Eubulides wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Carl Remick" <carlremick at hotmail.com>
>
> War is the most brutal [clip]
> =================
>
> Horrible? Absolutely. Should we focus on them to the relative exclusion of
> what is happening in Sudan, Chechnya, Congo and other loci of barbarism?
> No. Methinks Ulhas' question is a bit more nuanced.
Let me repeat: there is an indefinitely large supply of issues which (if one were writing an objective academic account of capitalism) one would want to list, and many of them, again in objective academic or philosophical terms would _seem_ to be better issues to move people with. But in fact how many issues in the history of capitalism have _in fact_ triggered large mass movements?
1. Union recognition. (Once unions achieve recognition they are no longer sources of radical action. (This is nothing against unions: we need them. But we can't expect union activity to be a source of movement.)
2. Women's rights. (Sort of. One would guess that what inspired Mary Wollstonecraft was that she kept getting elbowed to the sidelines in the 1790s equivalent in France of England of modern political maillists. The 19th c. movement emerged from the same thing happening in the anti-slavery movement. Much of the energy of the Second Wave of the '70s flowed from the same thing happening to women in the civil rights and anti-war movements.)
3. Anti-lynching.
4. Protracted War.
That's about the complete list.
Maybe it shouldn't be that way. But then almost nothing that's going on around the world now _should be_ that way.
All the other things that you may think are of greater importance won't generate a movement _except_ as they are used to expand movements which have their core in anti-war and anti-imperialism. Perhaps the struggle against the Patriot Act. You can't build a movement for positive things except as an emergent feature of Struggles Against. That's a simple prediction, not an argument about what should be.
So the only way to argue against it is to go out and organize, and then come back when you have people actually in motion. I won't hold my breath.
Without ever speaking more than two minutes at a time, and not more often that about two times about every three months, I have persuaded about 30 people in Bloomington-Normal that they have an obligation to keep BNCPJ alive and ready for the next time when something sparks mass interest. Two other people (seconded by Jan and me) persuaded the same 30 people that burnout of leaders was a major barrier to that survival, and that hence the generation of new leadership was an obligation on all those with (as a young sociology asst. prof put it) "fire in their belly." As I said a couple years ago on this list, I'm having fun for the first time since ERA went down in flames. During that time, until both of us and our friends more or less burnt out after the Gulf War, we had clawed at one thing after another with our fingernails, just hoping. One possible focus after another would fade away. (We saved one, perhaps two, lives along the way, but nothing more came of it.)
Anti-War is the framework for everything else.
Carrol