[This is Chapter
Ten of Murphey’s book Socialist Thought.]
RELATIVISM AS A MEANS OF ATTACK
"Relativism" is hard to define with precision. The distinction between relativist and non-relativist value systems and ways of thinking is more a continuum than an absolute polarity.
Someone
is generally not considered a relativist if he states a value or a descriptive
law and expects it to hold good over a long period of time and for a broad
range of varying situations. This is especially true if he asserts a
theological, metaphysical or axiomatic "stamp of authority" to give
it a special claim to legitimacy and permanence.
The
relativist, on the other hand, will acknowledge the limitations that apply to a
value or a descriptive statement. He will point to how contingent it is upon a
certain set of circumstances or assumptions, emphasizing that circumstances
invariably change and that assumptions can become irrelevant to actual
conditions. Knowledge and values are seen as contingent and somewhat transitory.
The relativist also has far less tendency to claim the imprimatur of a
permanent validating stamp, such as from God or Nature or a set of
“self-evident” axioms.
Difficulty
arises from there being gradations between the two tendencies. Is a descriptive
Law in economics, say, which claims to be valid for
all time, but which by its own terms applies only if several preconditions are
present that may more or less remove it forever from actual application in a
given society, consistent with relativism or non-relativism? It has ingredients
of both. I am thinking of such a thing as
If
a thinker puts forth claims, such as Ludwig von Mises
did in writing about a market economy, that such a law is a theorem deduced
from a priori categories of "human action" that serve as
axioms for a "purely deductive science of praxeology,"
such claims are clearly toward the non-relativistic end of the continuum.
An
exhaustive discussion of the definitional issues is not, however, necessary for
what I am about to say in this chapter. It is enough if I have given the reader
an overall notion of what I am talking about when I use the word
"relativism."
I
will discuss the role of relativism in socialist thought; but to keep the
subject in proper perspective it is important to start with an awareness that
relativism is an inherent part of the predominant tendencies of modern thought
for at least two reasons that are totally apart from socialist ideology.
The
first of these is that the development of rapid communications and travel, with
their world-shrinking effects, necessarily militates against any mode of
thought that is narrowly local and provincial. Just as the insularity of the
Roman Republic was broken when influences came in from the conquered areas of
the Mediterranean world and ideas began to flow toward Rome from Greece,
everything based on custom or tradition or rote acceptance of values and ideas
from a particular culture comes into question when the world opens up and can
be seen in all its multiplicity.
The
second is similar to the first. It is that the great empirical emphasis that
has been so important to modern thought inherently leads toward a relativistic
perspective.
It
would be hard to imagine that an anthropologist could make cross-cultural
studies of, say, New Guinea, Finland, Ecuador and Canada (not to mention such
cultures from the past as those of ancient Egypt, Troy and Carthage) without
being impressed by the variety of human institutions, values, modes of thought,
and styles of life. Such studies would tend to wash away all provincialism
within him. He would know as a matter of course that much that exists in human
life is rooted in, arid contingent upon, a certain time and place. Thus he
would tend to be a relativist, as something totally apart from being a
socialist or holding to any other social philosophy.
This
isn't to suggest that an anthropologist's relativism can't be overridden by
other factors: an Islamic social scientist may well see, for example, the
steady hand of Allah behind all of the seemingly disparate phenomena. Nor do I
suggest that there are not, in fact, constants that lie underneath the surface
of the variety. Neither side, it seems to me, was fully correct in the ancient
argument between Heraclitus, who held that everything
amounts to perpetual flux, and Parmenides, who held that, despite appearances,
nothing ever really changes. Nevertheless, empiricism opens quite widely a
window toward the recognition of variety, and hence lends itself to
relativism.
There
has also been a pronounced tendency within modern scientific thought to be
fully conscious of the epistemological role of the observer. We see this in
Descartes' Cogito, ergo sum, which is radically egocentric; in
Einstein's Theory of Relativity; and in Heisenberg's "Uncertainty
Principle." In the absence of truths "set down from on high,"
modern thought has come to appreciate that the problem of knowledge is one
faced by the individual human mind. Reality, it knows, can be approached in no
other way by human beings. Needless to say, this is radically relativistic.
