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E. Belfort Bax

A Personal Explanation

(20 September 1902)

A Personal Explanation, Justice, 20th September 1902, p.6 (letter).
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.

Dear Comrade,

I do not wish to prolong this unpleasant discussion, and will, therefore, confine myself to one or two remarks:–

  1. I cannot help thinking Askew convicts himself of remissness in not reprinting my original article, when he says, what I had forgotten, that I had myself called his attention to the English version.
  2. As to the expression Gedankenreflex I think I had a right to expect that the context should have sufficed of itself to show that the proper translation of this phrase here was not “reflex thoughts” but “thought-reflexion” viz., thought-reflection of the material conditions – “in the social consciousness.”

I am sorry if Askew felt hurt at anything in my letter. The fact is a quasi-philosophical controversy of this sort is very difficult to render accurately in another language, and it is no disparagement of Askew if I express the view that in my humble judgment he has not quite succeeded in all respects; or of Beer, if one suggests that in the work of comparison which he kindly undertook, he has, perhaps, through inadvertence, missed one or two of the finer nuances.

 

Yours fraternally,
      E. Belfort Bax

 

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