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This is the third part of my review of Stephen Hick's masterful book, Explaining Postmodernism. It is as much a detailed overview of the book as review so - spoiler alert - much of what is in the book is discussed in this review. That said, it is an abbreviated outline and the book goes into much more detail than I do here. It is well worth the read.In Part 1 I discussed Hicks's overall thesis - that Postmodernism sprang from two sources - both of which were reactions to the Enlightenment. The philosophy of the Enlightenment is Modernism, which is based on realism, reason and individualism. The world is an objective existent. Reason is our means of learning about and understanding the world. And the mind is a faculty of individuals and it is only with freedom that individuals can flower and knowledge gained.
In the late 19th Century, the counter-Enlightenment evolved as a reaction to the Enlightenment. It took the form of irrationalism and subjectivism in epistemology and collectivism and socialism in social theory and politics. Hicks avers that the failure of socialism in the Twentieth Century led leftist philosophers to merge the irrationalism and subjectivism of the counter-Enlightenment with collectivism in politics. This first part of my review dwelt a lot on Kant's epistemology which is pivotal.
In Part 2 I went into some detail on Kant's epistemological heirs - Heidegger, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and others. And I discussed the division of collectivist thought into two streams - left and right. The former were universalist in their approach while the right developed into tribalism and nationalism. Both had their roots in Rousseau.
I then elaborated on Hicks's discussion of the right's approach to collectivism with the nationalist theories of Herder, Fichte and Hegel.
Today's installment looks at the second to last chapter of Hicks's book - The Crisis of Socialism.
Originally Marxism was logical and scientific in its outlook. It argued that capitalism suffered from a number of inner contradictions that would eventually lead to its collapse.
As Hicks puts it, "So the strategy of the Marxist intellectuals was to wait and mount a lookout for signs that capitalism’s contradictions were leading logically and inexorably to revolution."
Marxian socialism was based on class analysis and argued that capitalism was a zero-sum game. The rich would get richer and the poor poorer. And even the middle class would eventually be split with a few joining the exploiting capitalist class and the rest driven into poverty.
But these predictions of socialism failed avers Hicks. The percentage of the population engaged in manual labour not only declined but became better off. And both the middle and upper classes increased in both wealth and in numbers.
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| The Failure of Marxism by Michael Bedard |
And so the socialists took a different approach, led by the Fabians. They no longer talked of revolution but of evolutionary change. And they no longer had confidence in the common man. Socialism needed an elite to bring about change. As Hicks notes: "The Fabians decided early to abandon the strategy of waiting for the proletariat to change society from the bottom-up. That approach, they argued, requires much too much confidence in the powers of the ordinary working man. As Beatrice Webb put it in her memoirs, “we have little faith in the ‘average sensual man’, we do not believe that he can do much more than describe his grievances, we do not think he can prescribe the remedies.” For both the prescribed remedies and the initiation of measures to enact them, strong leadership by an elite was essential."
Lenin, Hicks notes, had already abandoned the idea of a revolt of the proletariat because Russia was still a feudal society. They would impose "revolution from above". In China, Mao also decided "that socialism would have to arise directly out of feudalism".
Mao differed from Lenin in one key respect. "The classical Marxist vision of socialism included a developed industrial and technological economy, one that would come about and be maintained by the forces of (dialectical) logic. Mao de-emphasized technology and rationality: Chinese socialism would be more agrarian and low-tech, and it would be brought about less by logic and reason than by sheer, unpredictable will and assertion."
With the rise of fascism in the thirties, the far left and the far right seemed to be in agreement on one thing. "socialism must be for the people. But it cannot be by the people. The people must be told what they need and how to get it; and for both the direction and impetus must come from an elite."
The Soviet model was eulogized by the left and with the advent of the Depression, they believed that capitalism was at last failing and "all that the socialists had to do was get their act together, and, led by an intransigent cadre of leaders, give tottering capitalism the shove it needed to topple it into the dustbin of history."
