The politics of betrayal: Renegades and ex-radicals from Mussolini to Christopher Hitchens

By Ashley Lavelle

The radical who becomes a conservative is a common theme in political history. Benito Mussolini, the Italian socialist who became a fascist, is the best-known example, but there have been many others, including the numerous American Trotskyists and Marxists who later became neo-conservatives, anti-communists or, in some instances, McCarthyists.

The politics of betrayal examines why several one-time radicals subsequently became part of the establishment in various countries, including the former Black Panther Party leader turned Republican Eldridge Cleaver, the Australian communist Adela Pankhurst who became an admirer of the Nazis, and the ex-radical journalist Christopher Hitchens, whose defection to the neo-conservative camp of George W. Bush’s administration following 11 September 2001 offers one of the most surprising instances of the phenomenon in recent times.

How and why do so many radicals betray the cause? What implications does it have for left politics? Were the ex-radicals right to become conservatives? This book, the first of its kind, answers these and more questions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Nov 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781526102737

Ashley Lavelle

Ashley Lavelle is Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, Sydney

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

A ROAD WELL TRAVELLED

The final struggle will be between the Communists and the ex-Communists. (Ignazio Silone, 1949: 113)

In each country that has experienced a revolution a confrontation has taken place between revolutionaries on one side and reformists and future renegades on the other. (Régis Debray, 1967: 23; emphasis added)

The corpse of the radical turned renegade is strewn across the battle plains of political history. Perhaps the best-known example since the rise of organised party politics in the early twentieth century is the man who distinguished himself as a rambunctious editor of a socialist newspaper only to emerge later as the ruler of fascist Italy, Benito Mussolini. But a similar fate befell numerous other radicals around the period of the First World War and during the interwar years, including the French anti-militarist transformed into a warmonger Gustave Hervé, the Belgian Marxist cum Nazi collaborator Hendrik de Man, and the British Labour Party politician Oswald Mosley who eventually founded his own fascist movement. A significant number of American Trotskyists and Marxists (the so-called ‘New York intellectuals’) active from the early decades of the twentieth century onwards later became neo-conservatives, anticommunists, or, in some instances, McCarthyists. Numerous former 1960s radicals, too, were subsequently to find themselves ensconced in parts of the establishment in various countries, as the whiff of tear gas and the blow of the truncheon faded from memory: witness the former Black Panther Party leader, Eldridge Cleaver, who became a Republican and a born-again Christian; or the proponent of guerrilla warfare and revolution, Régis Debray, who ended up as a heavily compromised adviser to a French president. More recently in the early years of the twenty-first century, the muckraking journalist and former Trotskyist Christopher Hitchens waged a vigorous campaign on behalf of the neo-conservative imperialist ambitions of George W. Bush’s administration following the terrorist infernos of 11 September 2001.

The renegade is therefore no chimera: the Italian novelist and founder member of the Italian Communist Party Ignazio Silone, himself a renegade, divined that the ‘final struggle will be between the Communists and the ex-Communists’ (Silone, 1949: 113). The Marxist writer Isaac Deutscher commented that, ever since the Russian Narodnik Lev Tikhomirov published Why I Ceased to be a Revolutionary in the late nineteenth century, ‘in every generation, in every decade, the weary and disillusioned, as they withdrew from the fray or changed sides tried to answer this question’ (Deutscher, 1987: 442). The spectacle of ex-fighters and rebels laying siege to their old ideals is thus an all-too-common occurrence in political life.

