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+{"text":"\n# **TAKE BACK  \nYOUR BACK**\n\n**EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO EFFECTIVELY REVERSE AND MANAGE BACK PAIN**\n\n**BETH B. MURINSON, M.D., PH.D.**\n\nDirector of Pain Education  \nDepartment of Neurology  \nJohns Hopkins School of Medicine\n\n**To Sasha,**\n\n### CONTENTS\n\nPREFACE: NOT ALL BACK PAIN IS ALIKE\n\nINTRODUCTION: HOW TO USE THIS BOOK\n\n**1** | Diagnose and Relieve Your Back Pain\n\nCHAPTER 1 Muscle-Related Back Pain\n\nCHAPTER 2 Disc Herniation (Slipped Disc)\n\nCHAPTER 3 Torn and Painful Discs\n\nCHAPTER 4 Sciatic and Other Nerve Compresasions\n\nCHAPTER 5 Sacroiliac (SI) Joint Dysfunction\n\nCHAPTER 6 Facet Disease\n\nCHAPTER 7 Spinal Instability (Spondylolisthesis)\n\nCHAPTER 8 Vertebral Fracture: Emergency!\n\nCHAPTER 9 Syndromes of Spinal Cord Compression: Emergency!\n\nCHAPTER 10 Scoliosis\n\nCHAPTER 11 Spinal Stenosis\n\nCHAPTER 12 Coccydynia\n\n**2** | Getting Better, Getting Stronger\n\nCHAPTER 13 First Steps for Acute Back Pain\n\nCHAPTER 14 Early Exercises for Managing Back Pain\n\nCHAPTER 15 Shaping Your Own Recovery\n\nCHAPTER 16 Ergonomics\n\nCHAPTER 17 Better Nights, Better Days: Sleep and Intimacy\n\nCHAPTER 18 Massage and Acupuncture for Back Pain\n\nCHAPTER 19 Meditation and Mind\/Body Therapies for Pain Control\n\nCHAPTER 20 Water and Inversion Therapies for Strengthening and Conditioning\n\nCHAPTER 21 Eating Right to Prevent Pain and Promote Recovery\n\nCHAPTER 22 Your Back: A Guided Tour\n\nACKNOWLEDGEMENTS\n\nABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\nIMAGE CREDITS\n\nINDEX\n\n### **Preface: Not All Back Pain Is Alike**\n\nIt is obvious to most people that back pain doesn't happen to every person in exactly the same way. Yet much of today's medical literature fails to guide back pain sufferers and the clinicians who care for them through the manifold challenges of recovering from acute back injury and chronic back pain. The most worrisome clinical reports lump all back pain together, urging physicians to attribute a patient's \"complaints\" to generic low back pain unless certain \"red flags\" are identified. Some reports unwisely assume that all conservative treatments are the same and should be equally potent against all forms of back pain. It seems that back pain research is dominated by those who have minimal direct contact with people actually suffering from back pain. This treat-all-back-pain-alike approach deeply disregards the need to apply the best of modern medicine to alleviate the profound suffering caused by specific back problems.\n\nThe forces driving the oversimplification of back pain care are system-wide. There are pressures from businesses to minimize back-related absences from work; from ambitious office managers to reduce the duration of medical visits; from pharmaceutical companies to expand the profits from pain-relieving medications; and from insurers who must otherwise reimburse workers for time spent recovering from injury. The overlapping interests of these various groups have fostered the creation of \"educational symposia.\" These symposia promote a single perspective on back-injury science showcasing highly-paid experts who perpetuate the notion that the most back pain episodes cannot be precisely diagnosed. They tell the clinicians in attendance that attempting to do so is a waste of valuable clinical effort. The simplistic ideas that pain killers are the only proven treatment, and that the only non-pharmacological intervention that a sensible doctor can make is to urge patients to continue activity at normal levels are the take-home messages. To make matters worse, by oversimplifying the effects of gender on pain processing, these educational symposia often reinforce stereotypes that limit women's access to care.\n\nIt is clear from my clinical practice, personal experience, and speaking to people around the country that this approach to back care fails the Reality Test: Insisting that all back pain is the same just doesn't make sense. The spine is a complex structure; in fact, it is a bio-engineering miracle. Composed of bones, ligaments, nerves, and muscles all working together, the spine allows us to stand upright with the advantages of speedy locomotion and sophisticated hand functions. We would never give up the benefits we enjoy from walking upright. And so, each of us must come to terms with the consequences of an upright posture. Routine exercise and diet are not enough; people need enhanced knowledge of their backs and a deeper understanding of how to build a reservoir of strength and attain freedom from pain-imposed limitations.\n\nThis book was created as an open guide for people currently suffering from back pain due to non-operable back injury. The purpose was to bring together top science on back pain with both bona fide and evolving approaches to recovering from back injury. Despite hitting some serious notes here in the introduction, the book itself maintains a friendly, optimistic tone. This is because we know that maintaining a positive, proactive stance really does promote better health outcomes. Remind yourself daily that the glass is not only \"half full,\" it is half full of a wonderful life-giving liquid with dozens of health benefits. Drink up and go get another! It is my vision that in reading this book, you will find help and a wealth of useful information. You will reinforce existing good habits and get inspired to try new back-healthy activities. This book is the best of everything that I could know, learn, and find to guide people in getting better from back injury. It is here to speed your journey toward a long and happy life without back pain.\n\n### Introduction: How to Use This Book\n\nBecause your back is central to everything you do, sitting, standing, walking, and even lying down can be problematic when pain strikes. If you have back pain when sitting, it is likely that working at a desk, eating at a dinner table, and driving are next to impossible. Having back pain when standing or walking puts participation in everyday life out of reach. And back pain when lying down is a prescription for insomnia without the aid of powerful drugs. Ring a bell? You may be experiencing problems similar to these or have an important person in your life who suffers from back pain. Whatever your reason for purchasing this book, you are in the right place. This book is written to guide you, your family, and your friends on the journey to a healthy back.\n\n_Take Back Your Back_ is a synthesis of tested methods for improving back pain. The difficult part of this therapy is that it requires an investment of time and energy, by you as well as your support team: family, friends, doctors, nurses, physical therapists, and co-workers. Knowing what to do when back pain is severe will save hours of frustration and disappointment. Even when there is no quick fix, many things can be done to alleviate acute back pain and speed a return to function. I sometimes explain these methods to patients using the name Aggressive Conservative Therapy, but in reality it is most fundamentally about making peace with your back. Repairing, restoring, nurturing, cultivating, strengthening, building, and ultimately healthy enjoyment of the back are all part of this approach.\n\nIn Part I, I describe the major causes of back pain, from muscle-related problems to coccydynia. Many structures in the back can be injured and result in pain. There are 12 thoracic vertebrae, 5 lumbar vertebrae, sacral bones, a tailbone or coccyx, over 20 discs, dozens of facet joints, scores of ligaments, 44 nerve roots, many muscles, and hundreds of nerve branches. When several of these structures are injured at the same time, as often happens with a trauma to the back, the pain is amplified. So it's often very difficult to identify the exact source of a problem. This book will help you identify your pain and work with your doctor to receive better care.\n\nTo make the book truly accessible, I have put the diagnosis and prescriptions for each condition first, followed by information about diagnostic tests and detailed explanations. _Take Back Your Back_ is a reference book. I don't expect you to read every page! Look at the table of contents to find the kind of pain you're experiencing, and go directly to that chapter. Part II contains information about preventing and treating back pain, with chapters on exercise, ergonomics, and nutrition.\n\n### **IT'S VITAL TO KEEP YOUR OWN RECORDS**\n\nI would like to emphasize the importance of keeping records about your health and back problem that you experience. Our society is mobile and dynamic; most Americans live away from their hometowns. In most places, the retention of \"permanent\" medical records is controlled by law, and after a certain period of inactivity, your doctor may simply discard the records pertaining to your medical condition. If this happens, you won't be able to go back and get your old records; they will no longer exist. Here's why keeping personal medical records is so important:\n\n\u2022 Communicating with new providers about your problem will be easier\n\n\u2022 Having an accurate medical history can prevent medical errors\n\n\u2022 Reviewing records is a great way to learn more about your condition\n\nI suggest making short- and long-term goals for your record keeping:\n\n**SHORT-TERM GOAL:** Make a one-page health summary that lists your doctors, medicines, and health conditions. Include a short timeline of events relating to your major health problems. If your back pain arises from a specific injury, note that date and others relevant to your treatment course. Keep this one-page summary up to date, carry it with you at all times, and make a copy for your doctor and for your close ones. Also, make sure that any images of your back are kept with your records.\n\n**LONG-TERM GOAL:** Make and maintain a health file that includes notes from doctor visits, lab reports, imaging reports, images on disc or film, a pain calendar or symptom diary, and notes from physical therapy. It's a good idea to keep your file or diary organized by record type, and arrange it in chronological fashion. Also, because X-rays, MRIs, and other imaging representations are pictures of a single point in time, make sure you keep copies of any images taken of your back in chronological files.\n\nYou are your own best advocate for better health care. Read on to identify and relieve your back pain, and keep those records handy for recurring problems. Your back is central to everything you do, and keeping it healthy and strong is fundamental to living well.\n\n# PART 1\n\nDiagnose and Relieve Your Back Pain\n\n## CHAPTER 1  \nMuscle-Related Back Pain\n\n**Muscle injury and overuse is often the culprit.**\n\n**Reduce inflammation and shift activities to avoid re-injury.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Do you have pain located on one side of the spine?\n\n**>** Does your pain stay focused in the back without radiating into the leg or another part of the body?\n\nPain that is focused on one side of the back and does not radiate into the leg, groin, or torso is often due to muscle injury. Most typically, this type of back pain will follow a specific strain or stress to the muscle. It's often simply a case of \"over-doing it,\" whether from lifting something a little too heavy, twisting around with the body for something just out of reach, or being overly aggressive with weekend sports. The large muscles on either side of the spine are prone to athletic injury, while the smaller muscles closer to the spine can be damaged by twisting movements.\n\nBack muscle pain often has a burning quality, but when intense, it can be sharply painful and abruptly limit normal movement. One way to test for muscle pain is by first getting into a comfortable position. Now, gently start to initiate movement in a direction that you know will bring out your back pain. If your back pain is located off center (not directly over the spine) and does not radiate down the leg, into the groin, or around to the front of the body, you may have a back muscle injury, and this is the chapter for you.\n\nIf this does not describe your back pain, consider alternatives by reading the next chapter on radiating back pain and consulting a qualified health professional.\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\n  **Warning! Know When to See a Doctor** Back pain due to a muscle injury may respond well to treatment at home, but if the problem persists for more than a few days or is severe enough that you are worried, professional assessment is needed. The following red flags mean you should seek immediate medical attention:\n\n\u2022 \"Major\" trauma (car accident; fall from a height)\n\n\u2022 Age less than 20 or greater than 50\n\n\u2022 History of cancer\n\n\u2022 Fever, chills, or weight loss\n\n\u2022 Recent bacterial infection\n\n\u2022 Drug abuse\n\n\u2022 Immunosuppression\n\n\u2022 Pain that is worse when lying down\n\n\u2022 Severe nighttime pain\n\n\u2022 New bladder dysfunction (incontinence of urine)\n\n\u2022 Numbness over the genitals\n\n\u2022 Major or progressive weakness in one or both legs\n\n\u2022 Minor trauma, in the setting of low bone density or osteoporosis,\n\nTo promote healing of your injured muscles, you'll need to reduce inflammation and prevent re-injury. Once inflammation and the potential for re-injury are under control, your muscles will stop hurting so terribly and healing will begin.\n\nIf you have a back muscle injury (sometimes referred to as _back muscle strain_ ):\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend physical therapy, especially if it seems that your back strain is not getting better on its own or if the problem keeps occurring.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may encourage you to stay active after a couple of days of taking it easy.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will likely encourage you to continue working and may provide a recommendation for pain medication to get you through this episode of pain.\n\nLifestyle changes for your back are going to be essential in plotting your course toward permanent recovery from a back muscle injury and pain. You'll need to focus on stretching, strengthening, and symmetry. But first, you've got to get the pain under control. I call this \"back muscle First Aid,\" and outline the program in this chapter.\n\nMedications are also part of getting better after muscle injury. Your healthcare provider may advise you about particular medications and will want to know what you've been taking at home. Make sure to follow recommended guidelines for taking medications and never, ever take someone else's prescription pain medicine.\n\n### The Treatment\n\nReducing inflammation is essential when you have a sudden, severe muscle pain problem. But if you are having persistent back pain that your doctor says is caused by muscle problems, chances are that you are chronically re-injuring your back muscles. The following strategies will begin to break this painful cycle.\n\nFirst Aid for Acute Muscle Strain\n\n**R** est\n\n**I** ce\n\n**C** ompression\n\n**E** levation\n\n**M** edication\n\n### Phase 1: How Do You Spell Relief? RICE-M\n\nThe best therapies for acute muscle strain are Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation, and (anti-inflammatory) Medication. These treatments, best used in combination, are remembered with the acronym RICE-M. Picture a young athlete with a muscle strain, sitting on a table in the treatment room (Rest), ice pack bound in place with an elastic bandage (Ice and Compression), with the leg or arm propped up on a block (Elevation), being instructed by the trainer to take some food before each dose of ibuprofen tablets (Medication). All of these treatment components play an important role in preventing a worsening of the injury and speeding the return to function.\n\n#### **RIS FOR REST**\n\nRest is a special challenge when the back is involved. We depend heavily on our backs for all parts of everyday life. Sitting, walking, standing, lifting the groceries, bending down to pick up a child or pet; the things we do range from mildly stressful on the back to extremely demanding. One of the worst offenders for back stress is housework, that burden of daily life that weighs upon those of us not yet admitted to the jet set. Some housework is undoubtedly benign for the back. Even though it gets a bad rap, cleaning windows can offer healthy opportunities for stretching and strengthening the arm muscles and upper back.\n\nIn the acute phase, rest has a very particular meaning: putting the muscles into a position of neither stretch nor contraction, and deferring any activities that require the muscle to work. If the muscle is acutely strained and very painful, this could mean a day or two in bed, either propped up on pillows in a semi-recumbent position or lying flat, whichever is most comfortable.\n\nHowever, and this is an important caveat\u2014a muscle placed at rest will atrophy, perhaps by as much as 10 percent with a single day of complete rest. This can lead to a disastrous state of profound weakness if resting is continued past the amount necessary. So resting a muscle may be a necessary strategy when the muscle is suddenly injured, but cannot be a successful strategy for long-term management of pain that lasts more than a few days.\n\nAvoid These Household Tasks During Recovery\n\n\u2022 Vacuuming\n\n\u2022 Mopping\n\n\u2022 Cleaning bathtubs\n\n\u2022 Shoveling (snow, dirt)\n\n  Warning!  \n **Reprogramming May be Necessary** Unhealthy patterns of back use are strongly associated with persistent back pain. For most people, back muscle injury is caused by a combination of back-stressing activities together with inactivity in the first place. Learning how to have a healthy back is important for preventing re-injury. Such activity reprogramming is usually best directed by a qualified physical therapist.\n\nProper posture at a computer. Sit upright or slightly back directly in front of your workstation to reduce back muscle strain.\n\nHow to resolve the problem of chronic muscle strain? P-O-S-T-U-R-E. Sorry to say it, but positioning and ergonomics (see Chapter 16) play a major role in preventing chronic back strain and injury. Sitting with the back supported, the feet squarely on the ground, and trunk facing forward is fundamentally important for reducing chronic muscle strain. Likewise, proper lifting technique, re-learning how to rise from a bed, and re-engineering how you accomplish many tasks of daily living will contribute to your long term success in avoiding acute and chronic back muscle strain.\n\nResting for back pain got a bad reputation because years ago patients were put to bed rest for prolonged periods of time after a back injury. It turned out that prolonged bed rest was not very helpful for back pain and could in fact worsen the likelihood of chronic disability. Unfortunately, the pendulum has now swung very far in the opposite direction; many doctors have been trained to utterly reject rest as a therapeutic modality. This is not correct either, as rest has a place in the treatment of certain types of back pain. The real challenge is recognizing when and where back rest is appropriate.\n\nIn the case of muscle strain, the period of rest varies with the severity of the injury. In most cases, two to three days of rest is all that is needed. This is not to say that with severe muscle strain, longer periods of rest aren't needed. A severely strained or torn muscle will take weeks to recover. Most of the time, severe muscle strain occurs when there is a clear precipitant such as a previous injury, the kinds of strains that are seen in competitive athletic settings. If you have not been training for a triathlon or engaged in vigorous athletics and you find that your back still hurts after two or three days of resting what you think is a muscle strain, you should seek a medical opinion.\n\n#### **ICE IS MORE THAN NICE**\n\nIce is the best friend we have for acute injury. In the case of managing back pain, ice is a two-for-one special: it controls inflammation and blocks pain signaling. When using ice, it's best to limit any one treatment period to 20 minutes; this will reduce the potential for damage to the skin and soft tissues. When back muscle strain first happens, it will be necessary to ice the muscle several times in a day. Five to seven treatments of 20 minutes each are not unusual.\n\nThe sooner you can apply the ice after injury, the better. Getting ice on a muscle strain \"in the field\" is ideal, but ice is beneficial at any point within the first 24 to 48 hours after a muscle strain injury. Everyone should have an icy gel-pack in the freezer ready to go for occasional household bumps and bruises, but if you have back pain and muscle strain, a supply of two ice packs means that one can be in use while the other is cooling back down.\n\nIce can be used by many people even after the 48-hour time window has passed. The inflammatory response to an injury such as muscle strain is really set in motion during the first several hours, but is hardly complete by 48 hours. In fact, if muscle fibers are actually damaged and the immune system is activated in response, the inflammatory cells are still flooding into the damaged area at 48 hours, and will probably remain present in markedly increased numbers for a week or more. Some people find that once the first 48 hours after an injury have passed that warm compresses are more effective.\n\nCold therapy helps by blocking the signal before it gets to the brain (gating)\n\n  Warning!  \n **Insulate the Ice** Ice should be applied to the body wrapped in a light cloth or dish towel. It's best to use a moldable gel pack to get the maximum contact with the body surface, but if you use ice cubes, put them in an icepack with just enough cold water so that when the icepack is on the body, the water is helping to deliver the cold from the ice.\n\nIt is important to note that if the ice is too cold, the cold of the ice will itself be painful and possibly cause harm. The solution for this is to wrap another layer of light cloth around the icepack; t-shirts and dishtowels are great for this purpose. A lightly wrapped icepack can be inconspicuously tucked into a waistband. There are even icepacks that strap to the back of a chair with elastic bands. Car trips are notorious for exacerbating back pain; next time you take a trip, take along an icepack and see if that doesn't help.\n\nDrug-Free Painkiller\n\nMany of my patients are initially skeptical about the benefits of ice. However, for muscle and joint-related pain, ice is a safe, effective treatment that relieves pain and reduces inflammation. How does ice relieve pain? Acutely, the ice (when wrapped in a light cloth) cools the skin to the point of activating the \"cool-cold\" receptors. These cool-cold receptors are located on nerves that send signals fairly rapidly to the spinal cord. When the cool-cold signals reach the spinal cord, they essentially close the gate on the slower-traveling pain signals. Thus, the cooling of a body area makes it more difficult for pain signals to penetrate into the spinal cord, where they would gain access to the pathways leading to the brain and our conscious awareness of pain.\n\n#### **COMPRESSION CAN HELP**\n\nThe _C_ in RICE-M stands for compression. Compression helps reduce the amount of swelling that occurs after an injury such as a strain. In addition, compression helps to immobilize the injured structure and allow the repair process to take place without additional injury incurred by excessive movement.\n\nSwelling is a normal consequence of injury, part of the inflammatory response. Swelling occurs in part because some of the injury response signals lead the neighboring blood vessels to become leaky, almost like a soaker hose in the garden. The fluid component of blood can then exit the vessels (plasma extravasation) and enter the surrounding tissues. Swelling is potentially helpful because it can lead to a state of relative immobilization. For example, think how hard it can be to bend a finger that's been swollen by a bee-sting. But while immobilization is generally valuable after some injuries, the swelling is often painful. Thus, preventing excessive swelling is sometimes a critical component of controlling pain. Excessive swelling can also impede the blood supply to the area and may disrupt the normal architecture of the injured tissues. For back muscles, compression can be applied with a folded over towel pressed up against the painful part.\n\n#### **ELEVATION IN BACK MUSCLE INJURY**\n\nThe _E_ in RICE-M is for elevation. It sounds silly, doesn't it, to picture someone trying to elevate their back after a muscle strain injury. In fact, if you can't elevate your injured back muscle without stretching, don't try. For the first few days, the back needs to rest, and stretching it would be counter to that primary need. Perhaps the best you can accomplish is to avoid putting the injured part lower than the rest of the body for the first period after the muscle strain.\n\nThe best way for most people to rest the spine is to lie with their backs on the floor and the legs propped up on a chair or sofa with the knees bent at 90 degrees. When you have acutely strained a specific back muscle, lying may not be the best position. It may be necessary to adopt a side-lying position, with the hips and knees bent to reduce tension on the spine. Your best bet may be side-lying on the uninjured side. Remember that with side-lying, many people find it necessary to place a pillow between the knees to reduce excess tension on the hips. With sidelying, you can put the injured side up so it is elevated more than half of the body. If your back is otherwise healthy, it may be possible for you to comfortably lie on your stomach, perhaps with a pillow or two under your abdomen for support. In this case, go right ahead and lie on the stomach with the back fully elevated.\n\n#### **MEDICATIONS SPEED RECOVERY**\n\nThe big _M_ in RICE-M is for medication. In the context of muscle strain, the medications of choice are the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs. You have probably taken NSAIDs before. The most commonly available is ibuprofen, which is marketed under the trade names Advil and Motrin. Ibuprofen is one of a class of medications that not only interfere with pain signaling but also interrupt the inflammatory cascade that follows an injury. Other medications in the NSAID family available over the counter include naproxen, sold as Aleve or Naprosyn. There are also stronger NSAIDs available by prescription, including higher strength tablets of ibuprofen.\n\nOther medications against pain are generally lacking in anti-inflammatory benefits. Acetaminophen, for example, is quite effective against mild-to-moderate pain, but doesn't provide the anti-inflammatory benefits of NSAIDs. There is some evidence to suggest that in some settings, morphine, the primary opioid, is actually pro-inflammatory, which should not discourage its appropriate use, but means it would not be effective in reducing inflammation, one of the goals of early treatment for muscle strain.\n\n#### **MULTIMODAL TREATMENT WORKS BEST**\n\nThe limitations of NSAIDs are partly why it is so important to implement a comprehensive treatment strategy using all the parts of the RICE-M approach and not just take some pills and soldier on. It seems obvious but, if you think that pills will solve all your problems, you will probably wind up in more trouble than you imagined possible. That said, if you have a muscle strain and if your doctor or back care specialist says it's okay for you to take NSAIDs, then these can be an essential part of your response to back muscle strain. You may need to take them every day for the first few days after injury, but if you take NSAIDs for more than three days, you should discuss it with a healthcare provider to make sure that risks and benefits are being properly balanced.\n\n  Warning!  \n **GI side effects** The tremendous usefulness of NSAIDs is limited by their side effects, the most troubling of which is the heavy toll these medicines have on the stomach and GI tract. All of the NSAIDs increase the chances of developing gastric bleeding; statistics suggest that perhaps 30,000 people a year have serious health problems as a result of GI bleeding after taking NSAIDs. These medications can also be hard on the kidneys, and chronic use for more than a short period should be implemented on the advice of a physician with sound knowledge of how to minimize the risks (taking the medication with some food) and how to monitor for signs of trouble (blood or other changes in the bowel movements, increases in blood pressure).\n\n### Phase 2: Exercises for Restoring and Strengthening the Back\n\nThere is no one best exercise for your back. Two types of exercise are essential when you want to increase your back's resistance to injury: those that strengthen the abdominals and others that strengthen the intrinsic back muscles. The best exercises are abdominal crunches and, for lack of a better term, back crunches.\n\nWhat's New: Back to Basic Pain Meds\n\nTroubling setbacks have followed new discoveries in more selective anti-inflammatory drugs. Referred to as the COX-2 inhibitors because of their ability to more selectively inhibit Cyclooxygenase-2 (as opposed to inhibiting both COX-1 and COX-2), these drugs were highly effective for many people with chronic inflammatory pain conditions such as osteoarthritis and degenerative joint disease. For some, the effects of these medications were nothing short of miraculous, restoring levels of function and activity that had seemed permanently beyond reach. There was even evidence to suggest that people might do better after surgery if these medicines were given just beforehand.\n\nUnfortunately, at least some the medicines in this group increased the risk of heart attack, a risk that no one was willing to accept. After many deaths, a huge public outcry, and untold sums of money spent, some of these medicines have been withdrawn from the market and the use of others, including Celebrex, has become much more limited in scope. The bottom line is that for most people, a moderate dose of ibuprofen taken with food is a generally safe and effective choice for treating back muscle strain.\n\nThe ability to do these exercises is determined by your overall back health. If you have recently had a back injury, whether from an accident or another more minor incident, being able to do abdominal crunches and back crunches may be a long-term treatment goal rather than a currently realistic expectation. Check with your physical therapist about how to adapt these exercises to your limitations.\n\n#### **ABDOMINAL CRUNCHES**\n\nAbdominal crunches are a beautiful thing, as mundane as they sometimes seem. The health benefits of this exercise are multiple and essential for a happy life: abdominal crunches will not only strengthen your back but will also improve posture and trim the waistline. Improved posture will greatly enhance your resistance to back injury, and a trim waistline has been associated with reduced likelihood of serious heart disease! Once your back is on the mend from any acute problems, abdominal crunches should be a part of your daily routine. My dad, a lifelong health and fitness aficionado and mentor, has been known to do 400 abdominal crunches a day, three times a week. I usually scrape by with around 30 a day, and even a few is better than none.\n\nIn the simplest form, the abdominal crunch consists of lying on the back with the hips and knees bent. The feet should be flat on the floor. Holding the pelvis in neutral position, the abdominal muscles are gradually tightened bringing the head up and the shoulders up off the floor. The muscles are then relaxed gradually and the head and shoulders lowered back to the floor. The middle of the back should not rise up far from the floor, as doing a full sit-up is really taxing on the lower back.\n\nThere are some differences of opinion about what to do with the arms in abdominal crunches. Some people leave the arms at the side, while others cross them across the chest, and others place the hands behind the head. It is really a matter of personal preference, and the most important point is to minimize whatever barriers might exist for someone doing this exercise. If you prefer the hands at the sides, then by all means, keep them there. If you want to cross your arms across your chest, this probably adds to the challenge. If you do chose to place the hands behind the head, take care not to apply pressure to the head, as this will strain the neck. Never use the hands to pull the head forward.\n\nOnce you have a routine of performing several abdominal crunches at least three times a week, you can begin to try some variations by doing oblique crunches or by starting from a flat position and bringing the legs up together with the head and shoulders. You can even do oblique crunches with the bent elbows reaching across to meet the opposite knee, but that's getting really fancy. If your back has been injured, you will probably have to start with a basic pelvic tilt series and build up to the basic abdominal crunch. You may find that a mat or padded surface is necessary for you to be comfortable doing crunches. The most essential point is for you to do whatever it takes to get the basic abdominal crunches into your everyday routine.\n\n#### **BACK CRUNCHES**\n\nBefore Pilates, many healthy people were not paying enough attention to their core muscles. Now, there are lots of really cool exercises you can do to strengthen your core and increase your resistance to back muscle strain. Many of these are highlighted in Chapter 14. If you ask me which exercise would I recommend, it would be what is known in Yoga as the modified locust. In the midwest, this might be called the \"Mayo exercise.\" Lying on your abdomen, place a pillow under your stomach, so that you can lie comfortably. Stretch your arms out on the floor extending past your head and point your toes so that your legs are flat on the floor also. Contracting the back muscles, raise your arms and legs off the floor at the same time, and raise your head up as well. Hold this position for a several seconds and then relax gradually back down to the floor. Repeat this exercise several times, gradually increasing the amount of time that you hold the back crunch.\n\nMany adaptations of the back crunch have been developed to recondition the back after an injury. If you are recovering from an acute episode of back pain, talk about this with your doctor or physical therapist and obtain their guidance on how you can progress toward improved strength in the back extensor muscles. Some variations of the exercise include raising one arm and the opposite leg, while others progress by first raising the upper body with the support of the arms. The back crunch is a beautiful and profoundly empowering exercise to do; it should be a part of those things you do just for yourself every day. Strengthening the back extensors is an essential part of increasing your back's resistance to muscle strain and other injury.\n\n  Warning!  \n **Recover Fully Before Doing Back Crunches** Doing the back crunch is only possible once you have fully recovered from a back injury and it is not to be performed during the first week after an acute back muscle strain. The acutely strained back muscle should be rested, and this exercise is not compatible with muscle resting.\n\nA back crunch\n\n### Phase 3: Six Steps to Prevent Chronic Back Muscle Strain\n\n#### **1. USE PROPER POSTURE**\n\nProper posture is vitally important when sitting and when lifting. You will read later in this chapter about the consequences of sustaining a flexed spine position for more than a couple of minutes: ligament fatigue leading to muscle spasm leading to pain and more maladaptive postures. Sitting, standing, and bending with proper posture are essential for staying free from back muscle problems. (See Chapter 16 on Ergonomics to learn more about optimizing your back health.)\n\n#### **2. AVOID TWISTING MOTIONS AND PAY ATTENTION TO SYMMETRY**\n\nOne of the functions of the back is to support the upper body. This means that even when you are not doing any lifting, the back is carrying a load of several dozen pounds. For this reason, twisting in a funny way can place excessive strain on some of the smaller back muscles. If you have to do a task routinely or for many hours, think about how you carry out that task and try to adapt the task to your body's position. If you are loading groceries, think about how you are twisting and turning. If you are working at a computer keyboard, focus on sitting straight forward; arrange your workspace that you're not twisting to reach the keyboard or turning the head to see the computer screen fully.\n\n#### **3. STRETCH ROUTINELY**\n\nAs emphasized in this chapter and throughout the book, stretching is essential to maintaining back health. For the muscles, stretching must be a vital part of every day's routine. Muscles that are used or required to stay in a contracted state for prolonged periods eventually shorten to accommodate that position. When you change position, those muscles may not stretch sufficiently to accommodate proper spinal alignment in the new position. Stretching daily will allow the muscles to work cooperatively and will reduce strain on other structures such as discs and joints in the back. For most people, hamstring, calf, and iliopsoas (inner hip) muscles must be stretched several times a week to maintain a proper state of flexibility and a stable standing posture.\n\n#### **4. LOSE POUNDS IF YOU'RE OVERWEIGHT**\n\nCarrying excess weight is a strain on the back that never goes away. For someone who is overweight, every step places additional stress on the muscles and other back structures. If you are overweight, getting your life back on track must include changing your diet to reduce your weight. There are many unproven approaches to losing weight but the universal truth is that weight loss most consistently occurs when intake is reduced and activity is increased. Increasing aerobic activity may be very difficult when you are experiencing acute back pain. Make sure to eliminate the junk foods that don't contribute to you getting vital nutrients and fiber. Increasing your consumption of fresh vegetables is usually a great first step. Fresh fruits are important too, but some people will load up on fresh fruit to the exclusion of other parts of their diet, and this is not a successful weight-loss strategy.\n\n#### **5. CHANGE POSITION FREQUENTLY**\n\nIf you're sitting for several hours to do a task, you should get up for 10 minutes of every hour. But even as you are sitting for the other 50 minutes, make sure you are shifting from time to time, stretching a little in place and giving the muscles a little inspiration. If you are standing for long periods, make sure to shift your weight from side to side, lean against a wall for a little bit or do some quad stretches in place. The message here is that muscles need to move at least a little to avoid progressive stiffness, and in the worst case, atrophy.\n\n#### **6. LEARN ABOUT TRIGGER POINTS AND TRY SOME ACUPRESSURE**\n\nThe back muscles are prone to muscle spasms. Trigger point approaches can by very useful for understanding why certain parts of the back have the most pain. Sometimes the answers are surprising. Learning about trigger points will help you identify certain muscles of the back and how these muscles respond to strain, stress, and pain. You can then use this knowledge to massage the trigger point that a muscle is responding with. Even if that muscle is not the root cause of the problem, reducing muscle trigger points will help control the overall pain burden that you or someone you love is experiencing with back pain. To learn more about trigger points, read on!\n\nThe Three S's of Back Muscle Health\n\n**Stretching** \u2013 needed to maintain flexibility\n\n**Strengthening** \u2013 all else depends on this\n\n**Symmetry** \u2013 the key to staying pain-free\n\n### What Are Trigger Points?\n\nTrigger points are shrouded in some controversy. In past years, trigger points were poorly accepted by skeptical clinicians and researchers. At the same time, they have been widely recognized by those who perform massage and manual therapies, and the pendulum is swinging toward a wider acknowledgement of trigger points as an important abnormality in muscle function. To some degree, the trigger point has eluded laboratory study because muscle is dynamic, and trigger points especially so.\n\nNonetheless, trigger points were characterized in detail by Janet Travell and David Simons. Travell served as the White House physician during the Kennedy administration and over the course of several decades, made seminal contributions to the clinical science of musculoskeletal pain. Simons, originally an aerospace physician, brought scientific rigor to the study of trigger points, working closely with Travell in the writing of the their highly influential medical text on trigger points. Recent studies from the NIH have added scientific support for the presence of pro-inflammatory molecules and enhanced pain signals in active trigger points. In short, the trigger point is a place in the muscle that is holding an abnormally sustained contraction. This part of the muscle becomes painful to targeted pressure and sometimes is palpable as a firm area within the more pliable mass of the surrounding muscle.\n\n#### **HOW ARE TRIGGER POINTS TREATED?**\n\nTrigger points treated with a series of therapeutic interventions that range from acupressure massage techniques to controlled stretching to injections with local anesthetics or saline. The approach to trigger point therapy will depend on the experience and inclinations of the clinical specialist you are seeing. Although trigger points can be successfully treated by highly motivated patients themselves by applying focused pressure on the muscle, physical therapists often use a combination of approaches including trigger point massage, electrical stimulation of muscle, and \"spray and stretch\" techniques. In the \"spray and stretch\" approach, a cooling spray is applied to the skin overlying a particular trigger point, and then the muscle is rapidly stretched in a controlled manner. Trigger point injections are usually performed by certified pain specialists or others with special training in this methodology. They can provide rapid relief of pain associated with this process.\n\nTrigger points (such as these, marked with an X) result in pain that is most intense some distance away (marked with shading).\n\nTrigger Points\n\n\u2022 Are usually painful, especially when firm pressure is applied\n\n\u2022 Are typically palpable as areas of increased firmness in muscle\n\n\u2022 May respond to therapeutic massage or other treatments\n\nTrigger Point Therapies:\n\n\u2022 Acupressure massage\n\n\u2022 \"Spray and stretch\"\n\n\u2022 Electrical stimulation\n\n\u2022 Injections\n\n\u2022 \"Dry needling\"\n\nThere are several books available for learning more about trigger points. One exceptional book is the _Trigger Point Therapy Workbook_ by Clair Davies. The author tells the amazing story of how his career as a piano tuner prepared him for his subsequent work in manual therapy. It seems that his experience of working out the relationships between the stretched wires of the piano made him very receptive to developing a detailed awareness of muscle fibers in relation to one another. His book guides the reader through the process of learning acupressure massage and gives detailed instructions for treating a wide variety of trigger point-related pains.\n\n### Testing for Back Muscle Pain\n\nWhen a back problem is due to back muscle injury, most of the time the evaluation will not require expensive diagnostic tests. An experienced practitioner will be able to detect signs of muscle injury just by examining someone physically. Although severe muscle injury may be detectable using an MRI, especially when a sprain or ligamentous injury has also occurred, this mode of testing is rarely required to establish a muscle injury diagnosis. Electrical testing of a muscle and nerve would only be required if another cause of back pain was also suspected.\n\n### The Explanation\n\nBack muscle injury, also called _back strain_ , is the most common cause of temporary back pain. Although often minimized by those who never experienced it, the pain of muscle strain can be surprisingly severe and may disable a person from doing even basic tasks for a period of days to weeks.\n\n#### **WHY DOES BACK MUSCLE INJURY HAPPEN?**\n\nThe muscles of the back are central to the stability and strength of the back. All too often, we ask our muscles to work for us, but never \"pay them back.\" When a person starts to cut corners and doesn't invest appropriate time and energy into staying strong and healthy, acute or chronic injury to the muscles, tendons, and ligaments often produces disabling pain and weakness. Research indicates that periods of increased demand on back muscles must be balanced with periods of rest to avoid muscle strain and chronic muscle spasms. To reach a higher level of back fitness and function, make sure that you are balancing the demands on your back with healthy opportunities for growth and play.\n\n**MUSCLES OF THE BACK**\n\nIf you watch young children at play, they are constantly running, jumping, bending, climbing, and crawling! These natural activities all test and challenge the back, but also build strength and resilience. For better or worse, our society places a premium on highly structured activities for adults, and we rarely get the chance to move about spontaneously and with unforced vigor. Many of us work at jobs that don't allow us to move about freely; we either have to repeat the same tasks over and over, sit at our desks for hours upon hours, or lift heavy objects without adequate assistance or training. All of these activities leave us prone to back strain.\n\n#### **SPRAINS AND STRAINS**\n\nA strain is an injury to a muscle (or tendon), whereas a sprain is an injury to a ligament. Tendons and ligaments are both fibrous but serve different functions. Tendons are involved in connecting muscles to bones. They have poor blood supply but are capable of feeling pain when injured or inflamed. The pain of tendonitis can be quite severe and disabling. Tendonitis often arises in people who are performing strength-requiring tasks repeatedly. Although the classic example of tendonitis is tennis elbow, more mundane tasks such as assisting with wheelchair transfers can produce this syndrome. Although more common sites for tendonitis include the elbow and knee, it is possible to have tendonitis in the back and shoulder muscles.\n\nLigaments are involved in connecting bone to bone. There are many important ligaments in the back, including those that hold the vertebrae to one another. These ligaments can be damaged by sharp blows, very sudden stretching movements, penetrating wounds, or other traumas. Ligaments are slow to repair and can require prolonged casting or immobilization to heal properly. Because ligaments play a fundamental role in stabilizing bones and preventing excessive movement in associated structures, chronic pain can result when damage to ligaments goes unrepaired. Instability of the spinal column has a profound impact on back function and back pain; for more information about this, see Chapter 6.\n\nCauses of Acute Muscle Strain\n\n\u2022 Sports injury\n\n\u2022 Lifting\n\n\u2022 Twisting\n\n\u2022 Any sudden stretch\n\nMuscle Strain Leads to:\n\n\u2022 Weakness (lasting for days to a week)\n\n\u2022 Pain\n\n\u2022 Inflammation\n\n\u2022 Persistent damage when severe\n\n\u2022 Adaptive or maladaptive postures\n\nRecent research has shed important light on the connections between strain, sprain, and back pain. Muscle strain can be produced by a sudden loading force or a strong stretching of muscle. Commonly, acute muscle strain is associated with particular sports such as soccer and hockey, but ordinary lifting can be problematic for people who might be out of shape and not using proper lifting technique. The consequences of strain can be very serious for muscle, resulting in profound muscle damage, invasion of inflammatory cells, and ultimately the replacement of healthy muscle cells by collagen.\n\nStrain of a muscle is typically very painful and always produces a loss of muscle strength. Muscle strength drops within minutes of the strain itself but typically worsens over the first 24 hours. Laboratory studies of strain suggest that muscles can produce only half of their normal power on the first day after a strain injury. Muscle power gradually returns to normal, but this can take a week or more depending on the severity of the injury.\n\nWhat happens when the stresses are more chronic? The effects of staying bent over for even a few minutes can be quite serious. Although not technically producing ligamentous sprain, the consequences of improper poster and positioning are damaging to ligaments. With sustained improper spine flexion, the normally resilient ligaments of the spine stretch but don't bounce back. The technical term for this is _viscoelastic creep_ , but it is reasonable to think of this as _ligament fatigue_. When ligaments fatigue, the associated muscles are recruited to respond, initially attempting to support the movement. The muscles ultimately develop a predictable pattern of spasms: random bursting muscle contractions that can be detected with electromyography. Muscle spasms are typically painful, and interfere with normal movement. The spasms resulting from sustained spine flexion occur in the multifidus, spinalis, and longissimus muscles for several hours after the improper spine movement. Some research suggests that women are especially prone to the effects of ligament fatigue.\n\nThe take-home message is that fatiguing ligaments through improper posture and poor spine ergonomics results in muscle strain, inflammation, pain, and muscle spasms that last for hours and hours. Permanent damage can occur, so the importance of maintaining proper posture and never over-reaching personal strength limits is critical. Given that it can take several days to a couple weeks for the body to repair these injuries to muscles and ligaments, it's no wonder that millions of people have aching backs that never fully recover!\n\n#### **CRAMPS ARE DIFFERENT FROM MUSCLE SPASMS**\n\nCramps in muscle are swiftly-evolving, unplanned contractions of the muscle. These involuntary muscle contractions are typically painful, but can often be resolved by slowly stretching the muscle. It is usually possible to feel that the muscle is hardened in the area of a cramp. Muscle cramps are more likely in the setting of various conditions such as pregnancy, low calcium, low magnesium, hypothyroidism, and dehydration. They can reflect muscle fatigue and occur after heavy exercise. The most common sites for muscle cramps are not in the back but rather in the calves (gastrocnemius), the feet muscles, the thigh (hamstrings or quadriceps), and the rib cage area, where they are responsible to the pain of having \"a stitch.\"\n\nThe most common remedies are stretching the muscle, intentionally contracting the muscle, massage, and warm compresses. Although the precise mechanisms of cramps remain somewhat controversial, one popular theory is that cramps represent over-activity of the nerves controlling the muscle contractions. In this way, stretching the muscle or contracting the counter-acting muscles will interrupt the nerve signal to muscle and may bring the cramp to an end.\n\nMuscle spasms are random, bursting, and sometimes sustained contractions of muscle that are typically associated with pain and decreased motion. When severe, muscle spasms can result in muscle injury, especially if sudden or forceful movements are made while the muscle is in spasm. Although there is some controversy about whether muscle spasms are palpable, it is the experience of most trained observers that muscle spasms are readily appreciated either through direct palpation or through examining for limitations in normal movements (decreased range of motion). Muscle spasms may not respond to stretching as cramps do; treatments such as ice, warmth, and pain-relievers can help. Not infrequently the treatment of muscle spasms is addressed by doctors using prescription medications. As a testament to this, muscle relaxants continue to be among the most widely prescribed medicines. The problem with muscle relaxants is that they often interfere with thinking and levels of alertness. Some of these medications are liable to abuse, and even without abuse these medications can lead to physical or psychological dependence. Use them when needed but no more often than necessary.\n\nWhere Cramps Most Often Occur\n\nCalf muscles (charley horse)\n\nFoot muscles\n\nThigh muscles\n\nRib muscles (stitch)\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Henschke, N. and C. Maher. 2006. Red flags need more evaluation. _Rheumatology_ 45 (7): 920\u2013921.\n\n2. Bratton, R.L. 1999. Assessment and management of acute low back pain. _American Family Physician_ 60 (8): 2299\u2013308.\n\n3. Selby, Anna. _Banish Back Pain the Pilates Way_. Thorsons, 2003.\n\n4. Simons, David G., Janet G. Travell, and Lois S. Simons. _Travell and Simons's Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual._ 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins, 1999.\n\n5. Niel-Asher, Simeon. _The Concise Book of Trigger Points, Revised Edition_. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2008.\n\n6. Davies, Clair. _The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook_. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2001.\n\n7. Solomonow, M. 2004. Ligaments: A source of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. _Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology_ 14:49\u201360.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**What are fasciculations?**  \nThese perceptible contractions of muscle, when widespread, can be a sign of serious disease such as neurological degeneration or, quite rarely, toxic poisoning. More commonly, fasciculations are part of the muscles' normal response to fatigue or result from a decline in exercise-imposed demands. Caffeine is a potent stimulus for muscle contraction and is widely used in laboratory studies of muscle activity. Sometimes it is worth investigating whether caffeine consumption is related to bothersome fasciculations. If you have new fasciculations that persist and don't seem to be related to fatigue or muscle disuse, you should discuss this with your doctor.\n\n**How does prolonged sitting affect back muscles?**  \nOne of the consequences of prolonged sitting is a tightening or mild contracture of the hip flexor muscles. This can affect the back negatively through at least two mechanisms\u2014one through referred pain arising from the muscle itself, the other as a consequence of the negative postural adjustments that occur when these muscles are not properly flexible. This is almost an occupational hazard of the \"sedentary\" but mentally engaged professions such as accounting, writing, and computer programming. Because these careers require prolonged periods of sustained mental effort, often with a computer interface, the tendency is to become lost in thought and disregard the body's need to shift and move around. Sitting can also result in back muscle atrophy and chronic muscle overuse. Proper posture and ergonomic seating arrangements are critical. There are other deleterious effects of prolonged sitting for the back, especially on the vertebral discs.\n\n**How long should I wait before going to the doctor?**  \nThe amount of time you wait before seeking acute care depends on many factors, but most of all, on the intensity of pain you are experiencing and the response of that pain to the at-home therapies discussed in this chapter. If your pain is interfering with sleep or work and is not responding to the at-home therapies, then you need an appointment with your healthcare provider. If your pain is unbearable and you cannot control it enough to wait for an appointment, then you need immediate care. Your local emergency room or urgent care facility should be able to assess your pain and provide some treatments that will provide at least short-term relief.\n\nSitting forward not only strains back ligaments, but leads to overcontraction of the hip muscles, which may lead to chronic back strain when standing and walking.\n\n## CHAPTER 2  \nDisc Herniation (Slipped Disc)\n\n**Seek out expert medical care and get proper diagnostic tests such as**\n\n**an MRI or nerve conduction test.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Do you have pain that is located to one side of the spine?\n\n**>** Does your pain seem to shoot down the leg, radiate into the groin or wrap around the body?\n\nPain that radiates into the leg or groin is usually due to a nerve injury, often from a herniated disc. Back pain is called _radiating_ when there is an element of pain in the back and in the leg. The degree of pain in the back due to a herniated disc is often described as rather minor; however, pain may be prominent and centrally located in the back if a disc has been previously damaged. Some people with radiating back pain have the sensation that the back and leg pains are physically connected to each other, while others have back pain and leg pains that are felt at the same time without a physical bridge of pain connecting them (there and there but not in between).\n\nSometimes, certain movements will make the pain worse. One way to test for a nerve root injury is to do the following (you will need a helper to do this test): sit down in a hard chair that has a straight back. The chair height should be such that your feet are firmly on the ground with your knees at a 90-degree angle. Have your helper gently take one ankle and pull it slowly outward and up. If your back pain suddenly increases with this movement, stop immediately. You may have nerve root compression; read on!\n\nWhat's New: A Changing Definition\n\nTraditional descriptions of radiating back pain emphasize that it is more likely to be due to a compressed nerve root (and disc herniation) when the pain going into the leg extends below the knee. Recent studies indicate that even if the pain just extends into the thigh, pain could still be due to nerve root compression.\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nThe Good News\n\n\u2022 People with herniated discs often do better than those with other back problems.\n\n\u2022 Surgery can be very effective at restoring people with herniated discs to full health.\n\nBack pain due to a pinched nerve needs expert medical assessment and care. Many times, an MRI of the back or even a CT scan will be needed as a first diagnostic test. Some doctors still prefer to start with an X-ray, but this will only show the bones and does not indicate what is happening with the disc. If your doctor recommends an MRI and you suffer from claustrophobia, make sure to let your doctor know. For most people, Magnetic Resonance Imaging is very safe.\n\nYour doctor may also order a nerve conduction test to evaluate the integrity of the nerves arising from the spine. This test and MRIs are discussed in detail later in this chapter. Once imaging and electrical test results are in, a clearer picture will emerge. The possibilities range from \"nothing is wrong\" to a \"slipped disc\" to a \"broken back.\"\n\nIf you have a herniated disc (sometimes referred to as a _slipped disc_ ):\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend physical therapy, especially if there is no perceptible weakness. Surgery may be needed if non-surgical treatments are not effective after a fair trial.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may refer you to a surgeon, especially if there is weakness due to nerve damage. Surgery has pluses and minuses, but in cases of weakness or incontinence, surgery may be needed urgently to preserve function.\n\nFor an isolated disc herniation, microsurgery may be the answer.\n\n\\- Microsurgery is surgery through one or more small incisions.\n\n\\- Recovery times are usually faster.\n\nFor many reasons, microsurgery may not be an option.\n\n\\- Routine surgery for herniated discs is very effective.\n\n\\- Make sure to ask about expected recovery times.\n\n\\- When damage to the spine is more extensive, a more involved surgery is needed that may involve fusing adjacent spinal bones with metal hardware or bone.\n\n#### **AREA OF INJURY**\n\n#### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR DIAGNOSES A BULGING DISC?**\n\nIn this case, physical therapy and exercise are usually best. The degree of pain and disability associated with type of injury varies greatly, but in this case you can do a lot to improve your chances of a fast and full recovery. (See Chapter 5 to learn how to manage a bulging disc.)\n\n#### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR FINDS A NERVE ROOT BEING COMPRESSED BY AN OVERGROWTH OF BONES (BONY SPURS) OR LIGAMENTS IN THE LOWER BACK?**\n\nThe overgrowth of bones and ligaments in the lower back is usually the end result of years of accumulated trauma to the back, and carries the label of degenerative joint disease (DJD). Surgery may be an option, but this depends on the extent of damage to the spine. Many times, physical therapy and programmed exercise is the right solution.\n\nRare Causes of Root Compression\n\nIn rare cases, nerve root compression is due to a mass (tumor), an infection (abcess), or a spinal malformation. These causes of nerve root compression are readily assessed through MRI and the other diagnostic tests described here. The treatment for these conditions is individualized.\n\n  Warning!  \n **Don't Wait Weeks for Help** Unfortunately, many doctors have been trained to wait six weeks before pursuing a fuller work up with MRI or EMG tests for a suspected disc herniation. The pain of disc herniation is usually severe enough that six weeks is far too long for anyone to remain in agony. So if you are in a lot of pain, and especially if you have weakness as well, don't accept treatment that you think is second rate. Tell your provider you need a proper work up or go elsewhere for help.\n\n### The Treatment\n\nIf your doctor recommends physical therapy first, it usually means you have the type of disc herniation that is best treated without surgery. There are several treatment modalities that fall under the umbrella of physical therapy as the primary treatment for disc problems: thermal therapies, electrical stimulation therapies, manual therapies, traction\/inversion therapies, conditioning, and strengthening.