Outlaw state
Let us boycott boycotts
June 3, 2010 66 comments
Iain (“M.”) Banks, many of whose books I have enjoyed immensely, writes to the Guardian calling for “a full cultural and educational boycott of Israel”:
It would be a form of collective punishment (albeit a mild one), and so in a way an act of hypocrisy for those of us who have criticised Israel for its treatment of the Palestinian people in general and those in Gaza in particular, but appeals to reason, international law, UN resolutions and simple human decency mean – it is now obvious – nothing to Israel, and for those of us not prepared to turn to violence, what else can we do?
For the little it’s worth, I’ve told my agent to turn down any further book translation deals with Israeli publishers. I would urge all writers, artists and others in the creative arts, as well as those academics engaging in joint educational projects with Israeli institutions, to consider doing everything they can to convince Israel of its moral degradation and ethical isolation, preferably by simply having nothing more to do with this outlaw state. ((Via Flying_Rodent.))
Outlaw state is, of course, a meaningless term of disapproval, a pseudorational signal of one’s righteous outrage, no more rigorous than rogue state or failed state. If it is meant to mean simply that Israel has committed some actions that are considered to be contrary to international law, then outlaw state hardly helps in that respect to distinguish Israel from — to pick two other countries almost at random — the US or Britain. And the fact that outlaws are often heroic individualists battling a corrupt polity (Robin Hood etc) hardly helps Banks’s rhetorical purpose here.
I have written hereabouts before on why cultural boycotts are stupid, and that still applies (the idea that the refusal of pop musicians and sportsmen to play in South Africa somehow broke the apartheid régime is a fairytale). Iain Banks himself realizes too that it is a stupid (and actually vicious) idea: his plaintive “what else can we do?” doesn’t even pretend to be a justification; it is merely the Politician’s Logic of “Something must be done; this is something; therefore, we must do it.”
So Banks presses on regardless, proposing to cure the “ethical isolation” of Israel by, um, isolating it even more, without, or so it seems, even beginning to imagine how that might affect the balance of internal politics in Israel itself.
Boycott is a rather unlovely word in any case, though that can hardly be helped since it was the proper name of the target of the original boycott. Perhaps calls for such silly courses of action would attract more assent if their proposers invited everyone to join in a botham?
Reading the link about the origin of the word, a thought occurred to me. Any sort of political or social action has multiple consequences, both intended and unintended, both positive and negative (from the point of view of the actors), so can rarely be said to be entirely successful.
The above reservation apart, the original boycott seems to have been pretty effective from the point of view of the people organising it.
That said, I agree that a cultural boycott seems to be self-defeating. Writers and artists seem to me to have a significant opportunity to put their opinions across, and ought to use them more in these circumstances. Allow the other side to be seen practising censorship.
(the idea that the refusal of pop musicians and sportsmen to play in South Africa somehow broke the apartheid régime is a fairytale)
Erm, cite? Real life South Africans that I’ve encountered generally seem to disagree with that one…
(not, I’d admit, the pop stars and the scifi writers. But the rugby and the cricket, yes.)
what about fruit? can i still boycott the fruit?
Reading the above, I think that Banks would not be in complete disagreement with you — his stance seems to be that a boycott is noisome, but not doing anything stinks more.
I think I agree with him. I can’t imagine what good the lack of his books would do the political situation in Israel — but I wouldn’t want my (imaginary, theoretical) works to go anywhere near that country, either.
And, as Norm has pointed out, Banks even admits that he considers the sort of boycott he is calling for to be morally wrong.
It is often forgotten that the S Africa boycott was an act of solidarity with the majority population of that country, which makes it very different from most proposed boycotts which tend to be, as Banks says, acts of collective punishment.
