DAVID SlDORSKY
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Rorty, the Left is pronounced
to
be the party of perennial hope against
the prevailing status quo. So he asserts this distinction as providing the
basis for the "saving remnants" of the American Left of the past century
to
form the redemptive coalition of the reformist Left which will achieve
the American future, despite "the ghastly reality of contemporary Amer–
ica."
In Rorty's tour of the political horizon in search of the relevant bases
for institutional reform in the United States, there is no recognition of
the Right portion of the spectrum. Rorty does not recognize its existence
as requiring refutation or offering a potential for challenges or alterna–
tives. Any reference to the existence of a non-Left view is simply the
occasion for derision without argument, not even rising to the common
polemical discourtesy of the refutation of a caricature. For Rorty, the
non-Left in American history, politics, culture, or economic develop–
ment appears only as the championing of greed and avarice, as the rein–
forcement of the strong against the weak, or as the heralding of the
discovery of sin .
Consequently, in Rorty's quest for the policy options for achieving
our country, there is no examination of the issues that divide the Left
from the Right. The evidence and argument that are essential to justify
a new emergence of the Left after the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the apparent failure that followed so many socialist and even liberal or
welfare state experiments in the 1970S and 1980s are never debated. As
a result, although Rorty has raised expectations and promisingly beck–
oned an affirmative answer to the question of whether the Left still has
the power
to
speak, this promise carries no collateral support. For on
this important question, as in any matter of judgment, a steadfast
refusal to confront or consider alternative claims would render the ver–
dict not only to be un persuasive and unconvincing in discourse but
unsubstantiated or insignificant in fact.
Rorty's central advocacy of economic redistribution, for example,
avoids any reference to the contrary theory, familiar evidence, or argu–
ment that alternative strategies of free market competition may gener–
ate greater rates of economic growth resulting in improvement for the
masses of a society. Even apart from this theoretical discussion, there
has been a general empirica l recognition that some of the programs ini–
tiated by the reformist Left during the past decades, particularly those
associated with "The Great Society," have not realized their goals, or
may even have been counter-productive. Rorty provides no evaluation
of the success or failure of these programs but urges their continuation
and extension.
