Peace with social justice issues are indivisible—one can’t have true peace without eliminating the cause of conflict, namely oppression and injustice. Oppression and injustice are at the heart of conflict, its root causes, and if it was Karl Marx rather than George Fox, Paul Tillich or Thomas Aquinas who noticed this obvious fact first, so be it. It won’t be the first time this bearded Jewish atheist was right when the holy religious authorities were wrong! (But elaborating on this is something to be discussed later.) As the popular old song goes, “you can’t have one without the other;” peace and justice do go together hand-in-hand.
That’s why I “recommend” to all those who want peace most of all, if you really want peace then you should support right-wing dictatorships; because, historically, repressive dictators and fascist movements brought “peace” when before there was social chaos and disruption. Historically, the coming to power of Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, the Brazilian, Greek and Argentine military coups that ousted civilian leaders—all of them brought the “peace of the graveyard” to previously unruly and disruptive societies. They put an end to disruption and contentious dissent by—putting an end (often literally, through execution) to the disrupters and dissenters! And their “peace” of course didn’t last forever—but it did last for a long time in all cases, and it remained a stable “peace.” That’s why it’s always to question peace in and of itself as a goal. Because peace in and of itself is not peace with social justice, because the process of achieving social justice, the prerequisite for lasting peace, is always and forever a contentions process. Because powerful elites have vested interests in maintaining and promulgating social injustice.
That’s why the Southern crackers, who charged that people like Martin Luther King and the nonviolent protests against segregation they organized in the 1960s were “disrupting the peace” and “riling up people who wouldn’t otherwise be riled up,” were absolutely correct! Martin Luther King and the other leaders and activists for civil rights really were “disturbing the peace” of the oppressive status quo, really were “riling up” those who had previously been too timed and afraid to stand up. And Martin Luther King also really understood the linkage between civil and political rights and economic rights and freedoms, really understood that you couldn’t have the resources to provide for justice at home while spending it on foreign wars. Which is why, quite in opposition to the “liberals” who said he would “hurt” the cause of achieving civil rights, Martin Luther King spoke out against the war in Vietnam as well as calling for civil rights at home, and why the final acts of his life were supporting African American city trash collectors in Memphis and organizing the Poor Peoples March, both issues of economic as well as racial justice. In Martin Luther King himself we see the interconnectedness, the very indivisibility, of peace and social justice issues—and the need to address both. And as Martin Luther King himself did, address them programmatically, through concrete demands and concrete modes of action such as sit-ins and marches, not just articulating them as abstract principles and addressing them only through token and symbolic actions of supposed moral witness.
(Parenthetically though, in view of what I wrote above about “crackers” and the unrelenting hostility I receive from some in the IPJC no matter what I write, I categorically deny that my use of the word “crackers” above was in any way intended to insult, demean, or offend—saltines! In fact, some of my best friends are saltines—along with Triscuit, Ritz, Town House and many, many others of this important culinary species! All of its myriad members, in my humble opinion, deserve recognition and acknowledgement for their significant contributions to gastronomy, which are too often overlooked and simply taken for granted.)
But back to programs. Programs are what make principles real and realizable, programs guide actions that guide and goad supporters, and make those actions real and concrete move beyond the purely symbolic expressions of a select cognoscenti—in other words, programs suggest and lead to application, limn roads to follow for putting principles and goals into effect, i.e., tactics. Which, while often overlooked, are really the lifeblood of any serious movement for peace with social justice. Noam Chomsky has written tellingly on the crucial nature of tactics:
Talk of tactics sounds sort of trivial, but it is not. Tactical choices are the ones that have real human consequences. We can try to go beyond the more general strategic choices—speculatively and with open minds—but beyond that we descend into abstract generalities. Tactics have to do with decisions about what to do next, they have real human consequences. (Chomsky on Anarchism, AK Press 2007, p. 237)This is key, more key than many in the IPJC imagine, for tactics lead to implementation of principles, they bring about power and influence—and let’s honestly face it, a movement without power and influence, a movement unable to implement what it stands for and believes in, is impotent. Impotent despite the sincerity of its members, the “deep meaning” (or perceived “deep meaning”) of its symbolism and symbolic actions, and the “good guy” nature of its organization and small membership (necessarily small, because impotent organizations, organizations that cannot wield power, influence, and get things done do not attract large numbers of people wishing to join).
