Reconsidering the American left

The core of the American left has been a challenge to the liberal understanding of equality – the formal equality of all citizens before the law. In place of that understanding, each of the country’s three lefts sought to install a deeper, more substantive idea of equality. For the abolitionists, the issue was political equality, specifically the belief that a republic needed to be founded on racial equality. For the socialists and communists, the issue was social equality, specifically the insistence that a democracy could not exist unless all citizens enjoyed security in regard to basic necessities. For the new left, finally, the issue was equal participation or ‘participatory democracy’, not only in formal politics, but also in civil society, the public sphere, the family and personal life. In each case, the left sought to expand and deepen the hegemonic understanding of equality associated with liberalism. Far more than the struggle between left and right, the struggle between liberalism and the left is at the core of US history. Without a left, liberalism has become spineless and vapid; without liberalism, conversely, the left has often become sectarian and authoritarian. In this essay, I will argue this case in three steps. First, I want to clarify what we mean when we speak of a left. In my view, the left is both larger and different than socialism, but what exactly is it? I hope that a look at the specific character of the American left can at once broaden and make more precise the idea of a left in general. Second, I want to look at what we mean by crisis, since it is in periods of crisis that the left has proven so important in the United States. Finally, I want to describe the relevance of the left to America’s three great crises – the Civil War, the Great Depression, and the present crisis, whose character remains to be defined

Marxism and the left

In this special episode we visit the Marxism 2012 Festival in London’s Bloomsbury to hear the latest from Marxist thinkers and activists. Professor of European Studies at King’s College London, Alex Callinicos, speaks about austerity and how Karl Marx’s theories have found increasing relevance in today’s recession-weary world. We then take a look at the leftist movements across the Atlantic with Eli Zaretsky, Professor of History at The New School for Social Research in New York. He talks to us about his latest book Why America Needs a Left, the rise of the Tea Party and how President Obama failed his left-leaning supporters. Presented by Amy Mollett and Cheryl Brumley. Produced by Cheryl Brumley. Music courtesy of Harri at freesound.org for his song Hypno5 as well as Thee Faction for their song “Ready”