The Avant-garde And The Beatniks Share In

The Truth Of Literature And Art Has Always Been Granted (if It Was Granted At All) As One Of A "higher" Order, Which Should Not And Indeed Did Not Disturb The Order Of Business. What Has Changed In The Contemporary Period Is The Difference Between The Two Orders And Their Truths. The Absorbent Power Of Society Depletes The Artistic Dimension By Assimilating Its Antagonistic Contents. In The Realm Of Culture, The New Totalitarianism Manifests Itself Precisely In A Harmonizing Pluralism, Where The Most Contradictory Works And Truths Peacefully Coexist In Indifference.

The Neo-conservative Critics Of Leftist Critics Of Mass Culture Ridicule The Protest Against Bach As Background Music In The Kitchen, Against Plato And Hegel, Shelley And Baudelaire, Marx And Freud In The Drugstore. Instead, They Insist On Recognition Of The Fact That The Classics Have Left The Mausoleum And Come To Life Again, That People Are Just So Much More Educated. True, But Coming To Life As Classics, They Come To Life As Other Than Themselves; They Are Deprived Of Their Antagonistic Force, Of The Estrangement Which Was The Very Dimension Of Their Truth.

In The Form Of The Oeuvre, The Actual Circumstances Are Placed In Another Dimension Where The Given Reality Shows Itself As That Which It Is. Thus It Tells The Truth About Itself; Its Language Ceases To Be That Of Deception, Ignorance, And Submission. Fiction Calls The Facts By Their Name And Their Reign Collapses; Fiction Subverts Everyday Experience And Shows It To Be Mutilated And False.

Freedom Of Enterprise Was From The Beginning Not Altogether A Blessing. As The Liberty To Work Or To Starve, It Spelled Toil, Insecurity, And Fear For The Vast Majority Of The Population. If The Individual Were No Longer Compelled To Prove Himself On The Market, As A Free Economic Subject, The Disappearance Of This Freedom Would Be One Of The Greatest Achievements Of Civilization.

Thought That Accepts Reality As Given Is No Thought At All.