Comments on: Norman Geras

By: motorola

motorola — Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:59:27 +0000

Mein Hobby ist es Gästebücher zu besuchen. Das ist immer ganz interessant und widerspiegelt so, was die Leute im Internet wirklich denken. War auch interessant bei Dir ! Bis zum nächsten Mal. All The Best OfNew Year. Sorry for my english i’am from Germany.

By: Martin Wisse

Martin Wisse — Tue, 05 Aug 2003 01:40:03 +0000

Chris, I agree that going round and round on a subject is usually pointless, but I already paid for this trip, so… Humanitarian concerns where not why the war was fought whether or not any leftist took that as a reason to support it. In your last response to me you did exactly what every war supporter did, make it seem as if the people who didn’t want more innocent iraqis killed by your governments “precision bombardments” don’t care about innocent lives. May I remind you that the majority of those graves were dug during a time your government, as well as the US hailed Saddam Hussein as a stalward fighter against Khomeini? They’re not my fault. They were allowed to happen by the same bastards who earlier this year urged us to go to war supposedly because of those mass graves. Meanwhile, high ranking US officers casually mention arresting family of ex-Iraqi military people as if it’s the most normal thing in the world to do and large parts of Iraq are still without water, gas or electricity. In short: no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found so far (lie 1), hence Iraq was no immediate threat (lie 2). There have never been proof of ties with Al Quaida (lie 3) and the US/UK’s own actions belie the humanitarian concern (lie 4). If you, as a leftist, supported the war for any of these reasons you’re at best an useful idiot, sorry. (And yes Chris, I do get to decide who is and is not on the left anymore, just as you do.)

By: Brad DeLong

Brad DeLong — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 21:10:00 +0000

So what’s the title of the book about Rosa Luxemburg, the Holocaust, and cricket? That must be one strange read…

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 10:09:12 +0000

Geras is “still” a Marxist? Didn’t look like it to me, unless Marxists now side with the guys with the biggest bombs. Which I suppose they mostly do. Anyway, I was more interested in Geras’ take on Louis Armstrong. Knocking down the jazz fans who think jazz began with Charlie Parker (are there such people?) he lists a couple of Armstrong records and doesn’t say anything much about them. What a well-rounded fellow. Even Hobsbawm is more interesting.

By: back40

back40 — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 22:13:39 +0000

What a silly statement. Even overlooking your difficulties with time calculation what possible difference could it make? How long does it take to read an essay? Hint: when you are in a hole stop digging.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 21:53:18 +0000

>>Such a policy couldn’t be made public, since the recipients of your arguments would then take them as (a) not made in good faith and, arguably, (b) not rational (since in principle unresponsive to their counterarguments). I take it, though, that this suggestion was made as an interesting hypothetical and not as a morally or practically serious proposal I think it was this sort of thing I was dimly remembering, but I can’t find it either, so I apologise for suggesting it was there without checking. I think it’s an entirely seriously defensible moral and practical proposition, but I suspect that I should write a proper post on the subject, so I will also refrain from commenting any more on this thread. Back40: According to your post above, you only heard of the guy on 29 June 2003 at or around 5.29pm. That’s four and a half hours ago. It is perhaps a bit presumptuous of you to say “give it a try to me” as if you’d been studying Geras’ work all your life and I’d never even considered his arguments. Please don’t patronise.

By: back40

back40 — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 21:30:31 +0000

What you evade is Geras’ point that opposition to the US, come what may, misguided or not, has resulted in “a displacement of the left’s most fundamental values”. Whether opposition to the US is misguided or not isn’t the thrust of his complaint that the left has abandoned it’s core values and replaced them with something much less admirable. When you read his longer pieces about his struggles to remain a Marxist while being intellectually honest enough to fully face its defects on fundamental premises it is difficult not to take his views on 9/11, Iraq and war morality seriously. Carefully reading his careful thoughts is profitable even when you come to different conclusions. Give it a try.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 21:28:52 +0000

BTW that (or at any rate this) was my last contribution to this particular thread.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 21:22:37 +0000

I’m somewhat perplexed that a friendly pointer to someone’s new blog should have 15 entries in it prior to this one! I certainly meandered a great deal on Junius about the war, and I can’t be sure that I didn’t say something about burden of proof along the lines D^2 indicates. (In the face of an argument I found compelling, I may well have thought the onus was on me to given a response). I can, though, quote myself on Sept 12 2002:

Those who want to use coercive force have to make their case. They have to show that the clear and present danger is such that the normal constraints on the use of force should be abandoned, and, crucially, that there is no better way of achieving peace and security. Since there are policy options other than war, such as containment, they have to show why those are inadequate in order to pass the test of “last resort”.

