Tag Archives: Dr. Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International (2017) by Dr. Mark Leier
Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Imperialism, Civic Engagement (Activism), Dr. Karl Marx (1818-1883), History, History of Economic Theory, Political Economy, Political Science
Against the Grain, C.S. Soong, Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International (2017), Dr. Karl Marx (1818-1883), Dr. Mark Leier, KPFA, Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814-1876), Pacifica Radio Network, Simon Fraser University (British Columbia), transcript
LUMPENPROLETARIAT—One of the biggest schisms on the left of the political spectrum has manifested itself over the last century or more between two broad groupings—namely, anarchists and socialists. The anarchists see no validity (moral or otherwise) in the authority of the state form. Conversely, the socialists have proven to be more optimistic about the possibilities for progressive or radical reforms within the state form. Dr. Mark Leier, a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, has just published a new pamphlet about this long-running division on the left, taking Dr. Karl Marx and Mr. Mikhail Bakunin as figureheads for these two political tendencies on the left. Indeed, in their time (late 19th century), Marx and Bakunin were (as today) two of the most well-known figures on the left. And this schism eventually shattered the First International (or the International Workingmen's Association), the first international attempt to unite the left against capitalist exploitation of the world's working classes.
On today's edition of free speech radio's Against the Grain, host C.S. Soong spoke with Dr. Leier about the new pamphlet entitled "Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International". This is a fascinating interview, which provides us with useful background on Marx, Bakunin, the First International, and one of the deepest and most enduring divisions on the left. Dr. Leier compared and contrasted the two hugely influential leftists. And, in so doing, Dr. Leier's research seemed to suggest (reading pending) that the limitations of their respective temperaments definitely hindered their ability (and, by extension, the ability of their respective followings) to unite an effective and sustainable broad-based anti-capitalist left movement resistance.
[Transcript draft by Messina for Against the Grain and Lumpenproletariat.]
AGAINST THE GRAIN—[5 JUL 2017] "Today on Against the Grain, the battle waged between Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin within the First International was, according to historian Mark Leier, some of the nastiest sectarian fighting we have seen on the left. I'm C.S.
"Mark Leier discusses the lives and ideas of Marx and Bakunin, and argues that the two men had more similarities than is commonly believed—coming right up."
[Against the Grain theme music continues]
"And this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio. I'm C.S. Soong.
"Two leading radicals—Karl Marx and anarchist Mikhail Bakunin—famously clashed in the 1860s. They bickered and fought and heaped invective on each other. And, as a consequence, the International Workingmen's Association, known as the First International, split in two in 1872. Hostility and tension between socialists and anarchists continue to this day. And Mark Leier, for one, wonders whether it could have been different. (c. 1:36)
"Leier a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University has compared the background and ideas of Marx and Bakunin and has found many similarities, similarities ignored by or unknown to many who've written about or analysed the momentous breakup of the First International. Leier has also analysed the temperaments of these two men for clues into why they disliked and distrusted each other so much. Leier, who wrote a biography called Bakunin: The Creative Passion, has come out with a new pamphlet about Marx and Bakunin. The pamphlet's title is 'Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International'.
"When Mark Leier joined me from British Columbia, I asked him what the First International was." (c. 2:23)
DR. MARK LEIER: "The First International was an attempt of a number of left-wing and communist and working class and anarchist political groups to come together to create the organisation, that would help workers across the world build a new kind of solidarity. It was started in 1864. And its first meeting was in London. And its first congress, although they had delegates mostly in Europe, it was helped a year later in Geneva."
C.S. SOONG: "And what were the roles of Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin within the First International?"
DR. MARK LEIER: "The two organisers and radicals represented different wings and different ideas about how the socialist revolution was going to come about. I think the differences have really been overstated.
