Radical Humanism and Anthromodernism for the 21st Century

• Book:

URL =

Review

""By my reckoning, Paul Mason’s Clear Bright Future (2019) has received somewhat less attention than its landmark predecessor PostCapitalism (2015). Perhaps Brexit has sapped us of the ability to be otherwise stimulated, but there may be other explanations: as a piece of work it is more wide-ranging and eclectic (I cannot help but think of Mason as a kind of Anglo-Zizek at times), and perhaps less obviously zeitgeisty. However, its thesis is no less audacious than the prior book and, if its subject matter appears any less ‘of its moment’ than Post-Capitalism’s timely economic critique, that is only a symptom of the advanced philosophical decay upon which Clear Bright Future’s ire rests.

This is a book about the abandonment of humanism and, in lockstep, of a human future. It will not seem mysterious that this interests the author of a blog called Anthromodernism. But Mason is not doing anything as narrowly academic as defining a new humanism. He is attempting nothing less than to refound the normative basis for left-wing organisation in the 21st century. That this requires a robust (if only preparatory) theoretical elaboration of a ‘radical humanism’ is clear, and Mason provides one.

...

I’ll give you my verdict at the outset: Clear Bright Future is a treasure-trove of good ideas and deserves to be treated as a seminal text of the 21stcentury humanist left. Among its many ‘anthromodernist’ charms are:

• A furious critique of academic anti- and post-humanism from the Marxist structuralist dead-end of Althusser through high postmodernism (Foucault, Baudrillard) and its decay into posthumanism (Braidotti, Hayles, Harraway)

• Dedication to the serious pursuit of a theory of human nature, based on a) contemporary scientific research into how we differ from our great ape forbears (Tomasello), and b) the theories of species-being, alienation and ‘historical self-creation’ which root the early Marx’s account of human nature

• Militant anti-Nietzcheanism e.g. this apt paraphrase of Lukacs: ‘Nietzsche’s genius … was to develop a reactionary, romantic pessimism for all time – so that future generations of “spiritual” rebels who hate the working class, and want to celebrate the biological greatness of a few elite men, could always return to his aphorisms as if they were new’ (186-187)

• The insistence that ‘reading Arendt is not enough’, that is, that the liberal-left humanists of the post-war period (Orwell, Arendt, Levi etc) are insufficient guides to the present encroachments of the far-right, and that the humanism we need will have to reckon far more concretely with Nietzschean irrationalism and the problematic of American empire and its decline

• A strong theory of the psychological power of neoliberalism rooted in what I would call ‘reification critique’, whereby the stultifying power of the system is exercised at the level of expectations (curtailing them) and experience of economic life (tending to confirm the neoliberal mantra: There Is No Alternative)

• A basically correct analysis of the alt-right as about denying all forms of universal humanity and endorsing every form of biological hierarchy (again, Nietzsche)

• A materialist theory of information (based on modern science and Marx’s labour theory of value) to counter the ‘digital idealism’ of the tech giants determined to see themselves and their projects as being above earthly concerns; this smartly roots Mason’s call to arms against ‘algorithmic control’

• The unfashionable insistence that the 21st left needs a moral philosophy –Mason’s preferred system is Aristotelian virtue ethics (he regards this as the only available system compatible with humanism); this will be controversial for some Marxists, but Mason’s case that a moral system of some sort is needed seems unanswerable given the urgent need for an ethics of artificial intelligence

• A commitment to the basics of Marxist theory (theory of history, labour theory of value and theory of human nature) alongside a reasonable account of its historic deficiencies (on feminism/sexuality, ecology and the more esoteric natural-scientific applications of the dialectic)"

(https://anthromodernism.wordpress.com/2019/09/09/review-of-paul-masons-clear-bright-future-a-radical-defence-of-the-human-being/)

Discussion

See: Reification Critique vs Ideology Critique