The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the … (2024)

I had to keep saying to myself this was written in 2005. As far as books predicting the trajectory of history, this one is the best I have ever read, to the point where I started to wonder if Gottfried had a palantír hidden away somewhere. He wrote this in the midst of 9/11 and the Iraq War, and argued both were distractions from the ongoing cultural civil war, although it might be better to call it a triumph in this book. In no book has the Left looked more invincible, but he is dealing with culture (Left wins often) and not economics (where the Left constantly repeats the scene in Aliens where Apone, Drake, and the rest are killed)

Gottfried documents the shift away from Marx's materialistic and anti-capitalist communist ideals towards a Left that is obsessed with culture, and therefore no longer actually Marxist but arguably Post-Marxist. Indeed, he declares Marx is all but dead, and the events of the financial crash proved him right. The Left, instead of trying to rein in capitalism, doubled down on the culture wars, all the while Americans "enjoy" monopolistic corporations that would make Morgan and Carnegie blush. Obama signed off on those mergers and put no bankers in jail. The truth is Reagan was more of a threat to Wall Street than the Democrats of today.

The core of the Left is not Marxist in so far as they do not actually question capitalism. This is a Left that lost the working class to embrace educated professionals seeking individual freedom of appetites but not of thought or economic choice. In his words, "capitalism has become the handmaiden of multiculturalism" and many Left thinkers know this. The anti-capitalist strain in the Left are hold overs of the old order. Bernie Sanders' age certainly would add to this argument, as well as him becoming more open to loose borders, something anathema to communist nations of yesterday and today.

Where Gottfried is particularly good is discussing the misuse of the terms "fascist" and "Nazi." The cultural Left he describes applies these liberally to anyone that does not go with their views, whether it be criticism of the bombing of Dresden (with Antifa mobs yelling that more Germans should have died) or simply a belief in controlled (as opposed to opened or closed) immigration. So there is a Mussolini under every bed, which leads not just to histrionics and moralizing but, in an observation Gottfried fails to make, a political version of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." It is so bad that Hector Berloiz's name was dragged in the mud for being a monarchist who loved ancient Rome. Nevermind that he created one of the most important pieces in the history of music. Marcuse (whom Gottfried studied under) would no doubt approve, believing as he did that "true art" only came from the left, Shakespeare be damned I guess.

The Left according to Gottfried is now simply anti-western and anti-white, informed by a revulsion at bourgeoisie values which are seen as prenatal forms of fascism. This Left wins on this argument, but is utterly helpless when confronting capitalism, which Gottfried implies means the working class can be particularly susceptible to right wing ideology. He is a defeatist in this regard, seeing the cultural Left as a juggernaut of sorts, but as Orwell once said everyone looks invincible while they are winning. As of late, the right is getting better at working class out-reach, and it is one of the many depressing trends of this decade for any old line leftist.

The most creative part of the book is the examination of the cultural Left with the Marxist one, a troubled love held together in part by the Great Patriotic War. On the one hand the cultural Left are eager to ignore or at least downplay communist crimes, and this dishonesty enrages Gottfried. They have been successful. People are often shocked when I tell them communism killed more people than fascists and Nazis, although for the Nazis it was not for lack of trying. Yet, the communists were mostly rather socially conservative, which is the irony of this book. As Gottfried observes "The German Democratic Republic made Luther and Frederick the Great into forerunners of its Marxist regime, while West German journalists, academics, and politicians presented these and other German historical figures as contributors to the Nazi catastrophe." This observation is prescient.

One small point must be added. China today actively arrests hom*osexuals and Muslims. Eastern Germany is more conservative, as are the old communist countries. Japan, China, Mongolia, Turkey, and the rest are adept at ignoring their crimes. The result is arguably a more authoritarian bent, something Gottfried should address today (2005 was not the time for it) for that might prove Antifa correct in its implications about creeping fascism.

Interestingly, Gottfried ends up waxing nostalgic for the working class communist of yesterday, who were socially conservative and merely wanted a better material life. They are the betrayed group in the narrative. He even has this sad rumination: "Without bemoaning the passing of an erstwhile European leftist voter, it might be possible to note how little, relatively speaking, he desired. And it might be justified to wonder whether his successor, a lifestyle radical equipped with a bulging stock portfolio, has favored the rise of a less revolutionary Left."

