In defence of cliterodectomophobia: the left, secularism and religion
Posted on Tuesday 27 April, 2010
Filed Under Religion
OVER 90% of women in some African countries have undergone female genital mutilation, with religion the primary justification advanced by the perpetrators. Do you object to this? What are you, some sort of cliterodectomophobe or something? Beware, comrade. You are on the slippery slope to ritual child sacrificeophobia, that reductio ad absurdum of the arrogant eurocentric liberalism you clearly espouse.
We live in a climate in which the religious are increasingly strident in their insistence that they should be allowed to do anything and everything, including actions prohibited to others, solely because their interpretation of their faith enjoins it. It is time for the rest of us to take a stand, and tell them as gently as necessary that this is not so.
There was a time when the left, at least in its majority, would have come to the defence of rationalism and secularism. Not any more; Britain’s most widely-read socialist blog has just reprinted without criticism a polemic written by an Opus Dei supporter in defence of Pope Benedict XVI’s role in the Catholicism’s growing child abuse scandal. When it comes to religion, someone is very obviously losing the plot; please God, let it be Andy Newman rather than me.
Secularism has been part of the left’s DNA since the time that the word ‘left’ first took on a political connotation in eighteenth century France. Often this has entailed out-and-out atheism. The Bolsheviks, for instance, formed The League of the Militant Godless in 1925, and the clue is very much in the name.
Perhaps it was this outfit that blogger Liam MacUaid – a man with strong affinities to the Leninist tradition – subconsciously had in mind when he recently berated prominent liberals (as well as yours truly) for our apparent ‘militant godlessness’. Sorry mate, but I don’t know where to start here.
The irony is that I nowhere advocate godlessness of even the tamest stripe, and unconditionally support freedom of religion as being among the most basic of all human rights. I use the designation ‘secularism’ strictly in the dictionary sense of ‘the attitude that religion should have no place in civil affairs’. This position is entirely consistent with theism in most manifestations, and one which many believers embrace in recognition both that faith is a private matter, and that a multifaith society cannot work if one doctrine enjoys a legally privileged position.
OK, my opening paragraph was deliberately provocative. I can already anticipate the objections that prominent Islamic clerics and leaders of the Coptic church in Egypt have ruled that cliterodectomy finds no sanction in either the Qu’ran or the Bible.
But that misses the point. Given the fragmentary nature of Islam and Christianity, no single authority is entitled to rule on what is and what is not admissible. There is no biblical basis for the bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for instance. But it is not the place of anybody outside Catholicism to decide what Catholics should properly believe on this score. Religion is whatever floats your numinosity.
Given the inherently subjective nature of religious belief, if a practitioner says that a practice is religiously motivated, than religiously motivated that practice undeniably is. Whether any given baby girl is about to be christened down the local branch of the CoE or undergo the total removal of her external genitalia is beside the point.
Accordingly, it would be ridiculous to claim that nurses who wish to wear crucifixes at work are not religiously motivated because the wearing of crucifixes at work is not commonly regarded as a core requirement of Christianity.
It is entirely reasonable that the medical authorities make a determination on whether necklaces of any type constitute a health and safety hazard in hospital wards, and enforce prohibition if appropriate. That I leave to them. Outside of work, individuals should be allowed to dress as they please.
And more than that. From a pedagogical point of view, it is patently undesirable that teaching assistants be clad in full face covering when in charge of young children. The niqab should be out of the question in these circumstances, again with precisely the same stipulations when people are off duty. Appeal to religious motivation is not some variety of divinely-backed all-purpose Get Out of Jail Free card, despite the attempts of some to play it as such.
And more than that still. I have for decades prevaricated on the question of faith schools. While I have never thought they were a good idea, my underlying leftwing libertarianism has made me open to argument that parental choice should be factored into the equation. Moreover, sheer pragmatism suggests that abolition is not politically do-able.
But on further reflection, I fear that the way in which they have served to cement Protestant-Catholic sectarianism in the North of Ireland, Scotland and even some English cities will be much multiplied as Islamic and evangelical schools become more common. There is a ratchet effect at work. If that were not enough, it is increasingly obvious that they act as conduits for the miseducation of children in backward and anti-scientific notions.
The left in any case opposes educational apartheid based on class; it should equally oppose educational apartheid based on religion. The only consistent secular position is that faith schools should be scrapped along with Eton and Harrow, and that all education should be both in the public sector and resolutely non-religious. There. Said it.
And finally, we urgently need to get over the argument from ‘X-o-phobia’, which is rapidly descending into meaninglessness. Since the notion of Islamophobia first entered common parlance, this stupid word game has been taken over by the right to institute something called Christianopobia. This, in a country where bishops get reserved places in the legislature.
Now the even uglier neologism Catholophobia is in the process of being erected as an absolute defence against the critique of this particular variant of Christianity. Can Scientologophobia be all that far away? For that matter, can I patent the term ‘secularismophobia’, and instantly find Andy and Liam guilty on this count?
Those that guard the right to proselytise implicitly grant consent to both counter-proselysis and secular critique. It was Karl Marx himself who insisted that ‘the criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo’. It should be stressed does not entail advocacy of gratuitously offensive attacks on religious congregations, which serve no purpose. That much is plain good manners.
But it does mean relentless and sustained ideological assault on the religious representatives of the ruling class, from the Pope through to Pat Robertson and onwards to the repulsive theocracy in power in Tehran. On that, we should be irreconcilable. If the left cannot shortly rediscover such a very basic truth, it could soon be finished altogether.