\n\n#### **THERMAL THERAPIES REDUCE PAIN**\n\nWarm compresses, cold packs or both in combination can be very effective at reducing pain levels. Pain control is an important part of early treatment for disc problems. Pain levels with disc herniations can average 8 on a scale of 10 and will be higher with movement or stress. Pain can induce compensatory postures and movements that may increase disc pressures and slow progress toward recovery.\n\n#### **ELECTRICAL STIMULATION THERAPIES RELAX MUSCLES**\n\nElectrical stimulation may be used on selected muscle groups to induce muscle relaxation through a \"fatigue\" mechanism. The electrical stimulation can be applied in areas where muscle spasms are contributing to the pressures on the disc as well as on overactive muscles that are perpetuating abnormal postures.\n\n#### **MANUAL THERAPIES RELIEVE AND REALIGN**\n\nProper alignment of the spine and normal postures are essential to normalizing pressures on vertebral discs. In the thoracic spine, a pinched nerve can produce muscle spasm profound enough to interfere with proper breathing. Trigger point therapy is designed to relax muscles that have abnormal zones of muscle fiber contractions known as _trigger points_. Low-velocity manipulations can adjust dislocated sacroiliac joints or misaligned facet joints. In some cases, extension of the spine may provide pain relief from pain due to disc disease.\n\n#### **TRACTION AND INVERSION THERAPIES RELEASE PRESSURE**\n\nReleasing pressure on a disc increases the likelihood that it will return to its regular configuration. For some people, inversion can be carried out successfully at home, but for most, a supervised course of traction or inversion therapy is safest. For the person determined to try inversion therapy at home, it is possible to purchase an inversion table. For milder forms of inversion, an inclined board with padding may produce some benefits. For someone with active back pain, though, getting into position on an inclined board may represent a substantial challenge.\n\n#### **CONDITIONING IS CORE TO BACK HEALTH**\n\nStrengthening and conditioning are essential parts of physical therapy for disc problems whether or not surgery is undertaken. I often tell patients that they should expect to work hard at getting better from a back injury. I really discourage people from taking time off from work for back problems unless they are attending physical therapy and dedicating themselves to getting better through supervised exercise. If you have a herniated disc with radiating leg pain, a physical therapist will need to guide your first steps in back strengthening. In most cases where the disc herniation is not causing actual weakness, physical therapy is the preferred treatment.\n\nPhysical therapy is highly effective for many types of back problems, including some herniated discs. There are several advantages to pursuing physical therapy, but the primary advantage is that it avoids the complications of surgery and may be completely effective.,\n\nIt is not yet clear whether physical therapy is more cost-effective or time-efficient than surgery. The usual medical perspective is that for disc herniations causing muscle weakness, back surgery is more likely to be effective than not. For disc herniations where pain is the predominating problem _and_ there is no demonstrable weakness due to apparent nerve injury, surgery will be considered as a second-line option for particularly severe situations.\n\nKnow When to Seek a Second Opinion\n\nIf you think you have disc-related weakness and your doctor has recommended not pursuing surgery, make sure you understand why not. Make sure the doctor has examined the muscles that you believe to be weak, and if after communicating clearly about any perceived weakness, you don't feel understood, seek a second opinion.\n\nSometimes severe pain can cause muscles to function poorly, and this may be difficult to distinguish from the worrisome weakness that arises from direct nerve damage. The distinction is important and critically so in patients with disc herniation. Often, an electromyographic (EMG) study of the muscles can distinguish pain-induced weakness from nerve damage-induced weakness.\n\n#### **TO-DO LIST FOR SURGERY**\n\nIf your doctor refers you to a surgeon right away, chances are that you have a nerve root or roots that would be in danger without surgical decompression. Typically, surgery is needed if the herniated disc is pressing on a nerve and causing weakness in one or several muscles. Pain is also usually present, but the surgery that is needed to protect the function of the nerve root will typically relieve much of the pain.\n\nWhen you go to see the surgeon, there are several things you should do to prepare for the visit: gathering records, making a list of potential questions, and lining up a support person to go along on the visit.\n\nFirst, make sure that you have copies of any X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, or myelograms with you or arrange for these to be sent directly to the surgeon's office. You will need copies of recent blood work and documentation of any other medical conditions you may have. Take a detailed list of medications that you are prescribed and include in this any dietary supplements that you take.\n\nSecond, write down a list of questions that you may have about your back problem and the planned procedure. These question lists are well known to most physicians; try to weed out the routine ones and identify the questions that are most critical to you. You can learn a lot about your back problem and the usual approaches to treatment before your appointment with the surgeon; as you do this, some of your initial questions may be answered but new ones will arise. Your surgeon may direct you to specific educational resources. Some spine practices have websites that are designed to provide routine information about treatments and surgeries. Your public library may have excellent resource materials ranging from books to videos.\n\n#### **A SECOND PAIR OF EARS**\n\nYou will need a support person to accompany you to the surgeon's visit. Everyone who visits a specialist doctor should plan on having a \"second pair of ears.\" In some extreme cases in which no one is available, you can take an audio recording device along. Make sure to ask the doctor if they are comfortable with a recording being made. The recording device, while useful, is not as good as a friend or a family member, who will often be able to ask important questions and provide emotional support if the news is bad.\n\nQuestions to Ask Your Surgeon\n\n\u2022 Are you sure I need this surgery?\n\n\u2022 How many of these procedures have you done?\n\n\u2022 How long will I need to be out of work?\n\n\u2022 How much pain should I expect after surgery?\n\n\u2022 How long will I need to take pain medicine for afterwards?\n\n\u2022 How long will I be in the hospital following the procedure?\n\n\u2022 How long before I can drive again?\n\nMake sure you have a clear idea of the surgery that is planned. There are several possible surgical approaches that can be used for the treatment of a herniated disc. The extent of surgery will vary with the extent of back disease; for problems limited to a simple herniated disc, the planned surgery should be limited, but the specific approach will depend on the particular expertise of the surgeon and should be guided by his or her best judgment. The approaches used include an open discectomy, a micro-discectomy, and micro-endoscopic discectomy.\n\n#### **OPEN DISCECTOMY**\n\nOpen discectomy is the oldest, more established procedure. It involves an incision, perhaps two to three inches in length. Through this vertical incision on the back, the surgeon will cut or separate the layers of fat, muscle, and connective tissues that overlie the spine. There is a layer of bone that covers the spinal cord that must be passed through in order to access the spine. This bone consists of the posterior portions of the spinal vertebrae that are stacked, one on top of the other, to form a protective covering over the spinal cord. In the open discectomy, it is necessary to remove part of one of these, or parts of two adjacent vertebrae, using a technique called _laminectomy_ or _hemilaminectomy_. Once the bone is removed, it may be possible for the surgeon to see the spinal cord and its covering as well as the nerve root at that level. The disc herniation is usually just on the other side of the nerve root seen through the surgical incision. Removing the herniated disc material is done with specialized cutting tools once the nerve and spinal cord are protected from harm. The spinal cord may be gently held to the side using a tool called a retractor. Once the disc herniation is removed, the surgeon will begin to close the incision, often repairing the opening in the various layers by stitching with suture thread. Sutures come in various strengths and materials, and strong sutures are used in high-load areas like the back. The skin is the final layer that must be repaired to complete the surgery, and the skin incision may be repaired with sutures, staples, or other techniques. The recovery time for the open discectomy is usually longest of the three procedures, but the method offers a wide view of the problems in the spine, and may be preferred over micro-discectomy when certain conditions apply.\n\nWhat's New: Disc Location May Dictate the Outcome\n\nA recent analysis of a study on surgery for the treatment of herniated discs indicated that the effectiveness of the surgery at reducing pain depended in part on the location of the disc involved. The higher up in the low back, the better the chance of a positive outcome from surgery. It seems that the L5-S1 disc repairs were associated with less pain relief and lower levels of post-surgical functioning.\n\n#### **MICRO-DISCECTOMY**\n\nLike open discectomy, micro-discectomy is a procedure to remove a herniated disc but it is performed using a very small incision. Typically, a guiding catheter is positioned using an operating room X-ray machine called a fluoroscope. This guide catheter is much too small to allow the surgery to take place, so a series of progressively larger tubes are slid into place over the catheter in a process that enlarges (or dilates) the access path that the surgeon must take through the layers of fat, muscle, and connective tissue in the back. In this process, layers of fat and muscle are spread apart rather than cut, allowing for less local damage and perhaps contributing to the faster recovery times associated with this surgery. In order to visualize the disc herniation, it is still necessary to remove some of the posterior bone of the spine, so a partial laminectomy is done through the surgical access tube. A microscope is used to visualize the disc herniation as well as some of the spinal nerve elements (spinal cord and spinal nerve). The herniated disc material is removed using a specialized cutting tool that passes down through the surgical access tube. Once the disc herniation is removed, the tube can be removed with care and the incision in the skin repaired. Recovery times for micro-discectomy are generally faster than for open discectomy, although in both procedures, patients will generally begin walking the day of surgery.\n\nWhat's New: Young Adults Fare Well\n\nA recent study of people ages 20 to 35 with single-level disc herniation found that most of these young adults have great results: although five out of 67 people in the study had to have a second surgery for damage to another disc in the back, none of the people who answered the doctor's survey needed constant pain medicine, and most had returned to sports activities without undue pain.\n\nThe removal of bone (partial laminectomy) for a micro-discectomy\n\n#### **MICRO-ENDOSCOPIC DISCECTOMY**\n\nThe procedure for a micro-endoscopic discectomy, performed through a keyhole incision\n\nMicro-endoscopic discectomy is a procedure that is similar in many respects to the micro-discectomy. Instead of positioning a microscope over the end of the tube and looking down into the incision from outside, a fiber-optic camera is passed into the tube to visualize the structures of interest. The surgical instruments needed to perform the removal of the disc herniation are also passed through the tube as in the micro-discectomy but must then compete for limited maneuvering space with the miniature camera.\n\nWhat's New: The Risks and Costs of Micro-Endoscopic Discectomy\n\nA new study shows that micro-endoscopic discectomy may carry more risks than either open or micro-discectomy, and may in the end be more expensive. Make sure that you understand the specific plan for your surgery. If you feel uncomfortable or have reservations, try to discuss these openly. A second opinion can sometimes be very helpful for making the best medical decision.\n\n#### **PREPARATION FOR SURGERY**\n\nAfter you visit your surgeon's office for the first time, make sure to read over any materials that you receive from the doctor and the doctor's assistants or office staff. If you have any serious questions or worries, get in contact with the office and seek out advice from trusted sources. You may want to obtain a second opinion if you have lingering doubts about the plans for surgery. Once you make the decision to go forward, you will want to follow the surgeon's recommendations closely.\n\nYou will be told what to do to prepare for surgery. In most cases, you will instructed not to eat after midnight or perhaps earlier the evening before the surgery. Most surgeons begin operating early in the morning, so you may be checking in for the procedure before dawn. A pre-operative physical exam is often required before surgery; you may be asked to see your regular doctor for this or instructed to undergo a special pre-operative examination. Some additional tests may be ordered at this point to make sure that the medical risks for surgery are fully known and minimized.\n\n#### **WHAT TO EXPECT AFTER SURGERY**\n\nThe pace of recovery depends to some degree on the type of surgery that you have had for the herniated disc and on the type of work you are returning to. After an open discectomy, the time required before a return to work can be more than two weeks. The time for micro-discectomy may be sooner.\n\nAt first, it may not be possible to drive, especially after an open discectomy. Carefully follow your surgeon's instructions about driving. It stands to reason that (unless your surgeon says it's okay) no driving also means no flying airplanes, no downhill skiing, no boating, etc. It is surprising how often people with excellent common sense in other areas will try to circumvent the necessary restrictions on activity that follow back surgery. Try to remember that your back has undergone a sophisticated and expensive procedure. Your body needs time to heal and stitch itself back together; following the activity restrictions put in place by your surgeon will maximize your chances of getting a good result from surgery!\n\n  Warning! Follow Your Doctor's Orders for Limiting Activities\n\nIt is really important to respect the restrictions your surgeon places on activity following surgery. Overly aggressive \"rehabilitation\" outside the bounds set can cause delays in healing, a relapse of the problem, or sometimes a serious worsening in the back problem.\n\n#### **MEDICATIONS FOLLOWING SURGERY**\n\nYour surgeon may prescribe pain medication to control the pain after surgery. It's important to take pain medication as prescribed. Pain control is very important during the recovery period, as it will improve your chances of a good result and lessen the likelihood of persistent pain after surgery. Be sure to alert your surgeon if there is severe pain after surgery that doesn't respond to the pain medicine provided. Severe pain can be a sign of unexpected difficulties such as bleeding or infection. You will be able to gauge your need for the medications, as pain quickly escalates if a dose is skipped or delayed. For many people, the first three days after surgery are the worst from a pain perspective, and once this period passes, the need for pain medicine declines.\n\nMost of the medications used to control post-surgical pain are in the opioid drug family. These medications are notorious for causing constipation. This constipation can be a serious problem so you'll need to have a plan in place to minimize these effects. An additional pill may be prescribed to stimulate the bowels and a stool softener may also be prescribed. Discuss measures you would normally take for constipation with your doctor, including your usual routine. Helpful steps to take might include drinking some extra water every day, taking a glass of prune juice or eating some prunes, getting some extra fiber in the diet, or taking supplements. For many people, the constipation that follows with the post-surgical pain medications won't stop until the meds themselves are no longer used.\n\n#### **POST-SURGICAL PHYSICAL THERAPY**\n\nPhysical therapy is usually part of the recovery plan after back surgery, and a key element to making a full and successful recovery from disc herniation. It may begin with an assessment immediately after surgery, or start as late as three weeks post surgery. The inactivity that accompanied your back problem and the surgery may have weakened your back and stomach muscles. A guided program of strengthening, conditioning, and pain control is critical to preventing a relapse or recurrence of disc herniation. Ultimately, you will want to develop your own program of back exercise, but during the recovery from surgery, make sure any exercises you do are in line with the expectations of your surgeon and physical therapists.\n\n### Testing for Nerve Root Compression\n\nThe tests most commonly used to diagnose nerve root compression include the EMG\/NCS and the MRI. Neither of these tests is perfect and they serve complementary purposes.\n\nBe Prepared for Pain\n\nThe EMG is painful for most people; the degree of pain varies with the person and the particular muscle being studied. The hand and biceps muscles are especially painful. It can be painful if the needle enters the muscle near the point where the nerve connects to the muscle (muscle endplate or neuromuscular junction). Although the needle does produce very minor trauma to the muscle, it is an invaluable technique for learning about how the muscles and nerve are functioning: this is something the best MRI is not capable of doing.\n\n#### **ELECTROMYOGRAPHY AND NERVE CONDUCTION STUDIES**\n\nThe EMG\/NCS is a fundamentally important test for determining if there is damage to the nerves or nerve roots. The EMG portion of the test involves having a slender needle placed into one or more muscles. The specially designed needle is a high performance instrument designed to measure the electrical activity of the muscle with a minimum of noise and the best possible combination of signal detection and resolution. With this needle, it is usually possible to determine if the connection between brain and muscle is working well. Sometimes it is possible to detect prior injury to a nerve. Once the needle has been placed into the muscle, the doctor may just \"listen\" for a short while to see whether there is spontaneous activity in the muscle. The doctor may then ask you to tighten or contract the muscle. This makes it possible to see if the muscle is responding appropriately to the signals the brain is sending. It may be necessary to reposition the needle in the same muscle, and is usually necessary to test multiple muscles in this manner.\n\nThe EMG can be instrumental for pinpointing damage to a specific nerve root. However, the test results do depend to some extent on the technique and interpretation of the person conducting the test, and sometimes the test needs to be repeated. Early after a nerve injury, the signs of injury in the muscle are not as readily apparent. This is because following a nerve injury, a series of changes take place in the muscle that the nerve supplies. These changes make it easier to detect a nerve injury but are not well established until three weeks in most cases.\n\nEMG Test\n\nIf You Smoke, Stop!\n\nIf you are still smoking, now is the time to quit. Smoking will interfere with your recovery from surgery and is proven to decrease the success of surgery. Some surgeons will refuse to operate on current smokers. Smoking makes failed back syndrome (a condition where the patient has severe chronic pain even after back surgeries) more likely. Smoking will interfere with your ability to get aerobic exercise and get better from your back injury. In addition, it increases your risk for lung cancer by 10 times, increases your risk for having a heart attack, and increases health risks for those who are around you when you smoke. If you are unable to quit on your own, ask your doctor for help. One predictor of success at eventually quitting the nicotine habit is the willingness to quit again. So even if you've tried and failed before, don't be discouraged; resolve to start over.\n\n#### **PAINFUL BUT PURPOSEFUL NCS**\n\nThe other part of the EMG\/NCS series is the nerve conduction test (NCS). This test involves delivering a series of shocks to various nerves in the body and measuring the responses. The NCS usually precedes the EMG. There is currently no practical alternative to the NCS and the information obtained from the study can be invaluable for firming up a diagnosis. If your doctor suspects nerve root damage or radiculopathy, the NCS can be an important in excluding other nerve conditions and identifying specific nerve root syndromes.\n\nFor many people, the NCS is quite painful. It is often more painful for people with pre-existing nerve damage, such as that caused by diabetes. Young people are also especially susceptible to the pain of NCS, and finally, repetitive shocks are almost always much more painful than single shocks, but this depends on how closely timed the repeated shocks are. The NCS is painful because the skin not only is a barrier to the current needed to electrically stimulate the nerves underneath but it is richly innervated with pain-sensing fibers that will be directly stimulated by the electrical current.\n\nBecause the NCS can be so painful, some people have wondered if there is permanent damage. There is no evidence that NCS causes permanent damage; in fact, the NCS delivers electrical current to the nerve that activates the nerve in a very \"normal\" manner. In general, it has not been common practice to provide sedation or anxiety-relieving medications before the study. This may be because cooperation is required for the EMG, which is often paired with the NCS, and because some of the more common anxiety-relieving medications could interfere with some parts of the EMG study. It is best to bring a support person along to the EMG\/NCS, especially if you are not someone who takes great pride in being stoic!\n\n#### **MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING**\n\nThe MRI has become an instrumental part of confirming a diagnosis of nerve root injury. In a perfect world, a classical nerve root compression syndrome would show such a consistent and specific pattern of radiating pain and focal muscle weakness arising after a simple bending injury that an MRI would not be needed. However, in the real world, there are other causes of nerve root injury that are best assessed by MRI. Herniated discs are just one of the potential causes of nerve root injury, and MRI is an excellent test for assessing for the presence of other worrisome causes of nerve root compression.\n\nThe quality of the MRI is critical for the doctors reviewing the study and making decisions about your healthcare. Make sure to check with the doctor ordering the study for any pointers to facilities with good quality MRI studies. Some centers may be using machines that are out of date or older technology that will not produce a crisp picture of your back's structures. It is also critically important to hold perfectly still during many portions of the image acquisition process, so try to listen carefully to the MRI technicians instructions once your study is underway. Ask for a copy of the study so that you can keep this and bring it with you to the relevant healthcare appointments. Make sure to request that a copy of the report be sent to you (if possible) or your primary care doctor's office, as well as to any specialist that may have requested the MRI. If you have a history of claustrophobia, this may factor into your decision to choose open over closed MRI. Early \"open MRI\" images were not always of the best quality because of the technological challenges involved in producing a uniform magnetic field in the open MRI configuration. The need for a strong, highly uniform magnetic field is why MRI machines tend to consist of a relatively tight fitting tube into which you slide for the study. The MRI rapidly pulses a strong magnetic field over the body and records the \"relaxation\" of the atomic nuclei as they reorient spontaneously when the field is very briefly switched off. This magnetization process occurs many times during the standard MRI study and accounts for the loud noise of most MRI scanners.\n\n#### **IS IT DANGEROUS TO HAVE AN MRI?**\n\nPeople often wonder if MRI is dangerous. It is not. MRI is probably the safest imaging technology available. Unlike CT scans, there is no radiation, so there is no reason to worry about MRI increasing your risk of cancer. Unlike ultrasound, there is very little energy transfer despite all the banging sounds that may emanate from the machine. The tight-fitting spaces of MRI machines and the loud noise of most scanners can be mildly intimidating and uncomfortable, but listening to music and\/or maintaining a state of mental calm by focusing on the value of the test are usually sufficient to offset most worries.\n\nYour doctor may offer premedication for the test if you express concerns, anticipate feeling claustrophobia, or have a history of anxiety with MRI. Remember that taking a pre-MRI anxiety-relieving medication probably means that you will need a driver to take you home after. Although MRI cannot \"see everything,\" it does offer a dazzlingly detailed picture that can detect problems as small as a grain of rice. It also has the capability to detect changes in the body due to inflammation.\n\n  Warning! Make Medications Known\n\nBecause the EMG is a test that is invasive, if minimally so, it is important to make sure that the lab knows what medications you are taking in advance of the test. Especially if you are taking a blood thinner, the electrodiagnostic lab needs this information, and you should again notify the doctor before allowing the test to be done if blood-thinning medications are part of your medical regimen. If you have problems with blood clotting, it is important to make sure this part of your medical history is discussed as well.\n\n#### **WHAT HAPPENS IN THE DOCTOR'S OFFICE?**\n\nYour doctor or practitioner may perform some basic maneuvers to determine if nerve root injury is the cause of your back pain. This will probably include testing the muscles in your legs to determine if they have full strength. The practitioner may test sensation, trying to determine if there is any pattern of sensory loss. Most often, this is done with a sharp stick or pin. Reflexes will probably be tested using a reflex hammer as part of an assessment for nerve root damage. Although some of the nerve roots in the back don't result in lost reflexes when damaged, the classical finding of a \"dropped\" reflex in the ankle, in concert with other abnormalities, may indicate a specific nerve root arising from the back is damaged.\n\nThe practitioner may attempt to determine if there are signs of nerve root tension or compression by performing the straight-leg raise test. In this test, the patient is usually asked lie back on a table. This may be uncomfortable for you in the acute phases of back injury, so be sure to let your examiner know what movements or positions are especially painful. While you are lying on your back, the doctor or practitioner will ask you to relax while they gradually lift one leg, with the knee straight, bending at the hip. He or she should ask you to report if the movement becomes painful at any point but be sure to point out if much pain does occur and indicate where the pain is. Pain in the back of the leg can be just \"tight hamstrings,\" but pain in the lower back that comes on suddenly as the leg is raised has classically been interpreted as supportive of nerve root injury. After the leg is raised to 90 degrees or to the point of maximum tolerable pain, the leg is gradually lowered and the test repeated on the opposite side. All the pieces of information from the examination should be interpreted together with the history you have provided during the visit and through other communications. As noted above, the most common presentation of nerve root injury is pain and weakness together but variations do occur and the exam is a way of sorting out the contributions of various back problems.\n\n  Warning! MRI and Metals Don't Mix\n\nIf you have a pacemaker, electrical implants, or a history of working in the metals industry, you need to check with the radiology center and your doctor before having an MRI. In these situations and selected others, the presence of metal in the body can pose a hazard and means that MRI cannot be done.\n\nOne twist in all of this is that nerve root injury often occurs as a result of damage to a disc, whether herniation, protrusion, or bulging tear. The damaged disc may itself be painful and will produce a pain that is more central in the back and may be acutely worse with the movements required to get into position for the straight leg raise test and other parts of the exam. This active overlay of disc pain on top of nerve root pain may be difficult for some less \"pain expert\" clinicians to sort out. Don't give up hope if your doctor doesn't immediately understand everything that's going on with your back. You may need to go to the next level and seek out more expert care, but make sure that if you have pain severe enough to stop you from going to work or school that you are actively looking for answers as to why it still hurts. The examination findings of nerve root injury can be subtle in some cases, especially if someone is confused about the overall picture of your pain.\n\n### The Explanation\n\nThe nerves that arise from the spinal cord stream downward as they spiral around to the front of the body from the back. When injured, the nerves send out pain signals that can be felt at some distance from where the injury actually is located in the back. The pain of an injured nerve can be deep and aching or electrical and shooting, or bizarrely painful and difficult to describe.\n\nRadiating back pain is the classic description given to pain that is caused by a pinched nerve in the back. Typically, this is caused by a herniated disc, although other problems can produce these same symptoms. A herniated disc is the usual cause when symptoms come on suddenly and after a particular event: bending to lift, sneezing hard, jumping off from a height. A pain is called _radiating_ when there is a component of the pain in one location and another, seemingly related pain nearby. In the case of the lower back pain due to a herniated disc and nerve compression, there may be one pain in the back and another component that extends down into the leg on that side. The first thing that leaps to the mind of most doctors when they hear about radiating back pain is the possibility of a nerve root compression due to a herniated disc. Although there are other causes of radiating back pain, such as compression of the sciatic nerve in the buttock, the classic association is with a pinched nerve due to a slipped disc.\n\nQuestions Your Doctor Will Ask\n\n**Does the pain in your leg extend below the knee?** Pain below the knee is more often associated with the most common forms of nerve root compression. Pain that does not extend below the knee may mean there is a pinched nerve higher in the back, or that another problem is causing your pain.\n\n**Do you have a detectable area of numbness?** You can test this using gentle pressure with a toothpick. Not everyone with nerve root compression will have an area of appreciable numbness. When numbness is present, you should alert your doctor to this so that he or she can investigate the pattern and see if this fits together with nerve root compression syndrome.\n\n**Do you have weakness in one or more specific leg muscles?** People with nerve compression syndrome (radiculopathy) may have difficulty with one or more of the following:\n\n\u2022 rising from a squat\n\n\u2022 walking up on tip-toe\n\n\u2022 walking on the heels\n\nIf you check these areas and notice that something doesn't seem right, be sure to notify your healthcare provider when you are seen. If you decide to try these maneuvers at home, make sure to have someone with you to provide support should you have any unsteadiness or difficulty.\n\nIn most situations, back pain caused by a compressed nerve root in the back is very severe. Often described as eight on a scale of 10 or greater, the pain can take on one of several guises. The pain can begin with some subtleness, worsening progressively over a few days, or with a popping sensation while lifting and evolve fairly rapidly to an incapacitating severity. It can be fairly mild for a period and then suddenly worsen. The one thing these pains have in common is an element of pain in the back and an element of pain running down into the leg.\n\nThe precise location of radiating back pain in the leg will vary depending on which nerve root is endangered. There are several nerve roots arising from the lower part of the spine and each one of these nerves, when compressed, will produce a particular pattern of pain and limitations in function. The most common root to be damaged is the L5 root, the 5th lumbar root. This nerve comes out from the lower back, descends into the leg by passing deep through the buttock, and spirals around the back of the thigh to supply sensation to the top of the foot. If the nerve root is seriously compressed and functionally disabled by the pressure on it in the back, specific muscles will be weak\u2014in this case, the muscles that control the lifting of the foot and the ability to turn the foot from side to side. Sometimes people with nerve damage at the L5 level will have difficulty with frequent tripping because this nerve controls the muscles that lift the front of the foot as we walk. Frequent toe catching can also result from damage to the L4 nerve root or to problems in other parts of the nervous system. When the S1 nerve root is damaged, people may have difficulty walking on toes. This may not be as noticeable but may lead to some fatigue with walking or some difficulties at reaching high objects where stretching up is required. Compression of the L3 nerve root can be more subtle to detect, as the pain may or may not extend below the knee and the weakness may be in the thigh muscles. Since L3 nerve root compression is less common, some physicians may not be as familiar with this pattern.\n\nRadiating pain\n\nIn some cases, when the pain is very severe or persistent, the person can actually perceive the pain as occurring partially in the opposite leg as well. This probably has to do with how the body handles profound pain signals with the overflow from one side spilling onto to the opposite side. Recent research indicates that the phenomenon of opposite side pain (contralateral pain) may be due to the activation of the glial cells that are present in the spinal cord. Normally, these glial cells provide much needed nutrient support to the nerve cells, but in certain situations, like profound pain, the glial cells can become abnormally activated, and this activation has been associated with pain spreading to the opposite limb. There are no medical treatment strategies currently targeting the glial cell activation process; however, it has been hypothesized that early, aggressive pain treatment may help prevent the changes leading to chronic pain states.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Freynhagen, R., R. Rolke, R. Baron, T.R. T\u00f6lle, A.K. Rutjes, S. Schu, and R.D. Treede. 2008. Pseudoradicular and radicular low-back pain\u2014a disease continuum rather than different entities? Answers from quantitative sensory testing. _Pain_ 135 (1-2): 65\u201374.\n\n2. Bolton, J.E. and M.N. Christensen. 1994. Back pain distribution patterns: Relationship to subjective measures of pain severity and disability. _J Manipulative Physiol Ther_ 17 (4): 211\u20138.\n\n3. Gregory, D.S., et al. 2008. Acute lumbar disk pain: navigating evaluation and treatment choices. _American Family Physician_ 78 (7): 835\u201342.\n\n4. Selby, Anna. _Banish Back Pain the Pilates Way_. London: Thorsons, 2003.\n\n5. McKenzie, Robin and Craig Kuby. _7 Steps To A Pain-Free Life: How To Rapidly Relieve Back and Neck Pain_. New York: Plume, 2001.\n\n6. Cox, James. _Low Back Pain: Mechanism, Diagnosis and Treatment_. Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 1999.\n\n7. Hochschuler, Stephen and Bob Reznik. _Treat Your Back Without Surgery: The Best Non-Surgical Alternatives for Eliminating Back and Neck Pain_. Alameda, CA: Hunter House Inc., 2002.\n\n8. McKenzie, Robin. _Treat Your Own Back_. Minneapolis, MN: Orthopedic Physical Therapy Products, 2006.\n\n9. Brownstein, Art. _Healing Back Pain Naturally_. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.\n\n10. Filler, Aaron. _Do You Really Need Back Surgery?_ New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.\n\n11. Larson, Sanford and Dennis Maiman. _Surgery of the Lumbar Spine_. New York: Thieme, 1999.\n\n12. Lurie, J.D., S.C. Faucett, B. Hanscom, T.D. Tosteson, P.A. Ball, W.A. Abdu, J.W. Frymoyer, and J.N. Weinstein. 2008. Lumbar discectomy outcomes vary by herniation level in the Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial. _J Bone Joint Surg Am_. 90 (9): 1811\u20139.\n\n13. Dollinger, V., A.A. Obwegeser, M. Gabl, P. Lackner, M. Koller, and K. Galiano. 2008. Sporting activity following discectomy for lumbar disc herniation. _Orthopedics_ 31 (8): 756.\n\n14. Teli, M., A. Lovi, M. Brayda-Bruno, A. Zagra, A. Corriero, F. Giudici, and L. Minoia. 2010. Higher risk of dural tears and recurrent herniation with lumbar micro-endoscopic discectomy. _Eur Spine J_ [Epub].\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**What is the difference between a disc bulge, a disc protrusion, and a herniated disc?**\n\nA disc bulge is a bulging out of a disc in such a way that there is no fundamental compromise of the ordinary relationship between the disc core (nucleus pulposus) and the tough exterior of the disc (annulus fibrosis). Disc bulges are incredibly common. There is no evidence to suggest that a disc bulge is necessarily painful, and a disc bulge alone, in the absence of other spine problems, should not result in a compressed nerve.\n\nA disc protrusion is a focal pouching out of the nerve. In many instances, a disc protrusion is felt to represent a type of disc herniation in which the core of the disc has breached the tough outer ring, but has not extended through the ligament (posterior longitudinal ligament) that lies between the disc and the spinal canal. In some instances, a disc protrusion is a radiologist's term that is used when a disc bulge assumes a particular geometry such that the disc pouches out very sharply from the regular contours of the disc.\n\nA disc herniation is an abnormal state in which the inner contents of the disc (nucleus pulposus) have pushed through the tough exterior of the disc. Whether the disc contents have pushed up to the posterior longitudinal ligament, pushed through the ligament, or burst through the ligament and separated from the disc proper determines whether the herniation will be described as a contained herniation, a disc extrusion, or a sequestered disc herniation, respectively. It is important to distinguish between the different forms of herniation as the treatments and likelihood of success will vary according to the diagnosis.\n\n**My doctor says I have a disc fragment.**  \nWhat is that? Occasionally, the force of an injury that leads a disc to herniate is so great that a piece of the disc literally breaks off as the disc contents burst through the tough outer covering of the disc. This is referred to as a _disc fragment_ or a _sequestered disc_. To visualize the difference, first imagine squeezing some toothpaste from a tube with your hands as you normally would. The ribbon of toothpaste usually stays attached to the tube until you stop squeezing and move your toothbrush away. Now imagine you took that same uncapped tube of toothpaste, placed it on the floor, and stomped hard with your foot. The toothpaste would fly out of the tube and a piece of the toothpaste would separate from the tube and the rest of the toothpaste. This is like a disc fragment; when it is separated from the rest of the disc, it can move around within the spinal canal, potentially lodging up against a nerve root and causing severe pain.\n\nDisc fragment or sequestered disc pushing on the nerve root.\n\n## CHAPTER 3  \nTorn and Painful Discs\n\n**Physical therapy, patience, and multiple medications are often necessary.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Do you have pain located primarily in the mid-line (center) of the back?\n\n**>** Does your pain seem to worsen with almost any activity?\n\nPain that is most strongly felt in the center of the back (at the mid-line) and gets worse with sitting, standing, rising up, bending forward, or coughing and sneezing is usually due to disc injury. You may have a torn disc, especially if your pain started fairly suddenly after an accident, lifting something too heavy, or some other identifiable mishap.\n\nSometimes, disc pain relates to an accumulated injury and may be associated with damage to the top or bottom of the disc. In both of these situations, the pain can be mild-to-moderate when a person is resting the back, as when he or she lies still with the legs supported or with the body curled up in fetal position. This pain can suddenly get worse with standing or sitting, as pressure on the disc rises rapidly in these positions. If this sounds like your situation, you may have discogenic pain. Read on!\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nBack pain due to a damaged disc presents special challenges and requires knowledgeable medical assessment and care. Because the disc is not a bony structure, it cannot be seen on X-ray, and for this reason, an MRI of the back will be needed as a first diagnostic test when disc problems are suspected. Disc pain can be expected to have a much longer recovery course than pain due to simple muscle strain. Disc pain may respond to an intensive course of physical therapy and can even benefit from pain medicine injections.\n\nIf you have a torn disc (sometimes referred to as an annular disc tear):\n\n\u2022 Your doctor should recommend physical therapy, especially if there is substantial pain with movement.\n\n\\- Physical therapy can take a lot of effort. Especially after the first phases where the focus of therapy may be getting you more comfortable and reducing associated muscle spasm, you'll be expected to do specific exercises every day.\n\n\\- Sometimes physical therapy seems to make the pain a bit worse; this is part of the strengthening processes. Severe pain should be discussed with your doctor and therapist, but a certain amount of recuperation pain is to be expected.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor should prescribe or recommend some medicine to control the pain.\n\n\\- Make sure that you understand the instructions for taking the medicine. When pain is limiting your ability to work, make sure you ask about taking the medicine \"around the clock\" or on a \"time-contingent\" basis rather than \"as needed.\"\n\n\\- Be aware of potential side effects (bothersome symptoms that arise in people taking the medicine) as well as the potential for adverse events. Adverse events are more problematic than side effects; they will vary depending on the pain medicine used, and can include a risk of gastrointestinal bleeding, severe constipation, or other problems.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may refer you to a pain medicine specialist, especially if there is a severe degree of pain that is not responding fully to medications that you take by mouth.\n\n\\- For an isolated disc tear with severe pain, injections can help.\n\n\\- Injection of medicine into the disc area is associated with improved pain control in the first weeks after injection.\n\n\\- Long-term effects are minimal; if you'd rather not have an injection, don't worry that your prospects for recovery are necessarily dimmer.\n\n\\- When a disc tear is part of a more complex back problem, injections can help define the components that are causing pain.\n\nIf you have a disrupted disc (sometimes referred to as _end-plate damage_ ):\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend physical therapy.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor should prescribe or recommend some medicine to control the pain.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend that you see an interventional pain medicine specialist because injections can sometimes help.\n\n\u2022 In severe cases, your doctor may recommend a surgical evaluation.\n\nThe Good News\n\nPeople with torn discs typically recover fully.\n\nThe process of recovery can leave you with a stronger, healthier back.\n\nA disc with a major tear. Note the torn edges of the disc and the disc core material pushing through.\n\nWhen to See a Physiatrist\n\nSome doctors don't recognize disc tears as a potential source of strong pain, and they may dismiss the report of these findings in the MRI report. If your back hurts a lot and your doctor says there's nothing wrong, make sure you have copies of all your back images and the reports of those, then find a provider who is very knowledgeable about back problems. Often times, physical medicine and rehabilitation specialists known as _physiatrists_ are especially attuned to problems relating to injury and repair of the spine.\n\n### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR DIAGNOSES A BULGING DISC?**\n\nIn this case, physical therapy and exercise are usually best. Bulging discs have been reported to be very common in the normal, \"pain-free\" population. Nonetheless, people vary greatly in the degree of pain they may experience for a particular problem. If your doctor reports that a bulging disc is the only thing wrong with your back and you still cannot function properly due to back pain, you may want to look elsewhere for answers and support.\n\nAs long as you don't have any of the red flags (see Chapter 1) of back pain, it's usually okay to pursue a course of back strengthening and stretching. Physical therapy isn't likely to produce lasting damage and can result in a stronger back that puts less pressure on an irritated disc. You may want to read through the second half of this book where lifestyle choices for a better back are covered in detail.\n\n### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR FINDS THAT YOU HAVE DISC DEGENERATION?**\n\nAs the back ages, the discs gradually become less spongy and resilient. This is not necessarily associated with pain, and in fact may reduce the chances that a disc will be herniated when subjected to strong stresses. A severely degenerated disc can be associated with pain, whether due to chronic inflammation (arthritis), a loss of the disc height leading to nerve root compression, or chronic activation of pain fibers in the area. There are some cases where a degenerated disc is severe enough to warrant surgical intervention. Degeneration of the spine is covered in more detail in Chapter 11.\n\nIn rare cases, central back pain may be due to a mass (tumor), an infection (abcess), or a spinal malformation. These causes of central back pain are readily assessed through MRI and the other diagnostic tests that are widely used. The treatment for these conditions is individualized.\n\nCutaway view of the spine showing the location of the vertebral endplate relative to the disc core and the outer ring of the disc.\n\n### The Treatment\n\nWhen your doctor recommends physical therapy, realize that this is a wonderful part of modern medicine. Most physical therapists are drawn to this work through an intense desire to promote human health and fitness. Several different kinds of treatment are included in the realm of physical therapy that will be useful for the treatment of vertebral disc problems: thermal therapies, manual therapies, electrical stimulation therapies, traction\/inversion therapies, and conditioning and strengthening.\n\n#### **THERMAL THERAPIES ARE HOT AND COLD**\n\nAlthough we traditionally think of using ice during the first forty-eight hours after an injury, ice continues to be a useful part of pain control and improves outcomes with physical therapy. Because your physical therapy program will progress to exercises that will push your muscles to new levels of strength and performance, ice may be used at the end of sessions. Icing then will help reduce the pain of muscle strain and stress on the disc as you are working on the strengthening and conditioning parts of the physical therapy program. If your physical therapist is not offering ice at the end of each session and you think it would be helpful, go ahead and ask. The best physical therapists are open to suggestions and will check with your doctor about this if necessary.\n\n#### **MANUAL THERAPIES REDUCE PRESSURE ON THE DISC**\n\nOne way that manual therapy can help is by addressing the position and alignment of the vertebrae. Although not all physical therapists are skilled in this area, some have the capacity to make gentle adjustments to the spine and improve the alignment of the vertebral column. This can really relieve the pressure on a disc as the bones are coaxed back into their proper relative positions. Another way that manual therapy can help is by addressing the profound muscle spasms that frequently accompany disc damage.\n\n#### **ELECTRICAL STIMULATION THERAPY IS WIDELY ACCEPTED**\n\nIn this technique, small, rapid electrical impulses are transmitted to the body through \"sticky-pad\" electrodes. These electrical impulses can cause the muscle to relax, which may loosen some of the pressure on the disc that nearby muscles in spasm can produce. Because the injured disc signals pain to the spinal cord, and this can result in a reflex signal to neighboring muscles to contract, muscle spasm is a frequent accompaniment to disc-related pain.\n\n#### **TRACTION AND INVERSION THERAPIES ARE HELPFUL**\n\nWith traction, the disc will bulge less, and the resting pressure on the disc will be lowered, potentially relieving pain. Traction can range from milder forms that involve putting the legs up on a triangular bolster to more aggressive forms, which require the use of weights and even belts. Inversion therapy can be very effective in reducing painful pressures on injured discs. There are different approaches to using inversion in a physical therapy regimen. (See Chapter 20.)\n\n#### **STRENGTHENING AND CONDITIONING ARE MAINSTAYS**\n\nThere are many great exercises to help strengthen the back muscles. Your physical therapist can guide you through a sequence that is most appropriate to your back and pain level. A good place to start after a disc injury is by doing the pelvic tilt exercise. In this exercise, you strengthen the anterior abdominal muscles that are so critical to supporting the spine. You begin by lying on the back with the hips flexed and the knees bent. Gently at first, but gradually more strongly, tighten the abdominal muscles as you roll the front of the pelvis toward the chest. If you are having strong back pain, this movement may need to be very gentle at first; an almost subtle change in position may be all that is possible without increasing the pain. Hold this pelvic tilt for three seconds and then relax. Repeat this five times on the first day, but increase the length of hold and the number of repetitions each day.\n\n#### **ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES TO PHYSICAL THERAPY**\n\nKeep in mind that physical therapy is very effective for many types of back trouble, especially problems relating to discs. One great advantage of physical therapy is that it can turn the focus of your attention away from what is wrong and gradually improve your ability to do the things you enjoy. By reducing the need for medication over the long-term, physical therapy can help you avoid the awful side effects of most pain medications: mental cloudiness, memory loss, sleepiness, constipation, and sexual dysfunction. In fact, increased physical activity can help improve mood, memory, and sleep!\n\nOn the down side, physical therapy does frequently result in a temporary increase in pain or discomfort. If you're having a lot of pain after PT, make sure to let your therapist know. It's normal to feel like you've worked hard in physical therapy, and sometimes it's okay to feel a bit more pain in the first day or two after a physical therapy session. If your back pain is bad enough to interfere with activities at work or home, you should seek some physical therapy and expect to work hard on your way to getting great results.\n\n### Pain Medication Injections\n\nIf you are referred to an interventional pain specialist right away, chances are that your doctor thinks an injection of pain medication may be helpful to getting you back on track. The injection of pain medication into the area of an injured disc is a well-established pain medicine technique that can be very helpful for the immediate relief of pain.\n\nThe limitations of this approach are that in many cases, the injection will not result in lasting improvements, and clinical trials have suggested that the effects on long-term function cannot be proven. Moreover, these pain injections cannot be repeated over and over. This is because, in addition to local anesthetic\u2014which provides immediate pain relief but wears off over the course of a day or two\u2014most pain injections also include a long or intermediate-acting steroid. The steroid is helpful in terms of providing pain relief over the days to weeks that follow the injection. The problem is that steroids, when given repeatedly, have been associated with problems like abscess formation, diabetes, osteoporosis, and worse. For these reasons, a pain injection for disc injury is best used as a bridging strategy to get a person over a rough patch, pain-wise. It is not a long-term solution. Nonetheless, if the pain is unbearable and is interfering with your ability to function, getting some immediate pain relief is valuable as a goal.\n\n#### **NERVE-DESTROYING CHEMICALS WORK TEMPORARILY**\n\nThe injection of nerve-destroying chemicals into an area is intended to disrupt the pain-sensing fibers and block pain signals arising from an injured or irritated area in the back. The problem with this approach is that nerves will almost always grow back and sometimes more painfully so than before. The long-term outcomes of patients receiving injections of nerve-destroying chemicals for pain have indicated that pain problems may be better temporarily, but often return worse than ever over the ensuing few months.\n\nWhat's New: The European Gastro-Protective View\n\nThe primary limitation of using NSAIDs is the occurrence of serious problems in the digestive tract, including bleeding from the stomach and intestines. The number of people who experience life-threatening bleeding with the use of NSAIDs is believed to be much higher in the U.S. than in Europe. The reason for this is thought to be the widespread use of \"gastro-protective\" medications in combination with NSAIDs in Europe. Because the phenomenon of bleeding from the stomach is so common with NSAIDs, some doctors have adopted the strategy of always prescribing a medicine to protect the stomach whenever NSAIDs are prescribed.\n\nYour doctor may recommend that you take ibuprofen with meals. In Europe, they go one step further and instruct patients to take an acid-reducing medication at the time of using NSAIDs. Examples of these medications might include ranitidine (Zantac), cimetidine (Tagamet), or Omeprazole (Prilosec). Some of these medicines are now available over the counter, meaning they can be obtained without a prescription.\n\nAlthough it's sometimes uncomfortable to think about taking two medicines when only one is _really needed_ , evidence indicates that Europeans are very successful in preventing the bleeding complications of NSAIDs, whereas estimates are that 30,000 Americans each year require medical attention for gastrointestinal bleeding due to NSAIDs! Make sure you discuss both NSAIDs and anti-ulcer (gastro-protective) medications with your doctor.\n\n#### **SPINAL CORD STIMULATION MASKS PAIN WITH A BUZZ**\n\nIf your disc-related pain problem is very chronic and painful, your doctor may speak with you about a spinal cord stimulator trial. The spinal cord stimulator is a high-tech approach to a persistent pain problem. It requires the placement of a precision-engineered electrical contact strip on the posterior surface of the spine. To be effective, the stimulator strip must be positioned over the spinal cord in just the right place to block the pain signal from reaching the brain. For this reason, spinal cord stimulators are first \"trialed\" before permanently placed.\n\nWhile the spinal cord stimulator can be very effective in reducing the sensation of pain, it does nothing to correct the underlying problem with the back. When the stimulator is correctly positioned and turn on, most people will feel a buzzing or tingling sensation in place of their usual pain. Although the buzzing can feel rather distracting at first, it is much preferable to the sensation of strong pain.\n\nThe strip electrode is connected via wires tunneled under the skin to a control unit that is often located just under the skin in the lower abdomen. The control unit contains batteries and a programmable control element. Working with a trained specialist, a person who has a spinal cord stimulator can progressively change the settings to fine-tune the area of coverage (the part of the body that perceives the buzzing) as well as changing the stimulus program by increasing or decreasing the intensity and pattern of electrical signals to the stimulator's contact strip. Although many patients report dramatic pain relief with the spinal cord stimulator, it is often the case that some pain medication will still be required for optimal pain control. The advantage is that pain control is often better overall after the stimulator and even if medications continue, doses are often lower, leading to fewer side effects.\n\n### Taking Medications by Mouth\n\nDisc-related pain can be very strong in the first several weeks after an injury. What distinguishes disc-related pain from an ordinary muscle strain is the much, much longer time that is required for most people to recover from a disc injury. Muscle strain typically lasts a few days; disc pain can last three to four months in the more severe cases. In addition, the pain due to a disc injury typically relates to the degree of inflammation that occurs after a disc injury. Although some inflammation is needed for healing, the usual experience is that controlling inflammation will speed recovery and decrease pain. For this reason, it is usually necessary to take medications that control both inflammation and pain after disc injury; more than one medication may be needed.\n\n#### **NSAIDS BLOCK PAIN SIGNALS**\n\nOne mainstay of treatment for disc-related back pain is the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, or NSAID. NSAIDs are valuable medications because they both block pain signaling and can reduce the body's inflammatory responses to the injury. A broad class of drugs, NSAIDs have been widely used by millions and millions of people. Although there are rare cases of allergy and drug reactions, for most people these medicines are extremely effective at reducing pain, and when used properly, are quite safe. The best known NSAID is ibuprofen, sold as Advil and Motrin.\n\nIbuprofen is a very effective pain-reducing medication. Available at your pharmacy, ibuprofen comes in 200 mg tablets. The recommended dosage for an adult is usually two tablets. There are important guidelines for using this medication of the bottle, so please read the fine print. At the 400 mg dose, the medication is expected to relieve pain for four to six hours. This can mean that you'd get partway through a night's sleep and wake up in pain. Another factor is the weight or size of the person taking the medicine. A person weighing 110 lbs will get more benefit from this dosage than a 240-lb person. You should discuss with your healthcare provider whether ibuprofen is the best medicine for you. In some cases, physicians will prescribe a stronger dose of ibuprofen, but remember, the more medication, the more side effects. The higher doses, while potentially more effective, will increase the risk for gastrointestinal bleeding. You should not fill a prescription for high-strength ibuprofen without understanding your gastro-protective strategy.\n\nAnother NSAID gaining popularity is naproxen, which is sold under several names including Naprosyn and Aleve. Your doctor can prescribe this medication, but it is now available over the counter as well. This medicine is used at doses that begin around 200 mg. For many people, this medication is very effective against pain, and it has the advantage that pain relief may last longer, perhaps six to eight hours. You doctor can prescribe longer-lasting NSAIDs or medications that have a different side-effect profile. In some cases, a physician will choose to prescribe opioids for back pain.\n\nYou will need to communicate clearly and calmly with your healthcare provider about your pain. If you feel like you're being ignored, patronized, or belittled, try to find another provider who will listen to your report of pain. If you really do have a disc injury, the recovery course can stretch out over several weeks and sometimes a few months. You don't want to be in more than mild pain for that long a period. Sometimes making a pain calendar or a daily log of your pain intensity, recorded on a zero-to-ten scale, can be a helpful communication tool and may illustrate what you're going through to someone who would otherwise have difficulty understanding how serious the problem really is.