It is becoming fashionable, or whatever one wants to call such contagious repetitions of doctrine, to say things along the lines of this -
traditionally, the left was universalist, basing its claims on notions of reason, truth, human rights, justice and democracy. On the postmodernist view, however, these standards themselves, indeed all norms whatsoever, merely express particular interests or power relations that arbitrarily favour some people, cultures or outlooks over others.'
Now what 'tradition' exactly are we talking about here and what would differentiate such a tradition from Enlightenment Liberalism? Statements such as the above mislead, perhaps wilfully, and can be seen as attempts to 'revise' the definition of the Left in order to meet the demands of present agendas.
Left wing thought, if we are including the Marxist tradition under this rubric (and if we are not then it is a patently and feebly ideological construction we are dealing with) has always been a critique of the cited 'enlightenment values' in their own name. Let me give an example,
Marx exposes how the state constitutes subjects as 'equal citizens' at a purely abstract level - in what Marx terms a 'fiction of constitutions' whilst on the other hand, the sphere of civil society, characterised by domination, exploitation and disperate need and conditions is left in tact. The state thus establishes equality only by abstracting away from such real differences, thereby disguising and reproducing inequality beneath a purely formal equivalence. (Marx: 'political man is only abstract, artificial man' (see Early Writings, 1963, p. 60).
Marxism, and the 'traditional' left, does not unreflectively salute enlightenment values nor does it say that they are always only rationalisations of class interests. It says, precisely, that in determinate social conditions these values work to enforce and perpetuate certain interests, or 'express certain power relations'. This is surely the crux.
If the Left was merely about saluting such values, formally, then there would be nothing to differentiate it from Liberalism of a certain kind. It is presumably the intent or unintended effect of statements like the one cited above to elide this difference between Enlightenment Liberalism and the Left, so shrinking the political spectrum and the possibilities of legitimate thought and action in the process.
The Left, from Marx to the Frankfurt School, to the New Left, has been concerned precisely to show the particular at work within the universal and disguised as the universal; to show that the universal isn't universal enough, that the universal supresses the particular,
'Postmodernism' as the statement above summarises it, has nothing to do with the Left, traditional or otherwise and is more aligned with modern forms of Liberalism/ neo-Pragmatism. Meanwhile, the so-called 'traditional left' is the invention of the Present. The 'traditional left' is a Left from which Marxism and its categories have been surgically removed, so that the anodyne hybrid called 'left- liberal' can live.
The task of the real traditional left, or a task at least, is precisely to insist upon what differentiates the Marxist tradition from liberalism and to delineate the blindspots and failures of liberalism. This is one of the positive features of Zizek's work, and one which has of course met with uncomprehending and asinine responses.
Some related reflections here.
[Norman Geras has responded to the above here. I’m not sure that his position (on this particular topic) is significantly different to my own, although I somehow sense he would like it to be. I may be wrong. I would, however, be genuinely interested to know, given his expertise in this area, what he thinks is historically and politically distinctive about the Left and what distinguishes it (if there is an 'it') from the Liberal tradition. ]