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What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way [Paperback]

Nick Cohen
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Fourth Estate; First Edition edition (5 Feb 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0007229690
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007229697
  • Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 13.5 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 202,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Nick Cohen
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Review

'A roaring polemic of outrage against the moral and political crisis of the liberal tradition. It is already one of the most discussed current affairs books of the new year!At the very least it forces anyone on the left to think carefully about where their movement has ended up in the modern world.' The Guardian '!exceptional and necessary!Do not feel you have to be a leftist or liberal to read it, because it engages with an argument that it crucial for all of us, and for our time.' Christopher Hitchens, Sunday Times '(He writes with) a genuine passion and human sympathy about people who have experienced appalling suffering.' Michael Burleigh, The Evening Standard 'Undoubtedly controversial and provocative "What's Left?" is, as its title suggests, a bleakly witty but perhaps dimly hopeful examination of what it means to be liberal in an age where the lines that have been drawn in the sand are in danger of being washed away.' Waterstones Books Quarterly 'One of the most powerful denunciations of the manner in which the Left has lost its way!Cohen's is a brave voice.' Michael Gove, The Spectator 'Nick Cohen explains how contemporary liberals have lost their way with his usual polemical brio.' The Observer 'An essay of wide reference and great brilliance.' John Lloyd, Financial Times 'Cohen skilfully shows how the left perversely set its moral compass by the United States!Cohen is at his best as a painstakingly forensic officer and he marshals his evidence with flair and rigour!He is at his very best when he exposes the dishonesty of the liberal press!Cohen's book has made me look with greater respect at the motives behind those who led the journey to war in Iraq in 2003, and view many of the anti-war campaigners with a new scepticism!This book is much more than a mere denunciation of old left-wing friends and colleagues. It is also a moving account of a long personal journey carried off with wit, verve, considerable literary skill and compassion.' The Observer 'It is an essay of wide reference and great brilliance, which flays every kind of foot-shuffling excuse for not facing up to the nature of the regime which that evil (and now, mercifully dead) tyrant, Saddam Hussein, inflicted on his country and planned for his region. Cohen surveys a gamut of liberal-left Western opinion that, in part under the pressure of the Iraqi war, has forgotten its best tradition and instead lapsed into its worst, that regards nothing as more important than the failures of its own societies, and that lacks the imagination or the will to comprehend the agonies of those living under tyranny.' Financial Times 'Nick Cohen smells out the cesspits of corruption and injustice with the keenest of noses. He tells it as it is, without fear or favour. He's one of the few independent voices left in an increasingly closed society.' Harold Pinter

Financial Times

'An essay of wide reference and great brilliance.'

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Customer Reviews

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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Between Iraq and a hard place, 7 April 2009
By 
HuddsOn (Huddersfield, England) - See all my reviews
It could fairly be argued that what has always united the myriad groups, factions and parties comprised under the term "left-wing" is not so much their ideology as their self-image. They have always seen themselves as the champions of progress, the defenders of the poor and marginalised, the fearless pursuers of impartial justice. Their opponents are the bone-headed defenders of tradition and privilege who ensure the executioner's face is always well-hidden.

These typically liberal traits - an effortless moral superiority, instinctive support for the underdog, and opposition to the status quo - are undoubtedly very easy to ridicule. But they are not inherently malign or wicked. They only become dangerous when they are un-coupled from any sort of genuine altruism. This is what Cohen means when he says the Left has lost its way.

In Cohen's view, substantial segments of the left are in danger of allowing their movement to degenerate into a trite, self-indulgent counter-culture, in which an angry anti-establishment posturing conceals a lack of a positive political programme. Stop The War and Globalise Resistance, two of the most visibly popular left-wing campaigns, are defined by what they're against, not what they're for. Many people on the left are far too ready to draw an artificial moral equivalence between true tyrannies overseas and the very real but usually much milder moral failings of our own leaders and institutions. The author sets out to explore what's gone wrong and why.

Cohen is probably correct, at least from a British perspective, when he says that most liberals and socialists would find it quite difficult to imagine what a society significantly more left-wing than ours would look like at the present time. The defeat of the blue-collar unions and the rise of popular capitalism in the 1980s left socialism reeling. Tony Blair's reformed Labour party appropriated the rhetoric of conservatism, helping to close off space for a radical alternative. Even the minority who are still prepared to put forward a case for nationalised utilities and a more progressive tax system often feel compelled to admit that the welfare state has had unintended negative consequences. Liberals are no longer sure that history is on their side.

But perhaps more debilitating still is the social chasm that has opened up between the old, working-class, union-based left, and affluent cosmopolitan liberals in the public sector and cultural industries, a phenomenon Cohen explores in the chapter "What Do We Do Now?" He concludes with the depressing observation that a person who lacks empathy even with his or her indigenous working class is likely to be, at best, lukewarm about offering solidarity and support to people overseas, whether it's Iraqi trade unionists at risk from Ba'athist death squads, or Indian feminists trying to put an end to dowry murders.

