File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1995/95-02-28.000, message 279


Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 15:14:34 +0500
From: Andy Daitsman <adaitsma-AT-mail.cc.trincoll.edu>
Subject: Po-Mo critiques


Gotta confess that I've temporarily misplaced my copy of Bhaskar, so the 
critique of the four-stage dialectic will have to wait awhile...

In the meantime, though, I've been doing some other reading and I came 
across the following that I wanted to drop on you folks for comment.  
Without further ado:

"A central promise of Enlightenment and Western modernity is that conflicts 
between knowledge and power can be overcome by grounding claims to and the 
exercise of authority in reason.  Reason both represents and embodies truth. 
 It partakes of universality in two additional ways: it operates identically 
in each subject and it can grasp laws that are objectively true; that is, 
are equally knowable and binding on every person.  This set of beliefs 
generates one of the foundational antinomies in Enlightenment 
thinking--superstition/domination versus knowledge/freedom (emancipation).

"Knowledge in this scheme has a curious double character.  It can be 
simultaneously neutral and socially beneficial (powerful).  The 
Enlightenment hope is that utilizing truthful knowledge in the service of 
legitimate power will assure both freedom and progress.  This will occur 
only if knowledge is grounded in and warranted by a universal reason, not 
particular "interests."  The accumulation of more knowledge (the getting of 
more truth) results simultaneously in an increase in objectivity 
(neutrality) and in progess.  To the extent that power/authority is grounded 
in this expanding knowledge it too is progressive, that is, it becomes more 
rational and expands the freedom and self-actualization of its subjects who 
naturally conform their reason to its (and their) laws.  Power can be 
innocently or purely emancipatory; "rational" power can be other than and 
not productive of new forms of domination.  Such power can be neutral (it 
cannot hurt anyone) and transparent in its exercise and effects.  Hence it 
is not really power at all, especially when it works by/through such neutral 
mediums as the law.

".... Liberal political theorists from John Locke to John Rawls attempt to 
distinguish legitimate authority from domination by listening for and 
recording Reason's voice.  They claim they are articulating a set of rules 
or beliefs in Reason's own language.  In order to hear Reason's language a 
rite of purification must be undergone (imagining a "state of nature" or 
drawing the "veil of ignorance" around oneself) to strip away the merely 
contingent or historical.  The rights or rules that are truly Reason's own 
and hence binding on all will then re-present themselves.  Conformity to 
these (neutral) laws by the state and its subjects guarantees the 
rationality, justice, and freedom of both.

"Marxists have their own variant of this dream.  Their "objective" ground 
tends to be History rather than Reason, although in their account History 
itself is ultimately rational, purposive, unitary, law governed, and 
progressive.  In the Marxist view, events in history do not occur randomly; 
they are connected by and through an underlying, meaningful, and rational 
structure comprehensible by reason/science.  The pregiven purpose of history 
is the perfection of humans (especially through labor) and the 
ever-more-complete realization of their capacities and projects.  Marxist 
theory and its articulator (the Party, the working class, the engaged 
intellectual) have a privileged relation to History.  They speak but do not 
construct its "laws" and legitimate their actions by invoking its name.  
Since History, like Reason, has an essentially teleological and homogeneous 
content, we can look forward to its "end."  Then all sources of irresolvable 
conflicts or contradictions will disappear and authority will take the form 
of the administration of things rather than the domination of persons.  
Power will be innocent and human actions, in cornformity with our highest 
and most emancipatory potentials."

Jane Flax, "The End of Innocence," in Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott, eds., 
_Feminists Theorize the Political_ (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 447-449.

All of which raises a couple of questions.  First, does Flax accurately 
situate Marxism within the Enlightenment tradition?  (It seems to me that 
she does.)  And second, how can "Marxism" respond to this critique, and 
remain Marxist?

It's the second one that I have trouble answering...

Andy



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