----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, September 24, 2001 11:07 AM Subject: Re: poll on civil liberties
>
>
> Ian Murray wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > I can only define [militancy based on my experience of it;
know-it-all anger.
> >
> > If that's a bad definition of it I'm happy to be corrected.
> >
>
> I think it is a bad definition -- though it covers some (not all)
forms
> of ultra-leftism. (As I've noted before, I still carry a grudge
against
> the Weatherman tendency in SDS.) I think, perhaps, it is one of
those
> concepts the content of which is describable only within particular
> contexts. What is militancy in one context, is supineness in
another,
> and utterly unacceptable ultra-left madness in yet another.
>
> E.g., there will be occasions when window-breaking is not only
> acceptable but necessary; there are other contexts in which it is
> utterly disruptive of a mass movement; and there are other contexts
> (e.g. the night of the storming of the Winter Palace) when
indulgence in
> mere window breaking would be as detached from reality as is the
tailing
> of the Democratic Party now on lbo.
>
> Carrol
===========
Regarding the second paragraph, I don't regard property destruction in
a protest as militancy. I see it as a potentially strategic use of
reflexivity. When the other side complains about the destruction it
opens the door to talk about who's "really"destroying what. I do agree
there are many contexts in which it is totally counterproductive; we
may be at that stage now.
Ian