"But what we see in the First International is a deep feud between Bakunin and his followers ,and the Proudhon followers that were allied with him with a small group of Marxists in there. (3:37)
"And they used—as anyone, who's been at a co-op meeting or a left-wing meeting or a [] council meeting or a departmental meeting of some kind knows how these things can develop. And they can become very nasty long after everyone has forgotten what the original battles were all about.
"So, one of the things, that happened was the two different sides used some small differences on small matters to become trigger points to engage in a kind of schismatic in-fighting." (c. 4:04)
C.S. SOONG: "And this in-fighting climaxed with a final split between the two men, between their two factions at the Hague Congress of the First International in 1872. Tell us what happened there."
DR. MARK LEIER: "Yeah. You know; again, it was very typical of the kinds of things. But, basically, two sides lined up and held various votes on matters. And voting goes back and forth. And, finally, however, Marx and his allies win a couple of crucial votes. And they use that as a way to kick out Bakunin and the Bakuninists.
"And they, then, moved the International's headquarters to New York City, so virtually nobody could get to the next congress. And the whole thing pretty much wraps up by 1876.
"So, the bitter irony for the left is this attempt to forge a new solidarity, greater unity dissolves into factional fights, into fueding. One side takes its marbles and goes home.
"The anarchists do create another International shortly after that, which continues for some years. And, of course, in the 1880s there was a revival of something called the Second International, which was very much an International of the social democratic party. It does not have the same broad range of left-wing members and ideas in it." (c. 5:37)
C.S. SOONG: "So, in this pamphlet you have written for PM Press—it's called 'Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the International'—you actually go back in time. You look at the upbringings and the years of youth and young adulthood of, both, Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, Michael Bakunin. And it's very revealing. And it tells me, at least, as one reader of the pamphlet, a lot about who these men were, where they came from, and how, in some ways, similar they were. And that's part of your point—isn't it?—that these two men were more similar than one might think based on everything we've heard about the antagonism between them. (c. 6:27)
"So, let's start with Bakunin. You write that Bakunin's family was part of the Russian nobility. Does that mean, Mark, that his family was rich, was part of the idle rich?"
DR. MARK LEIER: "No, it doesn't. One of the things, that's happened in this long feud between anarchists and Marxists between 1864 and the present is that both sides are quick to point out the other as being absolutely unrepresentative of any kind of working class or real left wing movement by saying, in this case, that Bakunin was not a worker, but was an aristocrat. And it is true. But his family was not in the circles of the czar. His estate was pretty far from Moscow and from St. Petersburg. And it did not mean what we tend to think of when we think of aristocrats. You know; we think of Queen Victoria, when we think of the czar. That's not what life was like.
"The family did control the lives of about two thousand serfs. But that did not confer huge wealth. This was a family, that had more many than peasants—absolutely—but had to pay strict attention to housekeeping, had to pay strict attention to the books in order to keep going. When you look at the letters from Bakunin's father, it's filled with—you know; we're not sure if we're gonna make it this month. We're really having a difficult time making ends meet. It did mean that they had the luxury of educating the children. And, so, Michael and his sisters and his brothers got a very good education by tutors, that were brought into the home. They were given the training appropriate for gentlemen and ladies. But it was a training, that was very much instrumental in the sense that you prepare the men to step into careers in the army or as professionals or, perhaps, as people able to manage the estate and to provide the sisters of Michael Bakunin with the graces and skills and personal characteristics, that would allow them to make good marriages. (c. 8:38)
"This is not a family rolling in wealth, although it was certainly enough to send Bakunin off to school where he went to a military academy and took up service in the czar's army. But he was not one of the idle rich in that sense." (c. 8:54)
C.S. SOONG: "So, what about Karl Marx's parents? Obviously, he grew up in Germany, not in Russia. Where did his parents fall within the ranks of German society? And how important was education in Marx's family, you know, when he was a kid?"