Hopes that the Second World War would have the fascists and the liberal democracies annihilate each other leaving the world open to a Soviet style takeover also proved fruitless. The capitalist liberal democracies rebounded from both the Depression and the war.
Lenin had tried to explain away the failure of a revolutionary proletariat to arise in the West by arguing that poverty had been exported to the third world by Western imperialism. But, Hicks notes, "The exported oppression was not to be found in those nations either. Nations that adopted capitalism in varying degrees were not suffering from their trade with the richer nations. Instead, the trade was mutually beneficial and, from humble beginnings, those nations that adopted capitalist measures rose first to comfort and then to wealth."
Moreover, the Great Red Hope, the Soviet Union, was suffering shortages and failing to feed its people. And the supposedly moral high road held by the Soviets was demolished in February 1956 when Khrushchev revealed that "in the name of the future of socialism, Stalin had had millions of his own citizens tortured, subjected to inhuman deprivations, executed, or sent to die in Siberian labor camps." Later that year, Khrushchev himself ruthlessly crushed a rebellion in Hungary.
The Great Red Hope shifted to China, and then to Cuba, and then to Vietnam, and then to Albania, and then to Nicaragua. But each had its own failures. Most recently Venezuela has been held out as the Great Red Hope and you just have to read to news to see where that has led.
In terms of death at the hands of their own governments, the numbers are staggering.
Discounting for the slaughters by the Nazis and other fascist regimes, "over 110 million human beings were killed by the governments of nations inspired by Left, primarily Marxist, socialism."
Communist sympathisers like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida saw the writing on the wall. The communist countries did not have a moral or economic leg to stand on. The West was prospering and had the moral high ground. What to do? What to do?
Hard left socialism had to change course to survive and so it did. It abandoned traditional Marxism and adopted a new ethos. It disavowed any connection to Soviet style communism.
First it changed its focus. Previously socialism had argued that capitalism leads to widespread poverty. The Marxist axiom had been "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Need was the primary driving moral force. But since capitalism was satisfying people's basic needs in spades, indeed, today obesity is regarded as a serious problem, need was no longer a viable moral standard. The ethical standard shifted from need to equality.
This shift included a new definition of poverty. "The poverty that capitalism causes is not absolute but relative." The new standard was not subsistence or even moderate comfort. The new standard was envy. As Hicks puts it, "the proletariat would become revolutionary because, while their basic physical needs were being met, they saw that some others in society had relatively much more than they did. Feeling excluded and without real opportunities to achieve the good life the rich were enjoying, the proletariat would experience psychological oppression."
And there was a marked shift to identity politics. Instead of focusing on a "universal class consciousness", the left focused on "narrower subdivisions" - women, ethnic minorities, people with different sexual orientations.
"Common to all of these variations was a new emphasis on the principle of equality and a de-emphasis on the principle of need," writes Hicks. "In effect, in changing the ethical standard from need to equality, all of these new varieties of Left-socialism had resolved to quote Marx less and to quote Rousseau more."
Another change in tactics was to condemn wealth in and of itself. Not just wealth held by the very wealthy, but wealth in general. Marxism had condemned capitalism because it failed to provide for the bulk of the population. Now the radical left began to condemn capitalism because it was, in fact, providing wealth for all.
New Left philosopher Herbert Marcuse turned wealth into an instrument of oppression. As Hicks puts it, "By making the members of the proletariat wealthy enough to become comfortable, capitalism had created a captive class: The proletariat had become locked into the capitalist system, dependent upon its goodies, and enslaved by the goal of climbing the economic ladder and to “the aggressive performances of ‘earning a living’.” Not only was this a veiled form of oppression, Marcuse argued, the proletariat had become distracted from its historical task by the comforts and gadgets of capitalism. Capitalism’s producing so much wealth, therefore, is bad."
Sounds like something out of Orwell's 1984. To Big Brother's slogans of War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength, Marcuse had added Wealth is Poverty!
