ROBIN SHEPHERD: TOTALITARIANISM IS BACK IN FASHION
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4346/totalitarianism_is_back_in_fashion
With the terrifying tenacity of a cancer once thought cured that will never go away, totalitarianism is back in fashion. The “crisis of capitalism”, to use the deluded vocabulary of the latest generation of totalitarians, once again makes Marx “relevant”.
For those influenced by Karl Popper’s magnificent tour de force The Open Society and its Enemies, it will be no suprise that a new wave of people and movements against the free society has emerged, and is fired up with a new confidence. Popper’s argument was that, going back to Plato, we are engaged in a world-historic philosophical struggle between the supporters and the opponents of a freedom oriented political society.
The struggle does not end.
This is but a short missive, which will be followed up later. Consider, for now, an offering from Britain’s leading leftist political magazine, the New Statesman, which (online at least) we regard as now superior in its content and influence to the increasingly life-style oriented Guardian’s Comment is free.
The piece in question is about the “radicalisation” — get the vocab? — of Leftists in the United States. Authored by Max Strasser, here are the central points of the piece, with our queries:
1. (via the summary) “Every time I’ve come home to the US from my home abroad over the past four years, I notice a trend among people of my demographic: they have become increasingly politicised – and increasingly radical.”
Commentator comment: Why are you using the word “radical” to make something sound chic? Isn’t this somewhat pathetic?
2. “Something is brewing in Brooklyn, something far more inspiring than another batch of artisanal organic ale. There is a revival of left-wing intellectual thinking on a level unseen since the 1960s. Young people are starting magazines and engaging in serious, substantial critique of the status quo?
Commentator comment: It might not be a “revival”, — though it could be — but it could be a throw-back. No? Lack of originality, per chance?
3. “A 2011 poll found that 49 per cent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 have a positive reaction to the word “socialism,” while 47 per cent have a negative reaction to the word “capitalism.” Among the population as a whole 50 per cent view capitalism positively and 60 per cent view socialism negatively.”
Commentator comment: It depends on what you mean by “socialism”. The term has been used to kill 100 million people. Are you, as we suspect, still locked in that Marxist-totalitarian paradigm?
4. “What accounts for this? An answer that sounds straight from Marx’s mouth might be the most obvious one: capitalism is in crisis.”
Commentator comment: Oh dear. The contemporary world is not capitalist. You make the same old mistake. The world is social-democratic-corporatist. OECD figures show that on average 46 percent of economic activity in industrialised nations is flushed through the state. All the major actors are statist, from state central banks, through finance ministries to large companies protected by the state in multiple ways. The entire Marxist edifice is flawed, and is refuted by all the available evidence. The crisis is real; but it is the crisis of the big state; your crisis.
5. “…it was the anti-Stalinist left, much of it based in New York, much of it centered around magazines, that helped to lay the groundwork for the New Left of the 1960s. What happens next remains entirely unclear.”
Commentator comment: Are you serious, even at all? Never mind the stuck-in-nostalgia for the “New Left” which was only “new” half a century ago, what are you trying to pull with this “anti-Stalinist” line? Western Marxists, in almost all cases, who opposed Stalinism only did so because it was Stalin doing the killing rather than Trotsky, their preferred totalitarian mass murderer. Trotsky slaughtered hundreds of thousands during the Red Terror in the wake of the Russian Revolution. If he’d won the battle for succession after Lenin, it would have been Stalin who ended up with an ice pick to the back of the head.
In the end, neo-Marxists are totalitarians as much as traditional Marxists, cultural Marxists, Leninist Marxists, Stalinist Marxists, Trotskyist Marxists or any other Marxists.
They are the enemies of the open society. And the fact that the New Statesman’s writer thinks that the enemies of the open society are on the rise in America and elsewhere should not be accepted as a fashion item for superficial, trend-oriented totalitarians to celebrate; it is a reason for the true friends of freedom to be on their guard.
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