WHO IS WE?

This is what Wesley Clark said at the Democratic convention in his very appealing speech:

“I am an American soldier. Our country has been attacked. We are at war. Our nation is at risk. And we are engaged in a life-and-death struggle against terrorists.... As we are gathered here tonight, our armed forces are in combat.”

Each of these sentences contain certain rhetorical acts of identification with something called the United States. Identification is a powerful and foundational rhetorical act, and one is justified in questioning the thing with which the speaker identifies. In 1990, as plans were being made to attack Iraq, and before I knew much about socialism, I commented to a friend in the Socialist Workers Party that I had heard someone say "We have to stop Saddam," yada yada yada. The friend replied: Next time, ask, "Who is we?"

That response is a good way to approach Marxism from the inside out. For "We have to stop Saddam" could easily mean the "we" of those of us who would never make such decisions, or it could mean those of us who are conscripts for either side of the battle, or it could mean "we Americans," those who identify with America as a nation, a kind of really big family. And it's an insidious kind of process, forgetting that you do it, never knowing or giving much thought to who "we" is. From there, when you start thinking about that, you then think about how you really don't get to make these monumental decisions, and maybe you'd do it differently, and isn't it true that all you really know about Iraq and Saddam is stuff you read in the papers or hear on radio or TV? And when you read more complex literature, journals or independent press, for example, you start to notice it's much more complicated than it is on TV. And again, it strikes you that you're being made part of a "we" that doesn't really mean you.

Now, you might have people you love over there in Iraq or Afghanistan, and you certainly aren't against them--you don't wish harm on them. You want them to come back safely. In fact, once you start to realize that "we" aren't making the decisions together on how and when to fight, or who goes to fight and for how long, your concern for those people grows. It grows even as others accuse you of being against those people. And then it hits you: Somebody on the other side probably feels just as scared, frustrated and disaffected--in the case of a citizen of Saddam's Iraq, probably much more so--and it hits you that the ones you love and the ones they love are shooting at each other over disagreements and bad behavior none of you--none of us--had anything to do with. So who is "we?"

Is it a noble thing to stop Saddam? Sure. Would we reach a consensus on that? Sure. Maybe we'd even elect leaders, just like we do now, but maybe in a world where we have a hell of a lot more input. Where we not only could deliberate on such questions but also talk about how such situations start in the first place. Now, I attend the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Laramie, and our minister, Joe, is one of the wisest men I have ever met. And he's tough on you, and can talk sense into you. I think if he sat down with two world leaders who wanted to kill each other, they'd leave that room feeling sheepish and repentant. But the world isn't run in such a way that encourages people like Joe to talk to world leaders. Why? Isn't Joe "we?"

Now maybe "we" need to be governed by elected officials who can make all those decisions for us. That's cool, you'll notice few Marxists denying that people are good at different things and that smarts is smarts. It's really an irrelevant argument, because long ago, like back in 1776, "we" decided that the process of rulemaking mattered as much, if not more, than the rules themselves. Think about what Jefferson or Madison would say if Washington had committed troops to Tripoli using the argument that Tripoli was raising a legion of fire-breathing dragons and had to be stopped or they'd fly over here and burn us all to a crisp? Even if there was some other legitimate cause, like the Lybian leaders were killing and torturing their own people, Jefferson and Madison would probably invoke the spirit of procedural justice--for them, the Constitution--to object to the manner in which support was drummed up for the invasion. And in any event, everything we know about Washington indicates he wouldn't lie (or err on the side of suspect intelligence) to shove off a bunch of men and ships to the other side of the world. Obviously, what the founders of the USA wanted was accountability through checks and balances. In all fairness, they may not have been willing to consult "the people," and certainly gave the appropriate officials the power to declare war, and other officials the power to engage it. But one reading of their Constitution and their other writings is certainly a world where such decisions are transparent and involve genuine public deliberation, and a world free of legalized corporate bribery of these decisionmakers of whom the founders expected so much.

The examples and stories I've used here not only explain the sentiment (not the mechanics) of Marxist criticism, but also the "link of omission" and counterfactual critical theory that is Habermasian criticism. Some may not believe the two are complimentary, but I do. One explains why those concerned with procedural democracy find the current system unjust and unworkable. The other explains why it is so, and what prevents us from changing it. In both cases, "we" begin with the question "Who is we?"