[lbo-talk] Some Comforting Words from Rosa L.

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Mon Jan 30 18:20:56 PST 2012


Sweezy's "Present as History" was one of my guides in my changing views over the last 10 years. There are reactionary equivalents which carry some weight if 'filtered' as it were. I love Yeats, and have quoted it often on this list:

All things fall and are built again, And those who build them again are gay.

("Lapis Lazuli")

This catches up Joe's quote from I.F. Stone.

And then there is Old Man Marx's answer to the reporter's "What is?"

"Struggle."

Carrol

-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Angelus Novus Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 7:17 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Some Comforting Words from Rosa L.

Oh man, we can play the greatest hits from this genre all night.  Here's another fantastic one.

Paul Sweezy referred to this kind of thinking as "the present as history".  Here's my man Teddy Adorno giving his poetic spin:

"At the end. – The only philosophy which would still be accountable in the face of despair, would be the attempt to consider all things, as they would be portrayed from the standpoint of redemption. Cognition has no other light than that which shines from redemption out upon the world; all else exhausts itself in post-construction and remains a piece of technics. Perspectives must be produced which set the world beside itself, alienated from itself, revealing its cracks and fissures, as needy and distorted as it will one day lay there in the messianic light. To win such perspectives without caprice or violence, wholly by the feel for objects, this alone is what thinking is all about."

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1951/mm/ch03.htm

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