I actually withdrew my (imaginary, theoretical) works from the bookshops in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where they were (imaginary, theoretical) bestsellers. My boycotts, however, have been not limited to Israel. During the mid-1990s Balkans wars, I refused to attend an (imaginary, theoretical) conference in Belgrade where my (imaginary, theoretical) body of work was going to be celebrated, and I just recently took it upon myself to turn down an invitation to Moscow for a conference about my (imaginary, theoretical) most recent novel, in protest of ongoing Russian genocide in Chechnya. Later today, when I get bored at work, I think I’m going to insist that my (imaginary, theoretical) publisher establishes a boycott of my (imaginary, theoretical) works in Zimbabwe and in North Korea, and then I’ll write the (imaginary, theoretical) keynote speech I’ll be giving at PEN later in the year, surrounded by (imaginary, theoretical) adoring fans, who will really respect how I’ve really been an (imaginary, theoretical) leader in the (imaginary, theoretical) writing community to which (imaginary, theoretical) I belong.
sw, those imaginary cultural boycotts would not serve the same purpose as a cultural boycott of Israel. A cultural boycott of Israel serves the same purpose as the cultural boycott of South Africa.
It is not an act of collective punishment in any material sense. That would be the case of seiges, blockades, embargoes and sanctions. These were/are imposed on Yugoslavia/Serbia, Zimbabwe, and North Korea.
The cultural boycott of South Africa made it plain that the rest of the world regarded the system of government in South Africa as abhorrent. It did not allow South Africans the luxury of indulging in the self-justifying fiction that they were a normal Commonwealth state, a normal ex-British colony, on the front line against communism, barbarism, black power etc., and that the rest of the world stood behind them. Likewise, a cultural boycott of Israel would help Israelis understand that they are not a normal state, they are not a normal demographic state, and that they are not our front-line of some battle against the Muslim hordes.
“It is often forgotten that the S Africa boycott was an act of solidarity with the majority population of that country”. It is often forgotten that a little under half of the people living under the control of the Israeli state are Palestinian. And that the more than 3 million people live under Israeli control, but have absolutely no democratic right over that control have asked for a boycott.
More, a sporting boycott makes perfect sense, given that the Palestinian football team is regularly unable to fulfil FIFA sanctioned fixtures due to the whims of the Israeli state.
That is very kind of you, to be willing to help Israelis understand? I mean, maybe it’s not true that Israelis are incapable of understanding the nature of their own state by themselves; nevertheless, couching one’s pointless botham as a charitable effort of schoolteacherly concern for infantilized others is quite inspiring! (Edit: I just noticed Banks himself used this phrase in his letter. Same goes for him.)
PS what is a “normal demographic state”?
“It is often forgotten that a little under half of the people living under the control of the Israeli state are Palestinian. “
Depending on how you count them and what you mean by ‘under the control of’.
But it doesn’t change the central point that the SA ponting (let’s not be nationalist about this) was an act of solidarity, so it really isn’t a good analogy with any hostile tendulkar you might propose. If there was a genuinely popular Israeli call for a cultural lara, we should support it. Otherwise it is just an act of collective punishment, like Banks says.
I meant ‘democratic state’, but was thinking about my next paragraph, about the demography of Israeli controlled territory.
And fine, I do see how it reads as condescending and ‘infantilizing’. But it is true that there were South Africans who, at least 30 years on, claim to have thought at the time that their state was normal, part of ‘the free world’, or unusual only in that it was fighting on our behalf on the front line against ‘black communism’. And they claim that the cultural and sporting boycott made them realise that the rest of the world, the very countries and peoples around which they arranged their appeals for legitimacy, did not agree.
And much of the official and unofficial line from Israel appears to be much the same – that Israel is a democracy (the only democracy in the Middle East!), that Israel is like a European nation (and that by implication European states, like Israel, are unlike Arab states), and that Israel is fighting on our behalf on the front line against Muslims.
Now, if the sporting and cultural boycott of South Africa was condescending and infantilizing, then so is any boycott of Israel.
“If there was a genuinely popular Israeli call for a cultural lara, we should support it. Otherwise it is just an act of collective punishment, like Banks says.” So a cultural and sporting sidebottom will be justified if/when the Palestinian population exceeds the Jewish Israeli/settler population? Until that time, Palestinian calls for a Gough are collective punishment?
@SW:
LOL.
I think I meant “hypothetical”. As in, “if I were an author, I wouldn’t want..”
(I have zombie ‘flu today and I can’t think straight.)
What I was trying to say was, it wouldn’t matter to me if withholding my product from Israel would make a difference — I would simply want to avoid having dealings with the place as a matter of personal repugnance.