Closely
related to this is the aspect of modern thought that has seen the usefulness of
eliminating lines of inquiry that raise issues but that have no way of
resolving those issues. This insight has not been universally held and has been
violated by several important branches of fashionable thought even during the
twentieth century, but the philosophers of scientific method make an essential
point, it seems to me, when they say that humanity has much to gain from
economizing its intellectual effort, focusing only on those things that lend
themselves to some measure of proof or disproof.
I
myself am a relativist in these senses suggested by modern empiricism. I
wouldn't have a thinker cling to anything as a matter of provincialism, even
though I see that there is a valuable social cement in
certain situations when most people do that. Nor do I fail to see the
contingency and transitory nature of much that we prefer to consider universal
and permanent. I am also strongly committed to the soundness of epistemological
individualism, with its stress on the role of the observer, and to the value of
eliminating the purely speculative realms of inquiry. But my views on these
things are a far cry from my being willing to use relativism as a debunking
mechanism as so much modern thought, especially coming from the Left, has done.
To me, relativism is appropriately used as a positive orientation that is
conducive to the most fruitful thought; it does not suggest to me that a given
set of ideas or institutions are necessarily without value because there are
cultural alternatives or because they don't fit into some form of reductionist
thinking.
It
has been important to note the valid uses of relativism and their relationship
to modern thought. We should keep them
in mind as we look at how greatly relativism has been used by the Left and by
several major "schools" of thought as a debunking mechanism.
Socialist
thought has wanted modern society to change direction quite fundamentally. To
effect large-scale social change, it becomes useful (a) to induce the people
within the existing society to acknowledge the existence of one or more
alternative systems, which is something difficult to do since people tend to
accept existing forms uncritically; and (b) to weaken or even demolish the
attachment people have to the existing forms.
Later
we will notice how some members of the Left, as well as of the anti-bourgeois
Right, have articulated non-relativistic positions and have not relied upon
relativistic arguments. They have made a straight-forward argument in support
of their alternative system. It is apparent, however, that from the point of
view of the predominant society even this introduces an inherently relativistic
element. Anyone who proposes a radical alternative to existing society is
necessarily "standing outside of" the present culture, refusing to
accept its premises.
Relativism
necessarily becomes more explicit when obviously relativistic arguments are
used. One of these is cross-cultural. It says that "you owe no loyalty to
the values, institutions and perceptions of this society because they are
nothing more than 'artificial constructs.' They are no better than their
alternatives, since other societies address the same human issues in very
different ways."
Yet
another form of relativism involves the use of methodological reductionism; i.e.,
the adoption of an intellectual method that radically excludes all modes of
legitimation other than the one preferred by the debunker. When positivism is
used as a weapon, it plays this role. It can be used as a way of undercutting a
society's system of beliefs, since no society can justify itself entirely on
empirical, experimentalist grounds.
The
various debunking relativisms involve recurrent themes. The thinker stands
outside the culture stressing the value of social change. This preoccupies him
just as much as tradition has preoccupied the cultural conservative. An
important offshoot of this has been the modern emphasis on "historical
method" as we have seen it in both Marxism and the German Historical
School. Society is seen to be in perpetual transition from phase to phase, at
least until it reaches whatever form the particular thinker prefers.
Before
we review the specific arguments that socialist authors have made, it will be
worthwhile to discuss the differences between the valid uses of relativism,
which I have indicated I myself favor, and the spurious ones. One of the
weaknesses of the modern mentality has been that there has been too little
consciousness of what is and what is not appropriate about relativism.
1.
We should
first notice the problems that are inherent in "standing outside a
culture" and attacking its foundations. To do this presupposes a hierarchy
of values very different from the average person's. (a) The existing culture is
devalued, probably because of alienation, to the point that it is given little
weight as something worth preserving.
(b) Great weight is bestowed upon whatever the alternative is perceived
to be.
This
has been the characteristic position of the radical intelligentsia during the
past century and a half. Viewed in the abstract, it is not invalid per se,
since we can imagine circumstances in which it is justifiable. But as applied
to the advanced liberal civilization in
2.
Secondly, the
types of cross-cultural arguments that assert that "the existing norms are
just artificial constructs, since other peoples don’t share them" tend
almost invariably to end as non sequiturs. The conclusion that "you
have no reason to continue your loyalty" simply does not follow from the
observation that the objects of loyalty are cultural artifacts that other
cultures don't all share.
To
justify a conclusion that loyalty should be withdrawn from existing forms, the
relativist is obliged to take his argument at least one step further; and those
who use relativism as an ideological weapon almost invariably don't do this.
