Dilemmas of Radicalism
Kettler, David
The posthumous collection of Franz Neumann's essays (The Democratic and Authoritarian State, The Free Press, 1957) underlines the tragedy of his death. Some of the essays are diffuse and...
...ONLY ONE PRINCIPLE must be asserted as the premise of rational inquiry: man is potentially rational and capable of choosing—i.e., man is potentially free...
...Neumann scorned Utopian remedies, so, for example "if one refuses to take account of the inevitability of the division of labor and of the hierarchical ordering of the process of labor and attempts to 'spiritualize' labor instead of restricting it to a minimum, then social anxiety is deepened...
...From the radical implications of his position, he retreated into the academy: the demand for critical insight is reduced to a liberal plea for education, and the demand for capture of political power by the forces of freedom is reduced to a plea for political participation by men of good will...
...The posthumous collection of Franz Neumann's essays (The Democratic and Authoritarian State, The Free Press, 1957) underlines the tragedy of his death...
...The real function of the cognitive element is to expose the possibilities for realizing the human potentialities latent in different social situations...
...Neumann was no coward...
...For example, after a detailed analysis of the specific historical weakening of juridical freedom in the United States today, he offers the rather strange consolation that "these problems may not appear so depressing if one considers political power not as an alien power (as expressed in the formula citizen versus state) but as one's own...
...i.e., that freedom depends on an understanding of the situation] is wrong if it is conceived as obedience to an abstract and fatalistic law of history...
...Political power is a necessary fact of human life—man can only affect its form, distribution and purposes...
...Democracy, with its responsiveness to changing conditions and its competing political parties, institutionalizes peaceful change...
...Labor's interests, like those of any other group, may at times coincide with the "universal" interest of freedom, but radicalism cannot rely on seizure of power by the proletariat...
...But this is not true...
...Any attempt to resuscitate the radical implications of Neumann's theory must discover potentially progressive social energy in contemporary society...
...its ability to provide for the fullest development of all human potentialities...
...Perhaps man cannot control the forces which govern his life, and each must save his own soul as best he can—through Epicurean withdrawal from politics or the silent sabotage of the Good Soldier Schweik...
...Man becomes truly human only in the fight for freedom, and, ultimately, freedom means the unhampered development and satisfaction of human needs and faculties...
...Even the anxiety produced by man's helplessness in a rationalized, industrialized society need not be regressive...
...the individual cannot be understood merely as a political animal...
...Political theory seeks criteria for maximizing the freedom of men subject to political power...
...Neumann held that political theory is inherently critical and programmatic, yet saw no real possibilities for advancing freedom in the present situation...
...able condition for the realization of freedom...
...Since what man can achieve is bound to the stage of social development, the realization of freedom is not at the disposal of man's free will...
...In this situation, "there is...
...The situation forces a choice between democ...
...it must relentlessly criticize all existing forms...
...MODERN CONDITIONS sap democratic institutions because corporatism eliminates opportunities for rational choice and neurotic anxiety incapacitates the individual will...
...Confronted by conditions in the West, he retreated from the pursuit of freedom to a defense of established democratic institutions...
...This antithesis dominates and, at times, distorts Neumann's whole analysis of the Western democracies...
...Political theory therefore means rational radicalism...
...indispensable to the constitution of political freedom...
...The first and continuing task is the struggle for liberal democracy, and therefore, at the present time, against totalitarianism...
...the transformation of an open, pluralistically organized society into a corporate, closed society...
...First the demagogue must substitute a conspiracy theory for historical understanding, thereby providing an "enemy" as target which catalyzes the transformation of mass anxiety into hostility...
...Political power decisively affects the life of man...
...Following Freud, Neumann believed that all civilized social life involves anxiety, and that some anxiety generated by the repression of instincts is the price for creativity and rational freedom...
...the inadmissibility of retroactive legislation...
...if this is not a very good book, it is a most important one—particularly for those who, in some sense, regard them selves as radicals...
...If it is an alien force, in no sense an instrument of his will, man is not free...
...No society has ever limited alienation to the minimum necessary for civilized life...
...There is no road back...