Palestine, too, probably, while Hamas is in charge. Not necessarily a rational standpoint, but there it is.
Shutting up now.
“So a cultural and sporting sidebottom will be justified if/when the Palestinian population exceeds the Jewish Israeli/settler population? Until that time, Palestinian calls for a Gough are collective punishment?”
Palestinians are not calling for action to be taken against all the occupants of Israel and the occupied territories, nor do they consider themselves Israeli citizens, nor do they (on the whole) wish to be Israeli cititizens, so no. However, if Palestinians call for a cultural laxman of the Gaza strip, perhaps in protest at the actions of Hamas, it should be considered.
Thank you, @shadowfirebird, for taking my comment in the spirit it was written! (Although I will say, I suspect I don’t quite share your repugnance with Israel or Hamas)
A propos of the apposite and serious point in sw’s #7, it sure would be interesting to know where else (if anywhere) Iain Banks refuses to allow his books to be sold.
So it is illegitimate for Palestinians, who live under the domination of Israel, but are not Israeli citizens and do not wish to become Israeli citizens, to call for a sobers of Israel. If, however, they were in favour of a single state solution, that would be legitimate, at least when the proportion of the population that is Palestinian nudges up a few percent. And it would have been illegitimate to boycott South Africa is a) its oppressed black population was a minority, or b) if its oppressed black population, no matter how large, were not citizens of South Africa, having been corralled into eroding Bantustans, and had no wish to be citizens of South Africa, perhaps because the very idea, the very essence of this counterfactual South Africa was one of white domination in perpetuity, a domination that even ‘moderate’ politicians the world over are quick to defend.
And at least some Palestinians are calling for a holding of Israel: http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=868
“So it is illegitimate for Palestinians, who live under the domination of Israel, but are not Israeli citizens and do not wish to become Israeli citizens, to call for a sobers of Israel.”
Yes, it is illegitimate to call for the collective punishment of any group. Banks acknowledges this and then goes on to call for collective puinishment of Israel anyway.
It is not illegitimate to ask others to join you in an act of solidraity. So, Palestinians can legitimately call for a hobbs of Palestine and Israelis can demand the richardsing of Israel. If Palestinians or Israelis changed into some other sort of thing, then things might change, but they haven’t so they don’t.
But black South Africans weren’t really asking people to caddick them, they were asking people to trescothick the white South Africans who exercised power over them. If the white South Africans had asked the world to illingworth them, then they may as well have got on with dismantling apartheid.
If an occupied people cannot ask for an hedley verity of their occupiers, if the only legitimate moxon of an occupier is when said close is demanded by the people of the majority of the people of the occupier, then in practically no situations is a D’Oliveria legitimate.
I don’t even like cricket?
“But black South Africans weren’t really asking people to caddick them,”
Yes they were, with their many white counterparts in the anti-apartheid movement. They called for a khan of SA as a way of forcing their repressive government to take account of the popular will because there was no democratic means to do it. All South Africans were affected by the gracing, so joining it was an act of solidarity. It is a very different thing to ask singers not to perform in your country than to ask them to stop performing in someone else’s.
“then in practically no situations is a D’Oliveria legitimate.””
Just because a conclusion is surprising it does not mean that it is wrong. I think it would only be legitimate when the victims themselves are calling for it. Otherwise it is a form of collective punishment. I would agree , by the way, that the Gazan blockade is a form of collective punishment too,.
@SW:
I’m don’t really have repugnance for Israel or Palestine … just the way some people in either are behaving.
The way I see it, neither Palestine or Israel are behaving in a grown-up fashion. And I happen to think that as the party with most legitimacy in the eyes of the world; most resources; most money — it’s Israel’s job to take the moral high ground, which they have spectacularly failed to do, time and time again. Just my 10p.
it sure would be interesting to know where else (if anywhere) Iain Banks refuses to allow his books to be sold.
Or it might just be an act of whatabouttery, no?
How is Bank’s action “vicious”? That’s a curious term to use, especially on a site the major preoccupation of which is the misuse of language.
