The permanence of the political : a democratic critique of the radical impulse to transcend politics / Joseph M. Schwartz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schwartz, Joseph M., 1954-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Socialism.

Social conflict.

Social justice.

Democracy.

Cultural pluralism.

Radicalism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (349 pages)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1995.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Why have radical political theorists, whose thinking inspired mass movements for democracy, been so suspicious of political plurality? According to Joseph Schwartz, their doubts were involved with an effort to transcend politics. Mistakenly equating all social difference with the harmful way in which particular interests dominated marketplace societies, radical thinkers sought a comprehensive set of "true human interests" that would completely abolish political strife. In extensive analyses of Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, and Arendt, Schwartz seeks to mediate the radical critique of democratic capitalist societies with the concern for pluralism evidenced in both liberal and postmodern thought. He thus escapes the authoritarian potential of the radical position, while appropriating its more democratic implications. In Schwartz's view, a reconstructed radical democratic theory of politics must sustain liberalism's defense of individual rights and social pluralism, while redressing the liberal failure to question structural inequalities. In proposing such a theory, he criticizes communitarianism for its premodern longing for a monolithic, virtuous society, and challenges the "politics of difference" for its failure to question the undemocratic terrain of power on which "difference" is constructed. In conclusion, he maintains that an equitable distribution of power and resources among social groups necessitates not the transcendence of politics but its democratic expansion.

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER 1. Introduction: The Radical Impulse to Transcend Politics

CHAPTER 2. The Threat of Interests to the General Will: Rousseau's Critique of Particularism

CHAPTER 3. The Hegelian State: Mediating Away the Political

CHAPTER 4. The Origins of Marx's Hostility to Politics: The Devaluation of Rights and Justice

CHAPTER 5. Lenin (and Marx) on the Sciences of Consciousness and Production: The Abolition of Political Judgment

CHAPTER 6. Hannah Arendt's Politics of "Action": The Elusive Search for Political Substance

CHAPTER 7. Conclusion: Redressing the Radical Tradition's Antipolitical Legacy-Toward a Radical Democratic Pluralist Politics

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [311]-324) and index.

ISBN:

9786612752292

9781282752290

1282752294

9781400821778

1400821770

9781400813346

1400813344

OCLC:

700688687