Reactionary politics

Historically leftist politics was guided by intellectuals and theory. Think of Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci as theoreticians of radical politics. They crafted political economic critiques of capitalism, defining a plan for action that included criticism, strategy, and goals. It was the linking of theory to practice that defined left politics. Similarly, Michael Harrington, one of the founders of Democratic Socialists of America, fashioned a theory of politics and a vision for political movement in books such as The Twilight of Capitalism and The Next Left. Others such as Frances Fox Piven and Cornel West were progressives who bridged the gap between intellectualism and political activism. Progressive politics linked the intellectuals to the movement, working together to forge a plan for action that included policies, goals, and a strategy. Ideas mattered.

Today, there is no praxis. There is little or no effort to connect intellectual thinkers to everyday politics. What we used to call ‘armchair socialists’ often twaddle esoteric theories about politics in academic journals that at best only other academics read, perhaps if only to build literature reviews for their next article. Similarly, what counts for progressive politics today ranges from warmed over neo-liberalism with a human face, such as what Barack Obama and now Joe Biden espouse, to at best movement politics lacking goals and strategy. More often than not progressive politics is reactionary -- defined in opposition to Trumpism, overt racism, homophobia, or sexism. Rarely is it class-driven, at best it is a demand for better pay or working conditions, but again not linked to a plan for action or clearly articulated goals. It is slogans without strategy, ideas without ideology, politics without a program.

Walter Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction brilliantly criticized capitalism for stripping away the aura of art and replacing it with politics. Capitalism politicized everything.

His argument, building upon Karl Marx’s line in the Communist Manifesto that capitalism’s destructive power was that: “All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.” Capitalism destroys; the goal of socialism is to build from the ashes of what bourgeois society had burned.

Excerpted: ‘Anti-Intellectualism and the American Left’

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