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Image by Hennie Stander.<\/p><\/div>\n
Let us stop to smile at the ridiculousness of\u00a0The New York Times\u2019<\/em>\u00a0rightmost columnist Ross Douthat.<\/p>\n A recent Douthat piece is titled\u00a0\u201cCan the Left Be Happy?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0It accuses \u201cthe [US] left\u201d of being intrinsically despondent, discontentedm and pessimistic.<\/p>\n Douthat pins his argument mainly on the leftish Black author Ta-Nehesi Coates\u2019 following pessimistic statement in\u00a0The Atlanti<\/em>c eleven years ago: \u201cI don\u2019t believe the arc of the universe bends towards justice\u2026I don\u2019t even believe in an arc. I believe in chaos \u2026 I don\u2019t know that it all ends badly. But I think it probably does.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn this [Coates\u2019] crisis of faith,\u201d Douthat claims. \u201cyou see the question that has hung over left-wing culture throughout a period in which its influence over many American institutions has markedly increased: Does it make any sense for a left-winger to be happy?\u201d<\/p>\n Douthat also cites a review essay in which the childhood psychology scholar Candice L. Odgers dared to suggest that rising youth depression might to be related to \u201cguns, exposure to violence, structural discrimination and racism, sexism and sexual abuse, the opioid epidemic, economic hardship and social isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n The Catholic reactionary Trump apologist Douthat claims that \u201cthe left\u201d is \u201cby nature, unhappier than the moderate and conservative alternatives. The refusal of contentment is essential to radical politics\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Douthat relates this alleged left unhappiness to the implosion of what he considers \u201cthe 20th century left\u2019s\u201d\u00a0 two sources of optimism: \u201cthe Christianity of the American social gospel tradition, which influenced New Deal liberalism and infused the civil rights movement, and the Marxist conviction that the iron logic of historical development would eventually bring about a secular utopia \u2014 trust the science (of socialism)!\u201d\u00a0 Further:<\/p>\n \u2018What\u2019s notable about the left in the 2020s is that neither anchor is there anymore. The secularization of left-wing politics has made the kind of Christian-inflected cosmic optimism that still defined, say, Barack Obama\u2019s 2008\u00a0campaign\u00a0seem increasingly irrelevant or cringe-worthy. Meanwhile, the revival of Marxism and socialism has not been accompanied by any obvious recovery of faith in a Marxist science of history. I know many people on the left who think Marx was right about capitalism\u2019s contradictions; I know many fewer who share his expectation that the dialectic will yield a worker\u2019s paradise\u2026Instead you have a fear that when \u2018late capitalism\u2019 crashes, it will probably take everybody down with it, a sense we should be \u2018learning to die\u2019 as the climate crisis worsens, a belief in white supremacy as an original sin without the clear promise of redemption.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Good grief. Where to begin in picking through this childish drivel?<\/p>\n Douthat is laboring under eight wrongheaded notions.<\/p>\n His first mistake is to believe that there is any cohesive political and intellectual formation that can be reasonably be called \u201cthe left\u201d in the United States.\u00a0 Where is this mysterious entity that Trump and his party keep railing about \u2013 \u201cthe Left?\u201d Do we have a big seriously \u201cradical\u201d Socialist party or movement actually contending for power in the United States right now? (Where do I sign up? Hello?)<\/p>\n Douthat\u2019s reference to the\u00a0arch-neoliberal Barack Obama<\/a>\u2019s 2008 campaign suggests that he follows the Republi-fascist party and movement in absurdly casting his net to widely as to include Obama and the rest of the militantly capitalist-imperialist Democratic Party in his notion of \u201cthe Left.\u201d<\/p>\n Douthat\u2019s second incorrect notion is that \u201cleft-wing culture\u201d has recently \u201cmarkedly increase its influence over many American institutions.\u201d\u00a0 He is living in a Trumpian fantasy world if he seriously believes this.\u00a0 My best guess is that he is referring here to the bourgeois- identitarian \u201cdiversity\u201d and \u201cPC\u201d culture that is evident in workplaces, schools, media, and the militantly capitalist-imperialist Democratic Party \u2013 and to the fact that a small number of Democratic elected officials (Bernie Sanders and AOC above all) vaguely identify as \u201csocialists.\u201d\u00a0 Whatever.<\/p>\n Douthat\u2019s third error is to oddly spotlight the pessimist Ta-Nehesi Coates as the epitome of \u201cthe left.\u201d\u00a0 The actual leftist\u00a0Cornel West broke down<\/a>\u00a0the absurdity of this identification seven years ago:<\/p>\n \u2018Ta-Nehisi Coates and I come from a great tradition of the black freedom struggle. He represents the neoliberal wing that sounds militant about white supremacy but renders black fightback invisible. This wing reaps the benefits of the neoliberal establishment that rewards silences on issues such as Wall Street greed or Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people\u2026The disagreement between Coates and me is clear: any analysis or vision of our world that omits the centrality of Wall Street power, US military policies, and the complex dynamics of class, gender, and sexuality in black America is too narrow and dangerously misleading. So it is with Ta-Nehisi Coates\u2019 worldview\u2026 Coates fetishizes white supremacy. He makes it almighty, magical and unremovable. What concerns me is his narrative of \u201cdefiance\u201d. For Coates, defiance is narrowly aesthetic \u2013 a personal commitment to writing with no connection to collective action. It generates crocodile tears of neoliberals who have no intention of sharing power or giving up privilege\u2026When he honestly asks: \u201cHow do you defy a power that insists on claiming you?