Voices from the echo chamber

The Left Is Not Woke
Susan Neiman
Polity Press
2023
160 pages
ISBN: 978-1509558308

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Susan Neiman is a Jewish American moral philosopher and leftist activist. With a PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University, she went on to hold assistant and associate professorships in Yale and Tel Aviv universities. Currently, she is director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany.

This book and the many podcasts promoting it and its ideas offer as good an example as one could find about echo chamber debate. Not really debate at all, this style of discourse is confined to affirming the author or taking issue with peripheral points from a base of shared ideology. The “strawmen” caricatures of ideological opponents ensures no one would seriously consider inviting them to the table. As a result, there is no examination whatsoever of fundamental positions. Problematic developments like wokeism or failures to establish classic leftist doctrines into the western political system are attributed to a variety of contingent causes but never ever is there an exploration of the possibility of intrinsic disorder within the ideology itself, that it might simply be maladapted to human nature.

So the basics of leftist, socialist beliefs are placed beyond scrutiny and creeds from right of the ideological aisle are dismissed as too bad or too mad to be even considered. For Neiman, like most of her fellow ideologues, ideological enemies are usually termed “far right”. Since “far right” ought to be calibrated against some notion of “right” or centre right, this raises the question why Neiman, whose terminology implies there is a centre by which “far right” is defined, doesn’t engage with those whose opposition to leftist ideas are well reasoned and well referenced. She speaks of a global “lurch” to the right in politics, this perception exaggerated no doubt by her fear and loathing of the right in any guise. The same fear blinds her to the fact that it is the left in its fiery wokeism that has dominated public discourse in both politics and culture for the last decade. The “lurch” is quite simply the inevitable rebound from what has unquestionably been a headlong “lurch” in the opposite direction, the very thing that led her to write her book in which she concedes wokeism has done great harm to the leftist cause.

So highly debatable “givens” remain unexamined while problematic and embarrassing expressions of leftism are disowned by means of post hoc tests crafted to show they were never truly leftist to begin with. Wokeism has proved a wake up call for many on the Left. Neiman acknowledges that many of her friends have told her they now ask themselves “if they are Left any more?” The reappraisal of wokeism, its incoherence and belligerent intolerance, has disillusioned and detached many of those who were originally onboard, even enthusiastically so, with its agenda. Neiman was herself an enthusiastic supporter of BLM and contributed financially to the now widely discredited movement. So, apparently, she had no problem with wokeism until the wheels started to come off. However, instead of acknowledging it, or at least some of its aspects, as a wayward development in mainstream leftism, she chooses instead to build a very threadbare case against its claims to identify as left at all.

The first reason her case is threadbare is that she is not abandoning much of what constitutes wokeism for many, perhaps most, people, its outright self-righteousness and intolerance, its safe spaces, trigger warnings, cancellings and frenzied online denunciations. Susan Neiman may use a more measured tone but equally she belongs in that world of in-house debate where founding beliefs must not only always remain beyond scrutiny but be valorised as if they were sacred writ. She keeps faith with what she terms “state socialism” despite its catastrophic incarnations in twentieth and twenty-first century history. In a promotional conversation for her book with American leftist philosopher, Noam Chomsky, they both agree that the idea of “a socialist state” had been too hastily written off since 1991. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the emergence of independent democratic states in central Europe was for most people a conclusive, damning verdict on “state socialism”. Clearly, she balks at using the word “communist”. Like wokeism, it is no doubt a toxic brand, one that must be quietly dropped because it cannot be plausibly disowned, notwithstanding the daring degree of, perhaps unconscious, disingenuousness she displays in her attempts to disown wokeism.

Casting around for examples that show “state socialism” can work potentially, Chomsky selects Cuba which shows the desperation of the quest. Yes, we know Cuba has an enviable health system and a solid educational system. Education, however, is not to be equated with openness to learning new ideas. Cuba is a country that does not tolerate dissent. Peaceful protesters are thrown into prison to serve lengthy sentences. Foreign journalists are not welcome. Very few people have internet access. It is, in many ways, a closed state. Neither Chomsky nor Neiman observed with any regret, in fact, they didn’t allude to the fact at all that Cuba is run by a dynastic dictatorship which is immensely wealthy. The disparity of wealth which they deplore in capitalist countries meets no censure here. The second ray of hope they identity for the “socialist (communist) state” is the Indian region of Kerala. Chomsky describes the effective way they dealt with the covid pandemic because of their socialist style health system. In a conversation where both participants were orientated towards affirming their prejudices there was of course no interest in looking beyond the self serving narrative. A skeptical interlocutor, unenamoured by leftist ideology and ideally armed with some local knowledge, might have pointed out that Kerala is unique in India in having a Christian, mostly Catholic, population of 20% in a subcontinent where the Christian presence averages 2%. This is significant in that the Catholic Church remains the largest provider of non governmental healthcare and welfare globally. Could this not be the critical factor in Kerala’s relative superiority in dealing with the epidemic? Surely worth discussing before handing out plaudits to the “socialist state”. Especially so since it was capitalist countries that overall fared best in combating covid and who developed the vaccines that would quell it in the end.

