04.16.08
1848+: Ultra far left
It is not unusual for those recanting from Left-Wing or marxist positions to cite among their reasons for doing so that the Left is too dismissive of rights, insufficiently appreciative of the pacifying effect of liberal institutions, and particularly insensitive to the cruelty that rights-regimes try to curtail. This was Kanan Makiya’s argument, and of course Alan Johnson recently repeated it in his list of observations about why he is no longer a marxist. The Eustonites - effectively, though not dearly, departed - made a great deal of their support for ‘human rights for all’, and again it was part of their belabouring of the Left that it had proven insufficiently appreciative of those rights.
The idea for the category ‘ultra far left’ was to answer to just this objection. That is, ex’s generally drift rightward. But the knack is required to see through Marxism and go left, again, by what definition may not be at first clear, but the idea is basic.
Marx criticized the problem of rights in his classic on Hegel: there was a catch 22. But the Marxist position itself has a catch-22: denuding of rights discourse, Marx epigones slipped into the Leninist/Stalinist demonic parody of the critique of right.
A far simpler solution lies in the constructivst task of constructing a republican socialism based on rights, that expresses the essence of the critique of capitalism exploitation.