Finally, his most predictive application was seeing Germany's self-loathing as the forerunner of a new west, and he is correct as the narrative of western exceptionalism collapses nation by nation, leaving a void likely to be filled by Asia, whether it be eastern or middle. More importantly, he predicts the rise of mass immigration from the middle east that, without a culture confidant enough to assimilate, is likely to be a repeat of the western Roman Empire in the 400s. Given global warming and radical Islam, it is likely the tragedy of Rome will be like comparing a sailboat ride on Lake Pontchartrain to the Titanic at around 2:00 am on April 15, 1912. Since the Asian nations have been good about importing western technology, but not its self-hatred, tomorrow might belong to them, which given their treatment of hom*osexuals is chilling. I am left thinking, could we not have gay marriage without the anti-white rhetoric and hatred of the western tradition? After all, it is the western nations, imbued with western-liberal ideals, that have led on human rights. I had hope for that in 2012, and the death of that dream has been a nightmare. I have also read that in Russia and China, the current wave of hom*osexual repression comes in part from a belief that gay marriage is a sign of western decline which they wish to avoid. Is this the choices we are given by the leaders of the world?

Now for some choice quotations from a masterful book by one of conservatism's most original thinkers. His harshest criticism, outside of the hypocrisy of people ignoring the gulags, is for conservatives who are married to hollow entreaties for war and free markets. Perhaps I am too much a contrarian, but the ability to shoot both ways and not be a partisan hack, is the highest praise I can offer to anyone. Better to be sui generis than just another slogan (I am looking at you Fox News and Vox).

“'Cultural Trotskyism' may be a suitable description of this Left, which is actuated by a vision of perpetual cultural change and bureaucratically contrived social engineering. Neither a working class consciousness nor socialist economic planning is considered necessary to advance this leftist agenda."

"It therefore makes no difference, for the European Left, whether the Nazis and Communists were behaviorally more alike than different. Those who supported the Communists should be praised for exhibiting 'good intentions,' while those who opposed them, we are made to think, would have applauded Hitler’s genocide. The Left is about purity of intention, which must be demonstrated through ceaseless combat against the impure."

"America’s European critics with few exceptions are not calling for a nationalist, monarchist, or anti–welfare state regime in place of the supranational, bureaucratic, and pluralistic order associated with the United States. More common criticisms from the European Left are that the United States has not gone far enough to honor its 'human rights' or pluralistic ideals and that it does not consult Europe often enough before applying military power."

"It is not unreasonable to link Germany’s present self-contempt and the receptiveness of its declining population to Post-Marxist trends to what the postwar occupation helped establish. Just as Jacob Burckhardt proclaimed the Italian Renaissance to be the 'first-born son of modern Europe,' so too did postwar Germany after some hesitation bring forth with American midwifery a Post-Marxist leftist society. To the present generation of Germans has been vouchsafed the fateful experiment of living in and promoting such a reality."

"The Post-Marxist Left represents (with certain qualifications made in the first chapter) a distinctive political religion. It should therefore be understood as a would-be successor to a traditional belief system, one parasitic on Judeo-Christian symbols but equipped with its own transformational myths and end-of-history vision. To whatever extent this Left also reveals traces of a 'Gnostic' myth, it may be necessary to ascertain its origin in an ancient Near Eastern civilization. Voegelin and the German-Jewish scholar Jakob Taubes have both focused critical attention on the relation between ancient Christian heresies and modern political cultures."

"Tolerance, understood as glorifying the foreign and the anti- Western, is different from courtesy to strangers. It is an expression of ancestral self-rejection, like the zeal of those Romans who upon joining the early church turned against their pagan heritage entirely. Although Christianity came to terms eventually with the imperial establishment, multicultural political religion may not make peace with what it fails to transform. Like Marxism, it mimics Christianity, to the point of adapting certain Christian core experiences. The Post-Marxist Left has its own version of metanoia, the conversionary experience of the repentant sinner, who is now awaiting the 'end of History' as we have known it. Those converted to the new teaching try to reach out to the impenitent, but like Saint Augustine amid the heresies of fifth-century North Africa, they sometimes call in the magistrates against the heretics who are corrupting the community of faith."

