A view from outside

Abstract

I write these few brief comments as a complete outsider to issues of drugs policy. I have a vague idea only of the harm reduction approach and an even vaguer idea of the harm reduction movement. However, I do have some knowledge of the labour movement and it is from this point of view that I have been invited to comment on the article written by Friedman et al., 2001 I take the harm reduction approach to be a humane attempt to protect people while respecting their autonomy and customs. If this interpretation is even approximately correct, then it is sensible of Friedman et al. to recognise that the labour movement is a potential ally. The labour movement, and the trade unions and socialist parties which are its constituent parts, are the repository and the motor of progress; and, since the Enlightenment’s Bonapartist debacle, of humanism. This generalisation does not imply that the labour movement is perfect — you only have to remember the prejudice against women that was endemic in the old craft unions to realise that it is capable of grotesque reaction — nor that it can’t be hijacked by state capitalists as a cover for their brutality — think of Stalinism and Zionism (I do realise that both were opposed, literally to the death in the case of the fight against Stalinism, by many within the labour movement, but at various times both Stalinism and Zionism concealed themselves behind a smokescreen of socialist-sounding rhetoric). The truth of the generalisation rests on the big picture, not the details. The success of organised labour in raising working class living standards — what Marx called the historical and moral component of the value of labour power — and with them, increases in life expectancy and improvements in health. The success of socialist political parties in establishing systems of welfare, or a la Bismarck and Lloyd George their establishment by capitalists in fear of the growth of socialism, which have brought some security and stability to workers’ lives. The success of the labour movement in spreading the practice of democracy, whether in its strangled parliamentary form or in the norms of civil society. These are the foundations of civilisation and the fruits of workers’ E-mail address: d.blane@ic.ac.uk (D. Blane).