The influence of the postmodern theorists, Cohen explains, has also been thoroughly disastrous. Despite, or because of, their impenetrable jargon - "homogenizing epistemic logic", "representationalist discursive areas", etc - many of these obscurantists were able to achieve a high degree of credence in university humanities departments. Their contention that everything is a social, historical or linguistic construct opened the door to moral and cultural relativism, so that it became permissible to combine vaguely egalitarian-sounding rhetoric with an implicit rejection of universal human values: "Homosexuality, blackness and womanhood became separate categories that couldn't be criticised or understood by outsiders applying universal criteria. Nor, by extension, could any other culture, even if it was a culture of wife-burning or suicide bombing" (p105). A recurring theme of What's Left is that you must never underestimate the impact that cranks, contrarians and loonies can have on mainstream political thought.

Nick Cohen has frequently been derided as a "neoconservative" for his views on the Middle East and especially Iraq. But the charge is little more than a playground insult. Cohen is not some kind of wild-eyed utopian seeking to remake the world in his image. "There is no necessary virtue in wasting other men's blood and other taxpayers' treasure in other nations' conflicts rather than attending to pressing issues at home," he insists. Moreover, he is as critical of the excesses of Cold War militarism as he is of the unbridled free market and of rampant social inequality.

What he finds distressing is not so much that "the liberals" opposed the Iraq War, but rather that so few of them were prepared to give even qualified support to the occupation after "major hostilities" had ended. The "Bring the troops home now!" crowd didn't actually want Iraq to be subjected to an escalation of terrorism, years of hideous sectarian civil war, and the real possibility of a Ba'athist counter-revolution. But they refused to confront the reality that this was the likely consequence of what they were demanding.

We are also presented with a fascinating and convincing insight into possible reasons for the revival in anti-semitism, and of conspiracy theories in general, on the left. In the final chapter, entitled "Why Bother?", Cohen leaves us with the thought that we need to rediscover the best traditions of the "old left", whose sense of solidarity has remained relatively uncorrupted by postmodernism.

I disagree with Cohen on one or two specifics (the Kosovo conflict for instance) and he does overgeneralise a bit. But overall the book displays tremendous insight, scope, humanity and moral clarity.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A witty and personal polemic, 30 Dec 2008
By 
Sarah A. Brown (Cambridge) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Many reviewers of this book - whether writing in newspapers or here on Amazon - seem to distort its arguments. I think (cross) leftists and (smug) rightists both want Cohen's conversion to be more dramatic than in fact it is. I'd skimmed through some of these reviews before reading "What's Left?" and was expecting his perspective to be close to that of, say, Melanie Phillips. But he hasn't abandoned the Left completely, only certain tendencies and views within the Left which he sees as sinister. He has been characterised by some reviewers as a fan of Bush and an unequivocal supporter of the second Iraq war. But this clearly isn't the position he sets out in "What's Left?"

The book is polemical and aimed at general readers, and clearly Cohen has had to shape and select his material in the most rhetorically effective way. Sometimes I felt the argument had been flattened, a middle position excluded. Yet on the whole I thought "What's Left?" was nuanced, thoughtful and consistently absorbing.
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75 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars I'm Left wondering, 31 Jan 2007
This review is from: What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way (Paperback)
I suspect how people react to this book will depend quite a bit on where they stand politically. I have noticed on blogs and messageboards that it has enraged the Trots and Trot-lite fellow travellers in the anti-war movement. It's also had enthusisatic approval from those you might expect it from - Christoper Hitchens, John Lloyd etc. Whereas I imagine some on the Right will (wilfuly?) misread the book as "all Lefties are soft on terrorists". (Although having said that Peter Oborne wrote a very fair-minded review)

Speaking personally as a fairly moderate but anti-war Labour supporter I found myself nodding in agreement with much of his analysis of elements of the Left but a bit annoyed by some of the extrapolations he makes.

It is definitely true that much of the Left these days seems to watch what America does and then look for the reason why US policy is wrong. The same could be said about their view of Blair. It is also true that there is often an undue focus on the "causes" of terrorism, rather than simply facing up to the fact that this is an extremist movement that has no problem with killing opponents. (No-one on the Left was bothered about the "causes" of the far-Right bomber who set off bombds in Brick Lane, Soho etc).

It is also true that the tendency to side with the underdog leads many lefties to turn a blind eye to some rabid anti-semitism on the part of those they support. And the treatment of some Iraqi trade unionists who opposed pulling the US & UK troops out of their country by members of the anti-war movement is simply shameful.

However these are often failings of subgroups within the Left (often those trying to fit the current maelstrom in Iraq into a crude imperialist/anti-imperialist framework) rather than the Left as a whole. And the book seems to veer between awareness of these subdivisions and lumping everyone in together. In addition he does often read like a recent convert to his position, advocating it without nuance, and failing to spot the nuances in others' arguments. A good example of this is where he misreads (in my view) a quote from Amnesty's secretary general (p324-325). I think the context to this quote is Amnesty's interest in economic human rights, and as such I don't think it means what Nick Cohen thinks its means (that human rights don't matter to poor people).

Overall I think it is worth anyone on the Left reading this book with an open mind. It is well-written, even if it does feel a bit like a pamphlet that's been strung out for a couple of hundred pages. And it should at least make those who can be a bit objective question some of their on views and ways of thinking (so that probably leaves out the membership of Respect, SWP etc).

He's no George Orwell though!
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