They are content to shake the foundations of the other person's beliefs by
unmasking the fact that the person has probably held to those beliefs out of an
uncritical provincialism. What the relativist ought to be doing is to go
further, into a consideration of the merits of the cultural forms he is
attacking. To negate them properly, he must show that those forms are
unsatisfactory in their service to human values either as ends in themselves or
as means to ends. A part of the evaluation
of the merits should be a realization that the existence of a consensus among a
group of people
is itself a value, not to be taken lightly.
If
by such an analysis on the merits it were found that the forms of the existing
society are in fact highly serviceable to the broad range of civilized human
values, it would be totally beside the point that they are the
"constructs" of a given culture and are not shared by other cultures.
This has got to be the main question; relativism cannot validly be a substitute
for considering means and ends. Recourse must be made to the political, social
and economic philosophies, which make such questions their concern. It is only
when questions are confronted directly and honestly that a decision can be made
about whether a given set of cultural forms is worthwhile or not. Relativism is
certainly useful to the extent it opens these things for discussion, but it
engages in non-sequiturs when it preempts that discussion.
This
was illustrated well by the argument that was so common during the 1970s from
the feminist movement. The point was repeated over and over again that
"the role assignments of the sexes are arbitrary social
structurings." This was presented
as though it were a sufficient refutation of those role assignments. And indeed it worked very effectively, since
most people accepted it as uncritically as they accepted the role assignments
in the first place. An interesting void
in feminist literature comes from its failure to discuss the roles on their
merits as part of a consideration of the diverse purposes a civilized society
seeks to serve.
3.
We need to
consider next the validity of reductionist arguments. When all modes of thought
are negated except one, such as when Marxism denies the value of everything
except class analysis or when positivism in
its more radical forms denies everything except what is strictly
observable and experimental, the effect is nihilistic, since this involves an
unreasonable extension of the otherwise desirable wish to eliminate
unproductive modes of inquiry. The "baby is thrown out with the bath
water."
This is not the time to discuss
epistemology in detail, but it has become increasingly clear to me over the
years that the methodological options open to human thought lie on a continuum.
At one end, empirical and experimental methods offer the most rigorous
assurance of connectedness to reality. At the other end, there are the many
purely subjective and speculative discussions that offer no standard of proof
whatsoever. In between, there is the vast realm of what is neither fully
verifiable nor totally speculative. The decision about what sort of
intellectual activity we are willing to engage in along the continuum is itself
logically prior to a use of any one of the methodologies to critique the
others. It is a decision we must make partly as a matter of values, partly as a
result of the ontological assumptions we have already come to hold. In a sense,
epistemology precedes ontology, since we know reality only through our modes of
inquiry; but it is also true that our notions about reality must affect our
choices about modes of inquiry.
There is, in
my opinion, great value in denying the efficacy of the more remote
methodologies that would keep mankind arguing forever about how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin. But what are we to say about analyses such as the
one I am making in this series of books? My analysis is a combination of
non-experimental empirical observation and judgment. I don't claim any sort of
theological or metaphysical “validating stamp” for what I am saying. Is it wise
for mankind to do without this type of inquiry? To attempt to do so is not, in
my opinion, a justifiable decision about the epistemological options. In
deciding what we will accept along the continuum, we have to make judgments based,
as much as we can, on an informed opinion about what is necessary and fruitful,
but without committing ourselves to endless wheel-spinning.
High
school debates I have judged during recent years have given me a good example
of the inanity of too circumscribed a choice. The national debate topics in the
United States for several years have almost invariably taken the form of
"Resolved, that the federal government should take exclusive jurisdiction
over" one area or another of our national life. I have often asked the
debaters why it is that their arguments are strictly quantitative, focusing
entirely on such functional desiderata as budget and taxation instead of using
insights from social philosophy about values and cause-and-effect. They have
told me that it is because they are advised that judges generally will not give
them any points for such qualitative arguments. The result is that the debates
are peculiarly sterile, missing what is most important. Somehow a radical
positivism has impressed itself onto the national debate program.
In
what follows, I will discuss several of the ways in which the anti-bourgeois
philosophies of the Left and Right have used relativism as a means of
attack.
1.
Standing outside the existing culture.
