Page 93 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 93
p. mclaren ■ from a city on the hill to the dungheap of history
ti-clerical and vehemently opposed to religious institutions that served as
opium for the people. Who could blame him?) Rosa Luxemburg quotes
passages from Saints Basil the Great, John Chrysotom and Gregory the
Great in her essay on Socialism and the Churches. And of course, as An-
drew Collier notes, while it would be foolish today to wish a “Reign of
the Saints”, favoured by Calvin, Munzer, Wyclif and the Fifth Monarchy
Men, those professing to be, say, Christian, are obliged to support secu-
lar movements that their principles would lead them to support—and, of
course, politically I follow a Marxist humanist path and one that I am try-
ing to intersect with the tradition of liberation theology. My ideas on lib-
eration and emancipation appear perhaps hopelessly quixotic. But to me,
liberation and emancipation are two different processes. It’s more than
the multitude versus the people—pace Hardt and Negri. We can some-
times liberate ourselves from oppression but to emancipate ourselves we
need a viable alternative to the current capitalist system that transcends
liberal nebulosities. We need, in other words, a socialist system. And the
most pervasive argument against socialism in the U.S. is that it contra-
dicts our human nature and that it also leads to totalitarianism, lack of
freedom, and violent state repression. Which has been the most powerful
tactic on the part of Republicans for making the case that there is no al-
ternative to capitalism. Too often we remain locked in abstract universals,
and we need to concretize our dialectics so that they have a formidable
impact on the realm of actuality, but this is not as easy as it might seem.
In the decades following the civil rights movement in the United
States, university intellectuals were drawn to post-structuralist thinkers
and anti-humanist intellectuals and universities became filled with their
miasma of different indifference. The neo-baroque rhetorical formations
and fanciful logic of postmodern theory has, in our contemporary space,
replaced reason with opinion, explanation with observation, knowledge
with opportunity, facts with the way one thinks about them, and under-
standing of an idea with its tacit approval—all of which has been slan-
derously reflected by social media into a defense of the notion of “fake
news”. Fake news corrodes the factual basis of democratic debate by in-
sinuating that there exists no truth, there is only an ever-emptying cistern
of opinion and all opinions are always already populated with the inten-
tions of others—everyone is either a lout or a madman—and these opin-
ions in themselves are merely illusion in the Nietzschean sense. It puts
everything into a state of a cynically reasoned agnosticism, giving ballast
to a person whose sense of self feels under siege, yet who lacks an explana-
tory language of analysis, but still believes one can “imagineer” one’s exist-
ence outside the conundrums wrought by capitalist relations of exploita-
91
ti-clerical and vehemently opposed to religious institutions that served as
opium for the people. Who could blame him?) Rosa Luxemburg quotes
passages from Saints Basil the Great, John Chrysotom and Gregory the
Great in her essay on Socialism and the Churches. And of course, as An-
drew Collier notes, while it would be foolish today to wish a “Reign of
the Saints”, favoured by Calvin, Munzer, Wyclif and the Fifth Monarchy
Men, those professing to be, say, Christian, are obliged to support secu-
lar movements that their principles would lead them to support—and, of
course, politically I follow a Marxist humanist path and one that I am try-
ing to intersect with the tradition of liberation theology. My ideas on lib-
eration and emancipation appear perhaps hopelessly quixotic. But to me,
liberation and emancipation are two different processes. It’s more than
the multitude versus the people—pace Hardt and Negri. We can some-
times liberate ourselves from oppression but to emancipate ourselves we
need a viable alternative to the current capitalist system that transcends
liberal nebulosities. We need, in other words, a socialist system. And the
most pervasive argument against socialism in the U.S. is that it contra-
dicts our human nature and that it also leads to totalitarianism, lack of
freedom, and violent state repression. Which has been the most powerful
tactic on the part of Republicans for making the case that there is no al-
ternative to capitalism. Too often we remain locked in abstract universals,
and we need to concretize our dialectics so that they have a formidable
impact on the realm of actuality, but this is not as easy as it might seem.
In the decades following the civil rights movement in the United
States, university intellectuals were drawn to post-structuralist thinkers
and anti-humanist intellectuals and universities became filled with their
miasma of different indifference. The neo-baroque rhetorical formations
and fanciful logic of postmodern theory has, in our contemporary space,
replaced reason with opinion, explanation with observation, knowledge
with opportunity, facts with the way one thinks about them, and under-
standing of an idea with its tacit approval—all of which has been slan-
derously reflected by social media into a defense of the notion of “fake
news”. Fake news corrodes the factual basis of democratic debate by in-
sinuating that there exists no truth, there is only an ever-emptying cistern
of opinion and all opinions are always already populated with the inten-
tions of others—everyone is either a lout or a madman—and these opin-
ions in themselves are merely illusion in the Nietzschean sense. It puts
everything into a state of a cynically reasoned agnosticism, giving ballast
to a person whose sense of self feels under siege, yet who lacks an explana-
tory language of analysis, but still believes one can “imagineer” one’s exist-
ence outside the conundrums wrought by capitalist relations of exploita-
91