Yet the propensity for radicals to undergo the most striking metamorphoses – to cut back across what the English revolutionary William Morris called the ‘river of fire’ – and emerge as anti-radicals has yet to be sufficiently explained.¹ The few renegades who have been subjected to analysis have tended to be viewed in isolation, without the necessary comparative work enabling us to generalise about the problem. There are excellent volumes on the New York intellectuals and other Cold War renegades (see Wald, 1987; Bloom, 1986; Deutscher, 1969; Diggins, 1975), and there is some insightful work on ex-1960s radicals (Ali, 2005: ch. 11). In addition, multiple biographical sources on the stories of individual renegades are available (e.g. Scammell, 2009; Rout, 1991). But these works are invariably about a certain period, individual or milieu in politics, rather than about the phenomenon of the renegade itself. Thus we undertake here the first comprehensive study of renegades from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards.²

It was the former French radical Debray who pondered how a person can ‘get up one fine morning and renounce everything that has driven us until that moment’ (Debray, 2007: 5). The question is an important one, for if those who stand for radical political ideals are inevitably bound to renounce these views and become captured by the system they once abhorred, there would seem little hope for radicalism. Many renegades were at one time gifted radical belligerents whose loss to conservatism is immeasurable. The Marxist scholar Terry Eagleton describes Christopher Hitchens’ defection to the camp of the neo-conservatives as a ‘grievous’ blow to the left on account of his writing skills, debating abilities, and his encyclopaedic knowledge of world affairs (Eagleton, 2010). Most renegades were flawed but nonetheless highly talented members of political movements. On the other hand, could the left ever have relied on the wavering support of fair-weather friends such as Hitchens? Perhaps it is a case of good riddance to rotting refuse – a question we probe further in the chapters on ‘flawed radicals’ and the ‘renegade mentality’.

Whatever is the answer to that question, the political impact of such volte-faces is beyond doubt: the process of beating radicals into submission is aided considerably when the words and deeds of former revolutionaries are hurled back in their face. Mussolini’s former colleague in the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI)) Angelica Balabanoff situates his historic betrayal in the context of the need of the entente powers in the First World War for a ‘demagogue who knew his revolutionary phraseology and who could talk the language of the masses’, and therefore agitate for Italy’s involvement in the campaign alongside Britain, France, and Russia (Balabanoff, 1968: 119). In other words, Mussolini’s treachery was eminently useful to powerful political forces. In relation to the communist-turned-McCarthyist Max Eastman and other New York intellectuals, Alfred Kazin commented that ‘the Cold War and McCarthy era needed them, raised them, publicized them’ (cited in Wald, 1987: 290). The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had viewed former communists as the people best equipped to battle communists (Saunders, 1999: 62).

Radicals’ changing allegiances have thus made history. What would have happened had Mussolini not made his historic break with the PSI during the First World War, before becoming a fascist ruler and allying his country to Nazi Germany? In the estimation of Hitchens, the faction of ex-radical New York intellectuals contributed more to the rightward shift in US politics than the conservative Christians with whom they were often aligned (Hitchens, 1986: 52). Meanwhile, the actions of many former 1960s radicals in deriding past ventures also undoubtedly helped the revolutionary politics of those years stay frozen in that decade, as returning to the fold in later years became the fashionable thing to do (Harman, 1988: viii).

This book is therefore no feelgood story: it is about dashed hopes and dreams, reversals, resignation, and betrayal. In part, its subject is the defeat of movements for radical social change, as seen through the most obvious manifestations of defeat: leading radical figures who give up on changing the world. But it is nonetheless an important subject, for there is little point in acknowledging the instincts for creative political theatre and spontaneous rebellion of the 1960s Yippie and anti-capitalist activist Jerry Rubin without confronting the question as to why he ended up a self-proclaimed ‘Yuppie’. Any radical movement needs the talents of a Max Eastman, who translated important works such as Leon Trotsky’s epic The History of the Russian Revolution (see Eastman, 1997). But these qualities, alas, would ultimately be put to the service of McCarthyism, which survived the political demise and ultimate death of Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1957 to exact a terrible toll against the left and its organisations for years to come (Saunders, 1999: 211). The book thus seeks to provide some explanations for why dedicated and articulate radicals betray their comrades, in the process exerting an important impact on events.

