The Renegade in Politics1

THE RENEGADE IN POLITICS1 Ashley Lavelle Department of Politics and Public Policy, Griffith University Nathan, 4111 Brisbane, Australia [email protected] ‘One can never be radical enough; that is, one must always try to be as radical as reality itself’ (Lenin, cited in Keach 1998, 149). INTRODUCTION The renegade has been a prominent actor on the political stage throughout history. Perhaps the best-known example is the Italian socialist turned fascist Benito Mussolini. Yet, numerous others joined Mussolini around the period of WWI (Loughlin 2003, 516). A significant number of American Trotskyites and Marxists (the so-called ‘New York Intellectuals’) active in the early decades of the 20th century later became conservatives, neo- conservatives or anti-communists. Some former 1960s radicals were to find themselves ensconced in parts of the establishment in various countries, as the years of rebellion and resistance became an increasingly distant memory. Renegades are a sufficiently common species for the Italian politician Ignazio Silone to predict that the ‘final struggle will be between the communists and the ex-communists’ (cited in Deutscher 1969, 9). The propensity for radicals to undergo the most striking metamorphoses and emerge as anti- radicals has yet to be properly explained. The question is an important one, for if individuals who stand for radical political ideals are inevitably bound to renounce these views and become captured by the system they once abhorred, there would seem little hope for radicalism. Many renegades were at one time gifted intellectuals whose loss to the conservative side of politics is immeasurable. The talents of American Bolshevik supporter Max Eastman, who translated Leon Trotsky’s The History of the Russian Revolution (see Eastman 1997), alas, were eventually put to the service of McCarthyism. In addition, radicals’ changing allegiances have undoubtedly made history: What would have happened had Mussolini not made his historic break with the Italian Socialist Party during WWI, before becoming a fascist ruler and allying his country to Nazi Germany? Perhaps there are lessons to be drawn from this survey of renegades, such as identifying any political programs or policies better equipped to withstand pressures to acquiesce. Yet, the question as to why radicals become renegades thus far has been paid scant attention. The few renegades subjected to any analysis at all tend to be seen in isolation, without the accompanying comparative work that would enable us to generalise about the problem. An obvious impediment to any discussion of the question is our selection of cases: undoubtedly there are many radicals and ex-radicals whose experiences we cannot draw on for the purposes of positing explanations. But as Christopher Hill argued in his book on the English 1 Thanks are due to Morgan Gibson, Karina Leys, and Natasha Cleary for very helpful research assistance. I also am indebted to members of the Chair of Political Science, Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences, Viadrina University Frankfurt (an der Oder), and members of the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, University of Gothenburg, for their collegiality and research support during my visits in the first part of 2009 where earlier versions of this paper were written and presented. 1 revolution’s defeated radicals, The Experience of Defeat, we are reliant on those who left some record of what they did and why, rather than those who withdrew quietly into passivity (Hill 1984, 17). In any case, because they often remain vituperative political protagonists, renegades tend to be more likely to document, explain, and sometimes vigorously justify, their shifting alliances. Even then, however, for the sake of brevity we are restricted here to discussing a sample of illustrative cases. FROM RADICAL TO RENEGADE The term ‘radical’ historically is associated with going ‘to the root’, or identifying the systems, ideologies and power underlying individual phenomena (Engler 2004). Where liberals see problems such as racism and crime as separate and capable of being remedied through legislative change, radicals see these as part of a wider ‘system’ – namely capitalist social relations – that transcends acts of Parliament (Gordon & Osmond, 1970, 4, 5). One of its hallmarks, seeing things in totality, is reflected in Howe’s (1983, 10) observation that radicalism’s appeal to the young in 1930s America flowed from its ability to offer ‘coherence, only radicalism could provide a unified view of the world’. As well as relating seemingly disconnected events, radicalism is about achieving systemic change through challenging political structures and institutions whose legitimacy is assumed in wider society. Fry (1983, x, xi) argues that radicals have tended to question ‘dominant beliefs and policies’ and have ‘confronted the powerful authorities of their day’. Scruton (1982, 391) highlights more broadly radicals’ hostility to ‘the status quo’ and their dissatisfaction with anything less than ‘sweeping changes’. Similarly, according to Love (1988, 151), radicalism