On Tariq Ali's Support for
John Kerry
Posted to www.marxmail.org on
Apparently Tariq Ali is on some
kind of tour in the
For those on Marxmail who have
never stumbled across the name Tariq Ali before, a
few words of introduction might be in order. Ali was one of a group of
intellectuals who joined the British section of the Fourth International in the
late 1960s. Along with Robin Blackburn, Perry Anderson and other luminaries
around the New Left Review, they were impressed with the late Belgian economist
and Trotskyist leader Ernest Mandel. As the 1960s radicalization began to ebb,
all of them abandoned organized revolutionary politics and devoted themselves
to academic or literary careers. Although they never disavowed Marxism, there
has been a certain softening of ideology--a kind of intellectual middle-age
spread so to speak.
For those of us who are accustomed to the firebrand image of
Tariq Ali in his youth (his memoir was titled
"Street Fighting Man"), this turn toward mealy-mouthed Democratic
Party opportunism after the fashion of Earl Browder
will come as a disappointment. However, it does not come out of the blue.
Several years ago, Perry Anderson of the New Left Review announced that the
journal would be dispensing with illusory prospects about revolution and focus
on controversies within the academy, although he didn't exactly put it in these
terms (I do, however). Boris Kargalitsky wrote an
angry attack on this turn, describing Perry Anderson as a "sophisticated
British gentleman, [who] sits in his cosy office at
no. 6 Meard Street and limply discusses the collapse
of the left project."
In an elegant but patronizing reply to Kargalitsky,
Tariq Ali conveyed the same mood of resignation that
Perry Anderson must have felt: "The collapse of all systemic alternatives
is plainly visible.
Fortunately, 9/11 and the war in
Although the entire interview with Ali can be listened to in
streaming audio at http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#041028, the
most relevant passage is available in text, courtesy of Doug Henwood who posted
it to his mailing list as part of an ongoing effort to drum up support for John
Kerry. For somebody like Henwood, who in unguarded moments still professes
admiration for Karl Marx (but not Lenin), it is vitally important to line up
expert witnesses like Tariq Ali, who still has some
socialist credentials in his capacity as NLR editor. For the activist Marxist
left, such credentials of course do not carry much weight.
It is also worth pointing out that Henwood and Ali might
strike one as radical versions of Kerry campaign strategist Bob Shrum trying to woo undecided voters in the 11th hour. Does
anybody really think anything that Tariq Ali says on
Meanwhile, here's the relevant Henwood-Ali exchange:
DH: You've said, on
this show among other places, that it's important that Bush lose, which in
practical terms means that Kerry must win. Whenever you say these sorts of
things you hear people say he's no better, maybe worse, than Bush. How do you
sort that out?
Tariq Ali: I know. The last time I gave an
interview to you on this show I got a lot of rude emails, especially from the
As I said, pressure
should be put on Kerry from Day One. If he carries on with the war, attack him.
But the position would be clear: we removed Bush because he went to war, and if
you carry on with the war, then you could be removed as well. You won't serve a
second term either. I honestly can't see any argument against this. People who
say, "Are you advocating a vote for Kerry, you sellout," my response
is, are you seriously advocating that Bush should stay in power? Because that's the alternative. There's no third party.
There's no Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party winning a million votes and being
locked up for ten years as a result. He's not around. Nader, quite honestly,
he's a joke figure at the present time. The narcissism is astounding when you
hear him speak. There's no understanding of tactics on a national scale. It's a
tactical question, but it's an important tactical question. To say that Bush
shouldn't be defeated is to underestimate the loss of Iraqi lives and the loss
of American lives in this conflict.... You have to vote against Bush, which
means behaving politically and maturely and voting for Kerry.
To put it bluntly, Tariq Ali is
urging a vote for the Democrats because he thinks that There
Is No Alternative. In his own words: "Because that's the alternative.
There's no third party. There's no Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party winning a
million votes and being locked up for ten years as a result."
Ali seems to have forgotten that Nader received 2,882,955
votes in 2000, which was 2.74% of the total vote. While Debs won 6 percent of
the vote in 1912, his first campaign in 1900 yielded a paltry 87,814 votes. If
Nader had the support of the Greens and the liberal intelligentsia in 2004, it
is entirely possible that his support among the broader population would have
been even larger, especially in light of the elimination of Howard Dean as an
antiwar candidate. Instead, people such as Doug Henwood, Micah Sifry, Norman Solomon and Medea
Benjamin have used their intellectual and moral authority to stampede anybody
who would listen into voting for a candidate who pledges to win the war in
In a more fundamental sense, Ali's problem is this. He has
become so far removed from the world of practical politics that he cannot think
strategically, at least in terms of what Marxists should do. For Ali, there is
no grasp of transition. We are stuck
in mutually exclusive static states. Today and for the foreseeable future
obviously, we have awful Republican Party candidates and Democrats who are not
so awful. In order to prevent the more awful candidate from taking power, we
have to insure the victory of the less awful. Since somebody like Ralph Nader
will obviously never be able to win a majority vote, he can only succeed in
stealing votes from the less awful candidate.
Missing entirely from this schema is a prescription for how
radical alternatives, especially on the electoral front, can be created. You
are stuck with the minimalist here-and-now and a maximalist
outcome far down the road when American workers arise from their slumber and
become willing to cast a vote for a contemporary version of Eugene V. Debs.
However, for Marxists the only question worth addressing is how to get from the
current stage of politics to something more advanced. As James P. Cannon (the
founder of American Trotskyism and just the sort of figure derided in Tariq Ali's satire on Trotskyism titled
"Redemption") once put it, "The art of politics is knowing what
to do next."