In the mid-1960s, as the Cold War seemed frozen into place after the Soviet repression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, and the stalemate that defused the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the spirit of a âNew Leftâ began to emerge in the West. Although encouraged by events in the Third World, its common denominator was the idea that the misunderstood (or misused) work of Karl Marx must have offered a theory that both explained the discontent with the present among a new generation of youth and could also offer them guidelines for future action. At once personal and social, critical and political, this expectation was encouraged by publications of the writings of the young Marx as well as the discovery of non-orthodox theorists and political activists whose critical work had been ignored or suppressed by Soviet-dominated communist parties. These theories represented an âunknown dimensionâ1 that became the object of vigorous debate in the 1960s and early 1970s. The searching candle burned bright for a decade before it flamed out.
Meanwhile, the revolutionary spirit that Marx liked to call the âold moleâ had grubbed its way underneath the Iron Curtain; the multi-faceted movement of civil society against the repressive states anchored to the Soviet bloc brought finally the fall of communism. But the critical spirit was too weak, economic need weighed too heavy, and the spirit of utopia waxed. It seemed as if there was nothing to inherit from the past. As in the 1960s, the critical spirit of the young Marx, the critical philosopher searching for his path, can suggest a reason to persevere. In a âPreliminary Noteâ to his doctoral dissertation, Marx justified his refusal to compromise with existing conditions by invoking the example of Themistocles who, âwhen Athens was threatened with devastation, convinced the Athenians to take to the sea in order to found a new Athens on another elementâ.2 This was not yet an anticipation of Marxâs turn away from philosophy to political economy. Like the New Left, Marx was trying to articulate the grounds of a critique of a present that he considered âbeneath contemptâ in order to hold open the political future.
I will use this idea of a New Left to conceptualize the underlying unity of diverse political experiences during the past half century. Although Marx is not the direct object of my reconstruction, his specter is a recurring presence at those ânodal pointsâ where the imperative to move to âanother elementâ becomes apparent. These are moments when the spirit that has animated a movement can advance no further; it is faced with new obstacles, which may be self-created. I will analyze from a participantâs perspective the development of the New Left in the United States, France, and West Germany as it tried to articulate what I call the âunknown dimensionâ of Marxâs theoretical project.
1.1 Innocent Beginnings
As the Civil Rights movement spread, and more rapidly as it merged with protests against the Vietnam War, it was necessary to propose a political theory to explain both the conditions against which protest was raised, and the future projects and goals of the movement. This two-sided imperative, analyzing critically the present while opening a future horizon, could not be realized by a single academic discipline such as sociology or economics; critical analysis of the present coupled with a normative reflection on the positive possibilities latent within it has always been the domain of political philosophy. The dominant mode of analytic philosophy in most major Anglo-Saxon philosophy departments dismissed concern with history or politics as speculative.3 It was (barely) legitimate to appeal to the existentialist voluntarism of Jean-Paul Sartre; but the French philosopherâs demonstration that Marxism is âthe unsurpassable horizon of our timesâ, elaborated in the 800-plus pages of his Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), was not translated until 1976. It was (barely) more acceptable to turn to Husserlâs or Heideggerâs phenomenological concept of the life-world (and the recognition of lived-experience as a âhorizonâ), although the latter had been discredited politically and only the first volume of Husserlâs Ideas had been translated. However interested, most Americans did not have the linguistic competence to pursue this path.
