Cohen, Karl and Carlists

Mulling over Nick Cohen’s weird column in last Sunday’s Observer, I ran across some correspondence between him and conventional wisdom avatar Oliver Kamm, in which he says the following:

Many thanks for your kind words and mild criticism.... I accept everything you say, but still think you're wrong. What is novel is that no one from the Marxist tradition has ever embraced theocracy before. I'm sorry to quote myself - but then if I don't, who will? - but as I say in my latest book: 'Marx abominated religion. For the crime of preferring feudal bureaucracy to bourgeois democracy he would have tied copies of Das Kapital around the necks of the SWP leaders and thrown them into the Thames.' Marx saw himself as a part of the Enlightenment tradition. What's left of the far left is embracing the Counter Enlightenment. This is new.

You are right about the 1930s and the similarities between Lenin and Mussolini. But you're missing the wilful determination of many on the left to abandon what was for better or for worse their basic world view and go through a shameful and laughable inversion of their principles. As I also discuss in my book, there are good reasons for this, not least the absolute failure of Marxist Leninism. You might reply that what went on in the 1930s was worse, and it was. Or that if there had been religious totalitarian regimes around at the time they would have been supported. Maybe that's true too. But there weren't, and not just Marxists but many others on the left prided themselves on their rejection of superstition and rule by priests. That's the principle which has gone and in the process of losing it lots of people are making a nonsense of everything they profess to believe.

Short response: Oh no it isn’t, oh no he wouldn’t and oh no they’re not. Marx may have abominated religion in general terms, but that abomination wasn’t always the deciding factor in his views on any given issue. An obvious example is his support of the Carlists in their series of wars with the Spanish state in the 19th Century, despite the fact that they wanted, amongst other things, to re-instate the Spanish Inquisition. In other words, he actually did support the counter-reformation on at least one occasion. According to Mark Kurlansky’s Basque History of the World:

In the volatile 19th Century, Carlists were often seen as romantic figures. They were the underdogs, the brave and hardworking people of the countryside, fighting the powerful. Curiously, the great anti-clerical voice of the 19th Century, Karl Marx, praised the Carlists and not the anti-church liberals:

“The traditional Carlist has the genuinely mass-national base of peasants, lower aristocracy and clergy while the so-called liberals derived their base from the military, capitalists, latifundist aristocracy and secular interests.”

Moreover, a Carlist victory would have enabled the Basques to maintain and possibly expand their autonomy, and the general principle of the self-determination of peoples as a historical motor has always been central, as far as I can tell, to Marxist thinking (though certainly not Soviet practice).

This has obvious parallels, in the first case between the Carlists and the Sadrists, currently being ground to a pulp in Najaf and in the second between the Basques and the Palestinians. Support for the Iraqi insurgents can be argued over on its merits, but to say that sympathy for the Sadrists - who draw support from some of the poorest sections of the Iraqi working classes – is incompatible with left wing traditions is just not true. Part of the pro-war left wing case was that you have to take your alliances where you can find them. The antiwar left have this privilege too.

Which brings us to the current column, in which he laments the yahoo populism of the government, and sighs over the question…

But where is a principled opposition to come from? From the Labour left? At the time of the Hodge Hill election Ken Livingstone was embracing as a comrade Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a 'moderate' Muslim leader, whose Islam Online website supports the murder of Israeli civilians because 'on the hour of judgment, Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them'; describes homosexuality as an 'evil and unnatural practice', which can only be stopped when Islamic society is cleansed of its 'perverted elements'; says rape victims must carry a portion of the guilt if they dress 'immodestly'; and advises that a husband may beat his wife 'lightly with his hands, avoiding her face and other sensitive parts'.

My first response to this would be that a principled opposition is a luxury, but an effective one is a necessity. I would suspect that principled opposition on these issues would come from all over the shop, politically speaking. But what relevance does Ken Livingston’s new best mate have to all this anyway? Cohen seems to be arguing that opposition to the war in Iraq invalidates concern for civil liberties in the UK.
It’s a bit of an odd position to criticize people for opposing an action just because George Bush takes it and then refusing to support another action just because George Galloway might also support it. I’ll close with a brief citation:

“…you are headed for the edge of the cliff if your favourite words are “what about”?

Pretty Straight Guys, p119

Comments

[Robin Green]

and then refusing to support another action just because George Galloway might also support it.

Which action are you referring to here?

[jamie]

Action may have been premature. In gnereal I was referring to Cohen's assertion that the left were in no position to oppse the government's attacks on civil liberties.

[anon]

Marx support for the (religiously inspired and led) Sepoy Rebellion (aka Great Indian Mutiny) is another example of the old socialist supporting a religious resistance movement over rationalist , liberal occupation.

Following Nick Cohens logic, "marxists" shoudl have supported Generals Gordon and Kitchener in their battles with the Mahdi in Sudan.