Prof. Meeropol Sets The Stage Again.

CL201Mar06, 2008

Prof. Meeropol sets the stage again, this time for The Book of Daniel, with a lecture on the political underpinnings of the book. Describing the Old Left and the New Left, he prepared us for the book's inter-generational frame of reference. As he did with Ragtime, Prof. Meeropol gave us a social history, this time with an emphasis on the political aspect of Left politics, so we know how to understand the novel in its historical context.

In the way this colloquium is sequenced we are picking up where Billy Bathgate leaves off. During the Great Depression the Old Left was in its heyday, and the Socialist and Communist parties were at their greatest popularity, reflecting the economic conditions of the time. The economic impact of WWII is arguably what ends the Great Depression and contributes to the demise of the Old Left.

Ironically, the economic impact of WWII marks a revolution in the economic theories of capitalism itself. The Classical Theory with its Laissez-faire policies is challenged by the interventonist Neo-Classical theory of John Maynard Keynes. The Keynesian revolution is vindicated, and at the same time hijacked, by the massive example of Government participation in the economy in the form of WWII. Gigantic military budgets thenceforth become the linchpin of the U.S. economy.

After the defeat of Germany's Nazism and Japan's Imperialism, it is the threat of communism that becomes the justification for continuing military industrialism, with the Korean War and Nuclear Arms race internationally, and the Old Left becoming a straw man domestically, succumbing to the vigorous persecutions of McCarthyism, with ever increasing appropriations for HUAAC. A special aspect of the Old Left in the U.S.A. is the role of immigrants, who bring with them the traditional Marxist knowledge and, significantly, occupy a non-corporate niche in the U.S. economy, as small independent producers and intellectual professionals. As time goes by, beginning with conscription into the war effort and political persecution, this base is slowly absorbed into the corporate sector, though a significant vestige remains in existence to this day. The other bastion of traditional Marxism is the Labor Unions, who fall prey to union busting strategies and tactics that was part and parcel of McCarthyism, not to mention the Unions' own history of corruption, underworld connections (briefly glimpsed in Billy Bathgate) and self interest over the years, becoming "closed shops" that practice racial, gender and religious discrimination.

The New Left, then, is distinctly non-traditional in that the centrality of Labor issues is displaced. There seem to be even more fundamental questions of the dignity of human existence in the struggles for gender and civil rights, against conscription and the nuclear arms race. College students are the leading force in the New Left, making the displacement of labor functional as well as structural, that is, not only are they not workers, but they are children of privileged classes. This very displacement, in turn, signals the limitations of the New Left. The little victories of ending conscription, granting voting rights etc., pale in the big defeat of failing to address fundamental labor issues that remain dormant, seething below the surface.

Enough time has passed that the term "New Left" seems anachronistic now, two generations later, but the name persists as its spirit is recounted by graybeards like E.L.D., Prof Meeropol, and, if I may be allowed the privilege of elevating my scruffy chin to that noble company, yours truly. We can note that the dynamics of the Left have been driven by economic and political contingencies, and such contingencies have taken new forms and faces today. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the triumph of Capitalism and its ever intensifying globalization, the rise of terrorism, the impending recession and the coming presidential elections, we can only be sure that another Left turn is around the corner.