Diagnosing the left.(The Intellectuals and the Flag)(Book review)

Todd Gitlin The Intellectuals and the Flag. Columbia University Press, 167 pages, $24.95

Todd Gitlin used to be a 1960s radical, an SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) leader, a committed activist in the protests movements of the period. He became one of the tenured (former) radicals, a sociologist, professor of journalism, and active "public intellectual." He is also author of books on the 1960s, the mass media, and cultural-political trends in present-day American society. Unlike many of his former colleagues, he distanced himself from his youthful radicalism and became critical of what he calls the "fundamentalist left."

In this collection, as in other writings, he displays an excellent grasp of the adversarial mindset, noting, for example, that "anti-Americanism, was, and remains, a mood and a metaphysics more than a politics. It cannot help but see practical politics as an illusion entangled ... with a system fatally flawed by original sin ... an archipelago of bitterness." He rejects the negativity, self-righteousness, "pride in marginality," anarchistic leanings, and "intellectual slovenliness" on the left. He sees "the fundamentalist left ... negat[ing] politics in favor of ideology." That is to say, he is disturbed by what he sees as the left's withdrawal from practical politics. He observes correctly that the left "has been clearer about isms to oppose--mainly imperialism and racism--than about values and policies to further." But he exaggerates the left's hostility to all authority; after all, the New Left (including C. Wright Mills) admired radical revolutionary movements and systems, their leaders and power; their progeny still do, as witness the new political pilgrimages to the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez.

Gitlin is also a critic of postmodernism, cultural studies, and the popular culture enshrined by the practitioners of the latter. He supported the liberation of Afghanistan from Taliban rule and the intervention in Kosovo. Following 9/11, he put an American flag on the terrace of his New York City apartment.

He no longer advocates sweeping revolutionary transformations and believes in "a politics of limits ... at once radical and conservative." He writes: "there must be limits to what human beings can be permitted to do with their powers." He has learned that not all good things are compatible, that the United States is not the most evil force in the world, and that not all enemies of the United States deserve support merely because they are its enemies.

He is particularly critical of "cultural studies" and its mindless anti-elitism that led to the embrace of popular culture, mistakenly seen as somehow authentic and a challenge to the status quo. He is also unsympathetic to the identity politics that cultural studies support. He deplores mass culture for promoting "disposable feelings," superficial excitements, expectations and entitlements, nurturing moral and aesthetic relativity and is concerned about its impact on young people: "popular culture has recreational uses. Escape from rigors and burdens is ... its point ... the informal curriculum of immediate gratification obstructs education for citizenship"--and education in general.

While the critiques of postmodernists are also on target, Gitlin overestimates their apolitical orientation; notwithstanding their posturings, when push comes to shove ...