>
> Well not exactly. I didn't murder anyone, and you probably didn't
> either, and I doubt Brian did. We are no friends of the American
> state. WHy this identification of state and people? Why this notion
> of collective responsibility? Is it related to Yoshie's preposterous
> idea that if we tried harder we could have stopped the ____ war (fill
> in the blank)?
>
> Doug
Simply put, the U.S. state is within some compass of your agency and my agency, and the Iranian state is not. Therefore you bear responsibility for the actions of the U.S. state. You don't bear responsibility of the actions of the Iranian state because it is not in the compass of your agency. At least in name, the rulers of the U.S. state act as agents for you and it takes more than words to negate the effect of that __de facto__ agency. That de de facto agency is both moral and practical. There is no collective responsibility in the abstract, but there is both relative responsibility and practical responsibility for the situations you can have an effect upon, as contrasted with the situations that you have no effect upon.
Further, you have to take into account the effect of your words and actions. What will be the effect of you speaking up here, in the U.S. for the rights of women and homosexuals in Iran. Will it have any ameliorating effect on their suffering? I doubt it will and it will probably have the opposite effect. Meanwhile, here in the U.S. all that you do is contribute a bit more to the general demonization of the officially appointed enemy.
I think Doug in your comment, you are getting to the core of our disagreement. I believe most of us in the United States have not confronted the question of moral responsibility and responsibility simpliciter, for the actions of the government and the other State institutions that we live under and benefit from.
Your questions, I think are a little to abstract. There is no identification between "state" and "people". But there is relative responsibility for limiting the violence committed in our name, and within the compass of our agency. I do not believe in some abstract notion of collective responsibility. (I think that Dwight Macdonald's "Responsibility of Peoples" was very good going through these issues.) But there is partial responsibility for the institutions that we participate in, and benefit from; there is again relative responsibility for the institutions that we can have the most effect upon. Each individual is responsible for thinking through these issues collectively with others and each individual is responsible for the effect of his or her words and actions, that we take alone and collectively with others.
Abstractly,, we are to some extent responsible for the institutions we participate in. The moral weight of our responsibility varies depending on many factors. For instance, to what extent are we voluntary participants in the institution; to what extent can we back out of the institution once we are in it; to what extent do we benefit from the institution; and to what extent do we have actual or potential power over the institution..
In general our responsibility for the actions of state institutions is directly proportionate to the amount of our privilege, power and freedom to act upon those institutions. So what institutions do you have more responsibility for, the U.S. state or the Iranian state? Further which of these institutions does more harm in the world, the one we happen to be responsible for, or the Iranian state, which you are not responsible for at all.
One can imagine a future situation where institutions internationally would be within the compass of our agency and thus we would bear some responsibility for forming policies to ameliorate suffering caused by those states. For instance, if there were such a thing as deeply rooted international solidarity organizations, or a massive and grassroots international Social Forum, or something like the Spartacist's dream of a reborn and very strong Fourth International, then working within such organizations, and participating with others through-out the world, we could exercise some responsibility beyond what is possible today.
Such deeply rooted and mass international organizations don't exist. But most leftist intellectuals delude themselves into acting as if those organizations exist in their minds. It is a way of soothing ourselves, of thinking that we are in someway "internationalists". It is also a way to ignore the only real effect that we can have internationally, i.e. by limiting the murder and suffering caused by the U.S. government and U.S. business institutions. (As a side-note let me say that it is because such deeply rooted international solidarity organizations __don't__ exist that political moralists such as William Lloyd Garrison and A. J. Muste have more to contribute in thinking through these issues than Marx or Trotsky, no matter how much I have been personally influenced by Trotsky's "Their Morals and Ours")
So let me ask: Why do we talk about Iran and not a place like Colombia? Why is Iran on the agenda at all? Partially, it is because our state institutions have put it on the agenda. But there is a bigger problem here and that problem is partially a matter of our moral responsibility as U.S. citizens. The U.S. can get away with anything it wants in Colombia because the costs are minimal. In Colombia, the government we benefit from murders campesinos, drives peasants off the land, uses chemical warfare to destroy crops, we facilitate conditions of torture, rape and murder. Occasionally, maybe, you Doug will have a show about it, or maybe Brian or Andie will say something about it. But none of us are doing very much to stop it? So why is Iran on the agenda and not Colombia?
Partially, it is because we on the left who consider ourselves "intellectuals" are so disorganized and outside of social networks of solidarity, that all we can do is react to what the rulers and owners of our society do. But it is also because the costs to our rulers of bringing Iran into line are much higher than the costs of bringing Colombian peasants into line. In one respect it is the state power of Iran that raises those costs. But also people in opposition to U.S. action in Iran internationally also raises the costs to our rulers. And because the potential costs are so high we follow along in our "debate" on Iran, thinking all along that we are __internationalists__ and that we are acting in solidarity with the people in Iran. In reality our supposed solidarity with the people of Iran is just something to make us "feel good." If we were really in solidarity with the people of Iran we would be spending our time organizing in such a way that would raise the costs of U.S. imperialist adventures not only in Iraq, but also in forgotten places like Colombia and Haiti.
Yes, we collectively as United Statsians have failed to put limits on the most violent State in the world. All of the crimes of the current Iranian state pale when compared to the crimes of our state.
So let me ask again: what moral authority and what moral legitimacy do you have when speaking up against the crimes of the Iranian state against the Iranian people – women, homosexuals, leftists – when you can't even provide real limits on the crimes that our state commits against the Iranian people and other people in the world?
And further, what practical effect does your opposition to Iranian crimes have in the context of U.S. state sponsored war fever against Iran?
Finally, one last point about the use of "we" in our comments. Who are the "we" in your above sentences? And who are the "we" in my sentences? When I say "we" I either mean specifically "you" and "me" or "we" as relatively privileged people in the U.S. I hope this is obvious from the context. When you say "we" you seem to either mean "we" on lbo-talk or "we" leftists. The first "we" is legitimate. I don't think that there is a referent for the "we" as in "we" leftists, and that is part of the problem.
Also refer to my reply to Andie below.
Jerry