The Left's Nihilistic Agenda

In the absence of a practical alternative to the capitalist system, the [Marxist] revolutionary project is a nihilism--the will to destroy existing societies without an idea of what to do next.

The persistence of the revolutionary illusion without the revolutionary fact has given rise to what should properly be called a neo-communist movement--one that has learned nothing from the failures of Communism but has not abandoned the cause itself. Neo-communist radicals add new dimensions of oppression to the Marxist model, like racism and "sexism." But it is the same Marxist model that divides the world into oppressors and oppressed, identifies capitalism as the root cause of global problems, and regards the United States as the global system's guardian-in-chief.  Consequently, like the Communist perspective it has replaced, the contemporary radical outlook opposes America's wars and opposes America's peace.  All that really distinguishes this neo-communist perspective from its Communist predecessor is its ad-hoc attitude towards the revolutionary future, and the nihilistic agenda that follows.

As an expression of its nihilism, the contemporary left defines and organizes itself as a movement against rather than for.  Its components may claim to be creating egalitarian futures in which racism, "sexism" and corporate dominance no longer exist and in which "social justice" prevails.  But unlike Communists, the neo-coms are not committed to even a rudimentary blueprint as to what such an order might be.  It is this lack of programmatic consensus that leads some leftists to deny that there even is a "left," and makes it possible for a fragmented coalition of neo-coms--including anarchists, eco-radicals, radical feminists, "queer" revolutionaries, Maoists, Stalinists, and vaguely defined "progressives"-to operate side by side in improbable coalitions like the antiwar movement.  It is why they can do so in ways that benefit such anti-egalitarian allies and regimes as Islamic radicals and the Baathist, fascist state of Iraq.

-David Horowitz, The Black Book of the American Left, Vol II: Progressives (2013): pp.28-29