Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XX
Text in English to type
Comments on my "Not by Organization Alone" Draft #2
Paul Medow and the East
Comments on K.P.'s "A Note" on "Rousseau's
Comments of my letter of Jan. 31, 1958
[13][1] P. liked the letter with the four points and thought all were valid.
In point 1), the second paragraph (moralizing a premature resignation to the r. of s.) is the operative one.
Point 2), is the same thing and gives it content.
Point 3), the formulation should be on the illusion of freedom (which is clearer than ultimate freedom). What do we mean by native freedom? It needs an answer. The continuum of compromise is no answer.
Point 4), certainly there is the freedom of women, children and the working-calss, but it is quite true that they are only freedoms. It is not a satisfactory answer. ↑
"Freedom and Technology" (4)
P. read Hegel (Phenomenology) and half of Lukacs and he could now easily write the Marx.
The real difficulty is then the Shaw. “Back to Methuselah” etc. proves that Shaw was the only thinker who starts from the reality of society and the individual who doesn't feel this limitation is funny.
On existentialism P. doesn't know where to put his foot. He read Camus (also a recent story in Partisan Review) and he is a tremendous writer. ↑
Comments of Adam's Review of Trade and Market
Notes
Arendt
Adler and Keslo Book
Appendix
1984 - A discussion - Excerpt From “Fighting Words”, C.B.C.
[17]
PARTICIPANTS: HANNAH ARENDT
IRVING HOWE
JOHN MEISL
KARL POLANYI
NATHAN COHEN, MODERATOR
Cohen: Let us proceed to tour first quotation… “1984 is not a rational attempt to imagine a probable future”… Any idea of the author? A vagabond for four years against his distinguished's mother's wishes, however he had no use for bohemian life. A novelist of little success, more celebrated as a reviewer of a famous American magazine… No? His latest novel…
[…] Howe: I think it's a rather inane remark, 1984 is not an attempt to give a literal portrait of an imaginable [18] future. It is rather an effort […]
Polanyi: Well, I think it's a utopia, a negative utopia of terrific consequences and I should like to say that in my lifetime I would range three books together, that is Mein Kampf, Stalin's History of the Communist Party of Russia falsified history for a long time to come and Orwell's 1984.
Howe: Why this conjunction, Dr. Polanyi?
Polanyi: For the following reason. If today, we are fairly all agreed, well we are well on the way to a return to sanity, and all good wishes in this regard, well if there is one obstacle which is a literary obstacle, one which comes from a book, then I should say that the consequences of 1984 have not yet been fully realized.
Meisl: I wonder whether we're not misinterpreting 1984 a good deal. We tend to apply it to the Soviet Union whereas in fact, I think, Orwell was much more concerned with universal tendencies in Western society, and I think the book has really been misjudged on that basis, has it not?
[19] Polanyi: Yes, but so thoroughly that I am prepared to take up the argument of the effect of the book.
Cohen: Let's give Miss Arendt a chance to get in here, Miss Arendt?
Arendt: I think there is no rational way to stalk about the future because the future is that thing which we all don't know. I think the real merit of 1984 is, hat it brought out in extreme form, certain tendencies, and not even tendencies but things which really existed already, put it into a fictional framework to think about that an talk of the future, to think that this is something which is going to happen in 1984. This I think is the one great… the one… disadvantage of the whole book. I would have wanted Orwell to write exactly the same thing but without 1984.
Polanyi: Well I think that you shouldn't say this, because one of the strong points in your book which I have just reread is that a disastrous idea has been implanted by the totalitarians, and it is that everything is possible, meaning, there's no limit to the distortion of man. But the person who actually drove this thought home, was Orwell through 1984.
Howe: I don't see how you can say that…
Cohen: I'm sorry Mr. Howe, Miss Arendt.
[20] Arendt: I am not objecting to the content of Orwell's book, though I wonder whether it's a very good novel. I'm not objecting at all, and I think that every… for political consciousness he did a marvellous job. I only am objecting to believing that we can know's one of the most irrational things you can utter or think about.
Howe: Whether you can know about the future or not, I think Mr. Polanyi makes a very grave error here. I mean, Stalin's book and Hitler's book, those so to speak are the patients while Orwell tried to function as a doctor. Orwell tried to diagnose the malady and was violently opposed to the malady, to that I really don't see how you can put these two together, except insofar as they are absolutely in clash and contradiction to one another.
Polanyi: Well, I am really taking my stand on the effect. And I should say that if today we considerably can say any shred of confidence in the world would be today a boon. Anything, rational basis of hope in the residual strength of human nature would be a hope. Now if anybody actually tried to argue that out of the world because he overdid his negative utopia, he simply overdid the case, it was his work which convinced millions of people that is really possible to do anything to human beings.
[21] Howe: It's a very hard to argue effects of a book, but it's much easier to argue the meaning of a book, and the … […]
Meisl: Yes but surely really, the danger of the book, and I disagree with Dr. Polanyi on this point, I think the danger of the book is that it tries to make a number of these points but always tying it so closely to the experience of the Soviet Union, it deflects the attention of the reader, I think, by making him think this is what happens in a Communist country, whereas I think we in [22] the West, should perhaps ask ourselves to what extent these same forces are actually at work say, in the United States during the McCarthy period or, I think, more generally, perhaps without any specific political person.
Arendt: I think we touch on a very … […] both [23] Winston and Julia - Julia betray their love in the face not of totalitarianism, but perhaps in the face of terrible […]
Cohen: Mr. Howe and then Dr. Polanyi.
Howe: But […]
[24] Polanyi: Well, I go further. I think that it was a force in the political situation. Now I think very highly of Orwell so to speak, in every regard. But the objectivity would now demand that so to speak, that book which is almost on a piédestal, even today, should disappear of human imagination in the way Mein Kampf disappeared and in the way Stalinism disappeared, and I am prepared to say, that the views there put, as the views of the totalitarian Bolsheviks, were put with a power and force that they became widely spread in England as a valid sociology and I speak of very serious people who thought that the whole Russian event is really completely explained by the so-called bible book in it, which puts a kind of crazy Marxism, entirely crazy Marxism, with the three classes and so on, all on a deterministic mechanism, and then arguing that no society could keep unless terror, in some way, is actually present. If it's not present, it must be maintained by well, simulacrum of war, pretented wars, and so on, and I am quite prepared to argue, now here is the point where the thing becomes serious, that Orwell himself had no clear understanding of life, of society. That that is why in the book there is no intimidation at all where does the right way lead to, in what way… He is not a religious person, he is not a Christian, he has no element of this thought. All he did was, now there I agree with all of you who spoke, that he drew [25] attention to a tremendous danger which was real and therefore mankind was grateful to him and I agree with all of you. But incidentally he just committed the tragic mistake of overstating the case to such an extent that after his death he is just an obstacle on the way out.
Cohen: You all want to speak. Miss Arendt goes first.
Arendt: As far as overstating the case is concerned, I do not believe this. You cannot - on the contrary, when today … […]
Meisl: That's true, but there is one of the dangers again, in [26] this book, that I think Orwell misleads this case a bit by ascribing to the ruling group, ascribing the following motive to the ruling group, a quest for power as such. And I think Mr. Howe, you make that point in your…
Cohen: […]
[…] ↑
Text Informations
Date: February 15, 1958 (Interview)
KPA: 45/16
Editor's Notes
- ↑ Archive pagination.