"Though he has got up many noses, there is a lot in Nick Cohen's book What's Left? that I agree with. Cohen names the biggest change in modern times-the collapse of the left as a social force-which is at the root of most other reactionary symptoms he lists. He faces up to the exhaustion of the left's political programme and popular decline without flinching (p. 94). He grasps that the appeal of talking up the 'wretched of the earth' is that it compensates for the decline of popular left-wing mobilisation in the first world (p. 108). He has a good ear for the snooty put-downs radicals heap on the working class (p. 184). He shows how cultural theory tends to portray inequality as an inescapable fact of life (p. 111). He baulks at the way that the Marcusian 'repressive tolerance' theory minimises real social gains, like emancipation and democracy (p. 112). He can see how cultural difference has been raised up so high that equality is called into question. He rejects the vulgar idea that people are slaves to marketing ideology (p. 109)"
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