A second variant on the wealth is bad tangent was the rising concern with environmentalism. "Environmental issues, alongside women’s and minorities’ issues, came to be seen as a new weapon in the arsenal against capitalism." This is the lietmotif of the works of Naomi Klein, most notably in This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.
As Hicks puts it, "Wealth, therefore, was no longer good. Living simply, avoiding producing or consuming as much as possible, was the new ideal." The high-tech humanistic socialism of Marx was replaced with the low-tech egalitarian socialism of Rousseau.
Meanwhile, antipathy to reason started to dominate epistemology by the 1950s. "Heidegger was ascendant on the Continent and Logical Positivism was reaching its dead end in the Anglo-American world."
The Marxist appeal to reason had been questioned in the 30's but now the failure of socialism, its new focus on equality and disdain for wealth, and the rise of irrationalism in epistemology led to a merger of the two.
The universalist approach of traditional Marxism gave way to identity politics.
"The more epistemologically-modest theorists of the 1950s begin to ask," writes Hicks, "Can we really expect the masses to abstract to the view that we are all brothers and sisters under the skin? Can the masses conceive of themselves as a harmonious international class? The intellectual capacity of the masses is much more limited, so appealing to and mobilizing the masses requires speaking to them about what matters to them and on a level that they can grasp. What the masses can understand and what they do get fired up about are their sexual, racial, ethnic, and religious identities."
Also influential was Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. Mao became the new poster boy for radical left activism on campuses around the world. I was a student at McGill University in the late 60s and early 70s and while the traditional Marxists were a major force on campus, the truly radical leftists, the ones who had no qualms about using violence to press their views, were the Maoists. (See my article Free Speech on Campus)
Ironically, Hicks notes, "This strain of Left thought came to agree with what the collectivist Right had long argued: that human beings are not fundamentally rational - that in politics it is the irrational passions that must be appealed to and utilized."
Another wrinkle in the radical Left's evolution was the fusion of Freudian psycho-analysis with Marxism. Led by the Frankfurt school, this led to the idea that the average man, Joe Sixpack as Hicks calls him, is psychologically repressed. "He is unaware of the gap between the appearance of comfort and the reality of oppression, unaware that he is a cog in an artificial technological system - unaware because the fruits of capitalism that he produces and thinks he enjoys consuming are sapping his vital instincts and making him physically and psychologically inert."
This is strongly reminiscent of Rousseau's notion of the "real self". Marcuse takes this idea one step further. Capitalism's apparent tolerance of dissent is a thin veneer masking the repressive elements hiding in the shadows. Hicks elaborates: "In the name of 'tolerance,' 'open-mindedness,' and 'free speech,' a few lonely voices will be permitted to raise objections and challenges to the capitalist behemoth. But everyone knows full well that nothing comes of the criticisms. Worse still, the appearance of having been open and tolerant will serve only to reinforce capitalism’s control. Capitalist tolerance, then, is not real tolerance: it is 'Repressive Tolerance.'"
Another Marcusean addition to the Orwellian panoply: Tolerance is Repression!
Marcuse concluded, according to Hicks, that "the first task of the revolutionary is to seek out those individuals and energies on the margins of society: the outcast, the disorderly, and the forbidden - anyone and anything that capitalism’s power structure has not yet succeeded in commodifying and dominating totally."
A revolutionary vanguard needs to arise, especially from disaffected students, "above all (those) who have the will and the energy to do anything it takes, even to the point of being 'militantly intolerant and disobedient,' to shock the capitalist power structure into revealing its true nature, thus toppling and smashing the system to pieces, leaving the way open for a renewal of humanity through socialism."
Marcuse's appeal is to those who, psychologically, are susceptible to being attracted to mass movements. For more on that sort of psychology, see Eric Hoffer's brilliant little book, The True Believer.
