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Title: The Nostalgic Left
Author: Andrew Flood
Date: February 15, 2014
Language: en
Topics: critique of leftism, nostalgia, conservatism, authoritarian left
Source: Retrieved on 13th August 2021 from http://www.anarkismo.net/article/26743?

Andrew Flood

The Nostalgic Left

The nostalgic left is a bit of shorthand I’ve started using for those on

the left who have reacted to the disintegration of the old left by

wishing for idealised simpler times. And perhaps more strangely blaming

the collapse on what they see as threatening new developments, like

intersectionality. They hold such newfangled nonsense responsible for

the current failure of the left to get an echo from the general

population.

These were the wonderful days before the internet when left

intellectuals could write without fear of participants in the movements

they were writing about responding and challenging their right to

represent them. A time when commentators who could be heard were calm,

rational & polite. Those who were allowed to communicate with the masses

first passed through a process that took away that hammer of spontaneous

unfocused anger and replaced it with the stiletto of intellectual

putdowns, phrased in the correct polite terms to leave a wound that was

deep but also invisible to spectators. Not for them the ugly sight of

the crushed skull, just the suddenly slumped body and trickle of blood.

The right to have ones writing communicated had to be performed for,

publication in the party press, the academic journal or the op-ed pages

of the mainstream press was not a given, unlike that out-of-control

blogosphere or worse still the twitterati of today.

These were the days when leaders of mass movement could operate without

their problematic ‘personal behaviours’ being challenged because

everyone knew to put the good of the movement first and the few who

didn’t were denied a voice. After all Gerry Healy never had to fear the

‘dark side of the internet’, it was only the massive accumulation of

rape allegations that eventually brought him down.

The nostalgic left are often neo-social democrats, and in that guise,

see the voice subalterns have today to be the problem that is holding

back the possibility of social democracy. It seems more straightforward

to see the end of that project in the ideological triumph of

neoliberalism and the technical triumphs that have driven capitalist

globalisation. Even in then imperialist heartlands social democracy on

the national scale now seems almost impossible. Placing the problem

instead at the feet of some people who make angry harsh posts on twitter

about people that the nostalgic left would prefer to see left

unchallenged seems odd to say the least. But this also reflects another

aspect of the nostalgic left, a yearning to be back in the days when

only those at the top of mass parties could say critical things about

others and be heard. The role of the rest of us was simply to choose

sides in such disputes and Go Team our chosen side to victory.

The nostalgic left can also be revolutionary marxists who dream of the

days when appeals to party discipline could shut up internal dissent.

They forget the chants of ‘discipline, discipline’ that drowned out the

Soviet tanks as they rolled into Hungary in ’56. Or sometimes they may

even be anarchists, dreaming of syndicalist unions of muscular white

guys wielding tools, forgetting that Mujeres Libres arose of necessity

out of the machismo of the CNT.

What brings these fragments together is a common howl against the

complexities of modern movements, against the many voices that are now

heard. Like nostalgic movements of the right they have no meaningful

program, the change after all has has happened. The wish for a return to

left wing victorian values, when bearded men polemicised by pamphlet,

only serves to block the development of movements that might make a

difference.

The nostalgic left has forgotten so quickly that the 20^(th) century

left was drowned in blood when the leaders who rose unchallenged to the

top became paranoid psychopaths in power, murdering the former comrades

by the tens of thousands. Like all nostalgia’s the bad parts of the past

are forgotten in the wish for a simpler times.

When times are hard its often simple to dream of the imaginary easy days

of childhood, to those false memories of endless summer and carefree

lives. But to change the world ‘that is’, the very complex world ‘that

is’, it’s the future and not the past we need to embrace. Nostalgia may

be a comfort blanket but it is also the blindfold of the executioner.