DR. MARK LEIER: "Marx's family was very similar to Bakunin's. They were not aristocrats. But his father was a lawyer. He had vineyards, that he ran. So, he had enough wealth to educate the children, enough social status, that Marx's father would meet with local politicians and had some interest and some political sway, as did Bakunin's father, but not enough to guarantee careers, not enough to allow them to stop working and simply live off the income produced by workers. That was not their situation at all. (c. 9:49)
"What is interesting to me is that both sides have looked at the parents of Bakunin and of Marx to say: We can dismiss either of them, depending on your side, as being petit bourgeois elements. That cuts both ways. And it is easy for both sides to overestimate the class position of Bakunin and Marx. So, I wanted to pay attention to that to say that they were not unlike rebels, that we see all over the place. If you look at the make up, for example, of the Students for a Democratic Society [SDS], in their very title, they were students. They had some access to education. The Weather Underground, very similar. It's not true of all organisations, of course. But it's not a surprise that many people of the left had, at least, some exposure to education. It's pretty difficult to work all day and, then, go home and become an expert in all the arcane matters of the political economy, that we need to think about on the left." (c. 10:51)
C.S. SOONG: "Mark Leier is his name. He is a Professor in this History Department at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. And he's author of 'Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International'. And he's also the author of a biography of Bakunin, Michael Bakunin. I'm C.S. [Soong]. And this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.
"So, Bakunin, like Marx, was the oldest of the male children in his family. And you said that he was sent to a—or he went to a military academy. So, I understand that demands were placed on young Michael. But he would develop into some type of military officer. How did he do in school at that academy?"
DR. MARK LEIER: "Well, he was not a great student. His passion for rebellion surfaced early, though not in episodes of organising resistance among his fellow cadets, but in that kind of passive-aggressive behaviour, that is often how people, who don't have much power, respond. He was, like many students, slow at turning in his assignments. He didn't do very well on many of his exams. He was considered to be very bright. And, if only he would apply himself, the theory went, he would do very well at that.
"The point of going to military academy was not just to become a soldier, but enlist in the army, with any luck, to have a good war, if such a thing is possible. And it certainly was for officers; it meant escaping and acquitting yourself with some honour, so that you would be rewarded by the system for playing that important role in it. (c. 12:40)
"So, the idea was not to become a career officer, but to be exposed to the circles of power through your service and in that way, actually, add to the family income. But it didn't work out.
"He did some military service, but finally just went AWOL. He just left. And his family, later, then, had to scramble and say: Well, he was sick. He wasn't well. That's why he's here. He had something of a breakdown. That wasn't the case. He was sick to death of the military life, sick to death of the discipline, the pettiness of it. In that sense, we can look to some of his personality, leading to his ideas about anarchism, about freedom, and the lack of discipline imposed imposed from above."
C.S. SOONG: "And Marx, as I understand, he was expected, or at least his parents hoped that he would engage in the study of law. He went to the University of Bonn in Germany, where he studied law. How did that go?" (c. 13:42)
DR. MARK LEIER: "Not so well. He was more interested in writing poetry and in drinking an in dueling. You know? It's the 19th century equivalent of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. And so was Bakunin, of course.
"Both of them—lots of their early correspondence, letters back home saying: Trying really hard. Working really hard. I could just do better if you send me more money."
C.S. SOONG: "[chuckles]"
DR. MARK LEIER: "It didn't fool anybody. Both fathers respond: We sent you a pile of money. Most people could live for a year or two. You seem to have burned through it all for months. Maybe you should apply yourself more carefully.
"So, these are some of the parallels, at an early age, between the two men. And I stress the parallels because our sense of them, based only on the feuds of the First International, is that they must have been so very different. They must have been very different approaches to political and economic questions. And they really don't. I think they have much more in common, which is not surprising, given they had similar backgrounds.
"And the similarities in their upbringings, in their educations, and in their early moves, first, into Hegelian philosophy, as a way to make sense of the world, and, then, into working class politics and left-wing politics—so very similar, that I had to stop and say: What exactly was the huge difference between them? Why couldn't they get along? Why couldn't they become—you know—the hottest duo in the pamphleteering world, 'til, say, Gilbert and Sullivan?"
