blake 3:17
27th September 2013, 06:21
ouch!
Here's the first piece minus the notes, link at the bottom.
Pamphlet issued by the Chicago Surrealist group on the event of Lukács' death in 1971
Franklin Rosemont: Contribution to the Critique of an Insipid Legend
Hegel wrote, in 1796, in the diary of his sojourn through the Bernese Alps, that "...the Christian imagination bas produced nothing but an insipid legend."1 It is not acci*dental that the images associated with Christianity - ser*vility, sickness, corruption, weakness, degradation, maso*chism, cowardice, prostration - are the very images that define the life and work of Georg Lukács, who recently did us the long-overdue courtesy of dropping dead. Uniting the mystic's propensity for sudden conversion and the most obsequious realism since Aquinas, Lukács, for more than fifty years, specialized in adapting himself to, and justifying, the given reality in which he found himself. Thus his philosophical erudition and 'classicism' were put in the service of the reality of forced labor camps, the Moscow trials, 'socialist' realism, Stalin's destruction of the Bolshevik Party and the degeneration of the Commu*nist International.
Meanwhile, Lukács himself became something of an in*sipid legend. Exalted whispers throughout the world her* alded the 'profound', 'important', 'great' and 'gifted' thinker whose works, however, remained largely unknown, but eagerly awaited, like a Messiah. The mountains of this anticipation labored long and hard and ultimately for nothing, for in the end Lukács , the most anemic and blind of mice, returned to his point of departure, disappearing forever into the mouldy woodwork of abstraction and eva*sion. The appearance of his works in translation can in fact be welcomed, for the myth of Lukács' importance has been based on the widespread unavailability and ignor*ance of his writings. To actually read Lukács is to know his total inadequacy and irrelevance.
No one will have failed to notice, however, that Amer*ican liberals, political 'scientists', literary critics, book* reviewers, graduate students of theology and philosophy, professional aestheticians, 'radical' dilletantes, impostors and careerists of every variety - and even some individ*uals who proclaim themselves 'Marxists' - have formed a sizeable and increasingly noisy chorus of worshippers, tear*fully and volubly dedicated to the disgraceful pretense that Lukács was something more than a groveling pimp in the service of Stalinist betrayal. For the surrealists, on the contrary - and I say this not without pride - the death of this two-bit scholastic parasite was the occasion for an authentic and inexpressible delight.2
The facts that Lukács' works presently enjoy the favour of a substantial portion of what passes for the American Left, and that even among the revolutionary youth there appears to be a growing interest in these works, must be regarded as signs of the deplorable backwardness of revo*lutionary thought in this country.
This epidemic of Lukácsism requires a careful, detailed, many-sided, implacable and sustained attack on the part of those who are truly devoted to the cause of proletarian emancipation. The present intervention of the surrealist movement, an axe of crystal wielded against the cages of dishonor, is intended above all to establish a certain in* dispensable preliminary clarity in this discussion which has suffered so long from countless obscurantisms. Against the cocktail ideologists of so-called 'neo-Marxism' who officiate at the rites ofLukács ' beatification, and who have gone so far as to insist that Lukács has made "im*portant contributions" to Marxism, the surrealists main* tain that these 'contributions' are empty abstractions, his 'advances' merely retreats, and that no one was less qual*ified to expand or deepen the perspectives of Marxism than this unforgiveable cretin whose entire life was nothing more than an interminable series of exercises in belly* crawling, self-mutilation and permanent confusion.
Only the most hopeless idiot or gangrenous sectarian could confuse our serious, lucid, poetic and above all rev*olutionary hatred for Lukács and his work with the frivolous, backbiting, ghoulish and essentially reactionary at*tacks against him by, for example, Maoists3, Althusserians or other traditional pseudo-Marxists whose 'Marxism' consists of platitudes bottled in formaldehyde, irrevocably separated from the life of the working class, and serving only to inhibit workers' self-activity.
To undermine and explode the abject myth of Lukács as 'the finest Marxist since Marx'" as well as to reduce to their real insignificance the sectarian, dogmatic and false derisions of his works by anti-Marxist and pseudo-Marxist ideologists, is to assist in clearing the way for a true re*surgence of revolutionary thought and action. Let us have done with the cheap and indefensible bourgeois apologists for Lukács' 'genius', 'profundity' and 'rigor!' Away with these whimpering, pampered "'neo-Marxist' Lukácsian lap-dogs whose incessant yelping can be considered only a public nuisance! Of course, as Lenin wrote, "What else are lap-dogs for if not to yelp at the proletarian ele*phant?"4 But when this yelping becomes an annoying and wasteful distraction, an actual obstacle to revolutionary development, such miserable curs become intolerable, and must be sent scurrying back to the kennels of their ego* maniacal petty- bourgeois hypocrisy.
Nothing would be more absurd than to expect us to confine ourselves to merely pointing out the flies in the intellectual soup du jour. For the proletarian elephant and the surrealist anteater, nourished on materialist dialectics and the principle of creative destruction, this critical ac*tivity is inseparable from the whole process of the revolu*tionary transformation of the world. More than anyone we look forward to the day when, as Marx said, the weapons of revolutionary criticism will give way to the revolution*ary criticism of weapons - that is, to the seizure of power by the workers and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Meanwhile, the demystification and demolition of the insipid legend of Georg Lukács and his 'rigor' constitutes a small but essential step along this road leading to the triumph of workers' power, genuine human freedom and poetry made by all.
Franklin ROSEMONT
http://www.unkant.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=95:chicago-surrealists-in-memory-of-georg-lukacs&catid=79:downloads&Itemid=532
Here's the first piece minus the notes, link at the bottom.
