More from “Against Bosses, Against Oligarchies: A Conversation with Richard Rorty,” available for free here (short 67-page PDF):
[p. 16] RR: …the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the loss of public confidence in the presidency and the government all conspired to move the student radicals into non-majoritarian politics. In other words, the Marxist claim that the system isn’t reformable came together with the widespread post-Watergate feeling that the American government is hopelessly corrupt. This made it very difficult for leftists to think of themselves as American patriots, hoping to achieve their country [Rorty-speak for America as representing hope and potential for enacting progressive ideals, basically]. But unless the left wraps itself in the flag, it hasn’t got a chance of practicing a majoritarian politics. Before the ‘60s wrapping yourself in the flag when you did leftist politics was as natural as breathing. But that became unnatural after the ‘60s.
Q: This is the certainly the sort of thing with which many readers will take issue—this exhortation to patriotism.
RR: One of them already has, [saying] basically, “Who needs patriotism if you have moral principles?” My response is that moral principles are terrific in Ethics 101, but not as spurs to political action.
I wish we could just replace ‘patriotism’ with something like ‘humanism’ or ‘globalism.’
[p. 20] Q: …what do you say to people who would argue that what Rorty is asking us to do is to repress a Marxist tradition.
RR: How about not repressing it, but taking it fairly lightly? You can argue that if it had not been for Marx, Engels and their friends, we wouldn’t have gotten the welfare state. You can argue analogously that had it not been for Luther and Calvin we would still be buying indulgences. Both claims are probably true, but do you really want to bother about whether you’re maintaining a Lutheran or a Calvinist tradition?
Q: So you see it as a ladder we have climbed so that it may be discarded afterwards?
RR: It’s a ladder that is covered with filth because of the marks of the governments that have called themselves Marxists. You have two reasons for forgetting it. First, it’s become a distraction. Second, it’s acquired a bad name.
Indeed. I’m ready to get off the “train of history.”
[p. 36] Q: …your writing seems directed toward those who are, relatively speaking, powerful. …the concern is with how the powerful should act toward the less powerful. In contrast, a lot of leftist cultural studies work seems to write from the other side of the equation — writing in solidarity with the less powerful. …it seems to result in a different kind of politics. [...] Is it possible to write with that kind of solidarity, or does it seem like a false kind of solidarity?
RR: Roosevelt said early in his first administration that, “If I were working for an hourly wage, I would join a labor union.” This was a very important moment in the history of the labor movement. Was he speaking from the side of the less powerful? No. I could say to the janitors at the University of Virginia, for God’s sake join a union. Would that be speaking from their side? No. But it’s good advice anyway, even if it can be viewed as condescending.
This whole idea of solidarity with the oppressed on the part of the bourgeois intellectual strikes me as one of the many phony problems that we inherited from Marxism. John Stuart Mill didn’t worry about whether he was solid with the women or the workers—he just gave his views. The Marxist trope of “Jones is just a bourgeois intellectual” never did anybody any good. It isn’t something anybody should spend their time worrying about.
Q: …you make an unabashed defense of top-down initiatives. But what about the idea that all knowledges are partial, imminent knowledges, and that the things you think should be done are in part a product of where you’re speaking from?
RR: …Everybody’s always taken this for granted. The first thing you say when you hear a political speech is something like “well, that’s what it looks like to him.” But I can’t see that Foucault or anybody else has given us new insight into the tediously familiar fact that your views are usually a product of your circumstances.
Q: How can one acknowledge this point in one’s writing and still say something useful, though?
RR: Why bother? Why not let my audience acknowledge it for me? Everybody knows that I’m an overpaid, privileged humanities professor. They knew it before they read my stuff. Why should I bother with self-flagellation?
I think there’s something useful to dropping “cultural” judgements of “bourgeois”/privileged, middle-class type folk. The important thing should be, are they aware of their various privilege (class, feminist, etc.), do they honor the values of liberty, equality and fraternity, or are they blind? Who cares of rich folk buy expensive wines and enjoy elitist movies, or whatever it is that bothers you about them, so long as they’re socially aware and supporting helpful policies, that sort of thing?
That said, shouldn’t one’s views correspond somewhat to one’s actions? Meaning, if you purport to hold egalitarian, fraternistic values, you shouldn’t do things that work against them. Not it’s always easy to make the right choices.
Also, it seems a little like jumping the gun to declare everyone is “tediously familiar” with the idea that your views are a product of your circumstances. It often seems to me that 30-51% of Americans believe their views are very much obvious, normal and expected, and if you don’t share them there’s something wrong with you.
