Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 16:19:48 +0100
From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: Re: Re-Suicide bombs & Middle Eastern mentality


Michael L writes:

>>Why mystify the situation by drawing analogies between lemmings
>>and suicide bombers? Throughout the world, soldiers are trained
>>to act like lemmings when so ordered.

To which Zeynep replies:

>Well, it mystifies me. How is this possible? What does it mean for the human
>existence that the social-being can override the most basic instict of
>self-preservation?


I think the answer to Zeynep's question lies in the 'self' of evolution,
which must be the species rather than the individual. (The problems this
introduces in relation to consciousness and the subject are obvious but
productive. The progression subjective idealism (Kant) - objective idealism
(Hegel) - dialectical materialism (Marx) indicates the growing awareness in
philosophy of this relationship between the individual as bearer of
consciousness and the collective as subject). Altruism for the sake of the
group is no great problem, it's the sacrifice (willing if we're dealing
with altruism) of one or few for many.

Michael's point about training soldiers to act like lemmings - or zombies -
begs a few questions, however.

Most importantly, it doesn't distinguish between mercenary armies of
workers (ie usually unemployed) in uniform, hired to kill their class
brothers and sisters to serve the ends of the class enemy, and
revolutionary armies of workers in uniform fighting for the own class
objectives.

In revolutionary armies the principle of group altruism is manifest. I'm
not saying it involves cardboard heroics, but I am saying it involves
conscious self-sacrifice (with varying degrees of commitment to the cause
and torn loyalties towards self and immediate family etc) for the common
good.

In mercenary armies, it is an uphill and usually fruitless struggle to try
and instil a fraction of this spirit into reluctant cannon fodder, who
usually hate their officers (commissioned and non-commissioned) more than
the enemy (cf Vietnam, where there was no doubt about the voluntary
enthusiasm behind the fraggings, and a lot of doubt about the enthusiasm
behind the 'official' murdering of Vietnamese 'enemies'). I've used the
example of the situation of Red workers in the Finnish army against the
Soviet Union in WWII before. They were reluctantly stuck between two fires,
the rifles of the official enemy trained on them from in front, and the
rifles of their own White officers trained on them from behind.

In the 1930s, Bert Brecht wrote a poem on this problem of mercenary armies:


        General, your tank is a mighty machine.
        It can bring down a forest and crush a hundred people.
        But it has one failing:
        It needs a driver.

        General, your bomber is powerful.
        It flies swifter than a storm and carries more than an elephant.
        But it has one failing:
        It needs a fitter.

        General, people are very serviceable.
        They can fly and they can kill.
        But they have one failing:
        They can think.


The most striking example of the difference between mercenary armies and
revolutionary armies is provided by the very same individuals. The Russian
workers and peasants in uniform dragooned into the Tsarist armies turned
their backs on the front and had no will to fight at the end of WWI. Yet
after October, in the face of the imperialist invasions, the peasants and
workers took up arms again and returned to the front. No coercion on earth
could have accomplished this given the collapse of the old regime and the
lack of consolidation of the new regime. The willing altruism of the
soldiers defending their own class interests by defending October
illustrates the power of the militant spirit Zeynep is talking about.

Once the workers and exploited attain the same degree of conviction as the
religious fundamentalists, who can brave ridicule, crushing setbacks and
death in the service of their ideas, there will be no stopping us.

Cheers,

Hugh




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