The Old Left Makes New Compromises

Winston Churchill was a brilliant, articulate, eloquent politician. He also had some deplorable political views, especially with regard to race, as a recent biography has pointed out. But the man could turn a mean phrase, and he left us with some great quotations, even when they express views that are, shall we say, regrettable.

For example, here's my favorite Churchill quotation: "If you're not on the left in your twenties, there's something wrong with your heart. If you're not on the right in your fifties, there's something wrong with your head." This quotation is not my favorite because I agree with it (because, for the record, I don't); it's my favorite because it so neatly sums up a trend that's prevalent in many cultures: the seemingly inevitable rightward shift. Communists become democratic socialists, anarchists become Labourites, and Trotskyists become full-on neoconservatives.

The latter group has it the easiest; they can simply say they've seen the light and have dropped a fundamentally flawed set of principles for a completely different and fundamentally sound set. But those who shift right within the left can much more easily be painted as people who compromise for the sake of expedience. You still think capitalism is wrong, or at least not inherently right; but you no longer proclaim your intent to do anything about it. You take the cushy job; you wear the nicer clothes; you compromise.

Author Tessa Hadley writes convincingly, even poignantly, about these issues in "The Enemy," a story (which actually appears to be a novel extract) in The Barcelona Review. I found Hadley's story by going through eScene, Webdelsol.com's excellent archive of links to poetry, fiction, essays, and other literary content located off-site. There's enough great writing here to keep you reading for many a moon.

"The Enemy" is about a woman in her fifties who is visited by her former brother-in-law, who was once a charismatic revolutionary in the 1960s. The tale is suffused by the melancholy mood of a middle-aged woman whose life has never come close to meeting the impossibly high ideals she once used to possess; yet she accepts her life, and herself, with a certain grace. Or is it simply the comfort felt by the bourgeoisie? This is the question constellated by the former revolutionary, who has also changed--at least enough to know something about wine, which he once would have derided as a hopelessly bourgeois (and thus counterrevolutionary) affectation.

But don't let all this political talk put you off. "The Enemy" uses political convictions as the staging ground for an inquiry into psychology, aging, personal change, the texture of a life in its fifth or sixth decade--in short, all the stuff of literature. It's a subtle, wonderful story.