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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