Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 12:08:38 -0700
Sender: pen-l@ecst.csuchico.edu
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3@columbia.edu>
Subject: Postmodernism and idealism
 
On Fri, May 6  1994, Jim Devine wrote that "Some Marxists -- the gulag
builders -- thought that what the left should do is imitate this totalizing
project but in a "socialist" way, specifically in order to
"develop" or "modernize" poor countries such as Russia."
 
                       ***************
It's a mistake to blame the gulags on Marx.  Ideas, whether they're
'totalizing' or not don't cause war, colonialism or police terror.
Social and economic crisis does.
 
By the same token, just because both Nietzsche and Hitler extolled
'splendid blond beasts' and Wagnerian operas, there's no point in
trying to extrapolate Nazism from the Genealogy of Morals.
 
Decades ago when I was an undergraduate, Daniel Bell, Hannah
Arendt and Karl Popper were all the rage.  They all had the same
methodology: blame the horrors of the 20th century on post-
Hegelian philosophy.  The postmodernists, especially Lyotard, are
in many ways simply recycling those ideas.
 
There's an enormous temptation to try to understand the world in
idealistic terms.  This method goes all the way back to Plato and
held sway until Marx who put ideology in its proper place.  The
problem with many of those who follow in Marx's tradition is
their inability to think creatively and to update their thinking in
line with changes in the real world.  The fact that self-described
Marxists missed the boat on environmentalism, feminism, etc. is
not an indictment of Marx's method but simply reflects the tendency of
some to view his writings as dogma, in the way that the Jesuits or
Talmudists interpret scripture.