For Want of an Answer

Christopher Hitchens has made a career out of speaking the uncomfortable truth.
As a leftist columnist for The Nation and Vanity Fair, and as author of several
books–among them No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William
Jefferson Clinton, and The Case Against Henry Kissinger–he has consistently
and savagely challenged the assumptions of power. Since the advent of the war
on terror, Hitchens’ columns and reports have been a source of intellectual
reason and moral conviction, usually flying in the face of the liberal orthodoxy–an
opposition Hitchens seems all too delighted to mount. His latest book is Letters
to a Young Contrarian (Basic), in which he describes a life spent in the
service of “the art and science of disputation.”

In Letters to a Young Contrarian and in several interviews you’ve done recently,
you’ve said that your days as a socialist are more or less gone, and that so
perhaps are the days of socialism itself–or of “a general socialist critique
of capitalism.” Would you elaborate both on that declaration and on the apparent
sadness or reluctance that accompanies it?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Sure. It’s more the latter of those two things, by the
way. It was more that I felt that there was no such position really to occupy.
I still feel it like I’m missing a limb, but for example if you look at what’s
happened, say, in Argentina in the last few weeks–which is a country I know
slightly, and where I have in the past worked with the Left, worked against
dictatorship, and so forth. I mean, there it is: There’s been a complete meltdown.
It’s quite clear there’s been some kind of failure in neo-liberal economics
down there. But the situation is passed into the hands of the Peronists, at
least for the moment, who I’m sure will do their usual stuff of sort of debauching
the treasury, trying to renationalize the currency, maybe impose tariffs and
so forth, but it won’t work. In another sense, I think, apart from the ideological,
I’ve become sort of less interested in what other people’s politics are and
more in what their principles are, say.

You’ve also written that we’re living in a period where, on the world stage,
only capitalism is revolutionary.

Yes.

Which seems like the kind of statement designed to provoke Nation readers,
but then you cite Marx as one who recognized it very early on. Is this an endorsement,
or a reality check?

It’s nice of you to notice that, by the way. I wrote that quite a while back.
Well at the time, I may as well be honest, I was looking for a way of phrasing
it. The beginning of the whole argument–and often people forget this–is the
recognition on the part of Marx and Engels that the capitalist system was, up
until then, the most rational and the most efficient as well as the most heroically
subversive and detonating and dynamic force. And so they just thought that it
would in its turn give way to something more rational and more revolutionary.
And that was, in its way, not a bad bet. In a certain way, you could even say
it’s been vindicated in certain periods of history. Certainly there were points
where capitalism seemed to stall out and it was they, the capitalists, who had
no alternative to propose… except fascism, say, or empire. But none of that
is now true. Largely, I think, because, so it seems to me, it’s been able to
generate another industrial revolution, a technological revolution. Which has
created a different kind of labor for us. I might add to that, by the way, that–talking
about ironies of history–Marx and Engels also always thought that it was the
United States that was the great revolutionary country and Russia the great
country of backwardness and reaction. And, you know, in fact, everyone, if they
think about it or no, if they know anything about it, knows that’s true, but
as you say it, it doesn’t sound as if it can be right.

You’ve said that “capitalism has survived its crises but has not outlived
its contradictions.” If no alternative presents itself, what are some of the
more pressing of these contradictions?

Well, I think there’s one that’s quite obvious in my own work, for example,
say: journalism. Which is a tendency to monopoly. To conglomeration, to get
to larger and larger amalgamations. And these amalgamations are not made just
for reasons of economy of scale. They’re made for greater profitability and
they have the effect, or they hope for greater profitability, that’s their motive
and they have, whatever the motive, the effect of diminishing diversity, of
imposing certain uniformity, whereas the whole ideology of capitalism is supposed
to be that it offers more choice. At least that’s the market ideology. So I
mean, I wouldn’t, I think, need to look any further than the area where I work
myself, but that’s certainly one. And the other is, it does have a tendency
to create enormous polarities of income. To over-reward those who don’t need
it and to under-reward those who do. I mean, you know, one could cite–again,
to stay with communications, if not the journalism industry–the fortune made
by [Bill] Gates. That was something that’s fairly simple, but also involves
monopoly, by the way. And then there were people who either lost their jobs
or have very basic incomes because of that kind of technology.

And then, I think there’s a mystery about capitalism [to] which nobody has an acceptable answer–at least nobody I know about–which is why it works in some countries and some societies and not others. Because if it’s as rational and productive and all that, and it should be the same for everybody, but somehow it’s not and that’s because it had an early partnership–well, one explanation, anyway, is that it had an early partnership with empire. Which denuded certain economies and societies.

Actually, there’s a very interesting argument as to why it’s never worked in Argentina, and well before any of this globalization talk got going, by the way. Argentina has natural prosperity, good climate, a lot of resources, it’s if anything underpopulated, and it’s settled by Europeans, and it’s a failure. Umm, you know, discuss.

From Contrarian (p. 136): “The next phase [of revolutionary struggle] is
already discernible. It is the fight to extend the concept of universal human
rights, and match the ‘globalization’ of production by the globalization of
a common standard for justice and ethics.” First, will you explain the quotes
that go around the first use of “globalization,” and secondly will you address
your fondness for the idea of a globalization removed from quotes.

