Raznor:

General Sherman also authored the Navajo treaty …

I think that having personally commanded several genocidal wars is enough to get you on the “worst Americans” list even if you also worked out a good treaty along the way.

RonF:

Don’t take this as a defense of Sherman’s march to Atlanta. I just want to know what was new about it.

All kinds of atrocities and raids have been practiced in warfare since recorded history, but Sherman’s march inaugurated a couple of new tendencies for the modern age. It was one of the first times in recorded history that scorched-earth warfare was (1) systematically used (2) as a weapon of offense (3) on such a large scale. There are a few examples of scorched-earth tactics being used for defensive purposes (e.g. in Spain and Russia during the Napoleonic wars), plenty of examples of arbitrary pillage, raiding, and destruction in the countryside, and some examples of the destruction of entire cities (such as the Romans’ destruction of Carthage, or the Mongols sack of Baghdad). But Sherman pioneered the systematic use of deliberate devastation as a strategic weapon to break the enemy (through both concrete damage and terror), and he practiced it on a regional scale uncontemplated even in Timurlane’s darkest dreams.

Now, I’m no expert in military history; there may very well be examples of this kind of devastation elsewhere prior to Sherman, and maybe even on a comparable scale. But my understanding is that it’s Sherman whose legacy our contemporary historians and generals study as the origin of modern total warfare. (And if I’m mistaken, of course, he’s still an asshole, for other reasons.)

Well Seasoned:

Emperor remains emperor is ok? Have you studied what was done to US captives by the Japanese? Have you looked at the statistics on how many Americans were still dying during the latter phase of the war? Do you not remember how the war with Japan began? … Sorry that you don’t like it that people are held accountable for their government …

Deliberately killing civilians in retaliation for the crimes of their governments, in order to achieve some political end, is terrorism. In this case, terrorism that resulted in the deaths of over half a million civilians.

Question 1: In what respect is this morally better than the massacre of 2,000 or so innocent civilians in retaliation for the crimes of their government on September 11?

Question 2: Given whatever justification provides your answer to Question 1, is there any moral limit on the number of civilians killed in the terror-bombing of Japan as far as you’re concerned? How many innocent lives would you have considered acceptable losses for an unconditional surrender?

President Harry Truman. He ordered or approved the murders of 500,000 – 1,000,000 Japanese civilians over the course of half a year in 1945.

General Curtis LeMay. He carried out the murder of 500,000 – 1,000,000 Japanese civilians over the course of half a year in 1945. A nuclear maniac who explicitly denied that there were any innocent bystanders in war and by all accounts simply reveled in death and destruction.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a pseudo-leftist demagogue who created the military-industrial complex; ordered internment of Japanese-Americans, happily allied with, propagandized for, and consigned 1/2 of Europe to the totalitarian terror of, Joseph Stalin; and one of the three men who came the closest to becoming a dictator in the United States.

President Woodrow Wilson, unreprentant liar and war-monger, KKK fan, arch-segregationist, anti-feminist, and one of the three men who came the closest to becoming a dictator in the United States.

George Fitzhugh, the most militant defender of white supremacy and race slavery in the prewar South, author of Slavery Justified, Sociology in the South, and Cannibals All!

Nathan Bedford Forrest, perpetrator of the Fort Pillow massacre and founder of the Ku Klux Klan.

General William Tecumseh Sherman, one of the inventors of modern scorched-earth warfare, ravager of the South and murderer of Southern civilians; went on to pursue genocidal campaigns against the Plains Indians as a follow-up.

Senator James Eastland, militant white supremacist Senator from Mississippi, mad dog McCarthyist, and founding father of the White Citizens Councils.

In addition to seconding Larry Flynt, I’d also like to add Chuck Traynor, the pimp/pornographer/rapist/batterer/slave-driver who forced Linda Boreman into Deep Throat (among other pornography) and played an instrumental role in founding the mass-market, above-ground film pornography industry in the U.S. through repeated filmed rapes.

Battlepanda: Rightwing libertarian are the ones who have made an effort to integrate with the policy making mechanisms.

So how’s that been working out for them, lately?

Battlepanda: For most liberals, left libertarians are simply not part of the conversation because they’re not accepting the basic ground terms that politics imply government. It’s almost as if we’re playing a game of stickball and you show up with a hula hoop.

It’s not clear to me that libertarian policy-wonkery is a strategy well justified by its success. If “the conversation” about politics simply precludes those who aren’t pouring their time into getting an inside man at the skunk works, then perhaps the terms of the conversation need to change.

(N.B.: this is not a point peculiar to modern day left-libertarianism. Identifying politics exclusively with electioneering, lobbying, and wonkery related to those two activities, would also rule out any reasonable discussion of the radical feminist movement, the grassroots gay rights movement, the IWW, the Garrisonian abolitionist movement, and a lot of other really significant historical developments in politics.)

