Erik Hammar

The most wonderful TV series ever produced (possibly with the exception of the series with candid behind-the-scenes interviews with Swedish PM Göran Persson during his time in office, released after he had resigned) is probably BBC’s The Great Philosophers, where Bryan Magee interviews famous philosophers on central topics in the subject. I recently watched the interview with Herbert Marcuse, one of the founders of the Frankfurt School of critical theory which was to form the intellectual foundation of much of modern leftist thought. Today, I just wanted to share a wonderful quote from the heart of this tradition on the anti-intellectualism of parts of the New Left:

Magee: “One of the conspicuous features of the New Left that you have helped to father, is its anti-intellectualism. From the way you have lived your life, one wouldn’t expect you actually to approve of that.”

Marcuse: “On the contrary, I combatted this anti-intellectualism from the beginning. The reasons for this anti-intellectualism are in my view the isolation of the student movement from the working class and the apparent impossibility of any spectacular political action. This led gradually to some kind of, well, let me say inferiority complex. Some kind of self-inflicted masochism, which found expression among other things, in this contempt for intellectuals because they are only intellectuals and don’t achieve anything in reality.”

It may be apparent since earlier that I have a weakness for genealogical examinations of the pitifully disfigured political movement that today is the “radical” left. I would be the first to admit that this is often, in weaker moments, mixed with un unhealthy level of shadenfreude. But there are also better reasons to be interested in the mishmash of ideas bundled in much (but not all) of today’s radical politics, the New Left in its 21st century form.

Consider just for a moment the sublime irony of the tolerance with which ideas are mixed in the world of Buzzfeedian social commentary: The reification of the social world, where various kinds of “oppression” of rigidly defined groups is declared reality and fact unopen to interpretation, supposedly backed up by Foucauldian “analyses”. The embrace of some kind of particularistic ethics of identity and difference, combined with (dutifully tweeted) abhorrence at the lack of Benthamite utilitarianism in their Western Facebook friends as these are revealed to experience greater emotional distress over terrorist attacks in neighbouring countries than in far-away lands. The supreme value perceived in proud cultural and ethnic expression and identification amongst minorities, hand in hand with a complete obliviousness to why working class Europeans dare disagree with the “deconstruction” and ridicule of their most vividly felt beliefs, norms and social categories. Truly, to return to Marcuse, a not-so -splendid radical isolationism, not only from the working class, but from general coherence.

This may all seem a gainless rant, and though there may be an element of that, a deeper worry should beset us. For who will fill the democratic void which the left is currently so utterly unable to fill?