It has often seemed to me that there is a certain amount of arbitrary "puffing up" (Ayn Rand’s “moral counterfeiting”) going on when a thinker is lavished with credit for being the source of an idea that was obviously going to result from his historic situation anyway. Just the same, if we were to identify the towering figure who first "stood outside" of modern society negating its fundamental premises, it would be Jean Jacques Rousseau in the middle of the eighteenth century.
In his Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau allowed himself to stand completely outside the society in which he lived. He critiqued it by a comparison with what he perceived to be the much simpler human condition that existed in the "state of nature. Thus he used his postulate about the "state of nature" as the basis for an unfavorable cross-cultural analysis.
I
don't find that he idealized his "state of nature" nearly as much as
many of his followers have. He had little to say about primitive man's supposed
"brotherliness" or "dedication to communal effort," such as
we find in the writings of such of his followers as Veblen
and Marcuse. Rousseau's argument consisted of a
frivolous tautology: that while man was a beast, he had no problems, just as a
lion, who lives without memory of yesterday and without contemplation of
tomorrow, as no problems.
Oddly,
he used even this meager observation as the standard by which to eviscerate
modern society. He said in his Discourse:
"The
first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This
is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real
founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many
horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the
stakes, or filling the ditch, and crying to his fellows, ‘Beware of listening
to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the
earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.’... Civilized man is
always moving, sweating, toiling and racking his brains to find still more laborious occupations: he
goes on in drudgery to his last moment...(A)s there is hardly any inequality in
the state of nature, all the inequality which now prevails owes its strength
and growth to the development of our faculties and the advance of the human
mind, and becomes at last permanent and legitimate by the establishment of
property and laws."1
During
the two centuries since Rousseau, this posture of completely separating oneself
from the existing culture has been a commonplace with social commentators who
have continued Rousseau's negation. Probably the most extreme repudiation of
civilized society I have read has been New Left author Theodore Roszak's Where the Wasteland Ends, published in
1.972. Picking up on the anti-modernist
Romanticism that was so much a part of German and English thought in the early
nineteenth century, Roszak argued that mankind made
its mistake when it rose up off all fours! This made people unduly cerebral.
In
the same year Rousseau published his Discourse (1755), the socialist
author Morelly took a position similar to Rousseau's. In his Code of
Nature, Morelly saw property as the root of all evil: "If you were to
take away property... there would be no more... notions... of moral evil."2
2.
Denial of fixed theory. It is obvious that no one, socialist and
non-socialist alike, can exist in society without extensive concepts about what
life is like, what is valuable and what is not, and how things link together
through cause-and-effect. We all mediate the social reality around us through
extensive worldviews. This is so even if someone is not conscious that he is
using such theory.
Nevertheless,
it has been a fashionable relativistic weapon to deny any role to
"theory." This is ideologically useful because it is a way to
"do without the already-accepted theories" which the thinker is
trying to leave behind. When we review such schools of thought as pragmatism,
positivism and relativistic jurisprudence, we will see that they have relied
upon this method heavily. In Behaviorism it is what led John Watson to deny
even the existence of human consciousness, which he called a myth! -- and B. F.
Skinner to bypass any consideration of it. Such artifices negate enormous
realms of earlier inquiry.
In
his foreword to Benito Mussolini's autobiography, Richard Child remarked
favorably that “Mussolini, as I have learned to know him, is an opportunist in
the sense that he believes that mankind itself must be fitted to changing
conditions rather than to fixed theories.”3
Werner
Sombart, during his Nazi phase, was willing to
discard theory: “For the sake of
Germany’s greatness, power and glory, we will gladly sacrifice every 'theory'
and every 'principle,' whether it bears a liberal or any other stamp.”4
This is a remarkable statement for someone who dealt in theory all his life.
I
will devote a section to the Marxist rejection of bourgeois theory, including
such concepts as liberty, equality and morality. Marxism asserts on overarching
theory of history that alleges that all other theories are rationalizations of
particular class interests.
3. Ethical relativism: the attack on “the
bourgeois ethic.” A sizeable portion of modern ethical theory has attacked
the main body of conventional norms, which it describes relativistically
as just a "bourgeois" rather than a universal ethic. There is
frequent denial of the validity of any predefined behavioral code. This
operates in much the same way as the denial of theory.
