At night I regularly listen to AM talk radio from the United States. And lately the most common topic of conversation has been the price of gasoline. Talk-show hosts rant and rave as do their callers, pointing out, probably quite rightly that soon the price of gas will cripple the US economy and cause great suffering to many people. Some callers are fond of pointing out that the roots of this problem in the US can be found in the history of the Reagan Administration which effectively put a halt to sponsorship to alternative energy research. “By this time,” they like to say, “we would have been completely energy independent if not for Reagan.” Maybe so, but largely irrelevant now. Meanwhile, in an exercise of pure public relations, the US senate calls in Oil Executives and grills them on the hill as if the head of Mobil or BP really sets the price of Gas, and as if, even if they did, the Congress would do anything about it anyway. But what is remarkable about all this is that I have never once heard, whether on talk radio or on television or in print, any one in the US offer a single solution to the problem. A talk radio host in Boston is attempting to get everyone in the US to put a sign in their car that just says “I am mad about the price of Gas.” This is the extent of acceptable activism in the US. But of course, besides the long term solutions of shifting energy production and usage to clean renewable sources, the only real solutions to the price of Gas in the US and elsewhere are things that people are not even willing to talk about: to wit; nationalize oil production and breakup the cartel of OPEC. People in Venezuela pay ten cents a gallon for gas because of a nationalized oil program. Now, first of all, I understand that in the long term, such a solution will not address the important environmental issues. But what I am really getting at here is that as capitalism begins to spiral out of control in many parts of the global economy, the very solutions that capitalism has made available are ones that people will not consider because prevailing ideology has managed to take real solutions off the table. Marx was careful to point out that a mode of production creates the very conditions for its evolution. In this case capitalism has created profoundly useful structures of production and distribution but the casino economy makes the delivery of certain goods (food is another prime example) unworkable. The solutions to these problems are simple; it is time for society at large to take control of certain systems of production and distribution in the interest of everyone. In the past six months most of the gains on global poverty made in the past decade have quickly eroded due to oil and food prices. But it is not want of supply that is the issue, it is the casino economy that is the problem. When the economy no longer serves the interest of people, it is time for people to take control of the economy.
Wait until gas in the US is ten or fifteen dollars a gallon and suddenly it will become patriotic to talk about nationalization.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Support the Troops Continued
We know for certain now, due to an accidental release of information, that the Canadian forces are handing child soldiers over to the Afghan secret police. This is being done in direct violation of international agreements and is an abandonment of the principles of human rights. It is also being done while there is a UNICEF centre in Kabul that is prepared to take this child soldiers and treat them in the manner that international agreement demands. Instead they are being handed over the secret police who are known to have been engaging in torture!
Support the troops? I don’t think so.
Support the troops? I don’t think so.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Romanticism and popular culture
The German Philosopher Theodor Adorno open his book Aesthetic Theory with the provocative observation: “It goes without saying that nothing about art goes without saying anymore, not its inner life, not its relation to the world, not even its right to exist.” Although made over forty years ago this clever remark expresses the modern confusion about art that continues to prevail long after Adorno’s demise. I believe that the roots of this confusion extend back to a fundamental change in the function and status of the arts in age of Romanticism, a change to which our psyche has never properly adjusted. The Romantic age was the end of traditional art which functioned largely as process of craft and ushered in the age of art as an individual endeavour. Cut loose from the explicitly religious and public aspects of its functioning, and being slowly separated from the exclusivity of aristocratic sponsorship, art became, I believe, something distinctly different from what it had been. For the Romantics and those who came after them, art was a more personal expression and an investigation into the inner life of the self. Being a process of self-exploration, art immediately began to suffer from a crisis of identity at a social level and artists have, since that time struggled to produce work that serves the individual function of exploration while, at the same time, speaking to an audience in a meaningful way. Thus the more personal and esoteric an artist’s aesthetic investigations are, the more alienated they are from their potential social function, while, on the other hand, the popular culture industry has taken over the functions once fulfilled by many artistic endeavours prior to the Romantic age. Just as no one in the Renaissance would question the legitimacy of, say, the production of Michelangelo, no one today questions whether Steven Spielberg has a meaningful role to play in society. On the other hand, artists who often devote a lifetime to intimate and intricate exploration of the individual and her place in society and history lacks social legitimacy unless she manages to capture a mass audience or is defended by an increasingly smaller group of critics and intellectuals who speak for the importance of the work.
