Perhaps I am reading too much into the following, but I find it interesting the lack of response to my last intervention.
Julius Arscott, union executive for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) and member of Socialist Action, recently posted the following on Facebook:
I responded as follows:
Fred Harris“Be it further resolved that OPSEU/SEFPO supports the call for a lasting, peaceful, and just resolution in to the Israel/Palestine conflict that prioritizes international law….”Why prioritize international law? Indeed, we need to distinguish between the reality of law and the rhetoric of law. The rhetoric of law claims that there is equality before the law. The reality is often otherwise.RhetoricYou cannot be arrested without a charge, and you cannot be questioned once you are charged.From Doreen McBarnet (1983) Conviction: Law, the State and the Construction of Justice, page 41:“Indeed the combination of rules on arrest-no arrest without a charge-and the rules on interrogation-no interrogation after charge, would seem to render it [detention for questioning] legally impossible.”RealityBut procedures develop that get around this limitation. Page 41:“But there are ways round this: one is the holding charge. The rules prohibiting interrogation in custody refer only to interrogation about the offence with which the person has already been charged. There is no rule against using one charge to take a person into custody then interrogating him in the isolation of the police station on another offence. The holding charge thus allows a suspect to be questioned in private and in custody until a confession is elicited. It also opensthe way for search. Search of someone’s person or home is not permissible in order to find evidence unless there are prior grounds for suspecting him of an offence. ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’ is indeed an old legal maxim expressing the prohibition on search without warrant. But the holding charge obviates this. Once arrested, the person, and the premises he is in, can be legally searched, and if evidence relevant to another charge is unearthed, the search is quite lawful and the evidence admissible.In short, according to case law the police may with impunity make an arbitrary arrest, arresting not on a charge based on some kind of proof of specific implication in a specific offence, but arresting in order to acquire that proof or find out if there has been any activity that could be defined as an offence. (‘That could be defined’ is important. Remember we are not always talking about finding sacks marked ‘Swag’, but, for example, political posters and pamphlets.)Authoritative common law thus unceremoniously turns the basic principle governing arrest on its head.Wide police discretion over petty offences thus takes on further significance. Defining as arrestable offences behaviour as indeterminate as intent, loitering, or breach of the peace, a known thief in suspicious circumstances and so on gives the police wide powers oflegal detention, and these powers may be used to establish evidence for a different suspected offence, which the policeman is really interested in but has no evidence on which to charge and therefore arrest.”But what of international law? Is the rule of law a reality among nations? If so, can international law address the issues that Palestinian and Israeli workers, citizens, immigrants and migrant workers face? Ignoring the fact that the United States and a minority of nations have veto power in international affairs legally in a number of matters, let us assume that the rule of law really applies at the international level. Can international law address the issues in any meaningful way?The rule of law, whether national or international, has its own limitations, but such limitations are not considered in the above appeal to international law.Law is both too abstract and too specific. Robert Knox (2009), Marxism, International Law, and Political Strategy,” in pages 413-436, Leiden Journal of International Law, Volume 22, addresses this issue In relation to being too abstract, Knox has this to say. Page 430:“The problems with which progressives are confronted – poverty, war, disease – do not simply just ‘happen’, they are manifestations of ‘background’, structural factors – be they political, economic, or ideological; ‘“moment[s]” in a larger structure of meaning that can be known, analyzed, and potentially defeated’. But legal argument is both too abstract and at the same time too specific to deal effectively with these problems. Legal argument frames its participants as abstract, self-contained individuals; as such it treats their actions, rather than the reasons for these actions, as decisive. Moreover, these actions become relevant only inasmuch as they form the content of a dispute or violation of the law. Legal argument therefore resolves the particular disputes of abstract individuals without ever touching on the logics which shape and condition their actions, and in this sense it is too abstract.”Law is also too specific in that its form of resolving problems often limits its applicability to very specific disputes. Page 430-431:“Although legal argument may be able to deal with effects, it proves incapable of dealing with causes; this is where legal argument proves too specific. Legal argument resolves specific ‘violations’, ‘disputes’, or ‘instances’, but it never questions the general structural logics that lurk beneath them, and so cannot fully eradicate the problems it addresses. This is not to say that those who adopt legal argument are unaware of the systemic logics that underlie particular actions, simply that in adopting a legal strategy they act as if they were unaware of such logics and so cannot address them.”Rather than relying on international law, it would be better for the organized working class to call for blockades and other concrete measures that actually inhibit the Israeli military from carrying out the current genocide.
One person did like my comment. Another person responded to my comment:
Angelune Des LauriersFred Harris I agree that we should not rely on legal structures for liberation, but we should not ignore them either. We need to push in all directions. We can use our collective power as workers for direct actions, but also pressure politicians to follow the “rules-based order” and international humanitarian law.
Julius Arscott indicated that he liked her response.
My response:
Fred HarrisAngelune Des Lauriers The problem is that “pushing in all directions” most often leads to being incorporated into the present class power structure. Consider collective agreements. How many unions these days question the management rights clause (implicit or explicit in collective agreements)? How many unions talk of “fair collective agreements?” Is it fair to be treated as a thing to be used by an employer?As for international humanitarian law, all so-called international law does not question the existence of employers. The International Labour Organization (ILO), which supposedly follows international law, certainly does not. It talks about “decent work” in the context of the class power of employers.Both Amnesty International and Oxfam follow international law–but they too do not criticize the class power of employers. They implicitly assume the legitimacy of exploiting and oppressing workers; nowhere do they question the right of employers to use workers for ends undefined by workers.This does not mean that the international radical left should not use international law to buttress opposition to the genocide that is occurring. However, the international radical left should also point out both the limitations of international law and its dangers.
There was no further response from anyone. I suspect that many if not most who criticize what is occurring in Gaza and the West Bank do not criticize what occurs in the daily lives of workers in Canada (or in other countries where they live), whether in the private or public sectors–the oppression and exploitation and the lack of freedom which characterizes workplaces (but which union reps rarely address).
The Abolitionary 