CB
>>> Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> 11/08/99 10:30AM >>>
Indeed, but nothing new in such 'realization.' That's another old modernist theme: the idiocy of 'petit-bourgeois romanticism' & self-deprecation of 'renegade intellectuals.' D.H. Lawrence specialized in it, both exploiting this theme and sardonically laughing at himself doing so at the same time.
***** "Worm Either Way" (1929)
-clip-
*****
As I said, it's _late_ modernism, and its cultural themes come from recycle bins, flea markets, thrift shops, used-book stores, rental-video shops. Perhaps we should call this 'secondhand, hand-me-down modernism.' What makes 'renegade intellectuals' (especially late modernist ones -- I like Beckett still) often tiresome is that when they feel despair, they insist that _everyone else_ should also. When they feel like 'middle-class frauds,' they again proclaim that _everyone else_ should as well. They make it sound as if they felt the working class owed them socialism. However, since they can't afford to blame the working class tout court, they blame or laugh at other intellectuals.
Marx was never God, socialism was never religion, so no point in feeling 'betrayed by the God That Failed.' Either _we_ (the working class) make socialism or we don't, under the circumstances not of our own making. That's all there is to it. Nothing was ever guaranteed. If we are weak, chalk it up to the cunning & strength of our enemies.