Prostration before reaction
Comment by David Walsh
2 September 1998
Alexander Cockburn is a radical journalist whose work
appears regularly in The Nation, the weekly liberal
magazine in the US. An article recently appeared under
his byline in the Wall Street Journal, to whose
Viewpoint column he contributed regularly in the 1980s,
that makes one's skin crawl. The general tone and theme
of the piece, concerned with the Starr-Clinton crisis,
are summed up in its title, "The Left Has Forgotten How
to Enjoy a Good Scandal."
Cockburn writes: "What the stuffy left forgets is that
sex scandals can be an important component of the
seditious ridiculing of Established Power, one of the
prime tasks of any leftist." He suggests that radicals
who are hesitant "to join in the fun on the Lewinsky
scandal ... should learn from ordinary Americans who ...
have been enjoying the sex scandal, without taking it
too seriously." Later, he observes "that any good
leftist should want impeachment to be a staple of every
presidency."
Misplaced frivolity in this case is merely the form
taken by prostration before reaction.
Cockburn, first of all, accepts uncritically the
framework within which the American media have presented
the Starr investigation. In what sense is the present
affair a "sex scandal"? There was nothing illegal about
the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky relationship. To talk
in such terms, even to introduce the question of
"character," as Cockburn does, is to adopt the
hypocritical language of Gertrude Himmelfarb, William
Bennett and the like, the neo-Victorians.
The Lewinsky affair has been essentially a dirty tricks
operation financed and mounted by reactionary elements,
with the aid and support of the venal media, to paralyze
the Clinton administration and open the door to an even
more anti-working-class regime. The details of the
conspiracy have been outlined in the Observer, the
British newspaper, and the complicity of the US media
has been partially documented by Stephen Brill. Cockburn
is well aware of this material, yet he ignores it. He
heaps scorn on Gore Vidal for declaring, in Cockburn's
words, that the Starr inquiry "is a Big Business payback
to Mr. Clinton."
The immediate target of the Journal piece seems to be
those "liberals and leftists," principally
environmentalists and feminists, who are politically in
bed with the White House and therefore have gone soft on
Clinton, according to Cockburn. It is hard to imagine a
more trivial political concern under the present
circumstances. This simply underscores the fact that
Cockburn is so embroiled in such circles he imagines
their activities to have earth-shaking consequences.
That Cockburn construes resistance to the right-wing
conspiracy as giving aid and comfort to Clinton
indicates how uncertain he is about his own opposition
to the Democratic president.
He is quite blind to the significant political issues
posed by the crisis that has swirled around the White
House for seven months without interruption. Socialists
are opposed to Clinton because of the policies of his
government: his collaboration with the Republican
right-wing in destroying social welfare programs, his
role in initiating US military aggression overseas,
including the recent raids on Afghanistan and Sudan, and
his generally wretched track record, which includes, as
a not insignificant component, the cowardly refusal to
oppose the Starr investigation.
But Cockburn's cavalier attitude seems to be that the
overturn of the Clinton administration, no matter who or
what replaces it, must be a positive good as a thing in
itself. This is absurd, and reckless. The World
Socialist Web Site has offered an ongoing analysis of
the crisis and its implications. On 30 July we wrote:
"An increasingly frenzied political struggle is being
waged within a narrow circle at the top of American
society. While Clinton may fall victim first, the real
danger is to the democratic rights of working people. In
this atmosphere of backroom infighting and conspiracy,
in which a handful of politicians, media tycoons and
other corporate bosses vie for control, political life
has been stripped of virtually all democratic content.
It is an atmosphere which can, in the future, fuel the
rise of political adventurers, right-wing demagogues and
movements of a fascist or militarist character."
I would dispute the claim that wide layers of the
population are "enjoying" the current political crisis.