...Whatever may become of this or that minor or major conclusion of Neumann's studies, their value is inestimable...
...What is progressive today and conducive to freedom may be false tomorrow and a hindrance to freedom...
...More extensive editing and introductions to the essays relating them to the development of Neumann's thought would have added clarity to both style and content...
...This system must instill the virtues of discipline, obedience, and subordination— no matter who owns the means of production...
...NOR was Neumann immune to this trend...
...The mass can be manipulated, led to identify itself with a caesaristic leader, and transformed into a mob whose anxiety becomes neurotic and aggressive...
...Man can actually attain freedom only through his own efforts...
...Only in a democracy does rational political action become a real possibility...
...it is submission to other men...
...Throughout Neumann's essays runs the struggle against temptations to surrender...
...Amid the welter of erudition, repetition, and occasional obscurity there emerges a picture of a brilliant mind working its way through the decisive problems of our time...
...The truth of a doctrine will depend upon...
...and the collection as a whole does not form a coherent unit, despite its somewhat misleading title, and it abounds in repetitions...
...Thus modern industrialism preaches the very virtues which every authoritarian political system seeks to cultivate...
...Though knowledge of this minimum excludes Utopian panaceas, it does not authorize surrender...
...The state must not completely swallow up the individual...
...On the one hand it prevents us from repeating empty time-honored formulae...
...the hardening of political parties into machines which, because of the high cost of politics, tends to exclude newcomers from the political market...
...If reading these essays requires patience and effort, the labor is well rewarded...
...They are not, however, a sufficient condition, because they do not determine who will wield political power and to what ends—a point obscured in classic liberal doctrine because of its origin in special historical circumstances and for special purposes...
...Reason must never become defensive...
...Transforming political theory into ideology, whether aggressive or defensive, strengthens the forces hostile to freedom...
...Although liberal democracy represents the highest potentiality for freedom under certain conditions, new forms appropriate to the present situation may be required to express the negative and volitional elements of freedom, and the threatened or actual decline of democracy may open new possibilities...
...BUT IF THE RADICAL dilemma extends only to action, and not to criticism as well, as Neumann had thought, perhaps it merely reflects the general human dilemma...
...The historical tie of the rule of Iaw doctrine to the rule of the bourgeoisie calls attention to extraneous elements and unwarranted deductions in liberal theory...
...This rejection, Neumann believed, rests on the false assumption that political power is dispensable and the state inherently evil...
...In the totalitarian scheme, ideological potency, not truth, determines the validity of political theory and much contemporary "political science" in America echoes this view...
...Fear of real and pretended threats to security has led all modern states to appeal increasingly to this law of necessity through the use of "escape clauses" like the "clearandpresent-danger" doctrine...
...The closest approximation to a progressive class Neumann found in the intelligentsia, which will become an active force for freedom if it truly understands its in terests...
...Similarly, in his frequent and cogent defenses of "big government" and bureaucracy, he treats as an empirical description the model of a responsible bureaucracy functioning as value-free technicians who simply apply general laws...
...That means concretely...
...NEUMANN, however, failed to heed his own warnings against hypostatizing some historically limited institution...
...External nature sets inexorable limits, whose necessity men must recognize...
...The truth of political theory is political freedom...
...Questions about the distribution and the ends of political power lead beyond the negative conception of freedom to the theory of democracy...
...Laws of property and contracts no longer assure a minimum of predictability and equality to a large number of equal competitors...
...But if men then lose all control over the combined strength of society—political power—helplessness gives way to terror...
...He was, if anything, an even greater teacher than theorist, and that which distinguishes a true teacher from a hack and propagandist is precisely the wish to be superseded in the name of truth...
...the closed and selfconsistent nature of the legal system...
...Since these are clearly not totalitarian, he tended to identify them with his theoretical model of democracy...
...Yet I can understand Herbert Marcuse's decision to let Neumann's work speak for itself because that work is of great significance...
...Yet no sarcastic reproaches or radical cliches can spirit away the problem raised...
...On the other hand, the very opposite virtues may also be strengthened by technology: selfreliance, awareness of one's power and, most particularly, the feeling of solidarity—that is, a spirit of cooperation as opposed to authoritarianism...
