Autor: Lawrence, G. Frederick

Buch: Communication and Lonergan

Titel: The Human Good and Christian Conversation

Stichwort: result of the two waves of modernity; two chief forms or languages of Western liberalism; Karl Marx

Kurzinhalt: both depart from the modern assumption that the chief concern or issue of modern politics is power. First; conservative, liberal; socialist politics

Textausschnitt: 22 As a result of the two waves of modernity, there are two chief forms or languages of Western liberalism. They both depart from the modern assumption that the chief concern or issue of modern politics is power. First, commercial democracy is based on consent to governmental power as guarantor of public safety and comfort and on the doctrine of classical political economy that if there are no restrictions to free economic activity other than enlightened self-interest, social harmony and well-being will necessarily prevail. Second, socialist politics of compassion grounds the legitimacy of governmental power upon the extent to which it bolsters equality not merely of opportunity (that is, the political right to endeavor to acquire and dispose of one's property within the limits of the law and the civil right to freedom of expression and to self-government), but of the satisfaction of aggregate societal needs (under the heading of economic, social, and cultural rights to such things as health, housing, education, employment, sanitation, etc.) by attempting to reconcile older liberalism's means with socialist or collectivist ends in what has been since called welfare economics. Both versions of liberalism are staunchly convinced of the efficacy of scientific prediction and control and of institutionally contrived solutions to political problems. In general, and by way of oversimplification, advocates of commercial democracy believe that enlightened self-interest in private good is the operator of common weal, and they preach the ideal of as much freedom as possible for the individual and the equality of opportunity. In the United States we tend to label this stance conservative. Secularist proponents of the socialist politics of compassion depend upon "culture" to supply the link between the self-regarding individual and disinterested respect of the law or the rights of others by generating a secular kind of compassion that educes gentle and beneficent concern for others from natural selfishness. They advocate a greater equality of conditions or results in life and preach equality of influence and power for all. In the United States we tend to reserve the name liberal for people who are considered politically progressive in this sense. (256f; Fs) (notabene)
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23 The most noteworthy proponent of the socialist politics of compassion is Karl Marx. ... Marx tried to analyze that struggle by re-introducing social (second level) and, at least in his youthful writings, ethical (third level) concerns into political economy in opposition to the "possessive individualism" of liberal capitalism. However, this important attempt to redress the biases of liberal democratic political economy unfortunately got derailed by Marx's uneasy blend of idealism and materialism. That idealism trivialized the underlying problem of evil just as Rousseau and Kant had done. The materialism kept him from breaking cleanly from the utilitarianism and instrumentalism of his early liberal predecessors. He failed altogether to appreciate Rousseau's insight that to achieve freedom in equality requires small communities with religious foundations. And however much the Romantic model of artistic creation was his privileged model for the making of history by human subjects, his revolutionary idea was ultimately just a project of technical mastery, which not even a classless and stateless society would be capable of redeeming. (257; Fs)