Progressivism Doesn’t Harm the World

Re “The Deadly Consequences of a Progressive Disease,” Commentary, Jan. 4: A fact that continues to amaze me is that David Horowitz is able to find legitimate outlets for his attempts to turn his apostasy from the left into a literary genre. His latest is his attack on “progressives” and the so-called tragedy of “social justice” in the 20th century. His use of Stalinism and the policies of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe as representative examples are ludicrous. From their inception, Stalin’s policies were subjected to intense and profound criticism by progressives, both Marxists and non-Marxists, as Horowitz himself well documented in his 1968 book, “Empire and Revolution.” Unless one accepted Stalin’s cynical rhetoric at face value, his use of the famine in the Ukraine to undercut local Communist leaders and break peasant resistance had little if anything to do with social justice.

With respect to Mugabe, it is indeed a tragic state of affairs that his heroic role in the victory over the white regime of former Rhodesia is being tarnished by his current bid to maintain power at all cost. Yet it is a fact that Mugabe spent much of the last 20 years placating international financiers and breaking his promise of land reform for his nation’s impoverished black majority. This reality and his current fall back to a policy of land confiscation have little to do with Marxist principles and everything to do with the legacies of colonialism and the realities of corporate globalization.

If Horowitz wants to produce a bona fide indictment of progressivism and social justice movements, he will have to show how the real struggles against poverty, racism, sexism and imperialism in our time have done more harm to humanity than good.

Edwin A. Roberts

Associate Professor

Dept. of Political Science

Cal State Long Beach

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Horowitz suffers from myopic confusion. He is unable to distinguish a progressive from a communist. I could write the same article about conservatives. Just make all conservatives fascists, blame them for the sins of Hitler and close with the Mugabe story. For the record, Mr. Horowitz, arch-reactionaries -- who you claim ruined many countries -- are on the right side of the political spectrum -- your side, not mine.

Norwood Price

Burbank

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Where does Horowitz get this stuff? The Russians revolted against the pre-Revolutionary system precisely because they were politically little more than slaves and starving to boot. Does Horowitz suggest that well-fed, well-treated Russians revolted “just because”? Commitment to “social justice” prevents revolution. It was a lack of justice that brought Lenin and Mugabe to power.

In that sense, the Horowitzes of the world foster the very revolutions they decry. Horowitz, like so many on the right wing, equates communism and progressivism. Progressives aren’t communists any more than conservatives are fascists. Then again, maybe he’s got something there.

Jim Corbett

San Clemente