On 1/1/07, Mark Lause <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
You wrote, "liberalism, in theory if not in practice, is essentially a
doctrine about what constitutes legitimate exercise of state power,
favoring limitations of state power in defense of (negative) liberties
(i.e., freedom from the state) of the individual, mainly propertied
individuals."
That's a good 18th/19th century definition. The vast majority of our
contemporaries see liberalism in terms of emphasizing state authority.
Many North Americans, especially US citizens, do, but Americans are,
on this as well as on many other things, aberrant, breaking with the
international norm. :->
What Americans think of as liberalism is a combination of utilitarian
social-engineering, compelling people to behave well in the state's
estimation of their best interest, and what Michel Foucault refers to
variously as surveillance and discipline and biopolitics (which is
done not only by the state but also corporations).
Or Marxism....
You wrote, "The Marxist tradition, in contrast, has seldom embraced any
categorical limitation of state power in theory or in practice."
There is no class content to this kind of an abstraction about "state
power." Marxists discuss the state and state power in terms of class
realities...and they're pretty categorical about that.
I mean the Marxist tradition's stance on the state power of a
socialist state. The difficulty here is that there is nothing in
Marxist philosophy that serves as a doctrine in defense of civil
liberties as coherent as political liberalism. So, dissidents under
socialist states have traditionally turned toward political liberalism
as their main inspiration.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
