Two Lefts don't make a Right: The Old Left and the New Left

Now that I have around people on the broad "Political Left" for over a decade, I have come to see both the persistent Right Wing mischaracterization of Leftist politics, as well as the endless debates and battles within the Left itself. And what most outside the Left, and many inside the Left, do not understand is that there is not just one Left. There are many. Just as there is not just one form of conservative. There are many. 

And while I identify with Classical Christianity instead of modern politics (whether Left or Right), and no one on the Left would accept me as part of the Left, I would like to talk here about two versions of the Left which seem to be particularly important in the United States in 2020. This is my attempt to compile and organize what I have learned reading and teaching about politics in the last decade, and not an authoritative account of political or economic theory. Any flaws in the description are my fault alone, and should not be blamed on the sources I cite.

With that out of the way, let's start with two basic definitions:

The Old Left: Focuses on making sure every person, starting with the most vulnerable and impoverished, has “daily bread”. The main emphasis here is making sure the material conditions are met for all people to survive and thrive, including access for all to healthy nutrition, secure housing, quality medical care, educational opportunity, and access to political representation and courts of justice. This Old Left can range from a Democratic Socialist emphasis on nationalizing some industries as utilities for the public good, while leaving a robust free market for other goods and services, to Statist Communism, in which all industries and economic activities are managed and distributed by the government. 

The New Left: Focuses on making sure every person, starting with the most traumatized and marginalized, has a positive self-image. The main emphasis here is to limit psychic, social, and symbolic violence which is done to marginalized peoples by other powerful stakeholders in society. When marginalized peoples are demeaned or denied by other stakeholders, this has systemic effects socially, economically, and psychologically. Thus we must make all marginalized groups safe from these aggressions by carefully regulating speech, artistic content, institutional access, media coverage, and all other aspects of social interaction, so that we can silence, de-platform, and marginalized all ideas, people, and groups who would traumatize and marginalize others. 

Please note that someone can be part of the Old Left without being part of the New Left. They can advocate for material equity and access while allowing social and cultural differences to sort themselves out once material inequality and injustice has been eliminated and reformed. Also, someone can be part of the New Left without being part of the Old Left. They can accept that material inequality and injustice is just “the way things are”, and insist that within Capitalist disparities of wealth and opportunity the best thing that can be done is to ensure no group is socially or psychologically marginalized. This often results in a commitment to racial, cultural, and sexual diversity for the wealthiest classes in society, alongside a general disdain toward the poor and working class by those who perceive themselves as diverse and elite. 

And while the Old Left is generally congruent with a robust commitment to free speech and freedom of opportunity, the New Left has certain inherent tensions and contradictions which hinder commitment to free speech and freedom. For instance, in the Old Left all voices can engage in discussion of any topic. In those discussions it is wise to remember how class bias— economically, culturally, socially, sexually— may be shaping or distorting your views. But the Old Left doesn't use class as a way to silence certain groups or exclude them from the discussion, as it does in the New Left.

And in this essay I will be using “class” in a broad sense of any group of people with a common feature that includes them all. So by class I do not mean JUST economic class, but also classes formed by cultural and racial identity, as well as gender and sexual identity. Class thus forms not just a spectrum of rich to poor, but a kind of three dimensional grid, with economic class being the X axis, race and culture being the Y axis, and gender and sexuality forming the Z axis. In the Old Left in America, every class was given voice in public discussion and debate. And since, in principle, every voice has a place in the National discussion, the overall vision of the Old Left is in line with the dream of the Christian Socialist Martin Luther King, that we would become a society where a person “is not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”. 

In the New Left, this is not so. With their emphasis on marginalizing voices that have marginalized others, and cancelling those who have cancelled others, there lies many tensions. The first is that every class— economically, culturally, socially, sexually— has been marginalized and cancelled by every other class in recent history and in notable ways. Blacks have marginalized Latinos who have marginalized Asians who have all been marginalized by Whites. Cis Women have marginalized Trans Women who have marginalized Gender Fluid persons who have been marginalized by Gay Men who have marginalized Trans Men who have all been marginalized by Cis Men in the pervasive performative heteronormativity of our culture. I could go on, but it is clear there is an inter-conflicted matrix of oppression with a hierarchy of competing marginalization that needs to be carefully curated and sorted to see whose voice is valid in any particular issue. And at the root of this web of oppression is White Cisgender Heterosexual Males, unless you are in China where it is Han Cis Hetero Males, or India where it is High Caste Cis Hetero Males, or the Middle East... or Central Africa... or South America. 

