Achieving Our Country

If you are at all wondering how the hell 2016 happened and align even slightly left of political center, I urge you to take a look at this short book of lectures. Philosopher Richard Rorty offers some fairly amazing explanatory and predictive insights about our current American political reality.

I first learned of Achieving Our Country when a paragraph from the book circulated on social media last month (and even made its way into the New Yorker) which almost miraculously predicted the rise of Donald Trump. I immediately ran to the shelves of the research library I work at only to find every copy of this somewhat obscure book was already checked out, so I borrowed the last copy from another library. I now see what the clamor is about.

Rorty is a thinker raised by parents who were members of the New York socialist intelligentsia of the 1920s and 30s. These were socialist workers who were pragmatic but also opponents of Stalinism and the dark side of communism. This biography is important as it builds the framework for how he describes the split of the American Left circa 1964 with the rise of Vietnam War opposition.

Rorty makes a distinction between a Reform Left vs. a New Left (or progressive left vs. cultural left). This new left rose in prominence as a reaction to the horrors of Vietnam. The rationale of breaking from the leftist old guard was that 1) since the Vietnam war was horrific, and 2) the U.S. was fighting communism, then 3) communism must hold some value. This is in direct conflict with the reform left who were raised on economic justice but saw the genocidal tragedies of Stalin's communism. The new left, in his description, has evolved into overly theoretical anti-Americanism as a result of this.

He is admittedly critical of the cultural left for abandoning pragmatic tools of workers' economic justice in favor of elitist imagination about abstract concepts of “power”. He laments the irrelevance of Whitman and Dewey in favor of Foucault and Derrida. He keeps everything grounded in real-world problems of workers wages and economic disparity.

If you're curious about why identity politics are currently center stage, or why the super-rich are capitalizing on populist rage, or why notions of social justice are now couched in highly jargonized terms that seem to dismiss working class concerns, or why the left seems to hate the country they live in, take a look at this book.

Spoiler alert: He gives advice on how to unify the left. He suggests toning down critical theory, having a non-jingoistic pride in America that works for everyone, reaching out to trade unions again, and avoiding the traps set by the super-rich that seek to divide American workers along ethnic, racial, and religious lines.

American pride, he argues, should be like a healthy ego. If you love yourself too much you become arrogant and aggressive to others. If you hate yourself too much you become despondent and useless. The left needs a nudge in the direction of pride in country to help create a plan for real justice.