This paper argues that postmodernism represents a contemporary manifestation of a long-standing political despair among Western intellectuals. It shows commonality with various "power-conflict" perspectives of the past, as well as associated connections with well-known theses of "post-industrialism." The strength of postmodernism partly rests on its identification of several gaps in Marxist historical theory. In the end, however, the fundamental stance of postmodernism fails because of its dematerialization of symbols and their exchange. Postmodern social theory is thus understood as no more than a mode of Idealist philosophy, a status that renders it essentially useless as a basis for social change and that places it in the camp of political reaction.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Althusser, Louis.1990. Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists . London: Verso.
2.
Baudrillard, Jean.1975. The Mirror of Production. St. Louis : Telos Press.
3.
. 1981 . For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. St. Louis: Telos Press.
4.
Bauman, Zygmunt.1988. "Is There a Postmodern Sociology?" Theory, Culture, and Society5(2-3):217-39.
5.
Bell, Daniel.1962. The End of Ideology. New York : Free Press.
6.
. 1976. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. New York: Basic Books.
7.
Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, S.M.1966. Class, Status, Power. 2nd ed. New York: Free Press.
8.
Bloch, Ernst.1971. On Karl Marx. New York: Herder and Herder.
9.
Bober, M.M.1950. Karl Marx's Interpretation of History. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
10.
Bottomore, T.B.1966. Classes in Modern Society. New York : Vintage Books.
11.
Coser, Lewis.1956. The Functions of Social Conflict. New York: Free Press.
12.
Dahrendorf, Ralf.1959. Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society . Stanford: Stanford University Press.
13.
de Saussure, Ferdinand.1966. Course in General Linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill.
14.
Ewen, Stewart.1976. Captains of Consciousness. New York : McGraw-Hill.
15.
Gramsci, Antonio.1968. The Modern Prince. New York : International Publishers.
16.
Katsiaficas, George.1987. The Imagination of the New Left. Boston : South End Press.
17.
Lash, Scott.1990. Sociology of Postmodernism. New York : Routledge.
18.
Lenski, Gerhard.1966. Power and Privilege. New York : McGraw-Hill.
19.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois.1984. The Postmodern Condition. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press.
20.
. 1988. The Differend. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
21.
Lyotard, J.-F. and Jean-Loup Theabaud .1984. Just Gaming. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
22.
Lukacs, Georg.1971. History and Class Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
23.
Mandel, Ernst.1975. Late Capitalism. London: New Left Books.
24.
Marx, Karl.1972. Theories of Surplus Value, Vol. III. London: Lawrence and Wishart .
25.
McKelvey, Charles.1991. Beyond Ethnocentrism. New York : Greenwood Press.
26.
Norris, Christopher.1990. What's Wrong with Postmodernism: Critical Theory and the Ends of Philosophy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
27.
Ollman, Bertell.1976. Alienation (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press .
28.
Orwell, George.1964. 1984. New York: Signet Classic.
29.
Parsons, Talcott.1946. The Structure of Social Action. New York: Free Press.
30.
Parekh, Bikhu.1982. Marx's Theory of Ideology. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins.
31.
Rosenau, Pauline.1992. Post-modernism and the Social Sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wenger, Morton G.1978. On the Possibility of Synthesis in Stratiftcation Theory . Red Feather, CO: Red Feather Institute .
34.
. 1980a. "The Middle Class Revisited, or, Marxism Takes up Sociology's Burden." Humanity & Society4:262-277.
35.
. 1980b. "The Transmutation of Weber's Stand in American Sociology and Its Social Roots." Current Perspectives in Social Theory1: 357-378.
36.
. 1987 . "Class Closure and the Historical/Structural Limits of the Marx-Weber Convergence." In N. Wiley, ed., The Marx-Weber Debate.Beverly Hills: Sage.
37.
____________. . 1991. "Decoding Postmodernism: The Despair of the Intellectuals and the Twilight of the Future." Social Science journal28(3):391-407.
