Below is a
transcript of an email interview I did with writers Gregory
Smulewicz-Zucker and Michael J. Thompson
who co-authored the article “The Treason of
Intellectual Radicalism and the Collapse of Leftist Politics” which appeared
in the Winter 2015 edition of the academic journal Logos: A Journal of Modern
Society and Culture.
In the interview, we discuss the
problems of current leftist theory, the collapse of the left, and if there is a
way to rebuild leftist politics.
1. You write early
in the article that "Today, leftist political theory in the academy has
fallen under the spell of ideas so far removed from actual political
issues[.]" Do you think that this is a failing that is solely in the
academy? It seems that it is a widespread failure by the left as a whole, that
they are more focused on the theoretical than anything that is truly concrete.
We agree that the problem is not solely with the academy. It is
important to look at the academy because the kind of work that is done in the
academy is, in part, often a reflection of what people think they can achieve
on the ground. The main issue seems to be that moral revulsion has supplanted
the critique of social mechanisms that produce the problems that outrage people.
It is also important to stress that moral revulsion is not a substitute for, nor
an equivalent of, political action and political strategy. The key, as we see
it, is to understand that politics is about shaping not only the mentality of
citizens and the norms of culture, but more crucially about organizing the
legitimate power of the state to enforce laws that prevent social injustice and
expand the horizon of social justice. This requires understanding the
mechanisms of politics, of elections, of the law, of constitutional
interpretation, and so on. The contemporary left has abandoned these concerns
and has instead decided to view them as attributes of a system that needs to be
rejected. This is simply absurd and, in our view, anti-political.
We also think that there is a problem with what theory has
become. The only reason that a cleavage has developed between theory and
practice is because the function of theory has been abandoned. It is important
to recognize that what is now touted as theory is not actually theory. Theory
plays a vital role in diagnosing and critiquing concrete political problems.
People like Zizek and Badiou do not have theories. Their work is so convoluted
and self-referential that there is no link to the concrete. It masquerades as
theory. They are able to create their own fan clubs and say whatever they want
because they purposefully construct so-called theories that allow them to evade
critical evaluation. Esotericism has become a virtue unto itself. From this
standpoint, the aversion to theory is understandable. So-called theory has
become a world for the initiated. This is a distortion of theory. It is merely
the flipside of a society that can dismiss evolution as “only a theory.”
2. You say that
social movements are not focused on "unequal distributions of economic and
political power which once served as the driving impulse for political, social
and cultural transformation." What would you say to those who push back on
this idea and argue that there is a deeper analysis than just class?
There is more to social power and domination than class, it is
true. But movements for transforming
social and cultural forms of exclusion – for women, minority groups, gay
rights, etc. – have all occurred within the confines of the liberal state.
Class is the one category that has gotten worse over the past 40 years, not
better. Radicals need not only to be
able to call into question the backward, provincial views of the racist, the
homophobe and the anti-feminist, but also to tie this into a more general
theory of what a free, just society ought to be able to achieve and to be able
to understand that ending these kinds of exclusion lead us to some radical kind
of emancipation, but simply leave us within the liberal-capitalist consensus.
Radicalism must be able to craft a more comprehensive vision of
what a free, just society would look like.
But it must keep in view the fact that economic power, the power of
elite interests, are behind many of the cleavages in race, for instance. That propertied interests have had something
invested in preventing blacks from moving to white neighborhoods; that they
have been behind the decisions to de-industrialize urban American cities, which
has had an enormous destructive effect on contemporary black communities, and
so on. The killings of black men that have elicited so much outrage over the
past year cannot only be attributed to racism. They occupied a specific class
status. Likewise, one of the interesting things about recent writings that have
recast sex work as an expression of feminist self-assertion, is that they entirely
ignore the fact that it is working class women who are compelled to do this
work. Racism, homophobia, and sexism are social realities, but we must
recognize that the vulnerability to violence and exploitation of these people
is exacerbated by their class status.