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“Modernity: Were you sexually abused as a child?”
One hell of a question that SueR, that comes across as hard hearted old windbag.
Also do you really have to be abused to take an interest in the subject?
“And, ‘Johnno’, the fact you come across as a spotty youth when you are a ‘man’, is nothing to crow about.”
It is if it draws criticism from a degenerate like you.
Sue R,
Please forgive me if I ignore you, as I find your inane and (often) bigoted comments not to have any depth or meaningful content, for me.
I’m interested in politics, you are not.
There is no common ground between us.
So please continue your bickering with Johnno, etc.
I am not interested.
PS: dave, did you managed to find my post stuck in the moderation queue?
Morality, it is a matter of record that the CDF took responsibility for sexual abuse cases involving minors in 2001. Prior to that date, diocesan bishops were responsible, and the handful of cases that reached Rome were either when a bishop wished to laicise a priest against his will (which would be handled by the Roman Rota) or the small number of cases involving solicitation in the confessional (a delict reserved to the CDF under Crimen sollicitationis). Allen lays all this out, unless you’re saying you know better than John Allen.
Are there nonetheless individuals in the Roman Curia who have cases to answer? Sure there are, and I’m thinking specifically of those who blocked investigations into Maciel. But the very extensive investigation by the NCR into Maciel’s crimes has not been picked up by the media, because it doesn’t fit the narrative. For one thing, anyone who is familiar with the Maciel case knows that it was Cardinal Ratzinger and his close associates who were pushing hard for action against Maciel, whilst the “liberals” in the Curia were too busy with their usual back-covering. It’s also inconvenient for those like Morality who like to believe that there is this all-powerful monolith called “the Vatican” that micromanages Catholic institutions down to the parish level. Perhaps back in the days of Innocent III…
A culture of silence? Yes. Bureaucratic inertia? Certainly. Sheer incompetence? Yup. A failure to realise the scale of the problem? Absolutely. And compounded by the fact that, until 2001, nobody had central oversight of this issue. There’s plenty to be said on this, if we can get past your handwaving about “the responsibility of the Vatican” and actually engage with the facts. Something that you resolutely refuse to do, by labelling any inconvenient facts as mere assertions, while challenging us to agree with your extremely broad, unspecific and tendentious allegations.
And for all your venting, you still won’t say what facts you actually dispute in the Valero article. Cowardy custard.
JOHNNO (To me): “To be honest your constant requests for proof aare nothing more than the revelation of your own ignorance.”
Yes, empirical evidence (aka “proof”) is so tiresome isn’t it? Much easier to just make accusations and then not back them up with anything…
…while harping on about a version of “Marxism” (sic) recognised only by yourself and (possibly) one or two of the more demented followers of Louis Althusser
“Yes, empirical evidence (aka “proof”) is so tiresome isn’t it? Much easier to just make accusations and then not back them up with anything”
Well I gave you a direct quote from Marx himself, objecting to your interpretation of his ideas -not sure what more proof you need. The proof though can be found in an in depth reading and *understanding* of Marx’s work.
For you the idea of using cultural relativism or anthropology is an act of political heresy. For you understanding has no role to play. Wake up and smell the coffee, it is you who are outside Marxism. For example, your main use of anti cultural relativism, to support the bourgeois in its wars of domination is not a popular view among Marxists. That’s a piece of empirically based observation that even you cannot deny, even though you will!
It’s always interesting see the reactions of CiFers to a point of view at variance with their own:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/21/population-70-million-immigration-policy
Which reminds me; working with people to whom mother-tongue English is an unfamiliar language, as I do, I’ve been asked a dozen times what the word ‘bigot’ means.
It is some while ago that Sue R., for a reason I have forgotten totally, made an erroneous reference to my place of employment. A singular and memorable event, with many sequels, enlivened KFMMC many years ago – long before I came here – and, as can be imagined, the event comes up in conversation here from time to time:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/201457.stm
What constitutes libel on the internet seems to be what some call a ‘grey area’ so I shall NOT suggest that anyone was guilty as sin or that, eager to get the whole sorry tale off the front pages of UK newspapers, the spin doctors at BAe Systems ponied up the ‘blood money’ or even a considerably larger sum than was reported at the time …
In short, I ain’t gonna say nuffink ’bout nuffink, rather like the Tar Baby.
Hope I didn’t drop you in it, Bill.
Johnno: IN Marxism method is everything. It is not Marxist to extrapolate quotes out of context. Marx is talking about what is know as a ‘Whig’ view of history, he is not talking about a different version of historical materialism to yours.
JOHNNO: it is claer that you are struggling to get to grips with the a-b-c’s of the Marxist method. I know nothing about you, but you seem to have been misled by an Althuserian deviation that has caused you to fundamentally misunderstand what Marxism is about. Someone I’d not usually quote – Colin Barker – explains wher people like you go wrong, in an article about another althuserian, Nicos Poulanzas:
“What was the mistake? At root, it was a failure to comprehend Marx’s enormous theoretical breakthrough, in particular by comparison with the classical political economists to whose critique he devoted a large part of his theoretical life work. Marx’s achievement in this sphere lay, above all, in his ability to get behind the categories of political economy—value, capital, property, rent, state, class, etc—and to show that these expressed historically created social relationships. In particular, Marx showed that ‘production’ could only be adequately understood if it were seen as a social process through which human beings create and recreate their own world. Far from being simply a ‘technical’ relationship between human beings and nature, production was also centrally a social activity through which ‘men’—in the sexist language of the 19th century—made their own history, their own society.”
