[Marxism] Useful idiots

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Although Eric Alterman's assault on the Nader campaign 
(http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041004&s=alterman) is just a rehash 
of arguments made elsewhere by members of the ABB club (mixed with the kind 
of purple rhetoric he has perfected on frequent cable TV appearances), it 
does raise some interesting questions for those of us who still view Lenin 
as one of the 20th century's great political leaders.

The article is titled "Bush's Useful Idiot", a reference to Ralph Nader. 
Now many of you have heard that this was a term Lenin used to describe 
Western liberals who support the USSR. There are constant references to 
this in the rightwing press. For example, David Horowitz's website has an 
item that originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 27, 2002. 
Referring to actor Sean Penn's visit to Iraq, Clifford May wrote:

>>Lenin, father of the Soviet Union, had a name for people like Mr. Penn: 
"Useful idiots." Lenin's successor, Stalin, was even able to dupe Walter 
Duranty, the New York Times correspondent in Moscow whose Pulitzer 
Prize-winning reporting helped convince the world that no 
government-orchestrated famine was occurring in the Ukraine.<<

Since Eric Alterman is on record as stating that there were was more 
diversity in Stalin's USSR than on talk radio in the USA today, one might 
think that he would be a bit more careful in slinging this term around. I 
should mention that this bit of nonsense was reported in an article by 
George Gurley that appeared in the April 14, 2003 NY Observer, a 
salmon-colored newspaper geared to Upper East Side patricians that was 
launched by tycoon Arthur Carter, who used to publish the Nation Magazine.

Gurley's article is a real eye-opener, I must say. He opens with the following:

>>Eric Alterman, the liberal author of the new book What Liberal Media?, 
was standing in the middle of Michael's restaurant, the liberal-media 
hangout on West 55th Street in Manhattan. After a warm embrace with lefty 
novelist E.L. Doctorow, he took a seat.

Mr. Alterman reeked of success. Forty-three years old. Four books under his 
belt, with bold titles like Who Speaks for America? Media columnist for The 
Nation magazine. A Web blogger who is paid by MSNBC.com to write whatever 
the heck is on his mind every morning. Degrees from Cornell, Yale and 
Stanford. Best man at his wedding? George Stephanopoulos. Divorced now, but 
living with a cool lady-who hasn't insisted he marry her!-and their cute 
kid on the Upper West Side.

He's the kind of guy whom even close friends call "arrogant," "intolerable" 
and "asshole"-but always affectionately and always followed by praise.

He apologized for being late for lunch. A reporter for NPR's All Things 
Considered had called to interview him. (By the way, according to Mr. 
Alterman's book, NPR ain't so liberal.) He ordered foie gras, the Kobe beef 
and a glass of pinot noir. Earlier, he'd said he liked his lunches 
"expensive." He has a brainy-little-kid quality, with large fish-like eyes 
behind glasses and a neatly trimmed goatee. He has a distinctive laugh that 
begins at raucous and ends in high, whinnying hysteria.

He was wearing a gray blazer, a purple button-down shirt and faded jeans, 
which was dressy compared to his normal attire. That evening Justin Smith, 
publisher of the magazine The Week, was throwing him a dinner party, which 
would be attended by liberal pals like Mark Green, writer Calvin Trillin, 
The Nation's Victor Navasky and even three ex-models.<<

full: http://www.newyorkobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=7212

In other words, just the sort of person you might expect to chastise Ralph 
Nader, whose wardrobe is sure to be bereft of purple button-down shirts and 
who would be about the last person in the world to find himself in the 
company of ex-models. Of course, with all the celebrity glitz surrounding 
the John Kerry campaign, one can understand why a man on the town like 
Alterman would hate a hair-shirt like Nader.

Returning to the question of "useful idiots", there is an important point 
that must be made. Namely, that Lenin never used this term. If you go to 
www.marxists.org, which has a database of Lenin's writings, there is not a 
single occurrence. Nor will you find a reference to it in Jstor, a database 
of scholarly articles in hundreds of journals, including those in the field 
of Soviet studies. My guess is that the term was coined by some 
professional anti-Communist in the 1930s and then taken up by generations 
of redbaiters. It was the sort of jibe that people like Ronald Reagan 
specialized in.

Continuing in this sort of crude, redbaiting vein, Alterman makes the 
wildly improbable link between Nader and the Comintern's ultraleft 3rd 
period line of the 1920s. He writes, "Pragmatic concerns carried no weight 
in what was essentially a Leninist campaign in 2000, based as it was on 
Nader's belief that things needed to get much worse before they could begin 
to get better."

It is most odd that so many well known liberals (including many who now 
shun Nader) backed his campaign in 2000 without understanding that they 
were backing "the worse, the better" (sometimes expressed as "After Hitler, 
Us"). I think that most agreed with Michael Moore, Barbara Ehrenreich and 
others that Nader was preferable to a Democratic Party candidate who 
applauded "welfare reform" and NAFTA.

Alterman's only proof that Nader believed "the worse, the better" was the 
following: "When Nader claimed a Bush victory would help energize groups 
like the Sierra Club, its leader, Carl Pope, loudly told him, No thanks."

Fortunately, Nader's 2000 letter to the Sierra Club, which prompted the 
inside-the-beltway operative Carl Pope's angry rejection, is on the 
Internet. I invite everybody to take a look at it, since not only is there 
not the slightest hint of "the worse, the better" but it serves as a 
reminder why Nader and Camejo deserve our vote.

>>Corporate-managed global trade, fervently promoted by President Clinton 
and Vice-president Gore, seriously threatens the world environment because 
it entails the single-minded pursuit of short-term profit at the expense of 
long-term ecological life support systems. Our national energy policy is 
dismally outdated considering the projected advancements of twenty-five 
years ago. Antiquated technology continues to threaten human health, 
natural resource supply and the biosphere, not to mention long-term 
prosperity. Forests in the United States and worldwide are threatened as 
never before, despite obvious practical alternatives to wood fiber. Small 
scale agriculture is being squeezed out by urban sprawl and giant, 
vertically-integrated agribusiness corporations. Despite the seriousness of 
these problems, given the requisite political will, they are surmountable.

Unfortunately, our politicians­kept afloat by empty rhetoric and corporate 
campaign contributions ­undermine clear solutions to the problems raised in 
your letter (among many more) because as campaign cash has poured in, their 
integrity has drained away. Historically, our government has protected our 
environment in the United States in response to vigorous citizen action. It 
is imperative, then, that we encourage and nurture this long-standing 
American tradition. Yet over the last two decades, our elected 
representatives have increasingly turned deaf ears to the hard work of 
citizen activists while furthering the agenda of big political patrons­oil, 
chemical, mining, timber, biotechnology and other industries­at the expense 
of our air, soil, water and the living world. We must reverse this trend 
and reinvigorate our citizen democracy to implement solutions of which we 
are all aware, rather than pin our hopes on politicians indentured to big 
business and its allies. To this end, I have entered the political arena.<<

Full: http://www.wildnesswithin.com/nadersc.html


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