George Konria sumsuay ones and outpoken, of the kes of whieh be mot fd at oe, He tanger enowgh ropectia com tronplacs in how county, probably in ore sophis- cael form, 20 why Bede to hport more ofthe sme and icrudr torn? ‘The esidens international market of eas as ken its tae songs he nteratonst nes and went sere. Wetare ome tec sa atin Ani en Tater han the props ofthe mary dictator ft pusher in Emope Ie ay wonders te me ig tStw of Eanem Earope? “Tus Power op nue Stare ann Tue FowsK OF TH Seine: Poteics aN AN POLITIES ‘Today the intellectuals” product is the leading product; Knowledge is the prime Commodity in tade. High-grade skills, life seyles, new options willbe the competitive items the tm of he lest The roe rod i the end ‘of software. Creative imagination isthe thing that costs the mort, What exists i what we think up—a it always hasbeen, seutetimes with a vengeance. Marx, Einstein, Freud: you bet people pay atention when someone has one or evo in ‘uiguing ideas! Indeed, chey parrot them ad nauseam, riding ‘ren the most original ideas tothe point of inant. "Those who have the greatest stake in the global informa: toa market are the intemational intelletsal elite, who are no 2 longer content orem within dentinal aren. Tia the ieee betneen cling the globe feral tne 2d arling over oak your mentor aeghbon Tt fats fom te dep of hey, We te loge ne 1 oer our serve 0 hadidng mobleme, moe hes pels palsy lhercatel noon aves and somber ile gone cur iota tovard the acres We at Tetely wee se tion: they can't get along without us. m Eveyone wich to make what he ha marReuble, We have to inc in cing that nlc ably sloed gee Nighy Ths she glbl compe et te nent into elite—te fe conspocyn oy dee don edo Be hep see Ie conn) aa te at coat ot anreiv inbeciy, Leno one dace ine ‘hiking thatthe apreive neces mouth thos tans inane agsns enh ther Tey ae ale te dec Inking or on each thre hand In gle toe cee Une they fi eal atenon to theme an eee others exitenceasan ceo eneoppstion st ae 1e3 a competition for minds, for followers, for disciples, for the public I's prophew’ market: how many copies can ou sell your inspiration in? Alluring ides, ideas that ele Yate and woud, ideas whose marketability is party én the Pal they cause—a full supply of ways of chitking on the International marker of ideas, competition of stylet on the international market of syles! I's a game every bit as evens ful asthe Olympics or the arms race. For it ian just news ‘hat travels along the global networks, i's new ideas as wel Not only can we find out in one conner ofthe world what'sGeorge Komstd happening in another comer, we can find out what people there are thinking sbout, too. The worldwide connections fof the media have put an end to dosed culeotes with in ‘commensuzable valves of o use to other ‘Our societies are systems, but nonexclusive stems com stancly impinging om one another; some intellectuals play the parc of merchants and smugglers, others the sole af cus toms officers. The thinking ones are frontier violators, the censors are the border guards, Our ocellectual weight i in Sitect proportion to the number of border violations we ‘The cerebrum is liberating itself. The imagination is take og off its clericatmilitary uniform, The writer isnt a mayor ora Nietaschean blond beast or «professional revl tionary; he isn't a Grand Inquisitor forthe state or am ex pet adviser available for bite to some political leader, Independent thinking docs’ serve the bureaucracy or the bourgecisie or the proletariat; it serves itself, serves the fquse of independent thinking, It identifies vebellionsly Iwth itself and refutes to undertake any socal obligations to anything alien to itll Yesterdays intellectual elites were ashamed of having nothing to lfer for ale but the adventure of the under Standing and the imagination, devoid of anything more of ttlty. ‘They wanted some stronger justification for their texisence, some nobler warrant for thelr income and sociat position. ‘The consciousness of che intellectuals wasn't enough for them, They longed for a more exciting tole, & nobl heroic military qualities Theadepts of thinking felt a snobbish awe for the Dee — ‘which in the last analysis wavally means some siolent act ‘war, revolution, the forcible expansion of «nation oa cas, For killing, in other words, oF what is almort the same thing giving license to kill. Intllecsats who turned their backs fom intellectual power and embraced physical force felt smugly superior toward ni sling humana. Thinge