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The Root is Man (New Autonomy Series) by Dwight MacDonald
An anarchist classic. In these essays, Macdonald turns his back on every doctrine that treats humans as objects, whether implicitly or explicitly. “We must emphasize the emotions, the imagination, the moral feelings, the primacy of the individual human being, must restore the balance that has been broken by the hypertrophy of science in the last two centuries. The root is man, here and not there, now and not then.”
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First published January 1, 1953
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About the author
Dwight Macdonald
65 books28 followersDwight Macdonald (March 24, 1906 – December 19, 1982) was an American writer, editor, film critic, social critic, philosopher, and political radical. Macdonald was a member of the New York Intellectuals and editor of their leftist magazine Partisan Review for six years. He also contributed to other New York publications including Time, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and politics, a journal which he founded in 1944.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 3 reviews
May 28, 2012
In this work, moral questions seem as bewildering and fascinating as I have always felt them to be.
Since I first read it, I have become fascinated by the life and times of Dwight Macdonald, critic, essayist, and radical. This piece was published in Macdonald's magazine Politics in two separate issues in 1946, a moment of American history bearing only a slight resemblance to our own. Yet, the superficial "datedness" of his concerns, revolving around Marxism, Nazism, and Stalinism, on closer examination, give way to more fundamental issues which remain unresolved since at least the ancient Greek civilization.
Macdonald, unhindered by the taboos of either "bourgeois" or Leftist discourse, focuses on the irreducible distinction in Western philosophy between fact and value and attempts to work out its modern political implications.
In trying to uproot the moral assumptions of the Left, it is necessary to reconsider "a whole cultural tradition" for which "Marxism looms up as the last and greatest systematic defense." Toward that end, Macdonald offers an alternative typology of political thought that distinguishes the "progressive" from the "radical."
Where Marx is always seen as a prime representative of the Left, in stark opposition to the defenders of inequality identified with the Right, Macdonald argues that the dominant tendencies across the political spectrum since the early 20th century have in common a still more fundamental commitment to progress inherited from the optimism of the Enlightenment.
On the other hand, the radical ethical concerns that inspired the socialist imagination, including Marx's--in other words, the root of the desire for liberation--has been on the decline, always subordinate to the achievement of "scientific" results, tangible, predictable progress. When our thinking remains on this pragmatic level, we have difficulty formulating certain basic moral questions:
In the dominant, progressive way of thinking, the destructive effects of scientific advance (the atom bomb, for example) do not count against this utopian ideology but are always seen as perversions of "true" progress.
That Left and Right represent an obsolete political typology is a valid point, but Macdonald isn't interested in merely scoring points; he wants to jar us (and himself) loose from a dead-end of rationalistic thinking that endangers our ability to distinguish between desirable and undesirable political values.
This is not a pessimistic work; it is an earnest--philosophically scientific--attempt to come to terms with the reality of the human capacity to not just survive, but to live well.
We simply cannot do everything. We are not gods. And the more god-like we perceive ourselves to be, the more monstrous we seem to become.
Instead, we can been begin with an acknowledgment of our limitations; but once we have chosen our desired ends, even our best effort to achieve them will never be "perfectible," despite what we would like to believe.
This is no Communist Manifesto--in a way it's the opposite. There is no "happy ending" here. The analysis is far from perfect. But at least it's an honest start.
Since I first read it, I have become fascinated by the life and times of Dwight Macdonald, critic, essayist, and radical. This piece was published in Macdonald's magazine Politics in two separate issues in 1946, a moment of American history bearing only a slight resemblance to our own. Yet, the superficial "datedness" of his concerns, revolving around Marxism, Nazism, and Stalinism, on closer examination, give way to more fundamental issues which remain unresolved since at least the ancient Greek civilization.
Macdonald, unhindered by the taboos of either "bourgeois" or Leftist discourse, focuses on the irreducible distinction in Western philosophy between fact and value and attempts to work out its modern political implications.
In trying to uproot the moral assumptions of the Left, it is necessary to reconsider "a whole cultural tradition" for which "Marxism looms up as the last and greatest systematic defense." Toward that end, Macdonald offers an alternative typology of political thought that distinguishes the "progressive" from the "radical."
Where Marx is always seen as a prime representative of the Left, in stark opposition to the defenders of inequality identified with the Right, Macdonald argues that the dominant tendencies across the political spectrum since the early 20th century have in common a still more fundamental commitment to progress inherited from the optimism of the Enlightenment.
On the other hand, the radical ethical concerns that inspired the socialist imagination, including Marx's--in other words, the root of the desire for liberation--has been on the decline, always subordinate to the achievement of "scientific" results, tangible, predictable progress. When our thinking remains on this pragmatic level, we have difficulty formulating certain basic moral questions:
If effective wars cannot be fought by groups the size of New England town meetings, and I take it they cannot, this is one more reason for giving up war (rather than the town meeting).
In the dominant, progressive way of thinking, the destructive effects of scientific advance (the atom bomb, for example) do not count against this utopian ideology but are always seen as perversions of "true" progress.