Marx, Marcuse and Mao became the unholy trinity of the radical left, Hicks avers. And in the late 60s, radical elements appeared who took his ideas to heart - elements who embraced violent terrorism as a means of social change. "There was the desire to do nothing more than to smash the enemy, to see it hurt, bleeding, destroyed."
From 1960 through the early 70s, a series of radical and violent groups appeared, the revolutionary as thug. The table below lists them.
These violent elements were killed, jailed or driven underground by the mid-70s. Occasional pockets have popped up like the Squamish Five in British Columbia in the early 1980s. But the liberal democracies were more than able to quash violent dissent.
And, of course, in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and on Christmas Day 1991, the hammer and sickle flag of communism was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin.
The Left, both old and new, had collapsed. But a new movement would arise to replace it - Postmodernism.
This series will continue with a fourth and final installment at a later date - a part that will look at Postmodernism itself and how it fused irrationalism and Marxism for the 21st Century.
Communist sympathisers like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida saw the writing on the wall. The communist countries did not have a moral or economic leg to stand on. The West was prospering and had the moral high ground. What to do? What to do?
Hard left socialism had to change course to survive and so it did. It abandoned traditional Marxism and adopted a new ethos. It disavowed any connection to Soviet style communism.
First it changed its focus. Previously socialism had argued that capitalism leads to widespread poverty. The Marxist axiom had been "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Need was the primary driving moral force. But since capitalism was satisfying people's basic needs in spades, indeed, today obesity is regarded as a serious problem, need was no longer a viable moral standard. The ethical standard shifted from need to equality.
This shift included a new definition of poverty. "The poverty that capitalism causes is not absolute but relative." The new standard was not subsistence or even moderate comfort. The new standard was envy. As Hicks puts it, "the proletariat would become revolutionary because, while their basic physical needs were being met, they saw that some others in society had relatively much more than they did. Feeling excluded and without real opportunities to achieve the good life the rich were enjoying, the proletariat would experience psychological oppression."
And there was a marked shift to identity politics. Instead of focusing on a "universal class consciousness", the left focused on "narrower subdivisions" - women, ethnic minorities, people with different sexual orientations.
"Common to all of these variations was a new emphasis on the principle of equality and a de-emphasis on the principle of need," writes Hicks. "In effect, in changing the ethical standard from need to equality, all of these new varieties of Left-socialism had resolved to quote Marx less and to quote Rousseau more."
Another change in tactics was to condemn wealth in and of itself. Not just wealth held by the very wealthy, but wealth in general. Marxism had condemned capitalism because it failed to provide for the bulk of the population. Now the radical left began to condemn capitalism because it was, in fact, providing wealth for all.
New Left philosopher Herbert Marcuse turned wealth into an instrument of oppression. As Hicks puts it, "By making the members of the proletariat wealthy enough to become comfortable, capitalism had created a captive class: The proletariat had become locked into the capitalist system, dependent upon its goodies, and enslaved by the goal of climbing the economic ladder and to “the aggressive performances of ‘earning a living’.” Not only was this a veiled form of oppression, Marcuse argued, the proletariat had become distracted from its historical task by the comforts and gadgets of capitalism. Capitalism’s producing so much wealth, therefore, is bad."
Sounds like something out of Orwell's 1984. To Big Brother's slogans of War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength, Marcuse had added Wealth is Poverty!
A second variant on the wealth is bad tangent was the rising concern with environmentalism. "Environmental issues, alongside women’s and minorities’ issues, came to be seen as a new weapon in the arsenal against capitalism." This is the lietmotif of the works of Naomi Klein, most notably in This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.
As Hicks puts it, "Wealth, therefore, was no longer good. Living simply, avoiding producing or consuming as much as possible, was the new ideal." The high-tech humanistic socialism of Marx was replaced with the low-tech egalitarian socialism of Rousseau.
Meanwhile, antipathy to reason started to dominate epistemology by the 1950s. "Heidegger was ascendant on the Continent and Logical Positivism was reaching its dead end in the Anglo-American world."
