Modern Brecht

Letters

Vol. 4 No. 16 · 2 September 1982

From David Ross

SIR: Your readers may find it useful to note that Bertolt Brecht in America by James Lyon, reviewed in the 5-18 August issue, will be published by Methuen on 14 October and is no longer available in this country from Princeton University Press.

David Ross
Methuen, London EC4

Vol. 4 No. 17 · 16 September 1982

From Geoffrey Minish

SIR: Discussing Bertolt Brecht and Karl Korsch (LRB, Vol. 4, No 14), Margot Heinemann remarks that Brecht refused to identify with the ‘Korschian version’ of Marxism. Yet when Brecht made his hasty departure from the United States, he took with him the revised manuscript of Korsch’s Karl Marx, first published in pre-war Britain, and tried without success to find a Swiss publisher. So even in the late Forties Brecht had a certain sympathy with Korsch’s ideas. Or else he put friendship ahead of the ideological purity that Miss Heinemann credits him with. She goes on to speak dismissively of Korsch as Brecht’s ‘ “teacher” ’ and refers to Brecht’s ‘sharp little pen-portrait’ of Korsch as a drop-out from the class struggle. That is one point of view. Another is that of Paul Mattick, the ex-Spartacist émigré who published Korsch in the magazine Living Marxism. In a tribute written after Korsch’s death, and reprinted in Anti-Bolshevik Communism (Merlin Press, 1978), Mattick said: ‘As in Germany, so in America, his main influence was that of the educator, of the Lehrer, as he was respectfully considered by his friends… The quality of his mind and his moral integrity set him apart, and excluded him from the opportunistic hustle for positions and prominence characteristic of both the academic world and the official labour movement.’

Geoffrey Minish
Paris

Margot Heinemann writes: I’m sorry to have annoyed Geoffrey Minish by saying that Brecht, while learning much from Karl Korsch, always refused to identify with his ‘Korschian version’ of Marxism (the phrase, as perhaps I should have noted, is not mine but Douglas Kellner’s). This was not an attempt to credit Brecht with ‘ideological purity’, which would indeed be difficult, but a statement of fact. To ‘identify’ means, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, to ‘associate oneself inseperably with (party, policy, etc)’. And this Brecht could not do with Korsch’s Marxism as a whole, though he sympathised with some of his ideas and argued over others at length in the unpublished Me-Ti and in the ‘friendly discussions’ I referred to. As Klaus-Detlef Müller’s essay on Me-Ti in the volume under review (Bertolt Brecht: Political Theory and Literary Practice) demonstrates, the two continued to disagree on crucial aspects – notably about the Soviet Union, about Leninism and Lenin’s view of ‘Left-wing Communism’, and about the attitude to be taken towards Stalin, on which Müller says: ‘Brecht defended him because the alternative to Stalinism in the given circumstances was not a better socialism but the counter-revolution.’ With respect, the question at issue is not what Geoffrey Minish, Paul Mattick or I think now about Korsch and his views (which remain of interest), but what Brecht thought and why. For this the short text ‘On My Teacher’ is highly relevant, though not the only source. Since it is not as far as I know available in English, it may be useful to give a translation of it:

My teacher is a disappointed man. The things he took part in did not turn out according to his ideas. For this he does not blame his ideas, but the things that turned out differently. Indeed he has become very mistrustful. Everywhere he sees with a sharp eye the seeds of future disappointing developments.

He believes firmly in what’s new. So he loves the youth, who for me are merely immature. But he sees them as still full of possibilities. So, too, he believes in the proletariat. Sometimes it seems to me that he would feel it his duty to do more if he believed in it less.

My teacher serves the cause of freedom. He has freed himself pretty well from all kinds of disagreeable responsibilities. Sometimes it seems to me that if he insisted less on his own freedom, he could do more for the cause of freedom.

His help with my work is invaluable. He discovers every weakness. And immediately he makes suggestions. He knows a lot. It is difficult to listen to him. His sentences are very long. So he teaches me patience.

He has lots of plans, which he seldom carries out. A passionate desire to give something perfect usually deters him from giving at all.

He does not like telling how he arrives at his often surprising conclusions. It may be that he does not know himself; but it may also be that he is indulging in the deeply-rooted vice of all teachers, to make himself indispensable.

He is very much in favour of the struggle, but he himself does not actually struggle. He says it is not the right time for that. He is for the revolution, but he himself is actually rather developing what evolves.

He has difficulty in taking decisions about his personal life. He always keeps the greatest possible freedom for himself. If something gets lost as a result, even something important, he is not unhappy.

I think he is fearless. But what he is afraid of is getting involved in movements that run up against difficulties. He lays too much stress on his own integrity, I think.

With the proletariat too he would only be a visitor. One never knows when he will take off. His trunks are always standing ready packed.

My teacher is very impatient. He wants everything or nothing. I often think: to this challenge the world has a way of replying: ‘Nothing.’

Brecht looked to Marxism not as a dogma of ‘ideological purity’, but as a method of analysis and a source of ideas that would work in the bitter fight to change the real world of the ‘dark times’. In the practical struggle for socialism he was prepared to see as inevitable compromises, imperfections, wrong turns, even harshness, to a degree for which he has often been attacked since.