Neiman’s three tests are as contrived as arguments from a teenager trying to pull the wool over parental eyes. She chooses universalism, a notion of justice as distinct from power and belief in the possibility of progress as the triple test of genuine socialism. Wokeism fails all three, she declares. Having considered her arguments, they are not alone unconvincing at the level of their application to wokeism but one wonders why she ever thought they were the hallmarks of  socialism to begin with. The first one in particular, universalism, is just as identifiable with the aims of rightist thinkers and activists. Every ideological movement considers its principles universally applicable. They may not always be pursued with the same rigour abroad as they are at home. That is, in the first place, a natural function of the universal condition of local and tribal gravity, something she attaches only to the right.

Neiman says the left demonstrates the defining characteristic of universalism in caring as much about “striking workers in Wales” as in their home  country.  She also uses the example of international leftist involvement in the Spanish civil war when volunteers from around the world joined forces on the ground with the Republican side.  One could cite far more international interventions in foreign conflicts by conservative or rightist powers. The international community, whether represented by NATO or major players like the US and UK have intervened again and again where human rights were egregiously violated, most recently in the Balkans and the Middle East. While exporting democracy proved an aspiration too far and some interventions, with hindsight, have only served to exacerbate bad situations, nevertheless rightist powers have been manifestly more “universalist” in their actions than any power of the Left. One may level charges of self interest or even aggrandisement against such interventions but the same may be levelled at the left.

Support for workers abroad in a country like Wales makes an interesting contrast with the silence from the Left about the plight of workers in leftist run Venezuela and Nicaragua today. Leftist concern for displaced Palestinians today is not mirrored by any such concern for displaced, persecuted and brutally murdered Christians in Iraq and Syria. Universalism is a problematic marker for either side but particularly the Left. Among leftist groupings, the globally expanding wokeist LGBTQ+ movement probably passes Neiman’s test better than most. The best exemplar of universalism, of course, is the Catholic Church. Across the globe the Church, and indeed it is not unique among Christian foundations in this respect, is the largest non governmental provider of welfare, education and healthcare. While the Church is not politically aligned with either Left or Right, the Left regards its values as fundamentally inimical to their agenda.

This brings us to the next defining marker by which wokeism fails the leftist test for Neiman and that is the belief that power cannot be separated from justice. As an illustration of the theory, she cites how a man could be deported to a far flung colony for stealing a chicken while the influential landlord victim of such a crime would not be arraigned for exercising “droit de seigneur” over the culprit’s daughter. It is a graphic but succinct summing up of the interplay between power and justice. (Neiman could have picked a more up to date and relevant example in the University of San Francisco praising protesting students for their ‘bravery’ after they physically assaulted swimmer Riley Gaines who came second to transgender swimmer Lia Thomas in an NCAA swimming championship and was on campus to speak against the inclusion of biological males in womens’ sport) On this second test, Neiman is obliged to question also the true leftist credentials of the leading and popular leftist philosopher, Michel Foucault. He believed that both justice and power necessarily hinge on each other so notions of justice are arbitrary, a mere function of establishing and maintaining power. However, Neiman’s problem with Foucault should logically extend  to many other leftist thinkers too who share his views.

Neiman believes principles of justice are not arbitrary but accessible through the use of reason. They are not obscured from reason however much the power of the state and its laws may choose to deny and suppress them. Reason can recover them and she points to the Enlightenment philosophers, particularly Kant, as evidence of the sufficiency of reason to determine principles of justice and virtue. She appears to track everything that is, by her reckoning, positive in human development, including socialist ideas, to the Enlightenment. She overlooks the fact that Enlightenment reasoning gave rationale to the bloodshed of the French Revolution and, in so far as it influenced Karl Marx, to the communist revolutions too. Her claims that the Enlightenment inspired the 1948 UN Charter of Human Rights overlooks the input of leading Christians who contributed to it, including the French Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain, It is of course quite absurd to assert, as she does, that the Enlightenment was a kind of singularity in the progress of humanity. Any reasonable secular reading of the history of thought would acknowledge the formative legacy of both classical philosophy and Judeo Christian teaching to the development of civilisation and society and the work of later thinkers and schools of philosophy through the centuries that followed.

The question of the sufficiency of human reason was certainly not answered in any definitive way by Kant nor by Marx. If reason is not contingent on any authority other than its own, if it is independent of the revelation and insights of faith, to what is it anchored ? It is anchored to nothing more than experience and culture. It belongs to its time and its place and its unique prevailing influences and indeed prejudices. Even what we can see, especially with hindsight, as flawed even crazed ideologies were based on a rationale that was sufficient to persuade a great many people and even, as Neiman points out in the case of influential, leftist philosopher and Nazi supporter, Carl Schmitt, sufficient to maintain their support even after the ideology collapsed in ignominy.

