Thanks for doing this work. I'm going to start working through your articles and sources because you're working ahead of me in an alley I've been wandering into of late.
There's no doubt a line of investigation like this is sorely needed today. But I can't help but worry that you begin from the contemporary left and project its characteristics back in time to say that the left always was how it currently is. That is certainly a tempting line of thought to take up, and it indeed has become rather mainstream; but it must be admitted as, at bottom, wrong. Marx's own leftism was the highest self-articulation that the left ever attained. I agree that it is too facile to say that the left has been coopted, etc. But surely we must investigate the historical development of the left's own self-conception as expressing the changing possibilities that capitalism itself admits. If the left has changed, that means capitalism has changed, and vice-versa. The possibilities for a Marx-inspired left may no longer exist. They may merely lie dormant. But surely there must be a way to draw attention to this history without going so far as describing Marx's own leftism as anti-left. Marx wasn't anti-anything! He followed capitalism's lead and grasped the simultaneous moments of potential and undermining that characterize every phenomenon, every expression of the self-contradiction of human freedom characteristic of our epoch. Coming to terms with this history is brutal, but surely it can be done. I will be looking forward to future installments to see if such an analysis can burst forth from this corner of the Internet!
Thanks for doing this work. I'm going to start working through your articles and sources because you're working ahead of me in an alley I've been wandering into of late.
There's no doubt a line of investigation like this is sorely needed today. But I can't help but worry that you begin from the contemporary left and project its characteristics back in time to say that the left always was how it currently is. That is certainly a tempting line of thought to take up, and it indeed has become rather mainstream; but it must be admitted as, at bottom, wrong. Marx's own leftism was the highest self-articulation that the left ever attained. I agree that it is too facile to say that the left has been coopted, etc. But surely we must investigate the historical development of the left's own self-conception as expressing the changing possibilities that capitalism itself admits. If the left has changed, that means capitalism has changed, and vice-versa. The possibilities for a Marx-inspired left may no longer exist. They may merely lie dormant. But surely there must be a way to draw attention to this history without going so far as describing Marx's own leftism as anti-left. Marx wasn't anti-anything! He followed capitalism's lead and grasped the simultaneous moments of potential and undermining that characterize every phenomenon, every expression of the self-contradiction of human freedom characteristic of our epoch. Coming to terms with this history is brutal, but surely it can be done. I will be looking forward to future installments to see if such an analysis can burst forth from this corner of the Internet!