[link|http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage3.asp|Ron Rosenbaum says goodbye to all that]

Excerpt:

But you know, I still can understand people like Pete Seeger joining the Party back in the 30\ufffds during the Depression, when it looked like unregulated capitalism had cruelly immiserated America, when racism and lynchings reigned down South and it looked (looked, I said) as if the Soviet Union was the only force willing to stand up to Hitler. But to cling to Marxism now, after all we\ufffdve learned in the past 50 years\ufffdnot just about the Soviet Union, but China and Cambodia \ufffd ?

I must confess that my own learning curve was on the slow side, having grown up reading The Nation and The New Republic and believing that the evils of Soviet Communism were a figment of J. Edgar Hoover\ufffds imagination. My slow learning curve had a lot to do as well with coming of age during the Vietnam War and covering antiwar demonstrations, where I found myself seduced by the brilliant Groucho Marxism of Abbie Hoffman (I still miss his anarchic spirit). And (more culpably) I was fascinated by the Dostoevskian moral absolutism of the Weather Underground, although never, thank God, by the pretensions of Marxism to be a "science of history."

I still identify myself as a contrarian, libertarian, pessimist, secular-humanist, anti-materialist liberal Democrat who distrusts the worship of "the wisdom of the market." Someone who was outraged (and outspoken in these pages) about the Bush-Baker election tactics in Florida, for instance. But not stupid enough to think we\ufffdd be better off with Al Gore as President now; not stupid enough to think Al Gore is smart.

I say:

The hard Left is increasingly forcing its adherents to choose between doctrinal purity and reality. In the end they will have the members they deserve.