"Gordon Fitch" <gcf at panix.com>:
> -But this would be another purity test -- leftists fighting
> -over just what constitutes justice and how to carry it
> -out, in a world already full to bursting of programs to
> -create justice.
Nathan Newman:
> It is not purity if we dont act as if each measure is mutually exclusive.
> The question is whether the Left pragmatically reaches out to those
> demanding justice or turns their backs on them in favor of a narrow,
> ineffective coalition against war in the abstract.
>
> Coalition does not mean disagreement-- in fact, it is the lowest common
> denominator "points of unity" approach that ends of backing the Left into
> ineffective "no" strategies that sound nice in the short-term, but end up
> leaving all long-term initiative on policy to the militarists. If the Left
> does not promote a positive program for global justice, we will just lurch
> from crisis to crisis, leaving infinite justification for the
> military-industrial complex to maintain itself.
"The Left" is not a coherent entity. Religious pacifists, for example, are not going to join anything devoted to justice in the sense of selective killing, and I'm certainly not willing to kick them out of the commune. You may sneer at these people -- how many divisions has the Catholic Worker? -- but consider this: no one knows how much repression is going to come down, and these people know how to do time.