Compromise

I regard myself as an uncompromising person. At first, this sounds like self-praise, and, like all self-praise, it is no doubt unjustified, for a single exception is enough to puncture insecure vanity, and such an exception is always available. All the same, this label ceases to flatter as soon as one reflects upon the general approbation accorded to the concept of compromise. But I cannot agree with this judgment.

Compromise is, essentially, nihilism. It is the concession to total relativism, to the idea that one idea is as good (as bad) as another. For when two parties compromise, they arrive at a position that is equidistant from both original claims, and which is therefore incapable of doing justice to either. To admit to the possibility of compromise is to forsake one's commitment to the original idea.

Compromise, like political moderateness, is the claim that all points of view are equal and equally worthless. It is not so much a matter of respecting the other as it is a total destruction of the possibility of meaningful difference. My position is as (in)valid as yours. By compromising with you, I betray my own position and assert that yours should be betrayed as well - in the interest of expediency, or peace, etc. All claims to the right apprehension of the matter slip into an abyss remote from all positive statements. One compromises with the other because the other is there, not because there is evident truth in the other's claim - this is something else entirely; it is re-evaluation; in the most basic sense, it is a repudiation of one's earlier claim. This is not the same thing as systemic compromise, as in the American political system, where all commitments are nullified in their aggregation, where the system is to preserve itself by amalgamating the delusions of the masses into an innocuous mixture.

A claim comes with a corollary - that claim is right, or it is not right. The resolution of this question necessitates action: the defense of the claim or its repudiation. Defense can succeed, or it cannot. If it does not, one is at least left with the truth of one's convictions, or the conviction in one's truth. Insofar as the functioning of a system or organization presupposes compromises, it nullifies the individuals within it. The structure which allows me to keep my opinion for myself by preventing its expression in the social realm divorces that opinion (and my opinions as a whole) from the possibility of realization.

Something of this problem is already captured in the dual connotations of the word 'compromise.'