Well, the first usage is to denote that I’m using a familiar expression in
an unfamiliar way. That’s all. It’s not intended to be, as some people often
think or suspect, about inverted commas, ironic at all. I actually don’t think
that globalization, economically, is a very new idea. It was discerned by many
19th-century economists, including many Marxists, that the great achievement
of capitalism was to create something like a world economy. Whatever the outcome
of that is going to be, one consequence seems to be very clear: If we’re all
to be members of the same economy, should we not think of ourselves as the same
society? If we did think like that, then it would immediately become obvious
to us that we couldn’t live in a society with such discrepancies. In fact, “discrepancy”
is a weak word with such glaring gaps between the standard of not just living,
but justice and expectation.

There seems to be a growing sense of frustration that the management of
corporations is not as accountable as government officials, because they’re
not elected and their mechanisms are not as transparent. Not to suggest that
government is transparent–

Well, I think I know what you’re on about. When I was at Oxford, there was
a very influential book called Monopoly Capital by Paul Baran and Paul
Sweezy. It was part of the sort of bookshelf of the ’60s. They were the editors
of the Monthly Review at the time, old, fairly traditional American Marxists
who made this gigantic study, and they pointed out that, indeed, many, many
corporations were already much larger than many governments, and this had extraordinary
implications for what was considered at least the Cold War model of liberal
capitalism, and the capitalists having a natural relationship to democracy.
It impressed a lot of people, including me. But I’ve since been in countries
where it would be not untrue to say that many people would rather work for that
corporation than for the government. Because they’d get better rewarded and
better treated by it, and probably have better access to things like education
than if they relied on the local regime.

So, if the popular culture is consumer culture, what power do we the consumers
have to assert? If that’s what we are…

Well, I don’t for a moment doubt that that’s what we are and how we’re thought
of by them, and indeed, unfortunately very often how we think of ourselves.
I thought it was very interesting, for instance, that–to take an example that
is not most people’s favorite–when the Southern Baptists decided that they
would try to boycott Disney, it was a complete failure. And they would think
that there was a coherent group, with some purchasing power and some clout and
even some reputation, which the Disney people would be forced to take into account.
As far as I know it had no influence whatever. Well, the first question to decide
would be whether or not people in fact did dislike the situation. My view is
that most of them don’t. In the United States, at any rate. It’s not as if there’s
a tremendous unslaked demand for change that isn’t being met, I fear. [As for
what to do about it,] it’s exactly for want of an answer to that that I’ve decided
that it would be dishonest of me in a way to continue to identify as before.

Given your passion for dissent and demonstration, I was surprised to read
your views of the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 1999, which you identified
as having “a very conservative twinge in the sense of being reactionary.” You
called them “a protest against modernity.”

Yes, that’s true of the ones that I’ve seen. These demonstrations occur in
Washington, D.C. as well, and elsewhere. And what it reminds me of very much
is the Port Huron Statement [by Students for a Democratic Society, 1962], which
I don’t know if you’ve read lately, but I don’t think you’ll correct me when
I say that a lot of that old critique was actually a protest against scale,
against bigness. And the corollary seemed to me to be, in that statement and
in some of the ones that I’m reading or hearing about now, the better society
would basically be more agrarian, more organic, more traditional. And I’m not
at all sure that that’s true, and I’m quite sure it’s not feasible. But the
idea that the sort of social model would be something like the Cherokee–which
as you know isn’t that much of an exaggeration about some of these people [protesters]–seems
to me to be, even if admirable, definitely conservative, and very unlikely to
be feasible. So, it meets most of my tests of reactionary utopianism, and therefore,
you have to allow me to be unimpressed when people say, “Hey, look at the broad-based
coalition of people dressed up as turtles and protectionist labor union leaders.”
You know, I’m sorry, it doesn’t move me at all. I don’t want to be a part of
that. Don’t feel myself to be part of it at all.

I mean, look, of course I’m as sickened as anyone else if I go to Damascus or something and find a McDonald’s. But that’s to do with my feeling against the lack of variety that comes with monopoly, and with the integration of those sort of economies of scale.

Which is a question of cultural preference, more than of economic systems.

It is, yes. It has to do with uniformity, with the terrible sense in which
wherever you go now in the United States, everywhere looks like everywhere else.
I hate that. It’s also true that, when I go back to London, if I look at the
cinema marquees, it’s the same as if I were in the United States. And though
I don’t ever watch the television, I gather that’s also true if you turn on
British TV, more and more. So I have some sympathy for people who want to try
and protect their own cultures against that. But I mean, the word “protect”
in that context has a ring to it that I also distrust. I mean, for example,
the idea that Canadians should want to say, “Let’s have more Canadian films
and less United States ones.” Well, that doesn’t give me the hard-on of a lifetime,
I’ve got to say.

The question that sort of underlies all those things, though, is whether
this cultural homogeneity is the necessary byproduct of capitalist dominance,
or just of the system as it exists now–and whether that system contains the
capacity to be changed.

Well, it’s possible that it’s a question of how long a view you’re willing
to take. In other words, the early days of automobiles were very conformist,
or uniform, and Henry Ford was very famous as a standardizer of product and,
you know, of giving people the least possible choice and hoping that they would
therefore choose his. But anyway, not being the one to supply variety–but that
was then. And now you have an almost wasteful profusion of choices as far as
the choice of automobiles would go. I don’t know if this is an encouraging example
or not. I mean, it goes to your question of whether or not it’s innate or inevitable.
I don’t think anything is. Certain things, I suppose hamburgers are probably
among them, probably can’t be disguised in more than one or two ways. I don’t
eat them at all. So that’s another reason I’m not pleased to see the same logo
everywhere. F