Patrick,

Just out of curiosity, if “Stalinists” leading the organizing of anti-war protests is the problem, why don’t good sensible liberals in the Democratic leadership quit crying about it and organize their own public demonstrations that they can show up to in good conscience? It’s not like we are talking about people without organizational resources to draw on here.

Geoff,

“Aside from Corn’s reporting that “Paul Donahue, a middle-aged fellow who works with the Thomas Merton Peace and Social Justice Center in Pittsburgh, shouted, ‘Stalinist!’” at a WWP-affiliated speaker at a rally several years ago, he nowhere offers anything resembling evidence for saying that the WWP consists of Stalinists; indeed, nowhere else does he even mention Stalin or Stalinism.”

This requires some digging into the complicated and sometimes rather silly history of sectarian Communist parties in the United States.

The Workers’ World Party is a dissident Communist sect that was founded under the leadership of Sam Marcy in 1959, when it formally split from the Socialist Workers’ Party, the leading Trotskyist organization in the U.S. at the time. For a few years before the formal break the Marcyites had been a dissident faction within the SWP. The split was the result of political turmoil within the Fourth International (due to the failure of World War II to produce global revolution as Trotsky had predicted); the Marcyites decided, with the postwar revolutions in China, North Korea, and Yugoslavia, and the creation of Communist governments in Eastern Europe, that global revolution was on anyway, and aligned themselves with the newly-existing Communist governments, especially in China (and later in Cuba). Since all of these governments except for Yugoslavia’s were Stalinist, that meant aligning themselves with Stalinist parties and Stalinist regimes as the leading edge of the global revolution; thus, while still professing to be Trotskyists in doctrine, they downplayed their opposition to Stalinism. They also came to endorse important tenets of Stalinism, such as the theory of national-state socialism (as opposed to the more strictly internationalist view held by the Trotskyists). The formal break with SWP was mainly caused by Marcy’s support for the Soviet invasion of Hungary (most Trotskyists condemned it as an imperialist assault on workers’ autonomy; the Marcy faction condemned the Hungarian councils and the SWP’s support for them as counterrevolutionary). Over time, WWP support for Trotsky and Trotskyism was even further downplayed (mostly in order to make alliances with Stalinist groups easier). Nevertheless, they never merged with official Stalinist organs (such as the Communist Party USA), and they continue to promote the works of Trotsky, as well as Stalin and Mao, in print. Their official label these days is just “Marxist-Leninist.”

So Corn and the rest are sort of right and sort of wrong when they describe WWP as “Stalinists.” What WWP really are is a rather insular and bizarre Stalinist-Trotskyist hybrid, with a substantial number of positions that are fixed by pure opportunism. In any case the standards of evidence they typically employ are so low that where they’re right, you might as well say they are right by accident. WWP can (sort of) be described as Stalinists, but the mere fact that they issued sycophantic praise for Kim Il Sung no more proves that they are Stalinists than “A Plea for Captain John Brown” proves that Thoreau was a Puritan.

In terms of origins and influences, the WWP are Communists, Marxist-Leninists of a sort, and combine Stalinist, Maoist, and Trotskyist influences. The most apt description for them, though, would probably be “freelance nutcases.”

Hope this helps.

Patrick,

I’ve re-read Leiter’s post and I now think your interpretation is more reasonable than when I quickly read things over this morning. I don’t know if it’s right—and I think that not considering clear alternative readings was a mistake on your part—but calling it a “wilfull misreading” was out of line on mine.

My bad.

That said, I’m a bit puzzled by your and zwichenzug’s discussion of the U.S. role in World War II. For example, when you say:

“Hell, FDR basically fought a low-key war of aggression against Germany for practically a year before Hitler declared war on the US. I mean, Hitler was absolutely right to complain that the US was bascially fighting against him without declaring it.”

Which you then follow by saying:

“I was merely pointing out that some wars of choice are justifiable. Some wars of aggression are justifiable. Some wars which involve the conquest of the sovereign territory of other nations are justifed. WW II is one of them from America’s standpoint.”

But if the U.S.’s role in World War II was morally justified (something that I don’t, incidentally, take to be nearly as clear as you do, in light of the actual conduct of the war), surely the reason that it was justified is that it was a defensive rather than aggressive war. Not in self-defense, prior to Pearl Harbor (and arguably never in self-defense in the European theater), but in defense of others against aggression. You may have an argument that this makes it a “war of choice” (thus a justified one, if justified) — since I don’t know what the hell “war of choice” means, I’d be glad to concede the point anyway. But it is certainly not an argument that it is a “war of aggression” (thus a justified one, if justified). Unless you intend to offer some pretty weird theory about why the U.S.’s role was justified, it seems that insofar as you give justifying reasons, you undermine the reasons for calling it a “war of aggression.”

zweichenzug,

“Very briefly on Afghanistan — if they nation of Afghanistan had attacked the U.S. then the case would be clear. The nation didn’t, so the case is muddy. I’m not claiming to be certain that such a war is unjustified.”

Do “nations” ever attack? If so, what constitutes an attack by a “nation”? (Does everyone have to attack? All at once, or one at a time?) If not, then does that make the case for all wars “muddy”? (I think that it does, but I don’t know whether you’d be willing to accept that conclusion.)

‘One of the things that Leiter likes to say is that Democrats are really pro-war because they only oppose the war on “strategic grounds (See number 3).” But I don’t know what this means. I think that “opposing only on strategic grounds” means that Democrats only oppose the war because “it won’t achieve the proposed objectives.” But seems like a perfectly valid reason to oppose a war.’

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be contrasting two reasons for opposing a policy: (1) because it’s unlikely to achieve the proposed ends (i.e., it’s foolish) or (2) because the proposed ends are themselves not worth achieving, at least not through the means proposed (i.e., it’s evil). And you seem further to suggest that Leiter is trashing the mandarins of the Democratic Party because they oppose the war only on grounds of type (1) rather than grounds of type (2).

But if that’s the right interpretation of what you’re saying, it seems like a wilfull misreading of Leiter’s point. When politicians are criticized for opposing policy X “only on strategic grounds,” this does not — as far as I can tell — typically mean that they’re being criticized for calling something impractical when it’s actually evil. The typical complaint is that their reasons for opposing a policy relate only to their own political career (here, as a matter of electioneering) rather than principled opposition to the policy (of either type (1) or type (2)). That certainly seems like the most plausible and charitable interpretation of what Leiter’s on about in the post that you link to.

Now, maybe Leiter is right about this and maybe he’s not. Maybe you’re right about the proper grounds to oppose the war being of type (1) rather than type (2) and maybe you’re not. But I don’t see that you and Leiter have so much as reached a disagreement yet on these points, since it doesn’t seem to me that your objections are responsive to the point he was making in the first place.

Consider_This:

Actually Rad Geek, and everyone else, according to this report: he didn’t actually hit her intentionally.

So please don’t toss around terms like beat until bruised.

You ought to look up what “RTFA” stands for. The article, which I did read, is not the same article as the one you linked below, and it does not specify how the bruises came about. But since Mr. Steinberg was charged with “domestic battery,” the likely cause was not hard to infer. If that inference was mistaken, and a different article that was not linked from here reveals this, then you’re right to point that out, but you’ll have to find a new phrase for the purposes of rhetorical jabs.

That said, here’s what the news report you linked to on the topic says:

At about 9 p.m., “she decided to call the police, at which time he either attempted to get the phone out of her hand or strike her, and he knocked the phone and hit her in the head with the phone,” Matheny said. “Then he took the connector out of the wall so she couldn’t call the police.”

You need to read this article more carefully yourself if you think that it states “he didn’t actually hit her intentionally.” Matheny suggests two different possibilities: (1) Steinberg tried to grab the phone out of her hand, bashed the phone into her head in the process, and then yanked the phone out of the wall; (2) Steinberg tried to hit her with his hand, bashed the phone into her head in the process, and then yanked the phone out of the wall.

If (1) is the case, it might be appropriate to say that “he didn’t actually hit her intentionally;” the blow was the unintentional result of an intentional assault of a different kind (ripping the phone out of her hand). If (2) is the case then of course he did hit her intentionally, since he bloody well intended to strike her and that’s what he did, although he ended up striking something else that ended up striking her. In the former case it might not be appropriate to say that he “beat” her, since that suggests that the blow was intentional. In the latter case it certainly is appropriate to say that he “beat” her, since that’s what you call it when you intentionally sock somebody in the head. In either case he was intentionally assaulting her and she ended up struck and bruised as a result. I’m not sure what impact, if any, you think that any of this is supposed to have on the debate, except to allow you to issue sleazy dismissals implying that it was all some kind of big accident — a position that not even Steinberg himself takes.

Consider_This: “Meanwhile amidst all the erstwhile didactic cerebral diddling no one else has been courteous enough to answer any of my questions about women who abuse men.”

Abuse is bad. Women shouldn’t do it to men. If a female Op-Ed columnist were under investigation and basically copped to beating her husband until he bruised, I’d think that she should probably be suspended and possibly fired, too. Happy?

On the other hand, I’m not sure that your example (“the bitch is always on my case about something!”) is a plausible candidate for a form of abuse. Nor is physical assault an appropriate way to respond to even the worst forms of emotional abuse.

Andrew,

So anyone who hasn’t read anything by a radical feminist doesn’t know what feminism is?

Well … … … yes.

It is no sin not to have read very much feminist theory. But it is totally irresponsible to go spouting off about the aims and theoretical claims of the feminist movement when you have made absolutely no effort to find out about what those are from sources available at your nearest bookstore or library. If you went around ranting about the evils of empiricism without ever having read anything by Locke or Hume, then you would be laughed out of the room; if you made confident pronouncements about the poetry of T. S. Eliot while refusing to read any of it, then your opinion would be dismissed out of hand. As well it should be: since you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about (how would you?) and your assertions have exactly as much evidential grounding as if you were just making them up as you go along.

(Note, incidentally, that I am intentionally ignoring your silly efforts to identify Valerie Solanas as a leading radical feminist, or to beg off on doing the reading when it’s “radical feminists.” Because it’s clear that you haven’t read anything by actual leading radical feminists, and it’s also clear that you haven’t done any serious reading of non-radical feminist theory, either.)

nik,

Thanks for your efforts at an answer. I’m afraid I wasn’t clear enough in my question, though. I know that the term comes from “Who Stole Feminism?” but I say that I don’t know what it means because I can’t find any coherent thread in Christina Hoff Sommers’ usage of the terms, or for that matter in the use by those who have adopted or adapted the distinction from her writing. It rather seems to me that it’s part of a long-standing tradition of Radical Menace politics in response to the feminist movement — that is, concocting a distinction between “reasonable” feminists and “hysterical” feminists, in order to try to divide the movement in order to make political headway. This has come from both within and without the movement, and the labels are always different — suffragists vs. feminists, “power feminists” vs. “victim feminists,” “moderates” vs. “extremists” (“man-haters,” “feminazis,” etc.), straight feminists vs. lesbian feminists, “First Wave” feminists vs. “Second Wave” feminists, “liberals” vs. “radicals” (there actually is a coherent distinction between first and second wave feminists, and also between liberals and radicals, but these terms have often also been abused in Radical Menace discussions), “sex-positive” or “pro-sex” vs. “anti-sex” (!) feminists, “Third Wave” vs. “Second Wave” feminists, “equality feminists” vs. “difference feminists,” “equity feminists” vs. “gender feminists,” etc. etc. etc. Of course, there are genuine factions within the feminist movement and I’ve no objection to identifying factions where factions exist, but it does seem to me that it’s important to make sure that these are distinctions based on the real distinctions in the thought and practice of the people involved, and not something that merely break down to “the feminists that I feel comfortable with” and “the feminists I don’t like”. When it does, the distinction serves only rhetorical purposes, not theoretical understanding.

Sorry for the lengthy prologue; this is one of my pet peeves. That said, let’s see how you set out the distinction:

• “Equity feminists” which — she says — is a doctrine of equal rights between the sexes (liberal feminism, first wave and beginings of the second).
• “Gender feminism” which — she says — views domination of women by men as a pervasive system, is opposed to liberalism, and is in favour of socialisation and state action (whenever people mention patriarchy, third wave).

This is probably consisent with what CHS gives as her “official” definition of equity feminism and gender feminism. But there are a number of problems. First, because they don’t divide the field cleanly, and they leave out some important factions. When she contrasts the “gender feminist” analysis of sexism as a pervasive social system with the “equity feminist” understanding of it in terms of individual violations of equal rights, it seems that she wants to line up her distinction with the liberal/radical distinction; but then why not just use the terms “liberal feminist” and “radical feminist” (which are widely known and originated from within the movement itself), instead of making up your own? I think part of the answer is that Hoff Sommers and many of those who cite her want to move the boundaries so as to move many high-profile liberal feminists from the “reasonable,” “liberal” side of the divide to the “hysterical,” “radical” side. In any case she doesn’t make the distinction cleanly. “Viewing domination of women by men as a pervasive system” and “a doctrine of equal rights between the sexes,” for example, are not mutually exclusive; the first claim has to do with the political question of how sexism operates, whereas the second claim has to do with the separate ethical question of what it is that’s wrong with sexism. You could believe in either, or you could believe in both; and in fact many feminists, historically, have believed in both — for example, First Wave feminists such as Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Abby Foster Kelly certainly considered the oppression of women to be systematic; they often compared their condition to that of Black slaves and their movement to the Abolition movement and to revolutionary uprisings such as the American Revolution. Many of them also suggested that the primary wrongs of this systemic domination were the violations of individual women’s equal rights that it enabled individual men to routinely commit. So does that make them “equity feminists” or “gender feminists” or both or neither? I don’t know.

Nor does viewing women’s oppression as systemic commit you one way or the other on the question of state action to remedy oppression; in fact many First and Second Wave feminists who were clearly liberal rather than radical in their orientation put a lot of effort into campaigns for state action or women’s ability to direct state action (e.g. the campaigns for the vote, antidiscrimination law, the ERA). On the other hand, many radical feminists have called for State action in various fields, but many others have been anarchists and/or advocated avoiding State channels. (This includes many lesbian separatists, who I imagine Christina Hoff Sommers would certainly want to include in her “gender feminist” category if she wants to include anybody.) So do pro-state-intervention liberals count as equity feminists, gender feminists, or neither? What about anti-state-intervention radicals? Again, I haven’t got the foggiest, and the problem is I don’t think CHS does either.

There’s another important criterion that you don’t mention — CHS suggests that “equity feminists” have “equality” (before the law, and possibly before some other prominent social institutions) as their main goal, whereas “gender feminists” reject claims of equality in favor of an political programme based on gender difference, which will either stop the suppression of women’s differences from men, or advantage women over men, or both. (This is part of the reason why Carol Gilligan is a particular object of her wrath.) Here it seems like she is trying to mimic not the liberal / radical distinction, but rather the “equality feminism” / “difference feminism” distinction. I have problems with the latter distinction too, but the chief problem with Hoff Sommers’ distinction is that she seems clearly to think this point is very important, but also seems very clearly to insist that people be lumped together on this point when they actually have nothing in common. For example, “gender feminism” is clearly used to pick out and criticize all of the following: (1) postmodern or poststructuralist feminists who regard gender as entirely performative, (2) radical feminists who regard gender as a socially constructed fiction that is violently enforced as a material political reality, and (3) feminists such as Elizabeth Gould Davis, and maybe Carol Gilligan, who are some sort of biological or spiritual essentialists about gender differences. But if you can be tagged as a “gender feminist” for believing that gender is a fiction that ought to be abolished, and tagged as a “gender feminist” for believing that gender differences are inherent and ineliminable, then again, I don’t have any idea what is being picked out by the term.

One more point of curiosity. I ask because this seems to be a very common theme, actually, with people who yell about “radical feminism” or “gender feminism.”

Andrew:

No, I know exactly what feminism is. I don’t need a reading list to learn more about it. I have better things to do than read Andrea Dworkin’s screed or Valerie Solanas’s revision of Mein Kampf.

Feminism is not about equality, as I wrote earlier it’s about Marxism and special privleges.

Question: if you refuse to actually read any major feminist works, then how do you have any idea about “what feminism is?”

Andrew:

Interesting, since I’m probably more liberal than most Democrats and feminists. Unlike that wonderful feminist, Hillary Clinton, I opposed the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, the war it green-lighted, and the subsequent occupation. Unlike the feminist John Kerry, I support same-sex marriage.

Well, that settles it, then. Congratulations on having managed to move to the left of two weak-kneed moderate Democrat Presidential hopefuls. I’m sure I’m not alone here in standing in awe of your relentless ideological commitment.

It’s kind of hypocritical for you to be criticizing my reading comprehension skills since you and other gender feminists obviously can’t read the US Constitution or you would know that the 14th Ammendment doesn’t contain a “right to privacy.”

(1) You keep using that phrase, “gender feminists.” Just what do you mean by it, anyway? I’m curious, because I keep seeing it used and I have absolutely no idea what it means, if it is supposed to mean anything beyond “feminists that the speaker finds icky.” Could you explain to me what characteristics all and only gender feminists have, which set them apart from the good feminists that you like?

(2) Portraying the doctrine of a Constitutional right to privacy as if it were the invention of some coven of “gender feminists” is either wilfully ignorant or else disingenuous. If you are going to pride yourself on being able to read, you should also spend a little time reading Supreme Court decisions, especially the majority opinion in Griswold and Roe (authored by those notorious gender feminists William O. Douglas and Harry Blackmun). Of course, you can agree or disagree with the Court’s findings (which incidentally draw on principles underlying the Bill of Rights — especially the 4th Amendment and the 9th Amendment — not just the 14th). But you’ll have to actually address their arguments, not just lamely point at the Constitution (which they, of course, read, and cited in their decisions). And you ought to recognize that your issue is with decades-old settled case law in the United States, not with “gender feminists.”

“Richard Posner: I don’t much agree with this guy, but his influence on American jurisprudence is hard to overestimate.”

So is Osama bin Laden’s influence on the Manhattan skyline, but I’m not about to give him my vote for a place among today’s top civic engineers…

Andrea,

(1) Do you think that it is “hysterical” to take offense at the prospect of being forced to fight (that is, to attack, to kill, and possibly to die), against your will, in a war that you disagree with? Set aside for a second the question of whether or not they ought to disagree with the war, and also the question of whether it’s likely that a draft will actually happen — those are separate issues; what I’m asking is whether, given somebody disagrees with a war policy, there is anybody who has the right to force them to go to war anyway? Because if nobody does have the right to act that way, then it seems to me that people are right to resent the prospect.

(2) I’m not sure I understand what you mean when you say that “It’s a shame, though, that there isn’t some way of getting lazy selfish people off their butts and out of themselves; things like mandatory military service used to serve that purpose, at least for some people.” Involuntary servitude in the military is a new and short-lived phenomenon in American history; the first federal draft was instituted in the middle of the Civil War; the only long-term draft the United States has ever had lasted 33 years — about a generation and a half — from 1940 to 1973, with a one year hiatus in 1947. All in all a draft has existed for only 37 years in all of American history; it hardly seems to me that this is the stuff of long-standing tradition.

Nor am I clear on why you think it’s a “shame” that there isn’t some government provision for involuntary servitude for “lazy selfish people.” Whether the victims are “lazy” or not, slavery’s wrong, isn’t it?

(3) ‘I can guarantee you that a lot of people don’t know that these nations, many of which have been busy calling us “warmongers” and so on, actually have the draft.’ Which demonstrates … what? Not that they are wrong to call the U.S. government “warmongers”; maybe they are right about that and maybe they are wrong, but showing that someone is a hypocrite shows nothing at all about whether what they say is true or false. If all you mean to show is that politicians are often hypocritical, then I’m sure you’re right, but I don’t know why you’d suggest that that’s surprising.