Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 12:48:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: M-TH: List die or Princess Die?--LUKACS, ETC.


At 06:54 PM 9/14/97 +0100, Russell Pearson wrote:
> One of the best ripostes to the Frankfurter's,
>especially Adorno is _The Power of Ideology_ by Lukacs' former student
>Meszaros. Here he points out that Adorno's critique of Lukacs was in a
>journal funded in part by the CIA...

I think the CIA bit is covered in AESTHETICS AND POLITICS, 
reproduces the debates among Adorno, Benjamin, Brecht, Bloch, 
Lukacs.  I don't think I have THE POWER OF IDEOLOGY.  I do 
have Meszaros' LUKACS' CONCEPT OF DIALECTICS.  I haven't 
read it; what do you think of this book?

I also have Meszaros' recent BEYOND CAPITAL, which I got on 
sale.

Oh, did I mention that Tom Rockmore's IRRATIONALISM: LUKACS 
AND THE MARXIST VIEW OF REASON, is a piece of shit?  Rockmore 
churns out a lot of books, but he doesn't have the slightest 
understanding of Marx or Marxism.

>their approach is much the same as the cultural studies crowd's use of
>Gramsci. Here, Gramsci's Marxist-Leninism is conviniently ignored and we
>get a dreary drained version of his politics.

I've always been suspicious of the American academics' 
appropriation of Gramsci, particularly their obsession with 
"organic intellectuals".  I didn't think I could use Gramsci
for my purposes until I stumbled across an essay by Sassoon 
in BOUNDARY 2 which links Gramsci's ideas about intellectuals 
to the division of labor, and finally I found something I 
could work with.

Hopefully I am not dragging things too far off on a tangent.  
Thanks for the commentary.   Russell, I recognize your name 
from a previous encounter, but the context escapes my poor 
powers of recall at the moment.



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