Always happy to contribute to the learning of the ignorant, I am.
The idea that Marx was any kind of cultural relativsist is beyond laughable, and the fact that so many younger comrades do not appreciate this is testament to their miseducation by third rate postmodernist academics. Yes kids, Marxism is a metanarrative. Sorry to have to break it to you like that.
I’m too busy to go quote-hunting. But the following points are all well-known to anybody who has actually read the guy.
(1) Marx very much saw himself as rooted in the Enlightenment tradition, as evidenced by his obvious intellectual debt to Hegel.
(2) He did not consider all cultures ‘equally valid’. His dismissal of the Slavs very probably is racist. He argued that British imperialism in India was historically progressive, in so far as it eradicated practices such as widow-burning.
(3) Advanced countries show backward countries their future, he maintained. Note the use of categories here.
(4) Marxism is clearly universalist, in that it argues that all humanity will one day reach a common communist civilisation that will obliterate current differences.
In short, I am with Jim on this one. You should sometimes listen to us old ‘uns, JOHNNO. Occasionally we even know what we are talking about.
Not that I would have taken much notice of old farts like me 30 years ago, I admit. But it could save you a lot of grief in the long run.
No, one thing Marx wasn’t was a cultural relativist. Although I’ve never met an anthropologist who took Engels’ anthropology at all seriously, even those who were a bit Marxist inclined. And it’s a bit tricky for you if you belong to one of those “unhistoric nations” – not only the Slavs but also the Basques, Bretons, Scots – who according to the Marx-Engels schema were doomed to be assimilated into the superior neighbouring races. In short, a dose of Rosdolsky makes for a good corrective.
(I once got up in an SWP meeting on the national question and defended Rosdolsky against Engels and also Luxemburg against Lenin. Needless to say, this went down like a lead balloon.)
But where the PoMo perspective does touch a nerve is on the question of how you interpret events depending on where you stand. From the point of view of the Parisian sans-culottes, no question about Jacobinism being progressive. From the point of view of the Bretons faced with the Jacobins running a military campaign approaching genocidal proportions, a bit more problematic. You still find this in left politics in France, where the Parisian element still accepts la Republique une et indivisible as common sense, while there are very different sentiments in Brittany or Corsica. When it comes to combatting big-nation chauvinism, the classical Marxist texts are not a fierce lot of help.
And so it came to pass that Jim and Splintly were finally at one …
Elucidate Rosdolsky for me Splintly, I confess to an intellectual lacuna on this influential Ukrainian Trot’s take on nationalism.
There’s a failure here by Dave and others who brand Marx as imperiocentric to differentiate between the different periods of the man’s life and thought. As a number of scholars including Teodor Shanin, James D White, Raya Dunyaveskaya, Kevin Anderson and EP Thompson have demonstrated in recent decades, the late Marx moved away from the view that imperialism was progressive in the semi- or pre-capitalist world, and that Europe showed the rest of the world its future. Marx exchanged a teleological, stagist view of history for something much more complex and multilinear.
Texts like Marx’s draft letters to Vera Zasulich, his letter to the Russian journal Otechestvennye, his preface to the 1882 Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto, his notes on Arab society, and his Ethnographic Notebooks, make it clear that he has embraced the possibility that socialism does not have to come via the creation of a Western-style capitalist society, but can instead be based on pre-capitalist institutions like the Russian peasant commune. As Stanley Rosemont shows in his fine essay ‘Marx and the Iroquois’, Marx even suggested at times that indigenous peoples like the Iroquois could teach Western workers a thing or two about socialism.
Kevin Anderson’s newly-published book Marx at the Margins explores the significiance of Marx’s late writings for today, and my book The Crisis of Theory: EP Thompson, the New Left, and Postwar British Politics, which will be pubished by Manchester University Press later this year, includes a couple of chapters which describe how EP Thompson took the the baton from the late Marx and highlighted the progressive features of pre and semi-capitalist societies can have, and the ways in which they come into conflict with capitalist ‘development’.
Basically – and it’s a long time since I read the Critique special – Rosdolsky is trying to demonstrate how nations that Marx and (especially) Engels dismissed as non-historic in fact became historic, through the rise of their national movements in and after 1848. Gellner is also not bad on this; and I have an old paper of my own somewhere on Arana’s forging of Basque nationalism in the 1890s that might be worth dusting off.
Reader’s Digest condensed version – in 1848 you have a German-speaking bourgeoisie in Prague and a Czech-speaking peasantry in rural Bohemia. Thereafter, you get the growth of a Czech-speaking bourgeoisie and intelligentsia that creates a national movement around itself, and thereby forges the Czech nation. Similarly elsewhere.
Now that much more of Marx’s late work has been published and studied, after decades of supression by first Kautsky and the German Social Democrats and later Stalin’s cultural bureaucrats, it is almost impossible to deny the shift away from imperiocentrism – from the view that the advanced countries show the backward countries their future – in his thinking.
What defenders of the imperiocentric reading of Marx tend to do now is fall back to Das Kapital, and defend it as the bastion of Marx’s ‘authentic’ thought. They see the late texts as a falling away from the achievement of Das Kapital – as an aberration, almost (this was the view, as well, of David Ryazanov, the great Soviet archivist and victim of Stalin’s purges who was one of the first people to encounter the heretical late work).