We have never had systems of ideas emanating solely from reason, or claimed as such, that did not need to be supported by a framework of laws which in turn require a foundation in some form of authority. It is either authority based on the force of truth or the force of power. For “state socialism” in every single one of its historical expressions that authority was heavily underpinned by force. For philosopher, Augusto del Noce, this is where a system of thought, based on reason cut off from faith, contrasts with a system, based on both. The latter allows individuals their freedom, the right to walk away. How can any system claim to be founded on “the dignity of the human person”, as Neiman asserts socialism is, if it depends on strong-armed enforcement? How is wokeism any different in its cultural coercion from the political coercion that has always defined “state socialism”?

Neiman’s third test by which she judges wokeism a changeling child in the cradle of leftist thought rather than its natural issue, is the belief in the idea and the possibility of progress. However, the Left never believed in progress, understood as continuity. Progress was predicated on rupture and revolution. We see that now in the less violent form of cancellings, decolonisation programmes in museums and universities and even redefinitions of the biological concepts of what constitutes male and female. From Marx to Foucault, progress requires an ideological “tabla rasa” and, respectively, a tacit and explicit acknowledgement that, for the masses, justice and progress, as they define it, can only be delivered by a new paradigm of power. The goal of social equality can only be realised by suppression of individual freedoms. Neiman however does not disown Marx, merely fails to mention him, but his leftist credentials are equally flawed according to the logic of her critique of wokeism. If wokeism cannot be described “as truly left” then neither can Karl Marx.

Neiman’s output, both in her book and the several interviews she has recorded to promote it, is self-reverential chopping and dicing of assertions and references that would not stand up a minute under open-minded scrutiny let alone under attack from ideological opponents. In building up the Left she dismisses the right as tribalist in all the negative connotations of being inward looking and indifferent if not hostile to their fellow humans outside the tribe. She never mentions the family, always problematic for socialists, but it’s the first tribe we all belong to. It is natural for us to identify with our tribe and as we mature we find the base tribe of the family is nested inside many others. We have a hierarchy of loyalties and a complexity of identities. However, commitment to the values we hold is the one thing that is not delineated by the borders of the tribe especially for those whose definition of the “neighbour” is the one we find in the Gospel. The narrow, self-absorbed, obsessive narcissism of identity politics is tribal in the negative ways that Neiman defines the term. But the fact is leftist politics has always been centered on identity from Marx’s focus on the dialectics of class struggle to radical feminists’ focus on a parallel dialectics based on sex. The left has always overlooked the value of personal freedom in matters of conscience, family life, religious belief along with freedom to dissent from prevailing orthodoxies. Freedoms that promote flourishing for the individual also enable the collective flourishing of communities and society at large too in the final analysis.

Neiman would like to disown what is known as cultural Marxism and reclaim socialist theory for egalitarian socio-economics. However, the economic revolution to which Marx believed history was inevitably bound has been superseded by the technological revolution which has changed the conditions of work and consequently the priorities of the masses. The wealth of the elites is exponentially increasing in this still very asymmetrical world as Neiman points out but not everyone is convinced they are exploited because people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and the technocrats around them are richer than the economies of many countries. There are performing artistes and football stars who are also earning multiples of prime ministers and brain surgeons but that is not seen to make anyone’s personal economic situation worse. Thinkers like Neiman and Chomsky will have a hard time convincing the masses they need another socialist revolution in an age where market and technological developments have pushed disparities of wealth away from the centre towards the margins, both demographically and geographically. In a global world economic order, very many people encounter little of either of these extremes. Of course, there are new causes of poverty which are actually the result of rising material standards in tandem with changing cultural mores such as family breakdown, deterioration in mental health, substance addiction and gambling. However, such forms of poverty are more likely to engender an attitude of dependency and entitlement rather than revolution in a developed western economy.

The takeaway from this book, and I am not recommending anyone purchase it, is that the left perceives itself to be running into the sands as wokeism drives on determinedly with the wheels whirring and jamming while the technological revolution continues to revolutionise the way we live together and more and more the way we live apart. The left, as Neiman defines it, may feel threatened by the wokeist societal phenomena of the age but the right has equally serious grounds for concern and dismay. The difference is that the right has greater reason than Neiman to hope, though she claims to be hopeful as opposed to optimistic, because the solutions offered by the truly enlightened part of the right are based on a reading of humankind that is conformed to a fuller understanding of our nature as creatures of a God who is in his being “universal”, who is “justice” and who alone offers a path to “progress” than is more than a path to material sufficiency and lies both within and beyond the confines of our brief mortal lives.