The political transformation of Eldridge Cleaver is one of the most profoundly interesting human dramas of our era. However, tracing his evolution is less my concern than the content and clarity of his thinking. Cleaver is saying many things that badly need saying and that are either not being said or not being said so well.

Cleaver's message is to remind us just how revolutionary the democratic idea really is. His emphasis on the importance of democracy may seem commonplace, but his views are powerful because they are the result of both theory and experience. His passionately felt beliefs have caused him to perceive the importance of turning the clichés of democracy back into ideals.

Cleaver, who once denounced the United States as "evil," "criminal," and "crazy," now describes himself as a patriot. He is certainly that, but at the same time he is both more and less. Unlike some previous refugees from totalitarian ideologies, Cleaver has not gone over to an opposite and equally extreme doctrine. Instead he is a radical democrat, who sees in the United States the best embodiment of the democratic ideal. (p. 20)

To those who would attempt to stereotype Cleaver as a right-wing superpatriot, he has himself provided the best answer: "The greatest mistake we have made as a nation is to allow our shining principles to lapse so far into disuse that we misname them clichés." Thus, Cleaver's patriotism is not narrow chauvinism but a sophisticated attempt to merge national pride with the fuller implementation of the American principles of democracy, equality, and justice. Cleaver's analysis is remarkably reminiscent of that of George Orwell, perhaps the most astute political observer of the twentieth century. Orwell criticized the British left for denigrating nationalism as necessarily reactionary and provincial. It was the patriotism of the British working class, he argued, that saved Britain from defeat at the hands of [Adolf] Hitler. In a letter to the Los Angeles Times Cleaver advanced the concept of a progressive and democratic patriotism that recognizes that "admitting our weaknesses does not negate our strengths. And glorifying in our strengths, as we rightly should, does not necessitate covering up our weaknesses."

Cleaver has not abandoned his belief in the necessity of fundamental social and economic transformations. He now insists that the method to achieve change is through democratic processes and not by violent revolution. Unlike some American radicals who have recently made a purely tactical endorsement of democracy because revolution is not likely to succeed in the United States, Cleaver has a profound appreciation of the human significance of democracy. Cleaver judges that political democracy is more important than economic democracy. It is easier, he contends, to add economic democracy to political democracy than to add political democracy to the sham economic democracy of the Communist states or the third-world dictatorships.

In the process of altering his views about democracy, Cleaver's feelings about the black struggle in America have also changed. From his experiences abroad he has concluded that the United States is far ahead of the rest of the world in solving its racial problems. In a recent interview, Cleaver outlined his perspective on black progress in the United States thusly: "Black people need to realize very fundamentally that they are full and equal citizens of the U.S. We can no longer afford to 'fence straddle' about where we are going. We can no longer afford to ask: Are we going to stay here and be integrated, or are we going to go back to Africa, as we have been saying since slavery? Are we going to separate into five states like the black Muslims used to talk about?… We are as much a part of the United States as any Rockefeller, and we can no longer afford to ask such questions." Not surprisingly, Cleaver has grown much closer to those mainstream black leaders he used to denounce. He has said, "I want particularly to apologize to Martin Luther King on some points. I now appreciate his awareness that the basic relationship between communities of people has to be one of love."

Cleaver's defense of democracy is all the more persuasive because he has not only lived in totalitarian countries and third-world dictatorships, but he was also once an adherent of those regimes. Indeed, Cleaver's most valuable function may be to dispel the myths about these societies. His idea of proletarian internationalism was but a concentrated version of the still persistent romanticism about the third world and a too common naïveté about the nature of Communism. Having lived in the third world, Cleaver is uniquely qualified to communicate the truths that the third world is "an empty phrase," that there are "incredible differences" in the third-world countries, and that many third-world countries are tyrannies.

The analysis that Cleaver makes of Communism is penetrating and insightful. He observes that "communists strap onto people the most oppressive regimes in the history of the world. Regimes that are dictatorships, dictatorships in the name of the proletariat, not by the proletariat." Cleaver criticizes détente for propping up the Soviet regimes and concludes that if the United States is truly to be a force for democracy in the world "we have an obligation to help in the disintegration of the Soviet regime." That is a harsh judgment, to be sure, but it flows naturally from Cleaver's commitment to democracy. (pp. 20-1)

I do not know how many on the left will listen to Cleaver. Certainly they will make every effort to avoid confronting his challenge to their uncritical acceptance of political myths. Sympathizers with the radical currents of the past decade cannot help but be made uncomfortable by Cleaver's proposition that it is time to sum up the questioning process, to abandon mistaken notions, and to come to some conclusions. I suspect that, nonetheless, the intensity and intelligence of Cleaver's views will force the confrontation whether or not it is desired.

Cleaver, I am convinced, is capable of speaking to a far larger audience than his former followers and sympathizers. He may well have to endure a long apprenticeship to redeem himself in the eyes of those who still suspect him or cannot yet forgive his past. Cleaver recognizes that it may be a long time before many people will agree with him.

The return of Eldridge Cleaver to the United States is a summing up of the decade of the sixties and a sign of new possibilities. In the sixties Cleaver became an almost mythical figure for thousands of young blacks and whites; but today, I believe, he is an authentic hero….

Even in Cleaver's early writings there was a strongly humanistic strain. Unfortunately, his desire for a better world was so strong and consuming that he condemned a system that was unable to immediately meet his stringent demands for perfection and justice and embraced an ideology that was destructive of human values. It is to Cleaver's credit that he had the strength and intelligence to reevaluate his beliefs and to avoid the temptations of despair and cynicism. His change is best reflected in his comment: "Somehow, man is less grand than I would have thought. He's still OK, but he's less grand." This attitude of realism, responsible optimism, and genuine humanism undergirds Cleaver's political views. (p. 21)