This book is premised, therefore, on the belief that it matters what people – and leaders – do. The notion that leaders would simply be ‘created’ by movements in their absence is just as spurious as the idea that leaders make history alone. Movements are thus critical, but so is the role of individuals within those movements, which, in a dialectical manner, in turn shape – and provide opportunities to – leaders (Lukács, 2009: 37). And so the part played by renegades in helping to determine the success – or otherwise, as it may be – of those movements has also been pivotal.

To an extent, this enters into the philosophical territory inhabited by the structure-agency debate, which concerns the scope for human action and influence vis-à-vis the social structures within – and against – which people strive to make a difference. This is an important point of reference, since the question is raised throughout the book as to what capacity individuals have to resist the pressures to accommodate and to soften their radical aspirations. In terms of the degree of autonomy designated to structures and agents in making social change, it is true that people are not born into an unstructured world in which they develop structures as they like, free of biases: structures get a head start on agents. But, while structures mould people in often unseen ways and determine the circumstances in which the latter view themselves and the world, the actions and decisions of people – guided in sometimes important ways by their psychology (see chapters 9 and 10) – can be decisive in the outcome of events (Barker et al., 2001; Callinicos, 1989). As John Rees argues, the freedom people enjoy to make their own history varies considerably: ‘At the height of the revolutionary wave such freedom can be considerable, in the concentration camp it can be reduced to virtually zero’ (Rees, 1991: 30). Moreover, broader social forces determine which individuals – for better or worse – make history, when they make it, and the circumstances in which they do so (O’Lincoln, 1993: 43).

An awareness of the plethora of pressures and constraints involved in political activity is an imperative – while, critically, not losing sight of the enabling factors, the opportunities, the relative autonomy of the individual involved, and their scope for influence. The challenge for all biographers, according to Woolf, is to depict the individual in their proper historical and social context without the subject disappearing altogether (Woolf, 1966: 187). Notwithstanding the problems posed by studying an ever-changing being – as Keynes asked in relation to the British Prime Minister Lloyd George: ‘Who can paint the chameleon?’ (cited in Morgan, 1988: 48) – in essence Woolf’s ambition is the one we set for ourselves in relation to the various individuals scrutinised in the following pages.

An obvious matter that confronts us in view of this task is the selection of cases: readers will undoubtedly object to the presence of some individuals in the collection, and to the absence of others. Even if this is the case, it is hoped that the reader will be convinced that the case selection is sufficiently large and wide to tackle the problem. Partly we are restricted by the fact that there are many radicals and ex-radicals whose experiences we cannot distil for the purposes of positing explanations. But, as the historian Christopher Hill argued in his book on the seventeenth-century English Revolution’s subdued radicals, The Experience of Defeat, we are reliant on those who left some record of what they did and why, rather than on those who withdrew anonymously into passivity, resigned to lives of quiet desperation (Hill, 1984: 17). In the following chapters we necessarily draw only on the experience of those whom we know about, or who have issued some public testimony as to their behaviour. In any case, because they often remain vociferous political protagonists, renegades tend to be more likely to document and explain – not to mention vigorously justify – their shifting alliances. Even then, however, for the sake of brevity we are restricted to discussing a sample of cases drawn from the major movements and periods of capitalism since the beginning of the twentieth century across a variety of countries.³ In this sense, we are trying to paint what Donaldson and Poynting (2007: 22), in their study of ‘ruling class men’, call a ‘collective portrait’.

Inevitably in the process we encounter a wide spectrum of actors. Consider the differences between the likes of Benito Mussolini and Christopher Hitchens: one at the head of a European state during some of the major political events in the first half of the twentieth century, the other a Portsmouth-born journalist who was anointed into politics in the 1960s without ever holding political office. Both are renegades in the sense set out in more detail below of renouncing long-held faiths and betraying old causes and friends at a crucial political juncture. Parker (2006) notes that Hitchens’ imprimatur for the 2003 Iraq War had ‘confused and dismayed former comrades, and brought him into odd new alliances’. The same was true of Mussolini – albeit on a greater scale, with more calamitous consequences. In this sense, there are differences in their occupations – though Mussolini was also a journalist of sorts as one-time editor of the PSI newspaper, Avanti! – and specific political contexts, but their relationships to radical movements have considerable resemblances. Both were political players whose defections have shaped events.