The problem with the attempt to counterpose the ‘good’ Marx of Das Kapital with the ‘bad’ elderly Marx who praised indigenous and semi-capitalist societies like the Iroquois Federation and peasant Russia is that the research of Marx’s last decade – the research that saw him learning Russian, becoming enthusiastic about the peasant commune, studying the struggles of the Iroquois Indians and the Arabs, and reading ethnograhic works on the Polynesians and Australian Aborigines – was undertaken as part of his work on Das Kapital.
Marx’s studies were intended to help him write the second and third volumes of Das Kapital. He never finished those volumes,
but he left behind a string of draft texts – most of which Engels left out of the official second and third volumes of the book – which fundamentally undermine stagist and teleological readings of Das Kapital. Marx also made an effort to revise and re-interpret the first volume of Das Kapital so that it reflected his mature conclusions. For instance, he removed glowing references to the progressive nature of the destruction of peasant communes in Russia from the first volume of Das Kapital when it was republished in in the 1870s.
That there are contradictions in Marx’s ouevre should not surprise us. Marx’s work is a series of adventures in research, not a unified doctrine passed down to us from on high. We should use the various (and sometimes contradictory) arguments and concepts Marx created as a toolkit, not as a holy writ.
gawwwd luv a duck. WoT a bunch of cre=tinistic shite is spouted by thick middle class tossers in this comment boxes bullshit — and no-doubt, all cribbed from there phd stupid as fuck and irrelevent as fuck dissertations and shit. Tossers.
I think it also useful to distinguish between epistemological relativism, and scientific/ontological realism – the former being acceptable, because it serves the latter – i.e. enables a dynamic and historically based (dialectical) framework that is a) capable of judging one morality or forms of social organisation as superior to another, b) historical, i.e. ideas are not treated as being independent of the structure of society and c) it does not negate the possibility of individuals creating alternative paths of history.
To do otherwise is to be a fuckwit and ignorant piece of shit that deserves putting into a camp and shot after several years of hard graft.
Just. Saying. Like.
“‘Show me a cultural relativist at thirty thousand feet and I’ll show you a hypocrite. Airplanes are built according to scientific principals and they work. They stay aloft and they get you to a chosen destination. Airplanes built to tribal or mythological specifications such as the dummy planes of the Cargo cults in jungle clearings or the bees-waxed wings of Icaraus don’t.’”
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search/ref=pd_lpo_ix_dp_am_us_uk_en_river.020out.020of.020eden_gl_book?keywords=river%20out%20of%20eden&tag=lpo_ixdpamusukenriver.020out.020of.020edengl_book-21&index=blended
I am quite sure that Marx, Engles, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxembourg, et al would not have seen anything remotely progressive in Islamacism. That non-industrial societies may have progressive aspects is hardly surprising, humans have to co-operate in order to survive, just like all apes, we are social creatures not solitary. The question should be ‘how can society be organised to provide social security for all?’, and this is an international question. Yeah, weaving palmleaf baskets and whittling traditional idols for the tourist market is all very well, but it ain’t going to generate a surplus to feed, clothe, medicate and educate a population. Why do you think there is immigration? No-one is saying that western forms of society are more valid that other forms, hell, those other forms have served their purpose for thousands of years, but in a rapidly changing world, they cannot deliver the goods. It should also be noted that many tribal societies rest on fundamental oppressions of women, of castes, of slaves, of non-tribal members and of children. Would a socialist society encourage that? From my undrstanding of Zimbabwe, breaking up the large estates from the white landowners to distribute the land to local people sounds all very well in principle, but in actuality the land is either handed over to Zanu officials or broken into lots of tiny uneconomic plots.
Different questions are being mixed up here. The pros and cons of cultural relativism and Islamist politics aren’t necessarily related to the points I was making in response to Dave.
The questions I was addressing in my comments were a) is the spread of the capitalist system into the pre-capitalist world inevitable and b) is the expansion of capitalism into pre-capitalist societies necessarily progressive?
I think that Marx answered both of these questions in the affirmative in texts like The Communist Manifesto, and in his early writings on India. By the last decade of his life, after a huge amount of research, I think he answered no to both questions.
Marx was repeatedly asked by followers in Russia to explain his attitude toward the encroachment of capitalist economic relations into their country. Did he support the breaking up of the peasant communes and the driving of displaced peasants to the cities as historically progressive? Was the countryside nothing but a repository of idiocy and backwardness? Did Russia have to tread the same path of development as countries like Britain? Or was there, as some Russian socialists like Herzen and (later) the Social Revolutionaries suggested, some way of avoiding the Western road of development, and instead creating socialism on the foundations of the old communal, pre-capitalist economy?
Marx answered these queries of his followers in two important letters. Here is a quote from each of those texts:
from the letter to Vera Zasulich
‘the Russian “rural commune” can preserve itself by developing its basis, the common ownership of land, and by eliminating the principle of private property which it also implies; it can become a direct point of departure for the economic system towards which modern society tends; it can turn over a new leaf without beginning by committing suicide; it can gain possession of the fruits with which capitalist production has enriched mankind, without passing through the capitalist regime’
from the letter to the journal Otecestvenniye Zapisky:
‘If Russia continues to pursue the path she has followed since 1861, she will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a nation, in order to undergo all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime…The chapter [in Capital] on primitive accumulation does not pretend to do more than trace the path by which, in Western Europe, the capitalist order of economy emerged from the womb of the feudal order of economy…[we should not feel obliged] to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale [general path] imposed by fate upon every people…’
It seems to me that these words are fairly unambiguous. Marx is repudiating the idea that there is some sort of Hegelian supra-historical law which dictates that the rest of the world must follow Western patterns of development, he is denying that capitalism is necessarily ‘superior’ to pre-capitalist forms of society, and he is suggesting that a socialism based upon pre-capitalist or semi-capitalist forms of social organisation, like the Russian commune, is possible in the non-Western world.
