What’s Left? (original) (raw)

Abstract

Addressing the future of radical politics at the end of the cold war, this article offers a reconstruction of radical theory around the goal of enabling collaborative self-realization through participatory democratic politics. It offers an interpretation of the radical tradition as defined by a view of human nature as a cultural artifact, and a conception of liberation as the self-conscious transformation of human nature. It proceeds to critique radical theory’s traditional focus on revolution as the means of radical transformation. Distinguishing instrumental and self-expressive conceptions of transformation it critiques revolutionary processes as tending to reproduce instrumental culture. It offers democratic association as an alternative model of transformation and defends this project against the deconstructive critiques of participatory democracy and community. The logical extension of these arguments would preclude radical politics altogether and replace it with critique.

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