Liberal Neutrality, Class-Warfare, and the Cross of Christ

There is a Hegelian-Marxist “political metaphysics” which rejects the liberal progressive myth of a neutral “safe space,” in which individuals may freely shift between different narratives, express different identities, assert different rights, exercise different freedoms, and so forth. Liberalism purports to set up a public space that is neutral with respect to these varying narratives, identities, and rights, a space within which they might all coexist peacefully, equally, and without judgment. Such a neutrality is, in fact, fundamentally at odds with the Hegelian-Marxist metaphysics, which is based not upon insipid neutrality, but upon bold confrontation, antagonism, opposition — the dialectic. Strife is the god of such a metaphysics. For such a metaphysics, history proceeds only by continual strife, mobilized only by negation, and by the negation of the negation. In Marx, this dialectic is embodied in class warfare, the underlying dynamic of all social structures. Every historical epoch must be defined by the taking of a confrontational stance. For the Hegelian-Marxist, the public space is nothing apart from the particular historical forms which it takes; it is never neutral. It is like prime matter: it only exists as the particular forms which inhabit it, and thus it is always in strife, always taking a stance. Every identify, every particular form, is the…