Absolutizing the Particular

From the late-1960s to the mid-1980s, Telos brought the Frankfurt School, Western Marxism, and other critical Continental thought to North America and the English speaking world; it was the critical theory organ of that era and best ever English language journal on the topic. Its left lean did not compromise its critical view of communist regimes and left-wing parties and thinkers. Its contribution with regard to critical theories, with Hegelian-Marxist roots, was so substantial and widely acknowledged that many former readers and, I expect, even some journal editors, who have advertised in Telos, during the last 25 years, did not grasp its mid-1980s change of course. Although often portrayed narrowly, Telos’ content, contributors, and editors have always been diverse.[2] Yet even in its early years, the Telos circle generally agreed that the welfare state and liberal-left political culture were exhausted. Elaborated in decisive moves by editor-in-chief, Paul Piccone, Telos’ later thrust inhered in his early exhaustion thesis. He held that critical theory already was obsolete in the mid-1970s, when it dominated Telos’ pages.[3] An outspoken critic of the New Left, Piccone still carried on its radical antiliberal current in his own unique, highly intellectual, philosophical way, which led eventually to his and Telos’ right-turn.