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PARTISAN REVIEW
tion on Lukacs and the gnostic sources of political religions. I
thought then of making-the connection between Weber and Lukacs,
but I had no evidence other than speculative allusions and, though
fascinating as a moral detective story, the excursus would be a
digression in the thread of my argument.
In 1979, I had begun a correspondence with the Hungarian
sociologist Agnes Heller, the last pupil of Lukacs and his literary
executor. Miss Heller, her husband Ferenc Feher, and their colleague
Andras Hegedus, a former Communist prime minister of Hungary,
had some years earlier lost their teaching positions and were perse–
cuted in mendacious ways for publicly raising questions about
bureacracy, the right of free opposition, and similar issues, albeit
within the framework of socialism. Finally, Miss Heller and her hus–
band were able to leave and take up teaching positions in Australia.
In one of my letters, I raised with Miss Heller my belief that one of
the hidden threads in Weber's essay, and the person he had in mind
in the crucial section I quoted earlier, was Lukacs. She replied:
As to
Politik als Bcruf:
the passage
is
interconnected with conversations
and debates between Weber and Lukacs but not in a direct way ...
there is a [different] direct link: in January 1919 Weber sent a personal
warning letter (eine Art von Kassandrabrief) to Lukacs, recently hav–
ing joined communism, whose basic content is: the much too bold
Russian experiment will- morally and sociologically - discredit so–
cialism for a hundred years. This was an unexpected turn with Weber:
worryiI"ig
for
socialism. This basically is the background.
Dostoevsky, you are right, is fundamentally 'imported' into this prob–
lem complex by Lukacs . (Under separate cover, my husband Ferenc
Feher will send you his essay
Am Scheideweg des romantischen Antikapitalis–
mus
which will contain the 'secret' story of a Lukacs-Dostoevsky book,
Russian revolution, etc.) But quite specifically this is a highly unjust
passage· and definitely no answer to Lukacs . It is unjust (a) because it
"In the passage on means and ends that Miss Heller refers to, Weber says:
... even during the war the revolutionary socialists (Zimmerwald faction)
professed a principle that one might strikingly formulate:
'If
we face the
choice either of some more years of war and revolution, or peace now and no
revolution, we choose-some more years of war!' Upon the further question:
'What can this revolution bring about?' every scientifically trained socialist
would have had the answer: One cannot speak of a transition to an economy