Thus art now lives in a continual state of limbo. Art as an in-depth investigation of the individual’s inner life and of how the individual interacts with society will perhaps always exist in a dubious state. On the other hand, popular culture not only satisfies many people’s needs for entertainment, it also sooths people, diverts their attentions, and, perhaps most importantly, often serves to legitimize prevailing ideology, in a similar, if magnified, way that church sanctioned art in the Renaissance did. Adorno suggested that popular culture functioned to create a process of pseudo-individualization, which I take to mean a false sense of unique individual experience but in fact functions, in large part, as a kind of mass hypnosis. This is not to put forward an elitist theory that claims that there is nothing of interest in popular culture or that no popular work of art can speak to the intimate demands of the human experience. However, there is a clear, if sometime apparently arbitrary, delineation between art that lives in the shadow of the great Romantics and art that serves a more popular and social function.
The problem is that I believe that appreciation of Romantic art and the work that follows its basic motivations, requires a relatively high degree of sensitivity, a fairly solid sense of individual identity, and often times a high degree of [self]education in the humanities. There are great discoveries to be made in the realm of art as a psychic exploration but in an age of pseudo-individualization these discoveries will continue to lay mostly fallow in the soil of the human sole.
Thus art now lives in a continual state of limbo. Art as an in-depth investigation of the individual’s inner life and of how the individual interacts with society will perhaps always exist in a dubious state. On the other hand, popular culture not only satisfies many people’s needs for entertainment, it also sooths people, diverts their attentions, and, perhaps most importantly, often serves to legitimize prevailing ideology, in a similar, if magnified, way that church sanctioned art in the Renaissance did. Adorno suggested that popular culture functioned to create a process of pseudo-individualization, which I take to mean a false sense of unique individual experience but in fact functions, in large part, as a kind of mass hypnosis. This is not to put forward an elitist theory that claims that there is nothing of interest in popular culture or that no popular work of art can speak to the intimate demands of the human experience. However, there is a clear, if sometime apparently arbitrary, delineation between art that lives in the shadow of the great Romantics and art that serves a more popular and social function.
The problem is that I believe that appreciation of Romantic art and the work that follows its basic motivations, requires a relatively high degree of sensitivity, a fairly solid sense of individual identity, and often times a high degree of [self]education in the humanities. There are great discoveries to be made in the realm of art as a psychic exploration but in an age of pseudo-individualization these discoveries will continue to lay mostly fallow in the soil of the human sole.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Revolutions, failures and successes.
The assertion of the modern Western identity flows from the age of the American and French Revolutions. Here is where we find the declarations of political rights in which people finally revolted against the arbitrary use of power. Before the age of revolution, the wealthy and powerful classes possessed nearly all the political power in society while the mass of the population took no meaningful part in political life. The nineteenth century saw the steady expansion of democracy, judicial equality, and political accountability. But along with the expansion of political rights emerged the gradual realization that political rights were not nearly as meaningful as people expected unless they were accompanied by the expansion of economic rights and a fair distribution of wealth. Thus from a symbolic beginning in 1848 with the publication of the Communist Manifesto, the second half of the 19th century also saw a kind of economic revolution, the greatest manifestation of which was the birth of the modern trade-union movement.
The first revolution was the cry for liberty; the second was the cry for equality. I say this because regardless of one’s political stripes, it is essential to understand that without organized labour, the fundamental rights of collective bargaining, and a fair distribution of social wealth, political rights not only mean little, they will gradually break down under the weight of social injustice and turn any genuine democracy into a bastion of corruption and a democracy in name only.
In the 20th century these two revolutions melded into very socialist and communist revolutions that began as cries for both liberty and equality. And this is where a number of interesting historical parallels begin. Just as the French Revolution regressed into the terror, the communist revolutions went badly off the rails of both liberty and equality. And the cynicism of the post revolutionary generation in the early 19th century is repeated in the cynicism or our generation; there is a terrible foreboding sense that reform is impossible and that any striving for genuine liberty and equality will end in the very opposite of that for which we began to fight.
