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03/18/2019

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ajkreider

I think you have the reason for the faith in your post - there is some inductive support the survival of liberalism in the face of crisis. (Of course, the Marxist might respond, "It only takes one . .")

Truth is, modern liberal societies have the structures in place, both to make the crisis more bearable and less deep. For all the gnashing of teeth, U.S. unemployment in the Great Financial Recession barely reached double figures, and extended benefits made that survivable. We now know that such times are when to deficit spend - even never-MMTers are on board with that. Ten years on, median household income is at all-time highs.

We have good reason to take the attitude that "this too shall pass".

Aaron Lercher

The badness of capitalism for Marx isn't a self-evident moral truth, or even a moral truth at all. In Marx historical teleology takes the place of morality. He thought that eventually each of us would be forced to choose which side she or he was on.

Honneth's recent book, The Idea of Socialism, discusses the teleology thesis, not just in Marx. G.A. Cohen's autobiographical book has a nice discussion. Gramsci meditates on the point of the belief in historical necessity. I'm fond of Korsch's polemic, Marxism and Philosophy, as a document of coming to grips with this in the midst of revolutionary defeat. Also, Wajda movie, Ashes and Diamonds, presents this teleology with pathos and humanism. I haven't read the Andrzejewski novel, though.

Eric Schliesser

Aaron, I agree that for Marx historical teleology takes the place for certain bourgeois conceptions of morality. And that he is impatient with any kind of moralizing is true. But I push back on the idea that there is no morality presupposed in the Manifesto (and elsewhere). Throughout the text slavery is clearly taken to be self-evidently bad and the significance of this is extended into the analysis of the economy, the nature of commodification, etc. How to characterize the functional role of this moral claim in a way such that it does not become the to-be-rejected moralizing may not be easy.

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