\n\n  **Warning! For Those at Risk for Heart and Kidney Disease**\n\nNSAIDs are associated with a small increase in the risk of heart attack and acute kidney failure., Both of these effects are very, very small at ordinary doses of these medicines, but if you are at risk for heart disease or have a family history of kidney disease, you should discuss these concerns with your doctor so that an informed decision can be made. You may want to learn more by visiting the American Heart Association's website for patients: www.hearthub.org. If you have high blood pressure, a risk factor for both heart disease and kidney disease, you should discuss NSAIDs with your doctor before starting a course of therapy with these medicines.\n\n#### **MULTIPLE MEDICATIONS MAY BE NECESSARY**\n\nThe pain of a disc injury may be due to multiple mechanisms: one relating to the actual pain-sensing of the injury, one related to the inflammation that results as your body tries to repair the disc, and one related to the response of the nearby nerves to the release of nerve-irritating substances which may have been release from the disc at the time of injury. For this reason, it is very important to recognize that more than one medication may be needed to control the pain. People with disc injuries may require one medicine to help reduce the inflammation-related component of pain (an NSAID, for example), one medicine to help control the pain (sometimes an NSAID, sometimes another medication), and one medicine to reduce the neuropathic pain, if any is present (a medication such as gabapentin, for example). Although it's always better to keep to one medicine for a problem if one is enough, there are usually multiple aspects contributing to pain after disc injury, and multiple medicines may be appropriate. Make sure to discuss this with your doctor or other healthcare provider.\n\n### Testing For Disc Injury\n\nSome doctors may resist ordering an MRI, as they have been taught that all back pain not associated with demonstrable nerve root damage is best treated by ordering the least number of tests and by dispensing more pain killers. The problem with this approach is that it does not recognize the very special needs of patients with disc problems.\n\n#### **MRI PLAYS AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN DIAGNOSIS**\n\nMagnetic Resonance Images have been very helpful in clarifying the nature of disc injury. In fact, MRI is essential for defining disc injury as a cause of back pain. One well-researched study concluded that it was impossible to make the diagnosis of disc injury on clinical exam alone and that MRI was required.\n\nThe value of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in guiding the treatment of people with low back pain has been dramatically downplayed in the medical literature. Disc pain is terribly intense for many, if not most, people. It takes an exceptionally long time to recover from new disc pain, and MRI is quite good at detecting new disc damage. In fact, a 1992 study showed that MRI very selectively identified people with disc damage (few false-positive results) and was very powerful in terms of predicting severe disc damage. The real limitation may be that many doctors are not properly educated about recognizing disc-related back problems\u2014they may not have had more than one or two hours of education about spine problems in all four years of medical school!\n\nWhat We Don't Know: Recovery Times After Disc Injury\n\nThere is no definitive study describing the time course of recovery after a disc tear or a diagnosis of internal disc disruption. As with any study, there are limits, but better information about what to expect in the recovery course from disc injury would be most welcome. Stay tuned!\n\nIf you have back pain, getting an MRI can be the difference between night and day. By identifying a significant disc problem, you can anticipate a much longer recovery course that will require more intensive efforts at pain control and more physical therapy. If you don't have an MRI and you actually do have an injured disc, you will most likely have substantial pain that takes a long time to improve; however, you won't have a lot of physical evidence to prove that you have a real problem. You may experience pressure from your employer, your health insurer, and others to get back to work. Because disc injuries can take weeks and sometimes months to heal, you will be faced with a very difficult situation trying to defend your pain as real and possibly being pressured to make choices that will interfere with speedy and full recovery. If your doctor fails to recognize the true nature of the problem, you may end up with a denied claim for short-term disability coverage, or worse yet, out of a job.\n\n#### **PROVACATIVE DISCOGRAPHY IS A MORE INVASIVE TEST FOR PAIN**\n\nProvacative discography is a test wherein a small catheter-needle is placed into the core of the disc using fluoroscopic (multi-directional, low-intensity X-ray) guidance. Once positioning of the catheter-needle in the disc core is confirmed with dye, tracer is injected into the disc under pressure. The pressure is quite intense and is intended to stress the disc, partially simulating the pressures of bending and lifting. If this pressurization of the disc causes pain that is like the pain the patient normally feels, it will be labeled \"concordant pain.\" For the test to be truly diagnostic, however, the doctor performing the test must also place the catheter-needle into at least one other disc in the back and pressurize that disc. If that disc is normal, it should not reproduce the pain that is usually felt.\n\nTracer is used in these injections because it allows the doctor to also make an assessment of the physical integrity of the disc. If dye stays contained within the core of the disc, then the disc structure is normal. If dye begins to leak out and demonstrates cracks, tears, or ruptures of the disc structures, this is supportive of internal disc disruption as a diagnosis. Part of this study is expected to somewhat painful, but it should occur in a controlled setting and any severe pain should be reported to the staff immediately. For the test to be most helpful, those present should not tell the patient which disc is being tested prior to putting pressure into the system, as this could influence the outcome of the test.\n\n### The Explanation\n\nCentral back pain that worsens with standing or pressure on the back is the classic description given to pain caused by an injured vertebral disc. Most often, central back pain is a challenge because the limitations on how much a person can move without provoking pain can be very constraining. For most people, it's impossible to work a normal schedule if every time you sit or stand for more than five minutes, your back begins to scream out in pain.\n\n#### **ANATOMY OF A DISC**\n\nThe vertebral disc is a sometimes tough, sometimes resilient structure in the back that is central to making the spine both flexible and strong. However, the disc is subjected to many pressures and strains, especially when heavy objects are lifted or when accidental injury occurs. A disc that is injured or damaged by tearing at the edge can push into the adjacent vertebral bone, causing damage there. Although the center of the disc does not contain pain fibers, the edges are richly innervated and pain fibers can proliferate after injury, making the chronically stressed disc more susceptible. The damaged disc can become extremely painful, but taking the right steps can improve your chances of making peace with it.\n\n#### **THE RESILIENT DISC CORE**\n\nThe central core of the disc, or nucleus pulposus, is designed for durable resilience. It is made up of a spongy, gelatin-like substance. Although the gel-like center of the disc functions very well early in life, over time the disc core desiccates or dries out. This desiccation process is considered normal. On MRI scans, it is possible for the radiologist to observe this drying out of the disc. Desiccated discs are thought to be more resistant to herniation but presumably the other forms of disc damage such as tears, dislocations, and internal disc disruption are even more likely. Disc desiccation is thought to be an irreversible process, and the center of the disc does not regenerate as far as we know. The core of the disc does not contain any blood vessels and does not have any nerves: it is understood that the gel-like filling of the disc is a hostile environment for living structures such as nerves and blood vessels.\n\nCut-away view of the spine showing a vertebral endplate\n\n#### **THE DISC'S OUTER RING**\n\nThe outer part of the disc is a tough fibrous ring called the _annulus fibrosus_. Composed of many layers of strong collagen, the annulus complex serves to flexibly connect adjacent vertebral bones and contain the disc core material (nucleus pulposus). Unlike the disc core, the annulus contains blood vessels and nerves, usually just in the outermost portion. The blood vessels and nerves are important for delivering nutrients to the annulus, allowing for sensations to be perceived from the area, and providing the capacity for repair. Evidence suggests that when discs are chronically damaged, the nerves in the outermost portion will sprout inward, growing toward the center of the disc. Unfortunately, nerves that sprout are predominantly of the pain-sensing variety. This in-growth of pain-sensing fibers after excessive chronic back strain may explain why some people have discs that are especially painful following injury while others seem to bounce back quickly after the same experience. It may also be that over time, if the back has a chance to recuperate properly, the pain-sensing nerve fibers may die back to their original locations and the back may once again become more robust against various insults such as riding horses, riding in the back of a school bus, or bouncing along the back of a pick-up truck.\n\nNerves reaching into the disc\n\nThe outer part of the disc, unlike the core, has a capacity for repair after injury, although this capacity is quite limited and oftentimes seems to advance very slowly. The capacity of the disc's outer ring to repair is, in practical terms, restricted to injuries that involve annular tears. (More serious injuries, like those resulting in disc herniations, may require surgical intervention.) An annular tear is a rip in the fibrous-ring that surrounds the disc core. Often, the tear in the annulus is limited to the outer portion, as if the outermost fibers had ripped or torn from the stress placed on the spine at the time of injury. Under some circumstances, multiple tears are located in one or more discs. Sometimes, the disc's ring can tear in such a way that the innermost fibers of the ring separate from the outermost fibers. The repair process in the disc takes weeks to months to complete; during that time, the back will not be as strong as it is ordinarily, and the person with the disc injury may experience high levels of pain and may even experience pain that extends down into the leg.\n\n#### **THE DISC-ENDPLATE**\n\nThe disc-endplate is the place where the top or bottom of the disc connects to the vertebral bone above or below the disc. In recent years, the vertebral end-plate has come to be recognized as an important location of disc disruption and potential cause of pain. The disc-endplate can essentially shatter (like a window in a blast zone) when a disc is suddenly pressurized. The endplate is a structure with both blood vessels and nerves, and so the response to injury includes swelling, pain, placement of repair tissue, and ultimately re-establishment of a durable solid structure. Damage to endplates is readily visible on MRI and these damage-related alternations have been called _modic changes_. Studies of people with back pain and those without pain have shown that disc bulges are not likely to be a cause of pain for many people. End-plate changes, however, are associated with pain for many people and like disc tears may take a long period to repair.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. World Health Organization (WHO). \"WHO Model List of Essential Medicines,\" <http:\/\/whqlibdoc.who.int\/hq\/2005\/a87017_eng.pdf>. March 2005.\n\n2. Lafrance, J.P. and D.R. Miller. 2009. Selective and non-selective non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and the risk of acute kidney injury. _Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety_ 18:923\u2013931.\n\n3. Van Staa, T.P., S. Rietbrock, E. Setakis, and H.G. Leufkens. 2008. Does the varied use of NSAIDs explain the differences in the risk of myocardial infarction? _Journal of Internal Medicine_ 264: 481\u201392.\n\n4. Schwarzer, A.C., C.N. Aprill, R. Derby, J. Fortin, G. Kine, and N. Bogduk. 1995. The prevalence and clinical features of internal disc disruption in patients with chronic low back pain. _Spine (Phila Pa 1976)_ 20 (17): 1878\u201383.\n\n5. Aprill, C. and N. Bogduk. 1992. High-intensity zone: A diagnostic sign of painful lumbar disc on magnetic resonance imaging. _Br J Radiol_ 65 (773): 361\u20139.\n\n6. Schwarzer, A.C., C.N. Aprill, R. Derby, J. Fortin, G. Kine, and N. Bogduk. 1995. The prevalence and clinical features of internal disc disruption in patients with chronic low back pain. _Spine (Phila Pa 1976)_ 20 (17): 1878\u201383.\n\n7. Gruber, H.E., J. Ingram, K. Leslie, and E.N. Hanley Jr. 2008. Gene expression of types I, II, and VI collagen, aggrecan, and chondroitin-6-sulfotransferase in the human annulus: In situ hybridization findings. _Spine J_ 8 (5): 810\u20137.\n\n8. Schellhas, K.P., S.R. Pollei, C.R. Gundry, and K.B. Heithoff. 1996. Lumbar disc high-intensity zone: Correlation of magnetic resonance imaging and discography. _Spine (Phila Pa 1976)_ 21 (1): 79\u201386.\n\n9. Yeung, A.T. and C.A. Yeung. 2006. In-vivo endoscopic visualization of patho-anatomy in painful degenerative conditions of the lumbar spine. _Surg Technol Int_ 15: 243\u201356.\n\n10. Peng, B., W. Wu, Z. Li, J. Guo, and X. Wang. 2007. Chemical radiculitis. _Pain_ 127 (1\u20132): 11\u20136.\n\n11. Jensen, T.S., J. Karppinen, J.S. Sorensen, J. Niinim\u00e4ki, and C. Leboeuf-Yde. 2008. Vertebral endplate signal changes (Modic change): A systematic literature review of prevalence and association with non-specific low back pain. _Eur Spine J_. 17 (11): 1407\u201322.\n\n12. Moore, R.J. 2006. The vertebral endplate: disc degeneration, disc regeneration. _European Spine Journal_. Vol. 15, Suppl. 3.\n\n13. Rahmea, R. and R. Moussaa. 2008. The modic vertebral endplate and marrow changes: Pathologic significance and relation to low back pain and segmental instability of the lumbar spine. _American Journal of Neuroradiology_ 29:838\u2013842.\n\n14. Schwarzer, A.C., C.N. Aprill, R. Derby, J. Fortin, G. Kine, and N. Bogduk. 1995. The prevalence and clinical features of internal disc disruption in patients with chronic low back pain. _Spine (Phila Pa 1976)_ 20 (17): 1878\u201383.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**What if my doctor doesn't want to take an MRI of my back?**  \nIn a landmark study of disc damage, researchers looked at the question of how to diagnose internal disc disruption. They found that this was a cause of 40 percent of low back pain in their study population. They further concluded that none of the clinical tests (tests your doctor could do in the exam room) could distinguish between people with this problem and those without it. If your back pain is severe enough to keep you from your work for more than a few days, you may need an MRI to solidify the diagnosis and effectively guide treatment.\n\n**Is there anything else I can add to my daily routine to speed the healing of my injured disc?**  \nThere is some evidence to suggest that the dietary supplement glucosamine\/chondroitin sulfate may be helpful for reducing inflammatory pain. This is discussed in more detail in Chapter 21. The exact mechanism by which glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate act to reduce inflammatory pain is not known and for some, the efficacy of these compounds is questionable. There is little evidence to support the ingestion of glucosamine\/chondroitin sulfate in the absence of serious arthritis pain or inflammation, and routine usage is not something I recommend to patients. It is important to obtain all dietary supplements from a reputable manufacturer as the production of these is not as tightly regulated as the preparation of actual medications. Glucosamine\/chondroitin sulfate tablets are fairly expensive and a course of therapy may cost more than twenty dollars.\n\n## CHAPTER 4  \nSciatic and Other Nerve Compressions\n\n**Simple stretching exercises can resolve**\n\n**mild cases and prevent relapses.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Do you have pain that starts in the buttock and runs down the back of the leg?\n\n**>** Does your pain seem to get worse the longer you sit but ease off with standing and walking around?\n\nPain that runs down the back of the thigh and extends into the buttock and diffusely into the foot can be due to compression or irritation of the sciatic nerve. The sciatic nerve, the largest in the body, is prone to compression deep in the buttock; this pain is usually worse with prolonged sitting. There are actually several different syndromes of nerve compression that can occur in the back, buttock, or leg. Because sciatic nerve compression is most common, it is discussed first. Pudendal neuropathy, diabetic amyotrophy, post-herpetic neuralgia, and other causes of nerve pain are described later in this chapter. Each of these has symptoms particular to the nerve compressed, but the features of the pain may be similar. (Nerve root compression at the spinal level is described in Chapter 2.)\n\nThe diagnosis of sciatic nerve compression is made based on your medical history, findings in the physical exam, and possibly imaging or even electrical studies. Your doctor may perform some physical testing that is uncomfortable. If any of the tests provokes strong pain, make sure to speak up and let the doctor know what you're feeling. The doctor may bend your legs and apply pressure. In some cases, an examiner may press deeply into the buttock, trying to determine if there is appreciable muscle tightness or deep tenderness there. If the problem is very severe or lingers despite treatment, imaging or electrical testing becomes more likely.\n\nNerve compression pain is particularly distressing. It can be burning, deeply aching, or stabbing and producing electrical shocks. If you have pain that has electrical shocks from time to time, this is a strong indicator that nerve damage is part of the problem.\n\n### Sciatic Nerve Compression\n\nSciatic nerve compression is sometimes labeled _sciatica_ , but that's not entirely correct. _Sciatica_ is a term that originated in the fifteenth century and was used at that time to describe pain in the hip. It has been used for many years to describe pain that is primarily experienced down the back of the leg. It is a broad umbrella term like the words _headache_ or _depression_ , which actually encompass many specific medical conditions.\n\nThe medical causes of sciatica as a syndrome of back, buttock, and leg pain include compression of the 4th or 5th lumbar nerve roots in the back, compression of other nerve roots, problems with the sacroiliac joint, and compression of the sciatic nerve as it courses from the spine into the leg. The most common location for the sciatic nerve to be compressed outside of the spinal cord is the place where it runs between two muscles deep in the buttock. Compression of the sciatic nerve in this location is frequently called _piriformis syndrome_., It often occurs in the setting of trauma: car accidents, falls, and skiing accidents are examples. Although piriformis syndrome is rather common, it is often overlooked in medical school to the extent that the diagnosis is typically first suggested by the physical therapist rather than the doctor!\n\n#### **PINCHED NERVE**\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nA first episode of sciatic nerve compression as a cause of back, buttock, and leg pain will require expert medical assessment and care. If you've had sciatic nerve compression before, be aware that it can flare up again, but you can sometimes treat a mild second episode with some simple stretching exercises.\n\nIf you have sciatic nerve compression (sometimes called _piriformis syndrome_ ):\n\n\u2022 Your doctor should recommend physical therapy, especially if pain is interfering with your activity level.\n\n\\- Physical therapy is exactly the right treatment for piriformis syndrome. The key to beating this problem is reducing associated muscle spasm. You'll be expected to do specific exercises every day.\n\n\\- Sometimes physical therapy may temporarily make the pain a bit worse. If you have more than a temporary increase in pain, let your doctor know.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may prescribe or recommend some medicine to control the pain, including over-the-counter pain relievers or, if nighttime pain is especially prominent, some prescription medications that are active against nerve pain.\n\nIf you have pudendal nerve compression (associated more with genital region pain):\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend physical therapy, especially if pain is interfering with your activity level.\n\n\\- Physical therapy for pudendal neuropathy is usually carried out by specially trained therapists. The delicate nature of the structures in the lower buttock and genital areas necessitates extra training and special techniques.\n\n\\- Sometimes injection or surgery is required. The pudendal nerve compression syndrome is not due to muscle spasm so much as to the development of fibrosis in the ligaments and other structures that the nerve passes by as it travels from the spine to the pelvis. These typically need to be released by a surgeon who has special experience with this problem.\n\n  **Warning! How to Prevent a Worsening of the Condition**\n\nYour physical therapist should make an assessment of your body mechanics and help you become aware of how to avoid worsening piriformis syndrome. The simple things include making sure that when you sit, your body is positioned symmetrically in front of your workstation. Make sure to get up and move around every 30 minutes or so if possible. Avoid carrying a heavy wallet in your back pocket. And learn how to strengthen and exercise the muscle that complements the function of piriformis. This will help to take some of the stress off of the piriformis muscle.\n\n#### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR REFERS YOU TO A PAIN SPECIALIST OR WANTS TO DO AN INJECTION FOR PIRIFORMIS SYNDROME?**\n\nPiriformis syndrome is occasionally treated with injections to release the muscle. In most cases, however, the physical therapist's application of manual muscle-release treatments, electrical stimulation treatments, and stretching exercises will be sufficient. Be aware that anytime an injection is performed, there is a risk of not only infection, but longer-term damage and scarring to the muscle or nerve. This might convert a short-term problem into something more problematic.\n\n#### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR RECOMMENDS SURGERY FOR SCIATIC NERVE COMPRESSION?**\n\nSurgery is only rarely considered for piriformis syndrome and is usually reserved for the most treatment-resistant forms of the condition. Surgery for piriformis syndrome can involve efforts to free up the nerve or to cut a fibrotic band that seems to be pressing on the nerve.\n\n#### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR DIAGNOSES A THORACIC NERVE ROOT PROBLEM SUCH AS NERVE COMPRESSION, NERVE INJURY (NEUROPATHY), OR POST-HERPETIC NEURALGIA?**\n\nIn this case, medication therapy is usually the first-line treatment. Depending on the specific problem, other treatments may be tried. If there is a nerve compression in the thoracic spine area, surgery or injection-type approaches are sometimes needed.\n\n### The Treatment\n\nWhen your doctor recommends physical therapy, be confident that physical therapy is the best treatment available for piriformis syndrome. Most physical therapists are very familiar with sciatic nerve compression and piriformis syndrome. Because piriformis syndrome is driven by muscle spasm in a particular muscle, the physical therapists are well equipped to treat this using multiple methods including thermal therapies, manual therapy, electrical stimulation, body awareness training, and stretching. Less commonly, injections of medications may offer temporary relief, and rarely surgery is needed for completely debilitating or structural problems.\n\n#### **PHYSICAL THERAPY RELAXES THE MUSCLE**\n\nThe greatest aspect of physical therapy is the attitude that most physical therapists bring to their work: What you do makes a difference. Working with a qualified physical therapist will help you to remind yourself everyday that you can take steps to make this better and then follow through on those positive actions. The primary goal of physical therapy treatment is to relax the piriformis muscle so that the sciatic nerve can begin to function normally and stop signaling pain.\n\n#### **THERMAL THERAPIES PROVIDE IMMEDIATE RELIEF**\n\nWarm therapy can relax the muscles, while cold therapy blocks pain signals and reduces inflammation. Your therapist may use one or both of these approaches. She may also use ultrasound, which can create a gentle warming sensation deeper in the body. The warm packs that therapists use can only penetrate so far, and the piriformis muscle is actually pretty deep in the buttock, situated underneath the gluteus muscles. Ultrasound can be tuned to reach to varying depths in the body and may produce warming in structures that are too deep for access by warm compresses.\n\n#### **MANUAL THERAPY IS ESSENTIAL**\n\nYes, it may be uncomfortable and feel a little awkward to have someone pressing their thumbs firmly into your buttock muscles, but this may be necessary. There is a wealth of clinical experience to support the use of trigger point massage for the relaxation of specific muscles. A skilled manual therapist, whether doctor, nurse, physical therapist, or other person, can identify muscle spasm in the piriformis muscle and use their hands to relieve the spasm. Generally speaking, the location of the piriformis muscle prevents people from reaching this muscle manually, however.\n\nClair Davies has suggested a number of innovative ways that you can perform your own trigger-point therapy on hard-to-reach muscles. Davies has had an interesting career path, as he started out as a piano tuner and only later in life became interested in healthcare. It seems that his experience tuning pianos has given him a special awareness of the dynamic tension that exists in the human body as muscles, nerves, and bones work together to create an integrated loco-motor system. His book on trigger points has become widely used and recommended because of the straightforward explanations involved and self-empowering approach that Davies encourages throughout. Because trigger points are hyper-responsive to direct stimulation and because they release inflammatory signals, it is important to combine trigger-point massage with other treatments such as thermal therapies or electrical stimulation of the muscle.\n\n  **Warning! Don't Pull Your Leg**\n\nDo not, DO NOT use your hands to pull your leg toward your chest. Do not use a belt or a band to pull your leg towards your chest. Use only your own leg muscles to carry out this maneuver and be gentle with your back. If you must, use your fingertips only, to provide some gentle support and guidance to the leg. I have seen two patients cause disc tears by pulling too hard on a belt looped behind the knee. Both of these patients were well meaning, if slightly Type-A personality people, who pulled too hard trying to stretch out the piriformis and in the process brought on severe, if temporary, back problems. Please, please don't be next! This is one place where my recommendations will sometimes split off from those of others who encourage the use of belts and straps. It is really better if you can use your own efforts at mental control to consciously relax the buttock muscles. Never try to \"pull them out\" by using your arm strength.\n\n#### **ELECTRICAL STIMULATION IS A USEFUL COMPLEMENT**\n\nThe primary purpose of the electrical stimulation is to fatigue the muscle into a relaxed state. Although the treatment itself can produce a strong tingling or zinging sensation, afterwards the muscle feels very loose.\n\n#### **STRETCHING SPEEDS RECOVERY**\n\nYou will probably need to do piriformis stretches two to three times a week forever to keep your buttock muscles properly flexible and prevent a recurrence of sciatic nerve compression. Once a nerve has been irritated or damaged to the point of producing pain, it is much more prone to re-aggravation. The basic piriformis stretches will be demonstrated to you first by your physical therapist, but there are two related stretches that are widely used: the knee-to-chest stretch and the knee-to-opposite-shoulder stretch. You begin both by lying on the back with your pelvis in a neutral position. Flex both knees and place your feet on the floor about shoulder width apart. Now flex your hip on the good side so that the knee moves towards the chest. Your ability to bring the knee up to the chest will depend on your abdominal girth and your overall flexibility. As you are making this movement, don't focus on achieving the maximum flexion, but concentrate your mental energy on relaxing the muscles deep in your buttock. With time, this movement-with-relaxation will become easier.\n\n#### **KNEE-TO-OPPOSITE SHOULDER STRETCH**\n\nThis begins the same way, with you lying on your back and your feet planted on the floor. This time, as you bend the hip, angle the movement of your knee so that it is directed towards the opposite shoulder. Obviously, you're not going to actually bring the knee up all the way to the shoulder, but angle it across the abdomen and chest as if you are aiming for the opposite shoulder. Again, you should **never** use a belt, strap, or your hands to pull the leg towards you. You may use fingertip pressure to gently guide the leg though this movement. Hold the stretch for as long as 30 seconds, breathing in and out, consciously relaxing the deeper muscles of the buttock and then slowly return the leg to its original position. You should repeat this two to four more times and then stretch the opposite hip.\n\nBe Aware of Injection Inclinations\n\nWhen your doctor recommends referral to a pain specialist or wants to do an injection, make sure you have had a fair trial of physical therapy or that you understand why physical therapy will not be performed. The current reimbursements used by most insurers heavily reward procedural-based management of medical problems, so a doctor may get paid several times more money for making an injection than for speaking with you and learning more deeply about your problem. Most doctors are only human, and you should not seethe with resentment at the first mention of injections or procedures. However, be mindful of the financial pressures that exist and recognize that caution is needed to protect against the undue influence of healthcare reimbursements on medical decision making.\n\n#### **INJECTIONS OFFER TEMPORARY RELIEF**\n\nIt has become increasing popular to inject the piriformis muscle with a variety of agents, including local anesthetics, paralyzing agents (Botox), and steroids. Most often, these drugs are injected into the muscle using some kind of imaging technology for guidance. Frequently, fluoroscopic (X-ray) guidance is used, although ultrasound guidance has been described. The challenge is that the muscle directly overlies the sciatic nerve. Injection into the sciatic nerve itself is likely to be painful and may induce lasting damage. These warnings aside, for some people injection therapy is helpful, but the effects are not expected to last longer than a few weeks to months.\n\n#### **SEE A SPECIALIST IF SURGERY IS RECOMMENDED**\n\nWhen your doctor recommends surgery, this usually means that your piriformis syndrome represents either a long-standing problem or there is clear evidence for a structural problem. Make sure you have a clear picture of what surgery is planned, what the expected outcomes are (will I be pain-free after the surgery?) and what the anticipated time-course is for recovery and return to work. There are different surgical approaches to treating sciatic nerve compression by various structures; you will probably want to see someone who specializes in this type of surgery.\n\n  **Warning! Red Flags and Back Pain**\n\nOne of the reasons healthcare providers talk about \"red flags\" in the assessment of back pain is that the red flags can provide clues to some of the more worrisome causes of back pain. Things like cancer and infection are capable of producing nerve compressions, but these types of events are often associated with other symptoms, such as recent fatigue, recent weight loss, the presence of a known cancer elsewhere in the body, recent fevers and chills, and having had a recent bacterial infection (pneumonia, urinary tract infection, etc). All of us who have had medical training have had the experience of finding a cancer or a life-threatening infection in a patient as a cause of back pain. However, these problems remain relatively rare. The detection of problems like cancer and serious infection are part of the reason it is so helpful to have a detailed MRI picture of your back, but it's not always necessary. Be sure to let your doctor, PA, or nurse know if you are having any red flag symptoms (see Chapter 1); it could be the piece of the puzzle that leads to an early life-saving intervention.\n\n### Pudendal Neuropathy (Pudendal Neuralgia)\n\nPudendal neuropathy, or pudendal nerve compression, is very different from sciatic nerve compression in that the usual cause of the compression is not muscle spasm. Pudendal neuropathy can arise from several causes including trauma and extensive bicycle riding. It may be more common in women. The syndrome of pudendal neuropathy can involve buttock pain, but usually it is closer to the mid-line of the body and extends into the region of the genitals, producing pain, numbness, or sexual dysfunction. In men there may be an association with prostatitis. By comparison, sciatic nerve compression is more commonly felt in the center of the buttock or even in the upper, outer quadrant and then extends down into the leg. Although a relatively benign syndrome of nerve compression due to chronic scarring or fibrosis, pudendal neuralgia can be incredibly painful and disabling. A perplexing and troubling cause of low back\/pelvic floor pain, pudendal neuralgia can leave the sufferer in a nearly disabled state as normal activities like sitting, making bowel movements and engaging in sexual intercourse become severely painful. The pain of pudendal neuralgia is often especially miserable for the person experiencing it, and having a pelvic floor problem may be socially isolating.\n\n#### **PUDENDAL NEUROPATHY TREATMENTS**\n\nBecause pudendal compression is not due to muscle spasm, ordinary physical therapy approaches are less effective; injections, nerve-destroying treatments, or surgery may be used. Sometimes people with pudendal neuropathy pain are managed through the use of a spinal cord stimulator, a thin electrode placed inside the spinal canal to effectively jam the pain signals before they can reach the brain.\n\nInjections for pudendal neuropathy have been performed using local anesthetics, corticosteroids, and other drugs. Injections should only be performed by people who are familiar with the technique and have received advanced training in this area. Make sure to ask: How many they have done in the last year? How were they trained to do this?\n\nSurgery for pudendal neuropathy usually involves the release of a fibrous band deep in the lower buttock. Make sure to discuss with the surgeon, his or her certainty about the diagnosis, the expected outcomes of the surgery (will I be pain free after surgery?) and the anticipated time needed for recovery and a return to daily life (how long will it be until I can drive again?) and the chances that problems will arise.\n\nWhat's New: Treatments for Pudendal Neuropathy\n\n\u2022 There are descriptions of special tools being used that produce electromagnetic radiation to permanently destroy the nerve. Although this has been described as effective, it sometimes happens that a nerve can grow back after being \"destroyed,\" and when it does, the pain often returns with a vengeance.\n\n\u2022 A large study from France recently described the use of ultrasound for the diagnosis of pudendal neuropathy, and reported that this was very helpful in ensuring that the right patients underwent surgery. You can imagine that if you have a surgery to treat a problem you don't actually have, the surgery is not likely to be helpful. For this reason, it's very important to have a solid diagnosis before proceeding to have surgery.\n\nThe course of the pudendal nerve through the pelvis\n\nThoracic nerve root pattern\n\n### Other Nerve Conditions That Cause Back Pain\n\nOther conditions may produce nerve pain in the back area. It is important for your doctor to consider other causes of compression if you have nerve pain.\n\n#### **DIABETIC AMYOTROPHY**\n\nDiabetes can permanently damage nerves. Many types of neuropathy are associated with diabetes, but one type, called _diabetic amyotrophy_ , is thought to be due to sudden nerve damage and is a potential cause of back pain. In this condition, the local blood supply to a nerve may be compromised; what doctors sometimes think of as a mini-stroke in the nerve itself may be the cause of diabetic amyotrophy. In any case, the person with this condition will experience the sudden onset of severe pain in a focused part of the body. Investigations may reveal that the pain is associated with a loss of function of a nerve or nerve root. Diabetic amotrophy can occur in various parts of the body, but when this nerve damage occurs in nerves arising from the thoracic spine or rib area, the pain extends from the back around the rib cage. The pain may be so severe that breathing is limited, a situation that can lead to other problems such as a compromise in oxygen supply to the body or even pneumonia. It is important to note that studies of the complications of diabetes have strongly shown that good diabetic control is critically important to preventing complications such as neuropathy and limiting their severity.\n\nLyme disease can sometimes produce a syndrome of nerve injury that presents like a mild case of diabetic amyotrophy.\n\n#### **POST-HERPETIC NEURALGIA (PHN)**\n\nA distinct cause of nerve-related back pain is post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN). Post-herpetic neuralgia is a chronic pain that first begins with an episode of shingles. Shingles is caused by a reactivation of the chicken pox virus (herpes zoster) in the body. In most people who have been exposed to chicken pox, the virus lies dormant in the body, in part due to suppressive signals from the body's immune system. In certain circumstances, this suppression breaks down and the virus begins to grow and can do so explosively. The results are that the nerve cells that harbor the virus may be damaged or destroyed. The cells most likely to host this takeover by the herpes virus are the sensory nerve cells, often a nerve cell that supplies the skin of the thorax, although the face and other parts of the body can be threatened by shingles. Typically, this occurs in a single nerve root, for reasons that are unknown. Shingles more often occurs in persons who are around 60 years of age, so it is thought that certain age-related changes in the immune system raise the likelihood of shingles occurring. Also, stress is noted in some people who develop shingles, leading to the idea that severe emotional stress can sometimes disable part of the immune system's ability to suppress the virus from reproducing.\n\nIf treated immediately, shingles may not progress to the chronic and deeply painful condition of PHN. The characteristics of early shingles is an unusual tingling that progresses the next day to pain in a very focused region (a single dermatome or nerve root distribution). A bumpy rash may or may not be obvious at this stage, but if present, the rash should be focused on the same area as the pain. You should contact your doctor immediately if you suspect shingles. If you cannot see your doctor, PA, or nurse that same day, consider seeking urgent care through another route because if the shingles converts to PHN, it is then devastatingly painful for months and sometimes even years.\n\nWhat Your Doctor Needs to Know\n\nYour doctor needs to know if you are having the following symptoms in association with your nerve pain: weight loss, fevers or chills, severe pain at night, pain that is worse with lying down, weakness, loss of control over urine or incontinence of bowel or bladder, or numbness over the genital area. Your doctor needs to know what medicines you've been taking, including all over-the-counter medications, as well as what you can and cannot do because of your back pain.\n\n#### **VERTEBRAL FRACTURE**\n\nAnother important potential cause of nerve compression pain is vertebral fracture, this is discussed in some detail in Chapter 8. When vertebral compression fracture involves nerves in the thorax, it can produce a very difficult syndrome of nerve pain that wraps around the body and makes breathing difficult.\n\n#### **NERVE COMPRESSION AFFECTING THE FOOT AND LOWER LEG**\n\nOther nerve compression syndromes are not associated with back pain. For example, tarsal tunnel syndrome involves compression of the tibial nerve supplying the front part of the foot (almost like carpal tunnel, but in the foot) and peroneal nerve compression syndrome (more recently called the _fibular nerve_ ) occurs outside the knee. There are also compression syndromes of the nerves to the front of the leg (the femoral nerve and its branches), such as meralgia paresthetica, a painful compression of the nerve supplying the skin on the outside of the thigh, as well as compression syndromes affecting nerves that supply the front of the groin and the lower abdomen. These are also not typically associated with back pain and should probably be evaluated by a neurologist or other specialist.\n\n### Testing For Nerve Compression\n\nTesting for nerve compression is usually carried out with nerve conduction studies. This is certainly true for the most common nerve compression syndromes: carpal tunnel and ulnar nerve entrapment. These syndromes are most often associated with arm, forearm, and hand pain, although in exceptional situations, some neck pain may be experienced. I occasionally will have a patient tell me that carpal tunnel syndrome produces pain that runs all the way down one side of the body. I don't have a great explanation for this phenomenon except to say that all pain rises to the level of consciousness by passing through several way stations in the spine and brain. In some of these areas, arm and body signals might mix and create false impressions of where the problem actually lies.\n\nThere are limits to using nerve conduction tests for the detection of sciatic and pudendal neuropathies. These nerves are located pretty deep in the body, and the surface electrodes used to drive the electrical shocks used for the studies don't penetrate that deeply. As a consequence, other approaches have been adopted. For sciatic nerve compression, a skilled examiner will be able to detect nerve or muscle tenderness deep in the buttock. It is sometimes possible to have a special type of MRI, called MR neurography, performed. In these studies, the MRI signal is optimized to detect the high fat content of the nerve, and 3-D reconstructions are used to detect nerve abnormalities with greater sensitivity. In the case of the pudendal nerve, it may be possible to use a specialized form of ultrasound to detect blood flow through a nearby artery; increased pressure in that artery has been associated with pudendal neuropathy.\n\n### The Explanation\n\nThe spinal cord is enclosed in the spine, which provides essential protection to spinal nerve roots that travel from spinal cord outward, exiting through spaces between adjacent vertebral bones. Once the nerves exit the spine, they are cloaked in a sheath of fat cells that offer some cushioning, but very little protection from blunt or sharp trauma. This leaves nerves vulnerable to damage from repetitive motions, swollen or fibrotic tendons and ligaments, or in the case of piriformis syndrome, muscles in spasm.\n\n#### **PREVENT NERVE COMPRESSION WITH GOOD POSTURE AND STRETCHING**\n\nAlthough sciatica due to piriformis syndrome often first arises after some trauma such as a car accident or skiing mishap, the predisposition to sciatic problems is amplified by our computer-focused lifestyle that demands that many of us spend hours sitting in front of computers. The sciatic nerve, although well-padded deep in the buttock, is not really designed for sitting on. It is important that you plan active breaks into every work hour. Make sure to get up, move around, and stretch a little. Stretching the piriformis muscles is something that shouldn't just happen when you're recovering from any injury. If your physical therapist has shown you the knee-to-chest exercises, stick with the program. Make sure your hamstring muscles are properly stretched each day and don't forget your gastroc and soleus stretches. Keeping the weight-bearing leg muscles in proper balance is essential to minimizing your risk for sciatica. Consider adding some wall slides to your routine; your physical therapist can show you how. Keep stretching every week. Make sure to maintain a proper body mass and get in plenty of walking as well as other forms of exercise. Avoid lifting objects that are heavier than you can safely manage and always lift with proper technique. Strictly avoid lifting off to the side and never sit at your workstation with an asymmetrical posture to prevent sciatica and sciatic nerve strain.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Konstantinou, K. and K.M. Dunn. 2008. Sciatica: Review of epidemiological studies and prevalence estimates. _Spine_ 33 (22): 2464\u20132472.\n\n2. Filler, A.G., et al. 2005. Sciatica of nondisc origin and piriformis syndrome: Diagnosis by magnetic resonance neurography and interventional magnetic resonance imaging with outcome study of resulting treatment. _J Neurosurg Spine_ 2 (2): 99\u2013115.\n\n3. Tiel, R.L. 2008. Piriformis and related entrapment syndromes: Myth and Fallacy. _Neurosurg Clin N Am_ 19 (4): 623\u20137.\n\n4. Nevin Lam, A.C., S.S. Singh, and N.A. Leyland. 2008. Catamenial sciatica. _J Obstet Gynaecol Can_ 30 (7): 555, 556.\n\n5. Mollo, M., E. Bautrant, A.K. Rossi-Seignert, S. Collet, R. Boyer, and D. Thiers-Bautrant. 2009. Evaluation of diagnostic accuracy of Colour Duplex Scanning, compared to electroneuromyography, diagnostic score and surgical outcomes, in Pudendal Neuralgia by entrapment: A prospective study on 96 patients. _Pain_ 142 (1\u20132): 159\u201363.\n\n6. Meknas, K., J. Kartus, J.I. Letto, M. Flaten, and O. Johansen. 2009. A 5-year prospective study of non-surgical treatment of retro-trochanteric pain. _Knee Surg Sports Traumatol Arthrosc_ 17 (8): 996\u20131002.\n\n7. Travell, J. and D. Simons. _Travell & Simons' Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual, 2nd edition_. Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 1998.\n\n8. Davies, Clair. _The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook_. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2001.\n\n9. Shah, J.P., J.V. Danoff, M.J. Desai, S. Parikh, L.Y. Nakamura, T.M. Phillips, and L.H. Gerber. 2008. Biochemicals associated with pain and inflammation are elevated in sites near to and remote from active myofascial trigger points. _Arch Phys Med Rehabil_. 89 (1): 16\u201323.\n\n10. Kirschner, J.S., P.M. Foye, and J.L. Cole. 2009. Piriformis syndrome, diagnosis and treatment. _Muscle Nerve_ 40 (1): 10\u20138.\n\n11. Smith, J., M.F. Hurdle, A.J. Locketz, and S.J. Wisniewski. 2006. Ultrasound-guided piriformis injection: Technique description and verification. _Arch Phys Med Rehabil_ 87 (12): 1664\u20137.\n\n12. Leibovitch, I. and Y. Mor. 2005. The vicious cycling: bicycling related urogenital disorders. _Eur Urol_. 47 (3): 277\u20138.\n\n13. Fanucci, E., G. Manenti, A. Ursone, N. Fusco, I. Mylonakou, S. D'Urso, and G. Simonetti. 2009. Role of interventional radiology in pudendal neuralgia: A description of techniques and review of the literature. _Radiol Med_ 114 (3): 425\u201336.\n\n14. Rhame, E.E., K.A. Levey, and C.G. Gharibo. 2009. Successful treatment of refractory pudendal neuralgia with pulsed radiofrequency. _Pain Physician_ 12 (3): 633\u20138.\n\n15. Mollo, M., E. Bautrant, A.K. Rossi-Seignert, S. Collet, R. Boyer, and D. Thiers-Bautrant. 2009. Evaluation of diagnostic accuracy of Colour Duplex Scanning, compared to electroneuromyography, diagnostic score and surgical outcomes, in Pudendal Neuralgia by entrapment: A prospective study on 96 patients. _Pain_ 142 (1\u20132): 159\u201363.\n\n16. Ibid.\n\n17. Konstantinou, K. and K.M. Dunn. 2008. Sciatica: Review of epidemiological studies and prevalence estimates. _Spine_ 33 (22): 2464\u20132472.\n\n18. Papadopoulos, E.C. and S.N. Khan. 2004. Piriformis syndrome and low back pain: A new classification and review of the literature. _Orthop Clin North Am_. 35:65\u201371.\n\n19. CDC. \"Shingles vaccine,\" <http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/vaccines\/vpd-vac\/shingles\/vac-faqs.htm>. Accessed January 9, 2010.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**What is piriformis syndrome?**  \nPiriformis syndrome is a condition in which the sciatic nerve is compressed between two muscles as it passes through the deep part of the buttock. The typical scenario leading to this condition is accident-related trauma, whether from a car accident or a fall. The piriformis muscle is involved in connecting the sacrum (base of the spine) to the top of the thigh bone (greater trochanter of the femur) and contributes to our ability to externally rotate the leg. When the piriformis muscle is injured and in spasm, there may be a radiating pain down the leg. Piriformis syndrome can produce pain that is deep, severe, especially bothersome at night, worse with prolonged sitting, and sometime radiating to and beyond the knee. The pain can be felt up into the lower back. This pain will usually not respond to over-the-counter medications and can be fairly resistant to prescription medications as well. If you think that you may have piriformis syndrome, you should seek out qualified medical care. Ask your current doctor, nurse, or PA if they have had any training in physical medicine or rehabilitation medicine. It is important to have skilled guidance as you seek to address this problem.\n\n**My doctor tells me piriformis syndrome is rare; how rare is it?**  \nConservative estimates for the occurrence of piriformis syndrome in those with back pain are as low as five percent, although some have reported estimates as high as 32 percent. Now, if you stop to consider that the lifetime chances of having back pain are 80 percent, then piriformis syndrome might not really be so rare. Imagine a city of 100,000. If 80 percent will have back pain over a lifetime, and five percent of those are due to piriformis syndrome, which means that 4,000 people in that small city will experience piriformis syndrome at some point in their lives. Now multiply that by over 300 million Americans\n\n**Should I get the vaccine against shingles?**  \nIf you are 60 years or older, the CDC recommends that you get the shingles vaccine. Shingles is the common name for the herpetic rash that leads to PHN (post-herpetic neuralgia). Getting the vaccine will cut your chances of developing PHN by two-thirds and is generally considered safe. There are some people who should not get the vaccine so make sure to check with your doctor and read up on the vaccine in advance.\n\n## CHAPTER 5  \nSacroiliac (SI) Joint Dysfunction\n\n**Diagnosis can be tricky. Be sure to ask questions**\n\n**and get an expert medical opinion.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Do you have pain that is located to one side of the spine?\n\n**>** Does your pain seem to sit heavily in the base of the back just off to the side? Does it stab sharply with every step or effort to shift your weight?\n\nPain on one side of the lower back that worsens with every step is usually due to a dislocated sacroiliac (SI) joint. If you can take one finger and locate your maximal pain halfway between the spine and hip in the lower back, you may have SI joint problems. Sometimes, certain movements will temporarily relieve the pain; however, the pain of a dislocated SI joint can be so severe as to make normal walking impossible. The pain of a dislocated or destabilized SI joint may be aching or breathtakingly sharp. Activities such as rising from a chair or stepping off a curb can make this pain worse.\n\nBack pain due to a dysfunctional SI joint needs expert medical assessment and care, but it is important to know that there is some degree of controversy about the best way to diagnose SI joint dysfunction. As no one test is considered definitive, it is often necessary to subject a patient to a series of tests, some of which may provoke pain in the SI joint. At times, an X-ray of the SI joint will be needed. It may be necessary to include other tests as well, because the pain of SI joint dysfunction shares some features with other causes of back pain. Your doctor may order a nerve conduction test to make sure that the problem is not caused by damage to nerves arising from the spine. (This test is described in detail in Chapter 2). Once all the test results are in, a clearer picture will emerge. The possibilities range from \"nothing is clearly wrong\" to a \"clear joint disruption\" to \"subtle signs of SI joint problems.\"\n\nWhat's New: A Major Pain in the Back\n\nIn research studies about the causes of low back pain, a surprising number of people with \"low back pain\" were found to be suffering from SI joint dysfunction. Estimates of the number of people actually suffering from SI joint dysfunction as a cause of back pain are between 10 and 30 percent. The largest study found that SI joint dysfunction explained the pain of 22 percent of patients with low back pain. Other major causes of back pain include disc problems, such as herniation and disc tears.\n\n### **CLUES TO DIAGNOSIS**\n\nTo test for SI joint dysfunction, probe for painful areas on the back. If you can identify a single spot, located two to three inches from the midline of the base of back, where moderate pressure with the fingertip produces an extreme pain response, you may have SI joint dysfunction. Another test is to lie on your back with a partner positioned next to you. Have your partner place his or her palms on the front parts of your hip bones, one hand on either side. Your partner should press downward, applying steady pressure to both sides at the same time. This maneuver is supposed to cause the front side of the SI joints to open and will produce pain in some patients with SI joint dysfunction. If this maneuver worsens your pain, you may need to have SI joint-focused therapy; read on!\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nIf you have a dislocated SI joint:\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will very likely recommend physical therapy, especially if there is no perceptible weakness. The effectiveness of SI joint therapy depends on the skillfulness of the physical therapist or chiropractor; the nature of the joint dislocation; and the motivation of the person undergoing treatment to consistently follow exercise recommendations.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend injection of the SI joint with pain-active medications such as lidocaine or cortisone. These medications may provide temporary relief from pain, and may allow the physical therapist a window of opportunity for more aggressive treatments, but injections such as these are not shown to provide a lasting benefit.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend that you wear an SI band or belt. This will depend on whether it seems to be a one-time problem or happens again and again despite the use of other treatments.\n\n\\- An SI band is a moderately heavy belt that straps around the hips to provide external pressure on the pelvis\n\n\\- The success of SI band therapy depends in part on the wearer's ability to get a comfortable fit and to wear the band when needed.\n\nPainful SI Joints During Pregnancy\n\nThe sacroiliac joints are prone to develop painful instability during pregnancy as a result of hormones that loosen the normally tremendous strength of the ligaments. In this loosened state, a certain degree of play in the joint can develop. Under the stresses of walking and carrying additional weight around without respite, these normally silent joints can become very painful. Although the surrounding muscles normally play a minimal role in supporting the joint, when the ligaments are softened, the muscles become more important to joint stabilization. Fortunately, it is possible to provide relief to the overtaxed ligaments and joint structures through muscle strengthening exercises.\n\nSqueezing a ball between the knees is one example of an exercise that can relieve sacroiliac pain. Gluteal tightening exercises and Kegel exercises are also critical components of exercising for relief of SI joint pain in pregnancy. If these measures\u2014undertaken with medical supervision\u2014fail to resolve the problem, a sacral belt may contribute some external compression to stabilize the joint. For sure, it is very important to wear flat shoes once problems with SI joint pain in pregnancy develop. Heels will increase the amount of force delivered to the body with each step, and throw the body into an alignment that increases the stress on the pelvis.\n\n#### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR DIAGNOSES INFLAMMATION OF THE SI JOINT?**\n\nIn this case, it may be necessary to be tested for medical conditions that predispose to inflammation of the SI joint.\n\n#### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR FINDS THAT YOU HAVE SYMPTOMS OF SI JOINT DYSFUNCTION BUT NO EVIDENCE FOR DISLOCATION ON X-RAY?**\n\nThe SI joint is designed to be resiliently stable, as it is subjected to profound stresses every time weight is transferred from leg to leg. Your imaging studies may not show clear-cut signs of dislocation, but SI joint dysfunction is a diagnosis based on the pattern of pain and the clinical exam results. A trial of SI joint therapy may very worthwhile as the basic skeletal manipulations are usually not harmful and the core muscle strengthening exercises used for the treatment and prevention of SI joint dysfunction are almost always beneficial. In rare cases, pain in the SI joint area is due to a mass (tumor), an infection (abcess) or a fracture. These serious but rare causes of pain in this area are readily assessed through the other diagnostic tests described further in this chapter. The treatment for these conditions is individualized.\n\n### The Treatment\n\nIf your doctor recommends \"physical therapy first,\" this usually means that you have the type of SI joint dysfunction best treated without surgery (the vast majority of SI joint dysfunction is treated without surgery). Several treatment modalities fall under the umbrella of physical therapy as the primary treatment for SI joint problems: manual therapies, thermal therapies, electrical stimulation therapies, traction\/inversion therapies, and conditioning and strengthening.\n\n#### **MANUAL THERAPIES ARE HIGHLY EFFECTIVE**\n\nManual therapies can reverse and resolve an initial episode of SI joint dysfunction. In fact, anecdotal evidence suggests that the best chance of a cure for SI joint dysfunction may be to obtain an immediate reduction of the joint dislocation by a practitioner skilled in manual therapies. There are several approaches to reducing stress on the SI joint, some of which involve fairly complicated positioning of the legs and body and require significant strength on the part of the person performing the treatment.\n\nOne example of a maneuver that can decrease SI joint strain is as follows: Working with a partner, first lie on a table-firm bed with your bad side down. Keeping your bad leg straight, bring the knee of your good leg up towards your chest by flexing the hip and bending the knee, then allow the lower part of your good leg to rotate downward a bit, until your foot is placed in front and rests flat, supporting you from in front. Have a partner grasp the ankle of your bad leg, keeping the knee straight, gently move the foot in a horizontal plane until the hip is flexed at about 25 degrees, and then gently raise the leg in a vertical direction. If anything about this does not feel right or hurts, stop immediately and seek medical assessment. When properly performed, this maneuver can relieve stress on the SI joint and may be used by a manual therapy practitioner such as a physical therapist to reposition the joint that is dysfunctional. In actual practice, the complex nature of the SI joint means that the dysfunction may result from joint malpositioning in one of several directions. For example, in many people, SI joint dysfunction limits the movement of the bones on either side of the joint in a forward and back direction. For others, SI joint dysfunction may mean that the bones of the joint have shifted their relative positions in an up-down direction. Therapy will vary depending on the particulars of the problem.\n\n#### **PHYSICAL AND THERMAL THERAPIES RELAX THE MUSCLES**\n\nPhysical therapy can include the use of thermal therapies, including warm compresses and cold packs. These therapies can help to control pain and relax the muscles around the joint. The muscles that surround and support the SI joint can both respond to joint pain by going into spasm, worsening the pain, and potentially make the SI joint dysfunction more intractable and resistant to treatment. Thermal therapies are an important part of a comprehensive physical therapy program and are widely acknowledged as medically necessary.