This is what unites the cases discussed in the book, including those commentators whose words provide intellectual ballast for various social and political interests and who therefore act as legitimators (Steinfels, 1979: 6). In most instances, the cases can be considered radical leftists and anti-capitalists of some variety, and their interactions with the state and other powerful social forces are of comparable dimensions. From socialists during the First World War such as Mussolini to the New York intellectuals in the years after the 1930s, to French radicals in the 1960s, there are remarkable parallels in the articulation of their apostasies, the reasons proffered for them, the reactions of their former friends and allies, and the factors that can objectively be teased out as explanations for their behaviour.

From radical to renegade

Before outlining the book’s argument and structure, it is important to frame the discussion conceptually. The term ‘radical’ has been employed in a variety of different ways. It was, for example, used to describe the popular movement that existed in Britain between the time of the French Revolution and the emergence of the Chartists in the mid-nineteenth century. But it later became synonymous with either the Radical Whigs and Radical Tories or with members of the Radical wing of the Liberal Party, in which context the term had less progressive meaning (Cliff, 1984: 242).

This book approaches radicalism quite differently as part of a left, systemic, and anti-capitalist understanding of society and politics. Historically radicalism has been defined as an approach that identifies the systems, ideologies, and power underlying specific phenomena (Engler, 2004). As Karl Marx once put it: ‘To be radical is to grasp the matter by its roots’ (cited in Macdonald, 1957: 29). Where liberals see racism and crime as separate problems capable of being remedied through legislative change, radicals see them as inseparable and as constitutive of a wider system – namely capitalist social relations – transcending acts of parliament (Gordon and Osmond, 1970: 4–5). Radicals are thus generally anti-capitalists, though not always socialists.⁴ Leo Marx, a student at Harvard in the 1930s, recalled being encouraged by the Marxist economist Paul Sweezy to adopt a radical stance towards the US by identifying the structural forces underpinning social problems and accepting their insolubility through legislative reform (cited in Cohen, 1993: 247). One of radicalism’s hallmarks – drawing links between issues – is reflected in Irving Howe’s observation that radicalism’s appeal to 1930s American youth sprang from its ability to provide a coherent and all-encompassing view of life (Howe, 1983: 10). This aspect of radicalism is partly due to the influence of dialectical materialism, one of whose three core elements is seeing things in totality and teasing out the relationships between the different parts of the system (see Rees, 1998: 5).⁵

As well as relating seemingly disconnected events, radicalism is about achieving systemic change through challenging the political structures and institutions whose legitimacy is generally assumed. Radicals are often created when activists confront roadblocks to the change they desire within the channels of mainstream political participation, forcing them to countenance more concerted forms of resistance and rebellion (Hayden, 1969a: 29, 30). Fry (1983: x, xi) suggests that radicals have challenged prevailing belief systems and pitted themselves against ‘the powerful authorities of their day’. Thus, it has been suggested that the first radical was the angel Lucifer, who was rewarded for his rebellion against the establishment – by refusing to serve God – with his very own kingdom (Alinsky, 1989: ix).

