James Burnham, in his groundbreaking study of politics The Machiavellians, introduces a distinction between “formal” and “real” meaning. Formal meaning refers to the consciously intended verbal meaning of a specific theoretical contention. The formal meaning of a philosophical theory would be tantamount to its verbal or “technical” meaning. Criticisms that stray from formal meaning are often considered “unfair” and “misleading,” which may be true in one sense, but is not true in all senses. That’s because the formal meaning of a theory, whether in philosophy or political ideology, does not always align with its real meaning. Human beings are inveterate rationalizers. They tend to believe certain things relating to morality, politics and religion on the basis of instinct or intuition—which is to say, on mere feeling, which are often inchoate and non-rational in origin (if not by definition). Nonetheless, human beings like to reframe their fundamental intuitions in terms of a formal, which is to say verbal, theory. When involved in such theorizing, an attempt is often made to provide a veneer of logic and rationality to what initially had nothing of the sort. What begins as mere intuition ends as a formal rationalized theory. But something is usually lost in the process. In giving a conscious voice to the muddled longings of instinct most individuals inevitably indulge in spin. Like the press agent, they can’t help trying to cast themselves and their inner motivations in as attractive a light as possible. Hence is introduced a fissure between a man’s stated beliefs and their true nature as it is revealed in motivation and action. The stated beliefs correspond to Burnham’s formal meaning; the actual motivations and actions correspond to Burnham’s real meaning. Psychological research has shown that a man’s behavior provides a far more accurate window to his soul than does the torrent of verbal justifications that come streaming from his pie-hole. The separation between formal and real meaning explains in part why this is so.
If we judge, let’s say, a Marxist ideologue by the formal meaning of the doctrines he espouses, we would be led to believe that the primary goal motivating most, if not all, of his political aspirations is to help accelerate the historical processes that are inevitably leading toward a classless society. Such, in any case, is the formal meaning of the orthodox Marxist creed. Does this mean that the true believing Marxist, assuming that he is sincere in these merely formal beliefs, is in fact preoccupied in the business of shepherding the historical forces bringing about a classless society? Of course not. That would be impossible. No such historical processes exist or ever could exist. And since no individual can engage in an impossible enterprise for very long, what then must our intrepid Marxist ideologue really be up to? In order to answer that question, all we have to do is examine the actual behavior of the orthodox Marxist in question. His conduct will reveal the real meaning of his Marxist convictions. If, for example, we find the Marxist ideologue seeking at every opportunity to attack and bring down any individual who demonstrates greater competence, energy, and drive than himself, then we might conclude that the real meaning of this individual’s Marxian-inspired convictions is, in the words of Shakespeare’s King Richard,
…to command, to check, to o’erbear such As are of better person than myself.
And indeed, Marxist ideology often consists of little more than a rationalization on the part of those who, because their innate proclivities put them at a disadvantage in the competition for wealth and status in capitalist societies, seek to exact revenge upon those better constituted than themselves. From which it follows that the real meaning of Marxism does not entirely coincide, and in many important respects may actually diverge, from the formal meaning. More often than not the stated desire for a classless society is just a pretext to justify attacking those who are successful under the current dispensation. People who feel ill-used because they don’t occupy the position in social hierarchy that accords with their own rather grandiose self-estimation often feel a vague longing to lash out at anyone who’s achieved greater status than themselves. Of course, the frustrated social climber will find solace in any doctrine that claims that status is achieved primarily through perfidy and “oppression.” Such doctrines flatter the vanity of society’s losers while at the same time offering pretexts for revenge.
Having explained the distinction between formal and real meaning, we can now focus our attention on the topic of postmodernism. The formal meaning of postmodernism is something along the following lines:
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse defined by an attitude of skepticism toward what it characterizes as the "grand narratives" of modernism, opposition to notions of epistemic certainty or the stability of meaning, and emphasis on the role of ideology in maintaining systems of socio-political power.