All of this is to say that it is very unclear who has warrant to speak to any issue on the New Left, and who arbitrates the power to have voice. Unlike the vision of Martin Luther King, we simply cannot judge people at all based on their individual character or ideas. We can only judge them and their standing based on class status: What is their Culture? Gender? Sexuality? Yet, ironically, economic class is largely absent on the New Left, and it is largely assumed that the only people who can express voice are college educated professionals who are upwardly mobile and usually tech savvy. The poor and middle class need not apply. Those who are working class or non-college educated may be used as examples or mascots on the New Left, so long as the Intelligentsia provide their voice. The ultimate goal being that we do not judge a person by the content of their character, but on the color of their skin, and the gender they embrace, and the sexuality they desire. 

In an Orwellian inversion of meaning, the Newspeak of the New Left tells us that "free speech" means that only certain classes can speak to certain issues, "inclusion" means keeping people rigorously separated into their classes, and "diversity" means that people can look different so long as they believe the same things and have similar economic interests. And the predictable result is so-called "Cancel Culture" in which those who do not hold Orthodox views on diversity and inclusion are exiled, de-platformed, and if possible, terminated from employment. And this also entails a Purity culture in which every deviation from the Purity Code and every ignorant indiscretion of youth is broadcast to everyone across the Earth via social media, so they can be punished with globalized public shaming rituals. And just as a sharp knife can be used for surgery or for murder, so also public shaming can be used to heal society, or simply to destroy one's opponents. And both of these uses can easily be found on the New Left. Sometimes “cancellation” can be a powerful tool to protest and reprimand powerful elites, but sometimes it can be used to silence honest dialogue and debate and growth. 

Thus, while professing "intersectionality", the New Left undermines it profoundly. The Old Left realized, with Martin Luther King, that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” They realized that sowing racist divisions between the white working class and the black working class was a tool of oppression used by the owning class to stop workers from realizing their common struggle and common needs for material liberation. This in turn led the Old Left to realize the intersectional truth that all forms of class prejudice were intertwined and used to exclude whole swaths of the population from access to resources and opportunity and power. Prejudice based on gender, culture, and sexuality, led the great mass of humankind to be divided and conquered by monied interests that control the levers of power. 

The Old Left realized the truism "united we stand, divided we fall". All marginalized classes must work together toward material liberation and access to means of justice and equality. By seeing ourselves as part of the same struggle with common hopes and needs, we would learn to respect and value each other in all of our diversity and beauty. This is NOT "class reductionism", and it NOT saying that prejudice against social class (race, culture, gender, sexuality, religion, etc.) can be reduced to functions of economic class (rich, poor, owners, managers, workers, etc.). Rather, it is to say that common economic struggle together, and attaining economic justice together, provides the material basis for helping us to genuinely value and respect each other on an ethical and spiritual level. Intersectional economic struggle forms the basis for inclusive social praxis. 

This has been almost perfectly inverted by the New Left. I cannot tell if this is due to organic growth and development within the Left itself, or due to subversion of the Left by reactionary forces that seek to preserve wealth and power for a relative few. But if it was not a calculated subversion of the goals of the Old Left, it has functioned perfectly as such. Because under the rubric of “intersectionality”, the New Left pays rapt attention to every transgression against its favored classes, and will not permit any comment on these transgressions by those who are not a member of that class who identifies explicitly with the New Left ideology surrounding identity. 

A Black Cis Man cannot speak to the struggles of a Latinx Trans Man because of the history of marginalization between these two classes. And likewise an Asian Cis Woman cannot speak to the struggles of a Anglo Trans Woman. Even Trans Persons are shamed and silenced from speaking to other Trans Persons when their ideology varies from New Left Orthodoxy. And as a White Cis Male, I am unable to speak to or empathize with anyone else whatsoever (as least within the structures of the New Left). Our ineradicable class differences place us in hermetically sealed containers of class identity, unable to realize or speak to any intersectional struggles. To use academic speak: This often results in a reification of social class, producing an eternal and unchanging ontology of different classes, rendering them into fundamentally different kinds of beings who cannot share in each other's experiences in any way. Trapped thus in our class identity, no growth or development is possible or permitted. 

