Is Revolutionary Aristotelianism an Oxymoron?: The Case of MacIntyre

Here’s a very good and sympathetic review of Alasdair’s work that says it is. THE LINK IS NOW REALLY THERE!

Here’s one sentence: “It seems to me that MacIntyre’s image of modernity as an integrated, monolithic condition only makes sense within Marxist assumptions that he has clearly abandoned.”

For Marx, MacIntyre would simply be a reactionary. But revolutionaries and reactionaries have the same radical objections to the capitalist present. And the same obsession with the mode of production.

That leads to the rhetorical questions: MacIntyre seems to uncritically accept Marx’s description of capitalism in THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. But Marx clearly meant those seemingly empirical observations to be polemical exaggerations designed to provoke revolutionary hatred. Their emotional goal is the same: To get us to hate capitalism and to identify our present reality as capitalism and nothing more.

Should MacIntyre’s exaggerations be read the same way, as deliberately unempirical and provocative? Maybe or maybe not, insofar as MacIntrye’s revolutionary method is quite different.

As the reviewer suggests, it’s just not true that the great mass of people have been reduced to nothing.

Thanks to Tom Harmon for calling this review to my FACEBOOK attention.