Morning Comrades.
Today’s offering is in collaboration with our comrade Alex Herbert and to be fair, he did the majority of work here. Do enjoy.
“WHAT is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly--that is the first law of nature.” - Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
The question of toleration was one that wracked the minds of statesmen, political economists, and theorists from the Protestant Reformation to the 20th century. In the 19th century English political economist, theorist, and progressive liberal John Stuart Mill wrote “On Liberty” (1859) in which he defends toleration of speech, thought, religion, and politics as the easiest way to achieve happiness for the social body. The argument rested on the idea that nobody was naturally entitled to rights, but that toleration was a state policy. Mill recognized that legal codes, cultural zeitgeist, and existing social relations set the parameters of what could be tolerated, but it also set a precedent of what could not be tolerated.
Having grown up in western bourgeois liberal society, we are led to believe that certain liberties are inalienable rights protected by the state, and that these rights are received thanks to liberalism’s commitment to toleration. Liberal democracies since the French Revolution were built on a negotiated deal that traded political aquisence for civil liberties, or what Rousseau called a social contract. One should be able to practice whatever faith, or say anything, but we recognize that there are lines– advocating for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government has been outlawed, and, while in theory faiths are not outlawed, some can have grave consequences for its practitioners. Yet, it seems like in our own time, with Trump calling for the arrest and deportation of “communists” and “leftists,” we do not think hard enough about the social uses and abuses of toleration, and we have not really articulated a communist approach to toleration. Obversely, communists have not really theorized intolerance, or ‘cancel culture’ as its called in our social circles. In this article we try to square the deficiency by showing the connection between broad forms of state-sanctioned toleration, its effect on our politics, and the used and abused power of intolerance in our micro communities. At the end we offer some guidelines for comrades to consider before going “nuclear” on a member of the community.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Black Lodges to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.