Identity is simply not a stable enough concept to ground a
radical politics. Corporate power can
often back culturally liberal causes such as gay rights, or the symbolic issues
of the Confederate Battle flag. But what
remains after these (liberal) changes in our society and culture is economic
power: the power to shape our educational system, to organize social production
and consumption, and to chart the values of the society more generally.
3. Expand upon the
statement: "This new radicalism has made itself so irrelevant with respect
to real politics that it ends up serving as a kind of cathartic space for the
justifiable anxieties wrought by late capitalism further stabilizing its
systemic and integrative power rather than disrupting it." What exactly do
you mean by this? Also, couldn't some push back and argue that in many ways,
this new radicalism is disruptive, as can be seen by the Black Bloc, activists
fighting against the Keystone XL pipeline, and those who engage in direct
action?
This was not meant as a critique of those who participate in
direct action. Direct action becomes the only means for combating injustices when
concrete political programs fade away. What is worrying is the way direct
action has supplanted political strategy much in the same way that so-called
theory has become fetishized in and of itself.
Our critique questions the political salience of these actions as a
general political program. Neo-anarchism
has become a model for political activity on the left. It has claimed for
itself the mantle of engaged politics. We think this is a grave error.
When demonstrations occur, they are more often than not spaces
for moral rage, not for political programs.
Take the Civil Rights movement. Yes, there were symbolic acts of direct
action, but these were integrated into a more general movement that included a
political strategy to influence political elites, crafting ideas for
legislation to be enacted, as well as a new cultural understanding of civic
rights. To isolate ourselves to direct
action without a larger movement, without a more radical program for action,
for what you want to implement in a positive way through institutions, is
simply not radical politics. This is the “cathartic space” we refer to: it
grants a moral self-righteousness to the individual who has genuine anger
against society. But we should not
confuse this with the hard work of political action that has in view the
transformation of society through the shaping of law, winning elections, and so
on.
Look at modern conservatives as an example. During the 1960s,
they were a political, cultural and intellectual minority. Their ideas for
destroying public schools (Milton Friedman championed the school voucher idea,
considered insane at the time), for constitutional interpretation, for economic
liberalization and privatization, and so on were policy non-starters. Now they
have reframed American political life. Look at the last two vice presidential
Republican candidates. As patently imbecilic as Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan are,
the fact that such people are able to run in national elections and advocate
political policies evidences how fringe ideas gained some degree of public
approval because there is no rational radical left to oppose them. Radicals
have no ideas about how to combat these policy imperatives, and this is simply
absurd. How can we talk about radical politics that has any efficacy if we
oppose the state, taking law, political parties, and so on seriously as
mechanisms for change? Not to do so is to suffer from a kind of infantile
disorder. This makes Leftists surrender their place in politics to the right.
The dangers are real.
4. Do you think
that class politics have weakened in the post-industrial age due to the fact
that there was an illusion that one could move above their current station as
well as had more access to credit and high tier goods? [Compared to the
industrial age where one knew that they would always be a worker on the factory
floor.]
The transition from a productivist to a consumerist paradigm of
economic life is a crucial explanatory variable for the docility of American
political consciousness. The basic
inequality of our society is just as bad as it was during the gilded age, but
the overall size of the economic pie has simply gotten larger. There is just
more wealth to be concentrated in the hands of elites. Reconciling individuals
to this system has been a long process of legitimating the economic system and
the values that underpin it. The
weakening of labor class struggles is partly due to economic and sociological
shifts. The main thrust is still, we
think, ideological: There is no reason why new forms of labor – service, professional,
freelance, and so on – should not be protected from the kinds of extractive
power that private control over capital requires. The fact is, capitalism has changed some of
its contours, but still remains fundamentally the same in the sense that it
requires the exploitation of labor for expanded growth and accumulation.
The problem is that the political critique of capital needs to
be kept in view. We need to ask again
what the purposes and ends of our economy ought to be, to establish a critical
discourse on what is necessary and what is merely a means for the opening up of
new spaces for profit.
5. Would you say
that the problem with the language that many radicals use is that there is an obsession
with using the correct terminology rather than actually engaging in meaningful
work? That the language in and of itself is an end?
