On the Democrats and their Truths

“…‘freedom of criticism’ means freedom for an opportunistic tendency… to convert Social Democracy into a democratic reformist party, the freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into socialism.” (What is to be Done, Lenin)

The New World Order means the subordination of all social forms to the global economic logic now freed from the disenabling binaries posed by colonial revolution and Communism. Those who comply (who support the “reforms that allow [their] very existence”) are democrats. Those who resist (those who refuse to “open[ly] compromise,” and who “suppress…commonalities”) are hardliners. It is now possible to treat the hardliners with unrestricted cynicism and arrogance (to “assault” them with one’s “experience,” rather than engage them with knowledges and arguments). There is no need to read their texts (e.g., those from members of the majority printed in the last several issues of the Alternative Orange, Jennifer Cotter’s and Professor Zavarzadeh’s in the upcoming issue)—they have already been refuted by history (they “uncritically repeat” themselves). The democrats are protected by the self-confident serenity that comes from knowing that one’s truths are reflected everywhere (so much so that a challenge to one’s “lexicon” can only be “indoctrination” and dissent is automatically contradicted by reality—“practical pressures”—in the face of which it needs “to allow itself to be transformed”). They need only assert their truths (the “‘freedom to speak’ is indeed progressive”). The democrats therefore don’t need to learn anything new—knowledge is dangerous and oppressive, and only would-be totalitarian dictators invest the hard work involved in this outmoded and highly dangerous activity (the acquisition of a theoretical vocabulary and a political position—“consistency”—serves only to secure “centralized power and authority”). Of course, radical ideas are just fine in the “silence of [one’s] room,” but only pathological demagogues would think of applying (“materially supporting”) them in real life. The democrats prefer reality (“speech”), the moment of face-to-face immediacy, when the (actually simulated) truth shines through (Yeltsin on the tank, the electronic town meeting, the Rabin- Arafat handshake, etc.). The democrats ask for dialogue and then deny its usefulness (“you won’t have enough people”). Most of all, the democrats solemnly “propose” elaborate democratic forms (“a teach-in”), and then, having established their credentials, proceed to ignore such forms (“for a re-articulated A.O. ‘space’… in a lexicon which is not the lexicon of the majority”). The democrats are comfortable with their truths, and more than anything else wish others to be comfortable with them as well.

Adam Katz