Pamphlet issued by the Chicago Surrealist group on the event of Lukács' death in 1971
Franklin Rosemont: Contribution to the Critique of an Insipid Legend
Hegel wrote, in 1796, in the diary of his sojourn through the Bernese Alps, that "...the Christian imagination bas produced nothing but an insipid legend."1 It is not acci*dental that the images associated with Christianity - ser*vility, sickness, corruption, weakness, degradation, maso*chism, cowardice, prostration - are the very images that define the life and work of Georg Lukács, who recently did us the long-overdue courtesy of dropping dead. Uniting the mystic's propensity for sudden conversion and the most obsequious realism since Aquinas, Lukács, for more than fifty years, specialized in adapting himself to, and justifying, the given reality in which he found himself. Thus his philosophical erudition and 'classicism' were put in the service of the reality of forced labor camps, the Moscow trials, 'socialist' realism, Stalin's destruction of the Bolshevik Party and the degeneration of the Commu*nist International.
Meanwhile, Lukács himself became something of an in*sipid legend. Exalted whispers throughout the world her* alded the 'profound', 'important', 'great' and 'gifted' thinker whose works, however, remained largely unknown, but eagerly awaited, like a Messiah. The mountains of this anticipation labored long and hard and ultimately for nothing, for in the end Lukács , the most anemic and blind of mice, returned to his point of departure, disappearing forever into the mouldy woodwork of abstraction and eva*sion. The appearance of his works in translation can in fact be welcomed, for the myth of Lukács' importance has been based on the widespread unavailability and ignor*ance of his writings. To actually read Lukács is to know his total inadequacy and irrelevance.
No one will have failed to notice, however, that Amer*ican liberals, political 'scientists', literary critics, book* reviewers, graduate students of theology and philosophy, professional aestheticians, 'radical' dilletantes, impostors and careerists of every variety - and even some individ*uals who proclaim themselves 'Marxists' - have formed a sizeable and increasingly noisy chorus of worshippers, tear*fully and volubly dedicated to the disgraceful pretense that Lukács was something more than a groveling pimp in the service of Stalinist betrayal. For the surrealists, on the contrary - and I say this not without pride - the death of this two-bit scholastic parasite was the occasion for an authentic and inexpressible delight.2
The facts that Lukács' works presently enjoy the favour of a substantial portion of what passes for the American Left, and that even among the revolutionary youth there appears to be a growing interest in these works, must be regarded as signs of the deplorable backwardness of revo*lutionary thought in this country.
This epidemic of Lukácsism requires a careful, detailed, many-sided, implacable and sustained attack on the part of those who are truly devoted to the cause of proletarian emancipation. The present intervention of the surrealist movement, an axe of crystal wielded against the cages of dishonor, is intended above all to establish a certain in* dispensable preliminary clarity in this discussion which has suffered so long from countless obscurantisms. Against the cocktail ideologists of so-called 'neo-Marxism' who officiate at the rites ofLukács ' beatification, and who have gone so far as to insist that Lukács has made "im*portant contributions" to Marxism, the surrealists main* tain that these 'contributions' are empty abstractions, his 'advances' merely retreats, and that no one was less qual*ified to expand or deepen the perspectives of Marxism than this unforgiveable cretin whose entire life was nothing more than an interminable series of exercises in belly* crawling, self-mutilation and permanent confusion.
Only the most hopeless idiot or gangrenous sectarian could confuse our serious, lucid, poetic and above all rev*olutionary hatred for Lukács and his work with the frivolous, backbiting, ghoulish and essentially reactionary at*tacks against him by, for example, Maoists3, Althusserians or other traditional pseudo-Marxists whose 'Marxism' consists of platitudes bottled in formaldehyde, irrevocably separated from the life of the working class, and serving only to inhibit workers' self-activity.
To undermine and explode the abject myth of Lukács as 'the finest Marxist since Marx'" as well as to reduce to their real insignificance the sectarian, dogmatic and false derisions of his works by anti-Marxist and pseudo-Marxist ideologists, is to assist in clearing the way for a true re*surgence of revolutionary thought and action. Let us have done with the cheap and indefensible bourgeois apologists for Lukács' 'genius', 'profundity' and 'rigor!' Away with these whimpering, pampered "'neo-Marxist' Lukácsian lap-dogs whose incessant yelping can be considered only a public nuisance! Of course, as Lenin wrote, "What else are lap-dogs for if not to yelp at the proletarian ele*phant?"4 But when this yelping becomes an annoying and wasteful distraction, an actual obstacle to revolutionary development, such miserable curs become intolerable, and must be sent scurrying back to the kennels of their ego* maniacal petty- bourgeois hypocrisy.
Nothing would be more absurd than to expect us to confine ourselves to merely pointing out the flies in the intellectual soup du jour. For the proletarian elephant and the surrealist anteater, nourished on materialist dialectics and the principle of creative destruction, this critical ac*tivity is inseparable from the whole process of the revolu*tionary transformation of the world. More than anyone we look forward to the day when, as Marx said, the weapons of revolutionary criticism will give way to the revolution*ary criticism of weapons - that is, to the seizure of power by the workers and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Meanwhile, the demystification and demolition of the insipid legend of Georg Lukács and his 'rigor' constitutes a small but essential step along this road leading to the triumph of workers' power, genuine human freedom and poetry made by all.
Franklin ROSEMONT
http://www.unkant.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=95:chicago-surrealists-in-memory-of-georg-lukacs&catid=79:downloads&Itemid=532