Perhaps I am a bit thick but I couldnt see the point of this article.
I am a leftie and have no time for Marx.
My leftie views are summed up in these 2 references.
1. www.dabase.org/coopcomm.htm
2. www.coteda.com/fundamentals/index.html

Again what exactly is the "culture" of modernism?
It is a "culture" created in the image and likeness of the "profoundly" reductionist world dominant philosophy of scientific materialism. It is a "culture" which reduces human beings to thinking meat bodies ONLY---NO PROFUNDITY ALLOWED. The fundamental essence of being reduced to and identified with a MORTAL meatbody is that of hell deep Fear & Trembling---which produces the "culture" described in this reference:
3. www.dabase.org/coop+tol.htm

The "culture" of scientism has effectively destroyed all traditional forms of culture which were based on a Spiritual understanding of Reality altogether, and the understanding that there is a Prior Unity underlying everything including Human Culture.

Now all we have is a "culture" based on gross aggressive self interest only--me first and stuff everybody else including the global planetary ecological support systems. Tragically, ironically it is those on the "right" wing of the culture wars divide who are the loudest champions of this so called "culture".
And when they do champion "religion" it is always the most dim-witted remnants of the existing "great" religions (Christianity became "great" via its integral association with western imperialism--not because it had anything to do with the TRUTH). The Hillsong "church" is an example of this. They also champion sex paranoid "religions" which are totally obsessed with what people do with their genitals. And the "god"-idea that they tend to promote is the stern would be world conquering MOMMY-DADDY "god".
See 4. www.aboutadidam.org/readings/parental_deity/index.html

I have read both articles and have read Luke Slattery’s piece as well. As far as this article goes much has been written but no real argument can be discerned here. Perhaps one can take away from this the idea that to be left is to extend democracy in all spheres of human life, including the workplace, but that’s hardly novel nor “post-modern”.

In fact the authors like to say what is and what is not left. Notice that the “post-modern left” is not left on their own terms. To understand, perhaps too strong a word, pomo-ism you have to have training in the absurd lingo; straight away that becomes elitist and places the intellectual as a vanguard. It’s a bit like the website, funny enough from Curtin University (great hockey fields there by the way), on “public intellectuals” that has a list of the “40 top public intellectuals” you know like “top of the pops”. This elitism is why figures in the pomo pantheon are treated as celebrities. That’s not democracy. If it’s not democracy it’s not left. QED. Or am I being “logo-centric”?

What Markob said.

You can only guess that these two articles had an audience in mind other than OLO people, in which case they should have published elsewhere. They do themselves, and academics in general, more harm than good by pontificating in an inappropriate space.

Although I don't think the authors pay enough attention to the requirement for material infrastructures of 'democracy' (and for which the Hamilton and Maddison edited text, _Silencing Dissent_ does a good job), the most disturbing thing I have found with regards to the appearance of the two parts of this piece online is not in the piece itself. The disturbing thing is in the responses to both parts of the piece. It is not that people simply disagree with the argument, it is that the argument itself seems to be irrelevant to the 'intellectual' posturing of respondents.

Is this how a participatory online intellectual space functions? With a thought provoking work published online only so people can comment on how *they don't understand the piece*!! Do people assume when they read something they don't understand to then imagine that it is perfectly sensible to announce their own ignorance? And then somehow use it as a weapon against whatever the text they are not understanding?!?!?! The "If I don't understand it, then it must be nonsense" attack.

Isn't this another plank in the floor of the 'postmodern left' that Lucy and Mickler are denouncing? Not the left that thinks using some postmodernist tools, but the arm of the Left that is actually postmodern. Instead of trying to enlighten people by going go to war against stupidity, a *reified stupidity* is itself used as an (anti)intellectual weapon and seemingly a badge of honour.

These two jokers with their part one/two efforts read as funny gibberish and become ever more incoherent. How can communications get like this? Well, if we believe in the importance of the human desire to communicate, then we have to believe in reason. But how does reason justify itself and just how do we communicate?

How does reason justify itself? Enlightenment has always been a struggle in the name of reason, against tyranny, superstition and inequity. It is pretty easy to oversimplify the faculty of the human mind that creates and operates with abstract concepts, described as a type of thought or aspect of thought we call reason. Its heritage includes the Greek word "logos" which gives us three separate words logic, rationality and reason. All three words are associated with the ability of the human mind to predict purposeful effects based upon presumed causes.

Just how do we communicate? Where once there was but the spoken word, and then the beautifully hand written word, what became known as the Enlightenment had the printed word. Next we had the wire which then goes from the wire to the wireless. Wireless is a one to many dictatorship of the loud voice and hence the modernism of the early twentieth century is reflective of extremes of unreason ......i.e. dictators.

It is not surprising that television gave us the lateral but superficial postmodern.

BUT from 1995, with the birth proper of the www, the internet we find is interactive, democratic, many to many, with a deeper realism and our new enlightenment where the word is not with a teddy (god) anymore but with the people who do get to vote on it. This is where minds meet.

The "postmodern" has gone, because it has mutated into a hyperlink to the 360 degrees of an infinite meta-narrative with its global network of moderators and is always connected. We now have a communications medium unlike others that were always one to many forms.

I guess the article was about religionists attempting to vilify the more thoughtful people in society by associating them with Marxist theory and because of such Rudd wants to unite his so called left-ness with religionism. Such attacks of religionists are rhetorical. To say morality has to come from a metaphysical base is meaningless, empty propaganda and not a product of contemplation.

Postmodernism is the ‘metaphysics’ of the god believer. Postmodernism allows the religionist to claim there is no such thing as reality as there are no truths and so god cannot be proved as there are no proofs and at the same time say god is true without any backup what so ever. Postmodernism is a ‘spin’ cycle and other than a spin does it actually exist or hold credibility? Churches are the master modernists, rigid, structured, misogynist, a completely ordered hierarchy which demands mindless loyalty and protects a view where the worshippers in each level of superiority look down upon those who are too evil and valueless to share in the god belief.

What Rudd senses and I don’t believe he understands is there is a power struggle by religionists as knowledge has superseded superstition. Religion at this point in time is at war with modernity. The dark age occult superstition of Christianity has collided with the 21st century. The energy of this collision has been building since the 1st world war. I don’t think Rudd can fathom this as he holds deep seated superstitions of his own and though he recognises in part that Christianity is itself immoral and extremely harmful to society and at the very least dishonest he is in a fantasy world that this can be changed. The oil of religion is moral panic and its release is the blame game. If Rudd cured moral panic then he would cure god belief and if he stopped the blame game there would be no need for belief.