\n\n#### **ELECTRICAL STIMULATION THERAPIES ARE WIDELY ACCEPTED**\n\nIn theory, the continuous electrical stimulation applied via sticky electrodes attached to the skin will cause the muscle to go into an exhausted state that mimics normal relaxation. This offers yet another way to break the pain and spasm cycle that often arises in muscle and impedes normal function and recovery. Although mildly uncomfortable for some, electrical stimulation therapy is a useful complement to other approaches used in physical rehabilitation. It allows the therapist to target specific muscle groups, is generally without side effects, and can spare patients from being exposed to higher doses of oral muscle relaxants.\n\n#### **STRENGTHENING AND CONDITIONING ARE ESSENTIAL**\n\nRelatively few muscles actively contribute to holding the SI joint together, so many of the exercises used to treat SI joint dysfunction are actually stretching exercises; others are designed to strengthen nearby core muscles. You will need to consult with a skilled physical therapist, as the exercises during the acute phase will depend on which side the problem lies. More often than not, the SI joint is painful on one side and less so on the other. Although opinions on this vary, it seems there are multiple ways in which the SI joint can become \"out of joint.\" This is evident from the absence of a single definitive test to diagnose SI joint dysfunction and from the variety of repositioning maneuvers that are used to restore normal functioning. Once your physical therapist has provided you with a specific prescription for realigning your SI joint, you will likely need to perform core exercises in the future to prevent recurrence of this problem.\n\n#### **INJECTIONS PROVIDE SHORT-TERM RELIEF**\n\nIf your doctor recommends treatment with a pain injection, chances are this may provide some immediate relief and help to confirm the diagnosis of SI joint dysfunction as a cause of your pain. Most of the time, injection of the SI joint for pain relief is performed under CT or X-ray guidance (fluoroscopic-guided). In the majority of cases, the injection will consist of a mixture of lidocaine, a numbing agent, and a sustained-release form of cortisone. The lidocaine can act within seconds to provide relief of pain from SI joint dysfunction; however, the effects of lidocaine typically last only a few hours. It is common for pain to return later in the day after an injection has provided initial relief. The cortisone agent is injected because over a period of a few days, it will begin to provide similar pain relief, and in this case, the pain-relief may last for two or more weeks.\n\nIn patients who have unbearable pain from SI joint dysfunction, the pain injection may be a necessary intervention. However, research suggests that the long-term effects of these injections are insignificant. It is not expected that the injection will improve the long-term prospects of a patient with SI joint dysfunction unless it is used in concert with other approaches. Repeated injections of pain-active medicines is not practical beyond a few attempts as a risk for infection is always present and the cortisone agent may lead to increases in the infection risk as well as weakening the nearby muscles and bones.\n\nCore-Strengthening Exercises\n\n1. Pelvic-neutral abdominal strengthening exercises such as a pelvic tilt, crunches, leg extensions, and a modified bridge position\n\n2. Back crunches, which are described in detail in the muscle pain chapter, but basically involve lying on the stomach and raising both arms and legs from the floor for a count of 30\n\n3. Inner-thigh strengthening, which can be done by lying on the back with a ball between the knees and squeezing the knees together for 15 seconds and relaxing with five to 10 repetitions each day\n\n4. Outer-thigh strengthening, which can be performed using an elastic band around the legs at the knee level while lying on the back in a pelvic-neutral position. Press the knees apart against the resistance of the band for 10 seconds and relax, repeating several times each day.\n\n5. Avoid stretches that place asymmetrical strain on the pelvic structures, like the hurdler's stretch. This may worsen SI joint dysfunction.\n\n#### **ORAL MEDICATIONS ALLEVIATE SUFFERING**\n\nIf your doctor recommends that you take pain medications by mouth, chances are this will be just one of the necessary steps to address your SI joint dysfunction. Oral pain medicines, although helpful for alleviating pain and suffering, are unlikely to be successful for treatment if other measures are not taken.\n\nMany medications can be used for the treatment of pain related to SI joint dysfunction. These include over-the-counter medications such as acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and naprosyn. However, some physicians may prefer medications that are available by prescription only for SI joint-related pain. In your physician advises you to take a prescription pain medication, make sure to ask the doctor and your pharmacist about the potential side effects. Discuss any potential concerns before starting the medication, and read over the literature about the medication carefully. If your physician prescribes medication that contains opioids, make sure you have a plan for preventing and treating any constipation. Opioids are known to produce profound and potentially life-threatening constipation. The best strategy is to begin a \"bowel regimen\" designed to prevent constipation before problems start. Although essential during opioid use, good hydration is unlikely to be enough to ward off problems. More aggressive strategies like drinking prune juice, taking a bulk-forming laxative with lots of hydration, or taking a bowel stimulating agent, such as Senna, are likely to be needed.\n\n  **Warning! Know the Difference Between SI and a Pinched Nerve**\n\nClassical SI joint dysfunction is different from a pinched nerve in that the pain is off to one side but does not radiate, meaning it doesn't shoot down the leg into the foot or calf. It may jab or stab as it suddenly worsens with certain movements, but it should not send a zinging sensation down the leg. Make sure your healthcare providers know if you have radiating pain, electric shock sensations, or pains that occur below the knee as part of this problem.\n\n### Testing for SI Joint Dysfunction\n\nSeveral different types of bedside tests can be used to determine the nature of a problem suspected to be SI joint dysfunction. The following tests are widely used by experienced clinicians.,\n\n#### **DISTRACTION TEST**\n\nThe patient lies on his or her back on the examination table. The examiner places one hand on each of the front facing parts of the hips and presses down toward the table. This pressure is believed to distract or separate the anterior parts of the SI joint away from each other and may produce pain in the joint that is malfunctioning.\n\n#### **COMPRESSION TEST**\n\nThe patient is asked to lie on his or her side while the examiner applies downward pressure on the up-facing hip.\n\n#### **SACRAL THRUST**\n\nThe patient is asked to lie on the stomach while the examiner applies downward pressure on the center of the sacrum. A modification of this test is the Yeoman's test, which involves lifting one leg up toward the ceiling while applying pressure over the sacrum.\n\n#### **THIGH THRUST**\n\nThe patient will lie on his or her back. The examiner will guide the patient to bend one leg up at the hip until the knee is pointing up to the ceiling. Placing one hand under the sacrum for stabilization, the examiner will apply downward pressure to the thigh that is vertically oriented.\n\n#### **PELVIC TORSION TEST (GAENSLEN'S TEST)**\n\nThe patient is asked to lie on the less painful side facing away from the examiner. The examiner may stabilize the top hip with one hand, and will then pull the upper leg (affected side) backward, extending the hip and putting stress on the SI joint.\n\n#### **FABER'S TEST**\n\nFABER is actually an acronym for Flexion, Abduction, and External Rotation. This describes the movements of the hip joint as the test is performed. In this test, the patient is asked to lie on his or her back. The leg is supported by the examiner who bends the hip into flexion, guides the thigh outward to the side (abduction of the hip) and then rotates the calf and foot (clockwise for the right leg) to externally rotate the thigh at the hip joint. This maneuver places strain on the SI joint and may provoke pain when the joint is dysfunctional. This is also called _Patrick's Test_.\n\n#### **SACRAL SULCUS TENDERNESS**\n\nPalpation over the area of the SI joint may provoke pain in patients with SI joint dysfunction so that tenderness in this area is supportive of the diagnosis, but not definitive as there are other reasons why a person will have tenderness in this area.\n\n#### **GILLET'S MOVEMENT TEST**\n\nWhile the patient is standing, the examiner places fingers on the back to help identify the relative motion of various structures during the test. The patient is then asked to raise one leg by flexing the hip and knee, bringing the leg forward and up as far as possible without losing balance. In patients with unrestricted movement at the SI joint, the finger located over the bone landmark on the hip will move downward slightly as the SI joint accommodates this change in position.\n\nWhat to Look for with Low Lateral Back Pain\n\n\u2022 Pain is much worse when you press on it, in an area two to three inches (5 to 8 cm) lateral to the spine base.\n\n\u2022 Weakness may be perceived but this is only when pain is very sharp; what may be more evident is a feeling of instability, lacking a strong base of support, or discombobulation.\n\n\u2022 Signs of sacroiliac dysfunction include pain that is worse with standing from a sitting position and pain that is worse when weight is transferred to one leg, in particular when walking or stepping off a curb.\n\n### The Explanation\n\nThe back and spine are dynamic musculoskeletal structures that rely on a solid foundation for proper function. The pelvis, a heavy ring of bone lying between the hips, connects the legs to each other and provides foundational support to the spine that is essential for ordinary movements. Certain conditions\u2014especially pregnancy but also accidental trauma\u2014can cause damage to the structures of the pelvis. When the pelvic ring is disturbed, movements that are typically pain-free and seemingly effortless can become impossible to accomplish.\n\nThe sacroiliac joints are a pair of large joints connecting the sacrum to the hip bones on either side. Early in life, the surfaces of the bones inside the joint are smooth, but over time the bones develop ridges and valleys. The most prominent of these is a central ridge on the sacrum bone running along the longest dimension of the joint, complemented by a valley in the face of the hip bone where it sits opposite the sacrum. This adaption in form may contribute to the stabilization of the joint. Major contributions to the phenomenal stability of the sacroiliac joint are made by very heavy ligaments that bind the sacrum and hip bones together in the back most strongly, but also in the front (inside the pelvis). This structural arrangement contributes substantial strength but also allows for some flexibility and shock absorption. The ring of the pelvis consists of the two hip bones on either side meeting in the front, as well as the sacrum in back. This means there are a total of three joints to form the pelvic ring: two sacroiliac joints and one joint in the front. Any of these can become painful but only the two in back are referred to as sacroiliac joints and are associated with back pain. In very elderly people, parts of the sacroiliac joints may fuse. In some cases, there is a focused inflammation of the joint. This is typical of a rheumatological condition called _ankylosing spondylitis_.\n\nThe sacroiliac joint is richly innervated with pain-sensing nerve fibers. The nerve fibers that supply the joint arise from 12 or more different nerve roots extending from the 2nd lumbar level to the 3rd sacral level. This may explain why SI joint pain is sometimes difficult to pinpoint and can manifest in many different ways.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Schwarzer, A.C., C.N. Aprill, and N. Bogduk. 1995. The sacroiliac joint in chronic low back pain. _Spine (Phila Pa 1976)_ 20 (1): 31-7.\n\n2. Hertling, Darlene and Randolph M. Kessler. _Management of Common Musculoskeletal Disorders: Physical Therapy Principles_. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2006.\n\n3. Young, S., C. Aprill, and M. Laslett. 2003. Correlation of clinical examination characteristics with three sources of chronic low back pain. _Spine J_ 3 (6): 460-65.\n\n4. Petty, Nicola J. _Neuromusculoskeletal Examination and Assessment: A Handbook for Therapists_. Churchill Livingstone, 1997.\n\n5. Laslett, M., et al. 2005. Agreement between diagnoses reached by clinical examination and available reference standards: A prospective study of 216 patients with lumbopelvic pain. _BMC Musculoskelet Disord_. 9 (6): 28.\n\n6. Dreyfuss, P., et al. 2004. Sacroiliac joint pain. _J Am Acad Orthop Surg_. 12 (4): 255-65.\n\n7. Norris, Christopher M. _Back Stability: Integrating Science and Therapy, Second Edition_. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2008.\n\n8. Fortin, J.D. and F.J. Falco. 1997. The Fortin finger test: An indicator of sacroiliac pain. _Am J Orthop (Belle Mead NJ)_ 26 (7): 477-80.\n\n9. Forst, S.L., M.T. Wheeler, J.D. Fortin, and J.A. Vilensky. 2006. The sacroiliac joint: anatomy, physiology and clinical significance. _Pain Physician_ 9 (1): 61-7.\n\n10. Goode, A., E.J. Hegedus, P. Sizer, J.M. Brismee, A. Linberg, and C.E. Cook. 2008. Three-dimensional movements of the sacroiliac joint: A systematic review of the literature and assessment of clinical utility. _J Man Manip Ther_ 16 (1): 25-38.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**What causes SI joint dysfunction?**  \nTrauma as a result of falls and motor vehicle accidents can lead to SI joint dysfunction. This can include major trauma such as a fall landing on the buttocks, a rear-impact car accident, especially where one foot is stabilized on a pedal, and side-impact motor vehicle accidents. In cases where ligaments are damaged by prior injury or weakened, minor trauma such as stepping especially hard off a curb or bending sideways to lift a heavy grocery basket can be sufficient to initiate an episode of SI joint dysfunction. Conditions that result in asymmetries across the pelvis may increase chronic stresses on the joint and predispose people to SI joint dysfunction; these could include scoliosis, leg-length discrepancies, chronic weakness in one leg, and hip-flexor deconditioning (iliopsoas contracture).\n\n**What makes sacroiliac dysfunction distinguishable from other kinds of back problems?**  \nSacroiliac disease worsens with standing from a sitting position and becomes worse with provocative maneuvers, a series of bedside tests that some physicians will use to confirm the diagnosis of SI joint dysfunction. The joint moves only miniscule amounts under normal circumstances, with one or two millimeters of movement-induced shape change being the typical extent of motion. For this reason, physical therapists and other knowledgeable healthcare providers will ask patients if getting up from a chair provokes pain.\n\n**Are any other back problems associated with SI dysfunction?**  \nSeveral specific medical conditions are associated with inflammation of the sacroiliac joint. Among these, ankylosing spondylitis is a condition in which patients most frequently develop inflammation of the SI joint as part of the syndrome. This inflammation is usually painful and can be diagnosed with an X-ray. Patients with ankylosing spondylitis also experience a collapse of the spine. It is this spinal collapse that produces the characteristic forward curvature of the spine and can eventually lead to difficulties with holding the head upright. Other inflammatory diseases, including reactive arthritis, arthritis of psoriasis, and arthritis associated with inflammatory bowel disease are also known to produce sacroiliac inflammation and pain. The treatments for each of these are tailored to the specific disease.\n\n## CHAPTER 6  \nFacet Disease\n\n**Physical therapy is often the best course of action.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Do you have back pain that is focused on one side of the back?\n\n**>** Does your pain get a lot worse when you try to bend backwards, such as when you look at the sky, or when you make a twisting motion?\n\nPain that is much worse with backward bending (extension of the back) is often due to an inflamed or injured facet joint. One way to test for facet joint disease is to begin by standing with your feet firmly planted on the ground and then, maintaining your balance, bend the upper half of your body back as if you are trying to look at a spot on the ceiling while experiencing a stiff neck (try not to tip just your head back). If this worsens your pain, facet joint disease may be the cause.\n\nFacet joint pain can be very focused and intense. At other times, facet joint pain can be part of a larger problem. When a vertebral disc collapses, for example, one or both of the paired facet joints at the same level in the back will experience severe stress. At its most severe, facet joint disease can lead to nerve root compression and pain that radiates into the leg. The bottom line is, if your back pain is interfering with your ability to twist around and to bend backwards, you may have facet disease; read on!\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nFacet joins\n\nPain when bending backwards\n\nBack pain due to facet disease needs expert medical assessment and care. Sometimes an X-ray, MRI, or CT scan will be used as a first diagnostic test. Some doctors may be familiar with specific bedside tests to check for facet joint problems, while others may not. In cases where the pain in your back extends down into the leg and it's not clear what the cause of the pain is, your doctor may order a nerve conduction test as part of the evaluation for your pain. Some doctors, and some clinical trials, will only make a definitive diagnosis of facet joint pain after showing that the pain is relieved by a numbing injection into the joint, but in many cases this is not required to proceed with treatment.\n\nIf you have facet joint pain (sometimes referred to as _Z-joint pain_ ):\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will likely recommend physical therapy, especially if this is the first time you're having this pain and the pain is problematic but not unbearable. For those who prefer to avoid potential problems with medications and needle-based approaches to treatment, physical therapy is often the best course of action.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend an injection into the joint, especially if the pain is severe and if your doctor is familiar with these techniques. The facet joint injection is typically performed under fluoroscopic (X-ray) guidance, so there may be limitations to using this approach in all patients.\n\n#### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR DIAGNOSES AN INFLAMED FACET JOINT?**\n\nBecause facet joints are like most other joints of the body, they can become inflamed (or infected) much like the knee, wrist, or other joints of the body can. In these cases, it may be most effective to begin therapy with the injection of a drug into the joint space. In many cases, the injected drugs will include a quick-acting numbing agent; this will allow you and the doctor to know that the right spot has been injected. Most times, the injection will also include a longer-acting, steroid-based medication. The steroid will serve two purposes; it can reduce inflammation and will also tend to decrease the amount of pain.\n\n#### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR DIAGNOSES A FACET DISLOCATION?**\n\nFacet joint dislocation is rare in the lumbar spine. More commonly occurring in the neck, facet joint dislocation is typically the result of some trauma and is detected by X-ray, CT, or MRI. If an actual facet joint dislocation is identified, the treatment will vary depending on the location and severity of the condition. In the neck, approaches to treatment range from stabilization with a soft collar and immobilization with a \"halo\" or hard collar to surgery and neck fusion. Facet joint dislocations in the mid-back or lower back should be managed by someone with medical expertise in this area.\n\n#### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR FINDS THAT THE FACET JOINTS ARE DEGENERATED AND NERVES ARE BEING PINCHED?**\n\nIn some cases, especially when facet joint disease is severe and associated with vertebral fracture, bony malformations, or collapsed vertebra or disc, surgical management of the facet joint disease may be considered. If a facet joint is severely degenerated, it may develop bony spurs that protrude into the spaces that normally exist between adjacent vertebral bones. When this happens, the exiting nerve roots can be compressed and pain can radiate into the leg. In advanced cases, weakness can accompany the nerve root compression and surgery will be favored as a best choice. In some cases of severe disease, physical therapy may still be beneficial. Make sure to discuss the treatment options with your healthcare provider.\n\n  **Warning! A Window of Pain**\n\nOne limitation of injections that combine a numbing agent with a longer-acting steroid is that the numbing agent typically wears off before the steroid agent has any noticeable effect on pain. The usual experience is that a person will feel relief for a few hours after an injection, only to have the pain return later that night. The pain-relieving effects of the steroid may not be perceivable until a couple of days have passed, and sometimes longer.\n\n### The Treatment\n\nIn almost all situations where facet joint disease is the cause of back pain, physical therapy will be an important part of the treatment program. Several components contribute to a comprehensive physical therapy regimen for facet joint pain: thermal therapies, electrical stimulation therapies, manual therapies, traction\/inversion therapies, and conditioning and strengthening. In addition, injections may be used to manage pain or confirm the diagnosis, and in rare cases, surgery may be an option.\n\n#### **THERMAL THERAPIES ARE FIRST-LINE TREATMENTS**\n\nTypically used at the start of physical therapy, thermal therapies are often continued because they are very effective at getting control over mild-to-moderate pain associated with facet joint disease. In most cases, warm thermal treatments are soothing, can help improve the pliability of muscle, and increase blood flow. At the same time, cold thermal treatments can block pain signaling and potentially short-circuit inflammatory responses to injury and vigorous activity.\n\nCYST IN FACET JOINT\n\n#### **ELECTRICAL STIMULATION RELAXES THE MUSCLES**\n\nElectrical stimulation therapies are one of several approaches that may be used to get specific muscles in the back to relax. Because the body often responds to pain by tensing various nearby muscles, abnormal muscle contractions do occur in association with facet joint pain. In the case of facet joint pain, these contractions not only contribute to the overall intensification of pain, but may actually perpetuate the problem!\n\n#### **MANUAL THERAPIES CAN PROVIDE LASTING RELIEF**\n\nManual therapies for facet disease include trigger point massage and mobilization of the spine. Trigger point massage is a specialized technique of using focused pressure on specific locations in the muscle to induce relaxation. This is not the same as feeling more relaxed; it is an actual physiological response of the muscle that can be measured with electrical probes, often palpable to the person performing the therapy, and is sometimes visible to the eye as a barely perceptible twitch. Regardless, the accomplished practitioner of trigger point massage can produce lasting relief and change the course of therapy for the better.\n\n#### **TRACTION AND INVERSION THERAPIES REDUCE PRESSURE**\n\nAs we age, the discs in the back gradually lose not only resilience but height. The collapse of disc height means that the facet joints must change with the upper surface of the joint sliding downward over the face of the lower surface. There is a lot of play in the covering of the joint so that this shift does not usually strain the joint capsule, but the mechanics of the joint do change in the process, and cartilage of the joint may be stressed or eroded as a consequence. Gentle traction or inversion can help reduce some of this strain.\n\n#### **STRENGTHENING AND CONDITIONING**\n\nThese therapies are so important to treating and preventing facet joint disease that this chapter should probably begin and end with back-strengthening exercise. Because of the construction of the spine only as a stack of bones would not be sufficient to support a lifetime of running, walking, lifting, sitting, etc., the muscles must be viewed as an integral part of the spine. It is the part of the spine that you have the greatest direct control over. Exercises for facet joint disease should begin with core strengthening, with the back in a supported position.\n\nBegin with the pelvic tilt exercise, described in Chapter 5. Wall slides are a great exercise to strengthen core muscles while supporting the back so that facet joints won't hurt. To do a wall slide, stand with your back to a wall, about 15 inches (38 cm) from the wall. Place your feet shoulder width apart and pointing forward. Use your hands to guide you back until you're leaning against the wall, then slide your bottom down a bit as if you were going to sit in a chair. Make sure your knees are over your feet and hold this position for a few seconds. Increase the time that you hold this position until you can remain there for 30 seconds comfortably, then move your feet a little further out and try to slide further down. Work on going gradually lower with your wall slides until you are comfortable \"sitting\" against the wall for 45 seconds. Be careful not to overdo it with this exercise, as it can flare up any knee problems. Back extension exercises, done gently at first because the pain of the facet is made worse by extension, are critically important to long-term management of facet joint pain. The classic back extension exercise is described in Chapter 1. Other key exercises include core muscle exercises such as described in Chapter 14.\n\nFacet joint injection\n\n#### **INJECTIONS CAN CONFIRM THE DIAGNOSIS**\n\nIf your doctor recommends a facet joint injection right away, make sure that this seems like the best choice for you. Many doctors will use facet joint injections to definitively establish the diagnosis of facet joint pain. The injection typically includes a combination of medicines designed to immediately numb the joint (a local anesthetic) and reduce any inflammation in the joint (a steroid). These medicines are injected as a mixture through a single needle. Be sure to let your doctor know if you might be allergic to drugs in either of these classes of medication. The facet joint injection is typically done with fluoroscopic (X-ray) guidance and should be performed by someone who is very familiar with this procedure.\n\n#### **SURGERY TO MANAGE SEVERE CASES**\n\nIf your doctor indicates that surgery is the best treatment option, make sure that you have a clear picture of what's wrong with your back and what the planned surgery entails. There are times when surgeons will recommend surgery for management of facet joint problems that are especially severe. Possibilities might include surgery to relieve potential pressure points on nearby nerves, removal of part of the bony covering of the spine and even fusion of the spine in certain circumstances. You will probably want to consult with two or more surgeons before proceeding to surgery for the treatment of facet joint problems. Ask the surgeon what their expectations are for your recovery from surgery. Do they expect that this surgery will relieve the pain completely, mostly, or partially? Will you still need to take pain medicine? How likely is the surgery to improve your quality of life? What are the chances for problems down the road?\n\n  **Warning! Beware of Nerve Block Procedures**\n\nIn some cases of facet joint disease, the pain specialist may propose a nerve block procedure. In extreme cases, some doctors will recommend destruction or ablation of the nerve believed to be carrying the pain signals. If someone suggests this type of procedure to you, make sure not only that you understand the immediate risks (and benefits) of the procedure, but also that you are told, in clear terms, how likely it is to provide pain relief six months or a year later. Many times, nerve ablation is a temporary fix to a long-lasting problem. Despite appearing to be an ideal solution, it's not practical to just cut the nerve to a painful part, even a little part like the facet joint. This is almost never effective for two reasons: 1) severe pain seems to induce lasting changes in the nervous system so that even if the nerve is cut, a persistent pain signal may already be embedded in the system, and 2) the nerve almost always tries to grow back. It's been observed clinically that even when cutting the nerve fixes the problem at first, most people will experience a return of the problem over the months that follow, and many times the problem is even worse than it was initially.\n\n### Testing for Facet Disease\n\nOne problem with bedside testing for facet joint disease is that, as simple as the techniques are, very few \"regular\" medical doctors will have had sufficient training in this area to be able to perform the studies in a short office visit. In order to obtain a clear diagnosis of facet joint disease, you may need to seek the opinion of an expert in pain medicine, rehabilitation, or physical therapy. If you think that facet joint disease is part of your back problem, you may need to prompt your doctor to think of this diagnosis and possibly refer you for an expert assessment.\n\nOne test for locating facet joint disease is to have a person lie down on their stomach. The examiner will then apply pressure with the finger tips over each of the facet joints in turn. This test requires some experience in order to know how much pressure to safely apply to the spine. An examiner who is too ginger will not uncover the problem effectively, and one who is to forceful will produce unnecessary suffering. It is not recommended to try this at home.\n\n### The Explanation\n\nThe bones of the spinal column are connected to each other through a series of joints. The most familiar of these is the joint at the disc (discussed in detail in Chapters 2 and ), but there are also two important joints at the back of each vertebra called _facet joints_. The facet joints are paired, one on either side of the spinal canal. They are almond- to ovoid-shaped connections between vertebral bones that add support and flexibility to the spine. Compared to the joint at the disc, the facet joints are more like the other joints of the body in construction and are prone to some of the same problems that other joints suffer: arthritis, dislocation, inflammation, degeneration, and even infection. The facet joints are located at each of the spinal levels. The location of the pain associated with a particular facet joint often follows a characteristic pattern.\n\nThe facet joints are designed to provide both stability and flexibility to the spinal column. Oriented in a vertical direction between the vertebrae at the base of the spine, the facet joints allow movement forward and back (bending over and arching back). The facet joints in the thoracic spine are angled and in this part of the spine, movement is relatively restricted due to the presence of the ribs and rib cage. In the neck, the facet joints are more horizontally oriented, an arrangement that permits the turning movement of the head. In the low back, facet joints are aligned vertically, allowing for bending forward and back.\n\nIn many cases, the facet joint is damaged by years of chronic use and abuse. As the vertebral discs dry out and flatten with age, additional stress is placed on the facet joints. There is a fair amount of \"slack\" in the covering of the joint in early life, which allows the two sides of the joint to glide past each other when bending and twisting motions occur. When the vertebral disc flattens down, however, the two sides of the joint assume new\u2014more or less permanent\u2014positions relative to each other, placing a chronic strain on the joint. The bones of the joint will often respond to chronic strain by a process of overgrowth called _osteophyte formation_. Osteophyte formation is a process whereby the edges and corners of bones will heap up and develop protrusions and bony spurs. These areas of overgrowth can intrude into the spaces usually occupied by nerves, and when this happens, nerve pain can result.\n\nWhat's in a Name?\n\nThe facet joint is more properly known by its anatomical name, the _zygapophyseal joint_ (try saying that three times fast!). It is also known in shorthand as the _Z-joint_.\n\nAnother consequence of chronic facet joint strain is degeneration of the cartilage in the joint. When this happens, you essentially have arthritis in the back. Like any joint with arthritis, the facet joint can be persistently inflamed and achingly painful. The typical measures for treating this are described in this chapter but include stretching, strengthening, mild traction, the use of anti-inflammatory medicines, and even ice. More extreme measures can include nerve injections, nerve destroying procedures, and in rare cases, spinal fusion.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Cox, J.E. and W.J. Vanarthos. 1995. Unilateral dislocation of the lumbosacral facet joint: Imaging features. _Journal Emergency Radiology_ 2 (4): 234\u20136.\n\n2. Young, S., C. Aprill, and M. Laslett. 2003. Correlation of clinical examination characteristics with three sources of chronic low back pain. _Spine J_ 3 (6): 460\u20135.\n\n3. Giles, Lynton and Kevin Singer. _Clinical Anatomy and Management of Low Back Pain_. Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997.\n\n4. Bogduk, Nikolai. _Clinical Anatomy of the Lumbar Spine and Sacrum_. New York: Elsevier, 1987.\n\n5. Dreyfuss, P., C. Tibiletti, and S. Dreyer. 1994. Thoracic zygapophyseal joint pain patterns. _Spine_ 19 (7): 807\u201311.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**What is a _pars defect_ and how does it relate to facet disease?**  \nThe pars is part of the posterior ring of each vertebra, linking the superior and inferior facet joint faces. The full name of the pars is the _pars interarticularis_ (loosely translating as \"the part between the joint faces\"). A _pars defect_ is a deficiency in the pars, due either to a failure of the bone to form properly after birth or a fracture. The pars defect disconnects the posterior part of the vertebral ring from the anterior part of the vertebra.\n\nThe pars defect relates to facet disease due to the interlinking aspects of the spine's construction: each vertebra is stabilized from in front and in back. In order for a facet joint to become dislocated or serious damaged, either the disc will have to shift or the bones will have to give, which they do by fracturing. A pars defect can be present from birth as part of a minor spinal malformation. Alternatively, a pars defect can be a fracture of the vertebral ring. These fractures can result from a specific accident or trauma, but can also occur when excessive force is applied to the spine through heavy lifting. A pars defect may either be of minimal significance or require management by a surgical specialist, depending of the location and extent of the problem.\n\n**What does facet joint pain feel like?**  \nFacet joint pain can occur in either the lower, middle, or upper back, or even in the neck. It is usually most intense off to one side of the spine, and the level of the pain is usually near but not necessarily limited to the specific level of the problem. The pain of facet joint disease is usually due to arthritis or inflammation, so sensations of dull aching, strong pain, and even sharp twinges are not atypical. Facet joint pain is different from the pain of a back muscle problem, in that it lasts for much longer periods of time and is especially brought on by extending the back. Activities such as painting ceilings, changing light bulbs in suspended fixtures, or trimming trees are likely to provoke pain in people with facet joint disease.\n\n## CHAPTER 7  \nSpinal Instability (Spondylolisthesis)\n\n**OTC medications, heating pads, exercise, and corsets to stabilize**\n\n**the spine are often the best remedy for pain.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Do you have pain that is very severe at times and at other times is almost nothing?\n\n**>** Does your pain seem to flare up in discrete episodes and settle down, only to flare up again?\n\n**>** During an episode, do you have difficulty standing upright and develop muscle tightness especially in the hamstrings?\n\nPain that is severe at times and comes and goes in discrete episodes can be due to spinal instability. In this condition, simple movements such as standing up from a low toilet may be enough to trigger a shift of the vertebral bones relative to one another. Sometimes, the bones shift into a position that is more properly aligned; when this happens, pain is relieved. At other times, one vertebral bone will shift forward or back relative to the one below it. When the two vertebral bones are not lined up properly, this is called a _spondylolisthesis_ (spon-di-lo-lis-thee-sis). The ligaments, disc, and joints are all stressed, and incapacitating, severe pain may result.\n\nThe syndrome of spondylolisthesis is especially characterized by tight hamstring muscles. One way to check if your hamstrings are tight is to do a straight leg raise test. When you lie on your back and have a helper lift one of your legs gradually up in the air, bending only at the hip, your hamstrings are tight if there is tightness or pain in the back of your thigh that limits the range of upward movement in your leg. (Pain in the back with this movement is more indicative of a nerve root compression from a disc.) Have the helper check the other leg with you as well.\n\nRare Causes of Spinal Instability\n\nIn rare cases, spinal instability is due to a mass (tumor), an infection (abscess), or a spinal malformation. These problems are readily assessed through MRI and the other diagnostic tests described here. The treatment for these conditions is individualized.\n\nAnother characteristic of spondylolisthesis is that the pain in the back worsens as the spine is extended, as when someone bends backwards to look up at the ceiling. This is because spondylolisthesis is most typically associated with damage to the boney arch portion of the vertebra, and this part is pressurized with backwards bending of the spine.\n\nIf you have lived with the experience of \"having your back go out\" repeatedly and the cause is not a bulging disc or muscle spasm, you may have spinal instability; read on!\n\nDISPLACED VERTEBRA CAUSING PRESSURE ON NERVE\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nBack pain due to spondylolisthesis needs expert medical assessment and care. If you have a spondylolisthesis (sometimes referred to as a _spinal instability_ or a _spinal misalignment_ ):\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend over-the-counter pain medication and conservative measures such as a heating pad, especially if the spinal misalignment is believed to be old and not related to your pain.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend physical therapy, especially if the misalignment is mild and there is no evidence of nerve compression. Surgery may still be needed if non-surgical treatments are ineffective and if the misalignment appears to be worsening over time.\n\n\u2022 Chiropractic therapy may be appropriate for some forms of spondylolisthesis. Sometimes more than one treatment visit is needed.\n\n\u2022 Non-surgical decompression therapy may be beneficial, but solid evidence in support of this new approach is still accumulating.\n\n\u2022 A corset can be used to help stabilize the spine and relieve pain.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may refer you to a surgeon, especially if there is nerve-related weakness, persistent disabling instability, or advanced spinal degeneration. Surgery has advantages and disadvantages; however, if there is obvious weakness or loss of control over bowel or bladder, emergency surgery may be necessary to preserve function.\n\nA Corset, Of Course\n\nYou may be advised to wear a corset, and this may help to reduce movement around a hyper-mobile spine segment. You might wonder if the corset is a permanent state of affairs, but with proper rehabilitation and careful self-awareness, it is possible for the muscles to gain strength and support the spine, for the ligaments to repair somewhat, and for the pain-amplification cycle to wind-down.\n\n### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR DIAGNOSES A PULLED MUSCLE?**\n\nA pulled muscle will usually improve in three to five days. The difference between a pulled muscle and a spondylolisthesis is that spondylolisthesis attacks occur again and again, always with the same type of pain. Usually, the pain is deeper and sharper than the typical burning quality of muscle pain.\n\n### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR DIAGNOSES A BULGING DISC?**\n\nIn this case, physical therapy and exercise are usually best. The degree of pain and disability associated with this type of injury varies greatly, but in this case you can do a lot to improve your chances of a fast and full recovery.\n\n### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR FINDS THAT A NERVE ROOT IS BEING COMPRESSED BY AN OVERGROWTH OF BONES (BONY SPURS) OR LIGAMENTS IN THE LOWER BACK?**\n\nThe overgrowth of bones and ligaments in the lower back is usually the end result of years of accumulated trauma to the back. It carries the label of degenerative joint disease (DJD). Surgery may be an alternative, but this depends on the extent of damage to the spine. Many times, physical therapy and programmed exercise is the right solution.\n\n### The Treatment\n\nIf your doctor recommends physical therapy first, this usually means you have a mild spondylolisthesis or one that is prone to reduction with mild-to-moderate levels of pressure or traction. The types of physical therapy treatments used for spondylolisthesis are similar to those used for injured discs (see Chapter 3). Treatment for spondylolisthesis may emphasize manual therapy and traction approaches in order to restore the normal alignment of the vertebral bones. If you want to avoid surgery now or in the future, you will need to do your recommended back-strengthening exercises every day. Some of the exercises that are useful for strengthening the spine and preventing shifting into and out of spondylolisthesis are described in Chapter 14. But make sure you check with your doctor or physical therapist before proceeding.\n\n#### **A GOOD EXERCISE FROM PILATES**\n\nOne exercise that is good for building stronger spine muscles comes from Pilates. Begin by lying on your back; make sure to hold a solid pelvic neutral position at the start and throughout. Straighten one leg and bend the knee of the other, placing the foot on the floor firmly. Now, extend the arms fully as if you are lifting them over your head (see below). Raise the heel of the straight leg about four inches (10 cm) off the floor, then flex the knee and hip, bringing the knee up toward the chest. As you do this, bring both arms over you in an arc that aims to place one arm on either side of the flexed leg. As you do this, you should slightly bend your upper body up in a modified abdominal crunch. Return the arms and the flexed leg to their extended position and repeat this movement five to 10 times. Then switch legs and readjust the arc of your arms to exercise the other side of the body.\n\n#### **COSTLY COMPUTER-CONTROLLED THERAPY**\n\nIf your doctor recommends decompression therapy, be aware that many insurance companies are not going to pay this therapy. In the past, Medicare has not paid for this, so it is essential that you check with your medical insurer before making a decision, as it can cost thousands of dollars. There are different forms of this device; however, one machine is designed to apply controlled traction on the spine while simultaneously delivering electrical stimulation to the back. The idea is that if the electrical stimulation can relax the back and block muscle spasms, the traction will be more effective. Many patients have reported a benefit from this therapy, but the ordinary standards for proving that the therapy works have not yet been met.\n\n#### **SPINAL ADJUSTMENTS BY A CHIROPRACTOR**\n\nIf your doctor recommends manual therapy or spinal manipulation, make sure that you feel comfortable with the treatment plan. Many insurance companies will pay for spinal adjustments and chiropractic care. Ask whether the treatment is expected to work in one or a few visits, or whether protracted therapy is anticipated. Spinal adjustments to the lumbar spine are generally safe and effective.\n\nIn terms of caring for the lower back, chiropractors often have a distinct advantage over the garden-variety M.D. in the extent of training that they receive in disorders of the back and spine. Chiropractor training is essentially focused on the spine and how disorders of the spine impact the overall health of the body. The well-prepared chiropractor will have received a much more detailed theoretical understanding of spine mechanics and greater working knowledge of effective mechanical solutions to spine problems through their training. The chiropractor will usually approach a back problem with a can-do, hands-on attitude and will excel in doctor-patient communication. In general, chiropractors do not prescribe medications, as this is counter to the philosophy that they are trained in, and they do not perform surgeries. The number of chiropractors in the U.S. is still small, compared with the number of physicians and surgeons, but these numbers are expected to grow, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.\n\n  **Warning!**\n\nThere have been documented cases of major strokes to the brain occurring at five times the baseline rate in adults younger than 45 years of age following chiropractic treatments. It has been proposed that this is especially associated with high-force chiropractic manipulation of the neck. The reason the strokes are believed to occur is because the blood vessels that supply the back half of the brain are threaded through small holes on the sides of the neck vertebral bones (like a thread running through beads on a string). The explanation that seems to follow is that as the high-force manipulation causes the neck vertebral bones to twist and slide against each other, the blood vessels can be exposed to shearing forces and become blocked as the vessel is compressed or damaged.\n\nX-ray of the lumbar spine with a spinal fusion\n\nChecklist for the First Visit to the Surgeon (Before the Surgery):\n\n  Copies of imaging studies\n\n  List of questions for surgeon\n\n  Brief summary of the problem\n\n  List of other medical conditions\n\n  List of medications\n\n  Pain calendar\n\n  Support person\n\n### Surgery Means Spinal Fusion\n\nIf your doctor refers you to a surgeon right away, chances are that you have a spinal instability that is putting your spinal cord or nerve roots at risk without surgical intervention. The surgical procedures that may be used to address a spondylolisthesis include spinal fusion. Other surgical procedures may be considered as appropriate by the surgeon. Spinal fusion is a major procedure. It's a process of fusing or permanently linking different vertebral bones together into one unit. Fusion can involve fusing two adjacent vertebrae together with bone from elsewhere, sometimes harvested from the patient's own hip (bone autograft). At other times, another source of bone is preferred; if the bone comes from someone else, it is referred to as an _allograft_. The usual source of bone for allografts is deceased donors; you will hear this called the _bone bank_. Spinal fusion can also entail the placement of metal rods and screws alongside and into the spine. Fusions that use metal rods and screws are sometimes called _fusion with instrumentation_. The use of metal rods allows for the spine to be stabilized over multiple spinal segments at once, and can be used to stabilize a bone fusion until it is solidly fused. A brief description of the actual procedure follows.\n\n#### **NUTS AND BOLTS OF SPINAL FUSION**\n\nSpinal fusion is an established surgical procedure that usually requires a long incision on the back. Although some surgeons are adopting a new type of fusion surgery that is done through surgical keyholes in the abdomen, most spinal fusions continue to be performed using a long-incision-over-the-back approach. Once the incision has been made, the surgeon will separate the layers of fat, muscle, and connective tissues that are attached to the bone, which will anchor the fusion hardware. Holes are drilled into the bone that forms the sides of the boney arch on the back part of the target vertebrae. These holes may be tested to make sure that they are stable and can hold a screw. The screws are designed to connect to plates or rods that will fix the vertebrae in place. Oftentimes, screws and plates are used together with grafted bone in a fusion surgery, as these metal structures will prevent shifting as the bone solidifies and hardens. The maturation of the fusing bone takes several weeks. Once the plates or rods are in place, the screws can be tightened and locked into place. The surgeon will then close the incision in the back, cleansing the incision and working to control any bleeding as needed. A dressing will be placed in the operating room and this dressing will remain in place until the surgeon determines it should be removed.\n\n#### **PREPARATION FOR SURGERY**\n\nBefore seeing the surgeon, there are some things you should do to prepare: gather your relevant medical records, make a list of potential questions, and make sure you have a support person who will stay with you throughout the visit. Make sure that you have the necessary imaging studies, both reports and films. If blood work or other tests have been performed, bring copies of those reports as well. Have an accurate list of your medications including dietary supplements, and take a list of your prior surgeries. Make sure to alert the surgeon and staff to prior problems with anesthesia, bleeding, or procedures.\n\nConsider taking a notebook or an audio recording device to the visit as information can flow very quickly once treatment decisions are made. Always ask permission before making an audio recording of your visit. If the surgeon is recommending surgery, make sure you know what procedure is planned, whether the procedure might change based on findings at the time of surgery, and what the anticipated course of recovery might be. Have a reasonable sense of the expected limitations on activity after surgery. If you are planning airplane travel, make sure to get specific guidelines. If you smoke, you must quit before spinal fusion surgery. The biggest risk factor for failed fusions is smoking; it is believed that the nicotine kills bone cells.\n\nAfter your first surgical office visit, read over the materials that you receive. Make sure you understand what procedure is planned, how many days you will stay in the hospital, whether a rehab center stay is expected, and how much time off from work will be needed. Make sure you feel comfortable with the plan. You will need to know how to prepare for the surgery, including when to stop NSAIDs (potentially contributing to excess blood-thinning) and how long to fast before the surgery. Ask if you will need to complete a pre-operative exam and determine if any exercise is recommended or restricted beforehand.\n\nThe day of surgery, you will be meeting someone from the anesthesiology team before the surgery begins. Make sure that they know how long you've been fasting, what medications you normally take and have taken in the last 24 hours, and how long you have been off NSAIDs (including aspirin, ibuprofen, naprosyn, etc).\n\nChiropractic Interventions Gain Support\n\nThe research in support of chiropractic interventions is building. Studies suggest that chiropractic care is beneficial, but these studies are small and usually focus on chronic low back pain generally rather than any specific diagnosis. Studies also indicate that chiropractic care is effective at relieving pain and disability, associated with high levels of patient satisfaction, and less expensive than primary care management of back pain.\n\n#### **POST-SURGICAL CONSIDERATIONS**\n\nAfter surgery, you will have some degree of pain. Most of the time, post-surgical pain is controlled with strong pain medication. Opioids are widely used during and after spine surgery. If you have been on pain medications before the surgery, you may need to make sure the pain team is aware of this and makes any necessary adjustments.\n\nWhat's New: Smoking Puts Fusion at Risk\n\nA recent study on spinal fusion indicated that smoking doubles that chance of fusion failure. Just 10 cigarettes a day were enough to put people into the higher risk category for fusion failure. Those who quit smoking reduced their risk to fusion failure to near-normal levels.\n\nProper standing posture\n\nDetails on what to expect after surgery are covered in Chapter 2, but make sure you follow recommendations on when to get out of bed, when to ask for assistance, and how to move around in the first few days. You will need to have rehab after spinal fusion surgery. Be careful not to overdo it, because the spinal fusion takes several weeks to become strong against the ordinary pressures placed on the spine.\n\nTake the pain medication that is recommended, but be sure to communicate with your nurses and doctors if you think the pain is more than you expected. Out of the ordinary pain after surgery can be a sign that something is amiss; don't suffer in silence. In addition, too much pain can interfere with the normal recovery process. The body will release stress hormones in response to pain and this will block healing. People with excess pain are prone to falls, you definitely don't want to risk falling at this stage!\n\nYou should not smoke after spinal fusion surgery. Make sure to eat a diet that is varied and high in fiber. Stay well hydrated and act aggressively to prevent any constipation while on opioids (sometimes call narcotics) such as Percocet, oxycodone, or codeine.\n\n### Testing For Spinal Instability\n\nMany times, a basic X-ray of the back is the best test for the diagnosis of a spondylolisthesis. However, it is possible that the X-ray may not reflect the problem if it is taken at a time when the alignment has self-corrected. If the spine is very unstable, it may be helpful to have flexion-extension X-rays, where the pictures of the spine are taken as the person bends forward and back. An MRI may or may not be helpful. If you have pain that is shooting down the leg, especially pain that extends below the knee, or if you have actual weakness along with pain, your doctor may recommend a nerve conduction test to assess whether the nerves in the back are still intact. This test is described in detail in Chapter 2. Once imaging and other test results are in, a clearer picture will emerge. The possibilities range from \"nothing is wrong\" to a \"mild misalignment\" to \"high-grade misalignment of the spine.\"\n\nA spondylolisthesis is described by specialists using two systems. The first is a system that tries to identify the causes or origins of the problem. This diagnostic classification system includes labels such as dysplastic (meaning improperly formed during development), isthmic (pertaining to the boney arch structure), traumatic, and degenerative. The other descriptive system is based on the degree of slippage that has occurred between the involved vertebral bones. In this system, a grade is assigned. A Grade I slippage is less than 25 percent displaced, a Grade II is 25\u201350 percent displaced, and so on. The higher the grade, the more likely the spondylolisthesis is to compress nerve roots and other structures. It is asserted in the medical literature that low-grade misalignment that is stably displaced is not necessarily painful. A low grade slippage that moves in and out of alignment is more likely to be painful.\n\n  **Warning! Using NSAIDs May Interfere with Bone Healing after Surgery**\n\nMedical literature suggests that NSAIDs may interfere with bone healing, and laboratory-based research is quoted as supporting this. Recently, the recommendation was made that surgeons should not only avoid the use of NSAIDs immediately before and after surgery, but that they should counsel patients to discontinue NSAID use well in advance of the surgery.\n\nIt is important to note that most surgeons will require NSAIDs be stopped for a specific period of time prior to surgery because of the risk of blood-thinning effects.\n\n### The Explanation\n\nThe vertebral bones of the spinal cord are stacked one on top of the other like blocks in a child's tower. Most of the time, extraordinarily strong ligaments in the back hold these bones in proper alignment, but in some cases, if the spine has been injured or stressed, one of these bones may begin to shift in and out of alignment. The most common scenario is that the vertebral bone that sits on top will slide forward (an anterolisthesis). The less common scenario is that the vertebral bone on top will slide back (a retrolisthesis). Although that are some misalignments that are thought to be relatively stable, others will be meta-stable and will slip in and out of alignment. For these people, this slippage can sometimes be accompanied by excruciating pain and difficulty getting into a fully upright posture.\n\nAnatomy of the spine\n\nThe Pros and Cons of Spine Surgery\n\nIf you are contemplating spinal fusion surgery for treatment of spondylolisthesis, don't expect miracles. The spine fusion is intended to immobilize part of the spine. You will need to exercise care in returning to daily life. There is a good body of evidence that shows that the spine above and below the level of the fusion is subject to increased stresses. For people who don't adapt well to life after spine fusion, it can almost seem like there is a pattern of spreading spine degeneration. Increased body awareness can be helpful if it does not make you so fearful of doing anything that your world begins to contract. Stay focused on positive health but as you do, include a plan to care for your back in your overall health picture.\n\nIt is widely believed that having an exaggerated low back curvature (lordosis) or sway back posture with the buttocks protruding increases the chance of spondylolisthesis occurring. This is because the L5 vertebral body sits on a sloping angle and this slope is exaggerated when the low back curvature is increased. This is an important reminder to keep a constant watch on the spine and work on maintaining a pelvic neutral position even when standing. One way to facilitate this is to think about tightening your buttocks and curving your tail bone under as you stand. Another helpful visualization is to think about pulling your belly button toward your spine.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. McNeely, M.L., G. Torrance, and D.J. Magee. 2003. A systematic review of physiotherapy for spondylolysis and spondylolisthesis. _Man Ther_ 8 (2): 80-91.\n\n2. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, \"Chiropractors,\" _Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010\u201311 Edition_. <http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/oco\/ocos071.htm>. Accessed 12\/24\/2009.\n\n3. Rothwell, D.M., S.J. Bondy, and J.I. Williams. 2001. Chiropractic manipulation and stroke: A population-based case-control study. _Stroke_ 32:1054\u20131060.\n\n4. Chiroweb Editorial Staff. Stroke after chiropractic neck manipulation A 'small but significant risk,' says American Heart Association. <http:\/\/www.chiroweb.com\/mpacms\/dc\/article.php?id=41126>. Accessed 12\/27\/09.\n\n5. Wilkey, A., M. Gregory, D. Byfield, and P.W. McCarthy. 2008. A comparison between chiropractic management and pain clinic management for chronic low-back pain in a national health service outpatient clinic. _J Altern Complement Med_ 14 (5): 465\u201373.\n\n6. Grieves, B., J.M. Menke, and K.J. Pursel. 2009. Cost minimization analysis of low back pain claims data for chiropractic vs medicine in a managed care organization. _J Manipulative Physiol Ther_ 32 (9): 734\u20139.\n\n7. Andersen, T., F.B. Christensen, M. Laursen, K. H\u00f8y, E.S. Hansen, and C. B\u00fcnger. 2001. Smoking as a predictor of negative outcome in lumbar spinal fusion. _Spine (Phila Pa 1976)_ 26 (23): 2623\u20138.\n\n8. Irani, Z. and J.J. Patel. \"Spondylolisthesis,\" eMedicine. <http:\/\/emedicine.medscape.com\/article\/396016-overview>. Accessed 12\/20\/2009.\n\n9. Thaller, J., M. Walker, A.J. Kline, and D.G. Anderson. 2005. The effect of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents on spinal fusion. _Orthopedics_ 28 (3): 299\u2013303.\n\n10. Lowe, W. March 2006. Spondylolisthesis: An elusive cause of low back pain. _Massage Today_ , 6 (3). <http:\/\/www.massagetoday.com\/mpacms\/mt\/article.php?id=13380>. Accessed 12\/30\/2009.\n\n11. Towers, S.S. and W.B. Pratt. 1990. Spondylolysis and associated spondylolisthesis in Eskimo and Athabascan populations. _Clin Orthop Relat Res_ 250:171\u2013175.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**What are the triggers for episodic spondylolisthesis?**  \nThe usual scenario for a person with episodic spondylolisthesis is that he or she will have had an episode of strong back pain that resolved before anything was done about it. He or she will do well for a period of time, and then all of a sudden the back pain will return. The things that trigger the episode may seem relatively minor but include getting up from a low toilet seat, bending over into the trunk of a car, playing weekend sports too vigorously, or even sneezing.