DR. MARK LEIER: "Or some other famous team. You know? [chuckles]"
C.S. SOONG: "G.W.F. Hegel, an immensely influential philosopher, who, as you began to suggest, influenced Bakunin and Marx and so many other people of their generation and subsequent generations. Which ideas of Hegel's most appealed to Marx and to Bakunin?" (c. 15:49)
C.S. SOONG: "I think, to both of them, what was so appealing about Hegel is he presented for the first time the idea that change, not stasis and stability, was the human condition.
"If you think about the time, in which Hegel is writing, a time when Europe is changing so drastically, when the economies are in the middle of that shift from hundreds of years of feudalism to this new industrial capitalism that changes everywhere.
"That doesn't sit very well, if you are a king and want to hold [power] with the divine right of kings, that says: You're family has been on the throne forever and should be on the throne forever. So, Hegel, by suggesting it was change, that marked human history opened up a whole new world.
[Image of book cover by source used via fair use rationale for educational purposes.]
[7 JUL 2017]
[Last modified at 14:59 PDT on 15 JUL 2017]
Reason After Its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory (2016) by Dr. Martin Jay, Department of History, UC Berkeley
24 Tue Jan 2017
Posted by ztnh in Anti-Totalitarianism, Critical Theory, Philosophy
Against the Grain, C.S. Soong, dialectic of enlightenment, Dr. Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz (1646–1716), Dr. Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979), Dr. Karl Marx (1818-1883), Dr. Martin E. Jay (b. 1944), Dr. Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), Dr. Max Weber (1864-1920), Frankfurt School, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929), KPFA, Pacifica Radio Network, theodicy, transcript, Univerity of Wisconsin Press, University of California-Berkeley
LUMPENPROLETARIAT—Of all the philosophical strands touching upon political economy, which we might encounter at the university level, apart from Marxian economics and Marxian philosophy, one of the most interesting with respect to sociopolitical (or socioeconomic) emancipation is the Frankfurt School of social theory. [1] Back at the heterodox economics department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) a few years ago, at least one friend always championed the Frankfurt School and other neo-Marxists. [2] As I studied undergrad economics at UMKC, with an emphasis on Marxian economics and modern monetary theory (MMT), and sought to find their intersectionality or synthesis, my radical friend was praising the virtues of Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer, and other theorists associated with the Frankfurt School. Perhaps, we agreed that Dr. Karl Marx has contributed the most accurate description of the mechanics of capital, its nature, form, and dynamics, its circuital expansion. But the Frankfurt School has presented compelling critiques of the various Marxian schools of thought, which have succeeded Marx. Certainly, as Marxian scholar Dr. David Harvey reminds us:
I teach Marx. And a question I always ask is: What can we learn from Marx? And what do we have to do for ourselves? And I think that that's a very important question to ask because very frequently, in the past, people have read their Marx and then sort of, I don't know, plunked reality into it and, then, said: Ah! Here's the answer! I don't think you can do that. I think there's only a limited set of things we can learn from Marx.
Paradoxically, we can't really learn that much about socialism or communism or the future from Marx. We can learn a great deal about how capital works.
Marx will always be important for understanding capital, what it is and how it works. But, as Dr. Harvey reminds us, and critical theory shows us, we must constantly grapple with the reality of capitalist relations in our own time and place. So, it was a great joy to find today that free speech radio's Against the Grain was featuring a discussion with Professor Martin Jay (Department of History, University of California-Berkeley) about his book, Reason after its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory. The title evokes Max Horkheimer's important classic, The Eclipse of Reason (1947), a foundational text within critical theory. Critical theory extends many of the important lines of theoretical inquiry elaborated by Dr. Marx and others since, who have sought to expand and build upon earlier work. There is always so much for us to read. But Professor Jay's book On Late Critical Theory is an important read, which provides us with a philosophical study of reason and the foundations of intellectual inquiry. And, of course, critical theory is required reading for all self-respecting intellectuals (assuming that's not a contradiction in terms).
