Robert Pfaller, um universitário austríaco, põe a nu a
miséria teórica e o percurso errante da esquerda "pós-modernista",
numa entrevista muito crítica, tanto da "esquerda de governo" como da
"esquerda de contestação". A entrevista tem ainda o curioso (ou nem
tanto...) interesse de ser uma iniciativa da agência iraniana ILNA...
Postmodernism: The Ideological Embellishment of
Neoliberalism
Robert Pfaller interviewed by Kamran Baradaran, via
ILNA | Aug.11, 2019
"This is how the left became “cultural” (while,
of course, ceasing to be a “left”): from now on the marks of distinction were
produced by all kinds of concerns for minorities or subaltern groups. And
instead of promoting economic equality and equal rights for all groups, the
left now focused on symbolic “recognition” and “visibility” for these groups...
Thus not only all economic and social concerns were sacrificed for the sake of
sexual and ethnic minorities, but even the sake of these minorities itself.
"
Robert Pfaller is one of the most distinguished
figures in today's radical Left. He teaches at the University of Art and
Industrial Design in Linz, Austria. He is a founding member of the Viennese
psychoanalytic research group ‘stuzzicadenti’. Pfaller is the author of books
such as "On the Pleasure Principle in Culture: Illusions Without
Owners", "Interpassivity: The Aesthetics of Delegated
Enjoyment", among others. Below is the ILNA's interview with this
authoritative philosopher on the Fall of Berlin Wall and "Idea of
Communism".
The ideology of postmodernism is to present all existing injustice as an effect of discrimination; Robert Pfaller tells ILNA
The ruling ideology since the fall of the Berlin Wall,
or even earlier, is postmodernism. This is the ideological embellishment that
the brutal neoliberal attack on Western societies' welfare (that was launched
in the late 1970s) required in order to attain a "human",
"liberal" and "progressive" face.
ILNA: What is the role of “pleasure principle” in a
world after the Berlin Wall? What role does the lack of ideological dichotomy,
which unveils itself as absent of a powerful left state, play in dismantling
democracy?
Until the late 1970s, all "Western"
(capitalist) governments, right or left, pursued a Keynesian economic policy of
state investment and deficit spending. (Even Richard Nixon is said to have
once, in the early 1970ies, stated, "We are all Keynesians"). This
lead to a considerable decrease of inequality in Western societies in the first
three decades after WWII, as the numbers presented by Thomas Piketty and Branko
Milanovic in their books prove. Apparently, it was seen as necessary to appease
Western workers with high wages and high employment rates in order to prevent
them from becoming communists. Ironically one could say that it was precisely
Western workers who profited considerably of "real existing
socialism" in the Eastern European countries.
At the very moment when the "threat" of real
existing socialism was not felt anymore, due to the Western economic and
military superiority in the 1980ies (that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall),
the economic paradigm in the Western countries shifted. All of a sudden, all
governments, left or right, pursued a neoliberal economic policy (of
privatization, austerity politics, the subjection of education and health
sectors under the rule of profitability, liberalization of regulations for the
migration of capital and cheap labor, limitation of democratic sovereignty,
etc.).
Whenever the social democratic left came into power,
for example with Tony Blair, or Gerhard Schroeder, they proved to be the even
more radical neoliberal reformers. As a consequence, leftist parties did not
have an economic alternative to what their conservative and liberal opponents
offered. Thus they had to find another point of distinction.
This is how the left became "cultural"
(while, of course, ceasing to be a "left"): from now on the marks of
distinction were produced by all kinds of concerns for minorities or subaltern
groups. And instead of promoting economic equality and equal rights for all
groups, the left now focused on symbolic "recognition" and
"visibility" for these groups. Thus not only all economic and social
concerns were sacrificed for the sake of sexual and ethnic minorities, but even
the sake of these minorities itself. Since a good part of the problem of these
groups was precisely economic, social and juridical, and not cultural or
symbolic. And whenever you really solve a problem of a minority group, the
visibility of this group decreases. But by insisting on the visibility of these
groups, the policies of the new pseudo-left succeded at making the problems of
these groups permanent - and, of course, at pissing off many other people who
started to guess that the concern for minorities was actually just a pretext
for pursuing a most brutal policy of increasing economic inequality.
ILNA: The world after the Berlin Wall is mainly
considered as post-ideological. Does ideology has truly decamped from our world
or it has only taken more perverse forms? On the other hand, many liberals
believe that our world today is based on the promise of happiness. In this
sense, how does capitalism promotes itself on the basis of this ideology?
The ruling ideology since the fall of the Berlin Wall,
or even earlier, is postmodernism. This is the ideological embellishment that
the brutal neoliberal attack on Western societies' welfare (that was launched
in the late 1970s) required in order to attain a "human",
"liberal" and "progressive" face. This coalition between an
economic policy that serves the interest of a tiny minority, and an ideology
that appears to "include" everybody is what Nancy Fraser has aptly
called "progressive neoliberalism". It consists of neoliberalism,
plus postmodernism as its ideological superstructure.
The ideology of postmodernism today has some of its
most prominent symptoms in the omnipresent concern about
"discrimination" (for example, of "people of color") and in
the resentment against "old, white men". This is particularly funny
in countries like Germany: since, of course, there has been massive racism and
slavery in Germany in the 20th century - yet the victims of this racism and
slavery in Germany have in the first place been white men (Jews, communists,
Gypsies, red army prisoners of war, etc.). Here it is most obvious that a
certain German pseudo-leftism does not care for the real problems of this
society, but prefers to import some of the problems that US-society has to deal
with. As Louis Althusser has remarked, ideology always consists in trading in
your real problems for the imaginary problems that you would prefer to have.
The general ideological task of postmodernism is to
present all existing injustice as an effect of discrimination. This is, of
course, funny again: Since every discrimination presupposes an already
established class structure of inequality. If you do not have unequal places,
you cannot distribute individuals in a discriminating way, even if you want to
do so. Thus progressive neoliberalism massively increases social inequality,
while distributing all minority groups in an "equal" way over the
unequal places.
Interview by: Kamran Baradaran | INLA
