The End of the Left’s History

The hysterical reaction of the Western Left to the reelection of President George W. Bush is not just a primal scream from politicians and intellectuals deprived of political power. The violent language, numerous acts of violence, and demonization of Bush and his electorate — the same as that directed against Tony Blair in Britain, Jose Maria Aznar in Spain, and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy — portend a more fundamental event: the death rattle of the traditional Left, both as a dominant political force and as an intellectual vision.

For the most part, the Left only wins elections nowadays when their candidates run on their opponents’ platform (Clinton and Blair) or when panic overwhelms the political process (Zapatero and Schroeder). Under normal circumstances, leftists running as leftists rarely win, proving that their ideology — the ideology that dominated political and intellectual debate for most of the last century — is spent. When their ideas were in vogue, leftist advocates took electoral defeat in stride, as they were confident that their vision was far more popular — because far more accurate — than their opponents’ view of the world. History and logic were on their side. But no more. Incoherent rage and unbridled personal attacks on the winners are sure signs of a failed vision.

Ironically, the Left’s view of history provides us with part of the explanation for its death. Marx and Hegel both understood that the world constantly changes, and ideas change along with it. The world they knew — and successfully transformed — was a class-bound society dominated by royalty and aristocracy. They hurled themselves into class struggle, believing it to be the engine of human history, and they fought for liberty for all. Successive generations of leftists preached and organized democratic revolution at home and abroad, from the overthrow of tyrants to the abolition of class privileges and the redistribution of both political power and material wealth.

In true dialectical fashion, they were doomed by their own success. As once-impoverished workers became wealthier, the concept of the proletariat became outdated, along with the very idea of class struggle. Then the manifest failure and odious tyranny of the 20th-century leftist revolutions carried out in the name of the working class — notably in Russia, China, and Cuba — undermined the appeal of the old revolutionary doctrines, no matter how desperately the Left argued that Communist tyrannies were an aberration, or a distortion of their vision.

Thus the ideology of the Left became anachronistic, even in western Europe, its birthplace and the source of its historical model. But the biggest change was the emergence of the United States as the most powerful, productive, and creative country in the world. It was always very hard for the Left to understand America, whose history, ideology, and sociology never fit the Left’s schemas. Even those who argued that there were class divisions in America had to admit that the "American proletariat" had no class consciousness. The political corollary was that there was never a Marxist mass movement in the United States. Every European country had big socialist parties and some had substantial Communist parties; the United States had neither. Indeed, most American trade unions were anti-Communist. As Seymour Martin Lipset and others have demonstrated, the central ideals of European socialism — which inspired many American leftist intellectuals — were contained in and moderated by the American Dream. America had very little of the class hatred that dominated Europe for so long; American workers wanted to get rich, and believed they could. Leftist Europeans — and the bulk of the American intellectual elite — believed that only state control by a radical party could set their societies on the road to equality.

The success of America was thus a devastating blow to the Left. It wasn’t supposed to happen. And American success was particularly galling because it came at the expense of Europe itself, and of the embodiment of the Left’s most utopian dream: the Soviet Union. Even those Leftists who had been outspokenly critical of Stalin’s "excesses" could not forgive America for bringing down the Soviet Empire, and becoming the world’s hyperpower. As Marx and Hegel would have understood, the first signs of hysterical anti-Americanism on the Left accompanied the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The resurgence of American economic power and the defeat of the Soviets exposed the failure of the Left to keep pace with the transformation of the world. The New York intellectual who proclaimed her astonishment at Reagan’s election by saying, "I don’t know a single person who voted for him," well described the dialectical process by which an entire set of ideas was passing into history.

The slow death of the Left was not limited to its failure to comprehend how profoundly the world had changed, but included elements that had been there all along, outside the purview of leftist thought. Marx was famously unable to comprehend the importance of religion, which he dismissively characterized as the "opiate of the masses," and the Left had long fought against organized religion. But America had remained a religious society, which both baffled and enraged the leftists. On the eve of the 2004 elections, some 40 percent of the electorate consisted of born-again Christians, and the world at large was in the grips of a massive religious revival, yet the increasingly isolated politicians and intellectuals of the Left had little contact and even less understanding of people of faith.

Unable to either understand or transform the world, the Left predictably lost its bearings. It was entirely predictable that they would seek to explain their repeated defeats by claiming fraud, or dissing their own candidates, or blaming the stupidity of the electorate. Their cries of pain and rage echo those of past elites who looked forward and saw the abyss. There is no more dramatic proof of the death of the Left than the passage of its central vision — global democratic revolution — into the hands of those who call themselves conservatives.

History has certainly not ended, but it has added a new layer to its rich compost heap.

Marx's basic theory was economic, but resulted in socio-political results. It predicted the collapse of capital-intensive industrial age, as the owners oppressed the workers. It was against a backdrop of European feudal society (i.e. land owners and serfs).

By the early 1900s some (e.g. Lenin) grew impatient waiting for the collapse, and decided to speed it up by fostering revolution. Fatally flawed logic. Instead of universal willing workers rising up, radical agitators "forced" the collapse of the feudal/industrial and tried to start from scratch.. Bad plan.