This is a fascinating discussion, which touches upon the ideas of Adorno and Habermas, of course, but also those of Marx, Weber, Hegel, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and others, including topics ranging from Horkheimer's views on art and aesthetics to argumentation; Marcuse's structural transformation of the public sphere, valuing evidence and its centrality to a responsible press; Habermas' view of communicative rationality; and persuasion. Listen (and/or download) here. [3]
AGAINST THE GRAIN—[24 JAN 2017] [SF Bay Area Flamenco Festival announcement] [KPFA station identification]
[Against the Grain theme music]
"Today on Against the Grain, reasoning may be something we do. But reason is an idea, whose content and fate have been debated and discussed over the course of two millennia. I'm C.S. Soong. U.C. Berkeley historian Martin Jay joins me to discuss his new book, Reason after its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory, after these news headlines." (c. 1:15)
[KPFA News Headlines (read by Christina Aanestad) omitted by scribe] (c. 5:35)
"From the studios of KPFA in Berkeley, California, this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio. My name is C.S. Soong.
"Many have been tempted to think, in times of relative peace and prosperity, that the world is moving toward ever greater rationality, that Reason, with a capital 'R', is in the process of becoming realised. Notions like that take a hit when times turn dark, when, for example, fascism rears its ugly head. And, then, people wonder: What's happened to reason? What's happened to rational thinking? And: How did this—you might call it—crisis of reason, how did it arise? And what can we do about it?
"A collection of thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School, which was established in Germany in the 1920s and, then, relocated to the U.S. because of Nazism, a number of Frankfurt School thinkers grappled with what they saw as a kind of crisis of reason, with different thinkers taking different approaches to the question and coming up with different ways to address it. (c. 6:53)
"The ideas of two Frankfurt philosophers, Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas, are among the many ideas investigated in a new book by Martin Jay, a book called Reason after its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory. In the book, Martin Jay, a history professor at UC Berkeley, described how Adorno looked to aesthetics for answers. (c. 7:17)
"For Adorno, writes Jay, art was not the betrayer of reason, but rather its salvation.
"Jay also examines the very different approach taken by Habermas, a second-generation theorist of the Frankfurt School. Jürgen Habermas, in his effort to restore a robust notion of reason, pointed to a rationality rooted in the give and take of communication, of giving reasons and persuading through logical arguments and listening to the arguments of others.
"When Martin Jay joined me in-studio to discuss Reason after its Eclipse, I began by asking what concept of reason he was claiming, or observing, had been eclipsed." (c. 8:00)
DR. MARTIN JAY: "This an impossible question to answer. And, in fact, I address precisely the impossibility in the introduction [to my book] to the extent that the defining of a concept, the limitational concept, the belief that you can create a single unilocal meaning of a concept is precisely what intellectual history, um, tries to avoid. What intellectual history is most interested, I think, in doing is tracing the sometimes adventitious, sometimes meaningful—let's call it—pilgrimage of a word or a term or a constellation of terms over a long period of time.
"So, reason—not only in English, but in all the various other languages going all the way back to the Greek logos, and Italian [ratio], and a lot in between, reason's had many, many different meanings over time.
"So, what the book tried to do is to be fair to the variety of meanings and not privilege one as the essential meaning. Having said that, the Frankfurt School, itself—the people about whom I'm writing about in this book—did have an implicit normative notion of reason, which was, in their eyes, eclipsed in the modern world in favour of a debased version, which they saw as, essentially, instrumental. (c. 9:26)
"So, even though I'm being a little reluctant to give you a definition, they, I think, implicitly, held on to a normative notion.
