Cultural Surplus in America

Abstract

Why has a sustained radical movement not been realized in the American context? This reality has not been explained by radicals in general and Marxist socialists in particular.' Despite recurrent economic, political and legitimacy crises, American radicalism has remained a marginal and sporadic event in American history. Why? Perhaps a clue is to turn the question around: Is there a negative affinity between the American socio-cultural context and Marxist socialism? When Americans dream of a better world, why have socialist symbols failed to provide bridges between existing and possible worlds? Can it be that socialism, or its moral equivalent, is actually contained within the utopian concept ofAmericanism itself?2 My thesis is that a reconstruction of the origins of the American social identity discloses a that anticipates a society in which individual participation and autonomy of communities constitute the common public good. By I mean traditional cultural symbols that retain their capacity to anticipate utopian alternatives to existing realities (see Section V below). However, the American cultural surplus has a dual potential: It can be critically comprehended in a way which points beyond contemporary technocratic ideologies (of right or left), or it can be reified in a social conservatism that justifies local particularism and anti-modern authoritarianism. In American history, there are many examples of both uses as the following will document. What is required to retain the critical remembrance and combat reactionary appropriations of American origins is more attention by critical scholars to the normative ideals that were fused in the American foundation. This is all the