There are other, deeper, parallels to be considered too. One is that while the revolutions fell short in many respects, they also compelled many outside their direct purview to adapt to the changing demands of populations. So, for example, while in many ways the Russian revolution failed to deliver its principles to its own population, many workers in the West benefited directly from the fear it created in other ruling classes who realized that they may suffer a similar fate to that of the Russian aristocracy if they failed to deliver some basic economic rights to their workers. (This is very similar to the way in which all workers benefit from the victories gained by any one particular trade union struggle, because it sets an example and a standard for the whole of society.) Another, more negative, parallel can be witnessed in the way that once the initial shock of the events have passed and the cynicism has set in, the very victories that have been so painfully gained are slowly chipped away. Thus, in our own society, just like much of post-revolutionary Europe, the gap between rich and poor is gradually widening again, trade unionism is slowly dying out, and general economic equality is getting worse. With these events we can find a great empathy for the radicals of the early 1800s who battled with many of the same problems. I personally, have a great deal of sympathy for Shelley and Byron who saw the prior generation of Romantic poets turn away from the principles that drove the French Revolution forward. I feel a similar nausea when I see people turn away from the principles that drove the reforms and revolutions of our own times and gradually slip back into the degradation of economic inequality. The increasingly uneven distribution of wealth in societies all over the world means people will have fewer choices; they will have less control of their lives, their work-places and their futures.
But if anything is to be said for the case of historical parallels, then this age of historical cynicism will not stand indefinitely, and even as our political and economic rights are being undermined a new kind of revolution is brewing that will assert the principles of liberty and equality in a new way. It seems to me that most conservatives (as well as most of the wealthy) understand very little about history. If you chip away at people’s political rights and allow an obscene increase in the uneven distribution of wealth, you get a more general breakdown in the political, social, and economic life of society. This breakdown will inevitably lead to a revolution in perceptions and from there to a revolution of a more literal sort. Make no mistake, at some point people will band together once again to assert their rights to liberty, fraternity, and equality!
The first revolution was the cry for liberty; the second was the cry for equality. I say this because regardless of one’s political stripes, it is essential to understand that without organized labour, the fundamental rights of collective bargaining, and a fair distribution of social wealth, political rights not only mean little, they will gradually break down under the weight of social injustice and turn any genuine democracy into a bastion of corruption and a democracy in name only.
In the 20th century these two revolutions melded into very socialist and communist revolutions that began as cries for both liberty and equality. And this is where a number of interesting historical parallels begin. Just as the French Revolution regressed into the terror, the communist revolutions went badly off the rails of both liberty and equality. And the cynicism of the post revolutionary generation in the early 19th century is repeated in the cynicism or our generation; there is a terrible foreboding sense that reform is impossible and that any striving for genuine liberty and equality will end in the very opposite of that for which we began to fight.
There are other, deeper, parallels to be considered too. One is that while the revolutions fell short in many respects, they also compelled many outside their direct purview to adapt to the changing demands of populations. So, for example, while in many ways the Russian revolution failed to deliver its principles to its own population, many workers in the West benefited directly from the fear it created in other ruling classes who realized that they may suffer a similar fate to that of the Russian aristocracy if they failed to deliver some basic economic rights to their workers. (This is very similar to the way in which all workers benefit from the victories gained by any one particular trade union struggle, because it sets an example and a standard for the whole of society.) Another, more negative, parallel can be witnessed in the way that once the initial shock of the events have passed and the cynicism has set in, the very victories that have been so painfully gained are slowly chipped away. Thus, in our own society, just like much of post-revolutionary Europe, the gap between rich and poor is gradually widening again, trade unionism is slowly dying out, and general economic equality is getting worse. With these events we can find a great empathy for the radicals of the early 1800s who battled with many of the same problems. I personally, have a great deal of sympathy for Shelley and Byron who saw the prior generation of Romantic poets turn away from the principles that drove the French Revolution forward. I feel a similar nausea when I see people turn away from the principles that drove the reforms and revolutions of our own times and gradually slip back into the degradation of economic inequality. The increasingly uneven distribution of wealth in societies all over the world means people will have fewer choices; they will have less control of their lives, their work-places and their futures.
But if anything is to be said for the case of historical parallels, then this age of historical cynicism will not stand indefinitely, and even as our political and economic rights are being undermined a new kind of revolution is brewing that will assert the principles of liberty and equality in a new way. It seems to me that most conservatives (as well as most of the wealthy) understand very little about history. If you chip away at people’s political rights and allow an obscene increase in the uneven distribution of wealth, you get a more general breakdown in the political, social, and economic life of society. This breakdown will inevitably lead to a revolution in perceptions and from there to a revolution of a more literal sort. Make no mistake, at some point people will band together once again to assert their rights to liberty, fraternity, and equality!