Radicals are thus usually revolutionaries. It follows that in Stalinist Russia, being a ‘Marxist’ did not necessarily make one a radical, as this did not imply confrontation with the state and ‘powerful authorities’ (unless the Marxist was of a Trotskyist or some other radical variety deemed to be ‘counterrevolutionary’). In the same way that coming into conflict with the state does not necessarily make one a radical, just being nominally a Marxist is not enough on its own to see someone subject to state coercion. In fact, in most cases being a ‘Marxist’ in Stalinist Russia was a conservative disposition, since ‘Marxism–Leninism’ had assumed the status of a state religion (see Harris, 1968; Clarke, 1950: 54).⁶ In the US during the Cold War, by contrast, the same person holding very similar politics was generally a radical, since they were likely – assuming their wish to translate theory into practice – to encounter significant persecution and isolation and be required to make considerable sacrifices. But even here radicalism was not immutable: some communists in the US, for example, followed the dictates from Moscow in lining up with the West’s imperialist war drive after the collapse of the Nazi–Soviet pact in 1941 and were transformed into avid patriots, supporters of incarceration of Japanese nationals, and opponents of strikes (Davis, 1986: 89, 90).

In general, however, Scruton (1982: 391) highlights radicals’ hostility to the status quo and their dissatisfaction with anything less than ‘sweeping changes’. Similarly, according to Love (1988: 151), radicalism strives to subvert social relationships. Both these latter definitions are arguably deficient in light of their failure to specify the kind of change being sought, particularly given the mistaken assumption that conservatism involves hostility to change per se: if the status quo itself is hostile to conservative social forces, then conservatives will seek to challenge the status quo (D’Souza, cited in Robin, 2011: 25). With radicalism often regarded as coterminous with ‘extremism’, some will argue that the former can also be found on the far right (Labedz, 1999: 723). Yet if we accept that the subversion of social relations is a characteristic of radicalism, then right-wingers in practice are rarely deserving of the term ‘radical’. Even under Hitler’s Nazis, (capitalist) social relations remained intact, albeit in a different form – a highly state-directed command economy – to those existing under the Weimar republic (Cliff, 1988: 212). This is also why far-left political movements have always been treated more brusquely by the state than their enemies on the so-called ‘radical’ right: the former have always represented a far greater threat to the structures of power and privilege than the latter.

It is partly for these reasons that we are primarily interested in radicals on the left of the spectrum. The relevance and meaning of the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ themselves, though, have been subject to some debate since at least the 1990s, as issues such as the environment and biotechnology have been regarded as less comfortable fits in a spectrum whose origins lie in the eighteenth-century French Revolution (Giddens, 1994). Yet one feature always distinguishing the left from the right has been the former’s commitment to equality, and to greater freedom and power for the majority (Bobbio, 1996: 29–31; Cohen, cited in Robin, 2011: 9). Whereas the right has always been more tolerant of the vastly unequal outcomes that flow from the uneven spread of resources marring capitalist societies, the left has generally tried to have the equal talents and abilities present at birth reflected in each person’s quality of life. Usually this attachment to equality has been presaged on a belief in the need for the circumvention of capitalist market forces, to greater or lesser degrees, depending on whether one is part of the revolutionary or reformist left. This has also undoubtedly been part of the quest for greater freedom: whereas ‘freedom’ for the right has often meant the freedom for a minority to exploit the majority economically, the left has tended to understand it in terms much more liberating for the mass of the people through freedom of access to education, resources, health care, and dignifying work, as well as in terms of the usual negative freedoms from poverty and oppression (see Harvey, 2005). The usual ‘negative’ freedoms (from poverty and oppression, for example), but also positive ones (in particular, the freedom to partake equally in the benefits of human labour), garner the support of the left. The left, of course, has not always been consistent in its attitude to freedom, evidenced by some radicals and leftists’ support for patently unfree regimes in various parts of the world. But these are the underlying articles of faith for radical leftism.

There is an additional reason why left radical-cum-renegades are of interest. Finkelstein argues that invariably apostates move from left to right in the direction of power, rather than away from it (Finkelstein, 2008: 243). It is certainly true that apostates most commonly move in a rightward direction. Rarely do actors move from conservatism to radicalism, at least in the form described above. The examples that Robin (2011: 110) cites as proof that intellectuals can switch from right to left – John Gray and Edward Luttwak – do not refute this, since they ended up as leftists or social democrats at most, not radical and systemic anti-capitalists. There are occasional exceptions to this rule, such as the Tory capitalist Henry Mayers Hyndman, who was beguiled by Marxism after reading Das Kapital in 1880 (Mahamdallie, 1996: 76). Yet in his case the exception seemed to prove the rule.⁷ The story of renegades and ex-radicals is therefore almost always one of the radical who undertakes a rapprochement with capitalism and the status quo.

