David Horowitz/Hitchens

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Sat Mar 3 08:12:51 PST 2001


OK, this is more encouraging. He hasn't "renounced" socialism. He says he hasn't an "identifiable political alliegence." The left tradition he grew up in has run aground. Bear in mind he's a Brit, and his center of gravity was around the Labour Party, which has renounced socialism. I feel the same way about Marxism that Hitch does about socialism. There is no there there anymore. I will be happy to defend the legacy of liberalism; I have always been a liberal small-d-democrat. --jks


>From: Rob Schaap <rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: David Horowitz/Hitchens
>Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 22:51:16 +1100
>
>G'day all,
>
> >It's at the end of his interview with Feed, which ran on the list.
>
>Yeah, I've popped the relevant bit at the bottom of this note.
>
>Hardly much of a renunciation, though. Whether one is a socialist or not
>is hardly a question worth asking any more - which is probably why Lamb has
>stopped asking. There really ain't a socialist left to belong to any more.
>And there's something sadly contradictory (as many of this convocation are
>well aware, I'm sure) in proclaiming one's socialism from a position of
>impotently atomic solitude.
>
>As for Hitch's claim that socialism doesn't condition his work any more, in
>a time when capitalism is busy divesting itself of the political identities
>and expectations of liberalism, I suggest there's plenty of useful work to
>be done in defending liberalism and pointing to the retreat of the
>formalisms and material compromises which not only constitute liberalism,
>but legitimate capitalism. And most of his work is still about
>unaccountable elites, systemic and systematised lying, consequently
>unwitting constituencies, and the slaughter and theft which invariably
>attends such developments.
>
>Which has gotta be done, eh?
>
>Not nearly as usefully yours,
>Rob.
>________________________________________________
>
>FEED: Where do you stand politically?
>
>HITCHENS: I don't have any identifiable political
>allegiance at the moment, though I'm barely ready even to
>say that. My political training and allegiance was with the
>left, and I'm sure it shows. That's how I learned to argue
>and what to look for. But that of course came from the
>particular left tradition that was so involved in a lot of
>argument within the left, when there was such a thing as an
>intra-left argument, which there hardly is anymore.
>
>FEED: I remember Brian Lamb on C-Span used to ask
>you, "Are you still a socialist?"
>
>HITCHENS: I was very glad he didn't do that the other
>day when I went on with him. He used to begin every time
>we came on. I knew he hoped that one day I'd say, "Okay,
>okay, you win." And I knew that even if that day ever came
>I wouldn't be glad that it had. It's a question I'm quite
>happy to postpone at the moment. It doesn't condition
>anything I do anymore. I would certainly say that.
>
>

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