The entry on
Hegel in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy says that Hegel, in his
"The Spirit of Christianity," disliked Judaism because of its code of laws. He preferred
what he saw to be Jesus' transcendence of a code of laws with an internalized
spirit of love. Thus in Hegel we can see a forerunner of the "situation
ethics" that was later advanced by Joseph Fletcher and subscribed to by
the theologian Paul Tillich. There is a negation of all conventional ethics in
an argument that ethical decisions should all be patterned to each situation by
use of an immanent principle such as "love." Codes of ethics,
socially enforced, are denied any place. "Love liberates us from the
bondage of absolute ethical
traditions," Tillich was glad to say.5 It is a mistake to think of this as mainly an
affirmative ethical position; what is most important to it is that it makes
possible a negation of virtually
all prior ethical theory and codified prescriptions of conduct.
Herbert Read,
an anarchist, wrote that "we can avoid all coercive codes of morality, all formal conceptions of 'right'
and 'wrong.' For a morality of obedience
we can substitute a morality of attachment or reciprocity, that living together
in perfect charity which was once the ideal of Christianity."6 Krimerman and Perry
say about the anarchist Kropotkin that "he proposes that ethics be
completely individualized... Instead of defining morality as a set of
obligatory imperatives, it stresses the state of' character underlying and
expressed by moral decision."7
The British
socialist G. D. H. Cole wrote that "there is no such thing as an
absolutely valid moral rule which says 'thou shalt not do such and such a
thing' or 'thou shalt do such and such a thing.'"8 Leon Trotsky
in Russia said in his autobiography that "there are no absolute rules of
conduct, either in peace or in war. Everything depends upon
circumstances."9
To understand why this is
important to socialist theory it is necessary to recall how vital a code of
ethics is to classical liberalism.
An individualistic society, not pressing closely upon the individual with
overtly coercive constraints, relies upon the social cement provided by ethical
norms. These norms are socially established and become internalized within each
individual through the development of "self-discipline." Various socialist authors say quite openly
that their denial of ethical codes is motivated by their opposition to what
they relativistically call "middle class values," the
"Protestant work ethic," and the like. This is apparent, for example,
when Morris Cohen says that "it is the Puritanic
feeling of responsibility which has blighted our art and philosophy and has
made us as a people unskilled in the art of enjoying life."10
The New Left
championed a "do your own thing" conception of "freedom."
Although many people didn’t understand the difference, this was clearly at odds
with the classical liberal idea of individual liberty, which is built upon
personal responsibility, not its negation.
An
anarchistic view of ethical freedom is an effective lever against "middle
class ethics." We have reason to doubt, though, whether it would be a
permanent part of collectivist theory.
4. The Marxist rejection of
"bourgeois" concepts of freedom, equality and morality. Lenin wrote that “general talk
about freedom, equality and democracy is in fact but a stereotyped repetition
of conceptions which actually derive from the relations of commodity
production."11 This
states succinctly the basic Marxist position that all such concepts relate
relativistically to the system of production and its resulting class divisions.
Lenin
expounded upon the implications of this negation: "To attempt to solve the
concrete problems of the dictatorship of the proletariat by means of such
general talk is to accept the theories and principles of the bourgeoisie all
along the line. From the point of view of the proletariat, the question can be
put only in the following way: Freedom
from the oppression of which class? Equality between which classes? Democracy
based on private ownership of the means of production, or on the struggle for
its abolition? -- and so forth."
He posed the
question "In what sense do we repudiate ethics and morality?" and
answered with "In the sense that they were preached by the bourgeoisie...
(who) spoke in the name of God in order to pursue their own exploiters'
interests."
Lewis S. Feuer says that Engels wrote that
there was "no such thing as a universalistic moral sense that transcended
the systems of class ethics."12
Irving Fetscher says in Socialist Humanism that
"Marx's critique demonstrated the historical basis of the liberal concept
of freedom and showed that it remained confined within the socially and
temporally limited horizon of bourgeois thought."13 Similarly, Ernst Bloch commented in the same
book that "the bourgeois freedoms are more bourgeois than free."14
5. The
Methodenstreit; the attack on classical economics. When such a nineteenth
century political economist as James Mill wrote about economics, he laid out his
theory as a series of laws and theorems. To him, economics was a deductive
science possessing considerable rigor and having more than just passing
validity.
The German
Historical School argued against any such claims during the
"Methodenstreit," the argument over method that burned so brightly
between it and the Austrian School of Economics in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Society, the Historical School said, passes through
phases; and what is descriptive of human relations during one phase has no
necessary relevance to any other phase. Accordingly, economics as developed by
the classical and neo-classical economists was nothing more than a description
of how things work during the passing "bourgeois" phase.
