Nathan J. Robinson and the Persistence of Philistinism
Nathan J. Robinson, editor-at-large of the quasi-leftist rag Current Affairs, recently made the rounds on Twitter for his stupefying comments regarding the legitimacy of Marx’s works in the modern era. Specifically, Robinson directly questioned the applicability of Marxism to our contemporary age, disparaged the theory by comparing its advocates to those who grift for organized religions, and even went as far as to reduce the whole of it to “a single person’s ideas”. I wonder — does Robinson regard every Marxist thinker as some form of clone of Marx himself, or are they each entitled to their own unique brand of socialist theory? In any event, I won’t waste any time deconstructing such ridiculous and outrageously moronic statements because these obvious qualities can be recognized by anyone who has been awake on this planet for more than a few hours.
Robinson, and for that matter quite a few others in high places at popularized radical liberal media outlets, have indeed managed to awaken a resurgence in a formless sympathy for socialism. Formless, of course, being the operative word. One of Robinson’s books, Why You Should be a Socialist, has received quite a lot of praise in some circles. His aforementioned rag, Current Affairs, has amassed decent readership; it claims an impressive headcount of nearly 130,000 users on Twitter. It is because of these things that some believe that he should be given credit for whatever advancements he has made toward “mass consciousness” or a “revival” in the very broadest acceptance of socialism. I am here to tell you as emphatically as I can: he does not.
Robinson and his ilk represent a certain kind of mutated revolutionary Philistinism that has managed to persist since the time of Karl Kautsky and the Mensheviks of the early days of the Soviet Union. While I am far from equating Robinson’s half-witted version of socialism with the legitimately dangerous ideas of Kautskyism and the Russian Social Democrats, the two tend to bat in the same ballpark. His ends, to me, are one and the same as Kautsky’s: the distortion and delegitimization of the scientific theory of Marxism. Whether or not this is done out of sheer ignorance or conscious malice is frankly immaterial.
Not only is Robinson a committed revolutionary Philistine, whose preferred, shunted version of socialism I will get into in a moment, he is also a crass and shameless historical revisionist. In one Tweet, dated August 5th of this year, Robinson accuses Vladimir Lenin, whose ideas and contributions to Marxist theory have directly led to the establishment of actual socialist states like Cuba and Venezuela, of “mass murder” and further reduces him to some monstrous figure by quoting several vulgar and bogus articles by bourgeois writers. Mischaracterizing Lenin’s struggle against the oppressive Tsarist regime and the opportunists who sought to derail the Soviet socialist project as “mass murder” is both nauseatingly liberal pearl-clutching and an outright reconfiguration of history. Even committed anarchists begrudgingly admit that Lenin’s accomplishments are invaluable. This is part and parcel Philistinism.
I call this form of anti-revolutionary behavior “Philistinism”, as Lenin did, because it is a barbarous rejection of scientific socialism and correct ideas. Like his fellow radical liberals at Jacobin, Robinson’s abandonment of Marxism in favor of a vaguely-social-democratic, touchy-feely sham of socialism leads him often to make and advocate for horrendously incorrect and anti-revolutionary judgments and positions. Recently, for example, he has endorsed Joe Biden in the US electoral race against Donald Trump. His brand of revolutionary Philistinism consistently bows him back towards focusing on electoral politics — something that any committed Marxist knows is a fruitless endeavor. But I can hardly blame him. Robinson’s soupy, self-contradictory “ideology” can’t correctly inform him on anything. How do we know this? Just pick up an issue of Current Affairs, which has, among other things, published numerous articles highly critical of socialist countries, including Venezuela, which is under abysmal and criminal sanctions from the West. Any Marxist worth their salt understands the term “critical support”; it is only the Philistines who don’t seem to grasp it. Furthermore, Robinson’s version of Philistinism is especially abhorrent because it tacitly eschews the scientific nature and process of Marxism in favor of a totally-undefined criteria of “what seems nice”, i.e. what is acceptable as “socialism” to the bourgeois state. The man is either too afraid of criticism from within the bourgeois media space in which he operates, wary of losing his status, or downright politically-illiterate. I lean towards a more cynical suspicion.
It is for the above reasons that I believe Robinson is guilty of the same sort of reactionary activity that Lenin described in Philistinism in Revolutionary Circles in 1906: “…converting the proletariat from a fighting vanguard, pursuing an independent revolutionary policy, into an appendage of that faction of the bourgeois democrats which is most in the limelight, which lays most claim to represent ‘national’ aspirations.” His commitment to an off-footed and flattened version of socialism belies the true nature of his work. These revolutionary Philistines all have the same goals: to disarm the working-class of any revolutionary fervor inspired by scientific Marxism and Leninist principles, to obfuscate the real processes by which socialism is established and adhered to, and ultimately to present a major stumbling block to the realization of any consciousness that would lead to a revolutionary organization of the proletariat.
It does not get said enough that the rampant idealism like the kind proffered by Robinson harms the entire socialist project. It should be tamped down whenever and wherever possible. It’s entirely possible Nathan believes he is too smart to actually read Marx or Engels or Lenin. I mean, the man has a Master’s degree after all. But I think if Nathan were to find himself with an open ear to a bit of constructive criticism, I would tell him that if Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara could all humbly read Marx and Lenin and come to the same conclusions, then I don’t see how he is in any position to think he’s somehow got it right this time.
Perhaps I am being a bit too hard on our friend Nathan. Maybe he’s never heard the words “dialectical materialism”. Maybe he just needs someone close to him to tell him to log off, take a breather, and start with learning from Comrade Mao where correct ideas come from. But I am not holding my breath. Serious Marxists of all stripes should be watchful of this tendency amongst popular petty bourgeois figures and remain critical in our digestion of information from these sources.