But I also feel there’s something to his suggestion that you just speak your views and don’t waste too much time worrying about where they come from. If you think they’re good and useful, it’s almost a matter of respect to treat others as capable of understanding them, and just explain what seems to be misunderstood.
[p. 39] Q: There’s a tension between different sides of the left concerning what we should do in the age of global capitalism: do you keep borders open, or do you close them?
RR: Right. Do you save the working classes of the advanced old democracies by protectionism, or do you give up protectionism for the sake of the Third World? Do you try to keep the standard of living in the old democracies up in order to prevent a right-wing populist, fascist movement in the USA, or do you try to re-distribute the wealth across national borders? You probably can’t do both. I wish I knew how to resolve the dilemma, but I don’t.
When I was a kid, I knew just what I would do in foreign and domestic policy if I were President. Nowadays I don’t. I think this is a fairly widespread phenomenon. Forty years ago, you could believe that the U.S., through the U.N., could export democracy, squeeze the evil empire to death, create industrialization, and promote a rising standard of living throughout the world. I don’t believe that anymore. It can’t be done. How do you save the Asian economies without giving all the money to American and Japanese banks? I have no idea. Or consider Mexico. We in effect ruined the Mexican middle class by paying off American banks. There ought to be a way to avoid this, but I don’t know what it is.
Well, if you read other Rorty and his love of the enlightenment ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity, of ironists who are aware of how contingent their selves are, and have a sense of sympathy for their fellow humans… If you read his marriage of post-modernism with enlightenment values, and believe in those values and that ironism yourself, it seems to me there’s a clear solution.
The only pragmatic, and moral, solution, is to open borders, reduce barriers, and do your best to grapple with right-wing populist movements. You have to trust your ideals. You have to trust that if you help the rest of the world attain some of that freedom and equality, and education and democracy, that they will in turn help you and others as needed.
Rorty strikes me as someone worth listening to, who, however, is situated in an America where the left has lost its faith in “America” as a force for those enlightenment values. He’s tried to argue some of that faith back, at a time when it seems it’s starting to be better to argue for global efforts rather than many nation-specific efforts. But I suppose there’s reason for both, still – for reform and progress within nations, as well as between, and outside of them.
[p. 46] RR: …I think of the intellectual left as dominated by the notion that we need a theoretical understanding of our historical situa-tion, a social theory which reveals the keys to the future development, and a strategy which integrates everything with everything. I just don’t see the point. I don’t see why there shouldn’t be sixteen initiatives, each of which in one way or another might relieve some suffering, and no overall theoretical integration.
Q: It might be that some of this thinking is that the left isn’t quite sure what those initiatives should be, and that while the theorizing may occasionally become a fetish, it can also be a way of stepping back to one remove from the situation in order to get a clearer view, so we can then see what the more specific initiatives should be.
RR: It never worked before. Why should it work now?
Q: But what about the Marxist insight of taking a step back from the economy and saying, the economy in a big way works this way, thus our specific local practices should be unionizing the workers and organizing them.
RR: It didn’t take Marx for that. Cobbet knew that, I’m not sure that the Roman plebes didn’t know that. I think the idea that Marx burst upon an astonished world with the thought that the rich were ripping off the poor is weird.
Q: But isn’t it more than just the rich ripping off the poor? It’s that it’s being done in a certain way, so to stop it, we’re going to have to address the certain way it’s happening.
RR: But he didn’t address it. He said that nothing could change without a total revolution… The rhetoric was entirely one of “No piecemeal solutions.” The left got hooked on this no piecemeal solutions idea… But most of the good has been done by piecemeal initiatives that came out of left field. Stonewall came out of left field. Selma came out of left field.
…Most of the good is done by opportunistic moral entrepreneurs… Later on the academic moralists and social theorists come along and tie everything up in a neat package. But this latter activity usually doesn’t lead to political results.
I’m not sure I agree completely with this, but I think I basically do. Most of the best things humans do seem to come from trying to solve specific, piecemeal problems. That said, I consistently feel that there’s “something correct” about criticisms of things like “capitalism” or “state power” that place these in models containing systemic faults. But, short of bloody, tragic revolution, there doesn’t seem to be a solution aside from gradual, piecemeal solving of specific human problems. Sometimes tweaking the existing society, sometimes perhaps creating a new one out of the shell of the old.
