CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

“The Left’s Top Job This Year”? Academics In and Out Imperialist Quicksand

Image by Philippe Bout.

I have long been horrified by the unradical nothingness of our supposed “radical Left” academics, many of whom lined up behind the “neoliberal” capitalism-imperialism of the deeply conservative presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008.

A recent small but instructive example is a social media post by a leftish literature professor with a taste for “theory” and long, enigmatic sentences. After putting up a New York Times headline reporting that “[California Governor Gavin] Newsom Regrets Remarks Comparing Israel to ‘Apartheid State,’” the professor wrote this:

“I really cannot stand social media posts of the kind I am about to make, you know, the kind that tell other leftists what they should do, so apologies for the grandstanding in advance. But I do sincerely feel like if the left, all the progressives, taxers-and-spenders, rad-libs, miscegenationists, commies — all the good ppl out there being gay and doing crimes – have one job this year, it is to make Newsom’s statement disqualifying for a Democratic Party nominee (to say nothing of Hairgel’s transphobia, opposition to the ‘billionaire’s tax,’ war on the homeless, and vetoing of universal health care).”

Talking About What is to be Done is Not “Grandstanding”

I applaud the professor’s refusal to be ne-O-bamanized by “Hairgel” Newsom, but where to begin with how tepid and unradical this is? What’s wrong with a radical intellectual holding forth on “what other leftists should do”? Leadership is essential and attempts to exercise it should not be shamed in advance as “grandstanding.” A serious Left thinker should make recommendations on conduct. Lenin’s great 1902 pamphlet is titled What is to be Done? for good reasons: the Russian intellectuals and activists of his time were far too caught up is disorganized and non-revolutionary activities, potentially squandering the historical moment in which they lived. As the young Karl Marx pointed out, in words that are inscribed on his grave: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”

Were Marx and Engels just “grandstanding” when they called in The Communist Manifesto for “the left” of their time to build a revolutionary communist movement for the abolition of all forms of exploitation and oppression, denouncing utopian and other forms of conciliatory (bourgeois, petit-bourgeois, and even feudal) “socialism”?

“The point” has never been more urgent than it is in 2026, as the underlying capitalist-imperialist system is pushing humanity to the brink of extinction through climate catastrophe and/or nuclear war.

“The Left…All the Good People Being Gay and Committing Crimes”

Then there’s the professor’s oddball and eclectic definition of “the left.” “Rad-lib” is a hopeless contradiction in terms (kind of like the title of one of the prolific liberal economist and political commentator Robert Reich’s many books: Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few.) Only in some hyper-“woke” identitarian fantasy land is it meaningfully........

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