These observations could be distorted to make it sound like the Old Left-- or myself as a writer-- does not care about raising up marginalized voices or recognizing how certain classes have enjoyed privilege in public discourse. This is not the case at all. As I have stated many times in talks and essays, I am committed to the inclusion of all classes of people-- economic, cultural, racial, religious, sexual-- as worthy of respect and dignity and love and justice as people who are ALL made in the image of a God of Love. Because of this I am committed to reading, hearing, and watching a wide variety of voices from all cultures, genders, and sexualities to try and understand their struggles, so I may ally with them in the work of liberation. And I am aware that this chorus of voices needs to be ever expanded to understand more. 

But the New Left solution of using mass shaming and silencing tactics is not the solution to many of these problems. It only makes things worse. It tries to solve the problem of class oppression with the solution of speech repression. And repression may silence people in the short term. But in the long term it drives prejudice and hatred under the surface, for it to fester and grow, until it erupts into open hatred and hostility toward multi-cultural diversity and class struggle (as we have seen since the 2015 election until now). Repression cannot heal oppression in the long term, even if it brings symptom relief in the short term. 

To put it in medical terms, the Body Politic has fractures and infections. The New Left solution is to repress the symptoms by covering them with the bandage of politically correct speech, and prescribing rituals of public shaming to bring about symptom relief. The Old Left solution is twofold: Demand and Demonstrate. First, we demand an end to explicitly prejudiced policies and institutions, and we work to put a "cast" around the broken bones so they can heal. The "cast" in this case is protective legislation and programs to re-align practice and policy in public institutions (cf. Affirmative Action, School Integration, Pro-Labor policies, Social Security, Universal Healthcare, etc). Second, we demonstrate that Leftist ideas and policies are ultimately better for everyone (even for the oppressors!). We excise the infection by digging into the public psyche through dialogue and debate with people who hold different ideas, demonstrating how Old Left ideas are better in theory and practice. Instead of shaming others into silence, we demonstrate that their ideas do not produce a healthy Body Politic, while Old Left ideas do bring health and healing to all.

All of this is to say, while it is possible (and often desirable) to separate the New Left and the Old Left, it is also possible to be part of the New Left and the Old Left simultaneously. And the New Left can be seen as growing out of certain tendencies in the Old Left. Certainly there are people who BOTH work toward economic justice through socialized political systems AND seek to stop the social marginalization of certain groups by putting strictures on speech and discourse. There are Leftists who care just as much about purity of economic ideology as they do purity of social ideology. 

But it is also possible to see the New Left as NOT REALLY part of the Left at all. Instead the New Left can function as a form of reactionary Postmodern Puritanism,  that enables the Corporate Capitalist Right, by keeping all who are not in the owning class divided and unable to empathize or sympathize with one another. The New Left "feels" like emancipatory politics because it speaks the language of diversity and inclusion and liberation. But it can actually become a tool to enforce economic class interest, and stop diverse peoples from realizing their common struggle to attain the material means of full human flourishing. Many on the Left might even consider the New Left merely an extension of Neo-Liberalism, which is not interested in changing systemic inequity at all, but instead is a tool to uphold the existing social order while offering a fashionable critique of it. Thus the New Left can be an ersatz Leftism for the educated and comfortable which does not actually change the economic structures and disparities of society. 

These distinctions, in turn, could help us understand the divisions within the Democratic Party in 2020. Clearly, one powerful group in the DNC is supported by powerful Corporate interests, and seems fine with several aspects of economic oppression (in prisons, banking, healthcare, etc.) so long as we pursue cultural liberation. This group is comfortable with economic policy basically following the way it has since Reagan onward, and is championed by wealthy college elites, so long as we work toward social diversity and inclusion by silencing hateful voices. The other group is despised by Corporate interests, wants to change the economic system fundamentally, embraces the working class and the non-college educated and even the religious, and makes social inclusion mainly a function of economic opportunity. 

