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

[gonul@bilkent.edu.tr]

Türk Solu ile karşılaştırmaya kimse var mı?

On 20 Aug 2002 13:15 EEST you wrote:

> 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
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> The language of leftism is out of date.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.
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