Well I am glad I have sparked a good debate that has moved beyond SueR’s imbecilic ramblings and got to grips with ideas. Even Denham and for gods sake Will have provided food for thought, which after all is what debating on these issues should be about. Though Denham doesn’t seem to realise his quote from Colin Barker supports my view and not his!
“He did not consider all cultures ‘equally valid’. His dismissal of the Slavs very probably is racist.”
Firstly he didn’t ‘dismiss’ the Slavs, and he also argued that of all the nations in the world the Irish and the Poles had the right and the duty to be nationalistic. This wasn’t some immortal right but a right dictated by the time and place, i.e. the given conditions that prevailed. A clear example of the rejection of universalism, something which Dave strips out of history, out of time and place and presents as some absolute value determined by communists or whoever. Engel’s even argued that while a Greater Serbia wasn’t possible in the circumstances of the time, that at some point in the future it may become feasible.
You are treating Cultural relativism, not as a scientific method but as a moral statement on the human condition. It is not saying change does not come about, or even that it is not desirable. It is laughable to think Marx was a universalist, in the sense that he thought universal values applied to every corner of the earth and at any particular moment in time. Where Marx applied universalism is in the imperative of capitalism to spread and expand everywhere, and he recognised that capitalism would further impinge on these other cultures. He used anthropology to understand how this would happen and what barriers would exist to this expansion, not only of capitalism but its superstructures. He also pointed out in the direct quote from Marx that I provided, that this development was not homogeneous, that one general universal development couldn’t be applied to all peoples and all societies.
He even went as far to say that not all revolutions would be the same, for example he believed in some nations revolutions would be naturally violent in nature, whereas for example in England he foresaw the possibility of non violent change. Let’s face it the kind of revolution seen in Cuba would not happen in England, there are cultural factors or factors that affect culture which make this unlikely. So Marx was a cultural relativist, the problem is that some people see this as being opposed to change, that is because they are ignoring cultural relativism’s role as a scientific method. I also think they are restricting culture or anthropology to the realm human practice and are ignoring all the other things that affect this, climate, terrain, social relations. Marx himself said that the nomadic lifestyle of the people of the Middle East was due to the absence of landed property and this in part was due to the climate of region. Marx recognised that the development here could not possibly match the development he sketched out for Western Europe. And remember that Das Kapital was basically the history of Western Europe and the abstract theory of its economic system!!
On the British in India, Engel’s commented that they had proved that one stupid military campaign could hold back the development of an entire continent for a hundred years!
Obviously we live in a world today where cultures are being exposed to one another ever more greatly and the world is shrinking and from that itself a new culture emerges and new ideas and new conflicts emerge –e.g. multiculturalism.
These issues inform our ideas and opinions in the here and now and get to the heart of the theme of this thread. Do we as socialists build broad alliances, as David Harvey argues or do we insist on universal absolute values? Do we support capitalism and its wars abroad because ‘barbaric’ cultures are being ‘civilised’? Do we support labour movements abroad only if they operate within boundaries we set? These are critical questions, the answers are not easy but for those claiming to be Marxist, to present the idea that Marx would have supported these wars and called for the building of absolute universal values flies in the face of everything he wrote. In fact his lack of detail on the communist society of tomorrow says it all.
“It is laughable to think Marx was a universalist, in the sense that he thought universal values applied to every corner of the earth and at any particular moment in time.”
Eh, JOHNNO: that’s precisely what he *did* think. It’s what Marxism *is*
“The communists distain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKINGMEN OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE!”
Sounds pretty “universalist” to me.
Poor JOHNNO really hasn’t got a clue, has he?
Who was it who made that famous speech about the “dictatorship of relativism”? I don’t think it was Sean Matgamna… oh yes, it was Pope Benedict XVI. Nice to have you on board, Jim.
Denham,
If you think Marx believed universal values could be applied to all corners of the earth at any particular moment in time then you have no idea. Cultural relativism (a term I don’t think you really understand) doesn’t deny internationalism though your idea of internationalism, bombing the shit out of poor people, certainly isn’t in the spirit of the first international.
Johnno
Of course Marx was a universalist. He was a product of the Enlightenment. Which values of Marx’s do you think weren’t universal?
“Of course Marx was a universalist. He was a product of the Enlightenment. Which values of Marx’s do you think weren’t universal?”
I think I have answered these questions above. You think of universalism as something permanent, some absolute value, something abstracted from time and place. And something that can then be applied to all peoples at all times, as Marx himself said in response to exactly the same claim, I beg your pardon. So I think you have thoroughly misunderstood Marxism.
Of course this didn’t mean he just sat back and accepted the world for what it is and neither do I!
Johnno: History will judge you and your ilk.
The thick POMO cunT Johnno hasn’t addressed any of the point(s) I made. He is a disingenuous interlocutor — as such he/she/it shuD be ignored (preferably attacked verbally and perhaps maybe even physically depending on the circumstanses and shit like that).
