Yesterday I stumbled across an article I published on 1 May 2008. I've just reread it with the benefit of hindsight and in light of the tumultuous events of summer and autumn 2008 which exposed the lie-dream of unfettered capitalism as a panacea for all the world's ills. I'm no expert but I'm putting this one down as a win for the little guy from West Bromwich over the brainiac journo.
Cohen smashes his way through the political rubble of his past
I’ve recently read the thoroughly dispiriting “What’s Left?” by Nick Cohen. I exaggerate, I read some of it. The thrust of the book is that Socialism is a busted flush and, in seeking a new cause to replace it, its old followers have become defenders of fascistic regimes and radical terrorists. Why? Well simply to oppose America, of course. It appears that this is what being a lefty was all about all along. Tsk!
I suppose that I should have known what I was letting myself in for. I had a vague knowledge of Cohen as a lefty who had (as the cliché says we all will) become more right wing as he got older. And I’d read the blurb on the back: In this scorching polemic, Nick Cohen smashes his way through the political rubble left by the crumbling values of the old Left with his fearless exploration of their responses to some of the worst global crises seen this century (all seven years of it, it doesn’t add). But I wasn’t fully prepared for what I was about to read.
As I have said, I chose not to complete the book. My bookmark rests between pages 110 and 111 where Cohen’s scorching polemic is smashing its way through Jean Baudrillard’s critique on America (“It had brainwashed US citizens- although not, once again, French philosophers”) with all the wit and finesse that the reverse cover would have you believe. Mind you, this is not a critique of Cohen’s literary style- which is far superior to my own clunky prose- this is simply a digest of all that I had read before abandoning ship.
The book opens with a brief biography piece establishing Cohen’s Socialist credentials- like Mark Anthony coming to bury Caesar- which will give him the right to pronounce the Left dead.
“Socialism, which provided the definition of what it meant to be on the Left from the 1880s to the 1980s, is gone. Disgraced by the communists’ atrocities and floored by the success of market-based economies it no longer exists as a coherent programme for government. Even the modest and humane social democratic systems of Europe are under strain and look dreadfully vulnerable.”
I found that staggering. Socialist politics have been finished by the excesses of communism and the successes of capitalism. What’s actually happened, as far as I can tell, is that Cohen has lost his faith in Socialism. The ’success’ of market-based economies is a fallacy, a shuffling of the feudal pack. As a means of making the world a just, equable, comfortable or literally a good place to live, it has failed. Socialism is as necessary and relevant as ever. It is just that these days Cohen is all right, Jack. The last sentence in that paragraph, however, is bizarre. I honestly don’t know on what basis a statement like that could be made. Cohen has scraped through the bottom of the barrel in his bid to pithily justify what is to follow.
Throughout the book Cohen gives the strong impression that his conversion to Neo-Con (Neo-Cohen?) politics comes as a result of the Left’s stance over the Iraq invasion. He absolves the right of blame for turning a blind-eye to Saddam Hussein’s politics for the better part of two decades, but accuses the Left of hypocrisy for not supporting the decision to remove him. Perhaps he’s forgotten that the invasion of Iraq was not about regime change- well, not until the original reasons given were utterly discredited anyway. “The American and British Governments sold the invasion to their publics with a false bill of goods and its aftermath was a bloody catastrophe…” that’s the lies that led to the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq dealt with. No, really it is. That’s as much attention as he gives it.
He proceeds to state that the left picked the wrong side over Iraq and have become increasingly entrenched since to the point where they oppose natural Socialist values. “…The liberal-left bitterly opposed the war, and their indifference afterwards was a natural consequence of the fury directed at Bush”. And explains that the problem (he believes) that the Left has isn’t solely a result of the Iraq invasion. What follows is a list of tangential issues which exemplify the malaise afflicting the Left: “Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam… come from the liberal-left? Why will… a leftish post-modern theorist defend the exploitation of women in traditional cultures? Why were men and women of the Left denying the existence of Serb concentration camps? Why is Palestine a cause … but not China, Sudan, Zimbabwe, the Congo or North Korea? Why after the 7/7 attacks on London did leftish… newspapers run pieces excusing suicide bombers?”.
The problem Cohen has, though if you believe that he’s wrong then it would be his saving grace, is that none of these charges are specific enough to be proved or disproved. They’re his opinions, or his assumptions. Opposing the war doesn’t equate to being ignorant of the human costs of the war (quite the opposite, I would argue). To try to understand the rationale for militant Islam is not to make apologies for it, it is a means of combating it at its source. There is a difference between opposing the imposition of Western values across the world and upholding incidents of exploitation. The Palestinian question is another example of Cohen’s liberal attitude to the truth- how can it be seriously argued that the Left fails to keep those other regimes on the agenda? For me the contrary is true, only the Left have consistently opposed those regimes. Finally, Cohen’s allegations about the response of the Left to the atrocities in Serbia and on the 7th of July are unsubstantiated and, for me, fanciful.
Cohen’s personal politics have changed, this much is undoubtedly true. Does it automatically follow that the Left that he leaves behind is finished? It is unspeakably arrogant to assume so, or else he hung on to the corpse of a once great movement for far too long. The book acts as a long justification for his personal conversion- hence the assumptions behind it are passed off as fact- and his personal conversion appears, to me at least, to be driven by one aspect of the political spectrum. That is Iraq. Everything else is written as a retrospective justification for the change. The death of Socialism- which Cohen refers to throughout as a given- is dated contemporaneously with the Poll Tax riots which led directly to the end of the Thatcherite era. To exemplify it, he spends pages discussing the rise (in as much as so minor a political party can be said to have risen) and fall of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party in 1970s and 1980s Britain, its discredited leader Gerry Healy and the parenting skills of Vanessa Redgrave. It is like using Rolf Harris’s ‘Two Little Boys’ as evidence that the pop music of the 1960s was worthless.
I believe that there is a worthwhile book in the proposition that the Left has lost its direction and sense of unity. It is in need of impetus, of a concerted focus and something to rally behind. A new red flag is desperately required. But while I do not pretend that ‘the Left’ are without fault, I equally do not buy the proposition that it is somehow less grievous when the Right get things wrong. It is like the facile bar-room argument “the Tories will screw you, but at least they’re honest about it”. The Left is not dead because there has been a decade or so of middle-ground political worthlessness and a decade or so of Neo-Conservative tyranny. To argue that leftish ideals like social justice are no longer desirable because the illegal occupation of Iraq has displaced a tyrant that Western Conservatives supported and colluded with for decades is ridiculous. But that is what this book- as far as I read it- tries to do.
It would take a Keyser Soze-esque twist in the unread portion of the book to rescue it. Otherwise it must surely be seen as a man’s vindication of his decision to turn his back on the social movement to which he once belonged.
This book is a tragically missed opportunity by a writer of no little style, but increasingly little substance.