Banks’ action is neither stupid nor vicious, nor an example of Politician’s Logic. It’s a gesture. As a gesture it’s necessarily a small and individual thing, just as it was a gesture when as a student I decided not to bank with Barclay’s. These gestures were much derided at the time, as were others, like renaming student bars after Nelson Mandela and so on. And indeed, there were many people who asked “why aren’t you boycotting the USSR?” (or Argentina, or Equatorial Guinea, or Indonesia, and so on). These were good questions up to a point, but beyond that point they were whatabouttery avant la lettre, because rather than it being a case of “this is something, therefore we must do it”, it’s a case of “this is something small, but better do this than do nothing”.
Because the botham he calls for is, as he admits himself, an act of collective punishment. I assume we can all agree that collective punishment is vicious?
No doubt it’s a case of “better do this than nothing, because even though it’s vicious and very possibly counterproductive, it will at least make me feel better”.
Banks’ argument, though, seems to be based precisely upon the exceptionalisation of Israel (“outlaw state”, “ethical isolation”, “… by the rest of the world”), rather than a presentation of the state as just one part of a “bigger problem”.
Even if one accepts that a ranatunga is a good idea in a situation such as this, then I think one is still left with the need either i) to prove that the target of one’s odumbe is peculiarly abhorrent, and thus deserving of such treatment or ii) to accept that many states are guilty of “moral degradation” whilst arguing that state X is particularly ripe for or susceptible to an of pataudi, sr. of the type one is proposing (i.e. to say why this particular small thing).
In his (admittedly short) letter, Banks doesn’t attempt either of those things; rather, he uses a register consonant with i), even though he surely must realise that ii) is the path of least resistance. I think that this makes it more than justifiable to ask certain questions of him.
I assume we can all agree that collective punishment is vicious?
No, very obviously we can’t. It manifestly depends on the nature of the punishment. If the whole class has to stay in during playtime because a few boys were noisy at the back, that’s collective punishment, but it’s not vicious.
very possibly counterproductive
Pretty much all political actions are possibly counterproductive: similarly inaction. You may think Banks’ action likely conterproductive, and it may be that you’re right: but plainly he thinks otherwise, and so do I.
No, all collective punishment is vicious (ie not virtuous; or, if you prefer, unjust). One might consider that where the punishment is of small moment, as for example in your schoolroom example, so is the vice; but that does not suddenly make it right. One might even want to argue, as Banks does, that the vice of collective punishment may be outweighed by desirable consequences — eg helping the Israelis understand. But even Banks admits that the collective punishment in itself is wrong.
Banks’s argument is very strange, really. He hopes to, in some sense, educate the Israelis (help them understand) by means of, erm, an educational boycott.
No, that’s not strange at all: it would be quite normal to carry out an action in order to demonstrate to somebody that one was serious about something. The pupils may not believe you’rer serious that the staffroom is out of bounds: they believe it once they’re in detention.
all collective punishment is vicious (ie not virtuous; or, if you prefer, unjust).
That seems to rest on a prior claim that there can be no justified judgements of collective responsibility. That seems much too strong. After all, we often judge corporate entities responsible (say for negligence) and punish them. But corporate entities (companies, for example) are collectives are they not?
Yes they are. But punishing them as corporate entities, rather than punishing the individuals responsible for certain decisions, might indeed be wrong, if it leads to the firing of blameless individuals, the loss of money by blameless shareholders, etc: this is eg Robert Reich’s view (in Supercapitalism), and I find his arguments quite persuasive.
I agree with Steven about the specific case of collective punishment, but “All x is vicious”? Only if x = viciousness. Otherwise, I think it’s in the same logical/semantic ballpark as:
“All commies are godless”
“All capitalism is evil”
“All Lancet study deniers are shills”
etc.
‘Likewise, a cultural boycott of Israel would help Israelis understand that they are not a normal state, they are not a normal demographic state,’
Having spent a great deal of time talking to Israelis, I have come to the conclusion that they see things the other way round. That they are indeed not a normal state, but one which is being targetted as a scapegoat in a larger and grander narrative of anti-imperialism. You may disagree with this, but if the it is the intention of the boycott to educate Israelis, it is so far failing miserably since they are interpreting the message in a completely different way.
