Over the years and against conventional wisdom, utopians sustained a vision of life beyond the market… — Russell Jacoby
Over the years and against conventional wisdom, utopians sustained a vision of life beyond the market. … Georg Lukács set forth a theory of the “old and new culture” in which he argued that the socialist economy was not the goal; it was simply a precondition for humanity to advance to a new and humane culture. Most radicals do not understand that political power and economic reorganization is not the end-all, stated Lukács. The goal is not a new economic order, but freedom from an obsession with economics.
p. 27Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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The disdain for culture expressed by Johst and Fanon is not identical, however. Both despise the deceit of culture, but for opposite reasons. For Johst, culture is in itself a fraud, the cheap talk of weaklings; for Fanon, culture deceives by reneging on its promises. Johst and the Nazis hated culture itself; Fanon hated its hypocrisy, a very different notion.
p. 35
Endless discussions of multiculturalism proceed from the unsubstantiated assumption that numerous distinct “cultures” constitute American society. Only a few historians or observers even consider the possibility that the opposite may be true: that the world and the United States are relentlessly becoming more culturally uniform, not diverse.
p. 47
Though the ancient world understood that work was a curse, modern industrial society spreads its gospel. The working class, Lafargue hopelessly hoped, must reject the work fetish.
p. 26
