At the end of April, we'll have arrived at the 25th anniversary of the end
of the Vietnam War, when the last fugitives clambered into helicopters at
the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon. Gays are planning a big march on
Washington for April 30, but not, at least officially, to celebrate that
setback for U.S. imperialism. Nonetheless, I hope some speaker in Washington
that day will note that the Stonewall riot and gay liberation drew
inspiration and fury from the antiwar movement, as did women's liberation.
Environmentalism, too.
For years, the antiwar left was told to be embarrassed about the sixties,
put through re-education rites designed to elicit the confession that
"excesses" were committed, mistakes made. Of course, mistakes were made,
starting with the failure to stop the war eight years earlier, in 1967. We
misread the larger calendar. After Tet, after the May/June events in Paris,
we thought revolution was around the corner. The Tet Offensive of 1968
remains one of the great moments of the 20th century, even though one can
see in retrospect that Gen. Giap's desperate throw signaled the fact that
the Americans had indeed been successful in exterminating -- the appropriate
word, no? -- the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam. We make
mistakes all the time, again and again, however much we try to "draw the
correct lessons." Big deal. History isn't like a bus, conveniently carrying
a destination sign above the windshield. Every time I go to a political
gathering on the left, it's filled with people, myself included, who have
made mistakes about the way history was headed, about the vulnerability of
capitalism, but who were on the right track all the same. The most mistaken
people of all are those so frightened of making mistakes that they end up
missing the right bus when it finally comes round the corner.
A phrase I hate is that tag from the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci
leftists love to quote, "Optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect."
What's so wrong with optimism of the intellect, as well as of will, to get
one out of bed in the morning? OK, qualified optimism.
There's no sense in getting totally carried away. The British leftist Perry
Anderson has just written an editorial in New Left Review marking that
journal's "re-launch" as it enters its fifth decade. "The only starting
point for a realistic Left today is a lucid registration of historical
defeat," Anderson writes with gloomy relish. "For the first time since the
Reformation there are no longer any significant oppositions -- that is,
systematic rival outlooks -- within the thought-world of the West; and
scarcely any on a world scale, either."
Anderson notes that amid this historical defeat leftists can opt for
"accommodation," "consolation" (search for silver linings, favored
occupation of present writer) or "uncompromising realism" (NLR's official
position). But he does add in a footnote that there is another possible
reaction, "namely, resignation -- in other words, a lucid recognition of the
nature and triumph of the system, without either adaptation or
self-deception, but also without any belief in the chance of an alternative
to it."
As I read these dour lines by my old friend ( I am on NLR's editorial
committee), there came news over the radio of a tree-sit in a section of the
Headwaters redwood forest, in Humboldt County, Northern California. A young
woman named Firebird, fresh up from San Francisco, was at the time of this
writing, tree-sitting 40 feet up in the air. She'd fixed up a rope with a
noose round her neck, with the other end tied to a gate on the ground. If
the loggers or their allies launched an attack, Firebird was in imminent
danger of being hanged. No accommodation, consolation, resignation or
uncompromising realism here.
Firebird has optimism of the will, and optimism of the intellect. I don't
think many of us, back in the sixties, would have taken optimism that far.
Hurrah for the Vietnamese war of liberation, hurrah for the antiwar
movement, hurrah for Firebird. Hurrah for others like Firebird who battled
the WTO to a standstill in Seattle last fall, and for the reprise in
Washington this month, where the Ruckus Society, Direct Action Network, and
other insurgents demonstrated and acted in civil disobedience to shut
down the IMF and World Bank meeting. Hurrah for optimism!
To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other
columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at
www.creators.com.
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