[lbo-talk] Reading Arendt in Caracas

[Carl Remick]

>From: "B." <docile_body at yahoo.com>
>
>Carl Remick wrote:
>
>"Particularly refreshing is the conclusion, viz.:
>'Hannah Arendt argues that the content of the century
>is the assault launched by totalitarianism against
>freedom.  This overarching metaphysical description is
>characteristic of bourgeois ideology in that it
>completely ignores the central social and economic
>crisis of our time.  [...] The content of the century
>is not a parable of good and evil (which is, of
>course, a generalized form of Christian myth) but the
>long and tortuous efforts to overcome and overthrow
>capitalism-imperialism.  Humanity is still faced, to
>this very day, with the choice between socialism and
>barbarism.'"
>
>[B.]:
>
>Okay, so on the one hand it's lazy reductionism --
>and, even worse, "characteristic of bourgeois
>ideology" [!! - ha] (them's fightin' words in some
>parts!) to reduce the 20th century to this kind of
>Manichean (or, Christian, as the author prefers)
>"totalitarianism versus freedom" schema Arendt paints,
>according to the author.
>
>And yet Remick quotes, in contradistinction to this,
>we are also "still faced ... with the choice between
>socialism and barbarism."
>
>... Which is not lazy, Manichean reductionism.
>
>Huh.

Ha.  "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two 
opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to 
function."  -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Carl

_________________________________________________________________
Booking a flight? Know when to buy with airfare predictions on MSN Travel. 
http://travel.msn.com/Articles/aboutfarecast.aspx&ocid=T001MSN25A07001