Walk Away: When the Political Left Turns Right(Political Theory for Today)

This book examines key twentieth-century philosophers, theologians, and social scientists who began their careers with commitments to the political left only later to reappraise or reject them. Their reevaluation of their own previous positions reveals not only the change in their own thought but also the societal changes in the culture, economics, and politics to which they were reacting. By exploring the evolution of the political thought of these philosophers, this book draws connections among these thinkers and schools and discovers the general trajectory of twentieth-century political thinking in the West.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: James Burnham: From Left to Right Paul Gottfried Chapter 2: Pondering the People: Willmoore Kendall’s Intellectual Path From Progressive to Conservative Populism Christopher H. Owen Chapter 3: “Mugged by Reality”: The Neoconservative Turn Lee Trepanier Chapter 4: George Grant and Charles Taylor: Canadian Owls Ron Dart Chapter 5: Alasdair MacIntyre’s Revolutionary Peripateticism Kelvin Knight Chapter 6: Benedict Ashley’s Reappraisal of Marxism Christopher S. Morrissey Chapter 7: Christopher Lasch: A Reconsideration Jeremy Beer Chapter 8: The Failure of Marxism through the Frankfurt School and Jürgen Habermas Pedro Blas González Chapter 9: Analytical Marxism and the Meaning of Historicism: Reflections on Kai Nielsen and G. A. Cohen Grant Havers

About the Author :
Lee Trepanier is professor of political science at Saginaw Valley State University. Grant Havers is professor of philosophy and political studies at Trinity Western University.

Review :
Perhaps not since the Cold War have public debates been conducted with such explicitly ideological terms and clear commitments. After the prevailing centrism of Western politics at the close of the Cold War and the immediate post-9/11 era, political discussion within the West is again concerned with questions regarding Marxism as a social and political theory. As is evident within the United States, these debates have grown increasingly polarized of late within segments of both the Democratic and Republican parties as to how forcefully to adopt or oppose various components or contributions of Marxist analysis. This resurgence of explicit ideology has also contributed to the increase of polarization and extremism. In this fraught moment of concern about political conflicts and polarization towards extreme political positions within both US political parties, it is helpful to remember that history provides examples of countervailing reactions and reconsiderations generated from within extreme ideologies where former partisans abandoned prior commitments and formulations and adjusted their positions as a concession to their lived experience of reality. Lee Trepanier and Grant Havers have provided just such a reminder in Walk Away: When the Political Right Turns Left and perhaps provided examples for future emulation. This is a fine collection of thoughtful, philosophically rigorous, and illuminating studies of major twentieth century leftist thinkers who journeyed rightward. We are offered fascinating and even riveting accounts of radicals coming to grips with and overcoming the dogmas in which they had become immersed. No one, left or right, is immune to the allure of dogma, and this book shows every intellectually serious person the challenge we all face in attaining a genuinely free soul. Havers and Trepanier have put together an eminently readable and illuminating volume on the philosophical and ideological exodus of leftist thinkers to the right during the 20th century. In addition to the perspective and clarity it provides regarding major 20th century events, it gives us an analytical framework to assess similar shifts in contemporary politics. Serious students of politics, from both the left and right, can learn from the valuable insights in this volume. This volume reveals how, time and again, the experience of the soul has entailed consequential differences between progressive and conservative thinkers. A thorough and persuasive case is made in these pages - when leftist ideologues open themselves to the truth and the good of the order of being, a meaningful transition of political identity from left to right follows. A must-read for serious scholars of ideology and, perhaps especially, for left-leaning individuals who have begun to question their own ideology. Nietzsche in the Will to Power writes: “The charm that works for us, the Venus eye that fascinates even our foes and blinds them, is the magic of the extreme….” The contributors to this volume showcase twentieth-century thinkers who were not so easily charmed by the extreme of the leftist politics they once held. All drew the Aristotelian conclusion that any political form taken to its extreme results in tyranny. Some pragmatically turned to conservatism as the best defense against communism. Others leavened their leftism with traditionalism, religion, nationalism, or communitarianism as a way of moderating their progressivism. Still others suffered religious conversion upon beholding the “Venus eye” which represented for them the metaphysical rebellion grounding political extremism. In a time now characterized by what Pierre Manent calls the “fanaticism of the center,” this is volume provides welcome assistance for resisting the charm of the extreme.