Monday, May 12, 2008
Reductionism and the Right-Wing.
I have struggled with myself to understand the profound discomfort that I feel with the attitude, so prevalent today of the prevailing right-wing ideology. What is it that I feel to the very depths of my bones that is so wrong, so terribly corrupted, so utter inhuman, about these popular ideas? After much consideration, I have come to at least a partial conclusion. I have decided that it is not any one particular policy or position that I find so distasteful; rather, it is something to do with the manner in which they have reduced the abundance of the world. Everything about the modern right-wing ideology is offensively reductive. They restrict the rich diversity not only of the human experience but of nature itself. This is seen most blatantly in their reduction of all social and economic policies to so-called ‘measurable outcomes.’ Everything from healthcare to education is treated in terms of the crudest business model and reduced to inputs and outputs, as though you could measure normative values the way an accountant measures profits. You can see this in the contemporary obsession with standardized testing in education as though intelligence itself could be set to a formula. But of course education is no longer a social concern and even students are reduced to potential workers rather than growing individuals who can contribute in countless individual ways to the growth of our culture. Likewise, the citizen, once the central concept in democratic life and theory, has been reduced to the ‘tax-payer.’
But here is the rub; none of the most important things in life or society can be reduced to measurable quantities. Value cannot be measured. Education, for example, is not a number but a process of enrichment. We cannot reduce funding of education to an input-output model because its effects are moral, personal, and ideological. We cannot measure the investment return on normative standards, whether positive or negative. It is a deep perversion of the human and social soul to attempt to reduce health, education the environment, career satisfaction, or human happiness to a measurable quantity. This is, in my mind, precisely what it means to be human, to have values that are immeasurable and to look toward a better future that cannot be reduced to issues of measurability.
So here is what I have grown so uncomfortable with in the modern ideology; its proponents have abandoned one of the central aspects of their humanity – their illimitability. Thus when I look at George Bush or Stephen Harper, I see the soulless, mindless, heartless, autonomic creatures who have abandoned humanity and reduced individuals and society to a set rationalized functions that they think must always be measurable.
The way forward for people who oppose this reductive ideology need not be the creation of a complex ideology like those created in the 19th and 20th centuries. Rather, we need to begin simply by rejecting the technical-rationalism that has colonized our moral and normative lives and we must embrace our illimitable natures. The world is infinitely abundant, don’t let men in suits reduce it to numbers and equations!
But here is the rub; none of the most important things in life or society can be reduced to measurable quantities. Value cannot be measured. Education, for example, is not a number but a process of enrichment. We cannot reduce funding of education to an input-output model because its effects are moral, personal, and ideological. We cannot measure the investment return on normative standards, whether positive or negative. It is a deep perversion of the human and social soul to attempt to reduce health, education the environment, career satisfaction, or human happiness to a measurable quantity. This is, in my mind, precisely what it means to be human, to have values that are immeasurable and to look toward a better future that cannot be reduced to issues of measurability.
So here is what I have grown so uncomfortable with in the modern ideology; its proponents have abandoned one of the central aspects of their humanity – their illimitability. Thus when I look at George Bush or Stephen Harper, I see the soulless, mindless, heartless, autonomic creatures who have abandoned humanity and reduced individuals and society to a set rationalized functions that they think must always be measurable.
The way forward for people who oppose this reductive ideology need not be the creation of a complex ideology like those created in the 19th and 20th centuries. Rather, we need to begin simply by rejecting the technical-rationalism that has colonized our moral and normative lives and we must embrace our illimitable natures. The world is infinitely abundant, don’t let men in suits reduce it to numbers and equations!
Friday, May 9, 2008
Shelley on Love
For your entertainment, a letter written by Percy Shelley to his friend T.J. Hogg June 2nd 1811.