...As political theorist, Neumann at tempted "to pierce the layers of symbols, statements, ideologies, and thus to come to the core of truth...
...In fact, the enactment of general clauses simply transfers power from politically responsible representatives to protected judges and administrators, and makes meaningless the rule of law doctrine...
...Some of the essays are diffuse and obscure, others unfinished...
...His analysis reveals the crucial issues, but his answers evade them...
...Only counter-revolution and totalitarianism benefits from the activation of this discontent...
...the relevant alternatives are rather corporate oligarchy (in its broadest sense) and some progressive alternative which we have yet to find...
...As a tactic, withdrawal may sometimes be the only recourse, but as a principle it is supreme treachery...
...For Neumann, then, forms which assure equality of all men before general laws are a necessary condition for freedom...
...Maximizing this element demands limitations on the forms of political power made possible by the centralization and rationalization uniquely characteristic of the modern state...
...This is reminiscent of Plato's philosopher-kings, but becomes less disquieting, if also a good deal less potent, inasmuch as these "knowers" are denied the Platonic weapons of the "noble lie" and "a little gentle violence...
...the separation of the judicial from the legislative function...
...Furthermore, "No political system will fully uphold the legal value of calculability and legal security if it deems its own security endangered by it...
...Man's responsibility is the struggle against alienation, and rejection of that responsibility betrays humanity...
...Yet the alternative is not submission to God or nature...
...Application of this principle depends on understanding the historical situation, and leads to rational action...
...He denied that any class today is impelled by its interests and experiences consistently to seek greater freedom...
...He posed the vital problems, approached them with great erudition and insight, and gave us incisive analyses of ideas and institutions...
...the growing complexity of government...
...Locke clearly indicates that the law which rules is made in a parliament controlled by the middle class...
...Large-scale technology on the one hand may imply the total dependence of the industrial population upon a complex, integrated mechanism, which can be operated only in a highly organized, stratified, and hierarchic system...
...the ambig uous outcome of his radicalism manifests a tragic dilemma...
...Precisely the emergence of the modern state opened up the possibility for rational utilization and control of political power: the state is an indispens...
...The liberal tradition contributes the first element of political freedom: a rational legal system...
...The volitional or activist element is...
...In short, Neumann's work points the way for those who would supersede him...
...This model no longer fits the actions or even the pretensions of contemporary American administrators who deny that they are mere "sausage machines" and speak of "creative administration" in "the public interest...
...The functions of general law have changed decisively and states claim ever wider exceptions to the rule...
...Today's discontented classes, the Lumpenbourgeoisie and peasantry, are politically immature and can be roused only by demagogic manipulation...
...Neumann's dilemma results, in part, from an inconsistency between his basic conception of theory and his actual theorizing about freedom...
...And this, I believe, is how Franz Neumann would want it...
...In fact, he feared the destruction of past gains by advancing totalitarianism...
...Furthermore, the state retains sufficient power (regardless of the Iaws) to safeguard this situation...
...Nor is he free unless political power is used to actualize the potentialities for freedom discovered by a true understanding of the historical situation...
...pessimism and Epicureanism were his personal devils...
...Where democratic pressure compels attention to these realities, legislatures concoct vaguely worded, ambiguous legal norms (general clauses) and argue that judges and administrators can now make equitable judgments while upholding the rule of general law...
...Political theory must understand both the progressive and regressive characteristics of contempo rary society and deal realistically with the problems raised...
...Society seems to be composed of social corporations, each with a tendency toward monopoly, preferably protected in its monopoly position by public law in order to make access to it more difficult...
...Power will thus strive to set aside the juristic notion of freedom...
...it requires democracy...
...and democracy must be established to be defended...
...The task of political theory is...
...the concentration of private social power...
...No radical program can be actualized without the mass support of a radical class, but the Marxist faith in the proletariat has been antiquated by prosperity, industrial discipline, and the secure niche of unionized labor in the corporate hierarchy...
...The cognitive formula...
...Criticism of Western political institutions will weaken democracy and "if one is anti-democratic today one strengthens, consciously or unconsciously, Fascism, even when one does not have this aim oneself...