\u201d, the answer should be clear: they claim you because you are silent on what is a threat to their order (especially Wall Street and war). You defy them when you threaten that order\u2026.Coates tries to justify his \u201cdefiance\u201d by an appeal to \u201cblack atheism, to a disbelief in dreams and moral appeal\u201d. He not only has \u201cno expectations of white people at all\u201d, but for him, if freedom means anything at all it is \u201cthis defiance\u201d\u2026Note that his perception of white people is tribal and his conception of freedom is neoliberal. Racial groups are homogeneous and freedom is individualistic in his world. Classes don\u2019t exist and empires are nonexistent.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Douthat\u2019s fourth mess-up is that his charge of pessimism dangerously diverts attention away from what capitalism (and its related and overlapping oppression structures, systems, and practices of imperialism, racism, and sexism) are in fact doing to the world: potentially ending all prospects for a decent future with runaway climate change, environmental ruination more broadly, potentially nuclear global war, pandemicide, and the the\u00a0growing political pathology of fascism<\/a>. \u00a0Do we charge doctors who properly diagnoses lethal ailments and diseases with pessimism, preferring not to provoke fear and sadness in patients and their loved by telling them what is causing their ill-health? \u00a0Shall we forbid book titles like\u00a0Ill Fares the Land\u00a0<\/em>(both the late Tony Judt and Susan George have written left books with that title) when the land is in fact unnecessarily faring ill, courtesy of capitalism-imperialism?<\/p>\n Douthat\u2019s fifth mistake is to reflexively identify one\u2019s scientific understanding of what capitalism and racism (and imperialism, sexism, nativism, nationalism, and fascism) are in fact doing to the world, including yes the climate, with pessimism and unhappiness. For myself and for other actual radical socialists and communists I know, it is a pleasing, hopeful, and even optimistic activity to communicate and struggle with others about what\u2019s really happening in a world under the control of imperial capital.\u00a0\u00a0We believe that our fellow humans can grasp and act on that knowledge in the process of building a movement for a revolutionary socialist order that can put humanity on the path to a world beyond all exploitation, oppression, and injustice.\u00a0 We think revolution and another world are possible.\u00a0 Imagine that!<\/em><\/p>\n (I am no fan of the dysfunctional maxim that too many Marxians like to quote from the imprisoned 1920s Italian communist Antonio Gramsci: \u201cpessimism of the mind, optimism of the will.\u201d\u00a0 Anyone who thinks mental pessimism doesn\u2019t fuel spiritual and activist discouragement and inertia is out of touch with basic mind-body research, lived human experience, and natural intelligence. \u00a0It\u2019s a stupid, self-cancelling aphorism that should be dropped on \u201cthe left.\u201d)<\/p>\n Douthat\u2019s sixth mistake is to over-identify one\u2019s personal happiness with one\u2019s understanding of the world outside oneself.\u00a0 Many of us actual radical leftists can combine a sense that capitalism is actively ruining life on Earth \u2013 that\u2019s just a material fact \u2013 with continuing to play and party and enjoy friendships and\/or romance, exercise, pets, music, philosophy, good food, sports, \u00a0painting, and the delight of children.<\/p>\n Douthat\u2019s seventh mistake is to noxiously suggest that there\u2019s something wrong with unhappiness. Sadness and depression are natural parts of life and learning how to process and\u00a0 develop through darkness is part of an authentic existence, without a neurotic smile painted on one\u2019s face to meet social expectations. Given the many epic tragedies and grave menaces afoot today, symptoms mainly of the capitalist-imperialist order,\u00a0one has to wonder about the moral, intellectual and spiritual health of<\/em>\u00a0anyone who doesn\u2019t experience considerable moments of real sadness and depression<\/em>.<\/p>\n And, for what it\u2019s worth, the people most prone to their politics sparking unhappiness that I have met in this country are on the Republi-fascist right: they fuss and fume about the mythical great power of the purported \u201cradical Left\u201d \u201cdeep state\u201d that is supposedly \u201cstealing our elections and our country,\u201d collapsing our \u201cEuropean culture,\u201d fueling rampant \u201cinner-city crime,\u201d and \u201creplacing\u201d whites with nefarious dark-skinned immigrants, etc.<\/p>\n Douthat\u2019s eighth screw-up is to pretend that he knows anything much about \u201cthe Marxist science of history.\u201d Douthat\u2019s notion that a significant portion of \u00a0\u201cthe left\u201d is depressed\/pessimistic \u00a0because the \u201cMarxist science of history\u201d has not been borne with the fulfilment of Marx\u2019s \u201cexpectation that the dialectic will yield a worker\u2019s paradise\u201d is flawed in three key ways.<\/p>\n First, despite Douthat\u2019s odd reference to \u201cthe revival of Marxism,\u201d only a small part Douthat\u2019s mysterious \u201cThe Left\u201d is Marxist in any serious and scientific way.