Marxism in the adulterated forms of dialectical materialism was not a serious philosophical or political alternative. After the ravages of McCarthyism, there was no political (or commercial editorial) market for it. I bought my first copies of Capital in the summer of 1965 from an old communist who would drive from San Antonio to the University of Texas in Austin with a trunk full of literature from Progress Publishers in Moscow. Party control of Marxâs writings was maintained so far as possible by its American affiliate, International Publishers. I experience their desire for control when they interviewed me on Christmas Eve of 1970 about a possible translation of the young Marx. The meeting came to a rapid end when I suggested that I would of course add explanatory notes to explain difficult passages.4 The only option seemed to be to create a new mode of publication. The first step in that direction was taken when the New Left recognized that it was not the first New Left and that America had not always been a status quo society. This insight gave rise to the development of âhistory from belowâ, which was pursued in the mimeographed pages of the student-run journal, Radical America. Although the initiative came from historians (led by Paul Buhle), the pages of this journal were open to philosophical and critical theory as well. The young Marx found a place here, as did contemporary French theory, as did I.5
Of the politically engaged theoretical journals that emerged in the late 1960s, Telos was the most provocative. After two issues as the âofficial bi-yearly publication of the Graduate Philosophy Associationâ at Buffalo, the journal defined itself as âdefinitely outside the mainstreamâ in issues 3 to 5 (Spring 1969âSpring 1970); a year later, it called itself more modestly an âinternational interdisciplinary quarterlyâ, but its radical editors defined themselves as ârevolutionaryâ rather than simply âradicalâ in numbers 10 and 12 (Winter 1971 and Summer 1972). The labels are unimportant; the fact that the journal remained resolutely international influenced more strongly its future. Its history was marked by disagreement, dissent, and ruptures, each justified by appeal to the practical implications of theoretical choices.6 Intellectual, political, and personal issues both bound together and separated the editors.
Speaking for myself, I joined the editorial board in the Fall of 1970 with issue 6 (a 360-page summum that contained among contributions by the editors, as well as essays and translations by Tran Duc Thao on the âHegelian dialecticâ, Maurice Merleau-Ponty on âWestern Marxismâ, Georg LukĂĄcs on the âDialectics of Laborâ, and Agnes Heller on âThe Marxist Theory of Revolutionâ7). The editors of Telos were fully embarked on a voyage of initiation that continued with two issues consecrated to the repressed works of Georg LukĂĄcs (numbers 10 and 11, 1971â1972). Looking back today at the old volumes, I am a bit astonished by the breadth and depth of their themes. They present a juxtaposition of the stages of rediscovery of critical Marxism with a concern for French political debate (AndrĂ© Gorz and Serge Mallet, as well as the challenge of structuralism to the Hegel-inspired critical theories), as well as critical readings of Eastern European attempts to save what was critical in classical Marxism (in the theories of the Budapest School or the work of the Czech philosopher Karel Kosik, as well as the banned Yugoslav Praxis philosophers). Hard-to-place figures like Karl Korsch, Ernst Bloch, or the Dutch astronomer and founding spirit of the Council Communists, Anton Pannekoek, found themselves alive again in the pages of Telos. The diversity of the contributions reflects the avid curiosity of the authors. But this eager openness and free-floating critical spirit did not last.
I left Telos officially with issue 36 (Summer, 1978), after a series of critical exchanges among the editors that began already in 1974. The intellectual climate had changed with the political normalization. During the first years of Telos, the Vietnam War continued, as did opposition to its senseless pursuit. The rapid self-initiation into the varieties of Marxist theory and the nuances of its practice seemed all the more urgent; working with texts in French and German, providing translations and commentaries on them, the editors had remained, as they promised, âdefinitely outside the mainstreamâ. In the uncertain political conditions created by imperial war, colonial adventure, and the fight against racial discrimination at home, the serious work of theory was felt to be a kind of praxis. But a problem arose from the identification of Marxâs theory as the banner of resistance and the key needed to open the door to a revolution that seemed ever more imperative as repression at home increased. Repression had to be met with resistance, on all fronts, including that of theory.8 But resistance could become stubborn and dogmatic, pledging allegiance to the flag of Marxism at the cost of creating a climate that discouraged critical thinking.
An expression of this uncritical Marxist dogmatism led me to finally leave Telos. The editors were unwilling to publish the essays by Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis that I had proposed for translation. It was apparent that their explicit critiques of Marx were too much to accept in a journal that felt the pressured to hold high the partisan banner; to criticize Marx could seem to provide ammunition to the enemy (as if we critical theorists were perceived at all by that enemy). I prevailed ultimately, writing introductions to their essays published in successive issues in the winter 1974 and spring 1975 issues (numbers 22 and 23).9 The experience left a bitter residue; my concern was not to defend the Marxist faith but to recover the spiri...