I've also thought
that this has made it easier for opponents to infiltrate such groups.
What are your
thoughts on that?
Words matter, no question about it. But words without concrete concepts simply
create confusion at best and mask imbecility at worst. Language does not create
reality, but it can distort it. What the
left needs is a coherent connection between the basic values that define its
ends and the concepts and ideas it seeks to put out in the world. It needs to see that moral ideas and values
require some translation into political reality and this is never going to be
perfect or ideal. What makes a rational
radicalism salient, what keeps it alive, and what will allow it to breathe new
life into the world is its orientation to political reality. The correct
terminology is useful if it can explain reality.
If the focus is on language at the expense of establishing a
link between language and reality, the issue is not so much that opponents will
infiltrate radical movements. On the contrary, opponents will actually be able
to draw people out of radical movements. An anti-statist left can be drawn to
an anti-statist right, especially when right-wing opponents of the state seem
to enjoy actual electoral successes.
Even more, it can prevent the formation of a larger, more integrated
movement since the fetish of language simply splinters our politics. This is
why an objective science of politics is needed by radicals, not language, moral
rage, or anything else. An objective vantage point anchored in political
principles of social emancipation is what a mature radicalism should seek to
achieve.
6. You bring up the
fact that "Liberalism has been highly successful at incorporating many of
the social movements that have emerged throughout the twentieth century."
However, do you think that liberalism is now failing since we are seeing the rollback
of rights for women and minorities, the welfare state, jobs for working-class
Americans, and the like?
It’s not evident that rights for women and minorities have been
receding. It is, however, demonstrably true that political rights are simply
not enough. You need to reshape economic life to grant them any full social
meaning. Blacks have been excluded by income just as much as by overt racial
exclusion from migrating out of decaying cities to more affluent areas with
superior public goods such as education.
Civic and cultural rights are expanding, but at the expense of economic
rights that give them any kind of real significance and meaning. The civic equality for excluded groups
satisfies the narrow demand for recognition, but it does nothing for the richer
need for creating a social context for genuine human growth and forms of modern
social solidarity.
The emphasis on cultural liberalism as opposed to economic
liberalism has also allowed the welfare state to be slowly chiseled away. What is needed is a conception of economic
justice that allows for the concrete development of individuals, that grants
all equal access not only to “opportunity” but to the means for
self-development and for human growth.
This is what liberalism cannot provide and what radicalism must insist
upon.
7. Would you argue
that liberalism has effectively defanged a number of previously radical movements
and essentially acted as a co-optation of these movements on an ideological and
strategic/tactical level?
Liberalism has historically been able to reconcile every major
social movement into a more general legitimacy.
But it has done this not only because of its basic principles, but also
because it is good for business. It is good for Wal-Mart to get women out of
patriarchal structures of domestic life because it gives it a cheap labor force
to exploit. The same can be said about ending homophobia in the workplace. Liberalism
allows for the erasure of pre-liberal forms of inequality, but protects the
class inequalities of bourgeois life. It
has had more success in allowing women, minority groups of all kinds inclusion
into our political and cultural life.
But radicalism must push beyond liberalism: it must question the generic
values and norms that pervade our reality not simply because they exist, but
interrogate them on the basis of their ability to expand or to contract the
realm of human development.
None of this means that liberal values are irrelevant, quite the
opposite. Radicals need to be vigilant
against pre-liberal norms and practices: against racism, homophobia, gender
discrimination, and the like. But it
must insist that these categories be tied to a concept of the public good, that
they are not simply interests of minority groups, but part of a general public
good to live in a society of self-development, expression, difference and
non-exploitation. The main issue is that
economic forms of domination and exploitation are more universal and more
damaging in modern societies. The
destruction of the planet, the amount of human waste (both as refuse and as
“wasted” forms of life), the cultural realities of alienation, the withering of
artistic and cultural life – all of it is tied to the increased, wasteful
commodification and consumerism of late-capitalism. Radicalism needs a more unified theory of all
of this, and it needs to see the stakes clearly.
