by David Horowitz
500 pages; hardcover
Spence Publishing, 2003
$20.97 from Amazon.Com
Click here to order
For many years, my policy on accepting review copies of books has remained simple and reliable: If I don't have something nice to say, I'll say nothing at all. I won't accept a review copy of something I expect to dislike -- I'd rather pay for the book than feel bound to "pay" for it with a review that doesn't reflect my true opinion.
For obvious reasons, I was surprised to receive an email from Bill Tierney of Spence Publishing, asking if I'd be interested in a review copy of David Horowitz's new collection. Granted, I'd favorably reviewed one of Horowitz's books in the past, but in the post-9/11 era I've been extremely critical -- even, I'm forced to admit, sometimes offensively so -- of his foreign policy views.
After considerable thought -- and after a brief correspondence with Mr. Tierney, explaining that I could not promise to review the book favorably, and receiving his assurances that no such quid pro quo was expected -- I accepted the offer. What the hell? I thought. I've given fair warning. I don't owe David Horowitz anything, and if the book deserves to be slagged, I can slag it in good conscience.
I shouldn't have worried. Whatever else may be said about Horowitz, he always turns out a fascinating piece. Left Illusions is a collection of excerpts, articles and essays (28 of which, according to the cover blurb, are either unpublished, or are out of print, in book form) spanning his career from early New Left ideologue to avatar of what I refer to as "neo-conservatism" (a label he rejects -- but more on that later).The reader who comes to Horowitz's work seeking nothing more than a thorough demolition of the socialist dream and a comprehensive indictment of the modern American left won't be disappointed. Left Illusions is a worthy successor to Destructive Generation and Radical Son in that respect, covering not only Horowitz's disillusionment with the left's denial of its own past, but his trenchant ideological critique of leftist ideas presented as it developed over his own career.
There are, however, more sides to Horowitz -- and to the makeup of this anthology -- than those two. And, lest the reader suspect that I'm giving Horowitz a "free pass" in some way, I'll cover a primary area of disagreement first.
I was somewhat disappointed to find that the collection is "light" where the post-9/11 era is concerned. Of the 43 selections, only the final seven are dedicated -- loosely -- to the "war on terror." Given the life-spanning nature of Left Illusions and Horowitz's attempt to demonstrate the course of his own ideological development, this shouldn't be taken as a weakness -- it's merely a matter of personal disappointment on my own part. In truth, the book can reasonably be viewed both as a coda to 40 years of political development, followed by a brief overture to his future focus. In that sense, it's only right that the events of the past two years receive what seems, at first glance, to be short shrift.
Where Horowitz does choose to deal with foreign policy issues after 9/11, I can't even say that I always find myself in disagreement with him on principle, or unsympathetic to the journey he's made. "Why Israel is the Victim" may be the best concise explanation of the Arab-Israeli conflict in print. And, read in tandem with another piece -- "The Passion of the Jews," published 29 years ago in Ramparts -- it helps establish the fact, not always obvious to those on opposite sides of an ideological barricade from him, that Horowitz has both thought and felt his way from left to right as a process of resolving contradictions that have genuinely troubled him. It's convenient to think of Horowitz as a "defector," and to leap from that perception to the conclusion that his change of views has been one of expedience rather than of conviction. These two essays (and other, similar pairings) make it impossible to cling to such an evaluation.
But I digress. I was speaking of disagreement, and there is disagreement aplenty, on precisely the subject of Horowitz's "neo-conservatism."
"I have never defined myself as a 'neo-conservative'," Horowitz writes, "because, belonging to a younger political generation, I did not share some of the social attitudes of the neoconservative founders." And, he avers, "neoconservatism -- at least in the view of its founders -- has become indistinguishable from conservatism itself." ("Conservatives and Race," 2002, at p. 196 of Left Illusions)
Later, however (in "Neo-Communism," May 2003, at page 430 of Left Illusions), Horowitz takes it a bit further. "There is no group that identifies its politics as 'neoconservative' .... There are no 'neoconservative' organizations (official or unofficial) and there is no 'neoconservative' policy or plan."
I can accept the notion that Horowitz does not regard himself as a "neoconservative" based on disagreements he might have with those accepted as "neoconservative" spokespersons on social issues. On the other hand, neoconservatism does not, for the most part, define itself with respect to such issues. Andrew Sullivan, for example, is a) a "neoconservative" and b) openly gay. To the extent that neoconservatives have allied themselves, in some cases, with other identifiable movements -- the "religious right" -- for example -- it's been an alliance of convenience, not a marriage of compatible ideologies.