Increasingly the Israeli right is successively convincing the mainstream that ‘the world has always hated us, it will hate us whatever we do.’ In 2005 I was talking to a Turkish novelist who rather complacently explained that the world disliked Jews because they were powerful, I pointed out that it hadn’t seemed to like Jews when we were powerless, either.
Steven Poole writes:
I agree, but “vicious” (in the sense that you use it: “not virtuous”, “wrong”, etc) also seems a “meaningless term of disapproval” in this context (ie when you write about “all collective punishment”…). Since you can’t possibly know the circumstances, causes, consequences (etc) of “all” cases of “collective punishment”, I don’t see how you’re asserting anything more “meaningful” than your own disapproval applied to a nominalisation.
When it comes to specific cases, I share your disapproval of Banks’s suggestion (just as I share Banks’s disapproval of the attack on the convoy). But you accuse Banks of resorting to “a pseudorational signal” of “righteous outrage”, then you write that all collective punishment is “vicious”? I mean, come on.
Well, surely the argument intended is precisely that collective punishment is always immoral or at least unpleasant, regardless of intended or actual end. Disagreement about that substantive claim is possible (re: “immoral” anyway), but I don’t see how the claim itself is “pseudorational” or internally incoherent or linguistically dishonest. I mean, would you balk at the claim that “all war is vicious”, say?
democracy_grenade wrote:
I appreciate that, but my point was that I don’t see how one person’s disapproval (expressed as what I regard as moral absolutism), wrt to a nominalisation, might be seen as more “meaningful” than Banks’s expression of disapproval wrt an abstract noun.
Unless you impose conditions, “all war” could include anything that anyone (in the whole of space-time) considers to be war, including the war against racism, the war against soil erosion, and the future war against The Great Tentacled Ones from the Cthulhu Nebula, etc. Or you could limit it to your own specification of “all war”, but the more you make logical sense with your semantic specifications, the more you move towards a statement which has no meaning beyond definition/formalism (eg “all vicious war is vicious”) – which was the point I was making @ #31
Hi there
Here is Linda Grant when she supported boycotts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl.....lestinians
‘Sharon can choose to escalate this conflict into a regional war. Or he could evacuate every settler who does not choose to shoot it out unprotected by the IDF. He could then build an “iron wall” along the 1967 borders to keep the bombers out.
Behind it, Palestinians would undergo immense suffering, particularly in Gaza, but they would be forced into making an historic choice.’
Interesting how Sharon and the extreme right in Israel took Linda’s advice.
Indeed. That was an appalling thing to have written. Wrong wrong wrong wrong. It was written after a suicide bombing, and illustrates what happens to the mind when it’s driven mad by anger. A useful lesson for both sides.
democracy_grenade said:
Another point is that I don’t see an “argument” here, just an assertion about “all” cases. An argument might take the following form:
Arguments in that form at least refer to what we can report about real events (and people’s reported experiences). And of course it’s possible to refute such arguments with contrary cases.
But assertions about “all” and “always” refer to something beyond real (experienced, reported, etc) events. An assertion such as “all collective punishment is vicious” looks to me more like a definition of terms than an argument. If someone presents a contrary case (of non-vicious collective punishment) then given the defining terms, it can be dismissed in two ways:
1. “Since it’s not vicious, it can’t be collective punishment”.
2. “It really is vicious – in essence – despite all the reports that it isn’t experienced as being vicious”.
An example that springs to mind is when people voluntarily sign up for a system which involves collective punishment (eg in training institutions) – when they fully understand what is going on (they might even have moral viewpoints in which they regard some forms of collective punishment as virtuous).
One can accept such examples as refuting an argument, or one can impose the rules (terms, definitions, whatever) of one’s absolute moral formulations and insist that (for example) it’s not “real” collective punishment, or that they’re “really” being subjected to viciousness, regardless of what they think.
Having said all that, I personally disapprove of most specific cases of collective punishment that I know about. Particularly when applied to “states”. But let’s not turn that into some absolute, abstract moral formulation which is bound to be contradicted by examples in nitty-gritty reality, and which to my mind is at least as “meaningless” as anything that Iain Banks wrote.