(Just perhaps maybe saying like tho on the other hand might mean it)
Might it be possible to restore an adequate level of civility to this thread?
Just saying.
This will be of interest to some:
http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/article.cfm?aid=1565
I noted with interest that some Egyptian demonstrators the other day – on Al Jazeera TV – bore the portrait of Nasser aloft. It was nice to see him again after all these years; we thought he’d been airbrushed away as thoroughly as King Farouk.
Sue R., who will judge me and my ilk?
Who is or who are my ilk anyway?
I’m coming to your party and I’m bringing some of my ilk with me.
JOHNNO: “as Marx himself said in response to exactly the same claim, I beg your pardon.”
I beg your pardon?
When and where, exactly, did Marx say that in response to an argument about universalism?
Bill: As long as you bring your elk, it’s fne.
Johnno: ‘You think of univeralism as something pernament, some absolute value, something abstracted from time and place. And, something that can then be applied to all people at all times, as Marx himeslf said in response to exccatly the same claim.’
So, Johnno, how do you define ‘universalism’? Is it strictly limited in time and space? Is it contingent on here being an ‘r’ in the month? Can you provide a refrence for where Marx said what you allege he said? I can#’t even be bothered to insult you, you are so obviously a provocteur.
“You think of universalism as something permanent, some absolute value, something abstracted from time and place. And something that can then be applied to all peoples at all times…”
Well, that sentence is tautological. But yes, I think there are universal values – which obviously doesn’t mean all values are universal – which flow from human beings being human (what Marx called a ‘species being’), and which therefore include things like people should not have to suffer pain like having their genitals hacked off. This is a universal value because there is good reason to believe that all people with clitorises, across all human groups, will experience pain (and have later pleasure reduced) from the said hacking off. It is the same reason as to oppose torture, mass murder, starvation, etc etc. Unless you think there *are* human universals (for instance that it might hurt to be tortured) there is no good reason to fight for them universally.
This notion is, indeed, a gain of the Enlightenment which Marx is a child of.
Of course there also *some* values which are historically and culturally specific.
I’m assumimg that Clive’s latest comment will be the last word on the thread-within-a-thread about Marx and cultural relativism…though you never know for sure that JOHNNO mayn’t come back with some more ignorance on stilts.
But anyway: this has been a most stimulating and (for some) instructive exchange: could you make it available in some form, Dave? It would make for a good “introduction ro Marxism” educational.
INTERSTING. the argument has been ended with a defeat for the forces of anti-marxism (i.e. pomo shitebags utterly decimated)…when can we have another thread like this Osler? I want to bury these simpletons and cunts some more.
Who is following the tale about postal vote fraud involving persons with Pakistani and Bangladeshi connections?
Does anyone care?
Will the story disappear without trace?
Seeing as I am a female, I must have the last work. Mr Corr: You asked about ‘Johnno’ and what is his ilk. I would describe his ilk thus. On a previous thread he made dismissive comments about Indians rioting for food, therefore he is either a)a racist (black and brown people feel pain less than white people or whatever race he happens to be), or b)is not prepared to solidarise with workers and peasants who are not the required religion ie the starving are almost certainly Hindu, Sikh, Jain. This is NOT socialist. If you agree with him, then you are of his ilk. QED.
As a disciple of Pinker, not an adherent of Quirk, I accept that language is used as one chooses to use it and the concept of ‘correct’ usagge is and absurd one.
At one time, the expression “of that ilk” had a precise meaning: a bloke who claimed to be a clan chieftain, and there were usually several rival claimants if the clan was a big one, would claim to be the McCohen of that ilk and all Cohens would – in theory – owe allegiance to him.
Not that it matters much.
This is more to the point, really:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1271457/General-Election-2010-Postal-vote-fraud-amid-fears-bogus-voters-swing-election.html
Will it fall down an oubliette of immense depth or will it become a major scandal?
Firstly,
SueR, YOU WERE THE ONE WHO SAID THAT FOOD RIOTS IN INDIA CHEERED YOU UP!!!
Clive,
“This is a universal value because there is good reason to believe that all people with clitorises, across all human groups, will experience pain (and have later pleasure reduced) from the said hacking off. It is the same reason as to oppose torture, mass murder, starvation”
So I guess you and Denham would have opposed the Cuban revolution and the Bolshevik revolution because it caused pain and death. Or will oppose the dictatorship of the proletariat when fighting counter evolutionary forces. After all it was Engels who attacked those moral socialists and anarchists who spoke out against the state and the use of force.
Though Denham will have to explain how he came to support the war in Iraq, which caused a certain amount of pain and death and how he supports Israel, a nation that helped write the book on torture!!!
You see how universalists use this concept as an absolute principle but only when it suits their needs!!!
How weak an idea this universalism is when its main proponents reject it in practice!!
On a more philosophical note these ideas are never fixed and we should separate out cultural relativism, which is a science and not a moral statement, and universalism, which is more a political ever changing, ever shifting terrain of ideas -hence it isn’t universal!
To believe values (whatever they are, good or bad) are universal is to believe they are immortal and not material. You really can’t have it any other way. To the universalist values are pre ordained, a given before time and space come into existence. This is of course how bourgeois economists apologise for capitalism and is exactly what Marx criticised them for. The bourgeois say competition, struggle for existence etc is a universal value, they claim that capitalism is a universal system. Marx rejected this idea, he said nothing was fixed, everything was in motion, ideas come out of material conditions not cast down from heaven etc etc. Marx could never have posited this criticism of bourgeois thought if he had accepted the universalism principle, he would have had to say universalism is correct just my version of it and not yours!!!