“What is Passion? The very word implies an incapacity for action, otherwise than in unison with its dictates, What is reason? It is a thing independent, inflexible; it adapts thoughts and actions to the varying circumstances, which for ever change – adapts them so as to produce the greatest overbalance of happiness. And to whom do you now give happiness? Not to others, for you associate with but few: those few regard you with the highest feelings of admiration and friendship; but perhaps there is but one; - and here is self again – not to yourself; for the truth of this I choose yourself, as a testimony against you. I think; reason; listen; cast off prejudice; hear the dictates of plain common sense – surely is it not evident? I loved a being an idea in my mind, which had no real existence. I concreted this abstract of perfection, I annexed this fictitious quality to the idea presented by a name; the being, whom that name signified, was by no means worthy of this. This is the truth; Unless I am determinedly blind – unless I am resolved causelessly and selfishly to seek destruction, I must see it. Plain! Is it not plain! I loved a being; the being, whom I loved, is not what she was; she exists no longer. I regret when I find that she never existed, but in my mind yet does it not border on willful deception, deliberate, intentional self-deceit, to continue to love the body, when the soul is no more? As well might I court the worms which the soulless body of a beloved being generates – be lost to myself, and to those who love me for what is really amiable in me – in the damp, unintelligent vaults of a charnel-house. Surely, when it is carried to the dung-heap as a mass of putrefaction, the loveliness of the flower ceases to charm. Surely it would be irrational to annex to this inertness the properties which the flower in its state of beauty possessed, which now cease to exist, and then did mearly exist, because adjoined to it. Yet you will call this cold reasoning? No; you will not! This would be the exclamation of the uninformed Weter, not of my noble friend. But, indeed, it is not cold reasoning, if you saw me at this moment. I wish I could reason coldly, I should then stand more chance of success. But let me consider it myself – exert my own reasoning powers; let me entreat myself to awake.”
“What is Passion? The very word implies an incapacity for action, otherwise than in unison with its dictates, What is reason? It is a thing independent, inflexible; it adapts thoughts and actions to the varying circumstances, which for ever change – adapts them so as to produce the greatest overbalance of happiness. And to whom do you now give happiness? Not to others, for you associate with but few: those few regard you with the highest feelings of admiration and friendship; but perhaps there is but one; - and here is self again – not to yourself; for the truth of this I choose yourself, as a testimony against you. I think; reason; listen; cast off prejudice; hear the dictates of plain common sense – surely is it not evident? I loved a being an idea in my mind, which had no real existence. I concreted this abstract of perfection, I annexed this fictitious quality to the idea presented by a name; the being, whom that name signified, was by no means worthy of this. This is the truth; Unless I am determinedly blind – unless I am resolved causelessly and selfishly to seek destruction, I must see it. Plain! Is it not plain! I loved a being; the being, whom I loved, is not what she was; she exists no longer. I regret when I find that she never existed, but in my mind yet does it not border on willful deception, deliberate, intentional self-deceit, to continue to love the body, when the soul is no more? As well might I court the worms which the soulless body of a beloved being generates – be lost to myself, and to those who love me for what is really amiable in me – in the damp, unintelligent vaults of a charnel-house. Surely, when it is carried to the dung-heap as a mass of putrefaction, the loveliness of the flower ceases to charm. Surely it would be irrational to annex to this inertness the properties which the flower in its state of beauty possessed, which now cease to exist, and then did mearly exist, because adjoined to it. Yet you will call this cold reasoning? No; you will not! This would be the exclamation of the uninformed Weter, not of my noble friend. But, indeed, it is not cold reasoning, if you saw me at this moment. I wish I could reason coldly, I should then stand more chance of success. But let me consider it myself – exert my own reasoning powers; let me entreat myself to awake.”
German Ideology
I was recently reading Jerome McGann’s book Romantic Ideology and he opens it with a discussion which concentrates on the different notions of ideology outlined in Marx’s German Ideology. It prompted me to look at Marx’s book which I haven’t read in fifteen to twenty years. It surprised me how much my response has changed over time. I am not nearly so repelled by what Marx so spitefully refers to as German ideology and not nearly so convinced by his arguments. Now, to be honest, over the past twenty years I have come to realize just how biased and disrespectful Marx was in his attacks on anyone with whom he disagreed, and this has tainted my appreciation of Marx. The truth of the matter is that as much as I respect the contribution that Marx made to modern thought he was very much part of the traditional, macho driven political discourse of the West, which is highly patriarchal, combative, and often lacks discursive honesty. In fact, given Marx’s attitudes in his confrontation with the supporters of Bakunin, I think we can safely, and sadly, say that Marx would not be out of place in contemporary politics. Having said that, I don’t think my opinion about Marx the man is entirely responsible for my changing views of German Ideology. For a number of reasons I just don’t find Marx’s idea of materialist view of ideology very convincing any more.
