The Bloody Crossroads
CrowdSource 1.6.2025
Welcome to CrowdSource, your weekly guided tour of the latest intellectual disputes, ideological disagreements, and national debates that piqued our interest (or inflamed our passions). This week: power — literary or otherwise.
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Where Literature and Politics Meet
The American critic Lionel Trilling once wrote about “the dark and bloody crossroads where literature and politics meet.” Political power tends to clash with artistic power.
Some recent missives from the bloody crossroads:
Literature in Jail. Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal, who once published a novel, 2084: The End of the World, about a dystopian future ruled by religious extremists, was jailed last month for statements about Algerian claims upon Western Sahara.
laments: “While some of the literary world’s braver souls are standing up and demanding his release … most of our bien-pensants are silent.”Literature versus Stalin. This weekend,
recalled the story of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, a “parable” that should give us hope: “This particular tale testifies to my belief that artists of vision and courage can even rise above the most brutal dictator. Alas, this victory of art over tyranny only happens over the long run. But it does happen.”Literature and Dudes. Responding to a recent New York Times op-ed about the disappearance of literary men, and contributing to an ongoing debate about the American male’s alienation,
writes: “Literature needs young men more than young men need it.”Literature after the Revolution. The Cuban poet Silvio Rodriguez, once famous for writing songs against American imperialism, today questions the Cuban revolution in his latest album.
Literature in a Democracy. In October, our own
told the story about literature flourishing under persecution, while languishing under democracy. “In the ambiguity of unfreedom, only the courageous or the clever could navigate.”
Discourse Update: The Left Needs Ideas
In our pages last October,
argued that the Left needs fresh ideas:But the Left has a harder case to make. Its vision of politics is not accidentally, or even occasionally, idealistic. It is idealistic by design. The Left exists to push toward a vision of society that could be. This orientation means not only that the Left sees a role for societal upheaval, but also that it is constantly in need of metaphysical renewal.
“Intellectually and Politically Defunct.” This weekend, supporting Samuel’s point and then some,
writes:
[I]t is an obvious fact of our present political moment that anyone concerned with shaping the world they actually live in can only now engage with “the Right,” simply because “the Left” is both intellectually and politically defunct. We see this in the intellectual Left’s new engagement, part fearful but increasingly curious in its own right, with the ferment of ideas on the Right. What is the Left’s project, what are its big ideas now it has broken its political and intellectual power through its catastrophic self-derailment into identity politics? It is a difficult question to answer, but also a pointless one: it simply doesn’t matter, and is unlikely to for the next few decades at least. One might as well ask what is next for Baathism.
“Liberalism Has Run Amok.” Also this weekend, and contrary to Samuel,
claims that what’s wrong with progressives is not so much their ideas as their practical inability to govern well: “The crisis of democratic government is actually a crisis of progressive government.”
From the Crowd
I don’t think freedom should serve meaning (singular). It might serve meanings (plural). For society to reflect only one meaning requires that many other meanings must be snuffed out or hidden. A modicum of freedom is better than no freedom at all. And our goal should be, perhaps, to embiggen that modicum.
See you next week!
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Sam, Roussinos, and Zakaria are all wrong. Not only does the Left have no ideas, it has all the ideas. As radical critics from Mill to Corey Robin have pointed out, conservatism is merely an irritable mental reflex in defense of class privilege.
The Left has won the battle of ideas among the American public. According to recent polls, 60 percent of Americans regard economic inequality as a serious problem; 65 percent favor sharp increases in taxes on the rich; 67 percent want increased government spending on healthcare; 66 percent want increased spending on education; 66 percent want increased spending on infrastructure; 58 percent want increases in Social Security. These are longstanding preferences, which have long been ignored by both parties when in power, in deference to the corporate and financial elites who, in fact if not in theory, own the government.
The Right has not won, or even waged, the battle of ideas. It has instead waged class war, using its comparative advantage -- money and the political resources money can buy -- to construct an ubiquitous and tightly integrated infrastructure, including lobbyists, consultants, lucrative jobs for ex-legislators and regulators, talk radio, websites, Tea Party chapters, law school and economics faculty members, Evangelical pastors, and other institutions and operatives. There are no ideas anywhere in this world, except the most vacuous and threadbare: government bad, market good; government action always curbs individual freedom; business is always more efficient than government; etc.
How the left (ie, ordinary people) can overcome this juggernaut, I don't know. But I know that's what Sam, Roussinos, and Zakaria ought to be brooding about, rather than pontificating about the War of Ideas.