Now prima facie, one might assume that postmodernism rejects all grand narratives and ideologies, including those of Marxism and its kindred offshoots. And from a purely formal point of view, that would be correct. But postmodernism is never followed in its purely formal guise, because that would be impossible. The skepticism of postmodernism is too extreme for it to be used as a basis for conduct. Excessive kepticism, as David Hume pointed out more than two hundred years ago, is an impotent and useless doctrine:
[T]he chief and most confounding objection to excessive scepticism [is] that no durable good can ever result from it…. We need only ask such a sceptic, What his meaning is? And what he proposes by all these curious researches? He is immediately at a loss, and knows not what to answer.… A Stoic or Epicurean displays principles, which may not only be durable, but which have an effect on conduct and behavior. But a Pyrrhonian [i.e., an extreme skeptic] cannot expect, that his philosophy will have any constant influence on the mind: Or if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge any thing, that all human life must perish, were his principles universally and steadily to prevail. All discourse, all action would immediately cease; and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence. It is true; so fatal an event is very little to be dreaded. Nature is always too strong for principle. And though a Pyrrhonian may throw himself or others into a momentary amazement and confusion by his profound reasonings; the first and most trivial event in life will put to flight all his doubts and scruples, and leave him the same, in every point of action and speculation, with the philosophers of every other sect, or with those who never concerned themselves in any philosophical researches.
Since postmodernism is an absurd doctrine incapable of providing guidance either for an individual’s life or for society at large, it is, like Marxism, an impractical creed. This being so, what is the point of it? Why did it become so popular among left-wing academics?
The “real” meaning of postmodernism, as opposed to its “formal” meaning, could be summed up as follows: Postmodernism is an extreme form of skepticism for people who aren’t skeptics. It is not a philosophy to be followed, but rather it is a tool of criticism to be aimed at one’s enemies.
Why do people on the left, particularly the radical left, find such a tool useful? It’s actually not all that difficult to comprehend. Leftism in its more extreme forms constitutes a revolt against the reality of human nature and the human condition. Psychologically, leftism arises from unhappiness with the prevailing social order. Leftists, who tend to be low in consciousness and high in agreeableness, lack the necessary psychological characteristics to thrive in a modern industrial society. They can’t help noticing that the lion's share of society’s wealth and status tends to fall to those that are far more competitive, aggressive, and “self-interested” (i.e., provident) than themselves. The way wealth and status are distributed under “capitalism” doesn’t seem “fair” to the typical left-winger. Lacking any deep understanding of how human societies work and the difficulties involved in reforming “abuses” in any social system, leftists build castles in the air through which they imagine they can bring about a social order that is more harmonious with their innate dispositions. Instead of seeking to adapt to the eternal order of things, they seek to adapt this order to themselves—which, alas, is a largely impossible undertaking, and is one of the prime reasons for the manifest failures of leftist social policies (the other being the arrogant incompetence of leftist political leaders). These are not people who are fit to rule.
When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez complained about those individuals who are “more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right,” she was expressing the typical attitude of the radical leftist. AOC elevates what she calls “morality” (by which she really means her own wishful thinking) above facts and reality. For the leftist, facts and reality are the enemy. They are to be overturned and vanquished. But since this is impossible, the leftist instead must be content with merely evading these eternal verities. This is precisely where postmodernism proves useful. When postmodernists argue that assertions about matters of fact constitute a “naive realism”; when they regard “grand narratives” with suspicion and scorn; when they suggest that reality is a mental construct; when, in short, they indulge in any form of extreme skepticism about the existence of the real world, they are doing so merely in the service of evading those facts of reality which refuse to square with their jejune political and social ideals. Hence when confronted with unworkability of socialism, the palpable racism of critical race theory, the existence of only two genders, and other inconvenient facts of the human condition, the leftist turns to postmodernism to apply its extreme skepticism to the task of jettisoning any and all eternal veritis that have the temerity to testify against radical left shibbeloths. Postmodernism provides the leftist with an epistemological escape hatch that allows him to imagine that the real world, which he hates and is opposed to, does not actually exist.
