[lbo-talk] RE: L.A. grocery strike.

[Carrol Cox]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> 
> joanna bujes wrote:
> 
> >It follows that all criticism of "The Left" on lbo-talk has been
> >unprincipled.
> >
> >Carrol
> >
> >I never know what marxists mean when they say that.
> 
> It means Carrol disagrees with it, but he wants to lend his
> disagreement a note of "objectivity."
> 

Why then do I call the DP leadership _principled_? My argument with the
DP is that their principles are vicious, not that they are unprincipled.
And why do I call Justin, with whom I have extremely sharp
disagreements, principled? And I have recently attacked a poster on psn
who, in disagreeing with Martha Gimenez's position on the election
accused her of "elitism." I agreed with the substance of his rather than
Martha's position, but saw his criticism of her in this respect as
'unprincipled.' An argument can easily be correct but unprincipled, or
principled but incorrect or even (as in the case of BDL on Sweezy)
principled but contemptible. It is in reference to the likes of BDL and
other lap dogs of the imperialists that Marx's "ruthless criticism"
which must be completed with the criticism of arms applies.

Kelley's posts on this have been excellent, and the following is
intended to be complimentary both to her posts and my own earlier posts.

Principled means (a) the target is specified (and specifiable), (b) that
the criticism is based on a shared principle with the target (otherwise
it is polemics, which can be either honorable or dishonorable; they are
dishonorable if they disguise themselves as criticism), (c)that the acts
and/or style and/or theories of the target violate the shared
principle(s), (d) that a focus on acts or ideas, _not_ on personality,
and (e) the practice/act/theory criticized must be correctable by
conscious action. (Doug, for example, seems almost congenitally unable
to focus on an argument independently from a character analysis of the
person making the argument. As Ian is sure to point out that sentence is
an instance of the practice it condemns. :->)

In so far as "The Left" is an utterly vague concept, and in so far as
(ususally) there is no instance of the practice or theory 'criticized'
on this list, almost _all_ criticisms of "the left" or "leftists" in
general on this list are unprincipled. They don't specify a recognizable
object of their criticism beyond a generalized  "left" and since the
Left is so nebulous a category, all these alleged criticisms constitute
merely an isolated whine that things should be different. They
contribute _nothing_ to making different the condition which they weakly
gesture towards but are unable to specify.

An off-list discussion has called to my attention the misuse to which
Marx's "ruthless criticism of all that exists" is often put. First a
commonplace -- practically every word in a language must be used in
quite different senses (naming not just different things but quite
different _kinds_ of things: there are, after all, more genera in the
universe than there are words in any language). "Criticism" in Marx's
use of it in this instance simply has nothing to do whatever with
"criticism" as argument within the (broadly conceived) workers'
movement. One of the poisonous features of intra-movement debate in the
'70s was precisely this conception of criticism and self-criticism as
involving "ruthless criticism." Marx was using the term to refer to the
critique of capitalism, of a whole mode of production which he already
saw as "governing" the whole of humanity. And, used in this sense, it is
quite correct to go on to observe that "the arm of criticism must be
completed with the criticism of arms." If you don't think the person or
persons you are criticizing can only be changed by violence, then don't
justify your criticism with this quotation from Marx. (I sometimes
suspect that this is precisely what some of the more frenzied
anti-stalinists think: that the likes of Yoshie & me can only be handled
by physical destruction. I filter out such since there seem to be no
shared principles as a context for argument. I remember a long debate
here back in '69 with Jeff Jones & one of his sidekicks lasting til the
wee hours of the morning in which said sidekick's fondling of a bicycle
chain made me wonder whether or not that was their viewpoint towards SDS
members who would not accept the Weatherman program. :->)

Again, criticism that does not aim at unity with the person(s)/groups
criticized has nothing to do with the tradition of criticism and
self-criticism in marxist movements (except in so far as that tradition
is marred by violations of its own principles.)

I hope this helps, because I don't see how there can be any useful
discussion among marxists (or leftists more broadly conceived) unless
all understand and at least try to observe the criteria for principled
criticism. There can certainly be no reaching for unity without that
understanding.

Carrol