Their general attitude, on the contrary, might be summed
up as disgust with the whole business. The corrupt and
prurient American media, however, are fixated on the
scandal and could be said to be enjoying it. These
people can think and talk about nothing else. For them
the "sex scandal" is the opportunity to bring political
life more fully into line with their own practices and
concerns. As they see it, the Starr investigation is
politics as it ought to be. And Cockburn,
notwithstanding his amorphous "left" views, fits right
in with this crowd.
Behind the lightmindedness lies deep political
demoralization. It is obvious both from what he says and
what he doesn't say that Cockburn cannot conceive of a
movement developing against Clinton and the Democrats
from the left. He is incapable of distinguishing between
socialist working class and extreme right-wing
opposition to the present administration because the
former has no meaning to him. He would consider it an
ultra-left fancy.
Arguing that the "left" has missed the boat on populism,
Cockburn has been expressing interest in right-wing
militia-type movements for several years. His June 12,
1995 column in The Nation, "Who's Left? Who's Right?"
for example, described a visit to the Gun Stock '95
rally in Michigan organized by the far right, including
members of the Libertarian Party. While such movements
attract confused workers, given the worthlessness of the
official labor movement, they represent the potential
nucleus of a fascist movement in the US.
Cockburn's attitude of "Après Clinton le déluge--and a
good thing too!" might remind someone familiar with the
history of the workers movement in the twentieth century
of another strident, but demoralized slogan advanced
some 65 years ago. The German Communist Party proclaimed
"First Hitler, then us" as it was careening toward
catastrophe in the early 1930s. Its ultra-leftism,
summed up in the refusal to organize a United Front with
the Socialist workers to combat the Nazis, concealed a
deep-seated resignation and fatalism.
And Cockburn, prominent in the New Left and anti-Vietnam
War protests in Britain in the 1960s, indeed has family
roots in the Stalinist milieu. His father, Claud
Cockburn, played a leading role in the British Communist
Party in the 1930s and 1940s. Under the name Frank
Pitcairn he covered the Spanish Civil War for the
British Daily Worker, producing scurrilous articles
about the POUM and other left-wing opponents of
Stalinism. At the time of the bourgeois-Stalinist
suppression of the POUM in 1937 he justified the
jailings and murders of its leaders, describing the
party as "'Franco's Fifth Column'--a 'Trotskyist'
organization working in league with the Fascists."
While in Spain, according to the editor of a volume of
his writings, Claud Cockburn formed a close relationship
with Mikhail Koltsov, "then the foreign editor of Pravda
and at that time, in Cockburn's view, 'the confidant and
mouthpiece and direct agent of Stalin in Spain'." In
other words, Cockburn made friends with one of the GPU's
chief spokesmen in Spain, while leftists were being
hunted down, tortured and murdered in special GPU
prisons.
This is Alexander Cockburn's heritage. Far from
repudiating it, he revels in it. In a recent piece in
The Nation he brought together a number of his political
themes and passions: "'Between the crisis and the
catastrophe,' said Mikhail Koltsov to my father at
Munich time in 1939, 'we may as well drink a glass of
champagne.' Monica, so zaftig and endearing, has been
our champagne. With any luck, Bill Clinton's impeachment
will be our caviar. How I yearn for it!"
Sipping champagne with an executioner? Yearning for a
right-wing conspiracy to reach its climax? There is
something deeply disoriented about this, nearly
deranged. What do Cockburn's ravings have to with the
interests of the working class? The notion that anything
violent or disruptive in political life, regardless of
its class character or trajectory, deserves support
(Cockburn recently celebrated India's nuclear tests) is
the hallmark not of a socialist, but of a
petty-bourgeois adventurer or worse. Benito Mussolini
emerged from this sort of milieu, and so did a good
number of his middle class supporters. Cockburn's
article in the Wall Street Journal, which has
spearheaded the pathological campaign against Clinton,
says a good deal about the evolution of an entire layer
of New Leftists and assorted ex-radicals. It is by no
means a pretty picture.