If all boycotts are deemed to be “vicious collective punishment”, I would like to ask Steven what actions he would regard as virtuous in opposing Israeli aggression?
It seems to me that the Palestinians are allowed neither violent resistance (crap weapons unable to target effectively therefore endangering civilians and thus war crimes), nor non-violent resistance (boycotts are collective punishment and/or racist).
Perhaps other readers could enlighten me as to the most morally correct form of registering my disgust at the actions of the Israeli state, if indeed there is one.
#39 almost seems to be saying, “Well, if I am to take seriously any proposed prohibitions on either a) killing civilians with “crap weapons”* or b) banning Israeli academics from international conferences and not letting Israelis read our books, then the prohibitors are obliged to tell me what I can do instead, because frankly I cannot think of anything myself?”
But I am sure that cannot really be the intention.
* the exact mirror-Unspeak of “smart weapons”.
Well as someone who supports the Palestinian right to resist the illegal occupation of their lands, by any means necessary I don’t believe the prohibitors are obliged to tell me anything.
However, as you regard the Palestinians’ only non-violent method of resistance as both stupid and vicious, I was hoping you were going to offer a more acceptable course of action for them. Me, I think the boycotts are a great idea; economic, academic, cultural, sporting – bring them on.
Stephen said:
‘#39 almost seems to be saying, “Well, if I am to take seriously any proposed prohibitions on either a) killing civilians with “crap weapons”* or b) banning Israeli academics from international conferences and not letting Israelis read our books, then the prohibitors are obliged to tell me what I can do instead, because frankly I cannot think of anything myself?”’
Is that really what he seems to be saying?
To me he’s suggesting that a furious opposition to a cultural boycott might simply cover for an unwillingness to see any action taken against Israel – or, indeed, a belief that any action is required in relation to the situation of the Palestinians.
Is it a fair question? Who knows? But I’d’ve thought it wasn’t hard to read between the lines.
Instead you responded with what looked to me like an insult dressed up as an exegesis.
#41:
And yet you feel moved to unspeak the deliberate targeting of civilians with rockets as an unfortunate consequence of having “crap weapons unable to target effectively therefore endangering civilians”. If you consider the means “necessary”, why obfuscate it?
#42:
Sure, who knows? If only there were some way to find out!
#38: try this:
1. Punishing-for-φ any individual who is not responsible for committing φ is unjust. (This is almost analytic, or so it seems to me.)
2. All cases of collective punishment involve at least one instance of 1…
2a …except for the special case where all individuals in the collective actually have committed φ, but in that case we wouldn’t call it “collective punishment” but rather simply “punishment”; so
3. Collective punishment — ie, all punishment-for-φ of some number of individuals at least one of whom has not actually committed φ — is unjust.
And yet you feel moved to unspeak the deliberate targeting of civilians with rockets as an unfortunate consequence of having “crap weapons unable to target effectively therefore endangering civilians”. If you consider the means “necessary”, why obfuscate it?
I was expressing the formulation of those who would deny the Palestinians the right to any self-defence whatsoever. Which would seem to include you. If Hamas had helicopters armed with laser-guided missiles to take out the Israeli high command, perhaps they too could carry out a policy of “targetted assassinations” instead of relying on home-made rockets aimed at Israeli civilians. If you feel that would be better perhaps you could indicate some level of support for the lifting of the blockade so that Hamas could get their hands on some decent weaponry.
Personally, I think it’s up to the Palestinians to choose their own form of resistance. If someone’s being raped you don’t deny them any form of defence at their disposal. If the rapist doesn’t like it, they could always stop the raping. The fact that most Palestinians support a boycott over violent forms of resistance seems to me a good thing. I don’t understand why you would rubbish their only viable option without suggesting an alternative. If you were arguing in good faith.
To me he’s suggesting that a furious opposition to a cultural boycott might simply cover for an unwillingness to see any action taken against Israel – or, indeed, a belief that any action is required in relation to the situation of the Palestinians….Is it a fair question? Who knows?
Sure, who knows? If only there were some way to find out!
I shall ask you again; if you believe that there is an occupation of Palestine AND that said occupation is a bad thing, what course of resistant action is open to Palestinians, and their supporters, that is morally acceptable to you?