The glue that holds neoconservatism together is foreign policy, with a healthy portion of "reluctant" welfare statism mixed in as necessary to pursuing foreign policy goals. And on foreign policy, Horowitz is generally in agreement with the neoconservatives, and often in their vanguard. In the course of conducting a political taxonomy -- learned, in large measure at the knee of Horowitz himself -- I've satisfied myself that Horowitz is a neo-conservative, just as the "New Left" could be said to have been marxist, both when it hewed to the exact line of the Communist Party and when it did not.
I find Horowitz's disingenuous treatment of the very term alarming, precisely because his past is one of wrestling with the truth of the political milieu in which he finds himself and never turning his face from the facts that confront him. In "Neo-Communism," he attempts to foist the very existence of "neoconservatism" off as a fraud: a name pasted on Scoop Jackson Democrats who defected to the GOP, by their leftist former allies. This tack is not a new one -- Jonah Goldberg tried to blame the creation of "neoconservatism" on Michael Harrington of Dissent. In this respect, Horowitz and Goldberg agree: "neoconservatism" is a phantom, a construct, a boogey-man invented by leftists to describe a group that doesn't exist. To his credit, Horowitz doesn't play the anti-semitism card, as Goldberg does, attempting to define "neoconservatism" as a convenient label used to discredit Jewish conservatives.
The problem with Horowitz's formulation is that it's false on its face. The term "neo-conservatism" does, in fact, describe a movement that was, until recently, proud of its existence and accomplishments and identified itself by that name. The man described by himself, and by others, as the veritable "Godfather" of neo-conservatism, Irving Kristol, still answers proudly to that description, no matter the lengths that many of, or formerly of, his circle go to avoid doing so now. His 1995 classic, Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, explores the underlying history of the neo-conservative movement.
Political taxonomy is, of course, dirty and dangerous work. However, given Horowitz's brilliant analyses of the common factors linking leftists, leftist organizations, leftist movements and leftist ideas, he can't -- or at least shouldn't -- be surprised to find himself referred to as a member of an identifiable ideological group, the essential and distinctive ideas of which his own closely conform to. Foreign policy is the preeminent issue of American politics in 2003; Horowitz's views on foreign policy -- and his public justifications for those views -- correspond closely with those of the "neo-conservatives." While I'm willing to concede that the precise path he trod to arrive at those views may differ from the paths trod by others, the fact remains that he's arrived at the same destination.
And, insofar as paths are concerned, the neo-conservatives arguably derive their foreign policy ideas from a common Trotskyite past. While Horowitz may or may not have ever publicly embraced Trotsky, he has a self-described past as a marxist ideologue and a known, long association with Isaac Deutscher, Trotsky's biographer and, in some ways, his posthumous amanuensis. Horowitz's early career on the left subsisted in rejecting Stalinism. The neo-conservative progenitors, as former Trotskyites, seem to have been primarily motivated in their own ideological flight, by anti-Stalinist sentiments. Is it so unreasonable to conclude that leftists, fleeing rightward on separate paths, might tend to bring certain common beliefs with them? Or that, having done so, they might then find common cause? It doesn't require conspiracy theory to so conclude. And I conclude that Horowitz, even he finds the neo-conservative label distasteful, merits it on the basis of his ideas.
Once again, however, taking up the cudgel of foreign policy would not alone do justice to Horowitz's work. As a libertarian, I've often found his analyses disturbing, but have had difficulty explaining why. Left Illusions is no less unsettling, but it is more explanatory. I believe I've finally put my finger on just what it is that I find troubling about Horowitz's odyssey.
Libertarianism, in the "purist" ideological form which I advocate, is an untested product in the fullest sense. In the "micro" sense some particular policies, experiments and outcomes are observed to validate libertarian ideas -- and many political figures, Horowitz included, have adopted what they refer to as a "libertarian" approach to some issues -- but we have yet to see what could rightfully be called "a libertarian society" in action.
For libertarians, Horowitz's odyssey should serve as a cautionary tale. It is the story of a movement -- socialism -- which could not come to terms with its failures, or correct them (were that possible), or even own up to them. "Above all," he writes in the title essay, originally published in 1979, "the left seems trapped in its romantic vision. In spite of the defeats to its radical expectations, it is unable to summon the detachment to look at itself critically. ... Can it begin to shed the cloak of arrogance that elevates it above history and makes it impervious to the lessons of experience?"
This, of course, is a question that any ideological movement must answer -- and libertarianism shares with socialism its reliance on an inflexible ideological framework rather than the more pragmatic conservative "paradigm of essences toward which the phenomenology of society is in continuing approximation." The ordeal of fire which consumed the left is one which the libertarian movement must ultimately pass through as well. Are we up to it? I don't know. In the title essay once again, Horowitz attributes to Antonio Gramsci the description of the "revolutionary temperament as a pessimism of the intellect and an optimism of the will." I find this description chillingly familiar ... and upon the libertarian movement's ability to transcend it weighs the possibility of a better, or worse, world.