[lbo-talk] Hofstadter

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sun Mar 12 10:49:36 PST 2006


Dennis Redmond wrote:
>
> Andie Nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>
> > 2) There is the observation that one has to know a
> > tradition -- what _is_ a tradition, btw?
>
> Everything from the Superbowl to the US Constitution.

Come on Dennis. "Tradition" is _really_ empty unless you can compare Tradition X to what is NOT Tradition X. And if all you mean is that anything can be part of some tradition or other, that is pretty banal.


>
> > 3. Socialism (by which he means what? Marxism?
> > Marxism-Leninism?) among workers
>
> No, any of the mass Left social movements of the 1900-1940 period --
> social democracy, trade unions, Leftwing parties.
>
> > Does he want workers and "savages" to hate the
> > socialist tradition?
>
> His point is that there is no socialist tradition, and the illusion that
> there was some magical socialist period we can return to is a pernicious
> myth.

A trivial banality.


> There are great works of art, which may be genuinely radical, but
> the ability to decode that radicality, grasp it as something concrete, is
> as unequally distributed as money, education, social power, etc.

Big deal.
>


> > 4. What is is shit about improved communications and a
> > modestly raised standard of living
>
> Try the new translation. Adorno is warning First World intellectuals not
> to hitch their cart to Third World revolutions they don't understand
> anything about. In the context of 1944, when the anti-colonial movements
> of the Bandung era were just beginning, that was pretty far-sighted.

Why didn't he say it then. It seems that we are up against a commonplace that as soon as some profound arguments are made clear they cease to be profound and become merely banal.

Surely Adorno had more of interest than you allow him here.

Carrol



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list