On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Verso asked me to look over Desai's book for a blurb. Couldn't do it
> - it's a "capitalism is the true revolutionary force today so Marx
> would be a capitalist" argument. Who needs it? I'd rather read Hayek.
Since we seem to be having a Thanksgiving Weekend Hitchens Marathon, it seems appropriate to add in that this seems to be exactly what Hitchens thinks. Or as he puts "everything I've ever believed, all in one girth."
http://reason.com/0111/fe.rs.free.shtml
November 2001 Reason Magazine
Free Radical: Christopher Hitchens interviewed by Rhys Southan
<snip>
REASON: You've called yourself a socialist living in a time when
capitalism is more revolutionary.
Hitchens: I said this quite recently. I'm glad you noticed it. Most of
the readers of The Nation seemed not to have noticed it. That was the
first time I'd decided it was time I shared my hand. I forget whether
I said I was an ex-socialist, or recovering Marxist, or whatever, but
that would have been provisional or stylistic. The thing I've often
tried to point out to people from the early days of the Thatcher
revolution in Britain was that the political consensus had been
broken, and from the right. The revolutionary, radical forces in
British life were being led by the conservatives. That was something
that almost nobody, with the very slight exception of myself, had
foreseen.
I'd realized in 1979, the year she won, that though I was a member of
the Labour Party, I wasn't going to vote for it. I couldn't bring
myself to vote conservative. That's purely visceral. It was nothing to
do with my mind, really. I just couldn't physically do it. I'll never
get over that, but that's my private problem.
But I did realize that by subtracting my vote from the Labour Party, I
was effectively voting for Thatcher to win. That's how I discovered
that that's what I secretly hoped would happen. And I'm very glad I
did. I wouldn't have been able to say the same about Reagan, I must
say. But I don't think he had her intellectual or moral courage. This
would be a very long discussion. You wouldn't conceivably be able to
get it into a REASON interview.
Marx's original insight about capitalism was that it was the most
revolutionary and creative force ever to appear in human history. And
though it brought with it enormous attendant dangers, [the
revolutionary nature] was the first thing to recognize about it. That
is actually what the Manifesto is all about. As far as I know, no
better summary of the beauty of capital has ever been written. You
sort of know it's true, and yet it can't be, because it doesn't
compute in the way we're taught to think. Any more than it computes,
for example, that Marx and Engels thought that America was the great
country of freedom and revolution and Russia was the great country of
tyranny and backwardness.
But that's exactly what they did think, and you can still astonish
people at dinner parties by saying that. To me it's as true as knowing
my own middle name. Imagine what it is to live in a culture where
people's first instinct when you say it is to laugh. Or to look
bewildered. But that's the nearest I've come to stating not just what
I believe, but everything I ever have believed, all in one girth.