Istvan Meszaros

[Victor]

I recently finished The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time by Meszaros. I was wondering if anyone else read it (or his other works) and your impressions?:D

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

There's a positive review of it here:

http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=10634

[gilhyle]

I read his early stuff on alienation years ago. I recently started reading Beyond Capital....but I must confess I found it rather glib and was constantly reminded of an image of an old man persuading himself that his life's work was valid. Kinda reminded me of Kautsky's The Materialst Conception of History. His grasp of dialectics is annoyingly trite. But I did just stop reading and all that may be unfair. I should go back to it.

[Victor]

I read his early stuff on alienation years ago. I recently started reading Beyond Capital....but I must confess I found it rather glib and was constantly reminded of an image of an old man persuading himself that his life's work was valid. Kinda reminded me of Kautsky's The Materialst Conception of History. His grasp of dialectics is annoyingly trite. But I did just stop reading and all that may be unfair. I should go back to it.

I actually really liked Beyond Capital, even though it was incredibly difficult and took me a year to read. His points on overcoming capital's second order meditations was very interesting, the same with his criticisms of Soviet-style socialism. If you're having trouble with the main text of Beyond Capital, the interviews and essays in the back sum up some of the important ideas.