[lbo-talk] There. Is. No. God.

Jeffrey Fisher jeff.jfisher at gmail.com
Sun Mar 5 07:44:22 PST 2006


On 3/5/06, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, 5 Mar 2006 06:48:03 -0800 (PST) Chris Doss
> <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> writes:
> >
> > I'm having a quasi-Lovecraftian moment of cosmic
> > horror:
> >
> > Blair Says Trotsky Book Inspired Him Sat Mar 4, 3:28
> > PM ET
> >
> > LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair, who wrenched
> > his party from the left to the center of the political
> > spectrum, said he had been inspired to enter politics
> > by a book about socialist icon Leon Trotsky.
> >
> We should also keep in mind, that the infamous renegade,
> David Horowitz, was a protege of Deutscher back in
> 1960s London. Poor Isaac must be rolling in his grave!

uh oh. is this enough to suspect a pattern? i've not read deutscher, so i've got nothing at all to contribute on the topic, but i have always wondered about the conversion factor in left political thinking: you know, the idea of "radicalization". i know i'm supposed to be the great apologist for religion, but it always weirded me out that so many people i organized with had such a fundamentally *religious* understanding of their radical atheist pro-union politics. it always struck me as precarious, and therefore impractical (so, to "convert" someone to leftist politics would be, in my view, bad organizing), but the weird part was atheist leftists using religious concepts to explain their political commitment. maybe it's just because we haven't come up with a good language of consciousness-raising (on the one hand) and commitment (on the other) that doesn't mimic religious conversion, or isn't at the very least parasitic of it.

but it sure seems a poor model, to me.

to bring it back to this point about deutscher, blair, and horowitz, i wonder about these political conversions. i am almost sold on arianna huffington, but i am skeptical about her for the same reasons (well, and there's the opportunism factor).

probably some of you will think, "oh, now it all makes sense" when you hear this, but i grew up (not unlike doug, perhaps) as a neo-conservative in the 80s. it was the experience of grad school that changed things for me, although the stage was set in and by college (pace chuck0). i grew up (for the most part) in a GOP family in a GOP county of ohio, but i always thought that, well, you know, capitalism was just. it was when i got to new haven that my concern for making things right overwhelmed my sense that capitalism was the way to do that ( and i mean capitalism very much in the adam smith sense, btw, although i was reading people like mises in high school, too, seeing the austrian school as the true keepers of the flame) .

but the shift for me was never one of the scales falling from my eyes (per saint paul). it was much more gradual than that and, loooking back on it, was much more about getting things done.

or maybe i'm just nostalgically romanticizing myself. it's possible.

j

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