On Feb 5, 2009, at 5:24 PM, James Heartfield wrote:
> My review of Nick Cohen's 'What's Left? How the left lost its Way'
> is published in Critique: Journal of Socialist Thought
>
> "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)"
>
> Read more http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/
> content~content=a908502388~db=all~order=page
Would love to but you gotta pay.
Doug