\n\nIf you have episodic spondylolisthesis, you will need to become a keen student of your own body mechanics. You may need to scrupulously avoid activities that put your back out. You may need to avoid low seating, get a special adapter for low toilet seats in your home, and give up on shoveling snow and moving furniture!\n\n**Besides those with sway backs, who is likely to get a spondylolisthesis?**  \nCertain activities and sports increase the occurrence of a spondylolisthesis. Populations as special risk include gymnasts, rowers, weightlifter, divers, and football players. Certain professional groups are at increased risk, including loggers and those who carry very heavy packs such as foot soldiers. One group that has consistently been identified as having higher occurrence of spondylolisthesis is the Eskimos. There is some indication that a genetic component may contribute to this. Overall, it is thought that a spondylolisthesis is present in less than 5 percent of the population, although the degenerative form increases with advancing age. An L4-L5 spondylolisthesis is more characteristic of an early-in-life problem, whereas L5-S1 slippage is typical of later-in-life degenerative spondylolisthesis.\n\n## CHAPTER 8  \nVertebral Fracture: Emergency!\n\n**Self-treatment can result in permanent disability. Get emergency**\n\n**medical help as soon as possible.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Have you been told by a doctor that you have a fractured vertebra?\n\nA vertebral fracture can cause the spine to be unstable. Seemingly simple movements, such as trying to sit up, can cause the bones to shift abnormally, crushing the spine or severing blood vessels. Vertebral fracture is often preceded by some trauma, such as a motor vehicle accident, a fall down stairs, or a swimming\/diving accident, but in older adults with osteoporosis, the trauma that causes vertebral fracture may be less obvious. If you have osteoporosis or a collapsing spine, the sudden onset of strong pain in the center of the back may be your only sign that serious damage has occurred to the back.\n\n  **Warning! Do Not Self-Diagnose a Vertebral Fracture**\n\nMost of the chapters in this book are written as a guide to learning how to better understand what may be going on with your back. This chapter is different: it is intended as a guide for those who have been told by a physician that they have experienced vertebral fracture. You should not try to self-diagnose vertebral fracture. It is a critically serious medical problem that can result in permanent disability if one wrong move is made. If you suspect that you have a vertebral fracture, stop reading and call 911.\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nSuspected vertebral fracture is a medical emergency for the reason that some types of fracture can result in compression of the spinal cord or injury to other nearby structures. Emergency personnel are trained in how to move people minimizing the of risk for provoking further damage to the body in the event that there is a spinal instability due to a fracture. They will need to methodically evacuate someone with a suspected spine injury, typically using an immobilization board. At the hospital, someone skilled in assessing the spine for fracture will determine if it is \"safe to move\" by obtaining a medical history (sometimes very abbreviated), doing a physical exam, and evaluating any necessary X-rays or images. The treatments will vary with the severity of the fracture and the degree of associated spinal instability.\n\nIf you have a fractured vertebra in the neck:\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will have determined the particular characteristics of your fracture on the basis of X-rays and potentially other imaging studies (CT, MRI).\n\n\u2022 Your neck may need to be immobilized or surgically fused.\n\n\u2022 It may seem that fusion is a drastic solution given that it results in reduced movement in the neck permanently, but if you can still move your arms and legs, that is something to be grateful for. Cervical spine fracture is potentially fatal.\n\nIf you have a fractured vertebra in the middle of the back (thoracic region):\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will have determined the particular characteristics of your fracture on the basis of X-rays; sometimes other imaging will be needed.\n\n\u2022 You may need to take medication for pain.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will discuss with you any procedures that may help stabilize the broken vertebra.\n\n\u2022 Make sure you understand if your spinal cord is in any danger of compression.\n\n\u2022 Make sure you know the warning signs of spinal cord compression and when to see urgent medical care. (See Chapter 9 for more on spinal cord compression.)\n\nIf you have a fractured vertebra in the lower back (lumbar region and sacrum):\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will have determined the particular characteristics of your fracture on the basis of X-rays and potentially other imaging.\n\n\u2022 If the spine is unstable, your doctor may recommend surgery to stabilize it. Depending on the situation, spinal fusion may be required to stabilize a fractured vertebra.\n\n\u2022 Sometimes a brace or corset is used to stabilize the spine if this is considered sufficient to promote healing.\n\n\u2022 You may need to take medication for pain.\n\n\u2022 You may be instructed to eliminate certain activities for several weeks after fracture. It takes a long time for bones to heal after a break, possibly six weeks or longer. Make sure you know how much activity is permitted during this time and follow your doctor's directions very carefully. Failure to observe activity restriction can result in persistent pain and a worsening of the spinal stability.\n\n  **Warning! If You Suspect a Vertebral Fracture, Do Not Move!**\n\nVertebral facture is a medical emergency that may result immediately in permanent paralysis or other serious harm. If you ever suspect that a vertebra has just fractured, **do not move**. Have someone call 911 and let the emergency medical team know that you may have spine injury.\n\nIf You Smoke, Quit Immediately\n\nIf you smoke cigarettes and you've experienced a vertebral fracture, you must quit immediately. Smoking interferes with the body's ability to deliver oxygen to bones and recuperation from vertebral fracture.\n\nWhat's New: Controversy over Vertebroplasty Efficacy\n\nMajor controversy erupted with the publication of two articles in the _New England Journal of Medicine_ describing studies of the technique for the relief of back pain and reporting that no benefit was proven. The lead doctor on one study expressed shock with the study's conclusions, as have others. It has been the experience of many physicians that vertebroplasty is very helpful when a patient is experiencing severe back pain from vertebral fracture. In all fairness, it seems that the larger of the two studies showed that there was improvement in clinically meaningful pain relief at one month. Acceptance of this result was limited however, because the result had borderline statistical significance. The patients who received both the actual vertebroplasty and those who received the sham treatment were both better immediately after the procedure. This may reflect the effects of sedation, local anesthetic, or the normal stress response in someone undergoing a medical procedure. For reasons that aren't clear from the published works, neither of the studies was able to recruit the full quota of patients originally planned by the researchers. The Society for Interventional Radiology has weighed in with a Commentary that highlights the limitations of the study and demonstrated pretty effectively that just one additional patient could have swayed the conclusions of the U.S.-based study in the direction of definitely endorsing the treatment. Interestingly, many more sham treatment patients elected to have a second procedure in hopes of pain relief than did vertebroplasty patients.\n\n### The Treatment\n\nThe treatment of vertebral fracture depends of the location and extent of the fracture. Your doctors will assess the stability of the spine and treatments will include pain control measures and any necessary steps to prevent shifting or collapse of the spinal column.\n\n#### **USE ICE PACKS FREQUENTLY FOR DAYS OR WEEKS**\n\nVertebral fracture will often require ice packs to be used several times daily, for a week or longer. In other parts of this book, ice packs are strongly recommended for the first 48 hours after a minor injury or pain flare, situations of muscle pain, minor insult, or acute back pain. With vertebral fracture, however, ice is often recommended for the duration of the first week, and warm compresses are avoided during this time. This is because in vertebral fracture there is a longer time window for swelling and inflammation that may ultimately interfere with healing. Ice will help reduce both pain and excessive inflammation. Make sure to wrap your icepack in a cloth before applying it, and leave it in place for no more than 20 minutes at a time.\n\n#### **PRESCRIPTION-STRENGTH MEDICINE WILL ALLEVIATE PAIN**\n\nWhen your doctor recommends medication, it is entirely possible that prescription-strength pain medications will be proposed. There is some evidence to suggest that the NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) can interfere with bone healing, and some orthopedic surgeons avoid NSAIDs after bone surgery. Although a certain percentage of people with vertebral fracture will experience relatively modest pain levels, bones are painful when fractured and a vertebral fracture can result in nerve compression (also painful). For these reasons, it is sometimes necessary to use prescription-strength pain medications, and even still, it is observed that these may not always work for the pain of vertebral fracture. As long as the fracture is healing, you can expect an eventual reduction in back pain.\n\n#### **PHYSICAL THERAPY IS OKAY IF THE SPINE IS ALIGNED AND STABLE**\n\nWhen your doctor recommends physical therapy, this is usually because the integrity and alignment of the spine has not been compromised. Because the spine is an interdependent structure where bones and muscles depend on each other for support and strength, core strengthening is an essential long-term goal for addressing the problems that are associated with vertebral fracture. In the short run, physical therapy can address factors such as pain control, reflex muscle spasm, correcting and reinforcing proper body mechanics in the wake of vertebral fracture, and preventing deconditioning during the acute pain phase.\n\nPhysical therapists know exactly how to use ice packs for optimal results; they will position you with bolsters and pillows to place the spine in a rest position and have huge ice packs that they apply over a towel. They will set a timer so that the requisite time is not exceeded, dim the lights, and encourage you to relax for the treatment. It is a good idea to follow this model with ice treatments at home. As you are getting better from your fracture, the physical therapist will show you a series of stretches and exercises. It is absolutely essential to follow through with these. Improving strength and stability of the spine is the single best protection against chronic problems after a spine fracture.\n\n#### **VERTEBROPLASTY STABILIZES THE SPINE WITH GLUE**\n\nWhen your doctor recommends vertebroplasty, you will want to consider this recommendation carefully. Originally devised in the early 1980s in France, vertebroplasty is a procedure in which specialized glue is injected into the fractured vertebra to stabilize and perhaps partially restore the normal vertebral configuration., It is considered a minimally invasive procedure that is performed with the patient awake or very mildly sedated with medications to relieve anxiety. A needle is inserted into the fractured vertebra using light X-ray (fluoroscopy) to provide guidance and confirm correct placement of the needle tip. The glue is prepared on the spot in the procedural room because it hardens quickly, changing from something like the texture of toothpaste to a harder-than-bone state in less than 15 minutes. Vertebroplasty has been used for many years and has been believed to be a very successful treatment for severe pain after vertebral fracture. Widely considered a safe procedure, the major limitations were the cost factor and the fact that the technique had never been definitely proven to be effective.\n\n#### **A CORSET SUPPORTS AND STABILIZES THE SPINE**\n\nWhen your doctor recommends a brace or corset, this usually means that the spine may be mildly unstable but is considered sufficiently stable that a corset will serve to support and prevent abnormal motion of the spine during the healing process. It is especially important to follow your doctor's instructions about activity restrictions very carefully. Wear the corset as instructed, as the purpose of the corset is to prevent motions in the spine that will impede or reverse healing of the bones and ligaments of the spine. It is expect that the corset will aid in relieving pain. This is because if the spine is even mildly unstable and the bones are shifting small amounts, for some people, this is very painful. There are rich supplies of pain-sensing nerve fibers that go to all the structures of the back (except the interior of the vertebral discs). Persistent movements, even when small, can inflame these nerve endings and result in serious pain. A chronic state of mild spinal instability may take the form of intermittent spondylolisthesis (see Chapter 7 for more about spondylolisthesis).\n\nThe illustration here shows a type of brace that might be used for spinal immobilization after a vertebral fracture of the mid or low back. This brace is called a _cruciform anterior spinal hyperextension_ , or _CASH brace_. It stabilizes the spine in a more upright position and prevents forward bending, which may place further pressure on the vertebra and impede healing. Another type of brace used for this purpose is the Jewett brace.\n\nOne type of brace used for treatment of vertebral fracture\n\nSpeak Up If You're in Pain\n\nYou don't need to suffer in silence. If back pain after vertebral fracture is keeping you awake at night, interfering with your ability to function during the day, or just generally making you miserable, talk with your doctor about treatment options. If that doctor has run out of ideas for pain control, get another opinion. Undertreatment of spine pain is not an acceptable outcome.\n\n#### **SURGERY IS NEEDED IF THE SPINE MIGHT COLLAPSE**\n\nWhen your doctor recommends surgery, this usually means that a determination has been made that your spine is unstable and that without surgery you are at risk for having the spine shift or collapse and crush part of the spine or some nerve roots. Surgery for vertebral fracture may involve spinal fusion to stabilize the spine. Spinal fusion is described in detail in Chapter 7. In certain cases, it is necessary for special hardware to be placed in the spine to replace or stabilize a seriously damaged vertebral bone. This is done at the time of spinal fusion and is part of that surgery. Your surgeon will discuss this with you if it becomes necessary. You should read the sections on the preparation for surgery, the surgery itself, and the post-surgical considerations in that chapter.\n\n### Testing For Vertebral Fracture\n\nTesting for vertebral fracture will usually occur in an emergency room setting, at least initially. Your doctors will want to obtain and review X-rays of the back. CT scans can be very useful for visualizing the bones of the back in more detail, and 3-D renderings are sometimes used. An MRI may be ordered to evaluate the relative location of structures such as nerves, muscles, joint capsules, and ligaments. If someone has been in an accident and placed on an immobilization board at the accident scene, he or she may have to wait for imaging studies for the spine to be \"cleared,\" and then he or she will be unstrapped from the board.\n\n### The Explanation\n\nVertebral fracture is distressingly common. Car accidents, including head-on collisions, vehicular roll-over accidents, and accidents involving impact with windshield and steering wheel are associated with spinal injury. Two main groups of people suffer from vertebral fracture: young adults (mostly male) and older adults who have osteoporosis. In the young adult population, vertebral fracture usually results from serious trauma. Vertebral fracture is associated with spinal cord injury and sadly, there are still 11,000 spinal cord injuries reported each year. Most of these are due to motor vehicle accidents, but violent injury and injuries related to sports such as downhill skiing, diving, and football are important causes of spinal cord injury as well.\n\nX-ray of a spine showing the metal screws and plates used in the fixation of fractured spinal vertebrae.\n\nRed Flags for People with Vertebral Fracture\n\nThe following warning signs, for people who have previously been told they have vertebral fracture by a qualified physician, could indicate that the spinal cord or nerve roots are being compressed or damaged.\n\n\u2022 Loss of sensation over the genitals\n\n\u2022 Loss of control over urine or feces (incontinence), especially if this is a new problem\n\n\u2022 Having difficulty starting a stream of urine as a new problem after back injury\n\n\u2022 New severe pain in the back\n\n\u2022 Pain or numbness wrapping around the body or leg\n\n\u2022 Recent fever or noticeable weight loss\n\nWhen the spinal cord is injured, communications from the brain to other parts of the body are slowed or stopped. And this is the real danger of vertebral fracture: When a vertebral bone is broken, it can break in such a way that the spinal column becomes unstable; bones can shift or move and wind up pressing on the spinal cord itself, compressing nerve roots or even damaging nearby blood vessels. If you have had a vertebral fracture, a doctor will need to determine your risks for this kind of problem. The consequences of spinal cord injury are potentially severe. A cord injury in the neck can paralyze the hands, arms, and legs, and even stop a person from breathing. These sorts of injuries are potentially fatal when medical care is not provided immediately. When vertebral fracture damages the spinal cord lower down in the back, it may result in leg paralysis and loss of control over the bowels and bladder. These sorts of injuries can leave someone permanently confined to a wheelchair and dramatically shorten the life expectancy. For these reasons, vertebral fracture is considered a medical emergency that requires immediate medical evaluation.\n\n#### **CLASSIFICATION OF VERTEBRAL FRACTURES**\n\nVertebral fractures are classified based on the mechanism of injury and extent of damage. The major classes of injury mechanism include flexion-compression (as in landing in a seated position from a height), axial-compression (as in landing with pressure transmitted straight onto the spine), flexion-distraction (as in the injury produced by a lap belt\u2013only restraint as the spine flexes forward with deceleration), rotational (occurs with extreme side-bending or twisting motions), and shear injuries (where twisting and front-to-back motions are combined). The doctor's evaluation will focus on determining the type of injury, and also whether the various parts of the spine are affected by the injury. In situations of vertebral fracture, attention is focused on three vertical columns, one defined by the front part of all the vertebral bones; one that runs through the middle of all the vertebral bones, top to bottom; and one that runs through the back edge of each of the vertebral bones.\n\nWith this information in hand, it will be possible to determine whether the spine is stable, somewhat unstable, or dangerously unstable. The back edge of the spinal bones is bounded by a very strong, fibrous ligament that adds tremendously to the integrity of the whole. If the posterior part of the vertebral bone is damaged and or detached from the ligament, this makes it more likely that the vertebral fracture will be an unstable one. In the illustration, the front column is shaded in blue, the middle column in yellow, and the posterior column in red. The vertebral fracture can disrupt one, two, or all three of these columns. Fractures that disrupt only the front column and some fractures that disrupt the front and middle columns at the same time are still considered stable.\n\nSome examples of how the fracture classification method is applied can be seen in the next illustration. Vertebral burst fractures occur as a result of strong pressure applied directly to the top or bottom of the spine. In the topmost fracture, the front, middle, and back columns of the vertebral bone are all disrupted. This is an unstable fracture. In the middle fracture, the anterior and middle columns are disrupted while the posterior column remains intact. This fracture may be stable. In the bottom fracture, only the middle column is disrupted, and this fracture should be stable. An anterior wedge fracture is the most common fracture associated with osteoporosis. It is most often a stable fracture, but professional evaluation is necessary to make this determination.\n\n#### **OSTEOPOROSIS AND CANCER PRESENT HIGH-RISKS**\n\nThere are some people who can expect to face significant challenges after vertebral fracture. Two groups in particular are at risk for serious long-term consequences: those with osteoporosis and those who have had a vertebral fracture because cancer is present in the spine. These two situations require different approaches.\n\nFor people with osteoporosis, it is important to adopt a program designed to address problems with bone density and bone frailty. If you are not already taking bone-strengthening dietary supplements, this may be your signal to start. Discuss osteoporosis with your doctor. Find out what tests you need done to assess the severity of your osteoporosis and to determine how intensive your treatment for osteoporosis should be. The American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons recommends a DEXA scan as the best test to assess bone density. If you have already had a vertebral fracture but you don't know if you have osteoporosis, you should probably talk to your doctor about getting this very accurate test. There is only a very small amount of radiation involved in the test, about the same that you would receive from so-called background radiation just by living in the United States for three days! There are other tests that are used for screening that are not as accurate and won't provide that much information about what to expect about your risk for future vertebral fractures. At a minimum, every adult needs at least 1000 mg of calcium daily and vitamin D. (See Chapter 21 for more details.)\n\nOsteoporosis is usually seen in people over the age of 50, and certain people are at increased risk. If you are female, tall, slender, and have had minimal weight-bearing exercise throughout your life, you may be at particular risk for osteoporosis. The NIH reports that as many as half of older women may have osteoporosis. People who have been treated with long-term corticosteroids such as prednisone have an even higher risk for osteoporosis. Although steroids can be life-saving in situations such as asthma and autoimmune disease, it is the long-term effects on bone (and skin and muscle) that really limit the benefits of steroids for chronic use.\n\nVertebral fractures are classified by mechanism and by disruption of three vertical columns\n\n**THREE TYPES OF SPINAL \"BURST\"**\n\nIf you or someone you love is living with cancer and has had a vertebral fracture because cancer has weakened the spine, serious measures may be needed to stabilize the spine. Particular cancers, including breast, prostate, and lung, will spread to the bones of the spine. Be aware that pain can be an important symptom of serious problems, and attend to new pain problems carefully. Make sure your doctor knows if there is new or persistent pain in the spine. There are many treatments for cancer in the spine, and you should expect that any pain due to this problem will be taken seriously and a solid action plan put into place. Treatment options can include medications, radiation, and surgery, alone or in combination.\n\nSometimes vertebral collapse or fracture is due to an infection on the spine. In years past, tuberculosis was seen to invade the spine; this is very rare now as tuberculosis has been effectively treated and reduced in the U.S. Other infections of the bone, such as osteomyelitis, can cause vertebral collapse, and for this reason, fever is considered a warning sign in concert with sudden-onset strong back pain.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Kochan, Jeffrey. \"Vertebroplasty and Kyphoplasty, Percutaneous,\" eMedicine. <http:\/\/emedicine.medscape.com\/article\/423209-overview>. Accessed January 17, 2010.\n\n2. Ibid.\n\n3. Deramond, H., et al. 1998. Percutaneous vertebroplasty with polymethylmethacrylate. _Radiol Clin North Am_ 36 (3): 533\u201346.\n\n4. Kochan, Jeffrey. \"Vertebroplasty and Kyphoplasty, Percutaneous,\" eMedicine. <http:\/\/emedicine.medscape.com\/article\/423209-overview>. Accessed January 17, 2010.\n\n5. Buchbinder, R. 2009. A randomized trial of vertebroplasty for painful osteoporotic vertebral fractures. _New England Journal of Medicine_ 361:557\u2013568.\n\n6. Goodman, B. New studies raise doubts about the benefits of vertebroplasty. _Arthitis Today_ , 2009.\n\n7. Kallmes, D.F., et al. 2009. A randomized trial of vertebroplasty for osteoporotic spinal fractures. _New England Journal of Medicine_ 361 (6): 569\u201379.\n\n8. Kulkarni, Shantanu. Spinal Orthotics. eMedicine. <http:\/\/emedicine.medscape.com\/article\/314921-overview>. Accessed January 20, 2010.\n\n9. Reiter, GT. Vertebral Fracture. eMedicine. <http:\/\/eMedicine.medscape.com\/article\/248236-overview> Accessed January 12, 2010.\n\n10. Ibid.\n\n11. American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). \"Osteoporosis Tests,\" AAOS website. <http:\/\/orthoinfo.aaos.org\/topic.cfm?topic=A00413>. Accessed January 17, 2010.\n\n12. NIH. \"Osteoporosis,\" www.nlm.nih.gov\/medlineplus\/osteoporosis.html. Accessed January 17, 2010.\n\n13. Mayo Clinic staff. \"Exercising with osteoporosis: Stay active the safe way,\" MayoClinic.com. www.mayoclinic.com\/print\/osteoporosis\/HQ00643\/. Accessed January 17, 2010.\n\n14. \"Spinal Compression Fractures.\" www.eorthopod.com\/node\/10860. Accessed January 20, 2010.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**Can I exercise after spinal fracture?**  \nExercise after spinal fracture, once you've been cleared for this by your doctor, is critically important for staying healthy and avoiding additional problems. You should choose the exercise that you do based upon what is safe for your back, but also chose to do something that you enjoy. For some, exercise is an opportunity to engage in social interactions: Social exercisers can enjoy dancing, taking fitness classes, walking with a friend, or working out at the gym. Sometimes, exercise provides a time to be more focused on oneself. People who are pulled in many directions can find a few moments of contemplation in activities such as swimming, lifting weights at home, working out with headphones, or going to the gym very early in the morning.\n\nIt's important to choose your exercise with safety in mind. If you have osteoporosis or another condition that places you at risk for additional vertebral fractures, you may need to avoid exercises that require higher impacts or bending and twisting movements. Examples of these include tennis, golf, rowing machines, and running. Exercise bicycles are not considered ideal for the prevention of osteoporosis, as the exercise they provide is not weight-bearing. However, they are exceptionally good at promoting cardiovascular fitness while increasing strength and flexibility of the legs. For this reason, an exercise bike can be an excellent complement to other exercise activities that specifically target bone building.\n\n**What if I still have pain in my back after five weeks?**  \nIf your pain is gradually decreasing from the time of your injury but is lingering on at five weeks, you probably need to hang in there and anticipate that slow, steady improvement will be the name of the game.\n\nIf, however, your back pain is getting worse or changing for the worse quite suddenly, you may need to let your doctor know this is happening. If you're still getting physical therapy at five weeks after injury, ask your therapist what his or her sense of your recovery is. Vertebral fractures repair slowly, but the goal is to finish up with a stable spine that will allow you to return to everyday life and the activities you enjoy.\n\n## CHAPTER 9  \nSyndromes of Spinal Cord Compression: Emergency!\n\n**Cancer or severe infection are rare but do occur.**\n\n**Don't delay proper diagnosis and treatment.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Have you recently developed back pain, or has your mild back pain suddenly gotten much worse?\n\n**>** Have your legs become weak, or are you recently having trouble getting to the bathroom without soiling or accidents?\n\nIf you have back pain with leg weakness or bowel or bladder incontinence, you need to seek immediate medical attention. Leg weakness and\/or incontinence are considered red flags in the context of new or worsened back pain, as these symptoms can signal problems with the spinal cord or spinal roots. These kinds of problems when presenting together are not infrequently due to serious problems like cancer, aggressive infections, or problems with blood flow to the spine. To be sure, plenty of people have urinary incontinence for other reasons, such as prostate enlargement or pelvic floor problems after childbirth. But for someone who previously did not have these concerns to suddenly find themselves without good control over bodily functions, this is a cause for prompt assessment.\n\nThe treatments prescribed will depend on the identified cause of the problem. Although the causes of spinal cord compression are typically quite serious, if the problem is caught within a few hours of it starting, good treatment options may be available. Everything here depends on timing, though. Get help immediately.\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nIf you have spinal cord compression in the neck:\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will have determined the particular cause of spinal cord compression on the basis of X-rays and potentially other imaging studies (CT, MRI).\n\n\u2022 Your neck may need to be immobilized or surgically fused.\n\nIf you have spinal cord compression in the middle of the back (thoracic region):\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will have determined the particular cause of your spinal cord compression using a variety of tests. Blood tests, fluid samples, X-rays, MRIs, and CT scans may all be used.\n\n\u2022 You may need to take medication for pain.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will discuss with you any procedures that will be required to stabilize the spine.\n\nIf you have spinal cord or root compression in the lower back (lumbar region and sacrum):\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will have determined the particular cause of your compression syndrome on the basis of X-rays and other testing.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend surgery to stabilize the spine. Depending on the specifics of the situation, spinal fusion may be required.\n\n\u2022 You may need to take medication for pain.\n\n\u2022 You may be instructed to eliminate certain activities for several weeks if spine surgery is needed.\n\nWhat's New: Steroids within Eight Hours of Compression\n\nFor many years, the urgent treatment of spinal cord compression included the administration of high-dose steroid medications. The medications, although helpful in certain circumstances, are associated with serious side effects like bleeding from the stomach or intestines, transient diabetes, weight gain, thinning of the bones, atrophy of muscles, and increased skin fragility. Large-scale studies have indicated that steroids are only demonstrably beneficial when given very early after the onset of an injury to the spinal cord. Current recommendations indicate that eight hours is the time window during which steroids may be helpful, but leave it to the discretion of the treating doctor to proceed or not.\n\n### The Treatment\n\nDepending on the causes of spinal cord compression, treatments may vary from emergency surgery to medications to radiation. Make sure that you ask questions along the way and let your providers know immediately if new problems develop.\n\n#### **IDENTIFY A SUPPORT PERSON BEFORE SURGERY**\n\nIf your doctor says you have to undergo surgery, make sure that you understand the nature and expected outcome of the planned procedure. Things may move very quickly if you have cord compression, so you'll want to have your family members or close ones aware of what is happening. You will be unconscious for the surgery, and your surgeon may have important information to communicate to you after the surgery. You will want to have someone present as much of the time as possible, just to help get through the first few hours and days of this process. It would be a good idea to have a designated family spokesperson. This should be someone who understands your personal opinions about healthcare and can speak for you. Ideally, this person should be comfortable talking to doctors, nurses, and social workers. The legal structure that exists to support this is the healthcare power of attorney. The laws pertaining to this vary by state, but be aware that the best decisions usually follow a willingness to be proactive about making sure your medical wishes are known and represented.\n\n#### **DIFFERENT TYPES OF SURGERY**\n\nThe use of surgery for spinal cord compression will vary depending on the nature of the problem. If the problem is a tumor of the spinal cord itself and the tumor is still relatively small, surgery itself may be curative. The limitation here is that tumors of the spinal cord itself are often discovered fairly late, after the tumor has grown in size and is damaging delicate structures. In the case of a focal infection such as an epidural abscess, the treatment may require a combination of medications and surgery. In this situation, surgery is used to drain any pus and to stabilize the spine if needed.\n\n#### **ASK ABOUT SIDE EFFECTS OF MEDICATIONS**\n\nIf your doctor says you need powerful medications, the type of medication will depend on the nature of the problem. For some problems, steroids may be used; for other situations, strong antibiotics may be necessary. Make sure to ask about expected side effects and whether there are any symptoms that might be especially worrisome and that doctors would want to know about right away.\n\nMRI image of a metastatic tumor mass in the upper thoracic spinal canal and causing compression of the underlying spinal cord.\n\nMRI image of a neurofibroma.\n\n#### **EXPECTATIONS FOR REHABILITATION**\n\nIf your doctor recommends rehabilitation, ask about what his or her expectations are for rehabilitation. Do people with your condition expect to make a full recovery, or are the problems persistent? Rehab for spinal cord compression can go quickly if the compression was minor and brief, but when the compression is more serious and persists for more than a few hours, rehab can require months of hard work. Hours of exercises, learning to walk safely, and keeping one's balance will be part of the rehab plan.\n\n### Testing For Spinal Cord Compression\n\nTesting for spinal cord compression will most typically occur in an emergency room setting, at least initially. Your doctor will want to make a detailed examination of the nervous system's functioning, especially with regard to functioning of the legs and the bowels. A digital rectal exam may be performed as part of this. Images of the back will be obtained; this may include X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs. Each of these imaging techniques has particular strengths, and all three may be used at some point. CT scans can be very valuable in terms of visualizing the bones of the back in detail. MRI is usually needed to assess structures such as masses, nerves, muscles, joint capsules, and ligaments. Under certain circumstances, other imaging methods will later be used to help assess whatever process led to the cord compression to start with.\n\n### The Explanation\n\nSyndromes of spinal cord compression are divided into three main classes as follows:\n\n1. extradural, meaning those that press on the spinal cord from outside the spinal canal\n\n2. intradural-extramedullary, meaning those that compress the spinal cord from outside of the cord itself but from inside the spinal sac\n\n3. intramedullary, meaning they arise from inside the structure of the spinal cord.\n\nThe course of back pain in these different classes will vary. In the case of compressions that are due to problems within the spinal cord, the pain that results may start very gradually and remain vaguely defined in terms of location until the problem is quite advanced. A loss of sexual function may be the first sign of a real problem. Compressive problems that start outside the spinal cord may first press on a nerve root; in this case, the pain will be very specific to the level of the spine that is involved. If not addressed immediately however, the localizing nerve pain may ease off as the nerve is completely disabled and pain may progress to a deeper, bony type pain as the vertebral bones are involved.\n\nMRI image of collapsing and inflammed spinal structures.\n\nThe causes of spinal cord compression are multiple. Cancer is an important cause; spinal cord compression can be due to local tumors or to tumors that have spread from elsewhere in the body. Certain tumors have a tendency to spread to the spinal column (the vertebral bones) and from there extend to the point of compressing the spine. These spine compression syndromes may be characterized by a period of nagging back pain that suddenly evolves to include leg weakness or incontinence. The cancers that follow this pattern most often are those of lung, breast, and prostate. To restore or preserve function and minimize pain, it is important to get help immediately. There are several treatments that can be used to reduce the effects of these tumors and to control any resulting pain.\n\nAnother type of cancer that causes spinal cord compression are tumors that arise directly from the spinal cord itself (cord tumors). These tumors include the ependymomas, the astrocytomas, and the hemangioblastomas. Of these, the ependymomas are more common in adults, but even these are uncommon, with an estimated occurrence of less than one in 100,000 persons. The usual location for the cord tumors is in the neck, where they can affect functions of the lower body as well as causing weakness in the arms. The pain caused by cord tumors may come on very gradually. Problems caused by cord tumors develop so slowly that a patient typically has had some symptoms for two years at the time of diagnosis. The hallmark of pain from these tumors is that the pain is worse at night as the person is lying on their back. Most patients have some weakness prior to diagnosis, but sexual dysfunction and urinary incontinence may be the problems that prompt a patient to seek medical attention. In the case of ependymomas, the tumor may be growing within a capsule or covering. Removal of these sorts of tumors is curative. There are circumstances where spinal tumors are more aggressive, however, so it is important to wait for the pathologist's report before reaching any conclusions.\n\nIn some cases, spinal cord compression is caused by an infection. The infection can come from another part of the body: urinary tract infections, lung infections, skin abscesses, and implanted devices are potential sources of infection. Recent surgery, dental procedures, interventional procedures that require catheters or needles, and spinal injections are possible contributory factors as well. People with underlying immunodeficiency are at increased risk, as are alcoholics and those using IV drugs. People with diabetes have increased risk for all kinds of infections including epidural abscesses. The traditional picture of spinal abscess is that of a patient with fever, back pain, and neurological problems, but this is not always evident in each patient. The average age of patients with spinal abscess is surprisingly high, being around age 50. Because of the seriousness of this infection, other systems of the body can become destabilized and a state of shock can follow.\n\nThis condition is a medical emergency. Both surgery and medical treatments may be used depending on the circumstances. Medications for a typical abscess due to bacterial infection may continue for four weeks or more. In years past, tuberculosis was a cause of spinal cord compression, but this is very rare in the U.S. at this time. The treatment for tumors that are pressing on the spinal cord from outside the spinal covering (dura) will depend on the tumor type and the extent of damage. In some cases, where vertebral bones are partially destroyed, a spinal fusion is needed. This procedure was described in detail in Chapter 7.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Schreiber, Donald. \"Spinal Cord Injuries: Treatment and Medication,\" eMedicine. <http:\/\/emedicine.medscape.com\/article\/793582-treatment>. Accessed March 16, 2010.\n\n2. Ogden, Alfred, Nicholas Wetjen, and Thomas Francavilla. \"Intramedullary Spinal Cord Tumors,\" eMedicine. <http:\/\/emedicine.medscape.com\/article\/251133-overview>. Accessed January 31, 2010.\n\n3. Huff, Stephen. \"Spinal Epidural Abscess,\" eMedicine. <http:\/\/emedicine.medscape.com\/article\/1165840-overview>. Accessed January 31, 2010.\n\n4. Dickman, Curtis, Michael Fehlings, and Ziya Gokaslan. _Spinal Cord and Spinal Column Tumors: Principles and Practice_. New York: Thieme, 2006.\n\n5. Schick, U., G. Marquardt, and R. Lorenz. Intradural and extradural spinal metastases. _Journal Neurosurgical Review_ , 2001, 24(1):1\u20135.\n\n6. Ogden, Alfred, Nicholas Wetjen, and Thomas Francavilla. \"Intramedullary Spinal Cord Tumors,\" eMedicine. <http:\/\/emedicine.medscape.com\/article\/251133-overview>. Accessed January 31, 2010.\n\n7. Huff, Stephen. \"Spinal Epidural Abscess,\" eMedicine. <http:\/\/emedicine.medscape.com\/article\/1165840-overview>. Accessed January 31, 2010.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**When will there be a cure for spinal cord injury?**  \nScientists are working furiously to find treatments that reverse the effects of spinal cord injury. Until recently, there was little hope of recovery for people with damaged spinal cords, but the future holds much promise. Scientific research has uncovered biological responses that actually interfere with the ability of the spinal cord to recover from an injury, and scientists are devising new strategies to promote effective healing and regrowth. The fundamental challenge is that the spinal cord serves as a conduit for nerve processes (axons) that extend from the base of the spine to the brain, sometimes over three feet (91 cm) in length. When these connections are damaged or even severed, it is not simply a matter of restoring the connection at the injury site; the axons actually have to grow from that point onwards to where they used to terminate, find the appropriate target and re-establish functional communications. To accomplish this would be a task of profound complexity. From studies of lab animals, we know that if the goal is being able to walk a bit, it's not actually necessary to restore all the original circuits. In rats at least, a few pioneer axons are enough to bring back some walking function. Although repair of human spinal cord injury remains a tantalizing goal, and some intractable mysteries are beginning to unravel, effective treatments remain just over the horizon. If you know someone with a spinal cord injury, and you want to get the latest on cutting-edge (experimental) treatments, visit the clinicaltrials.gov website and enter the search term \"spinal cord injury.\"\n\n**Are there any other conditions that present like a spinal cord compression?**  \nOccasionally, what appears to be a spinal cord compression syndrome is actually a spinal cord stroke. The blood supply to the spine is mainly carried by two large arteries: one that forms at the top of the spine in the neck and another that penetrates the spinal column in the mid-to-lower back. Blockage of either of these arteries or their major branches will have severe consequences including some pain, paralysis, incontinence, and sometimes loss of sensation. In this case, an immediate intervention to restore blood flow may be the only chance to provide meaningful recovery.\n\n## CHAPTER 10  \nScoliosis\n\n**Early diagnosis and regular re-evaluation**\n\n**is the key to a good outcome.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Are you (or do you know) a young person with a curvature of the spine from side to side?\n\n**>** Does your back ache on most days of the week?\n\nScoliosis is a side-to-side curvature of the spine that usually affects young people in the mid-teen to early adult years. Girls are more often affected than boys. The common scenarios for scoliosis include chronic daily back pain, feelings of fatigue, and some shortness of breath. Scoliosis shows up as a difference in shoulder height, an obvious curvature of the spine, or something more subtle, such as a need to adjust a bra strap to be shorter on one side. Early treatment of scoliosis is important for good outcomes.\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nBack pain due to scoliosis needs expert medical assessment and care. Because this problem occurs most commonly in adolescence, most pediatricians are familiar with the screening procedures. If scoliosis is suspected on the basis of the physical exam, usually an X-ray will be needed. There are special methods for measuring the degree of curvature of the spine. The treatment depends on how severely the spine is curving and whether the curvature is getting worse quickly. Most commonly, scoliosis develops between the ages of 10 and 14. Exact numbers aren't known, but most studies find that girls are 10 times more often affected than boys. If surgery is needed, there is a preference for delaying the surgery if possible until after the last growth spurt so that there will be no need for later revision.\n\nIf you have mild scoliosis:\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will very likely recommend physical therapy, especially if there is no evidence that the curvature of the spine is rapidly worsening. The effectiveness of physical therapy for scoliosis depends both on the type of exercises prescribed and on the consistency of the person following the exercise recommendations.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will want to re-evaluate your spine in the next few months.\n\nIf you have moderate scoliosis:\n\n\u2022 Your doctor will very likely recommend fitting for a brace. Bracing is widely used to stabilize the spine and prevent worsening of scoliosis in situations where there is moderate curvature of the spine. In order to be effective, the brace must be worn nearly all the time. It is important to have the brace reassessed for fit at intervals as the person wearing the brace will be growing and adjustment may be necessary.\n\n\u2022 Again, your doctor will want to re-evaluate your spine in the next few months.\n\nGeography Is a Factor\n\nThe percentage of young people developing scoliosis varies with geographic location. There is a tendency for people from more northern countries to develop more scoliosis. It is believed that there is an effect from sun exposure (or lack of it) and possible effects in those with later puberty to be more at risk. Whatever the mechanism, the occurrence of scoliosis in the U.S. is reported to range from 2 to 5 percent in girls aged 10 to 14.\n\nIf you have more severe scoliosis:\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend assessment for surgery. Depending on the over-all medical picture, surgery is currently recommended for scoliosis where there is a more substantial curvature to the spine. The risks of leaving severe scoliosis untreated include chronic pain, breathing problems, and risks for infection.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend a brace for a period of time to allow for a growth period to be completed prior to surgical intervention. Although surgery may eventually still be needed, the results of surgery are often more favorable if growth is completed or nearly so.\n\n\u2022 Make sure that you discuss the risks and benefits of surgery thoroughly before proceeding. What are the expectations for relief of pain? How straight will the spine be after surgery? Will future surgery be needed?\n\n**What if your doctor diagnoses a specific problem causing the scoliosis?**  \nIn this case, the treatment may depend on whether that specific cause of scoliosis is reversible or curable. In rare cases, there may be a tumor, infection, or other abnormality that is inducing the curvature in the spine (secondary scoliosis).\n\nHigh Risk for Surgical Complications\n\nAsk your surgeon to provide specific details about the rate of complication in their surgery practice. It is recognized that surgery for scoliosis carries a relatively high complication rate. In addition to the usual concerns associated with a major spine surgery, such as blood loss and infection, surgery for scoliosis carries certain neurological risks and over the long run may increase the rate of degenerative spine disease at levels above and below the area of stabilized spine. It is known that more aggressive efforts to fully reduce spine curvature are associated with added stress on nearby structures. For this reason, spinal surgery for scoliosis does not seek to attain a perfect result. The long-term consequences could be quite negative. Some of the risks associated with scoliosis surgery are more pronounced in young people who have scoliosis as a result of an underlying nerve or muscle disease (neuromuscular disease), such as myopathy or muscular dystrophy. Most of the patients with idiopathic scoliosis are otherwise healthy and would be considered good candidates for surgery.\n\n### The Treatment\n\nIf your doctor recommends physical therapy first, this usually means that you have a mild or early form of scoliosis. It is very important to pursue physical therapy with a commitment to making this work, as a failure of physical therapy usually means moving on to more expensive, uncomfortable, and cumbersome treatments such as a brace that is worn full-time or a major spine surgery.\n\n#### **PHYSICAL THERAPY REDUCES THE CURVATURE**\n\nThe essential goal of physical therapy is to reduce the curvature of the spine. This is usually done with exercises that strengthen the spine. One approach, called Scientific Exercises Approach to Scoliosis (SEAS), teaches patients to recognize the location of their most pronounced spine curvature and actively learn how to reduce this curvature intentionally. This requires a training period wherein the patient is assisted by a treatment specialist who assists in this process of neuromuscular training. The patient then performs a series of exercises while consciously correcting the areas of curvature. This is referred to as _active self-correction_. Other approaches to physical therapy involve stretching frames and exercise equipment to reduce the curvature of the spine more passively in response to certain postures or exercises. The benefits of physical therapy are debated by some but there is accumulating evidence that certain forms may be demonstrable benefits.\n\n#### **A BRACE FOR MODERATE SCOLIOSIS**\n\nIf your doctor recommends a brace, this usually means you have a moderate or gradually progressive form of scoliosis. There is widespread agreement that for bracing to be effective, the brace must be worn all day with short breaks for bathing and other selected activities. The brace needs to be worn to bed at night and should be comfortable enough that it can be worn during the school day and to all social activities. Some specialists recommend 23 hours of brace wearing daily, but check with your provider to determine their specific instructions.\n\nScoliosis braces come in different forms. The most traditional is a hard plastic brace that fits around the waist and extends upward to the underarms and down to the hips as required for the specific spine curvature. The rigid brace is usually made out of white plastic and is strapped to the body. Because it extends down to the hips, it is important to have it checked for fit so hip growth is not impeded. The brace can be fit from a modular system such as the Boston brace or custom manufactured by a local prosthestist. Another brace type consists of elastic straps and a pelvic stabilization belt; it may require bands that wrap around the upper thigh and groin.\n\n#### **SURGERY FOR SEVERE SCOLIOSIS**\n\nIf your doctor recommends surgery, this usually means you have a more severe or frankly progressive form of scoliosis. The surgery for scoliosis usually involves the placement of rods in certain sections of the spine to partially correct the curvature of the spine. When scoliosis is severe, there is danger of neurological effects such as compression of the spinal cord or nerves. Breathing problems may develop, leading to recurrent pneumonia, and repeated infections can have life-threatening consequences. Lifelong poor body mechanics and serious chronic pain can develop.\n\nIn light of these negatives, the effects of surgery may seem minimal but it is important not to underestimate the impact of major spinal surgery. A fair number of patients have some persistent pain after surgery. Usually this pain is described as mild-to-moderate, rating about 3 out of 10 points, on average. The cumulative effects of daily mild pain are not known but are not positive in any case. The spine will never bend normally once spinal rods are in place. This is a consequence that must be accepted. It is probably prudent to exercise some care in the choice of physical activities after the placement of spinal rods. Excessive stress on the rods may lead to loosening of the attachments with pain as a result.\n\nMake sure that you discuss the specific plans for surgery with your surgeon beforehand. Know what to expect in terms of recovery time, time off from school, and impact of future activities. Ask if the rods will ever be removed and under what circumstances this might happen.\n\nThe procedures of surgery for scoliosis are essentially those of spinal fusion surgery, but may or may not include a bone-graft type fusion per se. One commonly performed surgery is referred to as _spinal fusion with instrumentation_. _Instrumentation_ is the technical term for the hardware that is used to stabilize the spine. The general aspects of spinal fusion surgery are described in Chapter 7.\n\nScoliosis braces are often custom-built for therapeutic effect and for comfort. The custom brace shown is made of multiple materials shown in white, light gray, and medium gray.\n\n### Testing For Scoliosis\n\nTesting for scoliosis will initially take place in the primary care provider's office. The doctor, nurse, or PA will want to make an examination of the back and will need to see the how the back responds to movement, especially bending forward. Images of the back will be obtained; this typically includes special X-rays that visualize most of the spine from top to bottom. The radiologists will make a measurement of the curves in the spine and the numbers will be reported back to the referring provider.\n\nSpine with scoliosis\n\n### The Explanation\n\nScoliosis is usually a condition of the spine that becomes problematic during the pre-teen and early teen years. The precise cause of most patients' scoliosis is unknown. It is more common in populations where puberty occurs later. One of the debated topics in the medical literature is the usefulness of large screening programs for scoliosis. The bottom line is that if a side-to-side curvature of the spine is significant enough that you have noticed it, it deserves evaluation.\n\nEach form of scoliosis is unique, although common patterns are seen. A single curve scoliosis will be described as having a \"C\" shape; when a second curve appears, it is usually compensatory in nature and will cause an S-shaped curvature of the spine. A scoliosis will be named for the part of the spine that are most affected, described as being a right or left scoliosis based on whether the most pronounced part of the curve is to the right or left. Imagine an arrow pointing into the major curve and that arrow will point to the side that is used to label the scoliosis.\n\nAlthough the most common form of scoliosis is idiopathic (meaning we don't know the cause), there are actually some forms of scoliosis that have specific causes. These might include a compensatory scoliosis due to a leg-length discrepancy, where the body tries to compensate for an angled pelvis with curvature of the spine. Rarely, tumors can induce a shape change in the spine; muscle spasm can cause the spine to curve to one side; and problems with the pelvis itself can cause a curvature.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Dreeden, Olga. _Introduction to Physical Therapy for Physical Therapist Assistants_. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2007.\n\n2. Grivas, T.B., et al. 2006. Association between adolescent idiopathic scoliosis prevalence and age at menarche in different geographic latitudes. _Scoliosis_ 1:9.\n\n3. Romano, M., et al. Scientific Exercises Approach to Scoliosis (SEAS): In _The Conservative Scoliosis Treatment_ , T.B. Grivas, ed. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2008.\n\n4. Weiss, H.R. and A. Maier-Hennes. Specific exercises in the treatment of scoliosis. In _The Conservative Scoliosis Treatment_ , T.B. Grivas, ed. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2008.\n\n5. Negrini, S., et al. 2008. Specific exercises reduce brace prescription in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. _J Rehabil Med_ 40 (6): 451\u20135.\n\n6. Weiss, H.R., and D. Goodall. 2008. Rate of complications in scoliosis surgery: A systematic review of the Pub Med literature. _Scoliosis_ 3:9.\n\n7. Tecklin, Jan Stephen. _Pediatric Physical Therapy, Fourth Edition_. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**Is surgery the only way to treat scoliosis?**  \nThe treatment of scoliosis depends on the severity and progression of the abnormal curvatures of the spine. Scoliosis will sometimes respond to the use of a brace, but the brace must be worn for most of the day and night. This is awkward for some patients, particularly as scoliosis usually strikes at a time of life when issues surrounding body image are very important.\n\n**What happens if I don't treat the scoliosis?**  \nIn its mildest forms, scoliosis can be a self-resolving process, becoming milder as the person grows. In many cases however, untreated scoliosis worsens. It can lead to spinal collapse, chronic severe pain, breathing problems, and compression of vital organs. I once saw an active lady in her mid-thirties who had gradually worsening back pain and spasms. She'd been told that her nerves were the cause of the problem and was given heavy doses of muscle relaxants to take for this. Despite the use of multiple medications, her pain got to the point where she was limited to working three days a week. She was miserable in her marriage and felt that she was failing as a mother. She began to travel from doctor to doctor looking for a solution. She came to my clinic desperate for solutions and we began with a fresh evaluation. Although she'd been told as a young person that she had scoliosis, it seemed that none of the doctors who saw her as an adult had taken this seriously. At the time of her first visit with me, she was in nearly continuous muscle spasms and pain. Her spine was curved from side to side with her shoulders and hips tilted at biomechanically unfavorable angles. We obtained new X-rays and a new MRI. The images showed a pronounced scoliosis of the thoracic and lumbar spine. In her lower back, one vertebra appeared to be slowly slipping off to the side and forward, compressing nerves and straining ligaments. This in itself probably accounted for her daily severe pain. Armed with the new information about her worsening scoliosis, she sought treatment from a local surgeon and ultimately did well. Although it was a joy to finally get this brave lady connected with a correct diagnosis and back on the path to a normal life, it was a pity that this could not have been properly treated earlier in life before her family and work activities were so severely disrupted.\n\n## CHAPTER 11  \nSpinal Stenosis\n\n**Medication, physical therapy, and exercise may help, but sometimes**\n\n**surgery is the best solution.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Are you more than 60 years of age?\n\n**>** Have you been finding that you can only walk or stand for so long before your back and legs begin to hurt?\n\nMany people find as they mature that the back is less resilient than it was in prior years. In part, this is because the discs of the back dry out starting in the mid-twenties and are remarkably less springy as time goes on. Other people find that they have one or two problem areas in their backs, perhaps an SI joint that tends to go out or a particular muscle strain that recurs from time to time. Still other people, especially those with an adventuresome spirit, will find that their back is just disabling them. They can barely walk, they wake up each morning with substantial pain, they sleep poorly at night, and they can't do most of the things they had looked forward to in retirement. If this sounds like you, then a diagnosis of spinal stenosis may be the explanation for your troubles.\n\nMost people with spinal stenosis find that flexing the spine will relieve some of the symptoms. So if sitting down for a bit seems to make things better, this might be a sign that spinal stenosis is producing your symptoms. The classical sign of spinal stenosis, recognized by the old-time doctors, was that it was easier for people with this condition to walk uphill than down. This is because the spine flexes a bit as we walk uphill and extends as the pelvis tilts back to accommodate downhill walking.