The biggest problem, the way I have come to see it, is that even if Marx was right, he was still wrong. Let’s imagine that Marx was correct in his formulation that almost everything about how we see and understand the world is a kind of superstructural edifice built up upon the material conditions in which we live. If so, then ideologies are, in the simplest terms, ephemeral constructs that pass away as material conditions change. As William Jameson said in his remarkable book, The Political Unconscious, even Marxism itself is a passing ideology that interprets the world according to its historical time and place. Or as Althusser, one of Jameson’s mentors put it; Everything is Ideology. But if this is so, then our thoughts have no transcendent capabilities. The problem is that, in the end, this is not a very useful philosophy. It would be as though we had conclusively proven the case for determinism. But then what? If we learn that all our acts are determined by material conditions and there are no emergent properties to consciousness, what can we possibly do with this knowledge? It is, in essence, utterly useless information. Similarly, if Marx’s approach to ideology is correct, what usefulness could we generate from this supposed wisdom? It is just a kind of ultimate disenchantment of our psyche.
Now, keep in mind that I do not believe that one must necessarily adopt Marx’s notion of ideology in order to accept a number of his other important political and economic ideas. I think that, despite what one may think, you could, for example, accept the idea that history is a motion propelled forward by a dialectic of class conflict without adopting an entirely materialist conception of ideology. And I am certain that parts of Marx’s analysis of Capitalism make a lot of sense regardless of whether our consciousness is entirely historical or may partly consist of emergent properties. In the final analysis, I think that this dilemma, like the problem of determinism, is indeterminable anyway. I just don’t think that human reason, if such a thing really exists, is capable of solving such a problem.
In the end I find that I have begun to harbour a kind of instinctual objection to Marx’s notion of ideology. I am certain that we are, at least in part, prisoners of history. However, I can’t help but suspect that, at some level, we can access transcendental ideas, or at least transcendental feelings. The problem is that I think that these transcendental ideas are not necessarily accessible by processes of rational thought or discourse. And if this is so then we must look for other kinds of experiences in order to gain the greatest insights of humanity. Unfortunately Marxists, being children of the Enlightenment, are stuck in a rationalist paradigm and therefore give little credit to such Romantic ideas.
The biggest problem, the way I have come to see it, is that even if Marx was right, he was still wrong. Let’s imagine that Marx was correct in his formulation that almost everything about how we see and understand the world is a kind of superstructural edifice built up upon the material conditions in which we live. If so, then ideologies are, in the simplest terms, ephemeral constructs that pass away as material conditions change. As William Jameson said in his remarkable book, The Political Unconscious, even Marxism itself is a passing ideology that interprets the world according to its historical time and place. Or as Althusser, one of Jameson’s mentors put it; Everything is Ideology. But if this is so, then our thoughts have no transcendent capabilities. The problem is that, in the end, this is not a very useful philosophy. It would be as though we had conclusively proven the case for determinism. But then what? If we learn that all our acts are determined by material conditions and there are no emergent properties to consciousness, what can we possibly do with this knowledge? It is, in essence, utterly useless information. Similarly, if Marx’s approach to ideology is correct, what usefulness could we generate from this supposed wisdom? It is just a kind of ultimate disenchantment of our psyche.
Now, keep in mind that I do not believe that one must necessarily adopt Marx’s notion of ideology in order to accept a number of his other important political and economic ideas. I think that, despite what one may think, you could, for example, accept the idea that history is a motion propelled forward by a dialectic of class conflict without adopting an entirely materialist conception of ideology. And I am certain that parts of Marx’s analysis of Capitalism make a lot of sense regardless of whether our consciousness is entirely historical or may partly consist of emergent properties. In the final analysis, I think that this dilemma, like the problem of determinism, is indeterminable anyway. I just don’t think that human reason, if such a thing really exists, is capable of solving such a problem.
In the end I find that I have begun to harbour a kind of instinctual objection to Marx’s notion of ideology. I am certain that we are, at least in part, prisoners of history. However, I can’t help but suspect that, at some level, we can access transcendental ideas, or at least transcendental feelings. The problem is that I think that these transcendental ideas are not necessarily accessible by processes of rational thought or discourse. And if this is so then we must look for other kinds of experiences in order to gain the greatest insights of humanity. Unfortunately Marxists, being children of the Enlightenment, are stuck in a rationalist paradigm and therefore give little credit to such Romantic ideas.
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