<\/p>\n Second, while Marx and his comrades and followers had plenty of reasons to think that the \u201cdialectical expectation\u201d of proletarian revolution would be borne out in the late 19th<\/sup>\u00a0Centuries and perhaps during and after World War One, no serious Marxist in 2024 thinks that iron laws of history make socialist revolution inevitable. That\u2019s essentially a religious, faith-based thing to believe.[1]<\/strong><\/p>\n Third, the science that is Marxism does not remotely depend on the fulfillment of the dialectical prophecy. Disillusioned ex-radicals who claim that Marxism is invalidated by the \u201cfailure of the proletariat to rise up against capital\u201d have missed the most enduring and relevant points in Marx. \u00a0Marx\u2019s core historical-materialist discovery was that,\u00a0as Engels explained in 1888,<\/a>\u00a0\u201cIn every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch.\u201d Each historical period combines an underlying mode of production (combining technical forces with distinctive social relations of production) with an overlaying political and ideological superstructure both serving and conditioned by that mode of production.<\/p>\n Look at Engels\u2019\u00a0speech at Marx\u2019s gravesite<\/a>\u00a0in Highgate Cemetery in 1883:<\/p>\n \u2018On the 14th of March.., the greatest living thinker ceased to think\u2026An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt\u2026Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.<\/em><\/p>\n But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.<\/em><\/p>\n Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery. But in every single field which Marx investigated — and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially — in every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries. Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry, and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez.<\/em><\/p>\n For Marx was before all else a revolutionist<\/em><\/strong>. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the first\u00a0Rheinische Zeitung\u00a0(1842), the Paris\u00a0Vorwarts\u00a0(1844), the\u00a0Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung\u00a0(1847), the\u00a0Neue Rheinische Zeitung\u00a0(1848-49), the\u00a0New York Tribune\u00a0(1852-61), and, in addition to these, a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great\u00a0International Working Men’s Association\u00a0— this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing else.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n See any mention of inevitable proletarian revolution as fundamental to Marxism as science in the eulogy penned by the thinker and ally who knew him best?\u00a0 You do not.\u00a0 And indeed, contrary to the notion of Marxism as inevitable-ism, Engels noted that Marx spent much of his life trying to bring his own (de-classed) bourgeois background to the fore of helping make socialist revolution with his own human agency. Why spend much of your life agitating for socialism and communism if you see them as inevitable?<\/p>\n Both of the scientific discoveries that Engels righty attributed to 141 years ago \u2013 (a) historical eras rooted in modes of productions topped by political and ideological superstructures and (b) surplus value and contradictory laws of motion under capitalist political economy \u2013 are as relevant today as ever.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not happy to observe that we continue to suffer under the cancerous contradictions of the capitalist era but I happily retain faith in revolutionists\u2019 continuing ability \u00a0to help people see and fight through and past these contradictions \u2013 to \u201ccontribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat\u201d and the emancipation of humanity.<\/em><\/p>\n This essay previously appeared on <\/strong>The Paul Street Report<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Note<\/strong><\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 For an excellent critique of \u201cinevitable-ism,\u201d \u201cclass truth,\u201d and other forms of religious, fetishist, subjectivist, partisan, irrational, anti-scientific and anti-revolutionary belief in \u201cMarxist,\u201d \u201ccommunist,\u201d and postmodern thought, see Ishak Baran and KJA,\u00a0<\/a>\u201cAjith: A Portrait of the Residue of the Past,\u201d Demarcations \u2013 A Journal of Communist Theory and Polemic<\/em>\u00a0(December, 2014).\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n The post A Happy Response to Ross Douthat on \u201cthe Left,\u201d Pessimism, Coates, and Marxism<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Let us stop to smile at the ridiculousness of\u00a0The New York Times\u2019\u00a0rightmost columnist Ross Douthat. A recent Douthat piece is titled\u00a0\u201cCan the Left Be Happy?\u201d\u00a0It accuses \u201cthe [US] left\u201d of being intrinsically despondent, discontentedm and pessimistic. Douthat pins his argument mainly on the leftish Black author Ta-Nehesi Coates\u2019 following pessimistic statement in\u00a0The Atlantic eleven More<\/a><\/p>\n The post A Happy Response to Ross Douthat on \u201cthe Left,\u201d Pessimism, Coates, and Marxism<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618825"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1618825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1618826,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618825\/revisions\/1618826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1618825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1618825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1618825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}