Why America Needs a Left: The Love-Hate Relationship Between Centrist Liberals and the Left Wing
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In his latest book, Why America Needs a Left, Eli Zaretsky explores the historical relationship between the left and liberalism in the United States. While some historians dismiss the very notion of an American left, Zaretsky argues that it has made a profound impact on American political life. He examines three historical “lefts”: the abolitionists, the left that coalesced around the New Deal, and the New Left of the ’60s and ’70s. In each case, the left addressed an issue already being debated—slavery, economic depression, civil rights—but transformed equality into the core goal of each movement. In this sense, each left resulted in a “refounding” of America, “a transformation of its identity and of its conception of legitimate order, one that placed equality at its center.”
Editorial assistant Sean Fabery spoke with Zaretsky about why the left never achieves its goals, how Obama ignores the left at his peril, and why Occupy Wall Street signals the dawn of a fourth left.
Sean Fabery: What was the impetus for writing this book?
Eli Zaretsky: There’s a long-term impetus and an immediate impetus. The long-term impetus is that I’m very much a product of the 1960s. I was active in the civil rights movement and in the New Left. I was very influenced at that time by an older generation of people who had gone through the ’30s and ’40s, and by the idea of the left as a kind of continuing presence in American life.
The more immediate impetus was the election of Obama in 2008. I did think that 2008 was a turning-point type of election because of the failure of the Bush policies—the disastrous impact of the war in Iraq followed by the economic crisis, which had such deep roots in long-standing policies. I thought it really opened the way for Obama to raise the question of a new direction for the country. The fact that Obama ran on that platform in his campaign for president but then didn’t govern that way was an immediate impetus behind the book.
SF: In the introduction, you mention that various historians have doubted whether an American left has ever existed. You argue that the left has very much been a part of American politics and has influenced the way we discuss equality. What is being missed when people dismiss the left as a genuine force in American politics?
EZ: Many conceptions of America say the left is irrelevant: “We don’t need a left,” or “We don’t have a left.” There are different versions of this idea. Some people say we don’t need a left because we all agree on the basic fundamentals—that the core of America is liberty and freedom. There’s a lot of truth to that. We have a consensus on human rights and individual rights in this country that’s very strong and historically grounded.
What the left brings to this, which I think is not just an impact but absolutely at the core of what the country is, is the importance of equality. You can’t really think about individual freedom without also thinking about equality. People in the New Left said that “I can’t be free as long as there are people being oppressed in Mississippi.” Individual freedom is not just something that individuals have. It requires equality as an ideal that pervades the country. It’s something that the left passionately believes and really has emphasized more than other parts of the political system in American history, but it’s really at the core of who we are as Americans.