The contemporary post-Marxist left seems to me to differ from the earlier Marxist one mainly in that the latter had a specific revolution in mind –– one in which selective replacement of private by public ownership of capital would bring about far-reaching desirable consequences, and in particular increasingly participatory democracy. From the point of view of that earlier left, it was plausible to claim that Dewey-style reformist tinkering had become merely an obstacle to the required revolution. But contemporary radicals have no such specific revolution to support. So I find it hard to see their purported non-membership in the culture of the liberal democracies, and their vehement anti-Americanism, as more than a wistful desire that there be some sort of revolution, any sort. This desire is, perhaps, the result of an understandable rage at the very slow extension of hope and freedom to marginal social groups, and at the frequent betrayals of past promises. But I do not think that the over-theoretical and over-philosophized form this rage is currently taking is of much use.
In particular, I think that a lot of the energy of leftist intellectuals in the contemporary American academy is being wasted, just insofar as they hope that work within such disciplines as philosophy and literary criticism can be geared in with political action in some direct way (as opposed to a long-term, atmospheric, indirect way). One symptom of this hope is the conviction that it is politically useful to “problematize" or "call into question" traditional concepts, distinctions, and institutions. My own view is that it is not much use pointing to the "internal contradictions" of a social practice, or "deconstructing" it, unless one can come up with an alternative practice –– unless one can at least sketch a utopia in which the concept or distinction would be obsolete. After all, every social practice of any complexity, and every element of such a practice, contains internal tensions. Ever since Hegel, we intellectuals have been busy winkling them out. But there is little point in exhibiting such tensions unless you have some suggestions about resolving them. The Deweyan liberal left and the Marxist radical left of my youth both tried to work out utopian visions –– to suggest practices that would minimise the tensions in question. My doubts about the contemporary Foucauldian left concern its failure to offer such visions and suggestions.
Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth 16
