SM

Yes, this is sort of surprising, especially from a present-day perspective. Politics today is absolutely saturated with professionals — consultants, strategists, think tank policy specialists, media talking heads. But it was not always thus. It’s very clear that in the late 1800s and early 1900s, journalists and newspapermen were the most important party experts, especially on the Left. In the book I call these figures “party theoreticians,” because they often wrote and edited for journals and newspapers that were party-supported, and so they depended on political parties to make a living.

Party theoreticians were important for a few reasons. First, if we go back far enough to recognize the tremendous importance of journalists in the production of socialist theory — which describes many of the most important early socialist and Marxian intellectuals — we have a very useful analytical starting point. We can trace their origins (how they became party experts) and what happened to them: why did they decline, such that we’re now surprised to find such a figure at all? And, of course, we can ask whether the fact that party theoreticians were party-dependent journalists mattered for how they saw things.

They were also important because journalists changed the course of political history. It’s not clear that Marxism specifically, or socialist theory more generally, could have become the basis of an enduring international discussion without them. Marx himself was academically trained, but much of his writing was done as a journalist. Some argue that the camaraderie, collaboration, cross-criticism, and political engagement that characterized life as a journalist in the mid to late 1800s directly informed the socialist and Marxian imaginary. So if we agree that socialist theory has been one of the most important lines of thinking in modern history, then we should also agree that party-dependent and party-affiliated journalists are among history’s most important intellectual figures.

There is one more reason the party theoretician is important, which bears on politics today. The fact that journalists’ past influence is surprising to us now shows that perceptions of “experts” or “expertise” are both historically variable and politically determined. There is a lesson in this: contemporary political parties have a special capacity to consecrate (in a sense, to make) experts, regardless of what kind of credentials, schooling, skills, or professional positions people have. They can valorize certain types of skills, forms of knowledge, and modes of communicating; they can also, of course, exclude or marginalize.

Left parties should take this capacity more seriously. There are too many wonks, strategists, and talking heads, and too few people who don’t have fancy credentials but do have firsthand knowledge of suffering in their communities, featured in today’s political debates. Maybe if left parties took their capacity to make experts more seriously, they could cultivate a more inclusive and representative politics.