The Frankfurt school has been identified with Marxism. Such theorists as Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas are viewed as the contemporary representatives of Marxism. And, the views of the Frankfurt theorists are very often, at a certain level of abstraction, quite similar to some of the classic theses of Marxism. Nevertheless, the Marxists writing in this volume not only do not consider the Frankfurt theorists to be Marxists, but actually regard them as anti-Marxists.

"The final chapter is a representative selection of passages on Hegelian philosophy from the work of Mitchell Franklin. It seemed fitting to close the book with a presentation and discussion of a twentieth century philosopher whose work is the culmination of the development of the best in the Hegelian and Marxist traditions"--Introduction, page 11.

The outcome of this comparison of the impact of the Englishtenment on two rival philosophical traditions suggests that there are points of contact even on the issues that appear to push Leninism in an opposite direction from liberalism. The lack of communication between these two traditions results in a lack of vigor in developing their philosophies in a way that addresses the accomplishments of rival philosophies. For example, Leninism, which seeks to justify limits on the freedom of speech for those (...) viewed as anti-socialist, would do well to reinforce its position by mastering the reasoning of the liberals who differentiate the rights of the Ku Klux Klan from those of the N.A.A.C.P. And liberalism, which has been concerned with overcoming formal equality to implement real, practical equality of opportunity, is in effect echoing one of Lenin's main concerns about democracy under capitalism.Insofar as Lenin put forward the idea of Marxism as the continuation and sublation of the best accomplishments of human culture, it appears to be a weakness of contemporary Leninism that it fails sufficiently to embrace or confront the body of philosophical thought characterizing the liberal democratic conceptions of the Enlightenment and of contemporary liberalism. Even though this body of thought was known to Lenin and partially appropriated as well as confronted by him, there is a lack of emphasis by Leninists upon the mastering of the arguments advanced by liberalism. The fact that rival, anti-Leninist thought also began from certain ideas of the Enlightenment underscores the importance for Leninism's own self-understanding of studying the evolution of Enlightenment philosophy, its links with twentieth-century liberalism, and the reasons for the rejection of liberal conceptions by Lenin. (shrink)

Mitchell Franklin completed fifty years of scholarship in law and philosophy, having written more than seventy-five major articles since 1932. In spite of his international prominence as a legal scholar, there has not yet been an in-depth study of his work. The difficulty of such an enterprise is due in part to his highly original approach to Roman law, the French Encyclopedist influences on American thought, and Marxist themes in law. In his work on the U.S. Constitution, Franklin has left (...) a corpus of writings dealing with the first, titth, eighth, ninth and fourteenth amendments, the sections of the Constitution dealing with judicial review, impeachment, the guarantee clause, and the historical influences on the framers of the Constitution. (shrink)