\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nWhat's New: Profile of Stenosis Patient\n\nThe last several years have seen a flurry of large clinical trials looking at spinal stenosis. Through these studies, a clearer picture of what spinal stenosis is and how to best treat it has emerged. The picture of the patient with stenosis is someone in their mid-sixties, tipping the scales at the high end of the overweight range, and possibly suffering with hypertension and some other arthritis. Women are slightly more likely to be affected.\n\nThe impact of spinal stenosis on quality of life is substantial, with bodily pain and inability to function causing more interference than limitations in mental function. People with spinal stenosis may still be working but more often are retired. The symptoms that predominate include difficulty with walking distances (pseudoclaudication) and pain that wraps around the leg from the buttock into the foot.\n\nBack pain due to spinal stenosis needs expert medical assessment and care. In mild cases, physical therapy may be used to relieve pain. Depending on the level of concern and local practice patterns, your doctor may want you to have some kind of injection. Surgery is beneficial for patients with moderate to severe stenosis.\n\nIf you have spinal stenosis:\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend physical therapy, especially if your disease is mild or there are reasons that surgery would not be feasible. The effectiveness of physical therapy for spinal stenosis depends on the skillfulness of the therapist, the degree of stenosis, and the motivation of the patient.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend injection of the back with pain-active medications such as lidocaine or cortisone. These medications may provide temporary relief from pain and may allow the physical therapist a window of opportunity for more aggressive treatments, but injections such as these may not provide a lasting benefit.\n\n\u2022 Your doctor may recommend that you have a surgical consultation for spinal decompression and fusion. This will depend on the severity of your spinal stenosis at this point and your overall medical picture.\n\n### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR DIAGNOSES A SLIPPED DISC?**\n\nIn this case, you may still need surgery. Please see Chapter 2 on disc herniation.\n\n### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR FINDS THAT YOU HAVE SYMPTOMS OF SPINAL STENOSIS BUT NO EVIDENCE FOR IT ON MRI OR X-RAY?**\n\nThe clinical description of spinal stenosis is someone who has difficulty with walking distances. It is sometimes possible to have problems like this from other causes. Possibilities include problems with the heart, problems with circulation of blood to the legs, and problems in other parts of the nervous system. If you are experiencing shortness of breath, you need to seek immediate medical attention. Especially if your pain is limited to the back of the calf and always comes on after walking a specific number of blocks, you should encourage your doctor to check out your leg circulation.\n\nIn rare cases, spinal stenosis is due to a mass (tumor), an infection (abscess), or a fracture. These serious but rare causes of spinal stenosis are usually assessed through the diagnostic tests described later in this chapter. The treatment for these conditions is individualized.\n\n### The Treatment\n\nIf your doctor recommends physical therapy first, this usually means that your spinal stenosis is not ideally treated with surgery at this time. If you have severe symptoms from spinal stenosis and surgery is not being considered, make sure you understand why. Does the doctor have particular health concerns that make surgery a poor option? Is there some aspect of your stenosis that precludes surgery, or does the doctor view your problem as not severe enough for a surgical referral?\n\n#### **PHYSICAL THERAPY IS WIDELY USED**\n\nPhysical therapy is widely used as a treatment for spinal stenosis. Several forms of physical therapy are effective for limiting the impact of spinal stenosis. In addition, I often encourage patients to pursue some physical therapy before surgery, depending on their circumstances. This is because surgery can be very demanding on the body and people who are in better physical condition can get through the process more easily. The types of physical therapy used for spinal stenosis can include thermal therapies, electrical stimulation, manual therapies, and conditioning and strengthening work.\n\n  **Warning! Some Exercises Are Harmful**\n\nAvoid exercises that extend the spine; examples of this could include certain types of standing aerobic exercise machines. Arching the back (extending the spine) is likely to worsen the symptoms of spinal stenosis.\n\n#### **MANUAL THERAPIES EASE SYMPTOMS**\n\nManual therapies such as massage and gentle spinal manipulation can provide some relief from the symptoms of spinal stenosis, especially if back pain is part of the overall symptoms. Sometimes, people with spinal stenosis don't have appreciable back pain, and sometimes people don't realize how much discomfort they did have until they get some treatment and start to feel better. Given that spinal stenosis is believed to result from an accumulation of minor injuries to the back over time, perhaps some people who develop spinal stenosis don't have very sensitive backs, and maybe they develop spinal stenosis because a lot of damage has occurred without much pain being experienced to slow them down and make them stop a harmful activity.\n\n#### **THERMAL THERAPIES ACCOMPANY PT**\n\nParticularly with spinal stenosis, it is important to prevent any strain or swelling of the low back structures. Warm compresses can help reduce muscle strain and promote relaxation. Ice packs will help to prevent and reduce swelling and can block pain signaling from the nearby structures. If you think a warm compress or an ice pack would help, make sure to ask your physical therapist if they haven't already offered it.\n\n#### **ELECTRICAL STIMULATION MIGHT IMPROVE BLOOD FLOW**\n\nElectrical stimulation may or may not be used, depending on the experience of your therapist and local practices. Electrical stimulation may be helpful for relaxing muscles and secondarily improving blood flow. It may or may not be beneficial with spinal stenosis.\n\n#### **STRENGTHENING AND CONDITIONING REQUIRES PROFESSIONAL GUIDANCE**\n\nThe process of spinal stenosis can make sustained exercise more hazardous. Some recommended exercises include the use of an exercise bike, as the typical posture for this flexes the spine and should be better tolerated by someone with spinal stenosis. Your physical therapist will have many good ideas for how you can improve your muscle strength and maintain your level of fitness even while living with spinal stenosis. You should do balance exercises, as they will help you avoid falls. Consciously trying to challenge and improve your balance will have positive effects.\n\nOne exercise that works well is the bent-knee sidestep. Check this out with your doctor or therapist first, but it works as follows. First find a place where you will have good support if you need to reach out and stabilize your stance. Often a hallway that is not too wide works well for this. Turn so that you are standing sideways in the hallway and place your feet about shoulder-width apart. Bend your knees slightly and tuck your tail bone; tighten your stomach muscles and hold them tightened throughout the exercise or as long as you can. To begin the exercise, lift your right foot and take a sidestep of about six to nine inches (15 to 23 cm) to the right. As your weight transfers to the right, bring your left foot over with a matching step. Take four more steps to the right, moving slowly until you are more confident with this process. Maintain your balance and try to distribute your weight evenly between your two feet in between steps. Now take five steps to the left. Repeat this exercise three more times back and forth.\n\nAnatomy of the spine\n\nAnother exercise that can help support balance and is accomplishable while maintaining a flexed spine position comes from the dance world. Stand in a place where you can reach out for support if necessary. Begin by standing on two feet, with your feet about 10 inches (25 cm) apart, wider if needed for stability. Bend your knees slightly as you tuck your tailbone. Transferring your weight to your right foot, lift your left foot and swing it gently to the side and bring it back as you maintain balance on the right foot. Continue to swing your left foot out to the side and back to center several more times. Then switch your stance to the left foot and move the right leg out and back. This exercise provides a good dynamic challenge to the ankle muscles. It will strengthen them without overly taxing your back and doesn't require any special equipment.\n\n#### **PAIN INJECTIONS PROVIDE IMMEDIATE RELIEF**\n\nIf your doctor recommends treatment with a pain injection, this may provide some immediate relief\u2014but it may not be a lasting solution. Usually, pain injections are performed using a mixture of fast-acting local anesthetic and a steroid to reduce pain over the longer term. While these injections can provide immediate relief, they do carry certain risks, such as a small riskof infection and longer-range risks of problems associated with steroid use. These injections are a way to make someone who is in terrible pain comfortable more quickly, and occasionally someone will have a dramatic and lasting improvement in response to an injection or two. Most of the time, however, these injections can only be repeated a few times and they are not a good long-term solution to spinal stenosis.\n\n#### **ORAL MEDICINES DULL THE PAIN**\n\nMany medications can be used for the treatment of pain related to spinal stenosis. The specific choice of medication will depend on the type and suspected cause of the pain. If your pain is due to compression of specific nerve roots, your doctor may recommend prescription medication. If it seems that arthritis or inflammation is a major part of your pain, then an over-the-counter or prescription anti-inflammatory medication (NSAID) may be prescribed. Long-term drug therapy is likely in the treatment of spinal stenosis. If opioids are used, address the potential for constipation even before treatment starts. Make sure to keep these medications stored safely, especially if there are other people coming and going in your home.\n\nEach medication will have specific side effects. If antidepressants are used, they can include weight gain, sleepiness, bizarre feelings, delay in urinary function, or a loss of libido. Some people will experience no side effects, while others will not be able to take even a small dose of medicine. At this point in time, the only predictor of whether a medication will cause troublesome side effects is your prior experience with it, so it is often helpful to keep a brief journal about your pain and its treatment. If NSAIDs are used, ask your doctor about something to protect your stomach. Some European doctors routinely prescribe an additional medicine to protect against gastric bleeding with NSAIDs. If you doctor isn't comfortable adding an extra medication, discuss it with your pharmacist, who may have some good recommendations.\n\nWhile oral medications will probably help with the pain, it is quite possible that other steps will be necessary to address the limitations of spinal stenosis. Oral pain medicines will have limited effect on the compression of nerve roots and restrictions on local blood flow that result from spinal stenosis.\n\n  **Warning! Put a Lock on It**\n\nOpioids as a group, although generally safe when taken as your doctor prescribes, are subject to a growing problem of prescription drug use among young people aged 18 to 25. The 2008 U.S. national study showed that nearly 5 percent of young adults have tried pain reliever medications that were not prescribed to them, most illegally obtained from friends or family.\n\n#### **SURGERY IS RECOMMENDED FOR SEVERE STENOSIS**\n\nSurgery may well be the best treatment for spinal stenosis, depending on the disease severity and your other medical conditions. Recent clinical research has compared standard medical management of spinal stenosis with spine fusion surgery and found that surgery has better results in terms of pain, function, and patient satisfaction. Spinal fusion surgery is a serious undertaking (see Chapter 7 for details), but people with moderate-to-severe spinal stenosis can be so limited in terms of activity and quality of life that the surgery is worthwhile. The usual surgery for spinal stenosis is lumbar decompression and fusion. Decompression is the process of removing built-up portions of bone and sometimes removing the roof of the spinal canal. This is done to relieve pressure on transiting nerves and nerve roots and is part of the overall surgery.\n\n### Testing for Spinal Stenosis\n\nThe diagnosis of spinal stenosis can often be made clinically on the basis of your recent medical history and the examination in the office. However, since most advanced cases of spinal stenosis need to be evaluated for surgical intervention, it is important to know that imaging with both MRI and X-ray may be required. In some situations, it may be necessary to include other tests as well. This is because spinal stenosis is a complex disorder that shares aspects with other causes of back pain. Your doctor may also order a nerve conduction test to better define the extent of any possible nerve damage. (See Chapter 2.) Once all the test results are in, a clearer picture will emerge. The possibilities range from \"nothing is clearly wrong\" to \"moderate spine degeneration\" to \"severe degeneration of the spine.\"\n\nWhat's New: Surgery Produces Good Results\n\nThe latest studies are now reporting on the multi-year follow-up from the initial favorable reports of surgery, and these longer term results continue to favor surgery when possible and appropriate.\n\n### The Explanation\n\nSpinal stenosis, in its most common form, is an advanced degeneration of the spine where progressive compression of the vertebral discs, accumulated traumas to the joints, overgrowth of the bones from repeated strains, and enlargement of the ligaments all come together to make smooth passage of the nerves to and from the spinal cord impossible. In spinal stenosis, the back is functioning at a permanent mechanical disadvantage. Ongoing arthritis and inflammation create a vicious cycle of persistent pain, and compressed nerves fire off pain signals that worsen with every step. For years, medical doctors have been trying to treat spinal stenosis they best they know how. Medicines, physical therapy, heating pads, aqua therapy, braces, sometimes even walkers are used to relieve pressure on the spine. A recent landmark study indicated that surgical interventions, if a person is in good health to tolerate a major spine surgery, may have the best chance of helping patients make a meaningful recovery. Some of the major specialists in the field indicate that people with spinal stenosis may or may not have much back pain.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Weinstein, et al. 2007. Surgical versus nonsurgical treatment for lumbar degenerative spondylolisthesis. _N Engl J Med_ 356 (22): 2257\u201370.\n\n2. Weinstein, J.N., et al. 2007. Surgical versus nonsurgical treatment for lumbar degenerative spondylolisthesis. _N Engl J Med_ 356 (22): 2257\u201370.\n\n3. Reed, Stephen, Penny Kendall-Reed, Michael Ford, and Charles Gregory. _The Complete Doctor's Healthy Back Bible_. Toronto: Robert Rose, Inc., 2004.\n\n4. \"Results from the 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings,\" U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies. <http:\/\/www.oas.samhsa.gov\/nsduh\/2k8nsduh\/2k8Results.cfm>. Accessed February 9, 2010.\n\n5. Weinstein, J.N., et al. 2009. Surgical compared with nonoperative treatment for lumbar degenerative spondylolisthesis: Four-year results in the Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial (SPORT) randomized and observational cohorts. _J Bone Joint Surg Am_ 91 (6): 1295\u2013304.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**What causes spinal stenosis?**  \nThe spine is an engineering miracle, and most of us experience years of good, productive service from our backs with minimal effort. Spinal stenosis is usually the result of many years of moderate strain on the back, sometimes punctuated by specific traumas: A fall from a horse, a car accident, that time you pulled the lawnmower up a flight of stairs, shoveling snow, moving furniture, a bike accident, and gardening all add up to a lifetime of insults to the back. Over time, the back responds in several ways. The discs compress down to a fraction of their original height, dramatically narrowing the space available for nerves to enter and exit the spine and, at the same time, reducing the biomechanics of spine movement. The discs will often bulge out, which might not be so bad, but the ligaments and facet joints on the back side of the spinal canal are enlarging at the same time. It's kind of mysterious, but part of our biological nature is not unlike bricks and stone that wear away with time and pressure, our bones and ligaments respond to stress and strain by overgrowing or hypertrophying. If you have spinal stenosis or advancing spinal degeneration, and you are able to get a hold of your MRI report, you may read terms such as \"ligamentous hypertrophy,\" \"facet joint enlargement,\" or \"narrowing of the neural foramina.\" All of these are terms that the radiologist will use to describe the basic disease components that together make up spinal stenosis.\n\n## CHAPTER 12  \nCoccydynia\n\n**Manage coccydynia pain by reducing stressful activities,**\n\n**using a cushion, and losing excess body weight.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Do you have pain at the bottom end of your spine?\n\n**>** Does your pain get substantially worse the longer you sit on a hard surface?\n\nPeople with coccydynia know a special misery. These are the patients who pace the waiting room, carrying their donut cushion and wincing every time someone asks them to take a seat. The pain of coccydynia is centered at the very bottom of the spine, deep in the crease of the buttocks. Although small and tucked away inside the body, the tailbone serves an essential function as an anchor for ligaments and muscles in the buttock and rectum area.\n\nAlthough the cause of coccydynia is not always identified, it can certainly arise from a trauma such as a slip-fall type accident, such as landing hard on your bottom while ice skating. When a specific causative injury is identified, the chances of recovery may be even better than when the syndrome occurs without a definable cause, although the reason for this is unknown.\n\nCoccydynia Aggravators\n\n\u2022 Bicycling\n\n\u2022 Sitting on a stadium bench\n\n\u2022 Horseback riding\n\n\u2022 Jarring carnival rides\n\n\u2022 Motorcycle riding\n\n\u2022 Unicycle riding (!)\n\n\u2022 Childbirth\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nDealing with Pain while Sitting\n\nLeaning forward while sitting transfers weight away from the tailbone and onto the sitz bones, while leaning back increases the pressures of sitting. For this reason, people with coccydynia will often naturally lean forward when they must sit. There are specialized chairs that have been used by people with coccydynia. While not especially portable, these chairs may normalize life at home and work.\n\nCoccydynia pain is usually increased during the moment of transition from sitting to standing. This is when the mechanical stresses are focused on the tail-bone. You may need to let people know that you'll need to stand during meetings.\n\nThe first major goal is to avoid re-injury of the tip of your spine. It is important to take all reasonable precautions not to fall; this may sound silly, but take extra care when walking. Avoid activities where falls and trauma are likely, including skating, skiing, motorcycle riding, tractors, school buses, and amusement park rides. Especially if you are healing from such an injury, special care is needed.\n\nYou will probably need to combine medication and non-medication treatments to get through an episode of coccydynia. Medications can include NSAIDs, acetaminophen, or prescription pain medications. Non-medication treatments will certainly include using a cushion but may also include stretches, manual therapy, hot and cold packs, and any of the non-medication therapies discussed in the second part of this book.\n\n\u2022 Reducing inflammation will aid in control of coccydynia. Your tools for reducing inflammation will include rest (as appropriate), ice, and anti-inflammatory medications (NSAIDs). Your doctor may recommend the injection of an anti-inflammatory medicine such as a steroid. This can be helpful if everything goes well. Consider your options carefully.\n\n\u2022 You will need to buy and carry a cushion. The donut is the most common but there are other types of cushions that relieve pressure on the coccyx. Coccydynia is usually worsened by pressure on the buttock while sitting. You need to think before agreeing to go someplace unfamiliar and determine if an extra cushion will carry you through. Some activities, like sporting events that take place in a stadium with bench seating, are best avoided until a recovery is made.\n\n\u2022 People who are overweight or obese place added strain on the tailbone and for this reason, weight control may be recommended when appropriate.\n\n\u2022 Constipation is another aggravator of coccydynia, so make sure to stay well hydrated and have an active treatment regimen (fiber, laxative) to prevent constipation.\n\nChronic Coccydynia Requires Expert Help\n\nMost people recover after a period but there are rare instances of chronic coccydynia. If you suspect chronic coccydynia, you will need expert help. Make sure that your healthcare provider under-stands the seriousness of the problem. Because coccydynia can make it impossible to sit for longer periods of time, ask for help getting your work schedule and work arrangements modified so that you can keep going without making the problem worse.\n\nWedge cushion with coccyx cutout.\n\n### The Treatment\n\nPain control for coccydynia will proceed along the lines of therapy for many other conditions: first, heat and cold therapies are used. Sometimes electrical stimulation is considered and some practitioners will apply ultrasound or try iontophoresis of medications through the skin. On occasion, manipulation of the tailbone will be tried; however, support for this in the medical literature is limited. One older clinical report suggests that manual manipulation in combination with injection is more effective than either method alone.\n\n#### **DONUT CUSHIONS REDUCE THE PRESSURE**\n\nIf your doctor tells you that you need a cushion, you will probably be advised to start with a donut. Donut cushions are named for their shape; they look like giant donuts. The rationale of the donut is that it will reduce the pressure on the tailbone and thereby alleviate pain. They may work for some people, but not everyone will respond as well. Sometimes the cushion is not firm enough and doesn't take enough of the pressure off the tailbone. Other times the donut cushion just doesn't feel right; it might cause pressure points elsewhere in the buttock. The other parts of the body that bears most of the weight when we're seated are the sitz bones, more formally called the _ischial tuberosities_. Each of the bony spots in the buttock are cushioned with a fluid-filled sac called a bursa. There are many bursas in the body and they are usually found at points of mechanical stress. They are great when they work: the bursas in the shoulder allow smooth gliding movements even when someone is lifting a heavy load. The problem is that bursas can become inflamed, and when they do, look out\u2014it's a whole new cause of pain that can compound an already difficult situation.\n\nThe donut can irritate the bursas in the buttock, so many people use other types of cushions: there are triangular wedge cushions that have a cut-out along the back edge to relieve tailbone pressure, and there are fancy commercial cushions with a groove down the middle, designed to relieve midline buttock and pelvic pressures. For most people, any cushion is better than none, and the worst situation is where someone is compelled to sit for long periods on a hard surface. This can occur a lot in the spring when students are graduating, or during sports seasons. If you're facing an ordeal like this, don't go without your cushion!\n\n  **Warning! Ask Questions Before Getting an Injection**\n\nIf your doctor wants to perform an injection, make sure that the person performing the procedure is experienced and has performed this many times in the last year. You can simply ask:\n\n\u2022 How many of these injections to the coccyx have you performed in the last year?\n\n\u2022 What is your complication rate?\n\n\u2022 How long will the effects of the injection last?\n\n\u2022 What are the chances that this injection will relieve my pain?\n\nCoccyx injections are usually done with fluoroscopic guidance. This helps avoid injury to delicate structures in the vicinity of the tailbone. Another type of injection that is sometimes used is a ganglion impar block. Although recent studies suggest that this may be an effective treatment, it has traditionally been used in cases where there is a serious structural problem.\n\n#### **PHYSICAL THERAPY IMPROVES BODY MECHANICS**\n\nIf your doctor tells you that you need physical therapy, you may be wondering what can be done. Several things may be helpful in the setting of coccydynia: pain control will be the first order of business, then focusing on getting the body mechanics right, and some stretching and strengthening may be needed. Rarely, people will need to have manual therapy done in this area. If this is the case, make sure to obtain a specific recommendation for someone with advanced training. Most physical therapists will shy away from the somewhat invasive methods required.\n\n#### **SURGERY IS A RADICAL OPTION**\n\nIf your doctor recommends surgery, you should consider this step very carefully. Removal of the coccyx is a radical surgery that removes an anchoring point for a complex muscle that is critically important for the functioning of the bowels and the stability of the pelvic floor. The muscles that allow the anus to close properly are connected to the coccyx, and removal of this anchor can produce lasting difficulties with bowel movements. This surgery is usually reserved for situations where there is demonstrated instability of the coccyx that is associated with disabling pain, or in cases where there is a tumor. Be sure to discuss the possible alternatives to surgery and make sure that your doctor paints a very clear picture of what to expect in terms of recuperation and return to daily activities after the surgery. Removal of the coccyx has been reported to have a very high infection rate. This is because the area of the surgery is very close to the bowels, and it is really difficult to keep the area clean. In addition, the recovery is hard to endure, as it is necessary to limit sitting until adequate healing has taken place.\n\n### Testing for Coccydynia\n\nThe first step in the evaluation of coccydynia is a physician's assessment. Diagnostic testing usually begins with an X-ray, although other imaging tests may follow. Based on the results of the clinical assessment including any test results, your provider will determine if you have a clear structural problem that is causing the pain, or whether treatment will proceed on the basis of a clinical diagnosis.\n\nThe examination for coccydynia can consist of a external exam and an internal exam. The external exam will involve the doctor looking at certain structures and palpating various locations in the back and buttock. Some of this will be done to make sure that the problem is not something other than coccydynia. The internal exam for coccydynia is performed for the simple fact that the tailbone in most people is located deep in the buttock, right near the rectum. This is a hard-to-reach location. The internal exam may require the doctor to place a finger inside the rectum and feel for the position and tenderness of the boney tail in this manner.\n\nSome highly specialized physical therapists have been trained to perform manual therapy using this approach. You can imagine that the people who experience problems with muscle spasm in the tailbone area really value people who are willing to learn about and develop the skills needed, but this training is not always appreciated because of the cultural taboos and sensitive nature of these structures.\n\nPelvic floor muscles\n\nA view of the coccyx seen from inside the pelvis from inside the pelvis\n\n### The Explanation\n\nPain emanating from the tail bone is a surprisingly prevalent and troublesome back pain condition. It often is precipitated by a fall in which the person lands suddenly on their bottom. These types of falls are incredibly common. The actual risks that make persistently painful tailbone fracture or injury more or less likely are not known. Childbirth is an important trigger of coccydynia, and not surprisingly, it is estimated to be five times more common in women.\n\n#### **COCCYDYNIA IN CHILDBIRTH**\n\nThe human tailbone is a small, rudimentary bone that varies from person to person. One important characteristic of each coccyx is the degree to which it is angled or \"tucked under.\" Under ordinary circumstances, having a small tail-remnant that sits more or less tucked under into the rear end of the body is completely without problems. There is one critical juncture however, where having a small bone in this location can be problematic: the moment of childbirth. During the nine months of pregnancy, a developing fetus sits safely inside the abdomen and pelvis of the expectant mother. During these months, hormones gradually work to increase the flexibility and stretchiness of the ligaments that bind the bones of the pelvis to each other. As noted elsewhere in this book, this can cause pain that ranges from mild aching to sharply debilitating if proper steps aren't taken. During labor, the baby descends through the large ring of the pelvis, a process that takes time. Towards the very end of the delivery process, the baby has to slide past the tailbone on its way into the world. Depending on the configuration of the coccyx, the baby will have more or less difficulty passing by this spot.\n\n#### **OTHER PREDISPOSITIONS FOR COCCYDYNIA**\n\nAnother factor that influences the tendency for pain arising from the tailbone is body weight. A variety of factors that predispose obese people to experience coccydynia; one is a tendency to angle the pelvis in a way that places additional stress on the tailbone when sitting. It has been proposed that plopping down into chairs may be an aggravating factor.\n\nSome people develop coccydynia in association with a minor skeletal malformation of the spine that includes a spicule or sharp spine projecting from the tail end of the coccyx. People with these little spines will typically also have a small dimple in the overlying skin, suggesting that this is the result of a very minor birth defect.\n\nFinally, there are rare instances of tumor or aggressive infection that lead to coccydynia. These conditions require highly specialized treatment and sometimes necessitate consideration of surgical options.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Maigne, J.Y., G. Chatellier, and M.L. Faou, et al. 2006. The treatment of chronic coccydynia with intrarectal manipulation: A randomized controlled study. _Spine_ 31 (18): E621\u20137.\n\n2. Wray, C.C., S. Easom, and J. Hoskinson. 1991. Coccydynia: Aetiology and treatment. _J Bone Joint Surg Br_ 73 (2): 335\u20138.\n\n3. Foye, P.M. \"Coccyx Pain,\" Emedicine. <http:\/\/emedicine.medscape.com\/article\/309486-overview>. Accessed January 26, 2010.\n\n4. Patel, R., A. Appannagari, and P.G. Whang. 2008. Coccydynia. _Curr Rev Musculoskelet Med_ 1 (3\u20134): 223\u201326.\n\n5. Foye, P.M. \"Coccyx Pain,\" eMedicine. <http:\/\/emedicine.medscape.com\/article\/309486-overview>. Accessed January 26, 2010.\n\n6. Cleveland Clinic. Coccydynia, <http:\/\/my.clevelandclinic.org\/disorders\/Coccydynia\/hic_Coccydynia_Tailbone_Pain.aspx>. Accessed January 26, 2010.\n\n7. Foye, P.M. \"Coccyx Pain,\" eMedicine. <http:\/\/emedicine.medscape.com\/article\/309486-overview>. Accessed January 26, 2010.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**I have coccydynia and feel blue. Is that normal?**  \nCoccydynia can be a very difficult and demoralizing condition to live with. When coccydynia becomes chronic, the impact on daily living is profound. A life in which one cannot sit normally means that regular meals, formal dinners, going to movies, attending cultural events, taking longer car rides, boating, socializing, and many other enjoyable activities are out of the picture until the condition settles down. This can place a substantial strain on family members as well, especially when expectations are high for social interactions or when there are others who may also need care such as young children or aging parents. For this reason, it is important to stay attentive to your state of mind and general mood while living with coccydynia. Feeling down might almost be expected given the challenges, but there is no reason to suffer in silence. There are many medications available that can help improve a depressed mood, and effective non-pharmacological treatments as well. Some of the medications used to treat depressed mood are also known to be effective in reducing pain. If your doctor proposes a medication to help you \"feel a little brighter,\" ask if the medication might also help with the pain. A short list of antidepressants that are known to be pain active includes amitriptyline, desipramine, duloxetine, and venlafaxine. Each of these medications will have a different set of side effects, so a discussion of options with your doctor is needed. If you would prefer to go the non-medication route when addressing depressed mood, ask your doctor if they know of any psychologists or psychiatrists who are well versed in addressing chronic pain. Not all practitioners are tuned in to the needs of patients with persistent pain.\n\n**Why is the coccyx so important?**  \nA number of key structures anchor onto the coccyx. These include part of the gluteus muscles (major muscles in the buttock) and muscles that run on either side of the rectum to form part of the floor of the pelvis. Ligaments are present as well. Some of these stabilize the coccyx onto the sacrum, while others run from the coccyx to the ischial tuberosities (sitz bones) on either side. Surgical removal of the coccyx is obviously complicated by the presence of these anchoring support elements. If the coccyx is removed, difficulties with the pelvic floor can follow as the rectum and other pelvic structures begin to sag downward or \"prolapse.\" The consequences can include chronic soiling, incontinence, and increasing pain.\n\n# PART 2\n\nGetting Better, Getting Stronger \n\n## CHAPTER 13  \nFirst Steps for Acute Back Pain\n\n**See a practitioner early and often to ensure there is no permanent damage and develop a treatment plan.**\n\n###  _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\nAcute management should begin as soon as you develop serious back pain. You will know if the pain is serious by the intensity or degree of pain. Another indicator is if the pain stops you from doing your normal activities. Most doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers use a 10-point scale to measure pain intensity. If your pain is eight or greater, it is probably serious and you need to seek help. If your pain is less than eight but prevents you from sitting or standing normally, it is serious and you should check in with your doctor. You will probably want to follow the plan in this book.\n\nThe primary reason for seeking a diagnosis for serious back pain is to ensure the proper treatment course. You will want to see a doctor, physician's assistant (PA), or nurse practitioner early in the course of back pain to make sure there is no danger to the spinal cord, nerve roots, or other vital structures. Once the dangerous conditions are eliminated as a cause of your back pain (Red Flags for Back Pain), finding a diagnosis may become more challenging, as not all physicians are well trained in the complexities of back structure and function.\n\n#### **RED FLAGS FOR BACK PAIN**\n\nIf your pain was preceded by a trauma or is associated with weakness or inability to control bowel or bladder functions, you may be dealing with a medical emergency and should seek immediate medical care. Don't do anything else until you see a doctor or qualified medical professional to assess your problem. The Red Flags are:\n\n\u2022 Major trauma (car accident, fall from a height)\n\n\u2022 Age less than 20 or greater than 50\n\n\u2022 History of cancer\n\n\u2022 Fever, chills, weight loss\n\n\u2022 Recent bacterial infection\n\n\u2022 Drug abuse\n\n\u2022 Immunosuppression\n\n\u2022 Pain that is worse when lying down\n\n\u2022 Severe nighttime pain\n\n\u2022 New bladder dysfunction (incontinence of urine)\n\n\u2022 Numbness over the genitals\n\n\u2022 Major or progressive weakness in one or both legs\n\n\u2022 Minor trauma, in the setting of low bone density or osteoporosis\n\n**>** Are you experiencing serious back pain?\n\n**>** Are you free of any weakness, bowel or bladder incontinence, or numbness?\n\nAll primary care physicians should be trained to recognize the back pain Red Flags, a term coined by the U.S. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research to aid clinicians in identifying aspects of a patient's medical history or examination that potentially indicate dangerous conditions requiring immediate intervention. These potentially dangerous conditions include spinal fracture, spinal infection, spinal compression, cancer, and nerve root compression. The problem is that even though the red flags were established by a panel of experts and have been around for over a decade, their value in making a diagnosis has not been accurately established, and no one knows for sure how helpful they are as true markers of disease. Suffice it to say that if there is a dangerous condition, you want your doctor to catch it early. The best thing you can do is to provide information about your health as clearly and calmly as possible. You may want to share the Red Flag list with your doctor.\n\nYour Clinician Needs to Know:\n\n\u2022 Severity of pain (on a 0\u201310 scale)\n\n\u2022 What the pain feels like (sharp, dull, etc.)\n\n\u2022 Location of the pain (where it is, where it \"goes\")\n\n\u2022 When the pain started\n\n\u2022 What makes it better\n\n\u2022 What makes it worse\n\n\u2022 Your limitations due to pain\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nThere are several very important things that you can do for back pain as soon as it starts:\n\n\u2022 Prevent further injury. If you're doing something that has caused you to injure your back, you need to stop doing it.\n\n\u2022 Seek medical assessment. You need the help of a medical professional to sort out whether your new back pain could be caused by a serious problem. Once these issues are resolved, you can go forward with treatment and recovery. This step involves finding a physician or care team who will acknowledge the serious nature of your back problem, endeavor to find a diagnosis, address your needs for pain control, connect you with exceptionally good physical therapy, and support your needs for sick leave appropriately.\n\n\u2022 Initiate pain control. Early and adequate pain control is vitally important to reduce a person's period of disability, restore normal movement patterns (preventing secondary injury), and reduce the chances of long-term pain. When back pain is serious, it usually requires more than aspirin, ibuprofen, or acetaminophen.\n\n#### **COMMUNICATION IS VITAL TO PAIN CONTROL**\n\nIt is sometimes hard to explain to a physician or other care provider how badly one's back is hurting. For one thing, many physicians, especially when young, have never experienced serious pain. In our studies, upwards of 30 percent of medical students have never experienced serious physical pain, and many have never considered the impact of pain on the person who is feeling it. On the other hand, older physicians will occasionally become hardened toward the pain of others. Still other physicians hold preconceived notions about back injury and will pigeon-hole patients based on social, economic, gender, or ethnic factors and conclude that the pain is being overstated.\n\nThis is critically important because the current medical system relies absolutely on a physician, PA, or nurse to recognize and acknowledge a pain problem before serious medical therapy can be started. Therefore, the first part of beginning pain control is communication.\n\n### **The Treatment**\n\nIf you have to wait for medical assessment, you have some choices to make. You can try using some over-the-counter medications, although serious back pain is often only minimally better with non-prescription medications. Your doctor or nurse will want to know if the pain was relieved by the more common medications, as this will give them potentially valuable diagnostic information about your problem. You should always be thinking about whether massage, acupuncture, ice, warm packs, stretches, rest, or some other non-medication treatment can work with whatever else you're using for pain.\n\n#### **PUT SOME ICE ON IT**\n\nOne treatment that is often overlooked and under-appreciated is starting with a cold pack. You can almost always help acute back pain with some ice. Why is this? Ice application can help in several important ways. Application of ice or a cold pack will both reduce inflammation after injury and block pain signaling. Often times, patients will give me _that look_ when I mention ice packs. That look usually seems to mean \"You're kidding. I came to see you so that you could recommend ice packs?\" I tell medical students that medical therapy for pain should always, always include non-medication-based treatments in parallel with medications for pain.\n\n#### **HEAT AND TOPICAL AGENTS HELP AFTER 48 HOURS**\n\nAlthough warm therapy is very helpful for chronic low back pain, heating the back may not be very beneficial during the acute phase. Most typically, the first 48 hours after an injury is reserved for cold treatments. After that period, it is often helpful to alternate cold and warm therapies. Warm heat can be delivered in various ways: it is possible to apply warm moist towels, microwave a sachet of buckwheat, use a heating pad, or rub on some medicinal agents that promote warming.\n\nCold therapy helps by reducing local inflammation. Cold works best when used in the first 24 to 48 hours.\n\nTaking Time Off from Work Is No Vacation\n\nOne of the biggest problems faced by a person with serious back pain is convincing his or her employer that time off is needed. A concerned and compassionate care provider may be your key to recovery. Many employers require a physician's signature for medical absence from work. But, and this is a critical but, under no circumstances should you take time off from work and not attend physical therapy. If your back pain is serious enough to merit sick leave, you require skilled physical therapy. Sick leave is not vacation, it is time for healing and you must do your part in getting better.\n\n#### **BED REST HELPS WITH SOME BACK PAIN**\n\nProper bed rest is needed for certain types of back pain:\n\n\u2022 A disc tear can be excruciatingly painful and is usually more painful when the disc is placed under pressure. Not infrequently, when there is a back injury, a disc is torn. The pain can be quite severe, dull to sharp, and typically located in the center of the back or just to the side. Getting off your feet will decrease the pressure on the disc and help to reduce the pain. An acute disc tear can require a week of bed rest with a gradual increase in activity, but this should only be undertaken with the supervision of a physician experienced in back care. Surprising research showed that the disc has nerve endings; this was not widely appreciated even five years ago. In fact, the outer ring of the spinal disc is richly supplied with pain-sensitive nerve endings.\n\n\u2022 A mild disc herniation is not best treated with surgery. Unless you resort to chiropractic manipulation, spine rest can the best way to coax the disc back into place. Bed rest can be combined with gentle traction implemented by a physical therapist, chiropractor, or back-care specialist. Seek the guidance of an experienced rehabilitation specialist regarding the treatment of mild disc herniation with bed rest. Several weeks of graduated activity may be needed with this treatment approach. Be aware that even \"mild\" disc herniations hurt a lot; studies have shown that the average amount of pain with a herniated disc is eight out of 10!\n\n\u2022 A mild flare-up\/overdoing it type back pain: often this type of pain is better with a day or two of taking it easy.\n\n  **Warning! Exercise Caution with Heating Pads**\n\nIt is important to exercise special care when applying warm therapies. A heating pad should never be applied directly to the skin. It should not be in place for more than 20 minutes, and one should not lay on top of it. It is most prudent not to set the temperature of the heating pad above low. People who have any kind of neuropathy and people who have diabetes, should not use a heating pad unless it is approved by their neurologist. Neuropathy can lead to poor awareness of skin temperatures and damaging burns can result.\n\n#### **BED REST IS NOT HELPFUL FOR MUSCLE PULLS**\n\n\u2022 A muscle pull is best treated with cold packs, over-the-counter medicines, and avoiding reinjury; bed rest is not ideal, although intermittent rest periods can help.\n\n#### THE SPINE AT REST\n\nBest position: spine at rest. All possible weight is removed from spine.\n\nOkay position: spine at partial rest.\n\n### **The Explanation**\n\nPain control is a fundamental need for patients with serious back pain. The benefits of pain control include better quality of life, better prospects for recovery, less disruption of sleep, and a potential reduction in chronic pain.\n\nYou must communicate your pain to someone knowledgeable enough to understand the problem and able to order appropriate therapies. This is usually communicated using a 10-point scale where zero is no pain and 10 is the worst pain imaginable. The \"pain score\" or \"pain number\" is reproducible and changes quickly when someone obtains relief from pain. The main difficulty with the pain score is that it is subjective, meaning there is no tool or test that will confirm your pain number to someone standing outside of your body. This leads to the next major problem with the pain score: both doctors and nurses will sometimes discount or underestimate a patient's pain score. The obvious consequence is that unperceived pain goes untreated. For this reason, make sure your clinician accurately perceives the seriousness of your back pain as you are feeling it.\n\nFor some people, sketching a picture of what the pain onset looked like is helpful.\n\n#### **RISKS WITH PAIN CONTROL**\n\nUsually, you will work with your clinician to reduce the risks of pain control. They can be summarized with three R's: Reactions, Reinjury, and Reduced cash.\n\nThe first R, for reactions, is the most important. Any and all medications used for pain control carry some side effects, ranging from mild to life threatening. For example, many thousands of people each year suffer gastrointestinal (internal) bleeding as a serious side effect of non-steroidal pain medicines like ibuprofen. It's estimated that more than 16,000 people in the U.S. died from NSAID-induced gastrointestinal bleeding in one year alone! If you take a medicine, be aware of the potential side effects; know the important warning signs and discuss these with your pharmacist. Common medication side effects that may be serious include rashes, excessive fatigue, yellow jaundice, fever, headache, and decreased or discolored urine production. Make sure your doctor, nurse, or care provider speaks with you about the major potential risks of any medication. Write down any questions you have about your prescriptions and call or see your clinician to discuss them. It's a good idea to keep a pain diary and include any medication changes, noting medicines that you take as needed. This is a good place to make notes about which medicines seem to work best and any symptoms you are concerned about.\n\n**Words to Describe the Time Course of Pain**\n\n\u2022 Explosive onset\n\n\u2022 Gradual worsening\n\n\u2022 Coming and going for a while\n\n\u2022 Ramping up quickly\n\n\u2022 Intermittently severe\n\n\u2022 Mild and then suddenly worse\n\n**The Risks of Pain Control**\n\nMedication Reaction\n\nBack Reinjury\n\nCash Reduction\n\nThe second R is for re-injury, which will hold you back from returning to your life. This book will teach you several techniques to avoid re-injury, ranging from ergonomics and proper back use to core strengthening and positive psychological messaging. Avoiding re-injury seems like the most natural, reasonable goal for someone with serious back pain, and this book is written for just those people seeking a deeper knowledge of the back and spine. Unfortunately, re-injury has become a hot-button issue in the back care industry because fear of re-injury has been identified as slowing the return to work. In reality, you will need to distinguish between reasonable concern arising from experience and unreasonable fear born of anxiety, pressure, and stress. You will have to make conscious decisions in order to protect your back from this day forward; you will need to think about how to bend, how to lift, when not to move heavy objects, when to take rest breaks and how to select and modify your shoes. In the short run, having a little pain to warn you away from back-endangering activities can be helpful.\n\nThe third R is not so much a risk as a reality. All treatments cost money; the objective is to find a highly effective treatment for the lowest cost. Ask your doctor to consider generic alternatives, especially if your insurance will not cover the cost of your medication. It's okay to let your doctor know if you are having trouble paying for medicines and to discuss how your treatment can include lower-cost options. Keep in contact with your insurance company about the range of treatments that may be needed for your back. Bear in mind that not treating a back injury will also have a cost, and you will need to balance the cost of treatment with the cost of continued pain. A major message of this book is that the consistent application of non-drug therapies such as cold, heat, ergonomic-positioning, physical therapy, and clinical psychological techniques will help to reduce dependence on medications and potentially make the medications you take more effective against your pain.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**I injured my back, but it wasn't until hours later that it began to hurt. Why is that?**\n\nAt first it may be hard to believe that you have been hurt, especially if you are otherwise busy, healthy, and active. Accidents occur unexpectedly and are a frequent cause of back pain. It's easy to understand that shock and surprise can delay people from recognizing the seriousness of a problem. Sometimes, the precipitating back injury seems inexplicably minor compared to the pain that follows, and this will delay problem recognition. And although back pain can start almost immediately with accidental injury, it often takes several hours for the pain to set in, and sometimes even longer. Days can pass before pain peaks. Delayed pain is common for people that are injured under \"battlefield\" conditions, reflecting physiological factors like the release of stress hormones. Delayed pain can happen when someone is focusing intently on completing a task, reflecting psychological factors such as attention and pain distraction. Delayed pain can occur in performance-related settings where all eyes are on you and a premium is paid for \"going on with the show.\" Finally, delayed pain may be due to the nature of the injury and the underlying disease process at work (pathophysiological factors) such as delayed swelling or inflammation.\n\n**My pain changes from day to day. How can I communicate that on a pain scale?**\n\nOne very valuable tool for communicating with your doctors and care providers about your pain is the pain diary or pain calendar. It can be as simple as jotting a single pain score on a wall calendar each day, or as elaborate as a keeping a detailed journal of each day's experiences. With the basic pain tally each day, it is very easy for your doctor to tell how things are going at a glance. It will make it possible to gauge whether a new therapy is working and alternatively, can help you assess your progress as you return to work or school. Also, people gain a sense of control over their pain simply by writing it down. Gaining control over your pain and getting your life back is the ultimate goal of treatment for back pain.\n\n## CHAPTER 14  \nEarly Exercises for Managing Back Pain\n\n**With Lina Mezei, certified yoga instructor. Gentle yoga can offer significant pain relief and increase mobility.**\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\n  **Warning! Easy Does It**\n\nNever push yourself to the point of pain. Yoga for back pain is not supposed to be strenuous; rather, it is meant to be restorative and healing.\n\n**Warning! Check with Your Doctor**\n\nBe sure to check with your doctor for specific warnings against any of the exercises described in this chapter before beginning.\n\nIf you are in the early stages of recovering from back pain and you are able to sit for 20 minutes, stand up from a chair without wincing, and tie your own shoes, these early exercises for acute back pain may be right for you.\n\nIt's time to learn about yoga, a system of poses, breathing, and thoughtful meditation that has been used for thousands of years to promote health. You can take a gentle yoga class, borrow books from the library, get a yoga DVD, or talk it over with a knowledgeable friend.\n\n\u2022 Your first yoga practice should be very gentle and well within your comfort zone. If you feel pain, it is time to backtrack and get more guidance. There is an excellent DVD produced by _Yoga Journal_ called _Yoga for Your Pregnancy_. While you may not be pregnant, you can imagine that yoga for pregnancy is very, very gentle. This is where you want to begin.\n\n\u2022 The yoga exercises in this chapter were adapted from standard yoga postures. They reflect the recommendations for improved core stability and gentle stretching.\n\n### **The Treatment**\n\nThe best way to start is to practice yoga breathing: refreshing breaths that reach deep into the lower abdomen. This is sometimes more challenging for women, as many women have learned over time to breath with the chest and not as much with the abdomen. Babies breathe with the abdomen; think about the gentle rise and fall of the belly with each breath.\n\nIn yoga, we use a technique called Ujjayi breathing, which translates into victorious breathing. Breathing should be completely unrestricted, each inhalation slow and expansive. As you practice controlling your breathing so it is longer and stronger, you should eventually be able to feel your breath deep inside your belly. This type of deep belly breathing requires some practice; each exhale should be steady and completely emptying.\n\nThere are two exercises one can do to practice Ujjayi breathing. One method is to take a deep, full inhalation and exhale as if you were fogging up a car window on a cold day. Another method is to whisper the word \"home.\" While whispering, draw out each sound of the word so that it takes roughly three to five seconds for you to complete each whisper. If done properly, you should feel a slight constriction of air in the back of the throat and the exhale should be very audible. These breathing exercises can also increase lung capacity and stamina for performing your yoga sequences. Additionally, practicing controlled yogic breath work is attributed to creating balance within the autonomic nervous system and fostering physical and mental tranquility., Different yogic traditions place varying degrees of emphasis on control of the breath. Although many advocate breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, it is possible to breath in and out through the nose; if breathing in through the nose feels too restrictive, to breath in and out through the mouth.\n\n**Where to Practice Yoga**\n\nYoga is primarily practiced on a yoga mat in a warm room, which aids in making your muscles more loose and flexible. For extra padding, you may want to place your yoga mat on a carpeted surface. Throughout all of the yoga poses, be conscious of your breathing. If, while in a posture, your breath becomes labored, it means you need to back off a bit. It is important that you listen to your body and modify the extent of poses and stretches as you see fit.\n\n#### **LIE DOWN FOR BASIC VINYASA**\n\nYoga is structured into specific sequences called _vinyasas_ , which translates into \"flowing movement.\" Your yoga practice should move with fluidity, each pose flowing into the next in correlation with your breathing to make each posture more restorative and beneficial. The goals of this basic vinyasa are to warm up, gain focus, concentrate on breathing, stretch, and awaken the spine.\n\n1. Lying down _Tadasana_ (Mountain Pose) will prepare and provide focus for your yoga sequence. This pose will get you acquainted with your yoga mat as well. Lay your body face-up on the mat. Adjust yourself so that your body experiences maximum contact with the mat. This may require you to move the flesh around your sitz bones in order to make better contact. Gently rock your spine side to side and up and down until you feel an imprint in the mat. Keep legs together and your feet flexed as though you are standing on an imaginary floor. Your arms should be placed next to your sides, hands open with your palms touching your thighs or in prayer at the center of your chest. Become aware of your body as you pull your belly in towards your spine. There should be no tension in this pose, so make sure your shoulders are down away from the ears and relaxed. Concentrate on alignment while breathing. Imagine you are as steady and strong as a mountain. As you begin, you may need a small support under the head and a small bolster under the knees. By the end of the early back pain phase, your goal is to be able to lie flat.\n\n2. Transition from Mountain Pose to lying down _Vrksasana_ (Tree Pose). Vrksasana is a nice hip-opening posture that will also help to release tension in the pelvis. Simply bring up one leg and place the sole of the foot against the inner thigh. If this is difficult, place the foot firmly on the inner shin. Adjust yourself so that the pelvis and hips are in a neutral\/straight position, and not jutting out toward the side that your foot is pressing on. For complete engagement, flex the foot of your outstretched leg. Press your hands together in a prayer position in the center of the chest. For an even greater stretch, lift your arms over your head, interlace your fingers, and turn your hands so that the palms face away from your head. Relax, take a few deep breaths, and repeat with the other leg.\n\nA precursor to Bandhasana (Bridge Pose)\n\n3. Now that your pelvis has been stabilized, practice a precursor to _Setu Bandhasana_ (Bridge Pose). In this early phase, the posture will be presented as pre-bridge pelvic tilts. While laying flat on your back, bend your knees and walk your heels toward your buttocks. Your feet should be flat on the mat and a hip-width apart. Place your fingertips toward the heels while lengthening your neck and pressing the lower back into the mat. Press all four corners of the feet firmly into the mat. As you exhale, engage your abdominal muscles and buttocks. Begin to tilt your pelvis, making your tailbone curl up as your whole lower back presses into the mat. The small of your lower back should feel completely flat. Hold here for three breaths and slowly release on an exhale. Repeat these movements three to five more times while moving with your breath. This posture aids in toning and relieving pressure in the lower spine.\n\n4. Roll over onto the belly to prepare for a modified _Ardha Salabhasana_ (Half Locust Pose). This variation is the least difficult locust posture, yet it is capable of relieving much tension in the lower back. Lie flat, placing your palms face down alongside the hips, or tucked underneath the thighs. Push firmly down on the hands, pelvis, and pubic bone as you gently inhale and raise the right leg upward two to four inches off of the mat. Make sure the raised leg is straight and the toes are pointing directly behind your body. Exhale as you slowly lower your right leg back down to the mat. Repeat three to five more times, then switch to the left leg. This posture activates the extensor muscles along the spine, namely the erector spinae and mutifidus muscles.\n\nBalasana (Child's Pose)\n\n5. A wonderful counter-stretch to _Ardha Salabhasana_ , which is a back extension exercise, is a gentle spinal flexion such as supported _Balasana_ (Child's Pose). You will need a pillow for the supported version. Begin by getting onto your knees, resting the tops of the feet flat on the mat, and positioning them directly behind the buttocks. The knees splay out toward the front corners of the mat. Place the pillow comfortably underneath your belly and chest. Take a deep breath in, and on your exhale, slowly begin to lower your belly, chest, and forehead down toward the mat, allowing your heart to sink into the pillow. Place your arms outstretched in front of you with your palms facing down on the mat. Allow the rest of your body to sink into the floor and begin to melt away into your mat. Relax in this pose while taking five to ten deep, restorative breaths.