interview with Istvan Meszaros

[Rakesh Bhandari]

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