The Marxist turn: The New Left in the 1970s

On May 19, 2011, Platypus invited Carl Davidson, formerly of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Guardian Weekly, Tom Riley of the International Bolshevik Tendency, and Mel Rothenberg, formerly of the Sojourner Truth Organization, to reflect on “The Marxist turn: The New Left in the 1970s.” The original description of the event, which was moderated by Spencer A. Leonard at the University of Chicago, reads: “The 1970s are usually glossed over as a decade of the New Left’s disintegration into sectarianism, triggered by the twin defeats of Nixon’s election and the collapse of SDS in 1968–69. But the 1970s were also a time of tremendous growth on the Left. The embarrassed silence retrospectively given to the politics of this time contradicts the self-understanding of 1970s radicals’ finally “getting serious” about their Leftism, after the youthful rebellion of the 1960s. After a decade of searching for new revolutionary agents, and faced with the reordering of global capital towards post-Fordism, the 1970s saw a return to working class politics and Marxist approaches, in both theory and practice. The conventional imagination of the 1970s as the long retreat after the defeat of the late 1960s occludes an understanding of the political possibilities present in the 1970s. Our contemporary moment provides an opportunity to rethink the politics of this period. The collapse of the anti-war movement and the disappointments of the Left’s hopes for a reform agenda under Obama have exhausted the resurgence of 1960s-style leftism that took place in the 2000s. The reconsideration of Marx in the wake of the current economic crisis, which parallels the neo-Marxism of the 1970s (if much attenuated by comparison), raises the question of the possibility of a Marxian politics that could fundamentally transform society. Therefore, in this panel discussion we will investigate the neglected significance of the legacy of 1970s-era Marxism for anticapitalist and emancipatory politics today.” Full audio is available online.

Lenin the liberal? A reply to Chris Cutrone

CHRIS CUTRONE’S RECENT ARTICLE “Lenin’s Liberalism” (Platypus Review #36) claims that Lenin’s politics are distorted when characterized as a pure opposition to bourgeois conditions. In fact, he suggests that Lenin insisted on “the mediation of politics in society” even after the creation of a “workers’ state,” demonstrating a liberal desire to preserve certain features of bourgeois society. His use of Lenin’s theory regarding the continuation of “bourgeois right” betrays an inattention to the context of Lenin’s remarks, and the notion that Lenin applied a liberal perspective to the question of working class political power does not ring true. The essay seems to conjure an ideal Lenin that can more readily be used as a reference point for contemporary Marxism. Cutrone’s claim that Lenin sought to “fulfill the desiderata of bourgeois society” rests on a strategy of non-confrontation with the messy historical details of Lenin’s relationship with liberal political ideals…

Lenin’s politics: A rejoinder to David Adam on Lenin’s liberalism

THE PRINCIPAL MISTAKE MADE by those who contemplate Lenin’s political thought and action is due to assumptions that are made about the relation of socialism to democracy. Lenin was not an “undemocratic socialist” or one who prioritized socialism as an “end” over the “means” of democracy. Lenin did not think that once a majority of workers was won to socialist revolution democracy was finished. Lenin was not an authoritarian socialist.

Socialism is meant to transcend liberalism by fulfilling it. The problem with liberalism is not its direction, supposedly different from socialism, but rather that it does not go far enough. Socialism is not anti-liberal. The 20^th century antinomy of socialism versus liberalism, as expressed in Isaiah Berlin’s counterposing of “positive and negative freedoms” or “freedom to [social benefits] versus freedom from [the state],” or the idea that social justice conflicts with liberty, travesties (and naturalizes) and thus degrades the actual problem, which is not a clash of timeless principles—liberalism versus democracy—but a historically specific contradiction of capitalism. To clarify this, it is necessary to return to a Marxist approach, such as Lenin’s…