Remembering Doris Lessing: Political Correctness

British writer Doris Lessing died in London today, aged 94. She had become a communist in the 1940s about the time she married Gottfried Lessing but had abandoned such ideas by 1949. ^{1 2}

In 1992, Lessing wrote and lectured about “Unexamined Mental Attitudes Left Behind By Communism.” ³ A brief of that essay appeared in the New York Times, called “Language and the Lunatic Fringe.” ⁴ In it, she warns of vestiges that remain after the “apparent death of Communism.” She was particularly concerned one of those vestages not “as immediately evident,” namely “Political Correctness.”

Lessing was a fair-minded writer and so is careful to note, “I am not suggesting that the torch of Communism has been handed on to the Political Correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it.” She does concede that Political Correctness can have a “good side” in that it challenges us to “re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful.”

Lessing did not address other political movements or their own tendencies toward Political Correctness. For instance, the Encyclopedia Britannica notes Political Correctness as a characteristic of the American Neo-Conservative movmement: “It also encourages the excesses of “political correctness”—that is, an overly acute sensitivity to offending people of other backgrounds, outlooks, and cultures.” ⁵ And Republican Ted Frier noted the same recently in the American Conservative party: “…More clear-eyed Republicans like Bruce Bartlett see today’s conservatism for what it is: a movement in decline, trapped by its own ‘PC thinking,’ condemned to ever-diminishing influence in American politics since it is incapable of ‘serious introspection’ and disinclined to rethink or rehabilitate either its philosophy or its strategy.” ⁶

Perhaps most importantly is Lessing’s conclusion: “We need to do some rethinking. It is a time, I think, for definitions.” ⁷ A similar call for new definitions came from the late Tony Judt in one of his last books, Ill Fares the Land. ⁸

(Photo of Doris Lessing by Chris Saunders)