Whipping a deceased steed

On the uses of political violence
Mr Younge's worthy if unexceptional take on many contemporary political issues would not put him at the top of my list of radical political journalists—even supposing that the compilation of such a list was possible. In fact, whenever I read one of his rather plodding pieces (for sociological research, so I tell myself, to sample the waters of mainstream leftish opinion), I am usually reminded of a phrase from Attila József's eponymous poem: "Some people will remain pedestrian no matter what form of transport they travel on". And so here is Mr Younge, once more riding his rudimentary cart along a well worn path, flogging a dead horse.

Executive summary: Individual terrorism isn't right, because it works against the terrorist's cause. But if you have some community support for killing your opponents' civilians, and are able to do so in a reasonably well-organised manner—in this way bringing the opponent to the negotiating table—all well and good.

A hyperbolic paraphrase? Perhaps, but not by much.

In short, much of the mainstream left doesn't appear to have advanced a single centimetre beyond the narodnik "means and ends" debates of late 19th century Russia, or, at best, Trotsky's Their Morals and Ours—which is not his best book (that would be The History of the Russian Revolution), but is rather an exceptionally clear exposition and defence of what we would nowadays call "moral relativism", then a daring subversive position, but today the unthinking stock-in-trade of soft-left establishments everywhere. Of this work Viktor Serge memorably says:

"Trotsky thinks that his party, formerly in power and now in opposition, has always represented the true proletariat, and himself the true morality.

From this he concludes the following: executing hostages takes on a different meaning according to whether the order is given by Stalin or by Trotsky or by the bourgeoisie."

(Note to myself: the contradiction between cultural-relativism-eliding-into-moral-relativism, on the one hand, as against the aspiration to universal human values, is one of the contradictions at the heart of Marxism.)

There is much else that I would like to say here, as I think attitude towards political violence is one of the crucial issues dividing today's fairly popular, if also fairly populist and reactionary, left from the tiny humanist fringe that remains. But anyone who waffles on this issue could not be relied upon in a fix—that's my guess.