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This, I think, brings me to the centre of my criticism. The impression which your entire study conveys--and not only on me and my arcades orthodoxy--is that you have done violence to yourself. Your solidarity with the Institute [of Social Research], which pleases no one more than myself, has induce…

Early August. 'In Russia there is dictatorship over the proletariat. We should avoid dissociating ourselves from this dictatorship for as long as it still does useful work for the proletariat--i.e. so long as it contributes towards a reconciliation between the proletariat and the peasantry, giv…

26 July. Brecht, last night: 'There can't be any doubt about it any longer: the struggle against ideology has become a new ideology.'

25 July. Yesterday morning Brecht came over to my place to read me his Stalin poem, which is entitled 'The Peasant to his Ox'. At first I did not get its point, and when a moment later the thought of Stalin passed through my head, I did not dare entertain it. This was more or less the effect Brec…

[...] In Kafka, then, the parabolic element is in conflict with the visionary element. But Kafka as a visionary, says Brecht, saw what was coming without seeing what is. [...] Kafka had one problem and one only, he says, and that was the problem of organization. He was terrified by the thought of…