Although I share many of the more libertarian proclivities of social democracy, readers of this website must have noticed that I am a fierce, obsessive critic of social democrats—a passion that may be found on either the neoliberal Right or the Marxist-Leninist Left. Today, under the Obama administration, it is almost impossible to separate social democrats (New Deal liberals/conservative reformers) from any of the Marx-derived sects that dot the landscape of liberal-leftist dissent. (See https://clarespark.com/2009/09/19/populism-progressivism-and-corporatist-liberalism-in-the-nation-1919/, for the source of confusion.)
In the sense that most readers will understand “the Left” I was never a member of any Marxist or Leninist sect, but my positions at Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles gave me access to leading figures in the arts in Los Angeles and New York. It seemed to me during the 1970s upheavals that the leftist intellectuals were by far the best educated and incisive on the ills of society that I addressed on the radio in my coverage of the art world and its institutions. Indeed, while Program Director of KPFK-FM I put as many as possible on the air.Then, when I was fired by the manager, Jim Berland, and I lost “power” nearly all of them drifted away, or perhaps I left them.
This blog is about some of the incidents that bothered me while I was in that milieu, and that still disturb me. One reason I went to graduate school in history was to understand my own prior attachments. I will not name names, but assure the reader that my contacts were with leading figures in the arts and scholarship. Many of these nameless ones are superstars in their fields.
On Archives. One critical theorist of great note, up there with Jacques Derrida, asked me to write him a memo on “the archive”. I love archives as I do all research in primary source materials, and I did not know that “the archive” as such was under attack from both Left and Right. (Leftists claim that they are elite-controlled, hence exclude the good stuff—daily atrocities suffered by ordinary people– while one biographer of Joe McCarthy, M. Stanton Evans, is also suspicious, claiming that key documents have disappeared, owing to political hanky-panky from his enemies.)
After reading my memo in praise of archives, my friend confessed that just entering a library gives him panic attacks.
On Hitler. One Leninist read my original work on Hitler’s psyche and we met for coffee to discuss it. He excitedly told me that he agreed with Hitler on many points, but then telephoned me after I got home to deny that he had ever said such a thing. He sounded panicky, so I didn’t argue with him.
On lawlessness. I was advised (almost ordered) by one figure in the arts, to steal from some wealthy art collector so that I would have the experience of rejecting bourgeois rules and morality. This sort of duplicity was advocated by more than one lefty I knew, trying to draw me into opposition.
On fighting to win. I intuitively knew ahead of my firing as PD that it was about to happen as I would have nothing to do with the commandments of multiculturalism and populism, and warned my anti-imperialist supporters at KPFK on a Friday night that we should prepare to defend my job. Sure enough, I was fired the following Monday afternoon; we could have shut down several of the news rooms at Pacifica in protest, but the most action in the defense of the direction I was pushing the station was a letter-writing campaign. The President of the Pacifica station begged me to test the administrative procedures he had put in place, and, naively, I complied, but he still upheld “at will” firings–a no, no among labor activists. (It is interesting that this was in the midst of fund drive preparation in which the theme for the Fall Fund Drive was to be science versus myth.) I concluded that “the Left” at Pacifica was weaker than I am on my own. It was then that I went back to school to study witch hunts and the history of multiculturalism as social policy.
On switches. I had been a Democrat all my voting life, but as I read the critiques of academic neo-orthodoxy by David Horowitz and Peter Collier in the 1990s, I found their observations to be exactly accurate and in line with my own experience in graduate school—where I found myself highly critical of most of the lines handed down by senior faculty—most of whom were somewhere on the Left, either as left-feminists or as anti-Americans. Graduate school was no different than Pacifica Radio or other “liberal” institutions. I ran into David Horowitz on the street in Pacific Palisades where he was then living, and we struck up an acquaintance. When David H and his wife came to my book signing party in Brentwood (shortly after 9-11-2001), one former very prominent lefty faculty friend of mine was present and interrogated my sister regarding the anomaly of David H’s attendance. Sometime during that same period, another academic of the Left asked me if it was true that David H was a friend of mine. Neither of these scholars is speaking to me today. You can’t leave the mob.
