>From Perry Anderson's "Renewals", an article in the current New Left
Review, online at (http://www.newleftreview.org/FreeArticle.htm):
The intellectual atmosphere in the advanced countries, and extending well
beyond them, reflects these changes. If the bulk of the Western
intelligentsia was always substantially satisfied with the status quo, with
a more restless and imaginative minority flanking it to the right, the left
was still a significant presence in most of the leading capitalist states
down through the eighties, even if there were important national
variations-the British becoming less conservative, as the French or
Italians became more so, and so forth. With the homogenization of the
political scene in the nineties, one would expect there to have been a
Gleichschaltung [Yiddish for heartburn] of acceptable opinion as well. By
the end of the decade, this has gathered pace. If we look at the spectrum
of what was the traditional-formerly socialist-Left, two types of reaction
to the new conjuncture predominate.
The first is accommodation. In its hour of general triumph, capitalism has
convinced many who at one time believed it an avoidable evil that it is a
necessary and on balance salutary social order. [This does not include
Bolivian peasants who were threatened with a tax on water.] Those who have
rallied, explicitly or tacitly, to the Third Way are obvious examples. But
the range of guises in which accommodation can be reached are much wider,
and are quite compatible with a sceptical or even derisive view of
official-Blumenthal-Campbell-oleographs of the new order: extending from
frank acknowledgement of a down-the-line superiority of private enterprise,
without mollifying embellishments, to simple dropping of the subject of
property regimes altogether. [official-Blumenthal-Campbell oleographs is a
reference to studies linking saturated fat to postmodernism.] One
consequence of the shift in the ideological climate at large is that it
becomes decreasingly necessary even to express a position on these issues,
as they fall outside the perimeter of significant debate. Clamorous
renegacy is quite rare; the commoner pattern is just changing the subject.
But the depth of actual accommodation can be seen from episodes like the
Balkan War, where the role of NATO was simply taken for granted, as a
normal and desirable part of the political universe, by a wide band of
opinion that would not have dreamt of doing so ten or twenty years back.
[Odd. Perry Anderson seems to be one of the few people on the planet who
has not been following Jared Israel's 'Emperor's Clothes' website.] The
underlying attitude is: capitalism has come to stay, we must make our peace
with it. [Especially when you are a tenured professor or well-established
journalist making more than $75,000 per year.]
The second type of reaction can best be described as one of consolation.
Here there is no unprincipled accommodation-earlier ideals are not
abandoned, and may even be staunchly reaffirmed. But faced with daunting
odds, there is a natural human tendency to try and find silver linings in
what would otherwise seem an overwhelmingly hostile environment. [This must
be a reference to the assumption that when capitalism unleashes an attack
on the standard of living of more than 90 percent of the people inhabiting
the planet earth, there will be receptivity to Marxist ideas.] The need to
have some message of hope induces a propensity to over-estimate the
significance of contrary processes, to invest inappropriate agencies with
disinterested potentials, to nourish illusions in imaginary forces.
Probably none of us on the Left is immune to this temptation, which can
even claim some warrant from the general rule of the unintended
consequences flowing from any historical transformation-the dialectical
sense in which victories can unexpectedly generate victors over them. It is
also true that no political movement can survive without offering some
measure of emotional relief to its adherents, which in periods of defeat
will inevitably involve elements of psychological compensation. But an
intellectual journal has other duties. [Of course. An intellectual journal
is designed to provide a platform for obscurantist, navel-gazing academics
who never wrote a leaflet in their life.] Its first commitment must be to
an accurate description of the world, no matter what its bearing on morale
may be. All the more so, because there is an intermediate terrain in which
consolation and accommodation can overlap-that is, wherever changes in the
established order calculated to fortify its hold are greeted as steps
towards its loosening, or perhaps even a qualitative transformation of the
system. Russell Jacoby's recent End of Utopia offers trenchant reflections
on some of this. [Russell Jacoby's latest book is a call for a return to
"utopian" themes that would answer the TINA zeitgeist that has poor Perry
Anderson so blue and miserable. Utopianism is the last thing that Marxists
need to get involved with. What all these left professors can't understand
is that it requires an agency to effect historical change, not utopian
wet-dreams. An agency like the underpaid janitors who clean their office
toilets after they go home at night.]
What kind of stance should NLR adopt in this new situation? Its general
approach, I believe, should be an uncompromising realism. Uncompromising in
both senses: refusing any accommodation with the ruling system, and
rejecting every piety and euphemism that would understate its power. No
sterile maximalism follows. [Maximalism? I guess this means revolution.
What can't these mandarins learn to speak clearly?] The journal should
always be in sympathy with strivings for a better life, no matter how
modest their scope. [A better life? Who needs NLR for this? I can read the
UTNE Reader and get much sounder advice about what kind of natural
toothpaste to use, etc.] But it can support any local movements or limited
reforms, without pretending that they alter the nature of the system.
[Somebody explain to Perry Anderson about the dialectical relationship
between reform and revolution.] What it cannot-or should not-do is either
lend credence to illusions that the system is moving in a steadily
progressive direction, or sustain conformist myths that it urgently needs
to be shielded from reactionary forces: attitudes on display, to take two
recent examples, in the rallying to Princess and President by the
bien-pensant left, as if the British monarchy needed to be more popular or
the American Presidency more protected. Hysteria of this kind should be
sharply attacked. [I agree. The next Marxist I run into who defends the
Queen will get a poke in the eye.]
Louis Proyect
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