From: "Eric" <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: global meta-narratives no local narratives yes...
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 21:05:29 -0600


Steve,

Maybe I just feeling perverse tonight, but reading your posting and
thinking about the recent libertarian exchange, I'd like to offer these
thoughts.

If you really think about a conservative libertarian like Hayek, I think
you need to acknowledge something. Sure the man was an incredible
political reactionary in many ways, but his economic thought was not
entirely based upon make-believe. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have created
the influence he currently wields.

At the heart of his thought (and I am the first to admit I am no
economist) is the notion that knowledge and decision-making in a market
situation act as a kind of spontaneous order, like language, and one
that no individual or group has sufficient knowledge of in a timely
enough fashion to intervene efficiently in order to command the economy.

There is little question that the Soviet and Chinese economies were
failures at this, and, although I agree there are many different ways to
explain it, it is necessary to admit the left has lost credibility
because of this and also because of the reign of terror that occurred
under this regime. The left needs to find a way to argue more
persuasively than it has about such matters in order to win back the
trust of ordinary citizens who no longer believe it offers a meaningful
alternative.

I believe that Hayek's idea of spontaneous orders finds some rapport
with both N&H's idea of Empire and Lyotard's own notions of
complexification and incredulity towards metanarratives.  In my own
perverse reading of postmodernism, as I have previously stated, I see it
as a sublime event in the Kantian sense where reason attempts to apply
the concept (a metanarrative) to the growing complexification and fails;
but thereby enthusiastically realizes with awe and respect a reality too
complex for mere understanding.  At the heart of postmodernism is a new
paralogical sense of the Real; a kind of metaphysical feeling of
surprise at a world that has become infinite again and in which we are
all participants. 

What I am arguing is that libertarians have been more realistic about
the complex nature of global economies, but naïve insofar as they
believed this signified a triumph of freedom and democracy.  Instead, as
we are currently witnessing, these spontaneous orders are just as
dystopian as totalitarian command economies.  All along they were simply
the road to serfdom by another means.  

The value of Lyotard is that he recognized both ends of this spectrum;
the growth of complexification and development and the continuing need
for justice in the face of this very complexification. In my reading,
Lyotard is thus a kind of left libertarian and not the neo-conservative
Habermas argues him to be at all. He is certainly not on the same side
of the political fence as Hayek, but rather turns Hayek on his head,
making a similar argument about capitalism that Hayek did about
socialism.

I think at the theoretical level, complexity makes the kind of
metanarratives the left favors harder to sustain - given the various
orders of complexity - is history really just about creating global
state socialism? (and in what form, does anyone honestly know?) Lyotard
seems more honest about these matters to me. 

There is also the question of metanarratives at the practical level of
strategy and tactics. Here it is necessary to ask - what is the
metanarrative of resistance that can currently be sustained? I still
can't see any unified international proletarian labor movement, rather a
patchwork of resistances, operating complexly alongside multiple
plateaus.  

I personally would like to see a greater unity and strength within these
resistance movements, but I don't think postmodernism should be blamed
simply because the critical watchman pointed out to us the complexity of
what currently confronts us.  

This is what needs to be more deeply understood as nomads halt their
transgressive caravans, pitch their tents, and wait for the encroaching
night to fall.

eric