"Now, one of the arguments of the book is that they never fully, at least not in the first generation of critical theorists, never fully defended a viable notion of what that alternative to instrumental reason was. They derived somewhat from Hegel, some from Kant, some from other metaphysical sources, maybe even theological sources, sometimes psychoanalytic sources, but there was never an absolutely coherent version. (c. 9:29)
"So, the second generation of critical theorists, most notably Jürgen Habermas, had to provide a kind of paradigm shift, in which a different version of rationality became his normative standard against which instrumental reason was measured. And, so, the book tries to tell the story, precisely, of that shift from the first to the second generation, with Habermas' alternative—communicative rationality—being the new norm." (c. 10:27)
C.S. SOONG: "And, by instrumental reason, you mean reason used as a means to some end?"
DR. MARTIN JAY: "Uh, Max Weber was the first, really, to point this out, that there was a substantive notion of reason, one which emphasised values, one which emphasised ultimate, we might say, concerns, ethical as well as cognitive. That, on one hand, and other types of reason, formal, and, most importantly for our purposes, instrumental, which emphasised the rationality of finding means, finding instruments to achieve ends, which are themselves arbitrarily and contingently given. (c. 11:05)
"So, instrumental rationality was, basically, the rationality of a kind of efficiency, a kind of willingness to suspend a deeper question of why you're doing something. So, for example, you might have, during wartime, a situation, a goal of winning a battle, of winning a war, and you might use the most efficacious way of doing that, which would, perhaps, be to, uh, wipe out the population, civilian as well as military, against whom you were fighting. But this doesn't, of course, raise the difficult, ethical question of: Who should, in fact, be seen as the enemy? Who should not? For what reason is the war being fought? Is it possible to minimise collateral damage? And all the other things, that are ethical questions.
"So, instrumental reason, essentially, brackets the ends, sees them as arbitrary and irrational, and reduces reason to merely its means-ends possibility. (c. 12:01)
C.S. SOONG: "Now, in the eyes of the Frankfurt School, the first generation, is there a way to generalise about what they saw instrumental reasoning coming out of, in other words, what they saw instrumental reason replacing? What was the prior version of reason, that maybe they approved of, or maybe they felt was more benign than instrumental reason?"
DR. MARTIN JAY: "The first generation, basically, held on to a notion of what might be called an emphatic or a metaphysical notion of reason, which was a notion prior to the reduction of philosophy to science and the triumph of modern technology, one which emphasised the role, that reason played in creating a nexus, we might say, of means and ends, in which the ends were themselves rationally chosen.
"Now, what makes it particularly difficult to figure out exactly where this notion of objective and non-instrumental reason can be located is that there was a metaphysical residue, which said that somehow it existed in history, it existed out there, it existed in social relations, rather than, uh, human interaction, understood as the process of giving reasons, or the process of reasoning. So that, there was what might be called an inherent reason in the world, which was a residue of a sort of metaphysical idea that the world, itself, was the creation of a rational god, could—even though we may not fully understand it—could be, at the deepest level, inherently rational. (c. 13:37)
"Now, there are two versions of this, we might say. One is what's called a conservative version: The world is, with all its apparent, let's say, surface or, let's say, contingent irrationalities, on the deepest level, is reasonable, is rational, is somehow meaningful. And, one might argue, this was best expressed in the work of the 17th-century philosopher Leibniz, who contended that there was a principle of sufficient reason underlying all the happenings, that occurred, even those, that seemed most basically irrational or unethical. So, he came up with theodicy, which said that partial evils were part of a general good. This is one version.
"The second version, we might call it, more or less Hegelian and, certainly, Marxist, was that reason exists, but not yet in a rational form, that the world is potentially rational. The world has the tendency to become rational. The world is, in complicated ways, moving through an historical process, which has as its goal the realisation in the institutions and practices of humankind a version of reason. (c. 14:43)
"But, here, too, it happens, if not automatically, at least on a level, that is almost like providence, in the religious sense, that happens behind the backs and even against the wills of individuals. And this was a version, that Marxism emphasised as an automatic process of, you know, basically, social revolution-producing outcomes, that would be beneficial to humankind.
