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Northwestern University Law Review,
Summer 1987,
81 Nw. U.L. Rev. 751
False Universality: Infinite Personality
and Finite Existence in Unger's Politics
By William A. Galston
I. INTRODUCTION
A decade ago, Daniel Bell argued against what he termed the "monolithic" view of
society. Whatever may have been true of classical and medieval communities, Bell
contended, Western industrial societies are characterized not by integration,
but by disjunction. There is no single spirit that animates these societies.
Rather, they are divided into different realms, each guided by its own
principle: the techno-economy, the operating principle of which is efficiency;
the polity, the legitimacy of which is based on the concept of free and equal
citizens; and culture, increasingly dominated by the modernist ideal of
unlimited self-expression. Within this framework, Bell suggested, one can
discern the following structural sources of tension in modern societies:
[B]etween a social
structure (primarily techno-economic) which is bureaucratic and hierarchical,
and a polity which believes, formally, in equality and participation; between a
social structure that is organized fundamentally in terms of roles and
specialization, and a culture which is concerned with the enhancement and
fulfillment of the self and the "whole" person. In these contradictions, one
perceives many of the latent social conflicts that have been expressed
ideologically as alienation, depersonalization, [and] the attack on authority .
. . .
Roberto Unger's project in Politics is to argue that these
contradictions can be overcome. Specifically, Unger contends that the principle
of what Bell calls "culture" -- the enhancement and fulfillment of the self --
is the axis around which all of society must be reconstructed. Economic roles
and hierarchies that constrain self-expression must be dismantled.
Legal-constitutional forms that restrict the free play of the human imagination
must be reconstituted. Fortunately, Unger argues, to accord normative primacy to
self-assertion is not to surrender other desirable features of modern life.
Plastic, nonhierarchical economic institutions are not merely compatible with
but actually necessary for the attainment of material prosperity. Rights-based
political institutions can be redesigned to accommodate the democratic clash of
imaginative projects while preserving individual security against tyranny. We
need neither embrace the rigors of civic-republican virtue to achieve democracy
nor accept the repressiveness of the Protestant ethic to ensure prosperity; the
modernist ideal of personal liberation will be functional in every sphere of
life. We can, in short, realize the old Enlightenment dream of a rational
society in which our most treasured goals are no longer in ultimate conflict.
From this normative vantage point, Unger launches a vigorous attack on
contemporary liberal polities. (He acknowledges -- but does not dwell on --
parallel failings of Marxist-Leninist societies.) Unger contends that Western
societies are frozen into rigid roles and hierarchies. Political systems of
checks and balances impede both democratic self-expression and egalitarian
social reconstruction. A combination of social rigidity, political gridlock, and
imaginative stultification locks liberal politics into futile cycles of reform
and retrenchment. Even European social democracy -- the fullest realization of
liberal aspirations -- fails to liberate the individual's practical, emotional,
and cognitive capacities. For these reasons, we cannot be satisfied with a
program of incremental changes pursued through current institutions. Rather, we
must seek to destabilize these institutions in order to move toward their
radical transformation.
It is not my purpose in this Essay to subject Unger's concrete political
analyses and proposals to detailed scrutiny. For the record, I should say that
his account of roles and hierarchies is unpersuasive in its denial of the
considerable fluidity characteristic of modern socioeconomies; that his critique
of political checks and balances is blind both to their capacity for strong
democratic action and to their ability to protect individuals against collective
tyranny; and that his account of reform cycles ignores the ways in which liberal
societies have been noncyclically transformed over the past century. Moreover,
the practical lesson of recent generations is that aggressive contempt for
social democracy does not promote the fulfillment of radical aspirations. The
effort to "leap over" social democracy is more likely to produce traditionalist
counterreaction than cultural revolution. In short, Unger's prescriptions rest
on a dramatically flawed diagnosis of contemporary society; they minister to
ills the very existence of which most individuals would deny. As I shall argue,
this gulf between Unger's vision and ordinary consciousness forces his argument
in elitist and coercive directions radically at odds with his professed
intentions.
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