On Apr 24, 2009, at 7:09 PM, James Heartfield wrote:
> Shane Mage writes, confusing the workers' movement with a philosophy
> seminar:
>
> 'Secondary? If the arguments grounding their claim that "their
> overall cause was just" are compatible with the assertion that
> torture could be a legitimate "means to use in the prosecution of
> their cause," then, recalling the Marxist conception of the
> interdependence between ends and means, we have to conclude that
> their argument fails and that their end, "their cause," is in
> reality as worthless as their means. '
>
> Revolution is a violent business. Working class movements have
> tarred-and-feathered, besetted, burned, bombed, maimed and
> intimidated throughout history. Captain Swing, Ned Ludd, the
> Rebeccas, the Chartists, the Communards[**], and others never
> flinched from violating their opponents' dignity or person.
>
> Writing of the Fenians, Marx said there's was a marvellous thing, at
> once violent and anti-British. It would be the workers' movement
> that turned the other cheek when it was struck that would be steeped
> in shame from the Marxist perspective. Yes, there is indeed an
> interrelation between means and ends - class war demands any and all
> available tactics...
No, class war demands *only* those "tactics" that lead to victory for the working class. None of the torturing "national liberation movements" that James celebrated (in his original post) led to or could possibly lead to anything like victory for the working class--in reality. as in Algeria and South Africa, quite the contrary. Now, appealing to history against theory (not in itself at all wrong), all he can come up with is a litany of failed movements. For the appeal to be taken seriously it needs better evidence.
Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos
** Irrelevant to the torture question of course, but in fact Marx criticized the Communards for *not* executing the Archbishop of Paris sooner.