"So, the Frankfurt School, to some extent depended on this latter version, but, basically, became disillusioned with the Marxist notion that this was inherently happening in a meta-narrative of historical progress, which left them with a dilemma because, if reason was not already in the world and reason was not, in a way, the talus of the world inevitably happening in a future, then it left it, in a way, hanging in the air. There was no, what you might call, human agent or a social agent bringing about reason. It had to be done by will. It had to be done by practice. It was not yet in place. And there was a kind of, we might say, loss of faith in the possibility of rationality finally being achieved.
"So, to some extent, the Frankfurt School fell back on a rather desperate utopianism, in which, although the present was growing increasingly problematic—and remember they were writing, many of them, during the period of fascism—and the enlightenment, instead of being a progressive, upwardly mobile, we might say, phenomenon, was dialectically going also in a negative direction. This is the idea of dialectic of enlightenment.
"They were left with, really, no hope beyond a kind of—we might call it—faith and prefigurative ciphers of utopian, maybe, art, maybe in other aspects of human imagination, but certainly not sufficient to create much confidence that reason would be achieved in the near or even in the far future." (c. 16:39)
C.S. SOONG: "So, you focus part of the book on what Max Horkheimer, a prominent, a leading member of the Frankfurt School, thought about reason and what had happened to it, what the future might bring. What did Horkheimer contend is the disease of reason?"
DR. MARTIN JAY: "Well, this is a very troubling question because, if you have a notion that there was once a robust positive—let's call it—objective or emphatic notion of reason, which is then replaced by a diminished instrumental version, then, it's a fairly simple narrative of decline. If your replace that with the notion that, from the very beginning, from the origins of human logos, of human use of reason, to survive in a hostile world there's always already a kind of negative fatality, in which reason is used for self-preservation. And self-preservation involves, basically, dominating a hostile environment, which creates a kind of technological instrumentality, which becomes inherently anti-human and certainly hostile to nature in its more benign forms. (c. 17:49) [snip] "
[additional notes/transcription pending]
Reason After Its Eclipse: A Conversation With Martin Jay, posted to Vimeo
"The Dictator Decides" (2016), posted on YouTube by Pet Shop Boys on 1 APR 2016.
"Pazzo!" (2016), posted on YouTube by Pet Shop Boys on 1 APR 2016.
[1] About the Frankfurt School of social theory:
The Frankfurt School (German: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and philosophy associated in part with the Institute for Social Research at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Founded during the interwar period, the School consisted of dissidents who felt at home neither in the existent capitalist, fascist, nor communist systems that had formed at the time. Many of these theorists believed that traditional theory could not adequately explain the turbulent and unexpected development of capitalist societies in the twentieth century. Critical of both capitalism and Soviet socialism, their writings pointed to the possibility of an alternative path to social development.[1]
Although sometimes only loosely affiliated, Frankfurt School theorists spoke with a common paradigm in mind; they shared the Marxist Hegelian premises and were preoccupied with similar questions.[2] To fill in the perceived omissions of classical Marxism, they sought to draw answers from other schools of thought, hence using the insights of antipositivist sociology, psychoanalysis, existential philosophy, and other disciplines.[3] The school's main figures sought to learn from and synthesize the works of such varied thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Weber, and Lukács.[4]
Following Marx, they were concerned with the conditions that allow for social change and the establishment of rational institutions.[5] Their emphasis on the "critical" component of theory was derived significantly from their attempt to overcome the limits of positivism, materialism, and determinism by returning to Kant's critical philosophy and its successors in German idealism, principally Hegel's philosophy, with its emphasis on dialectic and contradiction as inherent properties of human reality.