\n\n6. After releasing _Balasana_ , move the pillow away and gently roll over onto your back to prepare for the next posture, a modified _Ardha Apanasana_ (Half Wind-Relieving Posture). Apanasana is a flexion posture designed to open your hips and to stabilize your pelvis and lower back. While laying flat on your back, allow the whole spine to press down into the mat. Raise the right knee up and in toward the chest on an inhale. If strain is caused by trying to bring your knee to the chest, just lift your leg so that your thigh and knee are directly above your hip and your calf is at a 90-degree angle from your thigh with your foot flexed. On each long inhalation, allow the belly to expand. On each long exhalation, continue to pull the knee closer toward your chest. On your third breath, gently glide the knee toward the opposite side so that the knee cap is pointing in the direction of the left shoulder. Hold your leg here for three breaths. Switch legs by releasing and extending your right leg as you bring your left knee up toward your chest and repeat the sequence.\n\nA modified Virabhandrasana (Warrior Pose) forward lunge with hands providing balance and support\n\n#### **STANDING POSES IN BASIC VINYASA**\n\n1. Prepare for a modified _Virabhandrasana_ (Warrior Pose) by bringing yourself to a standing position, in which your body is upright and you are resting lightly on your feet. It is a good idea to place your mat over carpet and next to a wall in case you need to reach out for stability. Place your right foot about two feet in front of your body, and lean forward, aligning the right knee directly over the heel. As you lean forward on the right leg, try to keep the heel of the left foot on the ground as you stretch your calf and hip muscles. As you are more comfortable in this position and would like to experience a more intense stretch, move your right foot further forward, working towards a distance of three feet between your feet. Remain in this gentle lunge position as you visualize reaching upward through the crown of your head for five to eight breaths. Keep your shoulders down back so that they are not scrunching up towards the ears, with your hands by your sides. After three to five breaths, return to your original standing position and switch to stretch your left leg. It is beneficial to incorporate postures that stretch the hip flexors, as low back pain and lumbar lordosis are often exacerbated by tightness in these muscles.\n\nOnce you are comfortable with the supported forward lunge, you can progress to a Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I Pose) by first bringing your torso into an upright position. Breathing in through your nose, raise your arms straight up and reach for the ceiling, framing your ears with your forearms. Engage your left leg by lifting up on the quadriceps and left kneecap. Tuck your tailbone, suck your belly in toward your spine, and continue reaching up with your fingertips. Make sure your shoulders are down and back as you hold Warrior I pose. After five breaths, bring your left foot forward to prepare for stretching on the other side.\n\n2. Now that your quadriceps and hips have been stretched, it is time to engage your leg and core muscles in a wall-assisted _Utkatasana_ (Fierce Pose). It has been recognized in back pain sufferers that weakness in core musculature creates a biomechanical deficit. It is crucial to strengthen the core, which helps to stabilize the spine, which in turn helps to relieve pain. To start, walk over to the nearest flat wall. Position your body so that your buttocks are resting comfortably against the wall. Your feet should be out in front of you so that your heels are approximately a foot (30 cm) or so away from the wall. Stand with the feet hip-width distance apart as you begin to slide your buttocks down the wall. You should appear to be sitting in a chair but leaning forward a bit. Raise your arms up overhead, framing your ears with your forearms. Be mindful that there is no tension in the shoulders, as the shoulder blades should be down and back. Make sure that your tailbone is tucked under and that you are sucking your belly in towards your spine. Concentrate on the breath as you reach for the ceiling on every inhale and sink a bit lower and deeper on every exhale. Hold for five breaths. As an alternative to this pose, it is possible to substitute a wall slide until the back is strong enough for you to lean forward away from the wall.\n\n3. Turn so that the front of your body is facing toward a support such as a wall to prepare for a modified _Adho Mukha Svanasana_ (Downward-Facing Dog Pose). Stand facing the wall with your arms outstretched at shoulder width. Press the palms flat against the wall at chest level. You should be standing with your feet apart at hip-width distance. While firmly pressing both hands into the wall, slowly begin to walk your feet back. Your shoulder blades should be down, away from the ears. Begin to feel a huge opening in your shoulders and spine as you allow your head and chest to sink down past your arms. Your feet should be planted firmly into the ground with your legs straight or with a slight bend in the knees. Hold here for eight long, restorative breaths. This modified version of Downward-Facing Dog provides a multitude of benefits including stretching most of the long muscles of the body. This pose also provides active lengthening of the erector spinae and latismus dorsi muscles. Lengthening the back extensor muscles greatly reduces low back compression.\n\n4. While still facing the wall, prepare for a variation on a primer pose for _Natarajasana_ (Dancer). Stand arm's-length away from the wall and place your right palm flat against it at shoulder height. Kick your right leg behind your body. Bend the knee to bring the heel of the right foot close to the right buttock. Take the left hand and reach back and around to grab the inside of the right arch. Actively lift that right foot with your left hand to feel a wonderful opening in the quadriceps and iliopsoas muscles. Repeat on the left side.\n\n5. Now that the quadriceps and iliopsoas muscles have been stretched, it is time for a gentle back extension posture, _Anuvittasana_ (Standing Backbend). Stand in _Tadasana_ , reaching the crown of the head toward the ceiling while lifting the chest and ribcage. Bring the palms of the hands to the lower back, right above the buttocks. As you exhale, drop the head slightly back and press your hips and thighs forward. Bring your gaze upward. On your fifth breath, slowly inhale the head back to vertical followed by the rest of the body.\n\n6. One final back flexion exercise that releases the entire spinal column is a seated _Uttanasana_ (Forward Fold\/Ragdoll). Sit in a chair and place your feet firmly on the ground. Take a big inhalation as you raise your arms up overhead, creating length along the entire spine. Sustain that length by reaching out and forward with your arms as you begin to flex at your hips to lower your belly onto your thighs. Your arms should hang loose, with one arm at the side of each shin. Let the head hang heavy over your knees as you begin to release all tension in the neck. During the early phase after back pain, it is better to lean forward into a bolster.\n\n7. Always end your yoga practice with five or ten minutes of deep breathing meditation in _Savasana_ (Corpse Pose). A bolster under the knees and shins is a good prop to incorporate during this early phase, as it will assist in relieving tension in the low back. This is the total relaxation pose, which for many is the most difficult pose to master. While laying flat on your back, close your eyes, spread your legs about hips-width apart, and place your arms out by your sides with the palms facing up toward the ceiling. Try to loosen all the muscles in your face and body and begin to take slow, steady, deep inhalations and exhalations through your nose and mouth. Be still, clear your mind, and visualize yourself as being weightless. Do not underestimate the power of relaxation for back pain relief. General muscle tightness, tension, and spasms resulting from life's daily stresses contribute to back pain.\n\nPractice these poses daily. For best results, try for multiple times throughout the day. After a few weeks of persistent and steady practice, you should be ready to move on to some more restorative and strengthening poses.,\n\nSavasana (Corpse Pose)\n\n### **The Explanation**\n\nYoga is a phenomenal way to get in touch with your body. As you practice yoga, you will begin to notice improvements in breathing, body awareness, posture, mobility, stability, and agility. Many of the physical therapy exercises that are used today have direct correlates in the centuries-old yoga poses described here.\n\n####  **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Brown, R.P. and P.L. Gerbarg. 2009. Yoga Breathing, Meditation, and Longevity. Longevity, Regeneration, and Optimal Health. _Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci._ 1172:54-62.\n\n2. Nayak, N.N. and K. Shankar. 2004. _Yoga: A Therapeutic Approach. Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinics of North America_ 15: 783-798.\n\n3. McCall, T. _Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing_. Bantam Books, New York, 2007.\n\n4. Coulter, D.H. _Anatomy of Hatha Yoga: A Manuel for Students, Teachers, and Practitioners_. Honesdale, PA: Body and Breath, 2001.\n\n5. Borg-Olivier, S. and B. Machliss. \"Yoga for Low-Back Pain: Simple Yoga Stretches And Exercises Can Help Alleviate The Highest Cause Of Sick Leave, Say Physiotherapists Simon Borg-Olivier and Bianca Machliss.\" _Complementary Medicine Journal_ , November\/December 2005.\n\n6. Sorosky, S., S. Stilp, and V. Akuthota. 2008. Yoga and pilates in the management of low back. _Curr Rev Musculoskeletal Med_ 1: 39-47.\n\n7. Borg-Olivier, S. and B. Machliss. \"Yoga for Low-Back Pain: Simple Yoga Stretches And Exercises Can Help Alleviate The Highest Cause Of Sick Leave, Say Physiotherapists Simon Borg-Olivier and Bianca Machliss.\" _Complementary Medicine Journal_ , November\/December 2005.\n\n8. Sherman, K.J., D.C. Cherkin, J. Erro, D.L. Miglioretti, and R.A. Deyo. 2005. Comparing yoga, exercise, and a self-care book for chronic low back pain: A randomized, controlled trial. _Annals of Internal Medicine_ 143 (12): 849-56.\n\n9. Williams, K. A., et al. 2005. Effect of Iyengar yoga therapy for chronic low back pain. _Pain_ 115 (1-2): 107-17.\n\n## CHAPTER 15  \nShaping Your Own Recovery\n\n**Consistent self-care is just as important as medical intervention**\n\n###  _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\nBack pain is the most common pain problem in the U.S. today. It is the number-one cause of work-related disability and a huge expense in terms of doctor visits, over-the-counter and prescription medications, physical therapy treatments, and surgical procedures. For all this investment of time, effort, and money, we have little positive to show. Most of the therapies that we doctors have are at best partially effective. The current standards for pain treatments are that they have to reduce pain by 50 percent. Usually by the time someone has had back pain for several months, there's a chance that whatever we do to make it better will only help a little bit.\n\nThis book is written to be a new solution to back pain, and this chapter is the key element. All the other chapters of this book are designed to bring together the best that medicine and science has to offer about the back and to put this information into your hands. But this chapter asks the question: \"What are you going to do to make your back pain better?\" You must be the captain of your own ship. You are an adult and have a responsibility to yourself and your close ones to take command of your health.\n\nIn truth, whatever positive steps you take will have a greater cumulative impact than all the medical interventions out there. This is true for almost all the problems that are not clearly medical emergencies. Take smoking, for example. If all the smokers in the country were to stop smoking, most of our highly trained cardiologists would be sitting around waiting for the next patient to show up. We would probably need a third fewer hospital beds and medical equipment makers would have a drastic drop in demand. The same applies for obesity, excessive alcohol consumption, and most other long-term health problems. Honestly, some people have a genetic predisposition to certain problems. But each person who makes peace with their back has come to a certain point: the place where outside solutions aren't working anymore and a new, custom-tailored plan of action is born. If you're not there yet, I hope you can start to take small steps and look carefully for improvement. Ask the questions: \"What will I do for my back today?\" followed by \"What can I do better?\", \"What can I learn?\" \"Is there something new that I haven't tried yet for my back?\", and \"Who can teach me?\"\n\nIf you are ready to be the master of your back's destiny, read on!\n\n**>** Have you had back pain for longer that you ever thought you would?\n\n**>** Have you been trying everything the doctors tell you without good results?\n\n**>** Are you unsure that anyone really understands what's happening with your back?\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\n**Rest Works Wonders**\n\nWhile you are living with back pain, start any task early and take breaks to lie down. Putting the back to rest and taking some deep breaths will make a world of difference. It is widely recognized among experienced pain practitioners that a period of overdoing it is inevitably followed by a period of increased pain; this is sometimes referred to as the pain-rest cycle.\n\n\u2022 Identify healthcare professionals and treatments that work for you.\n\n\u2022 Advocate for your own health needs. Speak openly with your doctor and others about your back pain and how treatments are working. A pain calendar or journal is a great way to keep track of your progress and pitfalls.\n\n\u2022 Pace yourself. Don't let others intimidate you into pushing too hard. Overdoing it while your back is getting better is a mistake and may lead to long-term problems.\n\n\u2022 Use all therapies with proper care. Many of the treatments for back pain have unintended side effects, including physical therapy. Be well informed and speak up if something's not right.\n\n\u2022 Acknowledge that pain probably has physical and psychological components.\n\n\u2022 Avoid or opt out of activities that repeatedly make your back pain worse. At one end of the spectrum, this means not going on a ski trip; at the other end, a career change may be the most important life change you can make.\n\n\u2022 Use pain relievers judiciously. There is such a thing as too much and, believe it or not, too little. Severe pain early after an injury can actually lead to chronic pain.\n\n\u2022 Visualize your life without back pain. You can do this as a form of meditation or write some affirmations and paste them to your mirror.\n\n\u2022 Let people know how you're doing. You will find that all the caring you've shared with others over the years will come back to you.\n\n\u2022 Learn about your back and develop your own strategies for a back-healthy lifestyle. Build a personalized plan of exercise, movement, medication, and meditation.\n\n### **The Treatment**\n\nIf your recovery is difficult and takes longer than initially expected, you may need to switch therapists or doctors. It's fair to say to someone, \"I appreciate that you've brought me this far and thank you,\" and move on for a fresh perspective.\n\n  **Warning! Allergic Reactions Demand Immediate Response**\n\nIf you think you are having a medication allergy, it is best to get help immediately. Some medications, especially muscle relax-ants, anticonvulsants, and anti-depressants can have serious effects with abrupt withdrawal. If you stop a prescribed medicine suddenly, you need to contact your doctor or the on-call physician about this.\n\n#### **ALTERNATIVE TREATMENTS ALSO CARRY RISKS**\n\nThe prescribed medications available in the U.S. are subject to careful scrutiny before approval for use and are subsequently manufactured with stringent standards. Despite this, problems still arise. In stark contrast, dietary supplements are manufactured under loosely regulated conditions and are completely unproven in terms of providing a health benefit. The essential standard for a dietary supplement is that it must not be harmful and that any claims made must be backed up by scientific studies. However, the safety of dietary supplements is not tested before they are brought to market. As the supplements are sold, the FDA monitors for harmful effects and will compel the withdrawal of a product that proves to be unsafe. If you take a dietary supplement, you are part of a real-time social experiment that may result in people like you suffering harm. One example of a potentially harmful dietary supplement is vitamin B6. When B6 is taken at mega-vitamin levels, it causes painful neuropathy that may take months to recover from.\n\nChiropractic manipulation can cause strokes when performed with excessive vigor in the neck region. Acupuncture can be hazardous if the practitioner is not reputable and experienced. Many of the conventional treatments for back pain, including lumbar epidural steroid injections, radiofrequency ablation, surgery, and medications can all be harmful if not used with appropriate caution and care.\n\n#### **PAIN IS STRONGLY IMPACTED BY STRESS**\n\nFor most people, pain is a complex mixture of physical and psychological components.\n\nThis does not mean the problem is in your head. It means that stress levels have a big impact on the perception and experience of pain. I've had plenty of patients with seriously painful nerve problems who find that pain is better during vacation. This doesn't mean that the pain is made up; it means that coping mechanisms may not be functioning as well under everyday circumstances and that with proper steps, some of the pain relief they experience while on vacation could be brought to bear in \"real-time.\"\n\n#### **LEARN MORE ABOUT PAIN RELIEVERS**\n\nMany pain relievers can be used for the treatment of back pain: classic NSAIDs, acetaminophen, and opioids; pain-active antidepressants including tricyclics and newer serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors; anticonvulsants such as the newer gabapentin and pregabalin as well as older ones such as carbamazepine; and neuro-modulating agents that are sometimes injected or used locally, including lidocaine and methylprednisolone acetate (Depomedrol). Each medication within a class has slightly different side effects and properties of action: how long it stays in the system, whether it is metabolized by kidney or liver, and how it interacts with other medications. The cost, too, can influence whether it is right or not.\n\nOne other medication option is the use of topical medications. Lidocaine is now available in a patch placed right over the painful area. A surprising number of people experience relief from this treatment. Also, some formulations of NSAIDs come in topical creams that are rubbed into the body. The opioid medication fentanyl is available as a prescription patch. This does not work by local action, but rather delivers the medication in a way that affects the entire body.\n\nThe specifics of your back problem will determine which medications might be right for you. If there is a nerve pain component to your back pain (zinging, burning, or shock-like pains), you may need to take prescription medication. Your doctor can provide instructions for a special compounding pharmacy to make customized medications. There are many options, so don't give up hope of getting relief.\n\nThe Benefits of Aerobic Exercise\n\n\u2022 Reduced stress\n\n\u2022 Greater ease in accomplishing everyday tasks\n\n\u2022 Pain relief\n\n\u2022 Improved pain tolerance\n\n\u2022 Better mental functioning\n\n\u2022 Aids weight control and weight loss\n\n#### **DON'T LET JOB WORRIES RUIN YOUR LIFE**\n\nIf you are able to work while your back recovers, great. If you need time to focus on getting better, you're going to have to ask. But don't attempt to game the system and use this time to engage in activities that will interfere with your recovery. Ask your care provider to support your need for time off during the acute phase and recovery. You'll need to do your part by attending physical therapy, keeping good records, and taking medications appropriately.\n\nIf you are prone to back pain with prolonged sitting, see if you can do your job while standing up from time to time. It might be possible to make phone calls while standing or get an adapted workstation that allows position changes. You may even need to change jobs to accommodate your physical constraints. This is the most difficult decision that I've seen patients make, but sometimes a necessary choice, and the best one in terms of correcting a chronic pain problem.\n\n#### **DEVELOP AN EXERCISE AND RECOVERY PLAN THAT WORKS FOR YOU**\n\nGetting back to an improved state of health is the best defense against back pain. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of a healthy lifestyle is exercise. Simply put, the value of getting aerobic exercise three times a week cannot be overstated. Choosing an exercise that you find enjoyable and rewarding, and getting into the habit of breaking a sweat three times weekly is the single best thing you can do to prevent a recurrence of back pain. Frequent exercise will make everything else you do easier; it will reduce overall stress, increase your pain tolerance, reduce your residual pain, and improve your chances of staying mentally sharp for years to come. Although you should check with your doctor before starting a new exercise routine, push ahead until you get that clearance and then go!\n\n**Ask for Help**\n\nFriends and family are especially important as you go through an experience of serious back pain. Especially if you have small children or pets, the lifting and bending tasks are endless. Just finding someone who can lift a child into the car can be a wonderful act of kindness. If they are open to being helpful, don't be embarrassed to arrange for help again.\n\n**Exceptional Resources for Shaping Your Own Recovery**\n\n**Overall**  \n _Managing Chronic Pain Workbook_  \nby John D. Otis\n\n_7 Minutes of Magic_ by Lee Holden\n\n**Exercise-focused**  \n _Mindfulness Yoga_ by Frank J.  \nBoccia\n\n_Banish Your Back Pain the Pilates Way_  \nby Anne Shelby\n\n**Taking care of your body**  \n _The Trigger Point Therapy  \nWorkbook_ by Clair Davies\n\n_Move into Life_ by Anat Baniel\n\n### **The Explanation**\n\nIncreasingly, medical researchers are finding that people with certain personality features are more likely to get better from an injury. One of the essential elements of doing well after a back problem is a sense of self-efficacy, a belief that you have the power to make positive decisions. The effects of self-efficacy were recognized several decades ago in the nursing research literature where a related concept called the _internal locus of control_ was described. In this, a person believes that they are responsible for events and the outcomes of their experiences. People without this feel that others have control over them. People with a good internal locus of control are generally healthier and have better health outcomes., This is being echoed in the current pain literature, which finds that people with better self-efficacy survive and even go on to thrive, despite adverse events.\n\nLike all doctors with back pain patients, I've had people come in saying \"Doc, I'll do anything you tell me.\" Most often, this is the patient who refuses to change anything in response to our conversations. They refuse to start physical therapy because they've tried that before and it didn't work; they refuse to try a new medicine because their primary care doctor (friend, neighbor) didn't approve; they refuse to start exercising because they just don't have the time. The simple fact is this patient is not ready to get better. They are trapped in a cycle of believing that someone somewhere is going to solve their problem without any effort from them. This won't happen. No one, not even your surgeon, is going to have the magic solution to fix all back pain. You're going to need answers, but in reality, the answer is: you.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Otis, J.D. _Managing Chronic Pain_. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.\n\n2. NCCAM. \"Using Dietary Supplements Wisely,\" <http:\/\/nccam.nih.gov\/health\/supplements\/wiseuse.htm>. Accessed February 12, 2010.\n\n3. Waldron, B., et al. 2010. Health locus of control and attributions of cause and blame in adjustment to spinal cord injury. _Spinal Cord_ [Epub].\n\n4. Nyland, J., B. Cottrell, K. Harreld, and D.N. Caborn. 2006. Self-reported outcomes after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. _Arthroscopy_ 22 (11): 1225-32.\n\n5. Foster, N.E., et al. 2009. Distinctiveness of psychological obstacles to recovery in low-back pain patients in primary care. _Pain_ [Epub].\n\n## CHAPTER 16  \nErgonomics\n\n**Design your home and work environment for optimal back health**\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\n  **Warning! Use Proper Technique**\n\nPart of taking back your back is changing how you do those tasks that are especially hard on the back. You must use proper technique to resume certain activities.\n\nDid You Know?\n\nThe study of ergonomics extends back in time to the ancient Romans and perhaps beyond. Bernardo Rammazini (1633\u20131714), however, is recognized as the founder of occupational medicine. His landmark work, translated into English as _A Treatise on the Diseases of Tradesmen_ , contained many chapters devoted to the maladies of a particular occupation. Of those who sit, he noted \"All sedentary workers... are a bad color, and in poor condition... for when the body is not kept moving, the blood becomes tainted, its waste matter lodges in the skin, and the condition of the whole body deteriorates.\"\n\n### **What Is Ergonomics?**\n\n_Ergonomics_ is a \"new\" word created in the late 1940s by a British scientist interested in designing better work environments. Hywell Murrell was a chemist by training; one wonders how he developed an interest in work environments, but clearly the process of studying how humans function best and how to make their environments more productive and less pain-provoking was a revolutionary idea.\n\nThere are some basic principles of ergonomics that will allow you to maximize your back health. Especially if you sit at a desk or work on the computer for much of the day, there are some simple things that you can do to ease pressure on the spine. Reducing spine pressure is critical for speeding recovery from back injury and increasing your quality of life in the long term. Not only discs but ligaments, muscles, and joints will respond negatively to excess pressures and strains. There are special ergonomic considerations that apply to specific types of back problems.\n\nThere are a dozen easy things you can do to preserve your back at work if you feel as though you're working hard to get simple tasks accomplished or as though your enviornment is working against you:\n\n#### **When Sitting:**\n\n1. Get a lumbar cushion for your chair and lean back into it. By leaning back you can transfer the weight of your upper body onto the chair and reduce the pounds of pressure on the discs and other back structures.\n\n2. Adjust the height of your chair so that your feet rest lightly on the ground. A healthy sitting stance depends on getting your pelvis into neutral. This can only happen if your feet are able to provide support and your legs are not sloping up or down. If you cannot get a chair that is the proper height, consider carrying a lightweight footrest.\n\n3. Sit directly in front of your task area, sitting square to the work surface. Symmetry is an essential element of succeeding against back pain every day. Sit up straight whenever possible.\n\n#### **When Standing:**\n\n4. Wear shoes that have cushioned insoles. This will reduce the impact each step has on the spine, knees, and hips. Especially if you spend a lot of time walking over hard floors, you should strive for the best footwear possible. You can sometimes improve less expensive shoes by adding an athletic or high-density heel cushion or full foot support.\n\n5. As you stand, tighten your abdominal muscles and try to maintain a pelvic neutral position. Visualize how a dancer would stand and draw yourself up tall. Hold this as long as possible and then relax with some deep, cleansing breaths.\n\n6. If you must stand for a long period of time, a firm rubber floor mat help relieve pressure on your back and reduce fatigue and pain.\n\n7. Stand as if your head is floating off of your shoulders, lifted by a helium balloon. This approach comes from the Alexander Technique. It is a great tension reliever. Stand as if your head is being gently lifted up and forward by a string; this will immediately improve your posture (and may even brighten your outlook).\n\n8. Hold your shoulders back and take deep abdominal breaths through the nose. Shift your weight and intermittently contract key posture muscles like the abdominals and the muscles of the buttock. Stretch a little as you bend from side to side and pull your shoulder blades together.\n\n#### **When Lifting:**\n\n9. If you must carry a load, make it light and put it into a backpack worn on both shoulders. Better yet, consider a rolling cart or rolling bag. Be careful not to get hurt when lifting the bag or cart into a car or over an obstacle.\n\n10. When lifting, never bend forward or to the side with your back bent. To pick up objects safely, you must bend at the knees and keep your bottom low; lift with the legs. You won't be ready to lift again until you've 1) strengthened your buttock and thigh muscles; and 2) stretched out your calf muscles to stabilize the heel on the ground.\n\n11. Bend your knees and tighten your abdominals as much as possible when lifting or shoveling. You shouldn't start lifting or shoveling until your recovery phase is completed and you feel strong and pain-free for several months. When you are back to good health, use proper technique to avoid new back problems. Set a realistic goal for yourself like being able to do 20 crunches before pitching in with a shoveling or lifting project.\n\n12. Take a break every hour and put the back to rest two or more times a day, once a day if recovery is complete. It is important to stretch and move about, especially if you are sitting in a chair much of the day. Your legs, eyes, neck, lungs, and heart will also benefit.\n\nLean back about 70 degrees to rest your back. Spine pressure is reduced by the transfer of upper body weight to the chair back.\n\nDisc Pressure from Activities,\n\nLying on back | 25 kg\n\n---|---\n\nStanding | 100 kg\n\nBending forward | 150 kg\n\nSlouching in chair | 180 kg\n\nA full sit-up | 210 kg\n\n### **The Treatment**\n\nThe amount of pressure on the spinal discs is lowest when we are lying down. The pressure increases with standing and sitting. In the sitting position, the amount of pressure depends on how much weight is coming downwards on the spine. So when people are in acute disc pain, they may grab the arms of a chair as they lower themselves gently down into the seat. This reduces the transient pressure peak that occurs at the moment we sit but does not change the pressure once sitting.\n\n#### **LEAN BACK WHEN SITTING**\n\nWhen sitting is very painful, it is best to minimize the time spent sitting. Once sitting becomes possible again, it is beneficial to lean back. It has been shown that by leaning back, we can transfer the weight of the upper body onto the chair back. By leaning back even 10 degrees from the vertical, it is possible to reduce disc pressures by a substantial amount. How much is 10 degrees? Think of the minute hand of a clock at three minutes past the hour; that is nine degrees off the vertical. Sounds simple, right? Try it and see if it will work for you.\n\n#### **LUMBAR CUSHIONS BRACE THE SPINE**\n\nA lumbar cushion will help to place the spine in a protective curvature and transfer weight off of your back and onto the chair. There are a number of different lumbar cushions, and what feels good for you early after an injury may not be right for you later. Your physical therapist may be able to supply a lumbar roll or McKenzie roll, or may be able to direct you to good resources for them. You may also want to ask your doctor to prescribe one.\n\n#### **A HEADSET MAKES SENSE**\n\nTry getting a telephone headset if you don't have one already. The ability to talk without cradling a phone on your shoulder is truly liberating and will change the tone of your conversations! You can also position yourself square to your main workstation while carrying on a conversation or answering calls. Try switching to a laptop computer if you can; its position is easily shifted, you can prop it up on books, change the angle of the screen, even take it with you if you need to lie down.\n\n#### **WEAR SENSIBLE SHOES AND PURSES**\n\nNothing will ruin your back like carrying a heavy load. Don't fool yourself into thinking a purse is not heavy enough to cause problems. Purses are almost always held on one side or the other and the asymmetry causes problems. Think about temporarily trading in your purse for a fanny pack or a stylish mini-backpack. As a guideline, don't carry a bag that is heavier than you can lift with a single finger. You may need to hold off on toting around your laptop, or trade in for a netbook. Even better, put the battery pack into a rolling bag when travelling.\n\nWear the best athletic shoes you can afford. Consider buying shoes a size larger and adding in a high-density insole; several are available at your local drug store. These range in price up to $20 but are worth the expense in terms of protecting your back from the repeated micro-trauma of walking all day on hard floors. Never underestimate the importance of good footwear to your overall program of recovery from back pain. Getting into the right shoes with the proper amount of cushioning can make a real difference. If you add inserts to your shoes, make sure your toes and instep still have wiggle room. You can easily identify potential pressure points by wearing a new pair of shoes for 2 hours, then inspecting the foot for red spots. Sometimes minor adjustments can be made at the shoe retailer or cobbler.\n\nStanding posture, a side view.\n\nWhat's New: Discs Under Pressure\n\nAlthough there has been recent controversy in terms of whether sitting disc pressures are actually higher than standing disc pressures, the details are important. Studies have shown that slouching forward when sitting increases disc pressures by an additional 50 percent. Leaning back into the seat back will transfer weight from the upper body to the seat-back and will further reduce disc pressures.\n\n#### **DON'T STAND STILL**\n\nRemember that standing is not a static activity. In addition to shifting your weight back and forth, front and back, try to sit down for a few minutes. Do some stretches, lunges, and calf stretches if you're waiting for someone or something. A mat in front of the kitchen sink can relieve some of the strain that comes with dish washing and other food prep tasks. If you have no balance problems, the kitchen can be a great place for stretching your leg and hip muscles; the counter edge makes a great balance bar. But if you have a history of falls or are finding balance to be a problem, be mindful that kitchen floors can be unforgiving surfaces to land on.\n\n#### **SQUEEZE THE SHOULDER BLADES TO COUNTERACT THE HUNCH**\n\nHolding your arms at your sides, bend your elbows so that your hands level with your elbows. Now pull your elbows back as if you are trying to bring them toward the center of the back. As you do this, your shoulder blades will come towards each other. Go with this and try to tighten these muscles and hold for several seconds. Rest and repeat four more times. The feeling of the shoulder blades moving together occurs with the tightening of two muscles called the rhomboids. Strengthening the rhomboids will help reverse the effects of prolonged sitting, reading, and hunching over paperwork.\n\n#### **WALL SLIDES HELP BUILD LEG STRENGTH FOR LIFTING**\n\nYou should always ask your doctor and your physical therapist before you resume lifting after an injury. If you must, try to lift objects that are positioned at a waist-high location. Proper lifting involves keeping the spine as vertical as possible and using the muscles of the thighs and buttocks. This means that you won't be ready to lift until your legs are strong enough to support you as you bend down deeply. If you are not used to this kind of bending, it can be very hard on the knees, but as you get stronger, it will become easier. One exercise that is helpful in reestablishing the needed muscles is the wall slide exercise. (See page 103). Always remember that in order to pick up objects safely, you must bend at the knees and keep your bottom low; lift with the legs. Whenever possible get help, and if a lot of lifting is needed, weigh the advantages of hiring someone to do it.\n\nGet Up for 10 Minutes of Every Hour\n\nAt first, it may be overly ambitious to sit for 50 minutes. If you have just had a back injury, you may not be able to sit at all. Sometimes, it's the transition from lying to any other position that is especially painful. If you are in the very acute stages of a back injury, don't push yourself to do much sitting, especially if it is excruciatingly painful. Once you are recovered enough to sit for a period, make sure you learn to recognize how long this period may be. When pain begins to ramp up, stop sitting and note how long you were able to sit comfortably for. You may need to set a timer to make sure you don't overdo it. Once you have made an excellent recovery, you will still need to take breaks every hour to prevent muscle strain and atrophy.\n\n### **The Explanation**\n\nThe central purpose of ergonomics is to adapt the environment to allow for optimal functioning of the human body, to improve people's tolerance for sustained activities and to allow them to live largely pain free. The science of the spine is just beginning to explore the underlying mechanisms that explain why it's so important to maintain good body mechanics all the time.\n\nThe spine is held together by muscles, tendons, joints, and ligaments. When we slouch over or lean forward, the ligaments that normally bind the bones are placed under strain. Yes, the ligaments will work hard to hold the spine in position, but even 20 minutes of strain on the spinal ligaments will result in lasting overstretch of the ligament that is measurable over a day later. The significance of the overstretched ligaments is that they lead to back muscle hyper-excitability, muscle spasm, and ultimately, pain.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Pope, Malcolm H. 2004. Bernardino Ramazzin. _Spine_ 29 (20): 2335\u20138.\n\n2. Hedge, A. \"Ergonomics, Anthropometrics, Biomechanics,\" <http:\/\/ergo.human.cornell.edu>. Accessed February 10, 2010.\n\n3. Nachemson, A.L. 1976. The lumbar spine: An orthopedic challenge. _Spine_ 1:59-71.\n\n4. Finneson, B.E. _Low Back Pain, Second edition_. Philadelphia, PA: JB Lippincott, 1980.\n\n5. Claus, A., et al. 2008. Sitting versus standing. _Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology_ 18: 550\u2013558.\n\n6. Boccia, F.J. _Mindfulness Yoga_. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2004.\n\n7. Hertling, D. and R.M. Kessler. _Management of Common Musculoskeletal Disorders_. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006.\n\n8. Solomonow, M. 2004. Ligaments. _Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology_ 14: 49\u201360.\n\n## CHAPTER 17  \nBetter Nights, Better Days: Sleep and Intimacy\n\n**Simple, inexpensive bedding can make sleep and sex significantly more comfortable.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Do you wake up in the morning feeling like you've been run over by a truck?\n\n**>** Do you wake up in the middle of the night unable to sleep because of back pain?\n\n**>** Is your bad back ruining your sex life?\n\nRestful sleep is essential for normal alertness and function during the day. Yet pain is increasingly recognized as a major cause of sleep disruption. Whether you are a life-long insomniac, someone who intermittently experiences disrupted sleep, or a relative newcomer to being awake in the wee hours, you will find helpful guidance in this chapter.\n\nAnd sleep is not the only thing you do in bed. Regardless of how traditional or non-traditional a life-partnership may be, the need to experience the mutual joys of sexual fulfillment are indisputable. Physical intimacy can be a wonderful source of renewal and reassurance. If you have back pain, your sex life is going to face some challenges. The second part of this chapter will explore some ideas in this area.\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\n#### **FOR BETTER SLEEP:**\n\n\u2022 Choose a well-constructed mattress or futon topped with two or more layers of foam. Add a soft pillow and leg support pillows to ease back strain.\n\n\u2022 If you're currently having back pain, make sure to take some pain medicine one to two hours before bed so that you are as comfortable as possible at bedtime.\n\n\u2022 Engage in soothing activities before bedtime. Avoid caffeine or vigorous exercise in the evening.\n\n\u2022 Minimize non-sleep activities in the bedroom. If you can't sleep, get up and do something quietly in another room.\n\n\u2022 As much as possible, restrict sleeping to the nighttime hours.\n\n#### **FOR A BETTER LOVE LIFE:**\n\n\u2022 You will need to gently let your partner know what works best and what you are afraid might hurt. You may have to try out some new positions or alternative ways of sharing physical pleasure in order to avoid making back pain worse. Most authorities recommend that the person with back pain avoid the top position.\n\n\u2022 Use reliable strategies for pain mitigation before and after sex. Try taking a warm bath or cozying up with the heating pad ahead of time. Afterwards, you may need to treat your back with an ice pack. So as not to spoil the fleeting pleasures of the after-glow, you can have this wrapped in a towel and handy at the bedside even before beginning.\n\n### **The Treatment**\n\nProper sleep allows the body and mind to recharge. You spend nearly a third of your life sleeping, so it makes sense to invest some time, energy, and resources into improving your sleep experience. Are you sleeping on a mattress that was top-of-the-line when you bought it 20 years ago? Has it been more than six months since you turned and rotated your mattress? Are you waking up in the middle of the night with aching joints? Are you falling asleep during the day and lying awake at night? Answering yes to these questions indicates the need to take a hard look at your sleeping arrangements. Experienced people with back trouble know the benefits of a proper sleep environment.\n\n#### **START WITH A FIRM MATTRESS**\n\nYour choice of mattress has a big impact on your ability to sleep well when living with back pain. You want a mattress that is firm enough to provide good support for the heaviest parts of your body, but one that offers some resilience to accommodate the body's natural curves. A spring coil mattress is a good start, but many people prefer the feel of a futon. Either way, you will need to add some cushioning at least initially during the back recovery process. When you are recovering from a back injury, it may be necessary to lie still for longer than you were previously used to\u2014first, because it may be painful to change position too often; second, because it may be necessary to rest your spine by holding a particular position; and third, because sleep positions that you used to enjoy may not be comfortable.\n\n#### **PAD YOUR NEST FOR MORE REST**\n\nThe need for padding on top of a firm mattress cannot be underestimated. The number of patients who initially express skepticism about this simple change is pretty large, and the number who deliver enthusiastic feedback is nearly as large. In fact, if you can do one thing to make your life with back pain better, it is to invest a few dollars in cushioning your firm mattress. The key here is to go for more rather than less; not more money\u2014more layers.\n\nThe best thing to do is to buy a king-sized egg-crate style foam pad and fold it over a few times until it is the size of your sleeping area on your bed. You may wind up with two, three, or four layers of foam. The most common mistake that people make is to add only a single layer. This is not enough. Start by adding four layers of foam and cut back if it feels too cushy. A high-quality mattress cover will reduce the sense of limited breathability that people sometimes experience when lying on foam mattress pads.\n\n**A better bed. Use a wedge pillow or other support for your legs.**\n\nWhat's New: Futons Cause More Pain\n\nRecent research has shown that sleeping on a hard mattress, such as a futon, is associated with more pain in people with low back pain. If you own a futon, add an egg-crate style mattress pad, folded to create at least two layers over the futon.\n\nThe second mistake that people make is to get too fancy. By this, I mean investing hundreds of dollars in the latest high-tech foam product available. Generally speaking, a couple of egg-crate style foam pads are better than the super-expensive high-tech foam pads and are a lot less expensive! The egg-crate style foam pads will not last, though; after a few months, you will want to rotate the pieces from high pressure zones of the body (under the hips) to other areas and extend the life of a foam pad for another year.\n\nA soft, supportive pillow for the head and neck will make it easier to lie on your back during the night and can be folded over if needed for side-lying. Again, a modest investment will make a big difference in your nighttime and daytime comfort levels. Test some different pillows and shop for sales so that you can go with the top-of-the-line if needed. If you don't like a particular pillow for your head, you can always rotate it to support your legs or arms.\n\nWhile recovering from back pain, you will need to use a support pillow or wedge for the legs. The purpose of this support is to put the spine into a position of rest. Remember that during the day, this involves lying on the back with the legs propped up on a chair or sofa. Most people can achieve this extreme positioning while in bed but some leg support will be helpful. Experiment with different arrangements to determine what works best for you. Some people like just a small roll under the knees, others like a triangular cushion under the knees, and yet others like to have the entire lower leg elevated. One thing to keep in mind is the potential for pressure points. If you are propping up the knees, it might increase pressure on the heels or on the buttock. This doesn't mean you should give up on a leg-supported sleeping arrangement; it just means that further adjustment is necessary. Your goal is to find a sleeping arrangement that feels comfortable and healthful.\n\n#### **YOUR SLEEP ENVIRONMENT: PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER**\n\nMost people enjoy sleeping in clean, soft sheets. If your back pain is more severe at the moment, you may need help changing the sheets and getting the laundry done. It's always okay to ask for help, but it's even more okay if you're sure to ask graciously and express appreciation. Most people like to help but most also like to know that their help is noted.\n\nYou will want to create a bedroom space that is conducive to sleep. Ideally, there should not be a television or computer in the bedroom. Exercise equipment should be set up somewhere else. Make sure that there is no excess light entering the room during your sleeping hours; you may need to purchase a light-blocking shade or some room-darkening curtains. To the extent possible, insist on quiet during sleep times. You may need to purchase some earplugs; even inexpensive earplugs are very effective and can really help ensure deeper, more restful sleep.\n\nGo to bed only when you're sleepy. This may mean staying up a little bit past bedtime, but it's better to hit the pillow ready to sleep than to lie down with the problems of the world swirling around in your mind. Sometimes it's helpful to develop a pre-bedtime routine. A warm bath, a hot cup of tea, a favorite book of calculus\u2014well, maybe not calculus\u2014can all help bring on feelings of calm and comfort. There are evening yoga routines and meditation practices that help ready the mind for sleep. An evening session of Qi Gong can help clear the thoughts and bring on a sense of serenity before bedtime.\n\nAlways make yourself get up on time. If you're having trouble sleeping at night, snoozing late into the morning will only push the problem forward to the next night. If you are troubled by insomnia, resist the temptation to sleep in on weekends and stringently avoid daytime naps. Nothing will wreck nighttime sleep like an afternoon siesta. If you are not troubled by nighttime wakefulness, nap away\u2014but there is a growing sense that proper sleep patterns are necessary for overall health and longevity.\n\nMake conscious choices during the day to improve your sleep at night. This includes getting some moderately vigorous exercise each day but avoiding such exercise in the four-to-five hours before bedtime. Cut back on caffeine or eliminate it altogether. Studies have shown that cutting out caffeine not only makes it easier to fall asleep, but lengthens sleep duration and improves sleep quality. Drink alcohol only in moderation and avoid it altogether while taking medication for back pain. Although coffee liqueurs are popular with younger drinkers, they have disastrous effects on sleep initiation and maintenance.\n\n### **Intimacy with Back Pain**\n\nKeeping in touch with your intimate partner during an experience of back pain is also important to getting better quickly. Modern strategies for coping with persistent pain recognize the importance of incorporating pleasurable activities into everyday life. Sex is an important part of how adults play and find enjoyment. It's important to do what you can to keep this a positive force in your life.\n\nHowever, acute pain can interfere with a person's sex drive. So if you're in the midst of a severe bout of back pain, don't expect miracles. If you are receiving treatment with prescription medications for chronic back pain, be aware that many of these medications can interfere with libido and performance. This may be a good reason to pursue the non-pharmacological approaches to treating back pain more aggressively.\n\nFloat on a Warm Water Bed\n\nIf you love the feel of a water bed, this is another alternative for people with back pain. However if you're not used to this kind of mattress, it can be difficult and intimidating to get into and out of. Water mattresses are often temperature controlled, making it possible to benefit from some thermal therapy while sleeping.\n\n#### **PACE YOURSELF**\n\nThe first part of pacing for better sex is to know when to jump back into the game. If it's too soon to return to heavy action, your body will let you know. One way to get better results is to slow down and enjoy each moment as it happens. Watch a movie together; sit a little closer than usual, try massaging your partner's shoulders or feet. All of these things can bring you together and let you acknowledge the importance of staying physically connected while making adjustments for back pain. Part of pacing is making sure that you're allocating enough time for sex to happen at an easy pace. This can be difficult with work, school, family, and friends all competing for your time. Don't let your love life be the victim.\n\nAnticipation is where much of the most intense pleasure in life is found. Think back to your childhood years. The incredible yearning that preceded your favorite holiday or a special birthday, the happy anticipation of knowing that summer vacation was coming at last. Especially when trying to adjust to back pain or to live through an episode of back pain, building on the anticipation of sex is a pain-free way to extend the enjoyment of your experience. Of course, anticipation is really only fun for most people if there is a genuine reward in the end, so it's important not to overextend the anticipation phase and end up with empty exasperation. Anticipation and fulfillment are both important for most people.\n\n#### **MEANINGFUL WORDS AND ACTIONS**\n\nWe all have special signals or triggers that speak most clearly to us. Some people love a good strong hug, others deeply relish a cup of coffee in the morning, a home-cooked meal, or tickets to the new show in town. In life, it's critically important to know not only your own deepest desires are but also to understand the inner heart of your intimate partner. Is this someone who comes home exhausted and would love 15 minutes to lie down before starting the evening together, or is this a person who gets home ready to run full tilt? Is this someone who gets a thrill from seeing a new outfit, or is the old and familiar better and more attractive? Are whispered sentiments of affection cloying or the start of an exciting night together? The key to increasing happiness in a relationship is understanding what your partner most deeply values and bringing that forward to the extent that you can. Make every moment really count by speaking to your partner in words and actions that are most meaningful. You will add life to your years.\n\n#### **AMP IT UP WITH FANTASY OR SCENTS**\n\nAdding an element of fantasy to your intimate relationship is a great way to have fun as adults. You can do this simply and with a light-hearted touch. The ideal is not to have the other person fulfill your fantasy but rather to spark a new series of imaginations that arise spontaneously for both of you. What works best will depend on you and your partner. Some people are more responsive to music, others to food, and still others to clothing. It is often said that variety is the spice of life, but playful variations of the familiar are where greater enjoyment is found for most people.\n\nPleasing scents can play an important role in creating mood and setting the pace for an intimate encounter. The fragrances that stimulate male and female responses are not always the same. Lavender has been shown to create a state of relaxation and arousal for women. Men may respond more strongly to the scents of vanilla and orange as positive signals. You can incorporate scents in your love life in many different ways: perfumed massage oils, scented candles, sachets tucked into a pillow case, as a soothing bath beforehand, or the recently popularized room fragrance sprays. A little dab of essential oil onto various parts of the body can have a powerful positive effect. Music can either sooth or inspire the object of your desire; consider creating a bit of ambience with your loved one's favorite tunes.\n\n#### **SAFE POSITIONS FOR ACHING BACKS**\n\nThe actual doing of sexual intercourse may require some adjustments during an episode of back pain. The ordinary activities of intercourse can involve movements of the spine and pelvis that are frankly pain-provoking and may make things worse rather than better. It is generally held that the person with back pain should take the lower position. If you can arrange things so that the spine is supported as you lie on your back, this is usually ideal. A pillow underneath the buttocks can be supportive while further improving the mechanics a bit. A good alternative for many people is to start with the person who has back pain taking up a side-lying position. This can accommodate a variety of relative positions from the partner. Women who are experiencing back pain will often find that a posterior entry position is more problematic because of the extension or arching of the spine that this entails. When returning to intercourse after an episode of particularly severe back pain, begin slowly at first and limit encounters to relatively shorter sessions until experience shows just how much activity is tolerable without provoking pain. Consider researching this area a bit, as there are several recommended books on the market.\n\n#### **PREPARATION AND RECOVERY**\n\nYou may want to prepare ahead of time with a hot shower, warm bath, or a 20-minute session with the heating pad. This will have the effect of increasing relaxation, loosening up the necessary muscles, and decreasing pain. Afterwards, it is usually a good idea to treat your back to some ice. Sex is oftentimes just like having a good workout, in terms of the physical demands that are placed on the back and spine. Treat it like you would any other physical exertion. An icepack wrapped in cloth applied to the back will make your memories happy ones and decrease your chance of persisting pain afterwards.\n\n### **The Explanation**\n\nIt's a catch-22: pain will disrupt sleep, and disrupted sleep will amplify pain. More and more studies are showing that getting pain under control is very important to reduce sleep disruption in a lot of people with ongoing musculoskeletal problems such as arthritis. Disrupted sleep also interferes with a person's capacity to cope with pain and make good decisions about how to best manage an ongoing pain problem.\n\nMost people do not get sufficient sleep. The normal amount of sleep needed is eight hours. Most of us are running around getting substantially less. This is because we budget eight hours into our busy schedule for sleep, which makes the false assumption that sleep begins immediately upon lying down and ends at the prescribed moment in the morning. To the extent possible, you should allow more time for sleep rather than less. Especially when recovering from a back problem, your body needs time to heal. The more chances you can give yourself to get a good night's rest, the better you will be overall.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. White, A.A. and A.E. White. _Back Care, 2nd Edition_. Issaquah, WA: Medic Publishing Co., 1996.\n\n2. Bergholdt, K., et al. 2008. Better backs by better beds? _Spine_ 33 (7): 703\u2013708.\n\n3. Sin, C.W., J.S. Ho, and J.W. Chung. 2009. Systematic review on the effectiveness of caffeine abstinence on the quality of sleep. _J Clin Nurs_ 18 (1): 13\u201321.\n\n4. Otis, J.D. _Managing Chronic Pain, A Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Approach_. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.\n\n5. Maigne, J.Y. and G. Chatellier. 2001. Assessment of sexual activity in patients with back pain compared with patients with neck pain. _Clin Orthop Relat Res_ 385:82\u20137.\n\n6. White, A.A. and A.E. White. _Back Care, 2nd Edition_. Issaquah, WA: Medic Publishing Co., 1996.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**If I can't sleep because of my back pain, should I take a sleeping pill?**\n\nMany people have turned to medications to improve sleep. You will notice that none of the recommendations in this chapter include anything about drugs for sleep. As a rule, drugs for sleep are a temporary solution. They are also, by and large, a bandage over a problem that really needs more serious fixing. If you must ask your doctor for sleep medicines, do so, but recognize that taking a pill before addressing the fundamentals of good sleep hygiene is a fool's wager. Ask yourself about the quality of your sleep; see if you really feel better the next morning after taking a sleeping pill. If not, start making better choices that allow for natural sleep to occur.\n\n## CHAPTER 18  \nMassage and Acupuncture for Back Pain\n\n**Highly effective therapies without the side effects of medication.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Do you have chronic muscle tension in your back?\n\n**>** Are you walking around feeling like you're just not yourself anymore?\n\nIf you answered yes to these two questions, there are two things you should do right away: 1) undertake a trial of massage and\/or acupuncture and 2) fix your daily ergonomics (Chapter 16).\n\nMassage and acupuncture usually don't get the credit they deserve as potentially effective therapies without the side effects of most medications. Massage especially is generally safe and will result in almost immediate pain relief. Acupuncture is also widely practiced and usually requires significant training on the part of the practitioner. Still, in some places, people can become licensed in acupuncture with only 200 hours of training (five weeks full time), but obviously it takes a lot longer to become truly skillful at this technique. To pursue acupuncture, you will want to start with a recommendation from someone local who's had good experience with this treatment.\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nMore and more people are looking to alternative therapies as a way to circumvent the potential problems that come with medication and surgery. Among the most effective treatments are trigger point massage and acupuncture. Other therapies such as cranial-sacral massage and myofascial release are very popular in some locales.\n\n\u2022 If you haven't tried back massage for your back pain, make an appointment with a qualified massage therapist in your area and give it a try.\n\n\u2022 Check out a book on trigger point techniques. The best available is Clair Davies's _Trigger Point Therapy Workbook_. Other books include Simeon Niel-Asher's beautifully illustrated paperback guide and Travell and Simons's encyclopedic work, but few match Davies for clarity and inclusiveness.,,\n\n\u2022 Call your insurance company to determine if it will provide coverage for massage or acupuncture. Insurance coverage for alternative therapies varies widely. Some larger companies include acupuncture in their range of benefits; some states even require this coverage. Check to make sure that a failure to meet pre-conditions for coverage, such as obtaining a doctor's prescription, won't prevent you from getting the claim paid.\n\n\u2022 Ask your friends and family if they know someone who performs acupuncture and what their experience was like. Although the thought of having acupuncture needles inserted can be a bit intimidating, the needles are always sterile and precision manufactured to produce as little pain as possible. Most of the time, there is very little pain associated with the acupuncture treatment itself. Sometimes a mild burning sensation is all that is felt.