The Left has lost its way and lost its voice

theTimesOnline ^ | August 17, 2002 | CAMILLE PAGLIA

[07055]

Good points. So, why did she vote for Nader?

[Grampa Dave]

When do members of the Lunatic Left lie, including this author?

[Psycho_Bunny]

Soooooo......she fully recognizes the inherent self-destruction and stupidity of leftism.

But still voted for Nader.

Ya.

[stevio]

Wow, damn good article.

[RightResponse]

I see merit in her points, but... BOY, what a bunch of verbal diarrhea!!

[Consort]

All evidence seems to lead to the opposite conclusion.

[Taliesan]

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.

Translation: the left was wrong.

[Billthedrill]

Great catch - thanks for the post. Paglia is, I think, a very astute observer of a left that seems more to have driven away from her than she away from it.

The principal weakness of leftist political doctrine is, IMHO, an over-adherence to some of its Marxist roots, specifically that social class is to be defined in economic terms. If this is accurate then the class relationships that are the underpinnings of the Marxist historical dynamic are invalidated by the changing economic status, or as Paglia states In the US, salaries of skilled manual labourers have long exceeded those of mid-level office staff.

This is the real victory of the proletariat, not a "dictatorship" as Marx proposed, but a rise in economic status with regard to the bourgeousie that essentially eliminates their former class rivalry, at least in economic terms. In cultural terms this is debatable, and may be in part responsible for the red/blue nation split we noted in the last election.

There is a third measure beyond the economic and cultural, the political, the separation of which from the economic is not allowed under Marxist theory, nor is the class mobility which gave rise to it. America's self-proclaimed "ruling class" maps to economic or cultural classes very imperfectly, in fact, is rapidly becoming an entity of itself: Such concentration of power in the State creates its own tyrannical master class. The left stubbornly refuses to recognize this fact, preferring to ignore this class in theory and attempt to suborn it in practice. This dichotomy describes where Lenin left Marx, but that was three-quarters of a century ago and the left is yet to really account for that, preferring instead to substitute murky jargon for theory and increasingly stale cliches for practice.

Marx had a phrase for this, too, "alienation." It wasn't supposed to happen to the left.

[Wright is right!]

"I see merit in her points, but... BOY, what a bunch of verbal diarrhea!!"

That's been a persistent problemo with Camille's writing - her tendency toward affected constructs instead of the clean, crisp, concise sentences that would make her writing more powerful.

One is rarely one's best editor.

Michael

[Wright is right!]

"or as Paglia states In the US, salaries of skilled manual labourers have long exceeded those of mid-level office staff."

Let's just put this in plain English. Manual laborers are rewarded more in a Marxian society because their loyalty is more easily bought. The thick-headed are a natural target for class warfare, since many of the simple-minded resent their smarter neighbors. Call it Marx's Revenge Of The Boneheads.

Michael

[strider44]

"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."

-No sh*t?

"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."

-Anyone tell Al Gore or Hillary this?

[js1138]

As smaller companies were swallowed up in transnational conglomerates...

When told that HillaryCare would force small businesses to close, Ms Clinton responded that she could not be responsible for "undercapitalised" businesses.

Small companies live in fear of reaching the magic number of 12 employees, at which point they become nationalized.

[steve-b]

The Left has... lost its voice

Long-term "service" to The Bent One will have that effect.

[Leisler]

Well said, and way above me. I agree, but there is even a layer deeper and more elemental. They hate. They hate in a low, fecal, tear down way, America, and Americans and every thing good and fine, popular and basic. They get off on destruction of America; it kicks off endomorphins in them. In the end it is not so much logic, or reason, but feeling-i.e., chemicals. This is why arguing doesn’t work with them. They are my enemy. I hate them so. Honest.

[Billthedrill]

I think you're right, but Camille's point is that it isn't as easy to buy them off any more because they now have as much income as the folks the Marxists used to play them off against. Class envy now has to be couched in other terms if it's to work these days. Some of the left have caught up to that, the others are still attempting to identify the proletariat with the poor, a mapping which doesn't work as well now, because many of the poor don't work at all.

Here's one place where the left is losing it, IMHO - they can still work up class envy between poor and wealthy, (that stubborn adherence to economic measures I mentioned) but the class of the poor and the class of the proletariat aren't the same anymore. A wise fellow once said "the poor ye have with ye always," and if He was right it's a mighty shaky foundation for leftist politics. I think that's why the latter are shrinking in effectiveness, if Paglia is right on that account (and increasing in stridency).

[LarryLied]

The Stalinists (DLC) are purging the Trotskyites (progressives) from the Democrat party. This is great. Turkel, Donahue, McKinney, Hilliard are all crying. The Democrat party simply does not have enough votes unless they can keep the progressives in the party. But it can't. Israel and corporate cash trump classic leftist ideology. Either progressives suck it in and wait for an opening, which doesn't suit their temperment, they go Green or they sit home and don't vote. A win for the GOP no matter what.

[Billthedrill]

If my reply was murky it's my fault, not yours! ;-)

(You get this way debating Marx with Marxists. Don't hate them, pity them. They expend tremendous amounts of intellectual energy clinging to the demonstrably invalid.)

[bert]

Was this article an act of purgation and reclamation?

It sounded elitist to me.

[HumanaeVitae]

You want to see verbal diarrhea...read her "Sexual Personae".