IPJC expresses one tactic which has proven effective, as many mass movements have shown—nonviolence. Unfortunately, IPJC confuses the tactic, nonviolence, with the abstract principle of pacifism. But in so tying nonviolence directly to pacifism, especially the pacifism of the organized peace churches, IPJC automatically limits its appeal drastically, cuts itself off from numerous potential supporters. Many more would be drawn to IPJC as an organization were it not so stiff-necked on pacifism, for many who desire a peaceful world with social justice are not pacifists, indeed are critical of pacifism justifiably: after all, pacifism proved only a hindrance both to stopping Hitler and to ending slavery in the U.S., where numerous pacifist measures had previously been taken to prevent the inevitable conflicts that both slavery and Nazism represented. I even wrote positively on this originally in the October 2008 issue of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal, “Slandering Nonviolence,” which was updated (with attribution to the Journal as original source) and expanded for New Politics online and posted September 15, 2011, http://newpol.org/node/510. Which is to say bluntly, one does not have to be a pacifist to be peaceable; conversely, not being a pacifist does not automatically commit one to violence under any circumstances. That’s just a hoary but blatantly false canard that needs to be abandoned without reservation now and forever. Even by committed pacifists.
Pacifism limits IPJC in other ways as well, making it automatically almost completely occupied with issues of war and foreign policy, on which it can have little influence, especially in Indiana, one state out of 50, and one both overwhelmingly hidebound and without consequence when it comes to issues of war and peace. Which makes the IPJC, along with its complementary organization, the Indiana Peace and Justice Network, IPJN, little more than foreign policy windbags. Conversely, the social justice and labor movements in Indiana, such as organized labor itself and organizations such as the Community-Faith-Labor Coalition and Central Indiana Jobs with Justice, press local and domestic social justice issues without reference to antiwar issues, even though it is the so-called national “defense” budget and the costs of imperial wars such as Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan which drain vital resources that could be used to create a society in which unemployment, affordable healthcare, decent housing and schools, and other social ills would not be the pestilences they are today. More indication that peace and social justice issues are inextricably linked; and that an effective program in one area must also encompass an effective program in the other. In other words, what the peace and social justice movements need now is a unified program that address the real, compelling need—peace with social justice—that separated movements, one for peace, the other for justice, and neither the twain shall meet, cannot adequately address themselves through this separation, this artificial “division of labor.”
Yes, perhaps we march separately, and for some certain issues are more paramount than others, at least for the moment; but we realize not only the need to strike together, but to strake multiple targets. And while we of the movements may not realize this, believe me, the economic elites and their political satraps do. That’s why the military hawks such as the Blue Dogs, the Tea Party, and the Republicans all wish to gut organized labor, support “right-to-work,” and eviscerate social entitlement programs as well—they understand the interconnectedness of peace and social justice issues, even if peace and social justice grassroots activists do not!
This interconnectedness is something the political campaign of Donnie Harold Harris for Indiana Governor and me, George Fish, for Lieutenant Governor realized from the beginning, and drew up as our campaign proposals an interconnected platform, which we invite all to examine and “steal” from as deemed appropriate. This interconnectedness is developed in writing at length in two documents readily accessible: my entry on my “Politically Incorrect Leftist” blog, “A Peace with Social Justice Program for Indiana—and the World,” http://politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com/2012/07/peace-with-social-justice-program-for.html; and “The Peace with Social Justice Platform of Harris-Fish for Indiana: Catching the Occupy Spirit!” under “About” on the Harris-Fish for Indiana Facebook page.
Principles in themselves are not enough—they must be fleshed out with programs and appropriate tactics, or else they become dead letters. The world has long been waylaid by plenty of good principles not properly put into practice—and the principle of peace with social justice will join them if it is not dealt with appropriately, programmatically, and with an eye to implementation as well as to mere articulation.
No comments:
Post a Comment