Word: unger
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...SOME OF his sharpest analysis, Unger shows that the internal contradictions within liberalism lead to a breakdown of law and justice. If the Supreme Court is torn over conflicting interpretations of the Constitution, it is not because the document is poorly constructed, but because general theorems cannot be applied perfectly to specific cases...
...develop into a fully corporate state, in which individuals would be forced to act only within their bureaucratically defined roles, eliminating the interaction of human beings as human beings. Unger finds another possible course of development, the emergence of a socialist regime, equally undesirable. Here the holding of power and the definition of ends would become arbitrary. Even if private property were abolished, the desire for power would not be, and the socialist bureaucracy would provide an effective means of enforcing greater control...
Leftists who read Knowledge and Politics will first criticize Unger for giving such cursory treatment to Marx, though they will probably applaud his critique of liberalism. But because of Unger's logical structure, they cannot accept too much of what he says. The arguments he uses against liberalism can be turned against Marxism with almost equal force...
...UNGER, in a rather desultory manner, calls Marxism the best previous refutation of liberalism, but rejects it as a useful theory. He criticizes its historical determinism, its concern with the distribution of wealth and the emphasis on the means of production. He says it fails to resolve the antimony of theory and fact and "does not penetrate the realm of the consciousness." And yet he adopts one of Marx's more humanistic concepts, that of the species-being...
...comes closest to "universal harmony" in two forms of human activity, work and love. Unger's views about the value of work seem adapted from Marx, but he avoids the concept of alienation and sees no need for the worker to be a jack-of-all-trades. Unger accepts the continued division of labor, though he says it is moderated and refined to prevent the worker from feeling apart from the larger product...