Liberated

Perhaps we are however mistaken, if we think, that there would be nowadays few leftist attempts and new starts. Effectively, there was in the past decades several bigger and again so many lesser or more limited new begins. Already for almost half a century, the types of Post-Modern Marxism or of Marxizing Post-Modernism were existing, for almost also many decades, we might experience the so-called Third Way as an event, that remains in the memory. The diverse variations of the liberation theology are continuously existing, over that even also a range of so-called „models”, that at least are at the beginning linked to a state (from Chavez up to Hollande). North-Corea and Cuba should be also quoted, like the giant of the astonishments, the global-communist China. And we have mainly the impression, that there are much more leftist thinkers than leftist voters.

In spite of that, we have the prevalent feeling, that there would be no or almost no left in our days.

We do not perceive this number of leftist directions presumable because these conceptions are not similar to the Marxism’s core, to this eternal archetype and ideal type of the leftist thought domination. For, this archetype had a classical and omnipotent form! Do you opt for the main antagonism of the historical and social world, you occupy a position of antagonistic contradiction, from where you have immediately the holistic outlook, and with the help of this fact, you already have in your power one pole of the antagonism and dispose of the force of the revolutionary initiative.

From today, we can generalize also retrospectively from the incredibly intense (even if mostly unconscious) presence of the Marxist antagonism. The tremendous antagonism acted probably like an opiate and an inimitable model of thought structures. Probably also unexpectedly, this model inherited an exclusive kind of new philosophical begin. The start should not be – despite every appearance and every voluntary formation of identity and even also as a big surprise – a start from down below! No new confrontation with the world of the facts, and if possible, without conditions, came into question, the start should become as quickly as possible also logical, it should set up a logical domination upon the real.

Do we want to typologize to some degree the most visible leftist intellectual formations, then we must go on ahead cautiously and hypothetically. Nonetheless, the three very most visible currents, projected on the Marxist original model, show certain similarities.

The Third way notes, that there is no longer any antagonism in the society, and concludes immediately also on the consequences, the society is perfect and democratic. Leibniz stands up and demands a microphone, to announce in political English an ambitious Tony Blair, it would be the best of all worlds. It is important to see, how we came to this concept on the third way. This happened through a short-circuiting of the Marxist original antagonism, in a reality, in which it has no effect – consequently, the society is already the best of all times.

The Leftist Social Democracy or Social-Democratic Left, very difficult to define more precisely (in many countries, the names oscillate also intensively for these formations : from social democracy to socialism and vice versa: from socialism again to social democracy) does also not find the great original antagonism in the society of our days, its reaction is immediately also a reduction that, finally but consistently, claims for the state redistribution with the combat for social spending and thus for the recovery of ever stronger positions. The objective is by no means to underestimate this concept and this practice, however it is also intellectually a secondary position (not because the antagonism is missing, but), because the change in values and the transformation of all those conditions, that determine the positions in the redistribution, are standing out of the radius of action of this concept. This reduction is sentenced to a social and political passivity.

As hard as it is also philosophically to define the Post-Modern Marxism and the Post-Modern Left, the mode of reaction analyzed here appears also in them. In them, the antagonism is however not lacking. What is removed, is all their linguistic and conceptual intonations. The Post-Modern Left is silent, wordless, thinks in differences. It replaces the alone delighting antagonism by the same of the thinking difference. The antagonism was determining everything „positively” (replaces sometimes the science), the difference is determining everything „negatively” (allows no positive statements about the reality). The Leftist Post-Modernism destroys the reality, to save the logical antagonism of the difference.

The Third way, the Social-Democratic and the Post-Modern Left apply as three shades of a huge figure. The Post-Marxist Left remains faithful to the outline of the huge original.

The secret, that is touched here, even if by no means unmasked, is : the Left can only move in a world, in which the Marxist great antagonism is working. About a world, in which this great antagonism is just not working, it has little or also nothing to say. That we set up maybe, on the basis of an own analysis, first a model of the society and then of its changement, does not arise here, the intellectual creativity is competing in how we can absolutely infer, most quickly and most economically, from the lack of antagonism to the lack of problems.

A leftist strategy, intentional or not, can only develop definitely, in the present decades, in a national-state frame. At this place, we reflect on the nation-state very abstractly, not as a „professional political scientist” (then we should have spoken about the EU), not national-oriented (then we should have forgotten the globalization).

We only want to render stronger the fact, that the playing field of the leftist politics in the executive is essentially the national-state frame (whatever it wants to mean). Simplistically said : in the nineteenth century, there was an idea of the socialism versus the capitalism attached to the diverse nation-states (if they were already nation-states), today there is a global capitalism versus the leftist parties, which the nation-states are the playing field of.

We presented earlier the thesis, that the comprehensive antagonism, inherited from Marx, determines the th ree leftist thought families. Secondly, we came to the assertion, that the real playing field of the leftist activities is the democratic parliamentarism of the diverse nation-states.

Both results are pointing in two different directions. In this frame, we cannot speak of a global antagonism (neither fundamental, nor accidental), for this concrete activity needs something other than its own justification, not only a holistic and global antagonism, that would like to reorganize, in the point of view of this antagonism, the entire description of the world.

Without the comprehensive antagonism, which the world would have to be rebuilt from, the Left cannot constitute itself according to ideas, it can however not formulate such an antagonism. Its playing field requires however the ability of effective lobbies’ formations rather more than a comprehensive antagonism as Archimedean point.

This discrepancy cannot be resolved theoretically. For – strangely – one of the poles of the discrepancy consists in the ambition of a holistic antagonism itself. If the formation of the theory is one of the poles of the opposition, this one cannot be resolved by the theory.

The discrepancy can however also not be resolved in the practice. For the other pole of the opposition is just a certain kind of the political everyday practice. The discrepancy of theory and practice cannot then be unilaterally resolved by any of these orientations.

The resolution will and can come from an unconventional, also naive way of a new view of the society, the beginning of detailed work on the social being, a new social ontology, that can win new characteristics from the concept and the subject „society” : possibilities beyond the antagonism determining everything, but also beyond the political everyday work determining everything.

The result of the ontology handing itself over is a society handing itself over and their common result is a complexity handing itself over, that noone can any longer decipher.