The Vanishing American Left?: Two Views

THE VANISHING AMERICAN LEFT? Michael Walzer I DON'T KNOW about "vanishing"—we probably weren't as strong as we thought we were in the sixties, and we probably are not as weak as we think we are today. Back then, there were still some illusions about ideological coherence and perhaps some sense that we were actually building organizations. But the sixties left no organizational residue, and we no longer can have any illusions about ideological coherence. Still, if you add up all the "fragments"—environmentalists; feminists; antiwar activists; all the people still fighting for civil rights; ACLU types; multiculturalists of all sorts (well, of some sorts); Americans active in global civil society in organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Doctors Without Borders; the readers of left magazines, and so on, I doubt that our numbers have dropped all that much. If we are politically weaker, as we obviously are, it is not because we are fewer, but because of two long-term trends: first, the demobilization of the labor movement and the decline of the unions (liberals and leftists have paid too little attention to this); and second, the mobilization of evangelical Christians, who were largely withdrawn and politically passive back in the sixties (and also, though we never noticed it, bitter and resentful). But I am not a political sociologist; I don't study the latest survey research; I can't make educated judgments about our standing and influence in American society. I am more concerned about, and feel more confident talking about, the kind of left that we need and don't have right now. Did we ever have it—in my or your adult life? Well, yes, despite the craziness of the Weatherman and the various neoLeninist sects in the seventies and the pusillanimity of many liberals in the eighties and nineties, I remember or think I remember an oppositional politics that had some weight and integrity. I am less sure about the existence of a politics like that today. What's been vanishing in this country over the last years is a left that doesn't deserve to vanish. I am not going to talk about the Democratic Party's left. It is doing the best it can, I guess, 86 n DISSENT / Winter 2007 given poll data that strongly suggest that if it prevails, the party will lose the next presidential election. (The data are analyzed in some detail by David Plotke in the Summer 2006 issue of Dissent, and his piece is sharp and insightful but profoundly discouraging.) My views about the Democratic Party are very simple: I want it to win, because any Democratic victory would be a setback for the far right. It will take time to set the right back as far as we would like it to be, but it's vitally important to begin. If the Democrats can win with a strong liberal message, that would he great; that's what I hope for. But if a muffled and evasive message is what victory requires, so be it. But the real left, I mean, the left whose members vote Democratic (or should vote Democratic, though too many of them don't) but think of themselves as an independent political force—that left should never be muffled or evasive. We should have a clear position or, because we are an argumentative lot, a range of positions that have a strong family resemblance . We should share a commitment to a set of principles, even if we disagree sharply about how best to represent those principles in the "real world." The principles are big ones, like freedom, democracy, and—the defining principle of any left—equality. What these words mean is uncertain, but not all that uncertain , and we need to take them seriously. What would a left be like that had commitments like that? Ever since September 11, 2001, the really difficult political questions have had to do with global politics. But the Bush administration has used this fact, has used the cover of war and terror, to push the country hard right on domestic issues. So let's start there. The left we need would be...