Having a universalism principle means tactics, strategies never change as conditions change, they stay fixed and permanent.
A good example of universalism can be seen in the BBC documentary Terror! Robespierre and the French revolution where Slavoj Zizek and Simon Schama are debating the morality of the tactics employed. Schama takes the universalist approach, he takes 20th century bourgeois liberal values and applies them to 18th century France, classic universalism. In this world of universalism conflicts are universal ideas coming against one another; I will argue my universal ideas against your universal ideas. I would argue that Marx’s historical materialism was a rejection of this approach, not the scientific proof of it as Denham and Clive would have you believe.
Now I accept that your values as they stand currently are not apologising for the bourgeois system but are fighting it. However that will not stop me criticising this notion of universalism.
Now if Denham or Clive want the last word on this subject, I would appreciate a more philosophical line of argument. Or in Denhams case any actual argument whatsoever would be nice, as he will be used as an example of philistine Marxism in this educational school he wants to set up!
I don’t really want to stoop to the level of Johnno and take up any of his ignorant and laughable misreadings of philosphical tradition, but I must remark one thing. Are you a native speaker, Johnno? Although English is on the face of it a transparently open language, it does actually have many nuances. Either your reading ability and general cultural knowledge is rather low (watching too much tv maybe?) or you are a cunning fox who thinks they can talk the hindlegs off a donkey. (Is that cruel to animals?).
“I don’t really want to stoop to the level of Johnno and take up any of his ignorant and laughable misreadings of philosphical tradition”
SueR, instead of sweeping generalised statements tell me why you think I am misreading philoshical traditions using philosophical arguments. Otherwise I suspect that YOU are hiding behind your own ignorance by using insults.
“Either your reading ability and general cultural knowledge is rather low”
This is not an argument it is just a speculative statement. It has no meaning, as usual you are just a diversion. I would stick to racist, degenerate discussions with Bill Corr if i were you.
More on ilk:
http://www.baronage.co.uk/bphtm-01/scams4a.html
Those who enjoy such complexities can research the curious tale of the Japanese Southern and Northern Courts, the stunning and wholly unexpected emergengence of a Northern Court claimant to the Chrysanthemum Throne after the Meiji Restoration and the re-emergence of a claimant some decades, later in 1945.
“So I guess you and Denham would have opposed the Cuban revolution and the Bolshevik revolution because it caused pain and death. Or will oppose the dictatorship of the proletariat when fighting counter evolutionary forces. After all it was Engels who attacked those moral socialists and anarchists who spoke out against the state and the use of force.”
We support revolution, do we not, because we want liberation from oppression. You have to have some notion of what oppression is (experienced by human beings) and what their liberation (as human beings) would be, in order to be in favour of it.
Because we know that the oppressors – whose status as oppressors we recognise following criteria of oppression – usually fight to keep their power with violence, we know we will have to fight them.
Surely, though, unless we are bloody thirsty psychotics, we want to keep the pain and death to a minimum; and we want as few of those fighting for their liberation to be among the hurt and dead as possible.
Or do you think – yay! revolution! pain and death!? If you don’t, I suggest it is because you understand that pain and death are in general, for human beings, undesirable, and this is because of a certain universal understanding of what a human being is and experiences.
Will every Ali have a dozen votes?
http://www.ask.com/bar?q=http%3A%2F%2Findependent%2F&page=1&qsrc=121&dm=all&ab=0&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2F&sg=R%2FYql4GCACyAPDAST7J1%2FZvIoo2VbgCXmR63X509bvo%3D&tsp=1272605633114
Will this story die out fast, llike the event at Manchester University involving the Israeli diplomat?
Sorry to soil Dave’s lovely pristine site with this squabbling, but my inner pedant couldn’t resist this. Having looked up ‘ilk’ in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, I find it has two meanings and two derivations. One is the Scottish use, derived from Old English ‘ilca’ (masc) and ‘ilce’ (masc/neu) meaning ‘same’ and it is pronomial. ‘the/that ilk’ means ‘the same’. The Dictionary is quite clear that it is used erronously to mean ‘of that family, clan, set’. (Although, as it is used in that way, it does that unofficial meaning.). The second meaning is also Scotish and derives from ‘ilch’ and means ‘every’. But, say, isn’t your example of ‘McCohen’ rather anti-semitic? I guess it’s true what they say about you.
For me the rejection of universalism does not reject the idea of revolution or deny the actual social relations within society. On the contrary anti universalism calls for an analysis of social relations as they actually exist. Universalism says actual social relations, material conditions are irrelevant because whatever they are our universalism applies. In that case I wonder why Marx wasted so many years meticulously analysing the social relations in different societies. I like Denham and you wish to see a classless society. So the argument isn’t over that. What it is over is tactics and policies, do we support the invasion of Iraq or not, do we support Chavez or not, do we no platform the BNP or not what is our position on Zimbabwe, how do we analyse the situation there etc etc.
On revolution pain or death, it depends on the circumstances doesn’t it? In England I can foresee a smoother transition to socialism than in say Saudi Arabia or Iran but who really knows? Marx commented that the Paris commune failed partly because the good nature of the proletariat meant they were not ruthless enough! That doesn’t mean that standards cannot be demanded, that factory legislation cannot be fought for etc. But tactics, policies derive from a movement, a process and not out of some preordained universalism. Actual events determine values, shape them and change them. They are not fixed.