All of the cases examined in the succeeding chapters are one-time radicals – whether of the communist, Marxist, anarchist, Trotskyist, anticapitalist, or pacifist variety, each tended to involve at least a systemic view of the problems of life and their stubbornness under existing political economic arrangements – whose centre of gravity moved to the right. Along the way, they abandoned their radical politics to become renegades (also known as ‘apostates’, ‘sell-outs’, or ‘turncoats’) or simply ex-radicals who had moved on to far tamer pursuits. The renegade is broadly defined as a ‘person who deserts his cause or faith for another’ (also known as an ‘apostate’ or ‘traitor’). The word has roots in the medieval Latin word renegare (‘to renounce’), and in the Latin word negare, meaning ‘to deny’ (Collins Dictionary, 1979: 1235). Similarly, an apostate, according to the Oxford Dictionary (1976: 30), is a person who leaves one’s religion or party. Almond (1954: 132) uses the terms ‘renegade’ and ‘defector’ more narrowly to refer to ex-Communist party members in Britain, the US, France, and Italy. We use these terms in a wider sense (see further below).

It is not in political discourse exclusively that we find these terms. There are some parallels with the conversion of Saul to Paul on the road to Damascus, or the transformation of Augustine from lustful sinner into shamed advocate of abstinence (Squire, 2008: 90, 103–5). Historically the term ‘apostate’ has particularly religious connotations (Mahoney, 2003), though it has arguably more political resonances in contemporary speak.⁸ On the other hand, the musician Bob Dylan was accused – probably unjustly – of selling out because of the commercial success and fame he achieved while lyricising the plight of the poor and the oppressed (cited in Shelton, 1986: 416–17).

Despite these different usages, it is the political apostasy to which this book is devoted. The specific sense of the actor who renounces or turns away from one’s past radical views is of interest for our purposes, not the vague sense of someone who is considered unconventional, an outsider, or a maverick (e.g. Wolffe, 2010). Christopher Hill argued that the English radical William Sedgwick could rightfully be described as a renegade after 1661: he publicly turned his back on all political action, and in his written work (to some of which he dared not append his name) declared revolt to be ‘irrational and unsafe’, arguing that the cause had been corrupted from the outset – not unlike those who would later interpret Stalinism as the logical corollary of October 1917 (Hill, 1984: 115–16). The Russian Marxist and Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin described the reformist socialist Karl Kautsky as a ‘renegade’ and someone guilty of ‘apostasy’ over his renunciation of revolutionary Marxism (Lenin, 1975).

Renegades and ex-radicals thus do more than merely adjust their opinions in light of new evidence or changes in the world. Their actions require scrutiny not just because of the weakness of the defences – which we examine in subsequent chapters – proffered for their reversals, but also because of the unrecognisable beings into which they are transformed compared to their radical progenitor. As the literary critic William Hazlitt put it, they amount to a ‘vile antithesis, a living and ignominious satire’ on themselves (cited in Thompson, 1969: 153). Indeed, Stephen Vicinczey wryly commented that the ex-communist and novelist Arthur Koestler, who committed suicide in 1983, had killed himself twice (Cesarani, 1998: 536). As a result of the violent nature of the changes often experienced by the individual, the journey from radical to renegade consequently can be a very traumatic one involving nothing less than, in the words of William Phillips, the collapse of ‘your whole way of life’ (cited in Dorman, 2000: 67).

