FW: [ASDnet] Are the Black Bloc police agents?

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Jul 26 09:09:20 PDT 2001


Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema wrote:
>
> Neither pacifism, nor its twin, armed struggle is a complete
> strategic approach for the left, though one seems more conventionally
> acceptable than the other.
>

This is not quite the correct opposition. First of all, "armed struggle" has misleading connotations outside peasant societies, in which "prolonged struggle" necessarily includes, at some point, "prolonged armed struggle." When the (mis)leadership in such societies puts forth a non-violent strategy (I am thinking of India) they necessarily exclude the masses (peasantry, workers, really small producers) from the struggle and hence from participation in the fruits of the struggle.

Pacifism puts makes the question of force a metaphysical choice; the opposite would be a theory which glorifies violence for its own sake. Both are idealist in that they assume the priority of thought to action rather than seeing thought as emerging from and making sense of ongoing social activity. I don't know how to label accurately the opposite of pacifism; only from a pacifist perspective is its opposite violence.

One can also say of both pacifism and its unnamed opposite that they turn a question of tactics and strategy into a question of metaphysical morality.

Carrol



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