Gottfried’s chilling and informative book about the European Left in the new millennium makes clear the guiding influence of the United States in creating a progressive “soft despotism” in the Western world that is not as violent as Stalinism or Naziism, but which is in certain respects far more radical. This new despotism has-for reasons explained in the book-not yet been strongly opposed. Gottfried thinks that though this progressive tyranny is in a position of practically unassailable power, it clearly contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Gottfried shows admirable scholarly versatility in this 2005 book; not many American right wing commentators could speak with such fluency and knowledge regarding the leftist European scene. And Gottfried’s analysis seems sound and even prophetic; much of what he had to say over a decade ago helps explain the Western political scene circa 2016.

The Strange Death of Marxism details how the European Left after WWII tended to abandon dialectical materialism, and, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, tended to make its peace with welfare state capitalism. As Gottfried puts it: “The Left is no longer Marxist and only intermittently socialist.” Instead, the “post-Marxist” Left attacks Bourgeois civilization (as expressed through traditional Christianity, nation states, and traditional family and gender norms) as a source of social pathology that once led to fascism and might do so again if not vigorously resisted and rooted out. Gottfried thinks the Frankfurt school deserves special mention in terms of developing a concept of fascism loose enough to allow the term to serve as an epithet against whatever the Left deems unprogressive, insensitive and intolerant.

Frankfurt school theory might have been brought to America from Germany, but it flourished in its new environment because it proved useful to the patriotic, moderate Left. And it became a powerful force in Germany only after being reintroduced by the Americans seeking to rehabilitate Germany after WWII.

Gottfried points out that the Jewish American Committee that sponsored Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality was also launching Commentary magazine at the same time. So, interpreting reactionary attitudes as pathological proved congenial to what would eventually become known as the cold war liberal/neoconservative crowd. Gottfried says of The Authoritarian Personality that “What made its psychological understanding of reactionary attitudes so thoroughly American was the consolidation of an American centralized administrative state, coming simultaneously with the influx of different nationalities. The festering presence of a ‘race problem’ also contributed to the acceptance in the American polity of benign scientific administration, which was supposed to solve intergroup relations by giving them a new foundation. It was the growing diversity of a changing American society, which lacked the firm ethnic character of European states, that made administered democracy, and its child, social engineering, essential to the new political landscape. The plan to secularize and sensitize Americans that radical emigres were advancing fitted, with some modification, into what Americans were doing to and for themselves. It also in no way contradicted what mainline Protestant denominations were by then preaching about pluralism and social justice.” (p. 11-12)

Post war reeducation in Germany spearheaded by the Yanks involved plenty of Frankfurt school anti-fascism. There was an interlude during the early years of the cold war as the emphasis shifted from anti-fascism to anti-communism, but by the late fifties, the anti-fascist reeducation had resumed in force, this time under German leadership. Gottfried makes a fairly convincing case that this second stage was made possible by, and built upon, what had come before.

At any rate, the most important contemporary Frankfurt school intellectual, Jurgen Habermas, clearly demonstrates how the German Left’s hopes are aligned with the general project of the American managerial state. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Habermas turned to the United States as an imperial power that could help guide Europe towards progressive global administration. Gottfried says “The cure for reactionary values, we are made to believe, is a government of social engineers who will take a stand against what Habermas calls ‘the psychic residues of the past.’”

Gottfried thinks the successful extremism of the German Left provides a possible look into the future for an America that, even though it pioneered what Germany has so fully embraced, has yet to travel as far down that road, largely because of still existing residues of classical liberalism. Take for instance Gottfried's exploration of Habermas’s behavior in the so-called Historians’ Controversy of 1986-89. This controversy, along with the earlier controversy surrounding Fritz Fischer’s work on German WWI war guilt, are clear, high-profile examples for Gottfried of how scholars whose scholarly opinions are not deemed sufficiently “anti-fascist” are publicly denounced by the German academic Left, irrespective of the facts. Though Gottfried is highly sympathetic to Habermas’s Historians’ Controversy critics, he thinks they are not sufficiently aware of how Habermas’s censorious behavior throughout the controversy was entirely consistent with his own conception of democratic, “domination-free discourse.”

