There are some leftists (Paul Berman and Christopher Hitchens among them) that I still like more than I like some liberals. And this post (you might have to scroll down) about the UN on the British Marxist group blog Socialism in an Age of Waiting makes me smile.
The General Assembly is, of course, an assemblage of bourgeois governments, many of them dictatorships, all of them cynical to greater or lesser degrees. Its composition compels its members to horse-trade, obscenely, this people’s rights and freedoms against that people’s if it is to get through its business at all. The notorious elections of states such as Cuba and Libya to the Human Rights Commission have been among the wholly predictable results. The recent failure even to take seriously a proposal that referred to the right of Israeli children not to get blown up by fundamentalist fanatics, let alone pass it (as recounted, and rightly criticised, by Norm Geras, linked to in sidebar –>), was just one more case. The horse-trading is less robotically routine than it was during the Cold War, but it still goes on, making a mockery of the ideals that gullible bourgeois liberals still insist on praising the UN for upholding.
Anyone out there want to lump this Marxist blog into the vast right-wing conspiracy? Come on. I know there’s someone out there who wants to.
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