A new McCarthyism is emerging. Marxist intellectuals are being “canceled” with increasing frequency. So why aren’t we hearing more about this problem? Perhaps because the attempts to cancel Marxists are now coming from the left.
When David Shor recently lost his job it could be argued that he wasn’t being cancelled because of his Marxist beliefs, rather it was for tweeting a routine academic study by a black scholar.
In the most recent case, however, a prominent black Marxist scholar named Adolph Reed was barred from speaking at a left wing political event precisely because of his Marxist beliefs. Recall that Marxists believe that the most important distinctions in society are between economic classes, and that workers of the world should unite. That’s also Reed’s view.
This sort of traditional Marxist theory is now viewed as racist, because it denies that race, not class, is the most important distinction in society. Thus, just as in the early 1950s, Marxists are being cancelled—this time by their fellow leftists.
PS. Reason magazine directed me to a wonderful short essay on cancel culture by Nick Cave. Who says pop stars aren’t worth listening to?
READER COMMENTS
Mark Brady
Aug 16 2020 at 3:40pm
Scott writes, “A new McCarthyism is emerging. Marxist intellectuals are being “canceled” with increasing frequency. So why aren’t we hearing more about this problem? Perhaps because the attempts to cancel Marxists are now coming from the left.”
Please clarify. Do you mean why aren’t we hearing more from the “left” or the “right” or both?
If you search, you’ll find Marxists discussing the cancellation of Professor Reed’s lecture from the time when it happened (more than two months ago). And now it seems that non-Marxists have jumped into the fray in response to the article in the New York Times.
FWIW, the Democratic Socialists of America offered to host a debate between Reed and a different intellectual instead, and he turned them down.
Scott Sumner
Aug 16 2020 at 3:48pm
I mean that we have been hearing little from the media.
Mark Brady
Aug 16 2020 at 7:49pm
Are you referring to the so-called mainstream media?
Scott Sumner
Aug 17 2020 at 1:26pm
Yes.
Kurt Schuler
Aug 17 2020 at 8:05am
The Marxists should be grateful they don’t live under a Marxist regime, under which they would be the Old Bolsheviks, and not just their speaking engagements and jobs would be cancelled, but their lives.
Phil H
Aug 17 2020 at 9:08am
I’m still struggling to see it. The left has always eaten itself. It’s just not clear to me that these incidents are examples of anything new.
zeke5123
Aug 17 2020 at 10:48am
I think this title is fairly misleading. McCarthy wasn’t a Marxist or a leftist; he was attacking a different tribe. Here, you have leftists with a Hegelian framework attacking leftists with a Marxist framework. Really, the only connection is that Marxists are being attacked (some would argue a strain of Marxism; not Marxists writ large). Seems odd to call that McCarthyism, unless you are invoking McCarthyism in the broader sense to mean shutting down political dissent.
If that is the case, then it seems there is much greater energy on the left shutting down the non-left (be it libertarians, conservatives, alt-right, Trumpism, etc.) compared to Marxist.
I agree with you the above was bad. But if we are talking about a “new” McCarthyism, it seems to me there is a larger target.
Scott Sumner
Aug 17 2020 at 1:26pm
You asked:
“Seems odd to call that McCarthyism, unless you are invoking McCarthyism in the broader sense to mean shutting down political dissent.”
No, I mean specifically trying to silence Marxists.
zeke5123
Aug 17 2020 at 3:05pm
I think that is a rather idiosyncratic definition of McCarthyism. It wasn’t bad because the people being targeted where commies, it was bad because the process itself was rotten. In a pluralistic society, people shouldn’t be blacklisted for their political beliefs, even heinous beliefs like communism.
Even more disconcerting, McCarthy violated this principle without evidence of the alleged underlying “crime.”
Trying to limit McCarthyism to attacks on Marxists wholly misses the point.
Tom DeMeo
Aug 17 2020 at 2:57pm
“Amid murmurs that opponents might crash his Zoom talk, Professor Reed and D.S.A. leaders agreed to cancel it”
Adolph Reed wasn’t “barred” from speaking at a left wing political event, if anyone cares about such distinctions.
The real story here is how quickly social media platforms have trained us to be emotionally dependent on their feedback mechanisms.
We can no longer distinguish between a few hundred dislikes and the Spanish Inquisition.
Michael S.
Aug 22 2020 at 6:34am
I went to school in East Germany. Naturally, we covered the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) somewhat disproportionately 😉
I distinctly remember just one quote by Gus Hall (Head of CPUSA): that racial discrimination is “the most crucial issue” in the US.
The communists were always Lenininst rather than Marxist. They’d do anything to topple the system and use any weakness, preferably a legitimate one. They certainly never were wedded to Marxism.
I think McCarthy persecuted (Moscow-controlled) Communists rather than Marxists.
The modern ‘woke’ Left is a much more fitting target for McCarthy than Marxists, and fittingly, they do to others what they don’t want done to themselves.
The Marxists are the poor chump victims for both sides. (Not that I like them. But their sheer harmlessness is a huge redeeming feature.)
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