[FRA:] Marcuse question

[Ralph Dumain]

The ongoing debate between James Rovira and Fred Welfare has reached the 
bizarre.  But in response, I'd like to point out that the attack on the 
liberal values of individualism was linked to a reactionary web 
site.  Secondly, the equation of Enlightenment with individualist values 
with liberalism requires some critical inspection, esp. with regard to 
Marx's position.  Marx is not responsible for the directions that Marxism 
took, and the coloration it took on due to its ascent in underdeveloped 
peasant countries such as Russia.  Marx's criticism of liberalism, 
bourgeois liberal democracy, and the bourgeois conception of the individual 
did not proceed on the basis of a reactionary communitarianism.  You may 
recall that the Communist Manifesto is full of praise for capitalism's 
achievements in revolutionizing all cultural and social life and decimating 
tradition.  But because it could not fulfill its promises for all of 
humanity, it has to be superseded, but that means going forward, not backward.

The second question is what does postmodernism entail ideologically and 
politically?  It only has value for self-centered intellectual elites.  Its 
link to politics is the ideological undergirding of the yuppified social 
strata of marginalized consituencies--women, ethnic and racial minorities, 
third world intellectuals with credit cards, etc.  It is about as liberal 
as Bill Clinton is liberal, in the American social democratic sense of the 
term--i.e. not at all.  I.e. it's about the diversification of the 
professional middle and business classes, and no more.  The political 
hollowness of the Democratic Party has a parallel in the intellectual 
hollowness of a Richard Rorty, and both are a product of the decay of 
American liberalism in the '70s, which opened up opportunities allowing for 
the racial and especially gender (white women) diversification of the 
middle class while the working class as a whole (and especially said 
minorities) twisted in the wind.

Ideologically, the assault on Enlightenment values, though narcissistic and 
self-serving, prepares the way philosophically for fascism to take 
over.  It is both liberal and illiberal, depending on what senses of the 
term you are using.  It represents what's left of liberalism under all 
meanings of the term but is fundamentally illiberal in its philosophical 
underpinnings.  Yes, these people are pilloried by the hysterical Right as 
the academic left, but not a one of them has a left bone in their bodies.

DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT is hardly a counterexample to my 
thesis.  Politically, it's nowhere in particular, and as an argument, lacks 
historical concreteness.  It is rather a dubious metaphysical excursus, or 
more generously, a metaphorical meditation that cannot survive being taken 
literally.

As for Marx and individualism, I recommend my bibliography on the subject:

Marx & the Individual Reconsidered
http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/marxind1.html

At 07:15 PM 2/21/2006 -0500, James Rovira wrote:
>Steve -- the link seemed to me to be relevant to this discussion by way of
>providing a historically oriented definition of liberalism/the enlightenment
>and postmodernism's critique of enlightenment thinking.  That was about it.
>
>
>Ralph -- it seems rather one dimensional to think that the only alternative
>to liberalism is fascism.  Where does Marxism fit in?  Irrelevant?  From
>Knauss's perspective and mine, it's valuable for its critique of
>liberalism.  And who said anything about Heidegger?  I don't recall mention
>of Heidegger in the article or in my post...perhaps I missed something.
>
>Jim R.