The line of reasoning expressed in #45 illustrates well the general truth that some large proportion of the world’s evil derives from the habit of aggregating individuals into collectives and treating those collectives as if they were individuals.
And answer came there none…
“If someone’s being raped you don’t deny them any form of defence at their disposal. “
You have muddled up ‘defence’ with ‘punishment’, perhaps accidentally. Of course the victim of an attack can use whatever means are at her disposal (withing reason) to resist the attack, but should she be entitled to punish the rapist’s children after the act? This has been tried, you know. It wasn’t all that popular.
I am guessing that you would disagree with Britain’s recent military actions in Iraq, even consider them crimes. So what punishment for those crimes would it be just to inflict on you?
Steven @44
Your logic is fine, of course, but your No.1 premise already has the “all cases” absolutism (a statement of your own moral terms). Suppose it’s reworded in less “absolute” terms:
Say a person joins a group which openly practises collective punishment. She is punished for something she didn’t commit, and doesn’t find this unjust. Clearly this refutes the above premise. But it’s not clear (to me at least) if it refutes your premise. You could always respond (for example) that the punishment in the example “really” is unjust, regardless of what the person in the example it thinks.
In a sense your premise is “meaningless” to me, because I don’t know whether a given case refutes it. I think this is a general problem with framing things in absolute terms (eg “X is always unjust”) as we don’t have access to a universal, infallible Unjust-o-meter.
“You have muddled up ‘defence’ with ‘punishment’, perhaps accidentally.”
I’m not sure he does. The occupation of Palestine, and the oppression of Palestinians, is an ongoing act.
“I am guessing that you would disagree with Britain’s recent military actions in Iraq, even consider them crimes. So what punishment for those crimes would it be just to inflict on you?”
Again, I can’t speak for WP. But if people around the world refused to perform for British audiences, refused to buy British goods, etc., on the basis that we are currently engaging in the murderous occupation of two countries (and that we’ll be celebrating that on 26th June) then I’d think that that was a perfectly decent way to express disapproval. Of course, to some commentators above the only way that this could be legitimate would be if the majority of the British population called for it – if Iraqis and Afghanis were to call for it – as Palestinian have called for a boycott of Israel – this would be illegitimate. My god, if only the South Africans had had the wit to make all blacks under South African domination formally the citizens of Bantustans (under total white South African military domination, of course) then the boycott of South Africa would have been illegitimate too!
And of a boycott of Britain – I wouldn’t see it as collective punishment – it is not a blockade, it is not a seige, and that there is an equivalence drawn between a cultural boycott and a military enforced blockade in the comments above is baffling.
some large proportion of the world’s evil derives from the habit of aggregating individuals into collectives and treating those collectives as if they were individuals.
I just have to ask, to what extent are the people of supposedly representative democracies, who claim to be the basis of power and authority of such states, responsible for the actions of their government?
I really can’t see how on the one hand one can write ‘We, the People’, and on the other hand say ‘Hey, sorry, mate, wasn’t me: I didn’t vote for ’em!’
If, in fact, the people of such a state cannot be held responsible for the actions of the state, then the state is not, by definition, representative of its people, and its claim to authority on the basis of such representation must therefore be considered invalid.
I really can’t see how on the one hand one can write ‘We, the People’, and on the other hand say ‘Hey, sorry, mate, wasn’t me: I didn’t vote for ‘em!’
See 46. Or, if that’s too compressed, I recommend Latour and Callon’s paper Unscrewing the Big Leviathan. Who, in your sentence above, is “one”? What does the term “we, the people” mean, who wrote it, on which people’s behalf did he write? Who was excluded? What is the nature of the compromise posed by electoral democracy and who is consulted in striking this compromise?
If, in fact, the people of such a state cannot be held responsible for the actions of the state, then the state is not, by definition, representative of its people, and its claim to authority on the basis of such representation must therefore be considered invalid.
Latour and Callon would tell you that we are always implicated in political attempts at forming gesellschaften, frequently without our knowledge. It really is quite a good paper, if a bit rambly and not perfectly aimed at the topic at hand.
