"Personal life now seemed empty and meaningless. Pleasure became hollow. He used to look at people on the street and think of them in class terms, and where they might be on the day that the Revolution came. Now, when he noticed people on the street, he wondered what they got out of life. He was getting something, no matter what happened to him personally. He knew that. He had his place and his role to perform. But he found no joy in this. It was not joyful to be a Communist: it was grim."
from Victim or Hero, James T. Farrell

I wonder if Malachi Ritscher was thinking something similar, when he set himself on fire to protest the Iraq war.


Protest the hero - Malachi Ritscher

Ritscher's self-immolation was a brave act, and I respect his ideals. His mental illness was responsible for it, but it would be a mistake to see that illness as an abberation. Ritscher had a history of depression, but in this case he was depressed about the war. I'd suggest that depression about the murder of 655,000 Iraqis is a rational response. Anything less is sociopathic.

However, his pacifism, terrorism (in his obituary he wished he had killed Donald Rumsfeld) and suicide are different sides of the same individualism. Ritscher acted alone. He was hoping to shock people out of their complacency, and in this he relied on the old anarchist "propaganda of the deed".

A Marxist strategy has always been to exploit actually existing social contradictions, not create contradictions where none exist. It's a tragedy that more Americans aren't outraged at the war. But killing yourself is an extreme way of refusing to have the argument. It tells people, "The contradictions of capitalism you suffer through every day - lousy job, sexual harassment, environmental racism, etc. - don't matter. You have to pay attention to the one I think is important."


From Malachi's website savagesound.com

The anti-war movement has to denounce the war directly, of course. It would be a huge mistake to think working people just care about bread-and-butter issues. But the war has to be linked to everyday issues. Americans can't see the dead Iraqis (unless you go to obscure websites); it's why imperialist wars can go on for so long. But working people can see how they're getting screwed over each day. The challenge for radicals is to connect the two.

None of this is a moral judgement on Ritscher, who deserves praise for his political commitment. I just wish he had thought through his politics better. Trotsky had this to say, from Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism:

The recipe for explosives is accessible to all, and a Browning can be obtained anywhere. In the first case, there is a social struggle, whose methods and means flow necessarily from the nature of the prevailing social order; and in the second, a purely mechanical reaction identical anywhere—in China as in France—very striking in its outward form (murder, explosions and so forth) but absolutely harmless as far as the social system goes...

If we oppose terrorist acts, it is only because individual revenge does not satisfy us. The account we have to settle with the capitalist system is too great to be presented to some functionary called a minister. To learn to see all the crimes against humanity, all the indignities to which the human body and spirit are subjected, as the twisted outgrowths and expressions of the existing social system, in order to direct all our energies into a collective struggle against this system—that is the direction in which the burning desire for revenge can find its highest moral satisfaction.

A collective response to capitalism - Trotsky, Lenin and the Red Army