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.

This is worth listening to on the subject if you have the bandwidth. An amusing but thoughtful take on the modern liberal:

http://www.heritage.org/Press/Events/ev030507a.cfm

Alas, although I can understand this part more easily than the first, it doesn't add much to the sum of human knowledge. I think that the authors need to read up on the history of the ALP (and indeed of other social democratic parties in the developed world). Marxism has only ever been one strand. Methodism and catholicism were others, as was a humanist, non-religious perspective.

Another respondent thinks that those of us who feel we don't understand these pieces should not parade our ignorance. I'd put it another way. To communicate requires that we try to do the best we can to make what we are saying sensible to our audience/reader. As I said before, here there are too many words, and too much denunciation. Simplify, reduce the number and size of the words, try to persuade rather than to hector, and see if that helps.

What a hoot the Heritage Foundation is THE MODERNIST insitution par excellence--rigid, patriarchal, full of lies, and utterly devoted to the one dimensional "reason" and the "culture" of scientific materialism---despite the phoney religiosity.

It combines the "moral" (even fascist) "certainty" of the patriarchal war god and is at the same time THE leading propaganda outfit for Eisenhower's (equally fascist) Military-Industrial Complex --better known as the Pentagon Death Machine---the Pentagon being THE most influential institution in the USA and by extension the rest of the world. The "culture" of fear and death made very concrete in no uncertain terms.

"Today’s Labor is haunted by the spectre of Marx" Says who?

Marx clearly attributes the productive forces and their development to the actions of human beings, but emphasises the social nature of this development, based on necessity, the need to maintain their existence, which thus develops "independent of their will", as individuals, and thus impacts back on the individual in ways which reflect the given social conditions.

Given our current social conditions, it should be the conservatives who are haunted by the spectre of Marx.

Glen, yr right. The Deleuze quote was from Understanding Structuralism (I'd have to check my notes for the page) and it was cited again in Francis Wheen's 'How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World', Harper, p87.

As progressives we stand for fairness, empathy, freedom, justice, human dignity, the common good, and equality.

Our values are key to our identities, and any new policies/directions need to come from these values.

George Lakoff discusses it well.

http://connectthroughvalues.com

Connectthroughvalues seems to have succumbed to postmodernism. Truth is no longer included in the list of values for which they stand.

As to the people who announce that they do not understand the article, it should be remembered that there is an opinion, that in order to understand the article, one’s thought process would need to be in the same sad state as those of the authors of the article.

They may feel some gratitude for, or even pride in, their lack of understanding

I love post modernism. It is an excuse to blather on at length about not very much and avoid reaching any useful conclusions.

The ALP is a progressive liberal party.

The Liberal Party is a conservative party.

Marx is a dead German.

This contribution is welcome, as an attempt to bring Marx's theoretical base back into discussing the "left's" program. It highlights again the old, but present, distinction between those who see the need to revolutionise society and those who are content with reform.

I dont believe either party has an agenda for reform or revolution. In this neo-darkage era both parties are content to manipulate the social and political environment to keep donations rolling in.

If either party had modernist foundations they would both have addressed climate change effectively over the past 25 years. Instead we have the post modernist bondage to emotions where greed and sloth are the foundations to policy. The modernist pragmatism is not heard in Australian political rhetoric , instead our post modernist primeminister wobbles from hysterical mumbo jumbo resonant to 1984 newspeak to cutsie jingoism of bristling muscles in singlets and playing with balls. Meanwhile the opposition leader bleats the middle earth values of wizards that occult drivel can actually mean be kinder to demonic heathens than previously practiced in history.

While only being tangentially relevant to the original article, I think that postmodernism, while not being wedded to a particular flavour of political thought per se, seems to have found favour among the 'left' in academia (for want of a better term).

Therefore, postmodernism and left philosophy have become intermixed to the point where, to the layperson, they are one and the same. Ironically, then, postmodernism, while attempting to pull apart the facade of modernism, has also managed to undo the moral and ethical basis for left economics and philosophy. After all, it must be remembered that Marxism is a modernist notion, as it is infused with all those wonderful ideas about evolution, progress and the prioritising of the group over the individual. In fact, I would argue that postmodernism and left ideology are not compatible, since Marxism is nothing more than an outgrowth of capitalist and humanist thought.

"One man's truth is another man's lies." Kev Carmondy.

The article seems to be coming from the Habermas' interpretation of post modernism. In the context of the other various interpretations and expansions of the meaning of post modernism, such as Barthes (more so a radical departure from structuralism) and the reinterpretation of Western thought/morality by the colonised; I'd say the article is actually confirms post- modern discourse is trucking along nicely.

Not meaning to “decentre” you folk but we all mostly come from different reference points and I think it will pretty well be impossible to ever get us all on the same page - let alone adherring to the ideology (oops Principles) of some mystical extra systemic reference point -– unless fascism prevails (especially if we don’t realise it is so).

I am more concerned about the spectre of fascism; on the spectre of all folk believing in the “one idea” and the destruction of individual thought - than romper stomping Marx. Did I revisit the past with enough irony to be representative of post-modernist carry on? Are you certain?

If an untutored mind such as mine found the article interesting what does that say about the slaggers?
I would like to thank the author for a thoroughly informative article.
Post modernism has been a bit of a mystery to me, that said I am beginning to grasp it, a little.
Anyone got more I could read and understand as readily?
fluff

fluff there is no agreement on what post modernism is. Much of it depends on the subject matter in which you are discussing , ie art, architecture, politics, sociology , philosophy , religion , literature - mainly the soft sciences and the humanities. For the most part post modernism is a reaction to so called modernism which is highly structural and absolute such as science or the idea of right and wrong , the idea of truth and lies.

All of it wether modernist or post modernist, is extremely contradictory and it will become confusing where modernism ends and post modernism starts as neither are fair examples of the nature of things.

As an introduction I would not recommend buying a book, leave Michel Foucalt until later , but browse both modernism and post modernism under different topics on the internet to get a little insight into what it is actually about.

I suspect it is insightful drivel like my post here, good luck some of it is a good read :) As Ian Dury once said "There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bas*@#ds ".

This is a really late post but I've just read over this. I have a very basic idea of what postmodernism is. I understand some of the concepts, but haven't read much.

And I understood perfectly what both of these articles are saying.

How is it half of you could not? I'm self educated. I read a little of everything but don't know a lot of anything. The article was fine.

Seems to me like any time an article mentions pomo nowadays the knee jerk reaction is to call it semantic gymnastics and dismiss its point on the basis of absurdity?

Ignorance is no excuse for rejection people. Maybe you should read up a little on what it is you're trying to reject. TRY and understand it before writing it off. And I'm not a proponent of postmodernism, but I am a proponent of the critical mind.