Apostasy therefore is not just about retiring from politics, but rather about a wholesale change in class interests and perspectives. Renegades usually find themselves on the opposite side of the barricades, as was the case with the Russian Marxist Parvus whose advocacy for the German government during the First World War put him at odds with the interests of the international proletariat who would be called on to sacrifice themselves in the trenches (see chapter 1). Jerry Rubin is also a classic case of a renegade who wound up on the other side of the political equation: an anti-Wall Street protestor in 1967, he would emerge as a Wall Street stock analyst in 1980 (see chapter 2). Many renegades and ex-radicals are thus reborn as different people. In some cases this is almost literally true: the American ex-Bolshevik enthusiast Louis Fraina changed his identity to Lewis Corey before wiping references to his radical past from his personal bibliography (see chapter 1).⁹ In this sense, the renegade is distinct from the left-leaning labour or social democratic politician who compromises their politics under the pressure of governing the capitalist state.¹⁰ Instead, the renegade tends to take on a more permanent disposition of enmity to radicalism.

This gives a sense of the potential pitfalls of attempting to generalise about renegades, who in fact come in various forms. There are, for instance, the renegades who openly acknowledge their complete break with the past, and are often vitriolic about radicalism, pouring scorn on their past comrades and their own previous ideas. Then there are renegades who profess no shame about their past political affiliations, instead arguing that times have changed, and so have they. An additional variety is the renegade who might be more properly described as an ex-radical, since they do not always publicly renege on their old views or deny any fundamental ruptures with their past, but still their actions no longer have any visible radical content. There is not surprisingly a certain amount of blurriness in these categories, since we are dealing with personalities and the different lights in which actors themselves cast their actions. Indeed, honesty is not what we should expect from the typical renegade if Wald is correct in identifying a defining feature of apostasy as the failure to ‘see or acknowledge the authentic nature of one’s change’ (Wald, 1987: 281). As Marx warned, it pays not to ‘judge an individual by what he thinks about himself’ (cited in Montag, 1988: 95).

More definitively, what connects the different renegades and ex-radicals studied in the following chapters is their desertion of radicalism, defined as a left-wing project of emancipation designed to transcend the here and now, and which embraces in carnivalesque fashion, celebrated by the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, turning the world on its head in every sphere of life, from the political and economic to the cultural and the sexual (see Stam, 1989). Radicalism is in some senses unique in politics: arguably all other projects accept and seek to work within, to greater or lesser degrees, existing frameworks and institutions. Needless to say, not all radicals have been devotees of the carnival, but the eclipse of capitalist political economy was almost always part of the plan. The question of why it is that individuals choose to give up on hopes for global liberation and systemic, transpersonal change – however different their eventual destinations – is, therefore, worthy of the devotion of a single study.

As well as differing by type, there are some distinctions in the speed and extent of the unravelling of one’s radical politics. It can be a gradual, step-by-step evolution whereby one’s enfeebled radicalism eventually becomes non-existent; alternatively, as in the case of Mussolini, it can hinge largely on a single decision – in his case to support Italian involvement in the First World War (see chapter 1). The American radical who became a leading neoconservative, Norman Podhoretz, readily admitted having broken ranks in the 1960s, but denied that it was akin to a Damascene rebirth. Instead, he claims, it took between five and six years (Podhoretz, 1999: 88).

Finally, as well as the speed of the process differing, so too can its endpoint. Some former radicals have become mere liberals, while others have become anti-communists, neo-conservatives, or McCarthyists. The renegade does not always join the fascist far right, but generally any residual opposition to capitalism disappears (Deutscher, 1969: 15, 10). There is, of course, a world of difference between those who shifted from radicalism to social democracy or green politics – frameworks within which critical attitudes to capitalism are still possible – and those who migrated to neo-conservatism or even fascism. One should not give any credence to the notion that fascists and right-wing social democrats are one and the same – the fatal mistake, of course, made by German communists in the lead-up to 1933. The process of de-radicalisation itself matters: even if it is argued that the move in an individual’s case was from radical to centre rather than from radical to right,