Many commentators on the Right seem to think that the New Left and Old Left are continuous, or at least lead to one another, as some kind of "Postmodern Neo-Marxism". But in critique after critique by actual Leftist thinkers, we see that this idea does not fit the evidence. Not all Old Leftists are New Leftists, and clearly all New Leftists are not Old Leftists. And even on the Old Left, there is a vast variety from Communists to Socialists to Anarchists to those who root their Leftism in Christian doctrine, to those who root their Leftism in Marxist doctrine. 

Thus, Old Left versus New Left is not the only way to divide the Left. One could also divide the left by those that are building on a foundation of Marxist theory, and those that are not (such as Keynesian economists). You could also divide the Left among those that are Religious (such as Christian Socialists) and those that are Secular. You could even divide among tendencies on the Left: Toward Communism, or Socialism, Neo-Liberalism, or Anarchism, or even forms of Libertarianism. And there are often infinite splinters within various Leftist ideologies (with some notably hilarious and peculiar distinctions between kinds of Marxist Revolutionaries). We could even distinguish between the “Old New Left” from 1950-1990 and the “New New Left” from 1990-now, as well as the “Old Old Left” from the 1800’s forward as compared with the “New Old Left” which really got started with the Occupy Movement around 2010. But these distinctions can make heads spin. For now, this is sufficient. And I think one of the most helpful basic distinctions to understand Leftist politics in 2020 in the United States is the “Old” versus “New” Left. And although no one on any version of the Left would accept me as a Leftist, I’m obviously much more sympathetic to the Old Left. But what else would you expect from a middle aged White Cisgender Heterosexual Married Man?

ADDENDUM:

Although a link to a Bibliography of Liberating Media is already included in the essay above, I would be remiss if I did not include a list of media creators who help develop a mindset that is distinctly in the mode of the Old Left. This is not to say I agree with all of the content or the rhetorical moves of these authors and content creators. It is just that they present a healthy and healing vision of Leftist Politics, as opposed to what we find in much of the New Left. A seminal work in helping me understand this distinction comes from Mark Fisher (author of Capitalist Realism), who in 2013 wrote "Exiting the Vampire Castle" about finding his way out of the New Left, and back to the Old Left. 

In regards to the original Old Left in the United States, one could do worse than going back to the sources: Learn about major themes and leaders in Leftist Politics through Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States", and then follow up by actually reading the works of Eugene V. Debs or Mother Jones or Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement. As far as race relations go, start with the classic writings of Martin Luther King Jr, James Baldwin, and Cornell West. Then move forward to the contemporary era and compare the more "Old Left" approach of black community activist Ibram X. Kendi's "How to be an Anti-Racist" with the more "New Left" approach of white corporate consultant Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility". In terms of commentary on gender and sexuality, a more "Old Left" approach can be glimpsed in the media of Camille Paglia, Natalie Wynn of Contrapoints, and Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube (formerly Oliver Thorn).

In terms of political critique and news commentary, a more Old Left perspective can be glimpsed in the books of Chris Hedges, as well as his recurring news commentary program "On Contact". Helpful news sources include Democracy Now (a news outlet devoted to issues affecting the oppressed and the environment), Rising (news commentary designed to get the Populist Left in conversation with the Populist Right), and The Intercept (which generally critiques Leftist politics and policy from a Leftist perspective, especially in the commentary of Glenn Greenwald). For an economic commentary on contemporary America from the Old Left perspective of Democratic Socialism, one can look to the policy suggestions of the Bernie Sanders campaign, as well as the video channel Democracy at Work, featuring the commentary of economist Richard Wolff and social historian David Harvey. 

Finally, I have found Zero Books to be a consistent producer of Old Left cultural critique, both in books and in video, with authors such as Mark Fisher, Ben Burgis, and Angela Nagle. And I probably should not leave out Neo-Marxist social critics Slavoj Zizek and Terry Eagleton. They are fun to read, and cutting in their critiques, but extremely dense with little real-world application. Again, all of these diverse sources do not hold the same views, and some of them are not actually socialist. But they all articulate how a more "Old Left" critique of society and economics differs from a "New Left" critique.