The Personal Lives of Leftists, does it matter?

For the leftist community around the world it is hard to always defend the actions of many of the men and women who helped shape the mold for socialism and communism. While some of the "founding" philosophers lived rather tame existences, I'm thinking of Kropotkin for one, many lived lives that mainstream ethics would look at as immoral. While it may seem silly to look at the lives philosophers who wanted to change, disrupt, or dismantle the status quo, it is important, in my opinion, to look at the personal mistakes of those we ideologically look up to critically.

Looking at Marx, one sees a brilliant theorist who helped define the struggles of the industrial and post-industrial age who nevertheless lived a life of near-Randian "mooching". While he did make some of his living off of his journalism, he ultimately depended on Engels for financial support. And to top it off, he was a known bar brawler and allegedly had a child by his housekeeper. 

Next Althusser, another brilliant theorist who suffered from psychological problems and ended up strangling his own wife. Then we have to contend with: Sartre's sexism, Bakunin's anti-semitism, and not to mention the extramarital affairs of Lenin, Trotsky, and Guevara.

But does it ultimately matter? While the historical leaders of the Left have had their flaws, historical leaders from all political stripes have had their share of problems: Churchill's imperialistic racism (referring to Gandhi as a "half-naked fakir"), Gandhi's tumultuous relationship with his son, Thomas Jefferson's affair with Sally Hemmings, etc. But how must us on the Left react to the flaws of our historical leaders? Simple: separate the people from their ideals. Though they may have been hypocrites or had their problem vices, it is important for us to look at these flaws, learn from them, and move on. It is not our job to defend the personal legacies of these philosophers, they were imperfect as all humans are, and we thus must be committed to changing the world instead of interpreting it by learning from their mistakes. 

Response to "Tragedy of the Commons"

For my Environmental Governance class I wrote this short response to Garrett Hardin's 1968 piece "The Tragedy of the Commons":

The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek refers to a quote attributed to Vladimir Lenin on the Russian Revolutionary’s view of freedom “Freedom yes, but for WHOM? To do WHAT?” (Zizek, Slavoj. On Belief. N.p.: Marxist Internet Archive, 2001. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ot/zizek.htm.). In Garrett Hardin’s article “The Tragedy of the Commons” (Hardin, Garrett. "The Tragedy of the Commons." Science 162 (1968): 1243-1248. Accessed September 2, 2012. http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/v1003/lectures/population/Tragedy%20of%20the%20Commons.pdf.) he addresses this very notion by looking at the realities of overpopulation. He starts by asserting that this problem is one of “no technical solutions”, meaning that the outcome will not be necessarily pleasant or helpful to all, but, as he asserts at the end, is fundamentally necessary.

            Hardin asserts that because we live in a society governed by the values of individual liberty and private property we allow for our “commons” to be ruined because each of us wants to ensure our survival and success without coercion. He famously looks at the problem of a common-shared grazing pasture for cattle in which people want to have more of their own cattle put in the pasture even if it means lessened possibility of more cattle to be put there in the future. For Hardin we as a society are ruining our common resources and their future potential by allowing for the “freedom to breed”. He specifically criticizes the liberal human-rights notion in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that establishes the family as a “natural and fundamental unit of society” that cannot be limited by anyone else. While this may sound uncomfortably elitist and border-lining on Social Darwinian he makes an essential point that for our commons to be restored and ensured for future generations, we must allow for forms of “mutual coercion” to limit our breeding capabilities.

            While Hardin makes many valid points about overpopulation one must also look at the implications for common resources and remember he is acting out of an assumption that society will continue to run under the liberal, individualist system. This is where one must look at alternatives, and with Zizek’s comments on Lenin the Russian radical seems like a good place to start. Lenin’s views on freedom were born out of what he saw as necessity to protect the institutions he created during the Revolution because he saw any reversion to liberalism as a possible catalyst for counterrevolution. While the context and time may be entirely different from Hardin, the reality is still the same: for whom and to what extent can we value freedom? If freedom means freedom to do what one likes regardless of consequences to others, as our liberal democratic dogma contends, that “freedom” is thus simultaneously the death-knell for many who do not have such privilege to do with resources what they like. Therefore we have to ask ourselves: is liberal individualism truly the best system for allocating resources and utilizing them? Though some assert we can find alternative energies to ensure unlimited consumption, as long as we rely on the status quo of production and distribution we will continue to utilize finite resources which are increasingly lessening.