Haunting Hegemony: A Certain Spirit of Conservative-Liberal-Socialism

Martin Krygier begins his essay noting Leszek Kolakowski’s credo for a “mighty [Conservative-Liberal-Socialist] International that will never exist.” Krygier argues for the more limited position of conservative-liberal-social democracy for the post-1989 era, where the conservative temper, liberal discussion, and a concern for social responsibility offer an alternative to neoliberal “End of History” triumphalism. However, merely invoking the spirits of Kolakowski and the anti-totalitarian coalition in Eastern Europe is not sufficient if we wish to claim our full inheritance from those struggles. There are two issues that Krygier leaves underdetermined: First, can the importance of totalitarianism’s existence for sustaining the anti-totalitarian coalition of conservatives, liberals, and socialists be so easily dismissed? Second, one must take more seriously Kolakowski’s definition of his International as one that will never exist, as well as questioning his flippant remark that Conservative-Liberal-Socialism cannot promise happiness. Some light can be shed on both of these questions by engaging the work of another who has called for an impossible International—Jacques Derrida. In Specters of Marx, Derrida calls for a New International in a “certain spirit of Marx” to oppose the reification of current liberal democracy as the end of history and the ultimate expression of freedom. Yet like Kolakowski, Derrida’s International can never be a campaign or cause in the sense that Krygier implies. It can scarcely be more than a “link of affinity, suffering, and hope.” For Derrida this must be so, in that the New International is our inheritance of a certain spirit of the anti-totalitarian coalition. Thus, Derrida’s discussion of the problems of both inheritance and spirits may add an important dimension to the question of conservative-liberal-socialism.