Battlepanda: What I am saying is if the government is going to subsidize transportation, it might as well do it in an across the board fashion — not just for automobiles through road building, but also through trains, trams, and other possible types of people movers.

Let’s distinguish two separate questions with regard to government getting involved in transit.

1. The subsidy question: should governments subsidize (or directly provide) infrastructure or services for transit? If so, which should it subsidize, to what degree, and in what proportions?

2. The regulation question: should governments pass laws or regulations that effectively ban other people from offering transit services or building infrastructure? If so, which sorts should it ban, by whom, and with what sorts of enforcement?

Let’s set aside the subsidy question for a moment; I’m interested in your take on the regulation question. (This isn’t idle speculation; most municipalities with substantial subsidized or government-owned mass transit, New York City especially, also have very restrictive laws or regulations that ban outright, or sharply limit, competing taxi, bus, etc. services.)

Suppose my city, state, and federal government are taking tax money and pouring it into transit services, road-building, etc., to whatever degree and in whatever proportions you think best; and suppose that I decide, nevertheless, to start a competing taxi service. Or bus service. Or start laying rails for a private train. Do you think that the city, state, or federal government should force me to stop it? Or would that be overreaching on their part?

Does this really take a lengthy post? Here’s the most important argument in twenty words or fewer: “It’s wrong to have people shot for helping folks get to work. Even if they don’t have a permission slip.”

Me: (Or, to put it another way: if you aren’t offering a class analysis of the transit strike, what level of analysis are you offering? Individual?)

Wilde: Yes. Individuals, in general, act for their own self-interest.

Which individuals did you have in mind? The only person discussed in this post who is picked out as an individual, as far as I can tell, is Megan McArdle. The analysis you offer seems to pick everyone else out on the basis of the interests presumedly shared by the members of five groups of people, differentiated from one another by socioeconomic factors: the MTA management, the TWU Local 100, poor commuters who use MTA busses and trains, well-off commuters who use MTA busses and trains, and folks who would be willing to accept scab work from the MTA management if it were offered. That seems like echt-class analysis. If it doesn’t seem that way to you, I wonder what you think class analysis does look like.

Schuele suggested that the debate here has at least as much to do with miscommunication as with substantive disagreement. So, let’s number off claims for convenience:

[1] The group created is a product of individual interests. [2] Different competing groups are often of the same socioeconomic status, background, income level, and professions, often bidding on the same govt special privilege. [3] The distinctions between different groups are small. [4] Memberships between different competing groups can change easily as it becomes more rewarding for individuals to seek new allies. [5] New groups can be created by members of already existing groups. … [6] Economic action occurs at the level of the individual, not the group, not the class.

Which of claims (1)-(6) do you think make for a disagreement between you and someone who thinks class analysis is a fruitful way to understand the transit strike (and significant patches of socio-economic life elsewhere)? Further, if there’s more than one claim here that you take to cut against class analysis if true, do those separate claims cut it against it independently of each other, or only in conjunction with one another?

Masten: Isn’t violating the terms of existing agreements (no collective strike) wrong?

The MTA’s employees didn’t “agree” to the Taylor Law. It was imposed on them by an interventionist state government with the power but not the authority to ban peaceful coordinated strikes.

Scott, well, the shorter version of what I said is: I don’t think the dispute is merely definitional. The kind of complications that Wilde’s pointing to are indications that there are more socioeconomic class distinctions than vulgar Marxism suggests, not that socioeconomic class isn’t a good tool for understanding the transit strike.

Kennedy: Then it would be nice to give an example of how the union did this in the case McArdle is talking about. I’ve yet to hear of anything the union did wrong in the transit strike.

Sure. As usual, a lot of libertarians tend to think that the word “union” is enough to summon statist demons. The attempted analysis is just lazy argumentation; I just think that it’s also the case that, even if it were a solid argument, it wouldn’t establish that class analysis isn’t useful for understanding social life.

Dave: This is because union dominated industries can’t compete forever with non union companies. Only if propped up by political power can unions survive.

There were a good six and a half decades between the foundation of the Knights of Labor, and the establishment of government patronage of unions under the Wagner Act. I conclude that unions can survive quite well without being propped up by political power, and that there’s nothing intrinsic to unions that’s antagonistic to market survival.

What you say above suggests that you think something about the market has changed such that unions might have been beneficial back in the day but aren’t anymore. But then you’d have to identify what it is you think has changed in the interim. What do you think made unions as such potentially beneficial then, but categorically inefficient now? (One thing clearly has changed: the organizational structure and tactics of unions. But that’s certainly something that it’s possible to change without giving up on labor unionism as such.)

Dave: Kennedy is right, the voters have only themselves to blame. You can’t blame the unionists for trying the same tricks that have always worked before.