Postmodernism is not the first philosophical tool the radical left has adopted to help them evade facts of reality. In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels used dialectics, an epistemological tool developed by German speculative philosophy, for their own mendacious ends. German dialectics was developed by such philosophers as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel primarily to re-establish speculative rationalism against the criticisms of such philosophizing introduced by Hume and Kant in the eighteenth century. Hegel, for example, had some grandiose ideas about history that could not be supported through scientific research and empirical scholarship. Hence he made use of his version of the dialectic to argue that historical development does not occur in a straight line, “but in a spiral and leading upwards to growth and progress. This is where action follows reaction; from the opposition of action and reaction a harmony or synthesis results.” [Hegel, Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, I, # 79-82] This empirically irresponsible method of speculating about the “laws” of history left a deep impression on Karl Marx, who would later develop his own version of dialectics which he used to “establish” the inevitably of socialism and a classless society. His speculations, he rather arbitrarily declared, were scientific, even though they were nothing of the sort. He was just using dialectic as a rationalization for indulging in make-believe. The predictions that arose from his empirically baseless speculations have all been shown by history and economic theory to be largely baseless. There are no such historical laws, as he imagined, and there is nothing inevitable about socialism or a classless society (which is impossible in any case). There is little that is inevitable in history beyond what is circumscribed within the narrow parameters of human nature and the laws of physics.
Not surprisingly, the societies inspired by Marx’s theories have proven a huge failure. Estimates of mass killings under communist regimes (which include executions, famine, and deaths through forced labor, deportation, and imprisonment) range from sixty million to one-hundred and forty million. Nor have the socialist economies ushered in by communist dictatorships proved any less disastrous. Beyond the deaths caused by communism is the widespread misery caused by socialist economic deprivation. Supporters of these insane social systems have much to answer for. But rather than own up to the poverty and dysfunction of their ideals, many leftists prefer to simply dismiss these unpleasant facts from their minds, as if they could purge the misery and murder promoted by their political ideology through mere mental fiat. And here once again postmodernism proves useful. Since postmodernism denies the reality of an objective truth and insists that evidence and logic are only conceptual constructs of no intrinsic validity, it is very easy for the postmodern radical to deny any assertion about matters of fact that does not in accord with his social ideals. The facts about the horrors of communism and radical left rule can be dismissed out of hand as the mere conceptual constructions of a corrupt civilization.
The persistent failure of lefitst political programs must at some level leave psychological scars. As much as the typical leftist may attempt to blame his political opponents for the failure of his various ideological agendas, the fact is the society that he so badly wishes to bring into existence stubbornly eludes his grasp. This frustration inevitably breeds cynicism and nihilism. If the typical leftist begins his intellectual journey by hating those who are better constituted and more successful than himself, he often ends in days, after his long and futile crusades against the eternal verities, in a hatred for existence itself. The cynicism and nihilism bred by the despair over the failure of leftist political and social policies finds comfort in the cynical skepticism of postmodernism and in its corrosive attitude toward the civilized world. The urge to devalue the modern civilized social order is probably one of the key motivations behind the development of postmodernist thought. At the heart of radical leftism exists a suicidal urge to destroy the West—and postmodernism provides philosophical rationalizations for these destructive impulses.
Many critics of postmodernism commit the error of taking this version of extreme skepticism and moral nihilism at face value. They accept the formal meaning of its doctrines at the “true” meaning, while ignoring the real or actual meaning as it is manifested in the actual conduct of postmodernists. Thus Jordan Peterson has indicated his puzzlement over the fact that left-wing postmodernists fail to apply the formal strictures of their philosophy against their own deeper political and social convictions. \
It’s obvious to me [writes Jordan Peterson] that the much-vaunted “skepticism toward grand narratives” that is part and parcel of the postmodern viewpoint makes [an] alliance [between postmodernism and Marxism] logically impossible. Postmodernists should be as skeptical toward Marxism as toward any other canonical belief system.
But Peterson is assuming that postmodernists should seek logical consistency within their own thinking—which is to say, their postmodern beliefs should be integrated with their radical left politics. But of course there is no reason whatsoever to expect radical leftists to be logical. Doesn’t postmodernism give them an excuse for rejecting fact and logic? Of course it does. And since leftists tend to be low in conscientiousness, it should not surprise anyone that they should behave in such an unprincipled manner. But more to the point, the rejection of grand narratives belongs to the formal meaning of postmodernism. It is not meant to be taken literally. It is rather a tool to be used when useful, and ignored when not.
Greg Nyquist is author of The Psychopathology of the Radical Left and The Faux-Rationality of Ayn Rand.