In the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Yesterday I finished watching “The Wire” season three. One of the sub-plots of the season is about a City Councilmember named Carcetti who sees the failings of the political and law enforcement efforts to address the issues facing Baltimore and decides to run for Mayor. Since this show avoids hero-making like the plague, we also get to see Carcetti’s faults as well as his ideals. Eventually, he hires a consultant who helps guide him in handling city business in ways that advance his chances to win a Mayoral race. But the lure of having the power to change things becomes compromised by what he feels (or is told) he needs to do in order to get there. Hence begins his corruption.
It got me to thinking about all the blogwars on the progressive side that have been ignited by those on one side who want to be “practical” in order to win elections and those on the other side who refuse to give up principals in order to win. The old saying about “the end justifies the means” has plagued us in every realm of life from war as a means to peace, greed as a means to sufficiency, and corruption as a means to power.
But then, I wonder on a basic level, if we can ever incorporate truly pure means to reach our ends. Isn’t it almost always necessary to compromise in order to meet our goals? As an example, I wrote here a couple of weeks ago about having to raise money in order to support the work I am committed to doing in this community. That means occassionally making compromises in what I say (or more likely don’t say) to those who are prospective donors and, perhaps also turning a blind eye to their complicity in creating the kind of conditions we are working so hard to mitigate. Does this mean that I am beginning to engage in the “destructive means” to which MLK is referring?
I’m only using this specific situation as an example of the larger question and to show how this issue crops up in any attempt to try to bring people together to accomplish a goal. I do believe that what MLK said is true and that a compromise in means is certainly a slipperty-slope to corruption. And yet I also don’t think its possible to accomplish anything if we continue to hold to the purity of what we have defined as our values/ideals. So I’m asking where and how we draw the lines to avoid the slope. Or how we maintain our values while having to compromise to ever actually get anything done?
In asking these questions, I’m not saying we should join the Democratic Party bandwagon and embrace a “win at all costs” kind of mentality. And, as I write this, I keep feeling myself in the middle of polarities that I’m not comfortable with on either side. I wonder if some of the talk about “purity trolls” comes from this very tension. I think alot of the progressive blog diaspora came from personality clashes. But where it happened due to political differences, its seems to lead to ever smaller groups of like-minded people gathering to maintain their principles.
This leads me to think of a speech I found thanks to dove by Bernice Johnson Reagon titled Coalition Politics: Turning the Century. In the speech, Reagon makes the distinction between the “home” we develop for ourselves with like-minded people to be nurtured and sustained, and the coalitions we must build to save ourselves. Here’s a quote:
Coalition work is not done in your home. Coalition work has to be done in the streets. And it is some of the most dangerous work you can do. And you shouldn’t look for comfort. Some people will come to a coalition and they rate the success of the coalition on whether or not they feel good when they get there. They’re not looking for a coalition; they’re looking for a home!….You don’t get fed a lot in a coalition. In a coalition you have to give, and it is different from your home. You can’t stay there all the time. You go to the coalition for a few hours and then you go back and take your bottle wherever it is, and then you go back and coalesce some more.
And to underscore the importance of coalition work:
It must become necessary for all of us to feel that this is our world…And watch that “our” – make it as big as you can – it ain’t got nothing to do with that barred room (home). The “our” must include everybody you have to include in order for you to survive. You must be sure that you understand that you ain’t gonna be able to have an “our” that doesn’t include Bernice Johnson Reagon, cause I don’t plan to go nowhere! That’s why you have to have coalitions. Cause I ain’t gonna let you live unless you let me live. Now there’s danger in that, but there’s also the possibility that we can both live – if you can stand it.
Maybe one of the ways we can maintain our principles as we seek out coalitions to get things done is to make sure that we have a “home” to come back to. But one of the things Reagon leaves out of her description of “home” is that in addition to feeding us, it needs to be a place that grounds us…a place where we are challenged when we start sliding too far down that slippery slope of letting the ends justify the means – headed for corruption.