Now you could argue that at some level things are universal, at least have been for the entire history of human civilisation up until now. For example Humans have to feed themselves or they will starve to death. Humans have to sleep to restore their energies; they have to protect themselves from the elements in order to stay healthy. (Though it could be said that even these seemingly fixed conditions of existence are not exactly fixed. Reproduction can now be done in test tubes for example.)
So all humans share some essential universal characteristics, which is essentially the starting point for materialism. Now a purely materialist conception would stop there and say that is the final word on the subject. However, this is where Marx rejects vulgar materialism or if you want vulgar universalism. Because out of these material realities spring a whole ocean of ideas, which come from how these material needs are met. The simple hunter/gatherers will have different ideas and values to those who live in a modern 21st century city. Those differences are as a result of their different living conditions, you can’t imagine universal ideas in this reality, though you can understand that even in these different landscapes people still have to shit. The point is that it is how people shit, sleep, eat and produce that ultimately determines the ideas. Marxists use this principle to argue against the idea that whatever social conditions you have Human nature will manifest itself in the same way, Marxists say change the material conditions and you will change society and change humanity.
That is surely the principle around which we should all unite.
Marx was also at pains to point out that even when the communist system arrived society would still change, resources would eventually become depleted, new technologies would change the human condition etc. So those hoping that the communist revolution will mean the end of history and the final fulfilment of some universal destiny are going to be disappointed.
Johnno – I know what a mode of production is, and of course the ideology of hunter gatherers, feudal serfs (or lords) and so on are different from ideology under advanced capitalism. Is this really what you think we are arguing about?
And of course the conditions of revolution in, say, the UK, will be different from, say, Saudi Arabia. These are statements which are so uncontroversial as to be banal on a socialist blog.
But people do not only eat, shit, etc – activities they share with, say, ants. They also, among many other things, live in complex social groups, speak complex languages, use complex symbolism (including but in addition to language), make music, make other kinds of art, try to work out how the world and the universe works (though there are interesting debates about where this ‘universal’ comes from); that there is some kind of impulse towards something we now call ‘freedom’ is possibly a universal too (there is some evidence that even paleolithic cave art reveals contests – some people, for whatever reason which we don’t know, making art *differently* to the mainstream, perhaps even as some sort of protest); there are movements fighting for what we would call freedom at last as long ago as Roman slaves… and so on and so on.
These are the product of a basic shared humanity, which is not reducible to eating and shitting. It is because of this shared humanity that notions such as freedom and socialism are possible. Marx’s rejection of ‘vulgar materialism’ (though how you get from there to ‘vulgar universalism’, which seems to be a term of your own, I’m not sure) was categorically not a rejection of this kind of universalism. And I don’t see how a project for a future based on human solidarity possibly could be.
Concerning words and their meanings, I am an adherent of Pinker.
Concerning the Clan of McCohen, we are who we think we are.
If a large bunch of Cohens got together and announced that they were McCohens from that moment onwards and elected one of their number – the pushiest and least scrupulous – by acclaim as the McCohen of that Ilk and then devised a tartan and a clan badge and a motto in Gaelic, they’d be just as authentic as most of the Scottish clans are.
It’s an amusing idea; it’s probably been done already.
Those interested in this aspect of human behaviour are familiar with the term ‘appropriation of voice’ used sneeringly about such people as Grey Owl, an Englishman who ‘became’ a Native Canadian and a pioneer advocate of wilderness conservation.
Ward Churchill, a very different sort of person, is a living example of a white man doing his best to pretend to be an embittered and aggrieved American Indian, forever furious about smallpox-infested blankets, the Trail of Tears and so on.
Are you sure you’ve taken your degree ‘Johnno’? If you have, then higher education is definitely debased since my day.
Clive,
We may think we are splitting hairs here (and maybe we are) but my idea of universalism are values applied to all things at all times. I reject this idea. I do not reject that at some level of development ideas may converge, but they only converge if conditions are comparable. I also recognise that different socities when interacting affect each other. A major reason the Soviet Union collapsed was the ideological battle between East and West and the people in the East chose the values of the West. Though they have subsequently discovered that ideology and reality turn out to be 2 very different things.
“But people do not only eat, shit, etc – activities they share with, say, ants.”
Which is the point I made??? I said this is only the starting point for materialists.
“They also, among many other things, live in complex social groups, speak complex languages, use complex symbolism”
Which is why universalism cannot be applied. It is why maybe for Ants universalism would be more appropriate but even with animals the environment changes, evolution occurs etc.
“though there are interesting debates about where this ‘universal’ comes from”
Yes religious people believe it comes from God. Idealists think it is somehow fixed in human nature. Marxists reject it and apply historical materialism.
“It is because of this shared humanity that notions such as freedom and socialism are possible.”
Well socialism came out of struggle, one lot of humans against another lot of humans, so not shared humanity but humanity in conflict. I am a socialist not because I think it has been handed down from god but because I think the world would function better if we had it, I can think this because I believe people are a product of their environment and not pre programmed.
If we are pre programmed and universalism does exists then maybe it doesn’t matter what society we have, maybe just maybe humans will just cheat, kill and lie and others will just react with calls for freedom and socialism.
If we transpose your examples of freedom and socialism as universal then we get the right wing brand of universalism, that people are greedy, competitive, inherently evil etc. Your philosophy is no different, it does not transcend it. Marx did that with historical materialism and in my opinion some people just don’t get that.