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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

The Euston Manifesto: some queries « Previous | |Next »
April 25, 2006

The Euston Manifesto. It is applauded by William Kristol at the Weekly Standard for its muscular liberalism that is characterised by strength and confidence in the defense of liberty, and drawing a line between a soft and relativist left and the strong and confident democratic left that the signers seek to invigorate. The Manifesto is being discussed over at Larvatus Prodeo in the context of Will Hutton's interpretation in The Observer that the Manifesto offers a new direction for the left.

It is hard to disagree with a lot of the Euston Manifesto's principles as they are solid liberal democratic ones in relation to democracy, human rights, equality and developments of freedom, internationalism, the free exchange of ideas. The Manifesto is in favour of a two state solution to the Palestinian and Israeli conflict, is opposed to racism and terrorism and stands strongly behind open source software and fair use. It opposes the way the social and economic foundations on which the liberal democracies have developed are marked by deep inequalities of wealth and income ---even if the word 'capitalism' is not mentioned.

Clearly the Manifesto expresses voices on the Left, as Kristol acknowledges when he says that we at The Weekly Standard heartily disagree with the Manifesto's commitment to domestic and economic policies.Where then is my hestiation? Or my reservation? Where are the points of disagreements? Can we draw Kristol's distinction between soft and relativist left and the strong and confident democratic left? Note the way that democratic has been left out of the soft and realtivist left, inplying that this left is anti-democratic or totalitarian.

Let me state my reservations with two passages. The first is about America. The Manifesto states:

We reject without qualification the anti-Americanism now infecting so much left-liberal (and some conservative) thinking. This is not a case of seeing the US as a model society. We are aware of its problems and failings. But these are shared in some degree with all of the developed world. The United States of America is a great country and nation. It is the home of a strong democracy with a noble tradition behind it and lasting constitutional and social achievements to its name. Its peoples have produced a vibrant culture that is the pleasure, the source-book and the envy of millions. That US foreign policy has often opposed progressive movements and governments and supported regressive and authoritarian ones does not justify generalized prejudice against either the country or its people.

The United States of America is not just a great country and nation. It is also an imperial power, the only one in the world of nations. There is no mention of the US as an imperial power, pre-emption or American exceptionalism in the Manifesto that led neo-con Americans to disregard international law and preach Hobbesian "realpolitik", in which right is defined by strength and authorizes preventive nuclear strikes.

Does seeing the US this way, and being critical of the Bush Administration's use of power to further imperial interests, mean that one is simply anti-American? Hardly, given Fukuyama's recent argument. Surely a good internationalist means that one must be opposed to the way the neo-cons in the Bush Administration routinely trash international law and institutions because these are seen as constraints on the use of US power.

The second passage is one about modernity:

We reject fear of modernity, fear of freedom, irrationalism, the subordination of women; and we reaffirm the ideas that inspired the great rallying calls of the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century: liberty, equality and solidarity; human rights; the pursuit of happiness. These inspirational ideas were made the inheritance of us all by the social-democratic, egalitarian, feminist and anti-colonial transformations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — by the pursuit of social justice, the provision of welfare, the brotherhood and sisterhood of all men and women. None should be left out, none left behind. We are partisans of these values. But we are not zealots. For we embrace also the values of free enquiry, open dialogue and creative doubt, of care in judgement and a sense of the intractabilities of the world. We stand against all claims to a total -- unquestionable or unquestioning -- truth.

Do we not live in postmodernity? What is total -- unquestionable or unquestioning -- truth? The absolute truth of a fundamentalist physics? How does that square with, differing political perspectives and traditions, historical truth and competing historical narratives?

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:43 AM | | Comments (0)
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