegelian scholarship into an attack on "the beautiful soul." Then the position that it was better to be effective than entirely clean had a point, although one cannot be entirely happy with the results, whgich often involved apologia for the indensible for no real advantage to the movement that was supposedly being served. I have no doubt that if there is a socialist revolution, it will have to be defended with rough and sometimes doubtful measures. That's why, for example, I never blame Trotsky for putting down the Krondstadt revolt--no society at war could tolerate mutiny in the military like that, least of one that had, as it seemed, a dim prospect of promoting the goals of our movement. However, this is idle today. In our circumstances, when there is no movement in our movement and any MArxist contribution to it is insignificant, sneering at beautigl souls is justification of realpolitik for its own sake: it leaves you in the positioon of being neither clean nor effective. We have no justification here and now for not coming out in favor of the right thing.
And even when realpolitik is called for, there are limits. This was a point Trotsky made, with good effect, against Dewey in their debate over Their Morals and Ours. Thus while I would say that Krondstadt was a justifiable tragedy, not a crime, the suprression of the independent trade unions was one too far: that was a crime. Does the fact that Milosovic retained a large state sector make his national chauvinsim and murderous brutality an entrry on the Krinsadt side of the ledge? I don't think so, Kronstadt was arguablly necessary to retain military discipline and support a potentially socialist society against powerful enemies beant on its destruction. Srebenica was just another act of murderous terrorism, one that harmed rather than promoted any conceivable socialist goal, however much it may have furthered no-neck nationalism in Serbia. Yoshie and Lou should be ashamed of themselves.
--jks