...be exhausted in the competition of political parties which are purely machines without mass participation, but which monopolize politics to such an extent that a new party cannot make its way within the valid rules of the game...
...The brave urgings of good and wise men are notoriously ineffectual against the demands of power, as Neumann himself has often remarked, and political participation by the enlightened is a far cry from the capture of political power by the forces of freedom...
...Not performance but status seems to be decisive...
...the determination of the degree to which a power group transcends its particular interest and advocates—in Hegelian terms—universal interests...
...This is a Promethean conception and the Walter Lippmanns and Russell Kirks are certainly right in seeing human presumption at the root of radicalism...
...The political theorist seeks to understand and evaluate concrete historical situations so as to uncover the potentialities for human freedom and he must study doctrines to discover what help they can be...
...The historical process includes man's aspiration to secure more effective control of his environment, so that historical insight is critical and programmatic...
...Negotiations among the bureaucracies of functionally organized corporate bodies decide the important political questions and "Political life can...
...racy and dictatorship...
...Because these attacks on liberal legality arise from irreversible trends, democracy assumes a heightened importance...
...From this follows one basic postulate: Since no political system can realize political freedom fully, po1itical theory must by necessity be critical...
...Only responsible representatives of the people can be entrusted with this power...
...In this insight rests the theoretical formulation of democracy as that political system which permits the maximization of political freedom...
...Again, in the discussion of the intensification of anxiety in the Western democracies, he sees the sole threat in its manipulation into neurotic persecutory anxiety through caesaristic identification with a demagogic leader...
...doctrines that their truth must be determined...
...A conformist political theory is not theory...
...no doubt that today the citizen's alienation from democratic political power is increasing,—in Europe, at tremendous speed, more slowly but still discernibly in the United States...
...If political theory asks about the condition under which the state may be justified, and if the state, by definition, rests on coercion and power, then a true theory of freedom would reject politics and the state...
...A political theory based upon an individualistic philosophy must necessarily operate with the negativejuridical concept of freedom, freedom as the absence of restraints...
...Admittedly, this ultimate can never be achieved...
...On the other hand, it curbs Utopian radicalism...
...This abuse of reason, deeply rooted in contemporary problems, denies the possibility of rational theory...
...that the individual is no longer estimated according to what he is but according to what he belongs to...
...they bolster monopolies and other mighty agglomerations of economic power by treating them as equal to their infinitely inferior competitors...
...Ideologically, it disguised the fact that somebody's law was ruling, that men were exercising power through law...
...That is certainly a very big 'if' especially in the light of his subsequent description of the rise of political alienation in the West...
...That the rule of law implies the supremacy of parliament or any other form of government, or that it implies a minimum of governmental interference or anything else about the content of the Iaws—these ideas arise from the special situation within which the doctrine was developed...
...Such alienation generates anxiety easily manipulated by a demagogue and facilitates the emergence of totalitarianism...
...From the simple proposition that there exists a presumption in favor of the individual's freedom there follows every element of the liberal legal system: the permissibilityof every act not expressly forbidden by law...
...education a relationship to action...
...Economically, it was decisive for competitive capitalism, assuring calculability and equal treatment for competitors...
...the growth of bureau cracies in public and private life...
...Neither God nor history grants freedom to him...
...After all, they were written for a great variety of purposes over a period of seventeen years...
...Contemporary America does not offer a choice between democracy and totalitarianism...
...But participation must have a purpose...
...But he raised other doubts which preclude a simple solution to the radical dilemma...
...and even in the social realm necessity rules...
...But domination and power are of a different order of necessity from the laws of nature because man can alter their forms and diminish their effects...
...He nowhere raises the question, which I believe far more urgent for an understanding of contemporary American society: the possibility of manipulating this condition into mindless acquiescence and positive thinking...
...POLITICAL FREEDOM requires participation in direction of political power and minimal political alienation...
...This does not stem from an alien disease, but from contemporary tendencies which have produced a crisis for freedom: a trend towards conformism...
...It is thus in the historical development and the concrete setting of the...
...But many radicals would deny the possibility of a political theory aimed at freedom...
Vol. 4 • September 1957 • No. 4
