Philosophy for Cretino-Leninists, Or How To Construct Bad Pseudo-Logic the SWP Way by Philip Dore

In a previous article, LFIQ’s Alan Johnson introduced the concept of the Single Transferable Article on Iraq, one of the many wonky assumptions and spurious pieces of logic that infest the current debate over Iraq, particularly among our old friends the Socialist Workers Party and their allies.

Given the intellectual vapidity of much of the pseudo-left, one could, with a little imagination and plenty of back copies of the Socialist Worker, use their verbal outpourings as a basis to create a basic philosophy course on how to construct false arguments. A sort of Logic 101 on how not to do it. A Trinny and Susannah for the mind, if you will.

So, other than the Single Transferable Article on Iraq, what other concepts would be on the syllabus for our hypothetical philosophy course?

Anyone who spends any time arguing with the SWP, be it at political meetings, the comments boxes on Harry's Place or wherever, should have at some point come across the debating tool/handy cop-out that I like to refer to as the Rebuttal by Spurious Comparison.

This is the point where, upon being challenged over the SWP's dopey comments praising the Iraqi insurgency/Hezbollah/the IRA/Fidel Castro/whatever, a Swuppie responds by beginning to foam at the mouth and screeching, "But what about Fallujah/the Israeli separation wall/Bloody Sunday/the US economic embargo/that teacher who used to put me down in geography class?" The implication being that so long as somebody else is behaving badly elsewhere, you can't condemn the actions of one individual or organisation, mmkay?

There's a good example of Rebuttal by Spurious Comparison in the June 18th edition of the Socialist Worker, which contains a book review of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's new biography of Mao Zedong.

The review is pretty scathing about the book. Fair enough. I haven't read it myself, but I did notice that the respected biographer Frank Mclynn has "openly pro-imperialist" and a "campaign in support of Blair's Iraq strategy.", criticising the authors (among other things) for their lack of objectivity. Though in fairness to Jung Chang, it's hard to be objective about a ruler when you were a direct personal victim of his policies.

Towards the end of the review comes the Rebuttal by Spurious Comparison, when the reviewer declares:

The weakest point about this book is its claim that Mao was uniquely evil and “responsible for 70 million peacetime deaths”—“more than either Hitler or Stalin”.

All rulers in this barbaric capitalist world are prepared to see people die if it is necessary to achieve their goals of accumulating wealth or armaments.

They endorse sanctions in Iraq, which killed half a million children in ten years. They happily blast apart cities such as Belgrade or Fallujah. And they preside over a system that sees 50,000 die in the Third World each day from poverty-related causes — which means more deaths in just four years than died under Mao’s brutal regime.

Now hang on a minute. For all the unholy mess in Iraq, Bush and Blair have still yet to kill more Iraqis than Saddam did, let alone more than the number of Chinese people Mao killed.

And yes, more people may die in the Third World from poverty in four years than were killed by Mao under his rule, but that's worldwide not in one country. And it's as a result of a wide number of factors. Yes, these include crippling debt and unjust trade agreements imposed by the developed world, but it also includes war, natural disasters such as famine or tsunamis, and the corrupt, self-serving governments that many Third World nations are saddled with. Unlike the 70 million Chinese killed by Mao, they're not the result of policies that emanate from one man.

There's an ugly suggestion implied in this sort of argument, which is that elected leaders of liberal democracies can be equated to the likes of Mao, Hitler and Stalin. For all the (many) faults of Bush, Blair, Chirac etc, that is an odious suggestion.

Another concept to add to our little philosophy syllabus is one that we could dub Consistency Equals Correct. This is when political ideologues start behaving like religious fanatics, declaring the tenets of their faith to be true and pure, and the slightest deviation from the One True Faith to be blasphemy. The StWC’s stance on the war is a good example of the Consistency Equals Correct principle, and the foolishness that it causes as a result of principles being carried to their ridiculous extremes. The War Was Wrong, Therefore All Troops Must Leave Immediately (even if this results in carnage, civil war and the eventual victory of the fascists). On the opposite side of the argument, one can also see the same principle at work among certain US Republican supporters – The War Was Right, Therefore Bush Is A Benevolent Deity Immune From Criticism. Any nuances in this view (“I was against the war, but I think the occupation should end with an orderly transition to a democratic state, not a headlong dash to the airport”; “I was in favour of the war, but I disagree with the US’s cack-handed running of the occupation”) therefore become heresy and treason.

Ideas expressed with nuances are often more likely to reflect reality than those that stick to fundamental, unwavering principles. However, those who have tried to express a nuanced view on Iraq have come under attack from the True Believers. After the war began, the Liberal Democrats were excoriated by the anti-war movement for opposing war only “until the first shot is fired”. This missed the point that the Liberal Democrats had made their opposition felt in the only place where it really mattered – in the Commons votes on the issue. Anything after the war had begun would have been mere vacant posturing; unless of course Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell were expect to leap on a plane to the deserts of Southern Iraq, where they would lead a parade of middle-class liberals to run in front of the oncoming armoured divisions shouting “Stop where you are! Turn around and head back to Kuwait!” Admittedly an amusing mental image, but not very realistic.

Labour Friends of Iraq have also taken a nuanced view of the Iraq conflict. Some of us (including myself) opposed the war; others supported it. However, we believe that whatever one’s original position on the war, there is a dire and pressing need to support our comrades in the Iraqi trade union movement. We believe that working towards democracy and a working civil society is more useful than childish “anti-imperialist” notions. We believe that brave, dedicated trade unionists have a right not to be subjected to potentially harmful slurs and smears by cretino-Leninist organisations like the SWP and Workers Power. This apparently makes us "campaign in support of Blair's Iraq strategy."

Those among us who recently watch Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith may remember the following exchange that takes place in the film:

Anakin Skywalker: “If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi: “Only a Sith thinks in absolutes.”

The exchange is of course a not-very-subtle jibe at George W. Bush, but it could easily be about George Galloway. The absolutism of his anti-war stance has led him to openly urge Iraqis to kill other Iraqis who he regards as collaborating with the occupation. Since Galloway seems to have a shockingly broad view of who he regards a collaborator – last year he called an Iraqi trade unionist a "quisling"in print – this comes with deeply sinister undertones. How ironic that the two Georges – Bush and Galloway – have both come to embody childish Manichean views of good and evil, black and white, goodies and baddies.

In the absence of our hypothetical philosophy course becoming reality, any readers who want to explore this subject further might wish to make use of the
woolly-thinker's guide to rhetoric at the excellent Butterflies and Wheels website. You might find it useful to arm yourself with the kind of pseudo-logic so beloved of pseudo-leftists, so as to be ready with some verbal brickbats to retort with. Alternatively, you could use it to put together a speech to deliver at Marxism 2005.