Writing Seems To Rob Me Of My

The Most Compelling Confirmation Of Marx's Theory Of History Is Late Capitalist Society. There Is A Sense In Which This Case Is Becoming Truer As Time Passes.

Postmodernism Is Among Other Things A Sick Joke At The Expense Of... Revolutionary Avant-gardism.

We Live In A Society Which On The One Hand Pressurizes Us Into The Pursuit Of Instant Gratification, And The Other Hand Imposes On Whole Sectors Of The Population And Endless Deferment Of Fulfillment.

What Persuades Men And Women To Mistake Each Other From Time To Time For Gods Or Vermin Is Ideology. One Can Understand Well Enough How Human Beings May Struggle And Murder For Good Material Reasons - Reasons Connected, For Instance, With Their Physical Survival. It Is Much Harder To Grasp How They May Come To Do So In The Name Of Something As Apparently Abstract As Ideas. Yet Ideas Are What Men And Women Live By, And Will Occasionally Die For.

Because Subjects Like Literature And Art History Have No Obvious Material Pay-off, They Tend To Attract Those Who Look Askance At Capitalist Notions Of Utility. The Idea Of Doing Something Purely For The Delight Of It Has Always Rattled The Grey-bearded Guardians Of The State. Sheer Pointlessness Has Always Been A Deeply Subversive Affair.