Cornell West book review

[Dan Scanlan <dscanlan@xxxxxxx>]

BOOK REVIEW
How U.S. policy got hijacked
Democracy Matters Winning the Fight Against Imperialism Cornel West
Penguin Press: 230 pp., $24.95

By Anthony Day
Special to The Times

Sep 3 2004

Cornel WEST'S "Democracy Matters" is a jeremiad against contemporary
America. West writes that it is ironic "9/11 - a vicious attack on
innocent civilians by gangsters - becomes the historic occasion for
the full-scale gangsterization of America."

Three dogmas, he says, have contributed to this gangsterization: free
market fundamentalism, which "posits the unregulated and unfettered
market as idol and fetish"; aggressive militarism, which "takes the
form of unilateral intervention, colonial invasion and armed
occupation abroad"; and escalating authoritarianism, which "is rooted
in our understandable paranoia toward potential terrorists, our
traditional fear of too many liberties and our deep distrust of one
another."

This perilous development has also been assisted, he argues, "by the
market-driven media - fueled by our vast ideological polarization and
abetted by profit-hungry monopolies." As a result, political dialogue
has narrowed and the American people are "sleepwalking."

West is particularly critical of President Bush and his
administration, but he does not absolve the Democrats, whom he sees
as part of the same problem. "Senators Hillary Clinton and John
Kerry," he writes, "are contemporary paternalistic nihilists -
contemporary Grand Inquisitors who long to believe in a grand
democratic vision yet cannot manage to speak with full candor or
attack the corruptions of the system at their heart."

A decade ago, West wrote in his book "Race Matters" that black
America lives "a life of horrifying meaningless, hopelessness and
(most important) lovelessness." The same is true of America as a
whole, he writes now. All political leaders are infected with
"nihilism": "the flip-side of the nihilism of despair is this
nihilism of the unprincipled abuse of power."

Like most prophets, West is sharper in his denunciations of evil than
in prescriptions for reform. Yet he does offer some possibilities for
solution, focusing on a "Socratic commitment to questioning ? of
ourselves, of authority" and all forms of dogma; "the Jewish
invention of the prophetic commitment to justice ? echoed in the
fundamental teachings of Christianity and Islam"; and a "tragic-comic
commitment to hope ? expressed in America most profoundly in the
wrenchingly honest yet compassionate voices of the black freedom
struggle ? in the painful eloquence of the blues" and "the
improvisational virtuosity of jazz."

The bulk of "Democracy Matters" is a reiteration of West's prophetic
denunciations and his proposals for renewal. But two other elements
stand out. One is his hostility toward the "moral hypocrisies of
Israel's treatment of the Palestinians." Although he is careful to
denounce the anti-Semitism of despotic Arab regimes, he shares with
other leftists over the last few decades a deep anger about Israeli
policy toward the Palestinians that makes his prose quiver with fury.

The other is his personal quarrel with Lawrence H. Summers, president
of Harvard. In a well-publicized confrontation, the new president
took on West, a star of the school's Afro-American studies
department, for, it appears, not doing enough scholarly work and
paying too much attention to making rap CDs. In West's account,
Summers comes off much the worse in their dispute, which West
characterizes as "a fundamental clash between the technocratic and
the democratic conceptions of intellectual life in America."

West considers it important that Summers is Jewish and writes that
"the tensions between blacks and Jews are so volatile ? that
thoughtful dialogue is all but impossible." He says that "at our
country's leading university, there is little sensitivity to and
awareness of the legacy of that tension." (West now teaches at
Princeton University.) In the end, West's cry of "Woe!" in "Democracy
Matters" is most likely intended to be disconcerting to readers. Yet
it is the unsettling emergence of personal animosities in the book,
perhaps inadvertently, that leaves the strongest impression.
--
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