interview with Istvan Meszaros

Rakesh Bhandari bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU
Sun Sep 26 08:12:34 PDT 1999


I have read The Power of Ideology (over Easter Break seven years ago) and big chunks of Beyond Capital (the critical discussions of Weber and Lukacs are penetrating and lucid). My favorite parts of the former book are the discussions of politics and ideology (quite a powerful critique of identity politics as fragmented and impotent as well as the Frankfurt School and Galbraith, Sr) and of methodology (Weberian social science is again critiqued). I continue to disagree with Meszaros' political economic analysis of the military industrial complex. Any student of the American social scientists would benefit tremendously from his methodological critiques. But despite his immense theoretical erudition, Meszaros remains imo first and foremost a very practical thinker, committed to the idea that without the intervention of the proletariat all criticism can only be moral and impotent. Yours, Rakesh



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