Along these same lines, I unwarily told a mentor and close friend, a liberal, that I had voted for Bush in 2000 (on the theory that Al Gore was unstable and that “Dubya” was an acceptable alternative). I didn’t expect him to lash out at me, though, true to his self-image as a liberal, he did call me the next day to apologize for his harsh criticism. Things were never the same after that between us.
On schematic explanations for everything bad. It occurred to me after reviewing my disastrous attachments to persons on “the Left” that the attraction to Marxism and then Leninism on the part of my former friends was the simplicity of Marxist ideology. It was easy to master, and even the most sectarian memberships gave one a substitute family of like-minded individuals, all of whom were, in their own minds, morally and intellectually superior to the rest of America.
Real scholarship is messy, tentative, and you rarely know if your readings of documents or syntheses (narratives) of what really happened are even close to accuracy.
I left the Left because this sort of open-endedness and inconclusiveness is frowned upon. Seemingly, it is imagined by prominent and/or blogging leftist academics that I am either a neocon or a conservative scholar, and a dastardly turncoat. I would rather be known as a scholar with strong pluralist tendencies who never betrays evidence or prematurely draws conclusions—including why I left the Left. This is a partial inventory, nothing more, and is always subject to revision and correction.
[For a more recent blog on internal contradictions within “Marxist Leninism” see https://clarespark.com/2014/06/07/marx-vs-lenin/.%5D
UK politician Ed Miliband
The Clare Spark Blog 
I came across your blog. You may not remember me but I certainly remember you. i worked for KPFK for a whole 3 months in 1982 when you hired me to be the Music Director. The reason I only lasted 3 months was due to your unhinged and paranoid demands that I fire most of the music volunteers and replace them with people who had no radio experience but whom you believed would follow your incoherent vision of what KPFK should sound like. Adding to my misery was your boss, Jim Berland. His idea of “managing” was to let you and his other friends do whatever they wanted. Needless to say, it took me years to recover. Happily, I landed in Alaska, where I flourished as a successful Program Director and General Manager, working cooperatively with a gifted Chief Engineer to convert the station from analog to digital systems. I’m almost glad I left your horrific “supervision”. Otherwise, I may never have had the opportunity to serve the Alaska Public Radio network as a producer, manager, and consultant to Alaska rural radio stations. I hope you have become more kind and considerate. If not, woe is you and the people who have to work with you.
Comment by susankernes — August 25, 2017 @ 11:22 pm |
I suspect the ideological spectrum of Right and Left Wing is not really a line defined by two points. Rather, it’s a circle. And it has a seam where the Extreme Right and the Extreme Left meet on the circle, yet with a small divide between them. That explains why fascists and communists look so much alike in practice, yet despise each other across a chasm of idealistic differences.
Comment by albert8184 — September 2, 2014 @ 8:47 pm |
There is much to what you say, but when examined closely, there is no resemblance between fascism and communism. One was a revolution; the other a counter-revolution. Both however appealed to the working class and attacked “finance capital.”
Comment by clarelspark — September 2, 2014 @ 8:50 pm |
One thing I didn’t mention about my circle was that it depends on the classic definitions of Right and Left Wing from the French Revolution. I didn’t mean to infer I put Fascism on the extreme right. But, you see no resemblance between fascism and communism? I think the citizen living under either of these systems sees a large resemblance. Look at your own bullet point up front… your friend the Leninist saw much that he agreed with in Hitler… and I believe him up to the point where he denied it.
I view fascism as sort of a “cult” phenomenon that can occur anywhere on the circle, given the right circumstances. I would tend to place traditional theocratic monarchies on the extreme right instead.