The "workers" and others weren't all than anxious to have their world turned upside down, and resisted. Since Marxism assumes willing participation of all as inevitable the holdouts from the old regime became a massive problem.

Since universality had to be enforced on an unwilling populace, Communism be came a "totalitarian state" masquerading as a "worker's democracy. Stalin solved the problem of the "reluctant revolutionaries", the "old fashioned way". Massive death. Those who objected to the radical overhaul of the entire socio-economic system, and resisted had to convert or die (sound familiar?)

In addition to the merchant class, land owners etc, who were victims of the worker's revolution, the central planning economic model was unable to provide basic food supply. Additional dissent accompanied the food shortages, required additional purges. Massive starvation added fuel to the fire, so the totalitarians had to come down hard to maintain order. Nothing close to what Marx had envisioned, and early signs of fatal architecture.

Economic systems based on coercion don't provide economic expansion from within the system, which requires expansion out side the USSR so they embarked on a worldwide expansion plan. The rest is history.

Meanwhile, WWI and general Communism's lackluster (external view, minus murders) cooled the interest in a revolutionary, economic solution to crush industrial/capital-oriented systems. The Marxist's in Europe, the home of Marxism had the Spanish Civil War and Hitler in view when they made a strategic decision to not "kill capitalism" to promote social, populist (i.e.socialist goals). They decided to "bust the culture" instead. Remember that Europe had a long and stormy experience with royalty, aristocracy and powerful religious oligarchy (i.e. Catholic church and derivatives).

As a result, Marx was anti-oligarchy, anti-religion and anti-monarchy. The Frankfort School of Marxism embarked on a crusade to turn the populous against "the church" and against the oligarchy and aristocracy, "the rich". To accomplish their goals, they chose to target all the representations of wealth, power and control. In place of a revolution of disgruntled workers (economic wedge) they chose to "atomize" all the social systems, in order to restructure the social structure.

They literally had to break all existing social bonds (sufficiently), so they attempted to drive wedges everywhere. Any and all forms of "oppression" were identified and exaggerated, to maximize the power of the oppressed and dispossessed. Women and minority groups were the targets. Economic empowerment and social empowerment were the tool. This is the constant refrain from the Left since pre-WWII. Those are the roots of today's legacy.

Under the guise of liberation and equality, the true purpose it to overthrow or co-opt all power structures. The targets for co-opting were those who controlled the culture: education, media, entertainment, academia and labor. Those were infiltrated to turn the populous against the power structures.

The US has historically frustrated the Marxists. With prosperity, opportunity and increasing equality, they found it hard to get a foothold except for the 1960s-style Liberals who were effectively the Left Center version of the Classic liberals. Democrats Humphrey and Johnson (social policy) are the figureheads. Their latter-day counterparts would be Arlen Specter, et al.

In the last 1960's the Democratic liberals started losing power the the Leftists (New and Old). McGovern and other most of the new blood came from much more "left" attitudes. The Democratic liberals drifted towards the new center of their part and started losing for the same reasons that the Left/Marxists had never been successful.

Liberal became Progressive to blend the Liberal with the New Left and incidental Left extremists. They all supported each others positions and "messed their nest" by hooking up with the neo-Marxists. The rest is history.

The only times they are successful is if the hide their Marxist roots, and only win national elections by distancing themselves far to the right of their "party center", the American neo-Marxists, represented by Moveon.org and the crazy Berkeley crowd of radical Marxists and Anarchists (yes they still exist).

Accustomed to winning for years(as Zell Miller Democrats) they assumed they were a natural majority while drifting further leftward. As they started losing ground they first assumed it was a fluke, temporary setback.

Bush represented the cold hard reality smacking them in the face. They are vehemently opposed to Reagan, and now Bush. In their view, Reagan was a fluke, who won because people liked him, and ignored "the facts". GW Bush was a fluke Gore was a bore, and they didn't get the message out (we didn't have "the facts", (i.e.misinformed, but not evil). The election, they went ALL OUT getting the message out, and making sure everyone knew the REAL Bush, and assumed they had finally "done the job right".

People wouldn't make the mistake of voting for Bush simply because they liked him (like Reagan and Bush2000) No chance of that happening because they went overboard making him as unlikeable as possible. They "got the message out" and talked about the "real issues". Looking good!!

Nov 2, 2004 - Assured that "finally" they got it right.

Whoops!!!!!

Totally reversal of their expectations. Total frustration, since everyone "ignored their message" and "voted against their own interests".

We acted like Americans - Not Marxists - That was more than they could take. They are totally lost how to "convince" people they are right.

"If people really knew the facts, they would have voted for the Progressive Agenda" (nominally, John Kerry).

Dazed and confused, either they are fundamentally wrong, or they rest of us are insane, stupid, sexist, fascists, homophobes, because they are SURE that they are right.

The are truly at a loss to understand WHY. Their little fantasy got shattered, and they TRULY can't believe it.

Consider how many of the loonies want to go FURTHER LEFT, to provide a clear difference.

Your minds are belong to us!!

ROTFLMAO.

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