The New York Times Magazine ran a fascinating piece over the weekend on Oakland as the last refuge of Occupy Wall Street, which was otherwise a flash in the pan. It reveals a paradox that has always plagued socialism and other versions of radical leftism: they only really take hold in underdeveloped or 'backward' areas. Communism didn't have much appeal in the homelands of capitalism, England or America. Rather, it was instituted in Russia, the least developed European country. It was then adopted in other parts of the Third World or global south. OWS made a cameo appearance in New York City and elsewhere but quickly withered on the vine. But it has endured and radicalized in Oakland. What explains this paradox?
One reason Oakland and other underdeveloped regions tend to be receptive to hard left ideas is that they are often on the cusp of modernization. They thus acutely feel the effects of the creative destruction of modern capitalism. The other attraction is that in such places there exists a cadre of educated but underemployed people.
The issue is that as one moves leftward from a social democratic perspective that seeks to moderate market failures and reduce socioeconomic inequalities through the welfare state, one arrives in a fantasy land. That fantasy will only appeal to a small bunch of hardy spirits with a quasi-religious conviction about the coming cataclysm of modern society.
Advocating a mixed economy that preserves the market and private property but tries to mitigate some of their ill effects through taxation and redistribution isn't very sexy. It's just small-deeds reformism. It doesn't appeal to the militant spirit that wants to immediately eradicate the "contradiction" or tension between liberal democracy's principles of liberty and equality. Insofar as individual liberty exists, some people will use it better than others to acquire more property and thereby produce a scandal of human inequality. Thus one principle of liberal democracy constantly undermines the other, rendering equality an infinitely receding horizon. This tension will always stimulate some people to seek to bring modern democracy's ideals in line with its principles; to fuse the "is" and the "ought."
The maximalist solution to the tension at the heart of liberal democratic capitalism is the idealistic socialist or communist one: the elimination of private property and the market. Put differently, socialism becomes noncapitalism, or the negation of actual, existing modern society. Marx thought that the agent of the revolution would be the proletariat. However, the working class never developed sufficient revolutionary consciousness (since its fortunes actually improved under capitalism). Therefore, Lenin modified Marx to claim that the revolution had to come from an elite conspiracy of professional revolutionaries based in urban areas. What would be done after the suppression of the market and private property, no radical theorist has ever had much of an idea. Most of the OWS crowd has been reading too much of the incomprehensible post-modernists Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt to see the stakes clearly.
The ultimate tragedy is that the supposed leap into the "realm of freedom" has usually turned out to be just the opposite. This fact, which has found expression in the anti-political attitudes of many in the OWS movement, has probably as much as anything reduced the number of adherents.
The issue is that as one moves leftward from a social democratic perspective that seeks to moderate market failures and reduce socioeconomic inequalities through the welfare state, one arrives in a fantasy land. That fantasy will only appeal to a small bunch of hardy spirits with a quasi-religious conviction about the coming cataclysm of modern society.
Advocating a mixed economy that preserves the market and private property but tries to mitigate some of their ill effects through taxation and redistribution isn't very sexy. It's just small-deeds reformism. It doesn't appeal to the militant spirit that wants to immediately eradicate the "contradiction" or tension between liberal democracy's principles of liberty and equality. Insofar as individual liberty exists, some people will use it better than others to acquire more property and thereby produce a scandal of human inequality. Thus one principle of liberal democracy constantly undermines the other, rendering equality an infinitely receding horizon. This tension will always stimulate some people to seek to bring modern democracy's ideals in line with its principles; to fuse the "is" and the "ought."
The maximalist solution to the tension at the heart of liberal democratic capitalism is the idealistic socialist or communist one: the elimination of private property and the market. Put differently, socialism becomes noncapitalism, or the negation of actual, existing modern society. Marx thought that the agent of the revolution would be the proletariat. However, the working class never developed sufficient revolutionary consciousness (since its fortunes actually improved under capitalism). Therefore, Lenin modified Marx to claim that the revolution had to come from an elite conspiracy of professional revolutionaries based in urban areas. What would be done after the suppression of the market and private property, no radical theorist has ever had much of an idea. Most of the OWS crowd has been reading too much of the incomprehensible post-modernists Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt to see the stakes clearly.
The ultimate tragedy is that the supposed leap into the "realm of freedom" has usually turned out to be just the opposite. This fact, which has found expression in the anti-political attitudes of many in the OWS movement, has probably as much as anything reduced the number of adherents.
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