> a classic book that in some ways summarizes the Frankfurt school viewpoint for me is Orwell's _1984_, where there is total domination and no hope.
Well, the domination is not total, because Winston revolts and, for example, has an affair with Julia (the description of the character Julia owes much to Wilhelm Reich's analysis of fascism). In fact, Orwell refers to the hopes Winston feels, in seeking to meet Julia. If there was no revolt by Winston, there would be no story. The problem is rather that although Winston revolts, the story implies he cannot win in any way, because the "machine" will get him anyhow, and beat him down. The radical or extremist power of the story derives in part from the gradual but inexorable process of the complete destruction of all hope, which is completely contrary to the happy ending which most welladjusted people believe possible, and is therefore disturbing to them. Interestingly, Isaac Deutscher titled his review of 1984 "The mystification of cruelty". His view seems to have been that the story lacks emancipatory potential, because Winston experiences his world as arbitrary and relatively incomprehensible in his repressiveness, there is no sense of the Enlightenment idea of "reason in revolt", no sense of being able to understand that world profoundly, there is no possibilty of articulating another, alternative meaning, no "Interpretationsfreiheit". Orwell's story contrasts with Ira Levin's (in my opinion) superior story, which is more attuned to American imagery, called "This Perfect Day", where Chip ends up destroying the machine, because he has understood its functioning, and can put a spaniard in the works, which blows up the entire system that oppresses him. > > Harry Braverman's LABOR AND MONOPOLY CAPITAL was also highly influenced by this school (as was Baran's POLITICAL ECONOMY OF GROWTH). These books were excessively influenced by the bad political situation (the working-class demobilization) after World War II; the authors had a hard time transcending this situation. Yes, but they were good and influential books anyhow. Baran was amazingly astute, I would like to read him again actually because some of his insights about third world economies are very pertinent still, even although he is largely forgotten. I read these works in 1980 and 1981 respectively. Michael Burawoy wrote some scholarly critiques of what came to be known as the Braverman thesis, as did Paul Willis, but this is not linked explicitly to any project for cultural or political action. > these days, it seems, the situation is even worse. But people have got into other things besides Frankfurt School theory... They dropped the theory, and went for the Frankfurter. It's often a new agey, hedonistic, nihilistic response. The rational kernel in it is, that a social vision of gloom and doom may produce only gloom and doom, whereas a more optimistic, imaginative, hedonistic perspective, even if not justified by circumstances, pragmatically opens up new possibilities for social and personal change, and reveals new inner resources. For example, revolts against and subversion of social injustice might be fun, a source of joy. In a lot of Leftwing culture, there is exultation of the heroism of "revolutionary sacrifice" that people should emulate, a culture of suffering and martyrdom in the name of an ideal, but the more intelligent radical knows this to be self-destructive stupidity in many cases, a rhetorical hangover from the 1930s, from Marxism-Leninism, or from christian religion, which masks a bad social analysis, and is the result of a bad social analysis, which is stubbornly maintained for the wrong reasons, and hence produces senseless suffering. It is this phenomenon that David Horowitz tends to zoom in on, because as a neo-conservative, he instinctively feels that the most powerful critique of radicalism is that it promotes irrational suffering. But that is just to say, that he mystifies the social origins of his own "wayward" radical phase, he regards his own radical phase as an irrational deviation, ultimately his ostensibly radical politics were not consistent with the real impulses of his personality and out of step with history as he perceives it. Lenin referred to this phenomenon as "infantile leftism", i.e. a childhood disease or puberal rebellion against authority, driven mainly by emotion or moral sentiment, rather than mature intellect, and which, precisely driven by emotion and moral notions, has a rationality explicable only within human subjectivity, within the individual, but is unrelated to the real world and abstracts from social relations. Mutual misunderstanding After the fact Sensitivity builds a prison In the final act We lose direction No stone unturned No tears to damn you When jealousy burns - Elton John Ooh, life is bigger It's bigger than you And you are not me The lengths that I will go to The distance in your eyes Oh no I've said too much, I said it all That's me in the corner That's me in the spotlight Losing my religion Trying to keep a view And I don't know if I can do it Oh no I've said too much I haven't said enough I thought that I heard you laughing I thought that I heard you sing I think I thought I saw you try - R.E.M. Jurriaan.