From my
earlier comments about when relativism is valid and when it is not, the reader
can anticipate that I have some agreement with this view. I think that the
theory of the market is based on the assumption of a certain type of
society, with its attendant laws, mores and institutions. Where I differ from
the German Historical School on this point is in not wanting to rush off to a
different form of society. The theory of the market has more than passing value
to me because a market economy is something I want us to preserve.
I have had
students who have thought that a reference to something "as long ago
as" the Methodenstreit obviously has no bearing on anything current. They
should consider, however, the following statement in Michael Harrington's book Socialism,
published in 1970: "The bourgeois economists attempted, honestly and
straightforwardly, to explain how the economy worked. But they made the
assumption that the capitalism they confronted was an expression of human
nature rather than a transitory system. Their science was 'bourgeois,' not in
the sense of having sold itself to capitalist bidders, but because its basic
assumption would not permit it to see beyond the bourgeois order."l5 This is pure German Historical School.
6. Relativism
in jurisprudence. In The Constitution
of Liberty, Friedrich Hayek described four relativistic movements in modern
jurisprudence that have attacked the Rule of Law, one of the mainstays of the
classical liberal model.
Referring to
the school known as ''jurisprudence of interest," he said that "at
least in its more radical forms it wanted to get away from the kind of logical
construction which is involved in the decision of disputes by the application
of strict rules of law." About the "free law" school, Hayek
wrote that it concerned itself mainly with criminal law and that "its
objective was to free the judge as far as possible from the shackles of fixed
rules."16
He said about
"historicism" that it led to "an extreme relativism" that
claimed that we can transcend the views of our own time and "remake our
institutions." And about "legal positivism" he pointed out that
it has denied that there is a non-human source of law and has asserted instead
that all law is the product of human will. Placing it in the context of German
intellectuality in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth
centuries, Hayek pointed out how legal positivism was used to justify anything
the State chose to do. Thus it happened that "in Hitler Germany and in
Fascist Italy, as well as in Russia, it came to be believed that under the rule
of law the state was 'unfree,' ...and that, in order to act 'justly, ' it must
be released from the fetters of abstract rules."
Hayek's
summary is confirmed when we read, for example, the writings of Carl Schmitt, a
Nazi. Schmitt spoke of the "hostility to the state that is at the core of
the liberal antithesis of law and politics," and went on to say that
"the idea that a judge is normatively bound to a law has today become
theoretically and practically untenable in many fields of practical
jurisprudence."l7 Such a
view freed the state to work its will.
The desire for such a system is rooted in the collectivist ethos:
"National Socialism does not recognize a separate individual sphere which,
apart from the community, is to be painstakingly protected from any
interference by the state," Wilhelm Stuckart, another Nazi, was able to
say.l8
The attack on
established rules of law and of constitutionalism has been conducted in the
United States as a major imperative of modern liberalism, which has wanted to
free the federal government from the classical liberal Constitutional
limitations that so long stood in the way of social democratic legislation. The
change to "flexible law" was attained during the New Deal. I will discuss this in my book on modern
liberalism.
7.
Relativism
in education. There has
been a significant ideological ingredient in the modern theories of
"progressive" and "unstructured" education.
Classical
liberalism, identifying with the existing culture, wants education to reproduce
that culture in each ensuing generation.
It also wants the culture's values and norms to become, through
education, internalized within each individual.
As an instrument of social change, but not necessarily as what it will
favor when it has its own society to produce, the Left has wanted to loosen all
such ties. This conflict between the
major ideological systems lies behind the tension over educational philosophy
and method.
Rousseau was
again the originator of the relativism. He considered the existing stock of
wisdom "slavish prejudice." He wanted education to get away from
established principles, norms and theory. "True education," he wrote
in Emile, his book on education, "consists less in precept than in
practice."19
The anarchist
Bayard Boyeson has said it even more clearly:
"The personality of the child, during the sensitive and hazardous years of
early youth, must be kept free from the intrusive hands of those who would
mould and fashion it according to preconceived models."20
8. Relativism as to the family and the
sexes. The modern feminist movement
has been the result of many factors in the secular development of our society.