Since the 1960s, Frankfurt School critical theory has increasingly been guided by Jürgen Habermas's work on communicative reason, linguistic intersubjectivity and what Habermas calls "the philosophical discourse of modernity".[6] Critical theorists such as Raymond Geuss and Nikolas Kompridis have voiced opposition to Habermas, claiming that he has undermined the aspirations for social change that originally gave purpose to critical theory's various projects—for example the problem of what reason should mean, the analysis and enlargement of "conditions of possibility" for social emancipation, and the critique of modern capitalism.[7]
[2] About neo-Marxism:
Neo-Marxism is a loose term for various twentieth-century approaches that amend or extend Marxism and Marxist theory, usually by incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions, such as critical theory, psychoanalysis, or existentialism (in the case of Sartre).
Erik Olin Wright's theory of contradictory class locations, which incorporates Weberian sociology, critical criminology, and anarchism, is an example of the syncretism in neo-Marxist theory.[1] As with many uses of the prefix neo-, many theorists and groups designated as neo-Marxist have attempted to supplement the perceived deficiencies of orthodox Marxism or dialectical materialism. Many prominent neo-Marxists, such as Herbert Marcuse and other members of the Frankfurt School, were sociologists and psychologists.
Neo-Marxism comes under the broader framework of the New Left. In a sociological sense, neo-Marxism adds Max Weber's broader understanding of social inequality, such as status and power, to Marxist philosophy. Strains of neo-Marxism include: critical theory, analytical Marxism and French structural Marxism.
The concept arose as a way to explain questions which were not explained in Karl Marx's works. There are many different "branches" of Neo-Marxism often not in agreement with each other and their theories.
[3] Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving: Against the Grain, this one-hour broadcast hosted by C.S. Soong, Tuesday, 24 JAN 2017, 12:00 PST.
Broadcast summary at kfpa.org (accessed 24 JAN 2017):
What happens when "reason" is in decline, when the world appears to be moving in the direction of irrationality and political pathology? Martin Jay discusses how two Frankfurt School thinkers, Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas, tried to salvage a critical version of reason. Whereas Adorno looked to art and aesthetics, Habermas appealed to practices of interpersonal communication and argumentation.
Martin Jay, Reason after Its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory University of Wisconsin Press, 2016
A note on Reason after its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory by University of Wisconsin Press:
George L. Mosse Series in Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History
Steven E. Aschheim, Stanley G. Payne, Mary Louise Roberts, and David J. Sorkin, Series Editors
"Martin Jay is one of the most respected intellectual historians now working, and any book by him is an important event. His subject here could hardly be bigger: the idea of reason in Western thought over two millennia."
—Michael Rosen, Harvard University
Martin Jay tackles a question as old as Plato and still pressing today: what is reason, and what roles does and should it have in human endeavor? Applying the tools of intellectual history, he examines the overlapping, but not fully compatible, meanings that have accrued to the term "reason" over two millennia, homing in on moments of crisis, critique, and defense of reason.
After surveying Western ideas of reason from the ancient Greeks through Kant, Hegel, and Marx, Jay engages at length with the ways leading theorists of the Frankfurt School—Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno, and most extensively Habermas—sought to salvage a viable concept of reason after its apparent eclipse. They despaired, in particular, over the decay in the modern world of reason into mere instrumental rationality. When reason becomes a technical tool of calculation separated from the values and norms central to daily life, then choices become grounded not in careful thought but in emotion and will—a mode of thinking embraced by fascist movements in the twentieth century.
Is there a more robust idea of reason that can be defended as at once a philosophical concept, a ground of critique, and a norm for human emancipation? Jay explores at length the communicative rationality advocated by Habermas and considers the range of arguments, both pro and con, that have greeted his work.
A brief bio of Dr. Martin Jay by University of Wisconsin Press:
Martin Jay is the Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of fourteen previous books, including The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–50, which has been translated into thirteen languages; Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas; Adorno; Permanent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to America; Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth- Century French Thought; Songs of Experience: Modern European and American Variations on a Universal Theme; and The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics.