A Pauper's Broth ...

 “Marxism versus PostModernism,” by D. Morley / H. Alizadegh, In Defense of Marxism, #34

Many left groups have stopped or paused or extended publishing paper newspapers and journals.  At May Day Books we’ve seen Socialist Action, the Communist Party, Spartacist, International Socialist Organization and Freedom Road Socialist Organization cease or pause publication recently.  There might be others. In prior times the Socialist Labor Party newspaper and one put out by the Revolutionary Communist Party, as well as others, ceased.  These are not good times for paper revolutionary or left-wing papers and journals, which are expensive and hard to sell, with a good replacement – the internet.  Though each organization maintains a presence on the internet, it is a different kind of presence.  Organizations who have no hard-copies cannot go to demonstrations and promote their complete views, which becomes another kind of drawback.

Which Staircase Will You Take?

One paper publication that has not stopped is put out by the International Marxist Tendency, with the theoretical quarterly IDoM.  This issue has a good introductory article on the fallacies of post-modernism, which is the dominant view in much of ‘left-wing’ academe.  While many activists might think being overly-concerned with theory is an abdication of class struggle, it is really class struggle in another arena.  Marxists like Lenin spent time refuting forms of idealism in “Materialism and Empiro-Criticism,” his “Philosophical Notebooks” and a study of Hegel’s “Science of Logic” - as did Marx, Engels and others. This is partly why we run a bookstore!

At any rate Morley/Alizadegh confront the theoretical work of a gamut of post-modernists – Foucault, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari, Lyotard, Butler, Derrida, Irigaray - from a Marxist point of view. These names should be familiar to anyone who reads academic ‘critical thought’ and even this Blog.  This is not to say that none of these people have ever come up with a good insight.  But in essence the Marxist critique of post-modernism is that it is a modern form of idealism, ideologically propping up the present capitalist system by making out that reality does not exist, ‘all views are equal’ and that there is no ‘metanarrative’ about anything.  In a way it is a form of incomprehensible solipsistic nihilism.  Sorry for that mouthful but it’s appropriate.  Engels called something like this “a pauper’s broth of eclecticism.”

The authors focus on the purposely obscure and conflicted language used by post-modernists; their exclusive focus on words; their attitude against science, which ties in with their opposition to Marxism; their elevation of individual subjectivity; their hostility to any form of progress; their disbelief that any form of truth is available; their opposition to looking at the world through a materialist method, especially economics. 

This article is an excellent, brief look at these thinkers, using their own words to reveal what they are really about.  In a way the irrationalism of anti-mask, anti-vaccine libertarianism we see now is an excretion of post-modernism.  Science means nothing - reason, logic, material reality, economics – all nonsense.  Science and reality are just propositions!  Even baseless conspiracy theories like QAnon fit into this narrative. In Texas a law recently passed mandates that 'all' opposing views must be taught, including those that dispute the Holocaust and probably slavery, a flat earth, evolution, blah, blah, blah.  I.E. there is no actual truth anywhere, just opinions.  At this point, our heroic libertarians even seem to think stopping at traffic lights and other traffic laws are optional!  This can be extended to many, many topics, where the ‘emotional reality’ of something trumps the actual one.  I.E. magical thinking, high-brow and ‘low-brow,’ are the products of post-modernism.  They even have a concoction called 'post-post modernism.'  Don't get me started...     

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 14 year archive:  “Fashionable Nonsense,” “From the Factory to the Metropolis,” “Capitalist Realism,” “Art is Dead,” “The Marxist Theory of Art,” “Marxism and the Oppression of Women,” “Watchmen,” “Spiritual Snake Oil,” “Reason in Revolt,” “Astrology – Fraud or Superstition” or the phrase “Big Bang.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

September 29, 2021