Most have had nothing to do with the alienation or the Left. But even though this is true, anyone who
wants a complete understanding of feminism must become aware that the Left has
played an important role. In the Communist
Manifesto, Marx excoriated marriage as a form of bourgeois prostitution;
and a fair amount of anarchist and New Left writing has contained attacks on
monogamous marriage. Socialist societies have no necessary predilection toward
"free sex" theories once they are established, but again we see that
the Left, seeking ways for radical change, attacks all of the foundations of
bourgeois society.
I have included a lengthy discussion of the
role of marriage and sexual differentiation in my book Modern Social and
Political Philosophies: Burkean Conservatism and
Classical Liberalism. They constitute important building blocks for a
classical liberal society.
9. Relativism in art. Bourgeois art reflects everyday life, is
democratic in content, and often expresses aspirations toward ennoblement. It is "normal art," comprehensible
to artist and viewer alike. That this is not descriptive of the great run of
art in the twentieth century is indicative of how much the artistic community
has been part of the alienated subculture. To a large degree, art has been used
as a vehicle for anger and belittlement, and as a way to dissolve earlier artistic
sensibilities. Kenneth Coutts-Smith
captured the essence of it in his book on Dadaism when he wrote that "art
was the symbol of bourgeois culture that was to be unrelentingly
attacked."21
An irony that could provide real grist for
a contemporary satirist is how readily the predominant society, in its
ignorance on all these things and its desire to appear sophisticated, has
embraced the art of alienation and formlessness.
So much work has been done during the
twentieth century that some excellent art will no doubt survive. The art
curators and historians of the future will need to understand, however, that
the finer works, by such artists as, say, Andrew Wyeth
and Norman Rockwell, are not typical or our time. Such works will remain after
an enormous amount of art expressing dissonance, angst and the purely
esoteric has been forgotten.
Several schools of thought within modern intellectuality have used relativism extensively, including even for debunking purposes, without the schools being considered mere auxiliaries of the Left. Here is a brief review of the major ones:
l. Positivism. Auguste Comte is said to be the father of positivism, but
John Stuart Mill was correct in saying that "the foundation of M. Comte's
philosophy is in no way
peculiar to him, but the general property of the age."22
In his book Auguste Comte and Positivism,
Mill told how it is that positivism represents an advance in human thought. He
said that "the positive explanation of facts has substituted itself, step
by step, for the theological and metaphysical." Mill wrote that "no one, unless entirely
ignorant of the history of thought, will deny that the mistaking of
abstractions for realities pervaded speculation all through antiquity and the
middle ages." To Mill, as to Comte, it was a forward step to base thought
on what is experiential. Theology had imputed motive forces from God's volition
and metaphysics had imputed them from such abstractions as a Vital Principle.
Now, in an empirical age, the human mind had strengthened itself by insisting
on forms of knowledge that are more palpably connected to what is demonstrable.
When positivism takes the form of radical
empiricism, however, denying the validity of anything except what is strictly
observable and experimental, it draws the methodological line in so
circumscribed a way that it becomes a destructive reductionism. We have seen
this at work in the legal positivism that Hayek referred to, where all abstract
rules came under attack. I have also referred to Watson's "behaviorism,"
which is a form of radical positivism in its denial of the existence of human
consciousness.
2. Pragmatism. Pragmatism stresses the discovery of concrete
solutions to immediate problems, and is usually coupled with a denial of the
usefulness of long-term theory.
When a politician or a businessman says “I'm a pragmatist,” as Governor George Romney was fond of doing, he usually just means that "I'm a practical problem-solver, not a hazy visionary." He usually means nothing more philosophical about the word "pragmatism" than that.
As a movement in modern thought, though, it
has been more seriously intended as a reductionist denial of theory, just as
"situation ethics" denies codes or ethics by stressing immediate
situations and legal positivism negates broad legal principles. Accordingly, Krimerman and Perry can speak of
"the pragmatist's insistence that
there are no ultimate moral standards, only the transitory values that
emerge out of a scientific testing of the needs and interests present in
particular situations."23
Modern liberalism in the United States,
although not generally classified as part or the Left, has used pragmatism for
tactical purposes that are the same as the Left’s. Eric Goldman, in his history
of modern liberalism, wrote that "the great attraction or pragmatism lay
precisely in the fact that it was a method of doing without the conservative
philosophy."24
3. Historicism. None or the labels placed on these schools
carry precise meanings, since authors use the terms in different ways. One
meaning of the word "historicism" is to denote the doctrines of the
German Historical School, which we have already discussed. Another is somewhat more all-encompassing and
corresponds to Carl Popper's meaning in The Poverty of Historicism. Popper defines it as "an approach to the
social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their principal
aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the 'rhythms'
or the 'patterns,' the 'laws' or 'trends' that underlie the evolution of
history."25 Popper
counts Hegel and Marx as among the leading historicists.
