[Discussion] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3284-385779,00.html

[Paksoy, Hb]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3284-385779,00.html

August 17, 2002

The Left has lost its way and lost its voice
Camille Paglia
 
 
 
The language of leftism is out of date. It desperately needs reconstruction
and revitalisation, if the Left is ever to regain its proper status as a
voice of ethical critique of materialistic modern society. 
As a registered Democrat who voted for the fringe-left Ralph Nader for
President in 2000, I am well aware of the decline in prestige and
effectiveness of leftist organisations since their high point in the 1960s.
The large demonstrations against globalisation two years ago, for example,
made scarcely a ripple in the US and have already been forgotten. One
problem is that too many leftist periodicals are run by callow cliques whose
vaunted populism is a mask for snobbery. 

Leftist analysis has been slow to adjust to the massive expansion of the
service sector after the Second World War. In the US, salaries of skilled
manual labourers have long exceeded those of mid-level office staff.
Leftists consistently misinterpret mass media and new technology, which they
treat with paranoid theories of manipulation and "commodification" coined by
writers schooled before the Second World War (before the birth of
television). 

The communications revolution has blurred traditional class lines. But the
Left still doggedly invokes paradigms from early industrialisation,
applicable today only to the Third World. It finds "oppression" under every
rock and reduces contemporary society to rote battles of the "powerful" and
the "powerless". 

The Left is wilfully blind to the enormous contributions that capitalism has
made to democracy and individualism. Over the past two centuries capitalism
has raised the standard of living and enhanced the health and life
expectancy for untold millions in the West and elsewhere. It has stimulated
new ideas and fostered free speech. 

When they call for the redistribution of wealth, leftists are endorsing an
authoritarian system that, wherever it has been tried, has resulted in
economic stagnation and a sapping of cultural energy. Such concentration of
power in the State creates its own tyrannical master class. Without the
profit motive, few are inclined to work for long. The play of the market,
rather than government engineering, is more reliable for long-term job
creation. When jobs are varied and plentiful, ethnic and racial tensions
diminish. 


Only a lunatic fringe on the far Left is still calling for revolution, a
smashing of the social order, but it must be acknowledged how widespread
that idea was in the 1960s. Most leftists do believe that, without them, the
naive proletariat would wallow for ever in ignorance and slavery. Unless
they are volunteering hands-on service in blighted neighbourhoods, however,
most leftists are far removed from working-class life. Many are wordsmiths -
journalists or academics who run in packs. Leftism has become wordplay - a
refuge for bourgeois intellectuals guilty about their comfort and privilege.


The crisis of the Left was signalled 20 years ago by academe's retreat into
post-structuralism - an elitist, jargon-filled methodology practised by
literati with scant knowledge of history. In the US, liberalism too is
confused, alternating between a genteel humanitarianism credulously craving
government programmes to an overtly Machiavellian power politics. 

Because the Left has been programmatically anti-business, it has been unable
to reform the business practices that generate prosperity in the West. A
strong, articulate Left could have roused public resistance to the Marie
Antoinette corporate culture of the past 15 years, which climaxed in recent
revelations of monumental fraud. 

As smaller companies were swallowed up in transnational conglomerates, plant
closings produced superficial cost-cutting, rewarded by skyrocketing
compensation for top management. Boards of directors went limp, while
stockholders were helpless. An honest, respected Left would have been well
positioned to render aid when and where it was needed. 

The most radical task facing contemporary leftism is a purgation and
reclamation of its own rhetoric.