Postmodernism Is the Academic Far Left's Epistemological Strategy for Responding to the Crisis Caused by the Failures of Socialism in Theory and in Practice

From The Manifesto of the Communist Party of 1848 to the revelations of 1956 was over a century of theory and evidence. The crisis for the far Left was that the logic and evidence were going against socialism. Put yourself in the shoes of an intelligent, informed socialist confronted with all this data. How would you react? You have a deep commitment to socialism: You feel that socialism is true; you want it to be true; upon socialism you have pinned all your dreams of a peaceful and prosperous future society and all your hopes for solving the ills of our current society.

This is a moment of truth for anyone who has experienced the agony of a deeply cherished hypothesis run aground on the rocks of reality. What do you do? Do you abandon your theory and go with the facts--or do you try to find a way to maintain your belief in your theory?

Here, then, is my second hypothesis about post-modernism: Postmodernism is the academic far Left's epistemological strategy for responding to the crisis caused by the failures of socialism in theory and in practice. 

A historically parallel example may help here. In the 1950s and 60s, the Left faced the same dilemma that religious thinkers faced in the late 1700s. In both cases, the evidence was against them. During the Enlightenment, religion's natural theology arguments were widely seen as being full of holes, and science was rapidly giving naturalistic and opposed explanations for the things that religion had traditionally explained. Religion was in danger of being shut out of intellectual life. By the 1950s and 60s, the Left's arguments for the fruitfulness and decency of socialism were failing in theory and practice, and liberal capitalism was rapidly increasing everyone's standard of living and showing itself respectful of human freedoms. By the late 1700s, religious thinkers had a choice--accept evidence and logic as the ultimate court of appeal and thereby reject their deeply-cherished religious ideals--or stick by their ideals and attack the whole idea that evidence and logic matter. "I had to deny knowledge," wrote Kant in the Preface to the first Critique, "in order to make room for faith." "Faith," wrote Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling, "requires the crucifixion of reason"; so he proceeded to crucify reason and glorify the irrational.

--Stephen R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Tempe, AZ: Scholargy Publishing, 2004), 89-90.