Ideologue — The Positive Formulation

Abstract

The conceptualization of human behavior - with its far-reaching implications for the socialist movement - that de Man developed as alternative to Marxism was formulated in a series of works that followed the retentissement of the Psychology. Although the theoretical framework of the new position had been implicit in the critique, it was not until later that the author attempted a positive formulation of his approach, a fact that lent credence to accusations that his “surmounting” of Marxism led to a vague, unrealistic, and essentially pre-Marxist position. In his sustained and earnest efforts to counter such damaging charges, he was obliged to explore the pragmatic implications of a social methodology alternative to positivism. One accusation was that his renunciation of the Marxist schema necessarily led back to an idealistic minimization of the significance of the situation of action, and that hence such a socialism was “utopian,” not in the old sense that it lacked a social basis but rather in the sense that it had an unrealistically optimistic picture of the political problems faced by the socialist movement. Thus Kahler, his most formidable intellectual opponent, declared with reference to his insistence on the discretionary nature of human action,

The “possible” is in de Man’s outlook to be reached peacefully through reliance on the continued strengthening and consolidation of organized socialism (that is, the movement) - about which there is nothing more to say than that it is a zealous striving for greater justice, a vaguely drawn projection of his own wishes.¹