I don’t think Kennedy’s point had anything in particular to do with voting.

Delance: Are libertarian in favor of unions now?

Yes. The Central Committee approved the resolution Thursday. Didn’t you get the memo?

Holmes, here’s my favorite part of the North article, right at the beginning:

“The strike was illegal under the state law, just as the present one is. Mike Quill, the head of the union and one of its founders in 1934, was ordered by the judge to return with his union to operate the transportation system. Quill responded to the press: ‘The judge can drop dead in his black robes. I don’t care if I rot in jail. I will not call off the strike.’ … The union is obviously proud of Quill’s defiance.”

What villains they must be, to celebrate someone who ignored The Law and defied a court order. Next thing you know, they’ll probably call for something unconstitutional, too.

Me, to Wilde: Or, to put it another way: if you aren’t offering a class analysis of the transit strike, what level of analysis are you offering? Individual?

Berg: Interest group analysis?

And interest groups whose membership are are defined by their jobs, income levels, and level of control over terms of employment are usually called “classes,” or (more precisely) “socioeconomic classes.” Aren’t they?

Schuele: Jonathan seems to be saying that none of the typical conglomerations deemed “classes” have a unified self-interest, as is suggested by some.

I don’t know what you mean by “a unified self-interest.” There are lots of things that you might mean when you apply a predicate to a set. Is it supposed to mean (a) “a self-interest shared by each and every member of the class,” (b) “a self-interest mostly shared by members of the class” (with some kind of statistical meaning attached to “mostly”), (c) “a self-interest typically shared by members of the class (under normal conditions)”, (d) “a self-interest not necessarily shared by individual members of the class but somehow held by the class itself,” or something else?

I ask because if you mean (a), then I don’t know of any class theorists who have suggested that classes have “a unified self-interest” in that sense. (I think they typically mean something more like (c), although I suppose there may be some who, through various sorts of mystification, try to hold (d).) In any case, if you mean (b)-(d), then Wilde’s merely pointing out that there are members of the class who individually don’t share the class’s self-interest does not tell against the accuracy of class analysis, any more than poor Tibbles, who has been maimed and shaved, tells against the accuracy of a natural history documentary that says “Domestic cats have four legs and a soft coat of fur.”

If, on the other hand, you mean something more like claim (c), as I think Jonathan seems to, then the sort of exceptions you’d need to point out to even begin undermining the analysis have to be systematic exceptions to the alleged uniformity of self-interest. Which Jonathan does do, above. But the thing is that the systematic exceptions he points out are exceptions on the basis of factors that we usually take to differentiate between socioeconomic classes — jobs, pay, control over terms of employment, etc. — and in spite of his later protest that “It ain’t about big guys vs little guys” he explicitly says above that this is about bigger vs. littler guys: “Some little guys are bigger than other little guys. Any special benefit that any particular union garners for one set of little guys comes at the detriment not just from businesses, but also from other little guys.”

He seems to suggest toward the end that conscious organization, or perhaps access to the political means, better explain systematic differences of interest within the supposed “working class” than factors that mark out socioeconomic classes. But (1) the idea that either of those factors are independent of socioeconomic class is not at all obvious, and (2) neither saying “group X is better organized on behalf of its interests than group Y” or “group X has a greater ability to serve its interests through political pressure than group Y” explains what it is about group X and group Y that make for the difference in interests to be served in the first place. In the case that Jonathan seems to be discussing, the difference seems to be made on the basis of the socioeconomic factors I mentioned. (Specifically, the distinction between an “aristocracy of labor” and workers that are comparatively less well-off in terms of jobs, income, and organizational resources — a class distinction within the larger working class that has been discussed and fleshed out by many analysts who gladly make use of class analysis, and in regard to the history of labor organizing in particular.)

Kennedy: Say what? In a market unions can’t do anything “at the expense” of others since the only people who will do business with them are those that profit from doing business with them.

Well, I think there’s clearly a sense of “expense” and “detriment” in the English language, under which peaceful market competition can produce profits at the expense of, or be to the detriment of, third parties. (Businesspeople use it all the time — if Wal-Mart is eating K-Mart’s lunch, then there is some sense in which Wal-Mart’s competition is detrimental to K-Mart’s owners, or Wal-Mart’s greater profits are coming at the expense of K-Mart.) Of course, what I think you’re right to point out here is that these senses of “expense” and “detriment” aren’t senses in which profiting at someone’s expense, or doing something to their detriment, is in itself an objectionable thing to do.

To be fair, though, Jonathan et al. are operating from the presumption that unions are availing themselves of legal coercion in order to enforce their bargaining position, in ways that unorganized workers aren’t able to. (That’s true enough, but I think that the balance of political power in the late strike, given that it was against a government employer that had the power to throw union organizers in jail for continuing to strike, and publicly contemplated doing so, is clearly not in favor of the union.)