I think that the revolution-counter-revolution point fits where the two ends of the spectrum meet. But I don’t think either fascism or communism HAS to be revolution/counter-revolution anymore, given the fact that one is thoroughly a dirty word, and the other has now become the entrenched cultural Marxist culture of the Western establishment which isn’t being accepted by the masses.
Comment by albert8184 — September 2, 2014 @ 9:29 pm
I have written extensively all over the website about the matters you bring up, Albert. Please read and consider them. For instance, https://clarespark.com/2013/04/21/fascism-what-it-is-what-it-is-not/. Nazism, in its composition and rule was a far Right movement. All historians agree with that point of view.
Comment by clarelspark — September 2, 2014 @ 9:33 pm
Dear Clare: I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to discover your blog.
The humility of your claims, as well as the immense learning that backs them up, which this post reflects, is refreshing (dare I say practically unheard of?). Yours is indeed the spirit of the scholar.
How many kindred spirits can you find in the whole country? None in the halls of academia, I suspect.
I’m a fan and student of Herman Melville (I hope that it’s not too gauche to refer to myself as a “fan” of Melville), and that’s what drew me to your blog. Appreciating the cosmic vision, encyclolpaedic knowledge, metaphysical mystery, soulful longing, and majestic diction of “Moby-Dick” makes me glad that I have lived. Only the works of Hawthorne impress me similarly.
I’ll now be reading your blog regularly.
Thank you for reminding me that I am not alone — or at least not entirely alone.
Comment by MeridianMan — August 31, 2014 @ 1:12 pm |
[…] that seek to defang the labor movement. Since I am not writing from the revolutionary Left (see https://clarespark.com/2014/05/10/why-i-left-the-left/), I will focus on those features that deter workers from acting in their own interest, for instance […]
Pingback by LABOR DAY 2014 | YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — August 29, 2014 @ 8:21 pm |
Unfortunately, Marx and Lenin are only the symptoms. The real cause of the new left was the Enlightenment (French, British, American, German, doesn’t matter, they all gave birth to the New Left and to the horrors that it resulted in), especially Hume, Voltaire, Sade, Rousseau, Diderot, D’Almbert, Kant, and the like. If I were you, I’d get rid of free speech since it was all a lie anyways (Voltaire promoted it, even being considered the father of free speech, solely to destroy Christianity, otherwise, had his plans come to fruitition, Atheism would oppress the masses and silence dissenting opinion even worse than Christianity ever did, and he would have oppressed all as well. Read Timothy Dwight’s 1798 Independence Day speech if you don’t believe me.).
Comment by Eric Otness — May 19, 2014 @ 1:31 am |
I am of Jewish descent and find your comment understandable but not my cup of tea.
Comment by clarelspark — May 19, 2014 @ 2:24 am |
Clare, did you notice in the Olympics coverage, an American commenter expressed admiration for the “noble experriment” of Russian communism? This is when I realized that we live in a new era of pervasive cultural Marxism.
Comment by outtamoneyusa — May 18, 2014 @ 6:10 pm |
You have never heard of the Popular Front? Why does Eric Hobsbawm write like a social democrat? It is pretty well agreed that liberal anticommunists are rare these days, thanks to the New Left takeover. While in grad school, what used to be called “liberals” called themselves “soft Marxists.” They have plenty of clout.
Comment by clarelspark — May 12, 2014 @ 1:28 pm |
I was never on the left, except for being raised in Europe where the “right” is social democrat. As someone who was involved in the arts and had to keep quiet, I empathize with everything you said. The most important for me is the requirement you be part of the herd. I have non-standard opinions. The right tolerates them. The left not so much.
Comment by accordingtohoyt — May 11, 2014 @ 4:18 pm |
Clare,
I identify with everything you said. After years in one ideological camp or another, I realized that no ideology has monopoly on truth.
Comment by Michael Ilesco — May 11, 2014 @ 12:00 am |