RE: Modernism and Its Endless Returns to the Source , was Re: ...

["Justin Schwartz" <jkschw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Lowy explores the category of romantic anticapitalism in his book on
Lukacs. He suggests, perhaps plausibly, that this is a strain in Marx.
Consider how he depicts the association of free producers in Capital I, the
section on the Fetishism of Commoditiesm as an aufhebung [he doesn't use
that word there] of Crusoe, and all that talk about transparency. (Of course
there is "pure" modernism in Marx too, the celebrration of the revolutionary
and liberatory aspects of capitalism in the Mnaifesto and the 1989 Preface.)
Certainly it is a strain in Marxism. William Morris's yearning for a
mythical world of craftsmanship and solidarity and community is an extreme
example. Lukacs, Lowy argues, is another. "Left" communitarianism--Charles
Taylor, Michael Walzer (of Sphere of Justice)--is romantically
anticapitalist too.

Lowy suggests we try to reclaim this notion or ideal or whatever it is. Is
that a good idea? During the 1980s and warly '90s I was powerfully attracted
to this pole, only to be pushed away from it and to a more austere Rawlian
liberalism, mainly by the horrors of tribalism in the 1990s--the destruction
of Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and the like. Was I mistaken?

jks

> I don't want to get into a debate about the meaning of words, but the way I
> see "modernism" is as follows. "Modernists" believe in "progress," where
> things get better via the application of reason. "Traditionalists" or
> "romantics" resist progress, often because they see the importance of the
> "irrational" (i.e., tradition, religion, etc.) for social stability and the
> like. (This is also known as Burkean conservatism.) "Postmodernists" on the
> other hand, combine elements of modernism and traditionalism, while
> rejecting notions of progress. Some postmodern views might be seen --
> ironically -- as a form of modernism, if they purport to find or look for
> the best combination of progress and tradition, reason and unreason.


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