Will the real left please stand up?
True liberals, who don't buy into the cultural relativism and anti-Americanism of today's left, need a movement of their own
Morton Weinfeld
Citizen Special
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
For many decades, and more noticeably in the aftermath of 9/11 and the launching of the "war on terror," there has been a vacuum on the political spectrum. It has been harder for the so-called democratic or non-communist left, (or American Democrats in the Kennedy, Humphrey and Johnson tradition) to find an intellectual and political home.
People who sought to combine a progressive domestic agenda -- strong support for the liberal welfare state, free trade unions, gender and racial equality, free speech, fair trade -- with a robust, proactive and pro-democratic foreign agenda, had nowhere to turn. One or the other would have to be sacrificed.
So this past spring a group of British intellectuals and academics, led by Norman Geras, an emeritus professor of politics at Manchester University, drafted and publicized the Euston Manifesto.
The purpose of the document, a statement of 15 broad socio-political principles, was to create a coherent vehicle to rally left-liberals and other progressives who were disillusioned by some of the anti-democratic, neo-isolationist and reflexively anti-American tendencies of the contemporary left.
Mr. Geras, aided by three other colleagues -- Damien Counsell, director of Bioinformatics.org, Alan Johnson, editor of Democratiya, and Shalom Lappin, professor of computational linguistics at Kings College London -- drafted a platform to address that gap.
Over several meetings at a pub called O'Neill's, not far from Euston Underground station (hence the name), and many hours on e-mail exchanges and trolling the blog-
osphere, a document emerged. It is available to be read -- and signed -- on the group's website www.eustonmanifesto.org .
The Euston Manifesto itself begins with a preamble, which outlines its call to democrats and progressives. It then lists and explains briefly 15 principles:
(1) For democracy -- free elections, separation of powers, separation of church and state.
(2) No apology for tyranny -- no excusing of or apologetics for anti-democratic forces.
(3) Human rights for all -- a firm commitment to the universal character of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a critique of culturally relativistic arguments that can legitimate injustice in non-western societies.
(4) Equality -- commitment to gender and ethno-racial equality, as well as support for labour rights and free trade unions.
(5) Development for freedom -- globalization must serve the interests of the majority of workers and citizens in the developing world, through policies like fair trade, debt cancellation and anti-poverty programs.
(6) Opposing anti-Americanism -- while recognizing that America has at times supported anti-progressive regimes and forces, it rejects a reflexive anti-Americanism as a guide to foreign policy.
(7) For a two-state solution (Israel/Palestine) -- this position implicitly condemns Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other similar groups, Syria and Iran, which by word and/or deed oppose Israel's legitimate existence.
( 8 ) Against racism -- opposition to racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, as well as anti-Semitism and those variants of anti-Zionism that merge with anti-Semitism.
(9) United against terror -- assertions of a just cause do not justify acts of terror.
(10) A new internationalism -- states that cross a threshold of inhumanity can see their sovereignty overturned under the "responsibility to protect."
(11) A critical openness -- politically constructive ideas and voices can be found, on certain issues, on both the left and the right.
(12) Historical truth -- an objective historical record exists and should be respected (in opposition to some post-modernist views in which facts can never be established).
(13) Freedom of ideas -- with the exception of libel and incitement to violence, free speech, including the right to criticize religious ideas.
(14) Open sources -- maximizing flows of ideas and information, including the open development of software and opposing patenting of genes or facts of nature.
(15) A precious heritage -- a catch-all endorsing the 18th-century principles of liberty, equality, solidarity and human rights, while arguing against claims to one total and unchanging truth. (A bit ironic -- the only total truth is that there is no unquestioned and unquestioning total truth ...)
Many of the signers of the manifesto might not support all 15 principles, and certainly not to the same degree or in the same way. (And Canadians might be less comfortable with some elements than American or British endorsers.)
Following these principles, the document contains an "elaboration" section that addresses some specific issues.
It argues that the 9/11 terror attacks (no conspiracy theorists here) were "an act of mass murder" and not "America's deserved comeuppance." The initial drafters and early supporters differed among themselves about the original decision to attack Iraq. But they affirm that now support for the "insurgency" is misguided and efforts to steer Iraq onto some post-Saddam democratic path are required.
The group clearly states its opposition to anti-Semitism and to the periodic tendencies of strident anti-Zionism and one-sided anti-Israeli criticism to make common cause with explicit Jew hatred. They also reject what they see as a double standard in the left, in which human-rights violations committed by democracies are strongly condemned whereas those committed by anti-western states or political movements are ignored, under-reported or excused.
The manifesto received attention from various commentators, journalists, and bloggers. Many in the formal left were hostile, calling it an apology for Anglo-American imperialism.
This hostility from the left may have been exacerbated by positive comments from observers on the right. William Kristol, neo-conservative pundit and editor of the Weekly Standard, called the manifesto an example of "political courage and moral clarity." Though he disagreed with many of the group's domestic perspectives, he hoped the group might make common cause with conservatives on issues such as "the fight against tyranny and terror, against secular dictatorship and Islamic jihadism."
Writer Christopher Hitchens commented that the document "prefers those who vote in Iraq and Afghanistan to those who put bombs in mosques and schools and hospitals." But as of this writing he has yet to endorse the manifesto officially. Respected American writers and scholars with credible credentials as liberals and democratic socialists have endorsed it, including Jeffrey Alexander of Yale, journalist and NYU professor Paul Berman, and Michael Walzer of Princeton and Dissent magazine.
The manifesto will not persuade doctrinaire ideologues of the Canadian left; its aim is a core of moderate progressives, traditional liberals and red Tories. Several Canadians have signed the manifesto, and have begun communicating with each other to see if there might be support in Canada for an effort to create a Canadian chapter. A similar void exists in the Canadian political spectrum.
Supporters of the New Democratic Party or the left wing of the Liberal party would support most of the domestic priorities as described. But they would also be likely to share a visceral antipathy to the United States (and especially the Bush administration), and a preference to seek "root causes" of terrorist attacks and to use "soft power" internationally.
They would in general oppose Canada's continuing military involvement in Afghanistan, and criticize the Harper government's resolute support for Israel's security and distrust of the long-term intentions of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran in the region.
Certainly anti-Americanism has long been a central feature of progressive, left-liberal Canadian thinking, even more so than in other liberal democracies that do not live in the shadow of the American elephant.
Among the Liberal leadership contestants, Michael Ignatieff or Scott Brison might approximate Euston perspectives, though these might be construed as "too American" for the current party insiders.
In the Canadian political landscape today, it would seem that the NDP, because of its foreign policy stances, and the Conservative party because of its domestic policy agenda, might be less open to Euston positions than a tough-minded Liberal party.
But Euston supporters in Canada, as in Britain, are resolutely non-partisan. The objective is to influence the intellectual and political climate.
Canadian supporters of Euston include a range of democratic socialists, liberals, and conservatives. They are not all academic egg-head types. One describes himself as a New Democrat, a software technician, but not university-educated.
The group is discussing the possibility of establishing a Canadian website, and seeking high-profile supporters. They are also deciding whether or how the group should try to take positions on immediate policy issues as they arise, or remain wedded to endorsing a set of broad principles.
As Euston activist Shalom Lappin recently told me in London, with the recent Lebanese-Gaza explosion, and the possibility of a western confrontation with Iran, the issues raised by Euston are even more timely. Canadians should engage them.
Morton Weinfeld is a professor of sociology at McGill and a signatory of the Euston Manifesto.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2006
