[Peace-discuss] What's Left of the American Left?

[C. G. Estabrook]

The failures of the American (sc. anti-capitalist) left have not been so 
egregious as those of the American liberals. After all, the paladin of the 
latter turned out to be a worse war-monger than his rightist predecessor.

The nomenclature in use since 1793 is that Left means tending democratic and 
Right means tending authoritarian, the terms being applied to both the economy 
and the polity.  Thus the title of the article has a double meaning - "What 
remains of the Left?" and "What is more democratic than the Left?"

The answer to the second question is Libertarian Socialism, which has contrasted 
with the traditional Left since before Lenin attacked it in "'Left-Wing' 
Communism: An Infantile Disorder" (1920).  Today it is particularly the politics 
associated with Noam Chomsky, who wrote in 1970, "I think that the libertarian 
socialist concepts - and by that I mean a range of thinking that extends from 
left-wing Marxism through anarchism - are fundamentally correct and that they 
are the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of 
advanced industrial society."  ("Libertarian" in Chomsky's sense must be 
distinguished from the later - and exclusively American - usage, where it means 
something like anarcho-capitalism.)

I'm not so sanguine as Wolff about prospects for the American Left, but I am 
sure that it can revive only in conjunction with people who consider themselves 
on the Right - notably Libertarians like Ron Paul.  Opposition to the mainstream 
of US politics - the two business parties - is indeed growing on both the Left 
and Right, but probably faster on the Right.  On immediate questions, elements 
of the American Right (the paleo-conservatives) have been more consistent 
principled opponents of the Long War in the Middle East than the Left (and 
certainly more than the Liberals, who often joined the neo-conservatives to 
support it: John McCain has praised Obama for doing what he would have done in 
the Mideast war).

Libertarians also oppose the financialization of the economy over the last 30 
years - Rep. Paul has been a lonely voice calling for an audit of the Federal 
Reserve System.  And they condemn the intense concentration of wealth  in the US 
over the same period.  They rightly recognize the federal government as the 
source of these developments but think that they can be reversed simply by 
removing the federal government from the scene of the crime.  Again, too 
sanguine: democratic control over the economy must replace the present control 
by an economic elite working through the federal government.


On 3/14/11 9:28 AM, David Green wrote:
> That combination of rising *youthful passion* and political experience with 
> mass radical action represents a *potent mass base* for a new US left 
> political formation to emerge.
>
> *Organization is what the US left lacks.* Not issues, not members, not a wide 
> public audience: the US left now has all of them in abundance. Indeed, the 
> economic crisis that exploded in 2008 – now becoming a social crisis because 
> the "recovery" bypassed the majority that needed it most – has only enhanced 
> that abundance. Yet, a deeply rooted and continuously nurtured aversion to 
> unified organization undermines the US left's social influence and collective 
> action at every turn.
>
> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/14-2
>
>
>
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