Note, even if you did vote for ’em, that does not require you to support ’em in all the crimes ‘ey commit. I’m pretty sure Jefferson, and maybe even Madison and Adams intended something very, very different from that sort of populist tyranny.
Steven, do you continue to find Reich’s views plausible in the light of the BP spillage? Holding the company corporately liable is likely to result in more compensation for the victims than you would get if you went after particular bad decision-makers personally. I don’t see how it would be unjust to expect shareholders to suffer either: after all they get their dividends and no-one forced them to buy the shares in the first place.
RE #53 – a more general point is wrt “responsibility” in such matters. Steven writes: “Punishing-for-? any individual who is not responsible for committing ? is unjust”. The problem with that formulation is that “responsibility” is often not a binary matter of “responsible / not responsible”.
There are seemingly infinite shades of responsibility and blame, although juries have to draw a line somewhere. Outside of the courtroom there’s also “complicity” (according to certain media critics, BBC’s Newsnight is “complicit” in war crimes, etc – but I think that’s taking things too far).
The more I think about it, the more unwise “all collective punishment is vicious” (and other similar absolute formulations) seems to me.
Chris, #53 —
Yes, I continue to find them plausible, but I take it that the claim of victims for compensation is a competing justice claim that in this instance might be judged to override those arguments. But —
The problem is that the set of “shareholders” comprises not just (or even mainly) wealthy individual speculators — for whose cases I agree with your argument — but also massive pension funds etc., by means of which an awful lot of ordinary working people are to greater or lesser extents dependent on the performance of BP’s share price (as well as others) for their future financial security; and they were not consulted on whether their funds should buy the shares in the first place.
richard, #52 — I didn’t know that paper, thanks!
If you agree that’s it’s not unjust to punish some shareholders, isn’t that an acceptance of collective punishment (according to your terms) in this case?
After all, those shareholders aren’t directly “responsible” for the spill. Or are they?
The punishment of wealthy speculators holding shares in BP would indeed be an instance of collective punishment and therefore unjust; I just can’t get very excited about the injustice they would suffer compared to the injustice suffered by other parties in the situation. In buying the shares, the speculators have indeed volunteered to risk being subject to this kind of injustice.
I’m excited but confused by this idea that a reduction in the BP share price constitutes a form of collective punishment. I confess that I have only glancing familiarity with contemporary theory on publicly-traded corporate stock, but I rather thought such entities were set up to shield their officers and stockholders from punitive damages or debts beyond the value of the stock they owned – the idea being that one would be able to gamble in comparative safety on the fortunes of enterpreneurs without having to take on the risk of unknown debts. Have I missed something? Are Apple’s stockholders currently being collectively praised or rewarded for their good deeds? Or did they just back the right horse, for right now?
Steven @58: To me that looks like the same kind of rationalisation for collective punishment that Iain Banks was making.
#60 — sorry, I can’t find the bit where Banks said Israelis had volunteered to be subject to a boycott, can you remind me where it is?
richard, #59 — I didn’t mean to suggest that the share-price movement in itself was collective punishment; rather, the idea (Reich’s) is that the levying of a corporate fine, as Chris proposed for BP at #53, leads to collective punishment being realized via various mechanisms, one of which being that the fine causes a downward movement in the share price and so various “folks” “lose” “money” etc.
Steven @61
Your rationalisation is similar to Banks’s because you’re saying you can live with the collective punishment of some BP speculators, as the “injustice” is small “compared to the injustice suffered by other parties”. I think that’s the same logic Banks was using.
Neither can I, because “volunteered” was your word. Regarding the speculators, you seem to saying it’s “unjust” for them to receive something they’ve “volunteered” for.
#62 — reread #27.
“After all, those shareholders aren’t directly “responsible” for the spill. Or are they?”
They put their money into a company that explores for, drills for and extracts oil from deep-sea sites. They chose not to put their money into lower-risk companies, which pay lower dividends. They claim to be risk-takers and they should have known the risks. They seem not to have asked enough questions about contingency plans and risk management. To me that seems to imply a certain level of responsibility.
Great post!
Some further comment on this fascinating thread:
http://www.thecommentfactory.c.....ment-3151/