[lbo-talk] pink-scare: commentary on our editors' note

Bhaskar Sunkara bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com
Sat Jul 16 16:47:24 PDT 2011


I'd add that much of this critique centers around what we didn't say and what we were perceived of implying by the Harrington citation, omissions which were mostly the product of having to stick to 700 words for print.

I'll reply when I have some more time.

On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 7:30 PM, Bhaskar Sunkara <bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com>wrote:


>
> http://pink-scare.blogspot.com/2011/07/jacobin-dancing-on-liberalisms-grave.html
>
> I just noticed that the new issue of Jacobin is out. It's well worth
> reading. There is an excellent article by Richard Seymour (previously posted
> on his blog Lenin's Tomb) entitled "How can the Left Can Win?". Lars T. Lih
> has a piece as does Paul Le Blanc. There's also a piece by Zizek and a
> response. I also just finished reading an extremely interesting piece about
> radical political economy, Marxism and neoclassical economics. Check it out.
>
> I should like to say something about this issue's editorial "Dancing on
> Liberalism's Grave". It ends with a cautionary note to the Left:
> Radicals must avoid submerging our identities into an insipid and
> ahistorical “progressivism”; we must remain firmly anchored to the socialist
> tradition and never shy away from the ruthless critique of liberalism. But
> socialists should also be wary of slipping into a rhetorical posture of
> unrestrained invective that only cements the Left’s marginal status in
> American political life. Don’t dance on liberalism’s grave. There’s nothing
> to celebrate.
> I couldn't agree more with this particular set of claims. I, too, agree
> that we should reject ahistorical "progressivism" and remain firmly rooted
> in the socialist tradition. Neither should the Left shy away from the
> ruthless critique of liberalism. And, it is also true that the Left should
> avoid sectarian Schadenfreude in the context of the demise of reformist
> liberalism.
>
> But, having conceded this much, I would like to take issue with the way
> that the Left is carved up by the authors of the editorial. In their
> estimation, the Left has "traditionally" responded in two ways to the
> decline of liberal reformism: by adopting a politically tepid, fiercely
> dogmatic lesser-evilism meant to roll back the rise of the Right, on the one
> hand, or by taking a cynical, sectarian delight in the implosion of
> liberalism on the other. "Traditionally" seems a bit misplaced here, since
> the authors seem only to have in mind the demise of postwar liberal
> reformism in the US in the 1960s and 70s. It's not clear that their analysis
> helps us make sense of previous epochs of reaction and revolt (e.g. the
> 1920s, on the one hand, and the explosion of left radicalism in the 1930s,
> on the other). But this is a side note: let's stick with the period that
> interests them, i.e. the upheavals of the late 60s and early 70s during
> which postwar liberalism died a painful death as a hard-nosed neoliberalism
> was born.
>
> [continued...]
>



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