The Left as the Counterculture of Modernity

Abstract

The Left is characterized by its lack of humor. This has set it apart from other forms of opposition to capitalism, e.g., avant-garde art. The latter’s irony, self-mockery, and playfulness was a lèse-majesté to the Left as much as it was to the priests of the establishment. Épater-le-bourgeois has never been a Left strategy, because the Left has treated le bourgeois seriously as the author of a project the Left thought worth fulfilling and as the hindrance to its fulfilment at the same time.

At the end of this development the intellectuals of the opposition asked themselves in all seriousness: is there still a proletariat? Is there still a ruling class? Whereas they would have been more justified in asking: is there still an intellectual opposition?

Short-term hopes are futile. Long-term resignation is suicidal.

Hans Magnus Enzenberger

Reprinted from Telos, no. 70 (Winter, 1986–7), pp. 81–93.