Any suggestion, for example, that maybe we know more about nature by now than is good for us, that a moratorium on atomic research might lose us cheaper power but gain us the inhabited globe — the slightest speculative hint of such an idea is greeted with anger, contempt, ridicule. And why not? A god is being profaned.
That Left and Right represent an obsolete political typology is a valid point, but Macdonald isn't interested in merely scoring points; he wants to jar us (and himself) loose from a dead-end of rationalistic thinking that endangers our ability to distinguish between desirable and undesirable political values.
This is not a pessimistic work; it is an earnest--philosophically scientific--attempt to come to terms with the reality of the human capacity to not just survive, but to live well.
We simply cannot do everything. We are not gods. And the more god-like we perceive ourselves to be, the more monstrous we seem to become.
Instead, we can been begin with an acknowledgment of our limitations; but once we have chosen our desired ends, even our best effort to achieve them will never be "perfectible," despite what we would like to believe.
We must learn to live with contradictions, to have faith in skepticism, to advance toward the solution of a problem by admitting as a possibility that it may be insoluble.
This is no Communist Manifesto--in a way it's the opposite. There is no "happy ending" here. The analysis is far from perfect. But at least it's an honest start.
October 10, 2022
The Root Is Man contains a couple of interesting insights, specially regarding Progressive ideology and its affinity for scientism. Also touches on how easily "progressives" of the leftists variety become warmongers when they feel the war is "just" (which is, almost always). It was also nice to find references to the amazing Simone Weil.
While this might be a good gateway from Leftism to the kind of mature politics that Macdonald calls Radicalism (I kind of like the term), there is still too much baggage when compared to more recent theorists like Christopher Lasch.
First, there is the author's ambivalent relationship to Marxism. While he doesn't hesitate to say Marx was wrong (and even dishonest) about many things, there remains a sort of reverance for him that is found in many recovering Leftists. Even more anachronistic is the author's optimism about Anarchism; something which inevitably results in relatable but very vague platitudes about "talking to people and building communities" as effective praxis. I don't know.
But my main problem with this essay is how wrong it was about the future. Granted, it was written in the 40s, but Chesterton made better predictions more than a century ago. I'm talking about Macdonald being clearly a child of the bomb. His black beast was "Bureaucratic Collectivism", an ambiguous system sometimes characterized as left-liberal and other times as chauvinisticly right-wing. He tought such system was only animated by nationalism and warfare and saw WW3 and nuclear holocaust as being just around the corner. No wonder he thought pacifism and anarchism were a sensible way forward.
Indeed we got China as the quintessential "bureaucratic collectivist" State, and no doubt the last few years have seen increased geopolitical tension coming from Russia's and China's bid for hegemony. But what Macdonald failed to foressee was the anarcho-tyrannical turn of the United States; a clown State of sorts fueled not at all by jingoism and national interest but by hedonism and corruption. He no doubt saw and feared the consolidation of American Empire, but apparently this sharp dialectician didn't give much thought to the inevitable imperial decline already latent in the US brand of liberalism.
Nuclear extinction has now again become a possibility. But its alternative (a peace made possible by Atlantic-led technocratic globalization) isn't too pretty either. Yes, we need to be radical, but these times call for a renewed radicalism probably unknown to Macdonald and his peers.
While this might be a good gateway from Leftism to the kind of mature politics that Macdonald calls Radicalism (I kind of like the term), there is still too much baggage when compared to more recent theorists like Christopher Lasch.
First, there is the author's ambivalent relationship to Marxism. While he doesn't hesitate to say Marx was wrong (and even dishonest) about many things, there remains a sort of reverance for him that is found in many recovering Leftists. Even more anachronistic is the author's optimism about Anarchism; something which inevitably results in relatable but very vague platitudes about "talking to people and building communities" as effective praxis. I don't know.
But my main problem with this essay is how wrong it was about the future. Granted, it was written in the 40s, but Chesterton made better predictions more than a century ago. I'm talking about Macdonald being clearly a child of the bomb. His black beast was "Bureaucratic Collectivism", an ambiguous system sometimes characterized as left-liberal and other times as chauvinisticly right-wing. He tought such system was only animated by nationalism and warfare and saw WW3 and nuclear holocaust as being just around the corner. No wonder he thought pacifism and anarchism were a sensible way forward.
Indeed we got China as the quintessential "bureaucratic collectivist" State, and no doubt the last few years have seen increased geopolitical tension coming from Russia's and China's bid for hegemony. But what Macdonald failed to foressee was the anarcho-tyrannical turn of the United States; a clown State of sorts fueled not at all by jingoism and national interest but by hedonism and corruption. He no doubt saw and feared the consolidation of American Empire, but apparently this sharp dialectician didn't give much thought to the inevitable imperial decline already latent in the US brand of liberalism.
Nuclear extinction has now again become a possibility. But its alternative (a peace made possible by Atlantic-led technocratic globalization) isn't too pretty either. Yes, we need to be radical, but these times call for a renewed radicalism probably unknown to Macdonald and his peers.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 3 reviews