[PEN-L:30250] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Reply to Marc Cooper

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Carrol Cox wrote:

> Cooper belongs to the category of those (whether left or right in
> sympathies) who like to pretend that they are "above the struggle." I am
> beginning to call it the "Oldest Cousin Syndrome," after some of my own
> remembered attitudes from about 10 to 14. There were many cousins on my
> father's side of the family, and I (the oldest) can remember trying both
> to be "one" of them and to be "more adult." That attitude utterly
> suppresses any other virtues or vices a write might have.

I don't understand why we are personalizing Marc Cooper. The real issue
is not personality/psychology but the wholesale defection of a broad
swath of the radical movement into a kind of neo-social patriotism.
There are two reasons for this. One, the section of the radical movement
we are dealing with was never sufficiently rooted in a class analysis of
society to begin with. Two, the "enemies" that they are so anxious to
pillory lack any of the redeeming features of the liberation movements
of the 1980s. After the collapse of the Central American revolution and
the retreat of the post-colonial frontline states in Africa, new enemies
emerged who were far easier to demonize. When you put together a
Democratic Party administration which had the power to seduce the Victor
Navaskys of the world and "bad guys" like bin-Laden, Milosevic or
Saddem, the net effect is to defang one left intellectual after another.
Of course, part of the problem with these intellectuals is that they
subconsciously (but not in a Freudian sense) understand how their bread
gets buttered. The people who fund liberal magazines like the Nation or
who provide writing assignments in slick outlets like Vanity Fair might
open up a slot for a curmudgeon like Alex Cockburn from time to time,
but by and large they prefer housebroken writers who can adopt a rueful
tone with respect to the foolish Chomskyian left.

The reason class is important is that it helps you to navigate through
the kinds of  ideological pressures mounted by the ruling class. In 1914
the press was fulminating over the dastardly Hun. It took a deep
commitment to class politics to not give in to war hysteria. The same
thing was true in 1941 but even harder to resist. When Pearl Harbor
happened, it became virtually impossible to oppose the war. When the
leaders of the SWP spoke out, they ended up in jail. Of course, nobody
in the Nation Magazine milieu today has to worry about going to jail (at
least for the time being). They only have to worry about being snickered
at by their peers for being a 60s relic. Everybody knows that we are
living in 2002 and that the red-white-and-blue is a very nice fashion
accessory.

--

Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org