8. Please expand
upon the collapse of Marxism within a US/Western context and how that has
created both a political and intellectual vacuum which the liberal left has
come to fill. It seems that there has been a massive collapse not only due to
the triumph of global capitalism and the corporate state, but also inner
conflicts and, most importantly, the attack on the Marxist left by the state
itself.
Of course the decline of Marxism is a complex, highly debated
narrative. There was good reason for
members of the New Left in the 1960s to move away from categories of class
since the overt racism of many unions and the labor movement made alliances
with them odious. But the reality is,
the fall of the Soviet Union, the emergence of neoliberalism as a resurgent
form of capitalism, and the new cultural mentalities cultivated by an empty,
commodified culture have all come together to create a fertile ground for a
post-marxist (postmodern, poststructuralist, and, simply post-rational)
intellectual environment. Mediating
institutions like unions have been eroded; the suburbanization of several
generations of people since the 1950s has atomized consciousness, and a unified
culture industry has exerted strong pressures on the values and norms of the
population.
Historically, Marxism was a challenge to the liberal state. When
it went into decline, it ceased to be a threat. There is no longer need for the
state to attack the Marxist left. Right-wing pundits might sound the alarm that
President Obama is a socialist, but this is only a rhetorical tactic for trying
to oust Democratic politicians from office. As for internal disputes, true
believers of different sectarian castes mainly dominate them. Dogmatically invoking
Marx or the Marxist theorists of past is not, on its own, sufficient to a
revitalized radicalism. Their ideas are resources that can be built upon to
confront our contemporary crises. Indeed, this is precisely what the best theorists
did.
About all of this, the core values and ideas of Marx still have
a lot to say and to explicate. What we
tried to call into question in our article was the lack of real political depth
to the new radical intellectuals and their ideas about particularist forms of
identity, puerile anti-statism, and abstract notions of freedom. What is important is that we see that
advanced capitalism has been able to destroy the very foundations and resources
needed to advance a coherent, politically viable form of critique and movements
for enlightened, rational, progressive political change. Our polemic was aimed at those that do not
realize that the conception of leftist politics they endorse are molded from
the very stuff that ought to be critiqued.
9. Do you think
that there is any way to reverse this trend of the Left falling further and
further into the abyss of political irrelevancy?
Yes, there is a way. Rediscover
what politics actually is. It is not a
path to utopia. It should not be a means
to only vent frustrations. These are the qualities of a dogmatic and fractured
left. Concrete political engagement through social movements directed at
concrete aims forges solidarity. Part of why Occupy Wall Street was initially
so successful was because it seemed to create solidarity around the issue of
economic inequality. It got people out onto the streets. Part of why it failed
was because, in its rejection of demands, it did not show how protests could
lead to meaningful change. This was not true of the civil rights movement or
the labor movement. In the midst of the AIDs crisis, gay rights activists
protested to demand government action. Feminist activists mobilized to try to
get the Equal Rights Amendment passed. These examples of movements were inspired
by liberalism, but they attest to the fact that movements need an object.
Recognizing that the state is an institution that can be used to serve the
public good and is not some abstract apparatus gives the radical left a
concrete object.
A rational radical politics would have the effect of exposing
the irrelevance of anti-modern and irrational theories. It would marginalize
self-righteous rebelliousness. A left that is concerned with realizing the
public good has no use for self-indulgent flights from reality. It was in
response to these dangerous and alarmingly prevalent distractions that we wrote
our essay. A left that has nothing to say about the real world, material
interests, mechanisms of exploitation, political policy, or the function of
institutions in serving the public good will fall into the abyss of political
irrelevance. But these are tendencies on the left that have come to prominence over the last forty years. It is not an accident that these
tendencies occurred in tandem with the revitalization of capitalism. Yet, we
believe that the current morass can and should serve as an impetus for making
people articulate a rational radical politics, rather than encourage people to
retreat into the kinds of theoretical incoherence, chic radicalism and
cynicism, and romanticized rebelliousness that simply uphold the status quo.