gener- ally ended, of coun, with these hysterical militants being first need, then patronized, and then, once they had served ther purpose, being elbow aside by the bureaucrats, pol The intelligentsia is responsible for i own bad com: science. Te hat ite ought the intellect into disrepute Professng faith in the primacy of instinct, eeing, and ma terial interest is seltorture forthe intelectual. Te is the pieudoethicnl mask of the dependent intellectual, the en ployee, the servant. Prients have heen replaced by men of the sate. A revolutionary of the Left of Right it a stat rman, too-at least he will be if he wins. He will consent 10 having his mos valuable posession expropriated-—his abil ty 40 think A dictatorship may have good technology, buat it ell never have a good literature, except in opposition. (True, ‘where the language of symbols languishes, echnical think ing will eventually languish, 100) Existing authority and independent reflection look at each ater with sgpicion the executive ana the creator, the censor and the artist ‘The power of the spisit and the power of the sate are imreconcilable, Theirs is a deadly serious struggle: which will take over the other fram within? This i combat that requires not one deop of blood nor any grest commotion,George Konrad only a clear and constant awareness that here two radically diferent powers are at work We have no reagon at al to think that the aged separa tion of spiritaal and worldly power is an anachvonism, Conabining the wo in the unitary power and esltue ofthe rocialst stave was = mixguided utopia. There would be no democracy today ifthe Catholic Chuech had not been an independent power with respect to armed sezlar authority. Markisa-Leninisn’s unitary sate cultre is a Rusion de velopment, a continuation of the tradition that made the car head of the church aswell sof the state, Where there it no separate spiritual authority, culture is subservient and fale How crude a theoretical construction state Nfarxism is can be sen even from the fact that i Beas the name of no single person (or which the genius of Marx can hardly be blamed), Marxism was Lenin's work, as Marxism-Leninism was Stalin's, Anyone who calls himself Marsiat Leninis ie fact 4 Stalinist, Ie is Stalin who deserves the credit for rmulating Marxisa-Leninism into a closed and sharply distinct state ideology. An open, erative Marxism-Leninism ocm't exist, Without the guarantee of the Sovieetype pay state the doctrine falls apart. Fliminate the Stalinism from Marxism-Leninism and you eliminate the esence— the fac that this ideology isan educational system, centrally directed under Moscow's auspices, for the Soviet stave and its dependencies twas Stalin's achievement to fuse tate and doctrine into 8 single, closed entity; nether can exist without the other The theoretical fiction of the univers and incontrovertible validity of Marxist-Leninist doctrine, and its tigi defini ion and instcationalization, were exental to the campaiga to samp out “diversioniss, spies, wreckers, and assis Tho hid with diabolical cunning behind the mask of ideo- logical deviation. The gulag waited for deviations, 1k is obligatory in the Communist countries to study MarxiscLeninist science; it is forbidden, or at leat im advisable, to question it. For Marxism-Leninism to come ito existence at all, and to acquire the authority to com ‘mand and forbid, many million of innacent people had to sic. Without the police sate, the erude and arbitrary prop. ‘tions ofthis orthodoxy would collapse into an incoherent heap. IF Marx the thinker i to become our contemporary in all the original freshness of his thought, i can only be by clearing away the enerustations of Marxisn-Leninismn—the ideology of the Rusian police state, great Stalin's work. The favorites of the great feudal lords of yesterday ‘wanted to Become feudal lords themselves; they were not content with the power of ideas. They craved the prestige of fice and the poser to command, ‘They went into state service in onder to be somebody. They thought they had to put on a costume and adopt an elevated mianner so that people would Histen ta thei To worry is human, and itis understandable that med ‘octities should worry they requite the exaltation of service ‘The radical ineligence exists fr its own sake; it is no es. ‘ental pax of is purpose that anyone should find any use for i. At most, ic is useful in the same way asthe urinal chat Marcel Duchamp once exhibitedto be contemplated rather than employed. .