I’m comfortable when a priest gives extreme unction to a
dead catholic and conducts the funeral. So who should write the obituary of the
Left after 120 years of life?
I’m comfortable with the words of a marxist scholar, Andrei Markovits, writing in the Winter issue
of Dissent. Markovits puts the peak of
lefty thought at 1917 and the peak of influence in 1947. He traces the gradual decline and
fragmentation of the left from 1947 to the recent death last year.
Markovits writes
from a European perspective, as a scholar in the German Studies Department at
the U. of Michigan.
America had a
significant influence on the decline of the Left, beginning with the civil
rights movement. The civil rights movement was opposed by most labor unions;
labor and the proletariat had been longtime central tent-poles of the left.
Then came the woman’s movement and gay liberation into a Lefty world that had
been almost entirely male. The USSR in
Eastern Europe, China and Pol Pot in Southeast Asia didn’t help the Left.
I recommend
Markovits’ obituary. The final days of
the Left have been very unpleasant: heavily focused on anti-Americanism and
anti-Semitism.
On a lighter side,
the last page editorial of the latest New Republic has contributing editor T.A.
Frank going to an International Socialist Organization gathering in D.C. on
inaugural day. He goes to the meeting
as a liberal and comes out of the meeting as a Republican. He wants someone to drop a bunker-buster on
Arundhati Roy for her position supporting the Iraqi resistance in spite of
their cutting off heads on TV. You’ll enjoy the article.