"The most politically encouraging event on the horizon -- which is a very bleak one politically -- is the possibility of fusion or synthesis of some of the positions of what is to be called left and some of what is to be called libertarian."
Er, ain't there something to this? In fact, ain't it absolutely spot-on?
I won't have a bar of Hitch's very personal and vitriolic attacks on people whose positions on the whole post-WTC business are far more sensibly focussed than his own, but Hitch's bright red nose sniffs out pretty well stuff like nascent authoritarianism, romantic-idyll escapism, gratuitous paternalism, institutional hypocricy/inertia/masturbation, smug self-righteousness and kneejerk back-to-the-future 'leftism', I reckon.
Even Hitch's retreat from professed socialism, not all the articulated reasons for which quite do it for me (I think commensurability with targetted market cohort might be in there somewhere), makes a move I find very attractive, and that's throwing big question marks at the legitimacy of the linkages many Marxoid entities sought to make between themselves and the big fella. I see a significant chunk of libertarian-friendly notions in Marx, as I see awe for the transforming power of capitalism, as I see a commitment to keeping up with the times in one's critiques and practice, as I see a profound quasi-Nietzschean loathing for imagination-stifling, options-erasing, fulfilment-denying convention, sectarianism and statism.
Where I do disagree with Hitch is in his rather carefree elision of the capacity and proclivity of current-day capitalism to stifle imaginations, erase options and deny fulfilment, not all of which - not even most of which - is imposed through the medium of the state.
Reckon he needs to develop that point just a tad if it is to be made even remotely comprehensible ...
Cheers, Rob.