Efter 1968 och realsocialismens fall har de forna marxisterna rört sig åt flera olika håll. En del har konverterat till nyliberalism, kombinerat med kulturmarxism, andra har fastnat i dogmatisk marxism-leninism, andra har förförts av Deleuzes, Guattaris och Negris overkliga framtidsutopier. Men det har också funnits en reell möjlighet att ta fasta på de emancipatoriska inslagen i den kritiska teorin och västmarxismen. Ett exempel på detta är Paul Piccone och kretsen kring Telos, Aleksander Dugin har med sitt begrepp den fjärde positionen utvecklat tankar kring hur vi idag måste ta det bästa av både socialism och fascism (för en västeuropeisk fjärdepositionist är det också frestande att inspireras något av liberalism och libertarianism).
Costanzo Preve – Comunismo e ComunitÃ
The Holocaust religion (to be clear, I do not deny the Holocaust, I’m talking about its ideological dimension) has brought Europe into a state of permanent immaturity. The message is: if they left we Europeans alone we will surely return to commit horrible crimes, we cannot be left to ourselves, we need always someone to control us, because fascists or communists are always ready to materialize and take control. That ”someone” is obviously the benevolent American empire.
– Preve
Ett intressant exempel på en liknande resa som Piccones är den italienske filosofen Costanzo Preve. Preve var i ungdomen kommunist, och Marx är fortsatt en viktig del av hans tänkande. Men Preve fokuserar på arvet från Hegel och den tyska idealistiska filosofin hos Marx, liksom kopplingen till de grekiska filosoferna. Han har identifierat ett paradigmskifte hos den äldre Marx, där bland annat breven till Vera Zasulich visar att den åldrade filosofen började se samhället som en möjlig aktör snarare än enbart klassen. Preve är därför kommunitarist, och skriver om samhälle och klass följande:
At the same time, the term community ought not be dismissed as solely a vessel filled with the symbolic venom of reaction and organicism. Analysis of Marx’s own manuscripts shows a fusion of the terms, class and community, in his thinking. It might be necessary to disinfect the term community from its racist, and nationalistic contaminants in order to reappropriate its democratic, rational, cohesive, and its internationalist (why not?) meaning.
In order to accomplish this in the near future we have to guard against promoting a dichotomy that opposes the terms class and community… In reality, Marx’s acknowledgement of the possibilities inherent in the Russian communitarian model collective property in the mir for evolving into a form of communism without transiting capitalism represented a true scientific revolution in terms of his own system.
Preve menar att en sådan kommunitarism kan inspireras av ”countries and regions where communitarian practices be they conservative or revolutionary continue to flourish (sub-Saharan African, eg.)”.
Han betraktar också höger-vänster-distinktionen som irrelevant, och har både skrivit för Claudio Muttis tidskrift Eurasia och intervjuats av Alain de Benoist. Likheterna med Dugins fjärde position blir än tydligare när antiimperialisten Preve utvecklar sin syn på geopolitiken och Europa:
The world is much too complex to apply such a simple dichotomy everywhere, giving my comments substance only in relation to a majority of countries in Europe where the real problem, as I see it, is no longer Marx’s Left/Right dilemma but instead that of de Gaulle, the opposition between the defenders and adversaries of Europe’s subservience to imperial America.
Preves analys av 1968 är också knivskarp. Han skriver:
I would summarize “1968" as a kind of foundational myth, specifically the foundational myth of postmodernity, which describes a symbolic struggle between two metaphysical forces: Youth versus Power (more precisely, indeterminate Youth vs. indeterminate Power). Under the guise of a return to an ever elusive indeed decrepit and historically defeated communist utopia, this myth actually led to a radical modernization of capitalist culture. It produced, in Freudian terms, a “fatherless society" of ultra-liberalized sex and other social relations in general. In Europe, 1968 initiated the dissociation of bourgeois culture from capitalism. This process transformed socially normative classes and castes into mere income levels or fractions… In Marx’s terminology, the urban petit bourgeoisie initiated a radical modernization of behavior (open sexuality, consumption of narcotics and other stimulants, etc.) while experiencing this transformation under a false consciousness, or the erroneous belief that they were participating in an anticapitalist, communist-libertarian revolution.
Han karaktäriserar postmodernismen som en reaktion på 68-generationens sorg över att deras utopi inte är genomförbar:
The postmodern worldview that has become gospel for most of the Western intelligentsia since 1985 could be interpreted as the blowback of the struggle for an impossible revolution… Regarding Lyotard, it’s interesting to note his connection to “Socialism or Barbarism," a messianic Marxist movement of the 1960s. His subsequent ideas about postmodernism were informed by a kind of collective mourning over the collapse of this communist-utopian myth. What he calls “postmodern disenchantment" actually resembles Freud’s theory of “grief work." With respect to the May ’68 generation, one could say that they had to abandon their Marxist-revolutionary illusions by performing a type of grief work over their false consciousness. This was necessary in order to salvage the rewards of modern social mores that came from their rebellion against patriarchal authority. In other words, postmodernism is the consequence of confusion between a social revolution and the adolescent rebellion of the May ‘68 generation.
Även Preves analys av fenomenet politisk korrekthet är värdefull:
In Europe, by contrast, the PC movement has a dedicated mission in transforming the demographically large May ‘68 generation into full-fledged capitalism groupies. Those who at 20 or 30 years old were preoccupied by socialist and libertarian dreams are now, at 50 or 60, totally reconciled to the corporatist ideology in universities and the media, where they play a key role in manufacturing consensus for the continued submission of Europe to the new imperialist American state.
I view Political Correctness as essentially the collective, ideological product of the May ‘68 generation. Its principal function seems to be to suppress the growth of any intellectual or social force capable of contributing to original interpretations of the actual situation in which we live. It’s impossible to predict how long this will last.
Sammantaget är Preve en givande bekantskap, som visar hur man kan röra sig i riktning mot en fjärde position även med marxismen som utgångspunkt.
The fact that Western culture chose to criminalize Auschwitz, yet absolved itself of all responsibility for Hiroshima, violates a deep-seated tradition that heretofore excluded civilian non-combatants mainly women, children, the old and infirm as military targets during wartime. Throughout their various histories, Western nations shared this ethical principle in common. They did not in fact always abide by it, of course, but at the very least maintained it as a unifying ethical belief. Thus, Hiroshima signaled the end of an era.
– Preve
Mer Preve
Comunismo e Comunita
Intervju med Claudio Gallo
Intervju med Robert Dannin
Relaterat
Paul Piccone och den moderna vänsterns vägval
Socialism och samhälle
Karl Marx och irokeserna
Alexander Dugin och den fjärde positionen
Om skribenten: Joakim Andersen