Daniel also writes:

Opposition to the US, come what may, is not obviously a misguided strategic choice; the USA, practically alone among global purveyors of violence, is a democracy, and thus the marginal return to rational argument is likely to be much greater there.

Such a policy couldn’t be made public, since the recipients of your arguments would then take them as (a) not made in good faith and, arguably, (b) not rational (since in principle unresponsive to their counterarguments). I take it, though, that this suggestion was made as an interesting hypothetical and not as a morally or practically serious proposal.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 20:33:44 +0000

>>Slippery slope arguments are made all the time. They just aren’t convincing. Nonsense. Some are, some aren’t. The particular argument that if you allow someone favourable outcomes from small acts of violence they will progress to larger acts of violence was convincing enough to be used by both sides on the Iraq war issue. >>This is important, as Geras notes Factive use alert! Opposition to the US, come what may, is not obviously a misguided strategic choice; the USA, practically alone among global purveyors of violence, is a democracy, and thus the marginal return to rational argument is likely to be much greater there.

By: back40

back40 — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 20:25:24 +0000

Slippery slope arguments are made all the time. They just aren’t convincing. They cannot be utterly refuted but are seen to be remote possibilities and so are dismissed as sophomoric belaboring of the obvious. Most often, these weak arguments are made as thin cover for the very thing Geras complains of, the refusal to consider the moral case for intervention and “a displacement of the left’s most fundamental values by a misguided strategic choice, namely, opposition to the US, come what may.” This is important, as Geras notes, since “it has produced a calamitous compromise of the core values of socialism, or liberalism or both…” There is a small but cautionary role for slippery slope arguments. There is a huge and persistently relevant role for moral arguments.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 19:19:07 +0000

What I didn’t like (on either Norman’s blog or Junius, where it also appeared) was the apparent assumption that the onus of proof is always on the person who opposes a war to show why it would necessarily have identifiable bad consequences. I don’t like this because it appears to go hand in hand with a refusal to allow people more cautious about war to make use of slippery slope arguments that proposed humanitarian war A makes not-yet-proposed, non-humanitarian wars B, C …. Z more likely, and that the benefits of A should be set against these larger costs. Which appeared to me to be the core argument which a lot of the people Norman objected to were groping for (it’s also the mainstay of Jim Henley’s position, and of libertarian doves in general). So when people on “the left” make the genuine and not unreasonable claim that we are more scared of the long term effects of establishing a general principle of at-will military intervention, than we are of Saddam’s Iraq, then we tend to get strawmen thrown back at us that we think the USA “is worse than Saddam”. Which gets wearing after a while.

By: pathos

pathos — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 17:01:52 +0000

The problem with the response of many persons on the left, and why they have been given the label of “Blame America First”-ers is that what might possibly be intended as an intellectual pursuit of truth in fact more often comes off as blame. Take, for instance, the common argument that “they hate us” because “we” support Israel against the Arab nations. Is this true? Possibly, it could be one motivation. But what to be done? Was supporting Israel the right thing to do before the attacks? Either yes or no. If the answer was Yes before the attacks, does it change to No after? Of course not. You do not change a policy you feel is just due to terrorism. So, many on the Left have a problem with how America operates in the world. Fine. They should forcefully argue that America should behave differently. But, when a Leftist links the problem with America with a terrorist attack and says, “See, this is what happens!” he make his case weaker, not stronger. The implicit argument is that what is described as a cause is actually a partial justification. Of course, many do not say these things, and many more who do do not intend the natural conclusions that are reached from them. But the image that remains after all the Leftists are done talking is a little boy whining for an ice cream cone. His mother says no. Then, there is a terrorist attack and thousands are killed, to which the little boy responds, “See, you should have given me an ice cream cone.”

By: back40

back40 — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 15:58:35 +0000

What is interesting to me about Geras is that he seems to be quite the opposite of an apostate. He clings to his youthful ideas not by denying their defects, but by carefully sorting the sound parts from the mistaken ones and concluding that the balance is still favorable. That ability to reason in good faith coupled with his caring temperament makes him someone I will listen to carefully.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 13:45:27 +0000

Martin, There comes a point where one has said what one has said and there doesn’t seem much point in going round the houses again. I’m sorry that you are confident that “all the high minded reasons why a liberal person would support [the war], were actually lies.” My own confidence is somewhat disturbed by the mass graves containing the many, many victims of the Baathist regime. Human rights were clearly a reason why a left or liberal person might have been led to support the war, and, whether or not you think those reasons sufficient, I see no cause to doubt the good faith of those who took that view (*those* reasons weren’t lies, even if many of the other ones were). I’ll be linking to the next Imprints interview very soon, and I assure you, you’ll just love it. Meanwhile, I’m happy to live in a world where you don’t get to decide who is and who isn’t an apostate.