Date: Mon, 1 Sep 1997 10:37:07 -0700 (PDT)
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: BHA: lebensphilosophie/hermeneutics, Bhaskar, & Lukacs


Since Msalter is on a number of lists as I am, now I have to think what I've
written about Lukacs in which public forum and what I've written privately.
For example, somewhere I wrote that I thought the aesthetics of Lukacs in
the Stalinist period were atrocious, and I lauded Adorno's trashing of
Lukacs in the anthology AESTHETICS AND POLITICS (with the exception, natch,
of his paragraph on THE DESTRUCTION OF REASON).  Hence my "glowing
endorsement" of Lukacs is a qualified one.  I also mentioned even in my last
post that links in Lukacs' argument in THE DESTRUCTION OF REASON are
missing, but I think he is on the right track.  I do not recall praising his
entire oeuvre.  It is amusing, though, that the one work I single out for
praise is the only work that Lukacs buffs don't like.

Now Salter reveals his true colors once again.  In ripostes to others, you
will notice the eminent sage of immanent critique goes out of his way to
savage others on this list who don't join in his a priori rejection of the
materialist standpoint, which is precisely what sets the limits to his
precious immanent critique.  Hence, Prof. Immanence is notoriously obtuse to
what other discussants are saying a good deal of the time.

But I do thank him for the references.  I've heard of Gillian Rose, and I
have Dews sitting on my shelf, so I shall keep these precious resources in mind.

At 07:31 AM 9/1/97 -0400, MSalter1-AT-aol.com wrote:
>If a sound
>critique is to emerge from the CR tradition, then it is more likely to take
>the former of an immanent and/or ommisive critique, rather than the totally
>external, trashing, ranting critique that Ralph seems to endorse (and
>practice with some splendid gusto on a profusion of these lists).

I doubt many people would count me a partisan of CR, though I seem to be
when dealing with the likes of you.  But seriously, folks, I don't think
either an exclusively immanent or external critique, as I understand them,
will do the trick.

>Lukacs work is notorious precisely because of the totally external mode of
>critique. 

The weakness of excesses in this department is that analysis becomes the
sort of aprioristic, Procrustean sort of "totalizing" that Adorno criticizes
and you cite in your paper on law.

>The idea that "recognising the validity of the workers movement"
>represents a royal road to truth which the pre-post-modernists and western
>marxist combined to suppress access to, is the kind of robotic analysis that
>we once got used to hearing from a ideological bunker located under a tractor
>factory somewhere in Albania.

This is all childish.  For the issue is not about recognizing the workers
movement as the criterion of truth, but that the refusal to admit the
workers' reality into one's sense of reality pushes one to conceptualize
one's place in the world and the universe of knowledge in a certain
direction.  I assert categorically that the division of labor throughout the
history of class society has a direct impact on the formation and evolution
of philosophy.  One cannot deduce the minute particulars of any given
phenomenon from this fact alone, but to refuse to acknowledge it puts one
outside of Marxism.

In actuality, the issue of the division of labor could be used to criticize
a number of trends, not just German subjective idealism, but the Franks, the
Bhaskarians, the Stalinists, etc.

>On the contrary, the reason why this book was re-titled by many within
>western marxist tradition as "the destruction of the Lukac's reason" is its
>crass reductionism of social and philosophical theorising to the propagandist
>needs of the communist party. 

The propagandism, the constraints of Stalinism are there in Lukacs, to be
sure, but I don't buy the line that there is nothing but tractor-pull
propaganda in there.

>Lukacs it seemed had to smuggle in and conceal from
>state censorship the greater part of his undoubtedly intelligence. 

I've no doubt this is true.  He spent the major portion of his life
smuggling in the things he really cared about into the restricted arena of
his operations.  I've no doubt his work suffered as a result, above all his
aesthetics.

Incidentally, I think Lukacs' failure to confront objective idealism is very
telling, and potentially damning.

>Now my question is whether your glowing endorsement represents a response to
>that which distinguishes this work from crass propadanda, or what makes it
>such? 

For you, it's only a rhetorical question.

>I wonder whether the western marxist response to Lukacs is also
>appropriate to your own glowing endorsement of Lukacs, and for much the same
>reasons? 

Marcuse wrote an early book on reading Hegel through Dilthey and Heidegger.
Adorno, all the rest, were exposed to a certain type of education.  Lukacs
was too, of course.  To a certain extent, they overcame their own
idealism-soaked background.  Unfortunately for Lukacs, his progress out of
idealism was into Stalinism, which certainly held him back.  As for the
others, they are a mixed bag, too.  The problem with much of western
marxism--your problem too--is its rejection of materialism and the natural
sciences.  Why is this?  Because these intellectuals are typical products of
alienated existence routed through a humanistic education.  This accounts
for its response to a great many things, such as your responses to some
people (not necessarily me) on this list.

It's too bad you missed out on a major point of my Lukacs-Bhaskar post,
which had to do with overcoming a number of dualities.  (I don't regard
idealism/materialism as one of these dualities, as you must know.)  I don't
believe a purely political approach to ideas is useful at all, anymore than
I take a detached scientism at its own face value.  I reject the former
because it is subjective and manipulative.  The latter is lifeless and
un-reflexive.  My own position is that we have to be able to do what both
Bhaskar and Lukasc do, and also the Franks, and then raise them all up to
the next level.



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