Though Americans are certainly well acquainted with political correctness (Gottfried mentions how American Leftists like Richard Rorty find Habermas’s ideas regarding domination-free discourse commendable), its stranglehold is more pervasive in Germany. Though undeniably horrific aspects of the German past provide fertile ground for national self-laceration and anti-fascist posturing (with ex-Nazis like Habermas sometimes serving as the loudest and most bullying antifascists), Gottfried also points out just how deep political correctness in Germany is imbedded in legal institutions. “What has happened…is that ‘hostility to the Constitution’ has been interpreted to mean ‘betraying a disposition’ that clashes with a politically correct democracy…The German Left is carrying out a new founding of the Federal Republic, on the grounds that the bourgeois democracy created in 1949 did not go far enough to break with the Nazi past.” (p. 130-31) Considering how “the living Constitution” is utilized by American progressives to further their ends, one can discern an American trend that is similar, though not as steep. Gottfried remarks that a South Park episode where the characters were sent to a German concentration camp designed to enforce multiculturalism might well be prophetic. And such a dismal scenario seems ever more plausible throughout the Western world.

Though the European Left at times distrusts America’s spearheading the movement towards a fuller realization of “the end of history,” there is obvious overlap between what the post-marxist Left desires and what the neo-cons want: “a modified form of capitalism as the icebreaker for a new global society, including the empowerment of women, support for generous immigration policies, and the movement toward transnational political identities.” (p.125) Even so, Gottfried makes a distinction between the European Left and the American empire boosters based on the intensity of friend enemy distinctions. The European Left is more likely to view the world as a Manichean struggle between the forces of progress and the forces of reaction than the neocons, who are more moderate and selective when pathologizing reactionary attitudes.

Gottfried, borrowing from Eric Voegelin, sees the post marxist Left as a political religion. It seeks anthropological and historical transformation through politics, envisioning a socially engineered global community of the unprejudiced. Such “soft despotism” is not as violent as Soviet or Nazi tyranny, yet it is more corrosively anti-traditional than the “hard” political religions of old. It has not aroused a lot of political resistance at this point, in large part, Gottfried suggests, because contemporary electoral politics fools people into thinking they are being presented with real alternatives. However, the establishment right in Europe and America does not present any fundamental challenge to the new orthodoxy, and is in fact oriented in the same general direction. Not surprisingly, Europe and America are drifting leftward over time. Any true democratic alternatives to the current managerial-multicultural orthodoxy are marginalized by the mainstream parties, and stigmatized as being equivalent to other, morally dubious political outsiders.

Gottfried considers the reigning managerial multiculturalism as an “incomplete” political religion, noting that its continued commitment to open borders will defeat its ability to sustain itself. He also thinks that populism is the biggest internal Western barrier to the ruling political orthodoxy.

Gottfried’s 2005 analysis seems quite on the mark in 2016. Western elites have demonstrated a seemingly quasi-religious and self-destructive attachment to open borders, and this has definitely fueled a populist backlash, as seen by the Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. The opposition to our soft despotism seems to be picking up steam.

"The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium" is a book written by Paul Edward Gottfried, a political scientist and academic, that explores the decline of Marxism and the left in Europe in the 21st century.

In the book, Gottfried argues that Marxism, which is a political and economic theory that advocates for the abolition of private ownership and the creation of a classless, socialist society, has largely lost its appeal and influence in Europe. He suggests that this decline is due in part to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the failure of Marxist-inspired regimes in other parts of the world, as well as the emergence of new political and economic challenges in the 21st century.

Gottfried also examines the ways in which the left in Europe has responded to this decline, and the ways in which it has adapted to the changing political and economic landscape. He discusses the emergence of new left-wing movements and ideologies, such as social democracy and progressive liberalism, and the ways in which these have influenced the political landscape.

Overall, "The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium" is a thought-provoking and insightful examination of the decline of Marxism and the left in Europe and the ways in which they have adapted to the changing political and economic landscape. It is an important resource for anyone interested in the history and evolution of the left in Europe.

GPT