[lbo-talk] a new low

shag carpet bomb shag at cleandraws.com
Sat Feb 6 08:03:43 PST 2010


At 04:06 PM 2/5/2010, Carrol Cox wrote:


>John Thornton wrote:
> >
> >
> > I do however fail to see how military service makes one a better
> > citizen
> > nor am I one to encourage the idea that the opinions of those who have
> > served carry greater weight on matters of armed conflict than those
> > who
> > have not served.
> >
>
>My memory is hazy on this, but if I remember correctly in the ancient
>City States (from which the concept of _citiznship_ emerged, citizen and
>military service were simply differnt words for the same person. To be a
>citizen was to be a soldier; to be a soldier was to be a citizn. And one
>reason for this would be an obsevation Marx makes in the Grundrisse:
>land tenure presupposes military occupation of the land and miltary
>defense of that land. And this is still to some extent thecase. There
>would be no Vietnam citizens had not the Vietnamese fought for many
>years against the Japanese, the French, and the Amerians. I haven't read
>the column itself, it being just too clumsy to read websites with my low
>vision, but I'm curious what department at Princeton she is in.
>
>Probably she shares this opinion with several billion other humans, so
>to consider her either unitellignet or evil on the basis of it seems
>sort of odd.
>
>Carrol

Yes, Weber has an in-depth discussion of the emergence of the notion of democratic citizenship with weapons. When feudal lords entrusted weapons with people, not paid armies, there was an increasing demand for democratic rights. (Memory's hazy here)

The reason why she's taking this tack is because she's speaking, as she herself notes, from the perspective of the history of blacks in the u.s. as she says, it was a long standing debate - why should blacks struggle to obtain the right to serve in the military for a country that treated them like second class citizens. and yet they did, in part the momentum behind the civil rights movement came from people who had served in WWII and were angry when they returned home.

I'd liken it to the role of the church in the civil rights struggle.

as little as I think of her work, I think Yates would do well to at least acknowledge that history. She is speaking directly to the debates that animated blacks in this country for decades.

also, semi-relatedly, carrol was talking about the draft as a tactic for the left awhile back. Doug pointed out that there should be a universal draft in the u.s. He noted that he did so from a safe age; he'd never get drafted. But of course, were his wish to come to fruition, it might mean Ivan would be drafted.

I think the problem with supporting the universal draft, as a lefty, is that it puts us into contortions like that.

shag

-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)



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