the left that a future socialist press would be really independent, critical and accurate.
Latent in Chomsky’s critique is a comforting illusion: namely, that the left’s failure to sustain itself as a political force with a radical alternative social vision is due to the absence of socialist journalists in the capitalist media, rather than to its own deficiencies—the failure of the left’s ideals in practice; its moral inconsistency; its inability to formulate and fight for realistic programs; in short, the fact that it cannot command moral and political authority among its constituencies.
The blind-spot toward the Soviet Union provides a good instance of the left’s lack of political realism. The Soviet Union is one of the two predominant military powers in the world. That alone makes it a crucial subject of any contemporary political analysis that claims to be comprehensive. Radicals often seem to think that Western policy can be explained independently of Soviet behavior by reference to the imperatives of the system, the requirements of the “disaccumulation crisis,” etc. This was always a weakness in the radical perspective; but now, as a result of the continuing development of Soviet power in the last decade, it has passed a critical point and has become crippling.
During the 1950s, and even in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was significantly weaker militarily than the United States. The celebrated “missile gap” was all on the other side. Hence, whatever Soviet intentions, Washington’s influence on the dynamics of the arms race and the cold war was preponderant. This is no longer the case. The Soviet Union has now achieved nuclear parity with the United States for the first time since the onset of the atomic era. This profoundly affects, among other things, the Soviet ability to intervene in political and military conflicts outside its borders. The political pendulum has also swung in its favor. In an earlier day, John Foster Dulles used to attack the nonaligned states for “immoral” neutrality. At the recent conference of nonaligned countries in Havana, the policy of Washington’s representatives was to keep the participants neutral (i.e. not aligned with the Soviet bloc).
These changes and the trend they represent make a realistic analysis of Soviet policies crucial for any political movement. Yet in a special issue of The Nation concerned with the problem of military interventions (June 9), only one of ten articles was even partially devoted to the Soviet Union.66 That article, by Michael Klare, employed a comparative analysis of U.S. and Soviet military forces to discount the impression that the Soviet Union is now or intends to become an interventionist power.
Another, by Gareth Porter, however, did admirably deal with Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia.
Klare achieved this feat in two ways: by defining “interventionist forces” in such a restrictive manner as to exclude the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the occupation forces it maintains there; and by describing Soviet intervention in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia as “aid” to “beleaguered allies”—in short, by taking a page from the apologists for American intervention. When Klare was compelled under his own ground-rules to admit that some Soviet missions had the look of interventionist forces, he quickly denied the implication, saying, “. . . but it is important to remember that the units involved are seen by Moscow as being ‘on loan’ from their normal, defensive mission, and so would be recalled the moment they were needed at home.” So, presumably, would the U.S. “advisers” that began America’s involvement in Vietnam, if they had been needed at home.
Failure to appreciate the world role of a major power—the depressing history of leftist apologias for that power aside—would be serious enough. But the Soviet Union, despite all the qualifying circumstances of its origins and development, is the country in which the revolutionary socialist solution—state ownership of the means of production—has been tested and found wanting. For this reason, far more than for the others, it requires radical attention. The point was forcefully made a few years ago by the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski:
Why the problems of the real and the only existing Communism, which Leftist ideologies put aside so easily (“all right, this was done in exceptional circumstances, we won’t imitate these patterns, we will do it better” etc.), are crucial for socialist thought is because the experiences of the “new alternative society” have shown very convincingly that the only universal medicine these people have for social evils—state ownership of the means of production—is not only perfectly compatible with all disasters of the capitalist world, with exploitation, imperialism, pollution, misery, economic waste, national hatred and national oppression, but that it adds to them a series of disasters of its own: inefficiency, lack of economic incentives and, above all, the unrestricted role of the omnipotent bureaucracy, a concentration of power never known before in human history.
Can the left take a really hard look at itself—the consequences of its failures, the credibility of its critiques, the viability of its goals? Can it begin to shed the arrogant cloak of self-righteousness that elevates it above its own history and makes it impervious to the lessons of experience?
In a previous essay, Kolakowski wrote that the left was defined by its “negation” of existing social reality. But not only this: “It is also defined by the direction of this negation, in fact by the nature of its utopia.” Today, the left’s utopia itself is in question. That is the real meaning of the crisis of Marxism. Paradoxically, the way for the left to begin to regain its utopia, to fashion a new, more adequate vision of radical commitment and radical change, is to take a firmer grip on the ground under its feet.
This article was published in the December 8, 1979 issue of The Nation as “A Radical’s Disenchantment”—a title provided by the editors. It turned out to be my farewell to the left. (See Radical Son, pp. 305–7.)
1Baez had written an “Appeal to the Conscience of North Vietnam” to protest the post-peace repression in Vietnam. Even though the ad blamed the United States for its role in the war, she was denounced as a CIA agent by Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda for her efforts (Radical Son pp. 302–3). Later I appeared on a television talk-show with Baez to discuss the Vietnam War. During the discussion she peremptorily dismissed my views, saying, “I don’t trust someone who’s had second thoughts.” Stern and Radosh had published an article, based on FBI files released under the Freedom of Information Act, suggesting that Julius Rosenberg was indeed a Soviet spy. There was an uproar in the left and the two of them came under vitriolic attack from their (now) ex-friends. My role in the genesis of this article and the subsequent book by Radosh and Joyce Milton (The Rosenberg File) is described in Radical Son, pp. 300–302.
2The Nation’s Richard Falk was one of the outspoken promoters of the idea that the Ayatollah’s revolution would be a “liberation” for Iran.
3This was obviously wishful thinking.
4Chomsky’s extreme adverse reaction to this reference, which is described in Radical Son (he wrote me two six-page single-spaced, vituperative and personally abusive letters in response), caused me to begin a reassessment of his character. For my second thoughts on Chomsky, see the articles in Volume Two of this series, Progressives.
5Chomsky ignored this obvious criticism and went on to elaborate the same preposterous thesis in his most famous book, Manufactured Consent, co-authored with Edward S. Herman.
6Another, by Gareth Porter, however, did admirably deal with Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia.
My life as a leftist began with a May Day Parade in 1948, when I was nine years old, and lasted for more than twenty-five years until December 1974, when a murder committed by my political comrades brought my radical career to an end. My parents had joined the Communist Party along with many other idealistic Americans in the 1930s, before I was born. Just as today’s leftists believe that the seeds of justice have