Bring Back My Oppressors!

Not much time today, and none tomorrow -- perhaps enough to finish our little snidetrip into the cosmic nul-de-slack of Marxism.

Marx is on odd figure: at once totally irrelevant, but at the same time the most consequential intellectual of the last century, right down to the present day. He wanted his ideas to change the world. Well, they're still changing it -- in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, and other epicenters of leftwing Progress. Marxist inspired ideology continues to be the most dynamic and successful religion on earth.

Why? Taylor agrees that it "is the most influential formulation of a widespread modern protest against the course of our civilization." I would just say civilization, period, for it is the return of paganism, barbarism, and polytheism (or perhaps poly-antitheism). Yes, but why?

"The idea of overcoming the injustice and expressive deadness of our world at one stroke by recovering control and radically reshaping it according to a freely chosen design exercises a profound attraction," such that "We find it almost everywhere among the protest and liberation movements of our day" (ibid.).

Now we have some clues: idea, injustice, expressive, deadness, freedom, radical reshaping. Here again, these are all deeply religious categories; in fact, they draw from an intense religiosity, minus the religion, perhaps the deadliest combination in man's intellectual arsenal. Which we mean literally. See 20th century for details.

We'll come back to those religious categories in a moment. Let's just finish off with Taylor, so I can return him to the shelf and clear the desk a bit.

To the extent that the aspirations to radical freedom are influenced by Marx, they descend also from Hegel. But what is much more important, they encounter the same dilemma, which emerged from our discussion of Marxism. They face the same emptiness, the same temptation to the forceful imposition of their solution on an unyielding world, the same inability to define a human situation once the present one is swept away.

Note that our struggle against the left's intrinsic coercion is necessarily asymmetrical, in that they haven't evolved to the point of differentating politics from religion. Therefore, properly religious people are at a disadvantage, since we don't focus all our energy on politics. We have a life. Does anyone think Antifa members have one? No, and that's the point: politics is their life, albeit an empty and pseudo one. It is soul-deadness pretending not to be. Zombies.

Taylor:

This whole tradition, whether Marxist, anarchist, situationist, or whatever, offers no idea whatever of what the society of freedom should look like beyond the empty formulae, that it should be endlessly creative, have no divisions, whether between men, or within them, or between levels of existence (play is one with work, love is one with politics, art is one with life), involve no coercion, no representation, etc. All that is done in these negative characteristics is to think away the entire human existence. Small wonder then that this freedom has no content.

Or telos. Humanism without those messy humans.

So, what's the catch? Well, no more Ultimate Struggle Against the Forces of Evil, Fascism, Racism, etc. The cosmic melodrama is over, and with it, the existential meaning that had so animated and motivated the ideological zombie. Who knew paradise could be so boring with no one left to hate and bully!

Here's a key: "This is in a sense a negative conception of freedom." But this is by no means equivalent to the classical liberal conception of negative freedom, which is always teleological, i.e., ordered to virtue, to an archetypal pattern of human actualization and thriving.

In the absence of the vertical it is necessarily an empty freedom that immediately reduces to nihilism and will, AKA power. These postmodern nihilists constantly speak of politics reducing to power. Well, here it is. No truth-of or freedom-to, just blind will. Supposing it could be attained, it

would be a void in which nothing would be worth doing, nothing would deserve to count for anything. The self which has arrived at freedom setting aside all external obstacles and impingements is characterless, and hence without defined purpose, however much this is hidden by such seemingly positive terms as "rationality" or "creativity."

Do you really think the average BLM or Antifa member would be doing something creative, charitable, inventive, or beautiful if he weren't immersed in his psychodrama? Do you think Al Sharpton would be a great novelist, painter, or scientist if he weren't so preoccupied with political liberation? Do you think Barack Obama would be something other than a community agitator if not for The Man holding him down?

Here's a frightening thought to the losers of the left: what if you are already free? What if your unhappiness is primarily a consequence of your own bad choices, or the bad choices of your parents having you out of wedlock? What if there is indeed a systemic racism, and it's the local government indoctrination center you were forced to attend, and which has left you without knowledge, skills, or even basic literacy? What if the ideology that fills your head is part of a conspiracy to fill your head with ideology and thereby perpetuate a misdiagnosis and bogus cure for what ails you?

Back on the shelf you go, Professor Hegel. We'll get back to you if we need anything else. Meanwhile, let's close with this:

The relationship between gnostic thinkers like Marx and Christianity is parasitic. Marx takes from Christianity; he saps the spiritual life from it and ultimately displaces it with Marxism -- the existence of Christianity and its death are necessary for Marxism to live (Federici).

Some people wonder why they would burn Bibles in the street. I'm not one of them. I just wonder why they don't crucify them.

Marx's concept of "emancipation" is a deformation of the Gospel idea of "metanoia." Rather than a transformation of the soul, as is the case with metanoia, Marx posits a social transformation that is based on material conditions (ibid.).

Understanding the connection between the Christian image and its inverted likeness

helps illuminate the meaning of modern ideas like "social justice" and why they are the products of souls that have lost their sense of authentic Christian spirituality (ibid.).

So, with the success of the Revolution, the soul has everything it could possibly desire. Except a soul.