strives for a ‘fundamental change in the pattern of social relationships’. Both these latter definitions are arguably deficient by virtue of their failure to specify what sort of change is being sought. Nevertheless, because of the association of conservatism with resistance to change, these definitions are presumed to relate to leftwing radicalism. Often regarded as coterminous with ‘extremism’, some will argue that radicalism can also be found on the far right (Labedz 1999, 723). Yet, even if we accept this position, the term itself can be originally traced to the far-left section of the English liberals (Tansey 2004, 79, 80). It is not only for this reason, however, that we are primarily interested in leftwing radicals, who have generally been defined by their commitment to equality (Bobbio 1996, 29-31): as Finkelstein (n.d.) notes, renegades generally move in the direction of left to right rather than vice-versa. Leftwingers who move to the right and abandon their radical politics become renegades (also sometimes called ‘apostates’). The renegade does more than merely change their opinions. In fact, they assume a form virtually unrecognisable from their radical parent. Thompson (1969, 152, 153) thus describes apostasy as ‘a mutilation of the writer’s own previous existential being’. In this sense, the renegade is usually distinct from the left-leaning politician who compromises their principles under the pressure of governing the capitalist state: witness the case of British Labour’s Tony Benn who as a Cabinet Minister under the Harold Wilson and James Callaghan governments in the 1970s went along with cuts to social spending and the closure of power stations (Cliff and Gluckstein 1996, 341, 343), only to emerge in the 1990s as one of the leading leftwing critics of the Blair New Labour Government. The renegade, in contrast, tends to take on a more permanent disposition. The process can be a gradual, step-by-step evolution or, as we shall see in the case of Mussolini, it can hinge on a single decision. The renegade does not always go to the far right, but generally any residual opposition to capitalism is discarded (Deutscher 1969, 15, 10). 2 The Experience of Defeat The renegade’s origins have often been located in structural changes, in particular the decline of great movements for change. In The Experience of Defeat, Hill writes of the demoralising impact of the defeat of the English revolution in 1660 on radicals, many of whom subsequently made their peace with the restored monarchy (Hill 1984). Borrowing from Hill, Ali points to the many former 1960s radicals who cast off their revolutionary politics and moved to the right in the context of the defeat of social movements and capitalism’s stabilisation in the 1970s and 1980s (Ali 2005, Ch.11). Along similar lines, Harman analyses the failure of the strategy of some militants who employed individualist tactics of violence against the state. Some of these activists reacted to defeat by opting for what Rudi Dutschke dubbed ‘the long march through the institutions’ and accepting the capitalist mode of production and the structures of the state (Harman 2001). An additional consequence of defeat for radicals is a much less hospitable political terrain. Harman writes of the despair and pessimism that set in around the mid-1970s as the anti- Vietnam War movement ended, capitalism survived, and political machinations in China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia (backed by China) resulted in deep disillusionment (Harman 1988, 346- 349). Inevitably during such political downturns there is a shift in the balance of forces against radicals. Wald suggests that the transformation of many New York Intellectuals was indicative of the profound changes in the international and domestic political climates, including the booming post-war economy, the failure of revolutionary movements in Western Europe, and a Cold War context of harassment and infiltration by state authorities (Wald 1987, 290). In such circumstances, Thompson (1969) asks, is it possible for radicals to retain their aspirations for social change when all hope of realising them appears lost? What unites these different commentaries is an emphasis on the deterioration in radicals’ political environments. Such an approach is insightful: most renegades succumb during times of growing conservatism and setbacks for those pitted against the status quo. Yet, the ‘experience of defeat’ explanation raises the question as to how ‘60s radicals such as Ali and Harman weathered the darker times of the 1980s and 1990s without losing their anti- capitalist politics. Some radicals do not give up, even when all hope appears lost. Flawed Radicals? The influence of subjective factors thus needs to be considered, including theoretical weaknesses or flaws on the part of the disaffected radicals. The ease with which many flip over to anti-radicalism raises questions about the courage of their radical convictions in the first place. It may even be possible that some renegades sewed the seeds of their conservatism during their earlier phase.

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