The Marxist appeal to reason had been questioned in the 30's but now the failure of socialism, its new focus on equality and disdain for wealth, and the rise of irrationalism in epistemology led to a merger of the two.
The universalist approach of traditional Marxism gave way to identity politics.
"The more epistemologically-modest theorists of the 1950s begin to ask," writes Hicks, "Can we really expect the masses to abstract to the view that we are all brothers and sisters under the skin? Can the masses conceive of themselves as a harmonious international class? The intellectual capacity of the masses is much more limited, so appealing to and mobilizing the masses requires speaking to them about what matters to them and on a level that they can grasp. What the masses can understand and what they do get fired up about are their sexual, racial, ethnic, and religious identities."
Also influential was Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. Mao became the new poster boy for radical left activism on campuses around the world. I was a student at McGill University in the late 60s and early 70s and while the traditional Marxists were a major force on campus, the truly radical leftists, the ones who had no qualms about using violence to press their views, were the Maoists. (See my article Free Speech on Campus)
Ironically, Hicks notes, "This strain of Left thought came to agree with what the collectivist Right had long argued: that human beings are not fundamentally rational - that in politics it is the irrational passions that must be appealed to and utilized."
Another wrinkle in the radical Left's evolution was the fusion of Freudian psycho-analysis with Marxism. Led by the Frankfurt school, this led to the idea that the average man, Joe Sixpack as Hicks calls him, is psychologically repressed. "He is unaware of the gap between the appearance of comfort and the reality of oppression, unaware that he is a cog in an artificial technological system - unaware because the fruits of capitalism that he produces and thinks he enjoys consuming are sapping his vital instincts and making him physically and psychologically inert."
This is strongly reminiscent of Rousseau's notion of the "real self". Marcuse takes this idea one step further. Capitalism's apparent tolerance of dissent is a thin veneer masking the repressive elements hiding in the shadows. Hicks elaborates: "In the name of 'tolerance,' 'open-mindedness,' and 'free speech,' a few lonely voices will be permitted to raise objections and challenges to the capitalist behemoth. But everyone knows full well that nothing comes of the criticisms. Worse still, the appearance of having been open and tolerant will serve only to reinforce capitalism’s control. Capitalist tolerance, then, is not real tolerance: it is 'Repressive Tolerance.'"
Another Marcusean addition to the Orwellian panoply: Tolerance is Repression!
Marcuse concluded, according to Hicks, that "the first task of the revolutionary is to seek out those individuals and energies on the margins of society: the outcast, the disorderly, and the forbidden - anyone and anything that capitalism’s power structure has not yet succeeded in commodifying and dominating totally."
A revolutionary vanguard needs to arise, especially from disaffected students, "above all (those) who have the will and the energy to do anything it takes, even to the point of being 'militantly intolerant and disobedient,' to shock the capitalist power structure into revealing its true nature, thus toppling and smashing the system to pieces, leaving the way open for a renewal of humanity through socialism."
Marcuse's appeal is to those who, psychologically, are susceptible to being attracted to mass movements. For more on that sort of psychology, see Eric Hoffer's brilliant little book, The True Believer.
Marx, Marcuse and Mao became the unholy trinity of the radical left, Hicks avers. And in the late 60s, radical elements appeared who took his ideas to heart - elements who embraced violent terrorism as a means of social change. "There was the desire to do nothing more than to smash the enemy, to see it hurt, bleeding, destroyed."
From 1960 through the early 70s, a series of radical and violent groups appeared, the revolutionary as thug. The table below lists them.
And, of course, in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and on Christmas Day 1991, the hammer and sickle flag of communism was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin.
The Left, both old and new, had collapsed. But a new movement would arise to replace it - Postmodernism.
This series will continue with a fourth and final installment at a later date - a part that will look at Postmodernism itself and how it fused irrationalism and Marxism for the 21st Century.
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