Socialism

socialism so much as the idea that this history should culminate in disenchantment, that an understanding of this century of revolutionary grief should lead, finally, to conservative conclusions: reconciliation to the finite parameters of the human condition; recognition of the unavoidable conflicts and everyday insufficiencies that make up ordinary social unhappiness. In other words: acceptance of who and what we are. What troubles the radical heart, finally, is the sense of limits that such understanding provokes.

Otherwise, large contingents of the Left are now prepared to concede a great deal: the bankruptcy of Marxism, the evils of Communism, even the taint that socialism has incurred by its genetic involvement with both. But such leftists still want to know why these concessions are not enough, why they must give up the noble ambitions behind the tarnished ideas—not just the socialist past, but the socialist future; not just the totalitarian temptation, but the radical cause. This is the prospect that repels them. It is conceding the argument to their lifelong opponents. It is the thought of becoming one of them: not just a chastened missionary of the radical cause, but a counter-revolutionary of the Right. To abandon a lifetime’s loyalties, to become a conservative: where is the romance in that? What would remain of their progressive hopes, their quest for true equality and social justice? These are the unthinkable thoughts that bind them to the tattered ends of a discredited creed; that make them still—and despite all—soldiers in the vanguard of the political Left.

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socialism so much as the idea that this history should culminate in disenchantment, that an understanding of this century of revolutionary grief should lead, finally, to conservative conclusions: reconciliation to the finite parameters of the human condition; recognition of the unavoidable conflicts and everyday insufficiencies that make up ordinary social unhappiness. In other words: acceptance of who and what we are. What troubles the radical heart, finally, is the sense of limits that such understanding provokes.

Otherwise, large contingents of the Left are now prepared to concede a great deal: the bankruptcy of Marxism, the evils of Communism, even the taint that socialism has incurred by its genetic involvement with both. But such leftists still want to know why these concessions are not enough, why they must give up the noble ambitions behind the tarnished ideas—not just the socialist past, but the socialist future; not just the totalitarian temptation, but the radical cause. This is the prospect that repels them. It is conceding the argument to their lifelong opponents. It is the thought of becoming one of them: not just a chastened missionary of the radical cause, but a counter-revolutionary of the Right. To abandon a lifetime’s loyalties, to become a conservative: where is the romance in that? What would remain of their progressive hopes, their quest for true equality and social justice? These are the unthinkable thoughts that bind them to the tattered ends of a discredited creed; that make them still—and despite all—soldiers in the vanguard of the political Left.