In order to bring the much under-read AJ Muste to the table, I have to enlist the help of Noam Chomsky, who mentions him regularly. Here's an excerpt from Chomsky's essay, "On the Background of the Pacific War" which includes an extended trribute to the thought and writings of Muste.
(Muste's essays are out of print; the Chomsky piece is at http://monkeyfist.com:8080/ChomskyArchive/essays/pacific_html.)
But it is the international situation of
December 1941 that provides the most severe test for Muste's doctrine. There is a great deal to be
learned from a study of the events that led up to an armed attack, by a competing imperialism, on
American possessions and the forces defending them, and even more from a consideration of the
varying reactions to these events and their aftermath. If Muste's revolutionary pacifism is defensible as a
general political program, then it must be defensible in these extreme circumstances. By arguing that it
was, Muste isolated himself not only from any mass base, but also from all but a marginal fringe of
American intellectuals. Writing in 1941, Muste saw the war as
a conflict between two groups of powers for survival and domination. One set of powers,
which includes Britain and the United States, and perhaps "free" France, controls some 70%
of the earth's resources and thirty million square miles of territory. The imperialistic status quo
thus to their advantage was achieved by a series of wars including the last one. All they ask
now is to be left at peace, and if so they are disposed to make their rule mild though firm....
On the other hand stands a group of powers, such as Germany, Italy, Hungary, Japan,
controlling about 15% of the earth's resources and one million square miles of territory,
equally determined to alter the situation in their own favor, to impose their ideas of "order,"
and armed to the teeth to do that, even if it means plunging the whole world into war.7
He foresaw that an Allied victory would yield "a new American empire" incorporating a subservient
Britain, "that we shall be the next nation to seek world domination -- in other words, to do what we
condemn Hitler for trying to do." In the disordered postwar world, we shall be told, he predicts, that "our
only safety lies in making or keeping ourselves 'impregnable.' But that...means being able to decide by
preponderance of military might any international issue that may arise -- which would put us in the position
in which Hitler is trying to put Germany." In a later essay, he quotes this remark: "The problem after a war
is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a
lesson?"
The prediction that the United States would emerge as the world-dominant power was political realism; to
forecast that it would act accordingly, having achieved this status by force, was no less realistic. This
tragedy might be averted, Muste urged, by a serious attempt at peaceful reconciliation with no attempt to
fasten sole war-guilt on any nation, assurance to all peoples of equitable access to markets and essential
materials, armament reduction, massive economic rehabilitation, and moves towards international
federation. To the American ideologist of 1941 such a recommendation seemed as senseless as the
proposal, today, that we support popular revolution. And at that moment, events and policy were taking a
very different direction.
Since nothing of the sort was ever attempted, one can only speculate as to the possible outcome of such
a course. The accuracy of Muste's forecast unfortunately requires little comment. . . .
This is the thing for me. I agree: we have to have humility about events that took place outside our experience, before our time, and it's important to respect people for making difficult decisions in difficult times. But it's important to hear ALL the voices, including the most unpopular ones, those who saw this war AT THE TIME as Muste did and "stuck to their pacifist guns" when to do so was treason.
The 1941 essay by Muste, from which the long quotation above comes from is called "Where are We Going?" The other absolutely critical piece by Muste is "Pacifism and the Class War," where he makes the claim, "In a world built on violence, one must be a
revolutionary before one can be a pacifist." I'm going to turn to Chomsky's quotations of him, again, here: "There is a certain indolence in us, a wish not to be disturbed, which tempts us to think that when things are quiet, all is well. Subconsciously, we tend to give the preference to 'social peace,' though it be only apparent, because our lives and possessions seem then secure. Actually, human beings acquiesce too easily in evil conditions; they rebel far too little and too
seldom. There is nothing noble about acquiescence in a cramped life or mere submission to superior force." Muste was insistent that pacifists "get our thinking focussed." Their foremost task "is to denounce the violence on which the present system is based, and all the evil -- material and spiritual -- this entails
for the masses of men throughout the world.... So long as we are not dealing honestly and adequately with this ninety percent of our problem, there is something ludicrous, and perhaps hypocritical, about our
concern over the ten percent of violence employed by the rebels against oppression."
I hope this intrigues you all as much as it does me; for me it moves the discussion out of old appeasement vs. war as an either/or double bind and into something that feels more like the territory of the real.
alas. |