The emphasis within historicism, so
defined, is again upon social change, a change that sweeps past the bourgeois
phase.
4. Reform Darwinism. There is extensive discussion of Reform
Darwinism in Eric Goldman's Rendezvous with Destiny. From his discussion, I consider it the same
thing as the historicism of the German Historical School, except couched in the
language of Darwinian evolutionary theory.
It postulates the "evolution" of society from phase to phase,
again moving quickly past the bourgeois phase. In rewording historicism in
Darwinian terms, it illustrates as well as anything can how often the same
ideas pop up under different names, adapting themselves to what is fashionable
at the time.
The name Reform Darwinism is intended to
differentiate it from the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer. Spencer
described individualistic society in evolutionary terms, referring to
competition among individuals.
A warning is in order about the labels,
however. The term Social Darwinism is often used to apply to all applications
of evolutionary terminology to society.
When used in that way, it encompasses both Spencer and his
opponents.
There is no use being naive about the Left's
relativism, which in its rhetoric eschews values and theory. Much of what the
Left has said and done is best understood as tactical, not as a commitment to a
permanent outlook.
Rousseau, for
example, used relativism radically, as we have seen; but he was able at the
same time to embrace a non-relativistic value system of his own. In Emile,
he was able to say, despite the relativism he was espousing for education, that
"you will everywhere find the same ideas of right and justice; everywhere the same principles of
morality, the same ideas of good and evil."
Michael
Harrington has pointed out that the American New Left began with an
anti-ideological position, which involves a relativistic negation of theory,
but that "in early 1966
some of the Studies on the Left editors had argued that... the initial
usefulness and success of their anti-ideological stances have worn thin, and
that the need was for the development of a socialist movement."26
This is in
keeping with the tactical use of other ideas as well. Jerry Rubin admitted the
cynical use of ideas when he boasted that "we always put our demands
forward in such an obnoxious manner that the power structure can never satisfy
us and remain the power structure. Then we scream, righteously angry, when our
demands are not met."27
The insincere
use of ideas is only by virtue of circumstances more typical of socialists than
of others. People of whatever stripe tend to use most things instrumentally. If
socialists use ideas tactically more often than others, it is because their
role in modern society has been to stay vigorously on the offensive.
Another point
to notice is that many thinkers within the anti-bourgeois ideologies do not
use relativistic arguments (other than that of necessarily "standing
outside" the main culture). These thinkers tend, in fact, to interpret
relativism as a sign of bourgeois decadence. This shows considerable
misunderstanding, in my opinion, of the sources of relativism, since it assigns
no role to the alienated intellectual.
Harold Laski, the British socialist, showed his disdain for
relativism when he said about "pragmatism" that "I should not
use the word because I do not believe that wishing can change the
multiplication table."28
Adam Ulam has said of Bosanquet that
"his main interest is to defend the notion of the community as a moral
organism and to disparage the relativism which creeps into social theory."29
The National
Socialist Adolf Spemann
wrote about a liberal society that "the freedom of discussion appeared
more important than any definite idea. But this is precisely the form most
often taken by liberalism, out of which ultimately a political, moral, and
artistic theory of relativity has emerged."30 This points to a
thought I have not previously brought into the discussion: that the very
processes of an open society lend themselves to at least the sort of healthy
relativism that inheres in modern science. Joseph Schumpeter said the same
thing about capitalism when he wrote that "capitalism creates a critical frame
of mind which, after having destroyed the moral authority of so many other
institutions, in the end turns against its own; the bourgeois finds to his
amazement that the rationalist attitude does not stop at the credentials of
kings and popes but goes on to attack private property and the whole scheme of
bourgeois values."31
We have
seen how "modern art" has played a relativistic role in the attack on bourgeois
values. But Rudi Supek
tells us that "an extremely ferocious campaign is being waged in some
socialist countries today against abstract art as the last, 'most radical,' and
most distorted, expression of bourgeois decadency in art."32