\n\n\u2022 Consider trying acupressure. Acupressure uses self-massage techniques to stimulate the flow of Qi (energy in the body) by pressing particular points on the body. One method of acupressure for relief of back pain is described in this chapter, but you may want to consult a specialist to learn more.\n\nHow Long Will the Benefits Last?\n\nYou may have heard from naysayers that massage only helps for a little while, and the next day the pain will be back. This might be true in some cases, but for certain problems\u2014such as sudden muscle injury from a car accident or a sporting mishap\u2014massage can fix the problem in one or a few sessions. Some conditions such as spinal degeneration or muscle spasm compounded by nerve compression may take longer to accrue lasting benefits.\n\nAsk your massage therapist or acupuncturist if they have any recommendations to ensure the maximum benefit from therapy. Many times it's prudent to take a short nap and go easy for the rest of the day, but sometimes this isn't practical. If your massage or acupuncture treatments don't seem to be working the way you think they should, make sure you're following through after each session and not just jumping back into your life at breakneck speed.\n\n### **The Treatment**\n\nThere are many options for massage therapy, including trigger point massage, myofascial release, cranio-sacral work, and acupressure. Acupuncture is an ancient Eastern therapy that continues to make inroads in the West. Massage is especially helpful in the first few weeks of a pain problem, as it can interrupt the vicious cycle of pain leading to spasm leading to more pain. Once the muscles are relaxed via massage, normal blood flow can return and healing can resume.\n\nReferred pain. Trigger point massage helps relieve tension in your back.\n\n#### **TRIGGER POINT MASSAGE RELEASES TENSION**\n\nIf your doctor recommends a trial of massage for your back pain, seek out someone skilled in trigger point methods. You may find that your physical therapist is already using these approaches on your back. Trigger point massage is an offshoot of one of the most effective approaches to addressing musculoskeletal pain: trigger point therapy.\n\nYou can take one of two approaches to trigger point massage: let someone else do it or do it yourself. Trigger point therapy for the back is a bit tricky for the newcomer, although there are products such as the \"theracane\" that are designed to make it easy to get to inaccessible points on the back, lower leg, and shoulders. One low-tech approach that works well is to put one or two racquetball balls into a sock and dangle the sock behind you as you move back and forth against a wall. These D-I-Y approaches will probably work better once you've had a chance to learn about trigger points and become familiar with the basic process through the experience of receiving professional trigger point therapy. Although practitioners will use a variety of techniques to release trigger points, including the use of acupuncture needles, injection of local anesthetics, and spraying with a freezy-cold aerosol, you can actually learn to apply pressure to the muscle and train yourself to relax the muscles on cue. The pressure itself, when correctly applied, will induce a relaxation response in the muscle trigger point.\n\nTrigger points were described by Dr. Janet Travell as having four essential features: 1) a palpable tight band within the muscle, 2) a focused spot of tenderness within the tight band, 3) reproduction of pain in a nearby part of the body when the tight band is compressed by pressure from the fingers, and 4) relaxation of the tight band with proper massage technique. Once someone is trained to feel trigger points, it becomes immediately apparent that many people are walking around with trigger points, some of which produce pain and others that don't seem to be bothersome at all. The non-bothersome trigger points are referred to as _latent_ , and the trigger points that produce pain are called _active_.\n\nOne feature of trigger points is that they are not only painful directly when pressed upon, but they also result in pain at a distance. This is probably because of the way muscles travel from one part to another, as the hamstring muscles travel from hip to knee, but may also have to do with other features of the body's pain sensing system. This sets trigger points apart from an ordinary muscle spasm. For example, a trigger point in the calf can produce ankle or foot pain. This may be because that calf muscle has a tendon that extends into the foot but could have to do with nerve compressions or other problems. As you learn about your back, you will come to know that many of the muscles in the back are associated with pain that's actually in the muscle. One back muscle, the quadratus lumborum, connects the top of the hip bone to the ribcage. Its trigger point pain syndrome results in sacroiliac pain.\n\n#### **MYOFASCIAL RELEASE LOOSENS FIBROUS CONNECTIONS**\n\nMyofascial release massage is based on the idea that fibrous connections build up between adjacent tissues that are not subjected to full and vigorous movements. Over time, these fibrous connections progressively tighten and shorten. This process leads to worsening stiffness and restrictions in movement that can lead to abnormal movement patterns becoming entrenched and leading to chronic pain. The overall objective of myofascial release massage is to release these fibrous connections, leading to freer, fuller, and less painful movements. This is accomplished through a serious of kneading, rolling, and deep pressure movements. Myofascial release massage can feel a bit strange as it focuses on the \"spaces between the muscles\" rather than working on the muscles themselves at some phases of the massage. It may be combined with other forms of massage, but can have tremendously beneficial effects in and of itself.\n\nThe word _myofascial_ is derived from a combination of _myo_ , meaning muscle, and _fascial_ , meaning fascia. Fascia is a fibrous connective tissue in the body. Fine and weblike in some places, fascia can also be very strong and tough in some parts of the body. Fascia has been described as being like plastic wrap, in that it is normally nice and smooth. When one section of the fascia is entrapped by abnormal fibrous attachments to a body part (muscle, internal organ, etc.), this produces a distortion in the fascia that tugs or pulls on another body part and will restrain normal movements. Pain is the inevitable result. Myofascial release uses a series of pulling or stretching movements to loosen these abnormal fibrous bands. As usually practiced, it requires the therapist to listen carefully to what his or her hands perceive and to adjust the treatment to address each person's trouble spots.\n\nWhat's New: Recognition of Pulsating Spinal Fluid\n\nThere has been little support for cranio-sacral therapy published in the standard medical literature. However, most medical practitioners have been slow to recognize that there is a patterned flow of spinal fluid through the central spinal canal. Further, the fact that the flow of spinal fluid is pulsatile has only recently been more widely acknowledged.\n\nRolfing is a structured approach to myofascial release that leads to a state of structural integration. The goal of rolfing is to correct abnormalities in musculoskeletal alignment and reorient the various body segments so they are aligned with the earth's gravitational field. Once upon a time, rolfing was conducted in a very vigorous manner and the resulting therapy experience was sometimes painful, although with good results. More recently, rolfing practitioners have focused on accomplishing the goals of myofascial release and structural re-alignment in a more tolerable manner. In general, rolfing follows a specific sequence of techniques to systematically release myofascial adhesions, beginning with the feet and working upwards through various body parts.\n\n  **Warning! Jelly May Roll**\n\nMake sure to check with your massage therapist about recommendations for activity after myofascial release massage. Following a vigorous session, you may be a little more loosely held together than usual. Vigorous or especially effortful activities may result in inadvertent muscle strains as your movement patterns will shift immediately after this treatment.\n\n#### **CRANIO-SACRAL MASSAGE MANIPULATES THE SKELETON**\n\nCranio-sacral therapy arose at the turn of the twentieth century out of a postulate about the relative motion of skull and sacrum, and ideas about the flow of spinal fluid through the brain and spinal cord. The idea that the bones of the adult skull can move and are subject to manipulation is inconsistent with published research. Yet cranio-sacral therapy appears to be safe. It is performed using light touch while a person is resting, fully clothed, on the back. Through gentle application of pressure and re-positioning of the head, shoulders, spine, pelvis, hips, and back, the cranio-sacral therapist seeks to re-establish subtle rhythms of the body.\n\n#### **ACUPRESSURE MASSAGE INCREASES THE BODY'S ENERGY**\n\nAcupressure massage utilizes the philosophy of energy (Qi) from Chinese medicine to map out a series of pressure points on the body that, when compressed properly, are believed to stimulate the flow of Qi. Originating more than 5,000 years ago, acupressure actually was practiced before acupuncture, which required the development of needles, and more recently, electrical stimulation methodologies. The location of acupressure points is established based on a series of meridians that map out the flow of Qi through the body.\n\nAcupressure is widely used for the treatment of back pain. Several approaches can be used. One popular technique for back pain involves placing pressure on a on a spot located on either side of the spine at about the waist level. This point is sometimes identified as the B23 spot. You can locate the spot as follows: Sit upright on the edge of a chair or stand with feet shoulder width apart. Hold out your hands, palm side downwards with the thumb sticking out from the hand. Now position your hands so that they are touching your waist on either side, your thumb should be lightly touching your back and your elbows sticking out to the side. Move your hands closer to the midline of your back, still holding them in the palm-down position, until your thumbs are about three inches apart from each other on either side of the spine. You've been applying very light pressure to the skin with the thumbs until now. At this point you will increase the pressure that the thumbs are applying by pressing your elbows backward and arching the back gently. In applying this pressure, you should not feel pain of any significance. You may feel that the muscles underlying the skin are firm or soft; the pressure may be completely painless or feel as though there is some tension. Hold this pressure for several seconds, or two to three minutes if it seems helpful. A similar technique is described in Lee Holden's book _7 Minutes of Magic: The Ultimate Energy Workout_. If your back pain worsens with this procedure, stop immediately. This description should not be read as a recommendation of medical therapy in any sense, and is provided here only to open up new possibilities in your self-management of back pain. You should always have your back pain fully evaluated for serious causes by a qualified health professional.\n\n#### **SWEDISH MASSAGE USES RELAXING STROKES**\n\nSwedish massage (sometimes called classical massage) is a traditional massage modality that uses specific massage strokes to produce an overall sense of relaxation and well-being. There are five types of massage strokes used in Swedish massage, ranging from fingertip pressure to deep, kneading pressure. Everyone is a little different, and you may find that Swedish massage is right for you.\n\n#### **ACUPUNCTURE SHIFTS THE BODY'S ENERGY FLOW**\n\nAcupuncture has generally gained acceptance as a potentially helpful treatment for a variety of disorders, chief among which is back pain. Surveys have shown that more than three million Americans have used acupuncture in the last year and that this is increasing. It could be the topic of a very long book (or several books), but a few words here will have to suffice.\n\nAcupuncture is based on the Eastern belief system of shifting energy flows in the body. The energy flows are organized into meridians that run through the limbs and torso and are mainly named for various internal organs: lung, large intestine, stomach, spleen, heart, small intestine, bladder, kidney, pericardium, gallbladder, liver, and triple warmer. These twelve meridians and an additional two channels (the conception vessel and the governor vessel) make 14 in total.\n\nThe Miracle Ball\n\nThe miracle ball is a product designed to apply just the right amount of pressure to the body. The idea behind the miracle ball is that in order for pressure to work, it has to have not only the right firmness, but also the right geometry. The miracle ball attempts to solve both of these challenges. Usually provided as a pair, they are about four inches (10 cm) in diameter and made of resilient plastic. When properly inflated, the miracle balls are fairly firm and can support the weight of the body as you lay on them. The balls come with a guide book, which is very helpful in terms of describing the different ways in which the balls can be used for relief of neck and back pain. Mid-back and sacroiliac pain may also respond to treatment with the miracle balls.\n\nIn modern practice, very thin, sterile needles that are precision manufactured are inserted into the body through the skin. The sensation of acupuncture varies with the treatment plan and the insertion site; however, the actual placement of needles can be painless. The number of needles used will vary but one aspect that strikes Westerners as unusual is the emphasis on placing needles in delicate structures such as the outer ear and the nose. Although acupuncture can be performed while the patient is seated when appropriate, most of the time acupuncture is carried out while someone is lying down.\n\nWhat's New: Belief in Acupuncture Matters\n\nThe scientific evidence in support of acupuncture is patchy. There are studies that claim to show a benefit for specific conditions, such as dental pain and arthritis of the knee, and then there are other studies that show no benefit at all. One recent study of back pain showed that acupuncture was better than placebo, but it also showed that simulated acupuncture was helpful and not any worse than the real thing. Several studies have indicated that the patient's expectations for acupuncture have a major impact on the outcome. Put into plain language, if you think it will work, it probably will. For some it might seem like an expensive sugar pill, but for those who believe in acupuncture, the pain relieving effects are phenomenal.\n\n### **The Explanation**\n\nAlthough the use of massage for the treatment of back pain is often dismissed as unproven, ineffective, or soft science, massage plays an important role for many people with back injury or back pain. Its value depends on at least three factors: the nature of the back problem itself, the personality and inclinations of the person with the back problem, and the type of massage that is being used for treatment. For massage to be successful, all three factors have to be aligned with each other and the skill of the massage therapist as well.\n\nAs a first point, most back problems will not be worsened by massage, but the exceptions to this rule are quite serious and when unrecognized could lead to consequences as serious as spinal cord injury and permanent nerve damage. Conditions such as fracture of the vertebra or spinal abscess should not be treated by massage, as this could either worsen the damage or needlessly delay essential treatment. These caveats aside, the management of most back injury problems will be complemented and even greatly enhanced by massage. The reason for this is simple: even back problems which are not primarily muscular to begin with often evolve to have a component of muscle spasms as a significant source of pain and disability.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Simons, D.G., J.G. Travell, and L.S. Simons. _Travell and Simons' Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual. 2nd Edition_. Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins, 1999.\n\n2. Niel-Asher, S. _The Concise Book of Trigger Points, Revised Edition_. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2008.\n\n3. Davies, C. _The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook_. Oakland (CA): New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2001.\n\n4. Ibid.\n\n5. Wilson, V.P. 2003. Janet G. Travell, MD: A daughter's recollection. _Tex Heart Inst J_ 30 (1): 8\u201312.\n\n6. Shah, J.P., et al. 2008. Biochemicals associated with pain and inflammation are elevated in sites near to and remote from active myofascial trigger points. _Arch Phys Med Rehabil_ 89 (1): 16-23.\n\n7. Downey, P.A., T. Barbano, R. Kapur-Wadhwa, J.J. Sciote, M.I. Siegel, and M.P. Mooney. 2006. Craniosacral therapy: The effects of cranial manipulation on intracranial pressure and cranial bone movement. _J Orthop Sports Phys Ther_ 36 (11): 845-53.\n\n8. Finley, J.E. \"Myofascial Pain,\" eMedicine. <http:\/\/emedicine.medscape.com\/article\/313007-overview>. Accessed January, 24 2010.\n\n9. Manheim, C.J. _The Myofascial Release Manual._ Thorofare, New Jersey: SLACK Inc., 2008.\n\n10. Rolf, I.P. _Rolfing: Reestablishing the Natural Alignment and Structural Integration of the Human Body for Vitality and Well-Being_. Rochester: Healing Arts Press, 1989.\n\n11. Gach, M. _Acupressure's Potent Points_. New York: Bantam Books, 1990.\n\n12. NIH. \"Acupuncture for Pain,\" <http:\/\/nccam.nih.gov\/health\/acupuncture\/acupuncture-for-pain.htm>. Accessed January, 24 2010.\n\n13. Averoff, S.E. Acupressure and Reflex Points for Common Ailments, <http:\/\/www.lind.com\/quantum\/acupoints%20for%20good%20health.htm>. Accessed January, 24 2010.\n\n14. Holden, L. _7 Minutes of Magic_. New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2007.\n\n15. Burke, A., D.M. Upchurch, C. Dye, and L. Chyu. 2006. Acupuncture use in the United States: Findings from the National Health Interview Survey. _J Altern Complement Med_ 12 (7): 639-48.\n\n16. Hecker, H.-U., A. Steveling, E. Peuker, J. Kastner, and K. Liebchen. _Color Atlas of Acupuncture_. New York: Thieme, 2001.\n\n17. Furlan, A.D., M. Imamura, T. Dryden, and E. Irvin. 2009. Massage for low back pain: An updated systematic review within the framework of the Cochrane Back Review Group. _Spine (Phila. Pa, 1976)_ 34 (16): 1669-84.\n\n18. Cherkin, et al. 2009. A randomized trial comparing acupuncture, simulated acupuncture, and usual care for chronic low back pain. _Arch Intern Med_ 169 (9): 858-66.\n\n19. Kong, J., et al. 2009. An MRI study on the interaction and dissociation between expectation of pain relief and acupuncture treatment. _Neuroimage_ 47 (3): 1066-76.\n\n20. Wasan, A.D., et al. 2010. The Impact of Placebo, Psychopathology, and Expectations on the Response to Acupuncture Needling in Patients With Chronic Low Back Pain. _J Pain_ [Epub].\n\n  **Warning! New Needles Required**\n\nAcupuncture is generally very safe, and the major risks of infection or perforation of a major organ are rare. Because re-using acupuncture needles could result in the transmission of serious illnesses, it is important to receive acupuncture from a reputable practitioner and to be certain that the needles used on you are coming from a freshly opened (sterile) package.\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**Should I use massage oil?**\n\nThere are many different commercially available oils, creams, and lotions that can be used for massage. In most cases, you will want to perform massage with something to ease the passage of the fingers and hands over the skin. The first criterion for choosing a lubricant is that it not be irritating. Everyone's skin is slightly different, and you may need some trial and error to determine what works best. If you see redness or rash or experience burning after using a certain product, discontinue its use right away. Mineral oil is a petroleum-derived product that is part of many commercially available creams, lotions, and oils. If you want to use something plant-based instead, sweet almond oil is a popular choice that is often available in health food stores.\n\nThe second criterion for choosing a massage product is good aesthetics. It is important to note how the product smells and how it feels on the skin. Nowhere is the saying \"one man's trash is another man's treasure\" more true than when it comes to scents and fragrances. Popular choices include floral scents such as rose, jasmine, or lavender. Herbal scents such as rosemary, menthol, and eucalyptus can give a refreshing feel, and food-based aromas such as vanilla, nutmeg, and orange are soothing to some people.\n\nThe material should feel smooth and soothing on the skin. Some people prefer a product the feels invisible, in that very little perceptible awareness of the cream or lotion is felt. There are many products that would like to assert a potential health benefit, but in most cases these claims are tightly regulated. Aside from over-the-counter medicinal creams (such as those containing aspirin-related medications and possibly menthol) typically used for sports injuries, there is little solid evidence to support the use of specific additives to massage products. That said, menthol does have a proven capacity to interfere with pain signals and may be very helpful for some people in relieving their pain. Oregano is very popular with some massage therapists, but oregano oil can be damaging when undiluted and care is needed. Lavender oil has been shown to contain many active compounds, some of which are noted to promote a state of relaxation and pain-relief, and others that have anti-inflammatory effects. Eucalyptus oil may also have active pain-relieving properties, but further studies are needed.\n\n## CHAPTER 19  \nMeditation and Mind\/Body Therapies for Pain Control\n\n**Focus the mind to relieve back pain and move towards physical wellness.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Do you sometimes feel that back pain is ruining your ability to enjoy life?\n\n**>** Do you sometimes feel that life is spiraling out of control since you developed back pain?\n\nListen to Your Body\n\nMaybe you've had the feeling that your back is a little better when you're on vacation, but you haven't wanted to tell anyone in case they would think your pain is all in your head. It doesn't mean that at all\u2014it just means your body is trying to tell you something about your life, and the message is: It's too much, slow down!\n\nMeditation and other mind-body therapies are one way people can take charge of their own health and wellness. Ultimately, the healthcare choices that we make are an expression of our deeply held values. Unfortunately, many people have the experience that the regular healthcare system is too strongly focused on illness as a state of being, and is designed to generate revenues and not to promote health. This state of affairs is demonstrated by the willingness of insurers to pay $20,000 or more for surgery, but not one cent for massage, meditation, or other alternative therapies. But don't let this be the final arbiter of right and wrong. The choice is yours; you have this book in your hands, and this chapter is written to open your awareness to a healthy new life beyond back pain. If you want to make peace with your back, read on!\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nOne of the best ways to supercharge your recovery from back pain is to pursue health-directed therapies that will reorient your mind's eye toward physical wellness and connect you to people exuding energy, vitality, and enthusiasm. Especially if other therapies have failed to fix the problem, it's time to start thinking outside the box.\n\n\u2022 Learn more about meditation and mind-body medicine. Begin with a trip to your public library to find books on the therapies described in this chapter. You can also find information online. The NIH has created a series of fact sheets on alternative therapies.\n\n\u2022 Begin to meditate or reinvigorate your practice.\n\n\u2022 Talk to your doctor, other healthcare providers, friends, and family about mind-body therapies. Their openness may surprise you.\n\n\u2022 Seek out a movement therapy specialist and take a few lessons in Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, or Qi Gong.\n\n\u2022 Consider trying an energy-based therapy such Reiki, which manipulates a person's energy as they remain passive.\n\n\u2022 Ask yourself: Is self-hypnosis is worth a try?\n\n### The Treatment\n\nMost of the therapies described in this chapter are safe, although for some, question marks remain as to their effectiveness. I will try to point out the limitations of each. In reality though, as many of these therapies require a rather profound level of personal commitment, persistence, and openness to new experience, it will be very difficult to carry out studies that definitively prove a benefit. But again, the choice is yours. For many people, a life centered on mind-body awareness and therapies is a path to peace, happiness, and true productivity.\n\nWhat You Need to Meditate\n\n\u2022 Quiet space\n\n\u2022 20\u201345 minutes\n\n\u2022 Comfortable position\n\n\u2022 A state of wakefulness\n\n\u2022 A preferred method\n\n### Meditation Has Proven Benefits\n\nIf meditation were a drug, your doctor would be recommending it, your insurance company would be paying for it, and millions of people would be taking it., But meditation is not a drug; it is a technique you can master only with determination and effort. There are many approaches to meditation. The key is to start now and remain open-minded about the benefits until you have tried more than one kind of meditation. Although most practitioners and resources advocate meditating one or more times a day, it is possible to obtain benefits from more sporadic meditation.\n\nThe basic principle of meditation is to focus the mind to the exclusion of intrusive thoughts. This can either be done through directing all attention to a particular thought (concentration) or by intentionally directing all attention away from particular thoughts (mindfulness). The efficacy of meditation in clinical trials varies, but several studies have reported the benefits of meditative training for back pain. In one study, eight weeks of meditation-based therapy was nearly equivalent to eight weeks of physical therapy in reducing pain and improving quality of life.\n\nThe space you chose for meditation is important. It should be as quiet as possible, although some natural background noise is okay. Calm breezes and distant sounds are usually not problematic. If you don't have a space like this, you may want to find some way to create it. There are meditation audio recordings; some people like the sound of a small fountain or a sound-making machine; and noise cancellation headphones might be helpful if outside distractions can't be avoided. The temperature should be comfortable\u2014you will find it hard to meditate effectively if you are chilly, and a cold environment may cause your back muscles to stiffen. Although some religious forms of meditation encourage the use of incense, until your practice develops in a particular direction, it is best to avoid excessive odors, as well as other extremes of sensory input.\n\n**Recumbent meditation position**\n\n#### **WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, MEDITATE**\n\nAlthough the primary purpose of meditation is not to bring order into an over-packed schedule, many people have found that meditation is a way to gently yet firmly reassert control over one's life, experiences, thoughts, and destiny. Clinical studies have shown that meditation, when routinely practiced, has important positive effects in the lives of people with back pain. It seems that meditation can help when all else does not seem to work. And, if this is a course you pursue on your own, the financial costs are minimal\u2014it will cost you only the time that you would have spent running around doing tasks you won't remember having done a year from now anyway. What have you got to lose? Perhaps it's time you tried meditation.\n\n### Forms Of Meditation\n\nThe principle challenge to a person with back pain seeking to meditate is the nearly universal instruction that meditation is best accomplished in a sitting posture. Rather, it's most important that the posture adopted for meditation should be pain-free or provoke pain to the least extent possible. The first key, then, is to adopt a posture that will minimize your back pain; most often this is a lying posture. It is ideal to strive to keep the two sides of the body as symmetrical as possible when meditating. Find a position to meditate in which you will be comfortable for 20\u201330 minutes. This may mean lying on your back or propping your legs on a sofa, chair, or some pillows as you are lying on your back. Make sure that there are no pressure points underneath you. Lying on a surface that is too firm will provoke inflammation and pain in the body's protective fat pads over the back. When lying on the back, make sure the head is comfortably supported. Most often this will require a pillow that raises the head by two to three inches (5 to 8 cm). Try to meditate at a time when you are not sleepy, but it is okay to feel drowsy, especially if you are taking medicine for pain or if your pain has disrupted nighttime sleeping. Now place your arms at your side or across your body comfortably, take some cleansing breaths, and you are ready to begin!\n\n#### **MUSCLE RELAXATION MEDITATION (PROGRESSIVE RELAXATION)**\n\nThe technique of purposeful relaxation of various muscles of the body was formalized and promoted by Edmond Jacobson, who worked in this area from the 1920s through the 1960s. The method begins with attention on the feet. By focusing intention on the muscles of the feet, first tense those muscles and then relax them. Attention next moves to the lower part of both legs and the mind focuses on tightening and then relaxing the muscles there. Slowly, calmly breathing in and out and relaxing the muscles of the lower leg more and more fully. Attention then proceeds to the upper leg and onward part by part. The meditation can proceed more or less slowly up the body depending on the progress of the relaxation. If the relaxation is not full enough, more time should be spent on each part and attention should be turned to smaller and smaller parts until the relaxation is successful. A large analysis of clinical studies for back pain showed that progressive relaxation had a large positive effect in terms of reducing back pain.\n\nSeated meditation position\n\n#### **MANTRA-GUIDED MEDITATION**\n\nA widely known form of meditation involves the use of a mantra or simple sound that is repeated over and over to serve as a focal point for the mind. Mantra-guided meditation arises from the Buddhist tradition and has a long and rich heritage.\n\n#### **ENERGY-BASED OR CHAKRA-CENTERED MEDITATION**\n\nChakra meditation is an offspring of hatha yoga and is a sequential meditation that focuses attention on various centers in the body. These body centers are associated with certain forms of personal energy and with various colors. The Chakra meditation begins by focusing attention at the tail-bone region of the spine, where the associated energy is of being grounded and the color is a dark ruby red. The next Chakra center is in the pelvis, where the energy is creative and the color is tangerine. The third chakra lies in the mid-abdomen over the solar plexus, and has an energy of power and strength and a color of sunshine yellow. The fourth chakra is the heart chakra, which lies in the mid-chest. The associated energy is love and the color is bright green. The fifth chakra is centered in the throat, with energy that promotes effective communication and a color of green-blue. The mind's eye chakra is centered between the eyebrows, and the energy here is foresight. The associated color is deep blue. The seventh and final chakra radiates from the top of the skull, with a transcendent, spiritual energy that is between purple and magenta. The meditation progresses by moving from the first energy center to the seventh, focusing on each one in turn. Several breaths are taken for each chakra. As the breath moves deeply in and out, the mind is brought to focus simultaneously on the location of the Chakra, a visualization of its color, and a contemplation of the value or particular energy associated with each. The purpose of this sequential meditation is to bring the Chakras into appropriate alignment and to leave the meditation practitioner in a state of balance. It is important with this meditation to keep the two halves of the body and mind equally activated.\n\n#### **GUIDED IMAGERY MEDITATION**\n\nGuided imagery meditation is especially effective for those who are new to meditation, for the very young, and for those who may not be as open to meditation _per se_. Guided imagery may be incorporated into meditation sequences along with other elements such as relaxation and breath-centering. The basic process of guided imagery is to start out with a plan that will walk the mind through a series of events or a journey. The imagery should focus on relaxing events such as a trip to a warm sunny beach, a walk in the park, or a visit to someone you love. For a beach meditation, imagine the feelings of the hot sun as it warms the surroundings and a salty breeze blowing gently over the dunes from the shore. Focus on the soft crunching sound of sand underfoot or a louder sound of people walking on a boardwalk. The sounds of the ocean can be heard in the soft crashing of the waves and the familiar seagull overhead. Focus on sensations that are familiar and comforting. With visualization, it is possible to anticipate challenges and successfully resolve them. It can become a method for tapping into inner strength and solving problems before they occur.\n\n#### **PAIN-DISSOLVING MEDITATION**\n\nAlthough pain-dissolving meditation has evolved independently by pain suffers in response to pain they feel they cannot otherwise control, there is a tradition of meditation that acknowledges pain dissolution as a stage (Vipassana meditation). The core tenet is that intense meditation leads one's mind to eventually let go of the pain. The meditation is actively directed to the site of pain, and seeks to use the mind's powers to dissolve, dilute, or dissipate the pain.\n\nThe basics of this approach are fairly straightforward. The meditation begins by finding a quiet space in which one can get into a position of maximum possible comfort. After taking some cleansing breaths, the mind should be directed to the part of the body that is experiencing pain. The mind should be fully concentrated on this body part and the sensations\u2014painful and otherwise\u2014that are arising from that area. Slowly concentrate on seeking out the center of the pain. It may be necessary to creep in from the edges of the pain or possible to zero in immediately. Slowly envision that you are taking this pain and spreading it over the entire body. As it spreads out, it diminishes in intensity almost as waves lapping at the shore will spread out, become paper thin, and then vanish as the tide pulls back. Continue to go into the pain and allow it to extend outward until the strength of your whole body absorbs and dilutes its effects. Don't be discouraged if there is a brief worsening of the pain intensity. Remain aware of the other sensations that are arising from your painful body part. Celebrate those normal non-painful sensations and allow them to grow. Eventually, you will find yourself working at the center of the pain. You may be able to absorb it into the whole of your body and suspend it, if only briefly.\n\nPain-dissolving meditation requires a lot attention. In most cases, you will need to focus exclusively on this meditation and won't be able to do anything else. And although there are times when a pain flare-up is completely resolved with a single pain-dissolving meditation session (e.g., migraine), it is also the case that pain returns once the meditation is complete. Nonetheless, this is an important pain-relieving technique to learn about and practice.\n\nA Bridge to Pain Relief\n\nAlthough the traditional Eastern approaches to meditation recommend the avoidance of chemical substances, the pain-dissolving meditation described here is an excellent way to engage your mind while waiting for your \"rescue medication\" to take effect. It is well established that most pain medications require 20 or more minutes to pass before pain relief is perceived. This waiting period can be unbearably difficult sometimes, and knowing that you can use the pain-dissolving meditation to bridge this period and possibly even enhance the effects of the medication is important.\n\n#### **VALUE-CENTERED (CONCEPT-FOCUSED) MEDITATION**\n\nThis meditation category encompasses a wide variety of meditations. Your meditation may focus on values such as loving-kindness, compassion, forgiveness, resilience, or non-violence (Ahimsa). This meditation follows the basic principles of finding a comfortable, quiet place to meditate and arranging your schedule so that you can meditate for 25\u201345 minutes without falling asleep or being rushed away. Some people will approach concept-centered meditation by only allowing the concept itself to be focused upon. Others have recommended an approach in which you allow instances of the concept's opposite to arise into your consciousness as you visualize the events and meditate on how a stronger influence of the desired value would resolve the conflict or problem. This form of meditation may be especially powerful for people who are strongly value-oriented and those who feel that a particular value is under-expressed in their daily lives.\n\n#### **MINDFULNESS MEDITATION FOCUSES ON THE PRESENT**\n\nMindfulness meditation has its origins in Buddhist practice and includes three essential elements: \"observe precisely, have equanimity, and be sensitive to how things change.\" As widely conceptualized and developed in the late twentieth century, however, mindfulness meditation is a non-religious intervention that has been shown to be especially effective for the control of chronic pain. The process of mindfulness meditation includes a body scan meditation, a hatha yoga meditation, and a breath-centered (prana) meditation. The body scan meditation focuses attention on each body part in turn, breathing into that part of the body with the breath in and \"feeling\" that part of the body dissolve with the breath out. The body scan meditation is intended to bring the practitioner to a state of acceptance or non-striving.\n\nThe medical benefits of mindfulness meditation are well established and have even been shown in clinical trials. In fact, the benefits of mindfulness meditation have been specifically proven helpful for back pain. In one study, a group of older adults was offered an eight-week-long mindfulness meditation course for the purpose of improving low back pain. The results were impressive: the patients as a group were more active and less impaired due to their pain. The average amount of meditation was just more than 30 minutes per session, four to five times a week!\n\n#### **BREATHE IN ENERGY, BREATHE OUT NEGATIVITY**\n\nIt is possible to focus on energy any time one is meditating. The flow of energy may be visualized as entering and leaving the body through the feet, through the breath, or through the part of the body that is closest to the ground. Usually, it is best if the energy flows into the body with each breath in, and negative energy is visualized as departing from the body as the breath is exhaled. It is important to use deep breaths that connect deeply into the lowest parts of the abdomen. Start each breath as if it originated from below the belly button and as you slowly breathe in through the nose, gradually feel your chest fill up with air. As the air enters, concentrate on filling up the lowest parts of the chest first and then the middle. The upper part of the chest will be the last to fill with air. Pause for a moment at the end of each inhalation and slowly begin to release the air from your lungs, chest, and body, starting at the top of the chest and gradually lowering down. This type of breathing has been called _Wave breathing_ and is helpful for centering the mind, releasing negative tension, and bringing the thoughts to a fresh beginning.\n\n### Other Mind\/Body Therapies\n\n#### **ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE: MEDITATION OF THE STARS**\n\nThe Alexander Technique is a comprehensive system of body movement and motor training designed to optimize the functioning of the body and reduce the physical stress of everyday activities. The technique has long held popularity in the world of actors, musicians, and performance artists, among whom closely attuned body awareness is considered essential. The Alexander Technique originated from the discoveries and teachings of F. Matthias Alexander of Australia and London. It is avidly pursued in parts of England and continues to be taught at the Julliard School in New York and by teachers throughout the U.S. Although it is almost always taught through one-on-one lessons, some exercises have been published as the _Liebowitz Procedures_. In these procedures, the practitioner is guided through a series of movements while thinking of key directions that instruct the body to relax in certain areas that ordinarily carry excessive tension.\n\nOne place that usually carries excessive muscle tension is the base of the skull. As such, the Alexander Technique instructs the practitioner to relax the neck and skull, allowing the head to float on the spine as through it is being pulled upward and slightly forward by a helium balloon. As Leibowitz wrote: \"Let my neck be free, let my head go forward and up, let my torso widen...\" In some parts, the student is instructed to relax specific muscle groups and areas of the body in order to attain the desired result. These skills of relaxation are very useful and can help reduce stress and the pain response when medical procedures are required.\n\nThe Alexander Technique has been endorsed by many performers as helping to relieve pain associated with rigorous practice schedules and has been shown in clinical trials to provide long-term relief from chronic or recurrent back pain. In one study, six lessons were found to be nearly as effective as twenty-four lessons.\n\n#### **FELDENKRAIS INTEGRATES MOVEMENT AND THOUGHTS**\n\nFeldenkrais is a movement-training methodology developed by Moshe Feldenkrais, a judo master and physicist of the twentieth century with an interest in physiology and neurological aspects of function. The approach is designed to re-teach the body to move more intuitively, and in so doing make the movements of everyday life less stressful. The philosophy of the movement's founder notes that the self consists of movements, sensations, feelings, and thoughts, and that the unfolding of the true self occurs through the conscious alignment of these elements. You can learn the Feldenkrais method through classes or private lessons that teach a series of movements or exercises. The objective of this training is to learn how to function more fluidly and fully with less chance of harm to the body.\n\nAnat Baniel has written a book that brings together some of the physical movements of Feldenkrais technique with a beautiful reorientation towards developing improved vitality in daily life. It is called _Move into Life_. Although it is widely acknowledged that Feldenkrais can be beneficial to those with back pain, one technique in particular is likely to be helpful to those with sacroiliac pain. Loosely described as a variation on the butterfly stretch, the exercise has the student perform a variety of butterfly stretches while sitting upright and lying down. The exercise is entitled _Unexpected Freedom_ because of the effect that it has on freeing up the hip joints. It is essential to follow the procedures closely, so borrowing or buying the book will be necessary. The exercises seem to take advantage of normal pressures arising from rocking movements of the legs, hips, and sacrum to gently coax the sacroiliac joint back into position, increasing mobility and potentially reducing pain. Even if you don't suffer with SI joint pain, these exercises are likely to improve the stability of your stance and your flexibility.\n\n#### **QI GONG FOCUSES ON ENERGY FLOW**\n\nQi Gong is sometimes referred to as \"moving meditation,\" designed to promote the flow of energy and clear the mind. As the practitioner of Qi Gong follows the series of movements, they are to focus on the flow of energy into and through the body. Qi Gong is an ancient Eastern practice involving the use of movement and breathing to influence the mind and center the person. Widely practiced and accepted as beneficial by thousands and possibly millions of Eastern practitioners, Qi Gong has been the subject of some political controversy.\n\nAs adapted for Western use, Qi Gong is a generally safe and potentially very positive practice. A series of complex movements, Qi Gong practice can help to improve breath awareness, foster a sense of peaceful presence-in-the-moment, and promote overall health consciousness. Qi Gong will help increase your balance and improve lower body strength. Several avenues for learning more about Qi Gong are available. An excellent series of Qi Gong videos has been produced by Lee Holden, and Qi Gong practices are described in books as well.\n\nHow to Do Qi Gong's Spinal Breathing\n\nOne practice from Qi Gong that is especially helpful for someone recovery from back pain is called _spinal breathing_. To begin, first stand with the feet a wide shoulder-width apart. Holding a good pelvic neutral stance, bend the knees slightly, keeping the tail tucked and the spine upright. Position your arms so they stick straight out from the shoulders with hands facing forward, then bend the elbows to a right angle and make a soft fist with the hands. Now, as you exhale, bring the arms forward and down in front as you flex the spine forward and lower your chin; at the end of your full exhale you should almost be in a standing fetal position. As you begin to breath in, uncurl the spine and bring the arms (still bent) through the starting position and move towards extending the spine as you tilt the chin upwards and the head gently back. At the end of the inhale, you will feel your chest fully expanded as your eyes gaze skywards and your throat and airways fully open. You should feel a good stretch in the chest muscles and a gently distributed tension in the extended back muscles. Do not do this exercise to the point of any pain; this should not hurt in anyway. Repeat the spinal breathing process for a total of eight or more breaths.\n\n#### **REIKI TAPS INTO UNIVERSAL ENERGY**\n\nReiki is an energy-based alternative therapy that arose from the work of Mikao Usui in the 1920s. The term _Reiki_ is a combination of two words from Japanese, _Rei_ and _Ki_ , that together mean \"universal energy.\" The process of Reiki involves the placement of hands over or lightly on the fully clothed body with the intention of manipulating the flow of energy. According to Reiki teachings, there are specific patterns of energy in the body that may be in need of healing through the infusion of positive energy. The overall purpose of the therapy is to reduce stress and promote relaxation and healing.\n\nReiki for the treatment of back pain has not been formally studied, and while smaller-scale studies have not been able to show its specific benefit for conditions such as fibromyalgia, there is evidence to suggest that touch therapies, including Reiki, may be beneficial., A recently published study on Reiki for the control of stress and bodily symptoms had a surprising result. It found a benefit to participants who were unaware that the treatment was occurring!\n\n#### **SELF-HYPNOSIS**\n\nHypnosis has been widely used, abused, and disparaged over the centuries. Despite this, there continue to be very helpful applications of hypnosis. Hypnosis is used successfully by pediatricians and pediatric anesthesiologists to relieve children's anxieties about pain and procedures. This is believed to work well because children are much more fluid in their sense of reality and their openness to suggestion. Nonetheless, a majority of adults are considered hypnotizable.\n\nSelf-hypnosis is a process of training the mind to enter a state of relaxed wakefulness in which awareness of external events is filtered. It has been described as a relaxed state in which access to the subconscious mind is more direct while conscious awareness is more restricted than usual. Legislation in the state of Connecticut defined hypnosis as \"an artificially induced altered state of consciousness, characterized by heightened suggestibility and receptivity to direction.\"\n\nHypnosis has been used for a variety of health-related concerns including childbirth, smoking cessation, weight loss, and pain management. A very early clinical trial indicated that hypnosis was as effective as relaxation therapy with respect to pain control and resulted in better sleep and less problematic medication usage. Hypnosis (of others) is regulated in some states and not permitted in some places unless practiced by licensed medical professionals. Self-hypnosis is, obviously, a personal choice and is not regulated, per se. There are many resources available for those interested in self-hypnosis. A recently published study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, found that self-hypnosis was effective at reducing pain and anxiety in women undergoing a large-needle biopsy of the breast. If you are curious about self-hypnosis as a treatment for back pain, ask your doctor, explore your options, and consider investing in some audio-recordings of scripted self-hypnosis sessions (just don't listen to them while driving).\n\n### The Explanation\n\nWhile there are many skeptics of mind-body therapies, there are also many people who support them. One recent study of acupuncture suggested that people who derived the most benefit from acupuncture were those who most expected it to have a benefit. Does this mean that acupuncture doesn't work? It may mean that the person who has the strongest intention to receive a benefit from a therapy is able to experience that therapy more positively and recruit the body's natural health mechanisms in response to the treatment. Despite the persistent doubts of some, millions of people have experienced benefit from meditation and related spiritual practices. In the end, even if there are no immediate health benefits that can be proven in stringent clinical trials, if meditation or other mind-body approaches help you make more healthful choices in life, that is a positive outcome.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. Barnes, P.M., E. Powell-Griner, K. McFann, and R.L. Nahin. 2004. Complementary and alternative medicine use among adults: United States, 2002. _Adv Data_ 343:1-19.\n\n2. Kabat-Zinn, J., L. Lipworth, and R. Burney. 1985. The clinical use of mindfulness meditation for the self-regulation of chronic pain. _J Behav Med_ 8 (2): 163-90.\n\n3. Sherman, K.J., et al. 2004. Complementary and alternative medical therapies for chronic low back pain. _BMC Complement Altern Med_ 4:9.\n\n4. Boccio, Frank J. _Mindfulness Yoga_. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2004.\n\n5. Ostelo, R.W., et al. 2005. Behavioural treatment for chronic low-back pain. _Cochrane Database Syst Rev_ 1:CD002014.\n\n6. Young, Shinzen. _Break through Pain_. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, Inc., 2004.\n\n7. Kabat-Zinn, Jon. _Full Catastrophe Living_. London: Piatkus Books, 2007.\n\n8. Morone, N.E., C.M. Greco, and D.K. Weiner. 2008. Mindfulness meditation for the treatment of chronic low back pain in older adults. _Pain_ 134 (3): 310-19.\n\n9. Holden, Lee. _7 Minutes of Magic_. New York: Penguin Group, 2007.\n\n10. Leibowitz, Judith and Bill Connington. _The Alexander Technique_. New York: HarperPerennial, 1991.\n\n11. Little, P., et al. 2008. Randomised controlled trial of Alexander technique lessons, exercise, and massage (ATEAM) for chronic and recurrent back pain. _Br J Sports Med_ 42 (12): 965-8.\n\n12. Feldenkrais, Moshe. _Awareness Through Movement_. New York: HarperCollins, 1972.\n\n13. Baniel, Anat. _Move Into Life_. New York: Harmony Books, 2009.\n\n14. Tse, Michael. _Qigong for Healing and Relaxation_. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2005.\n\n15. Holden, Lee. _7 Minutes of Magic_. New York: Penguin Group, 2007.\n\n16. \"Reiki.\" <http:\/\/nccam.nih.gov\/health\/reiki\/>. Accessed January 3, 2010.\n\n17. Rand, W.L. \"How does Reiki work?\" <http:\/\/www.reiki.org>. Accessed January 3, 2010.\n\n18. Assefi, N., et al. 2008. Reiki for the treatment of fibromyalgia: A randomized controlled trial. _J Altern Complement Med_ 14 (9): 1115-22.\n\n19. So, P.S., Y. Jiang, and Y. Qin. 2008. Touch therapies for pain relief in adults. _Cochrane Database Syst Rev_ 4:CD006535.\n\n20. Bowden, D., et al. 2010. A randomised controlled single-blind trial of the effects of Reiki and positive imagery on well-being and salivary cortisol. _Brain Res Bull_ 81 (1): 66-72.\n\n21. MacKenzie, Richard. _Self-Change Hypnosis_. Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing, 2005.\n\n22. Hypnotherapists Union. Summary of State Laws Regarding Hypnosis, <http:\/\/www.hypnotherapistsunion.org>. Accessed January 4, 2010.\n\n23. McCauley, J.D., et al. 1983. Hypnosis compared to relaxation in the outpatient management of chronic low back pain. _Arch Phys Med Rehabil_ 64 (11): 548-52.\n\n24. Lang, E.V., et al. 2006. Adjunctive self-hypnotic relaxation for outpatient medical procedures. _Pain_ 126 (1-3): 155-64.\n\n25. Kong, J., et al. 2009. An fMRI study on the interaction and dissociation between expectation of pain relief and acupuncture treatment. _Neuroimage_ 47 (3): 1066-76\n\n**Q & A** _with Dr. Murinson_\n\n**Why should I try meditation?**\n\nThe most important reason to try meditation is to gain control over your pain and your life. As Shinzen Young, a master of meditation has written, \"The horrible part of chronic pain is that the more it hurts, the more sensitive you become to the pain. Your pain circuits become pain magnifiers, so that even ordinary sensations are experienced as painful.\" It is through meditation that you will begin to loosen the tangled knot of pain and movement, and move (in stillness) to a better life.\n\n## CHAPTER 20  \nWater and Inversion Therapies for Strengthening and Conditioning\n\n**Gravity-reducing therapies provide immediate pain relief, speed healing, and promote healthy alignment of back structures.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\n**>** Do you sometimes feel that your back is aching with every step?\n\n**>** Do you wish you could escape the effects of gravity for a while and get back to feeling like your old self?\n\nListen to Your Body\n\nMaybe you've had the feeling that your back is a little better when you're on vacation, but you haven't wanted to tell people in case they would think your pain is all in your head. It doesn't mean that at all, it just means your body is trying to tell you something about your life, and the message is: It's too much, slow down!\n\nIf your back has been injured and you have bulging, torn, or herniated discs, you are probably living with substantial amounts of pain. Gravity-reducing therapies can provide immediate relief for your back pain. In addition, studies have shown that reversing gravity's pull may speed the healing of injured discs; help distorted discs and other back structures return to their normal shape; and provide more space for nerves and spinal cord as these delicate structures transit through narrow passages in the back.\n\nIn the upright configuration, the spine is under constant pressure. It's clear that standing and sitting up put substantial pressures on the discs, especially in the lower back. This is why people with lumbar disc tears get so much pain relief from lying down. When you're in the water, you are nearly weightless, and this will provide respite for the spine. When you are on an inversion table, the upper part of your body actually creates some mild traction on the lower spine. This process may actually help correct bulging discs and relax tightened muscles.\n\n#### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR RECOMMENDS AQUATHERAPY?**\n\nFeel good that you have such an open-minded healthcare provider and ask for a prescription. Some insurance companies will cover supervised aquatherapy if prescribed by a physician. If prescription aquatherapy is not what your doctor has in mind, ask about specific programs, frequency, and duration of workouts, and whether the aquatherapy is being recommended as part of a cardiovascular fitness program or your back-strengthening program. There are also online, print, and media-based resources to help with designing a sound water-fitness program.\n\n#### **WHAT IF YOUR DOCTOR RECOMMENDS INVERSION THERAPY?**\n\nAsk your doctor what he or she knows about this treatment and how he or she came to recommend it. The clinical trials on inversion therapy are limited, but there is a wealth of testimonials that attest to the benefits of this approach. Ask your doctor to write a prescription for an inversion table or to complete the paperwork to support this recommendation. Some Health Savings Accounts will reimburse you for the purchase of a table if it's done on the advice of a doctor.\n\n### _the_ **PRESCRIPTION**\n\nGravity-reducing therapies will largely be self-directed, although you should discuss them with your doctor to see if he or she has specific recommendations for aquatherapy or the use of an inversion table.\n\n\u2022 Find out about pools in your area. There is no better way to relieve stress on the back than to spend some time in the water. Especially if back pain is preventing you from getting the exercise you need and crave, look into water aerobics, take some swimming lessons, or slip on a water belt and take the plunge.\n\n\u2022 If you are truly uncomfortable going to a public or private swimming pool, think about spending a few minutes every day in your bathtub. Of course, it's not possible to get aerobic exercise in the bathtub, but you can benefit from muscle relaxation and minimizing the effects of gravity on the spine.\n\n\u2022 Find an aquatherapy specialist in your area and attend a few sessions. Some medical insurers or healthcare reimbursement programs will cover aquatherapy-related expenses if the treatment is prescribed by your doctor.\n\n\u2022 While on land, make sure you're getting rest several times daily. This will temporarily stop gravity's effects on your back. The details are in Chapter 13, but you can start by lying down flat on the floor with your legs propped up on a sofa. If you want to reverse the effects of gravity, a slant-board can be a gentle way to get started.\n\n\u2022 Consider trying an inversion table. Check in with your local gym to see if it has these available. Long popular with athletic-types, inversion table therapy _may not be for everyone_. But, if you are in pretty good physical shape and want to maximize your at-home therapy for back pain, an inversion table may be right for you. Check with your doctor and start gradually.\n\n### The Treatment\n\nWater therapy and inversion therapy counteract the effects of gravity on your back. Have you noticed that you are quite a bit shorter in the evening than you are in the morning? Most of us are. Try this: Next time you get into your car, check to see if you have to adjust the mirror up or down. Chances are you adjust the mirror up in the morning and down every afternoon. Over the years, we gradually lose some of our height, although dramatic losses are only typical of diseases such as osteoporosis and ankylosing spondylitis.\n\nAn underwater treadmill used in water-based physical therapy\n\n### Water-Based Therapies\n\nOur bodies are 70 percent water. The rest of our bodies are made up of other things like proteins, minerals (bone), and lipids (fat). To the extent that people have a lot of lipids in their body, they are lighter than water and will be very buoyant. Someone who is very lean will be relatively heavy in water, but even still will feel 70 percent lighter. How can you tell how much body fat you might be carrying around? The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute states that \"Body mass index (BMI) is a measure of body fat based on height and weight that applies to both adult men and women.\" You can learn more and check out your BMI numbers in Chapter 21.\n\nIf you have a typical body build, meaning you aren't super-athletic or super-sedentary, and you are a middle-aged _man_ , your BMI is a fair approximation of your percent body fat. Women should add about 11 percent to the BMI to estimate percent body fat by virtue of our different physiology. The bad news is you may have a lot more body fat than you realized. The good news is that fat floats, and buoyancy will work to your advantage in the water. So as you enter the water, you will feel the weight draining away from your body, you will feel light and relaxed as you float around. If you wear a floatation belt, this will make it easier to keep yourself upright but you won't get as much exercise just staying afloat. In some places, weights are added to the ankles to produce some gentle traction on the spine. However, you don't want to do anything that might jeopardize your ability to keep your head above water. It is wise to always swim in a supervised setting or with someone you know.\n\n#### **WATER WALKING**\n\nThe exercise that you get from water walking depends on the vigor you apply to it. Water walking can be a gentle and soothing way to remobilize after a painful back injury. As you progress, water walking can become more demanding and even get you going with some cardiovascular fitness. You may want to change your approach from time to time by putting on a flotation belt and doing some water jogging. In water jogging, you are suspended in the water, and as you float you move your legs as if jogging. It's essentially a vigorous form of treading water. Make sure to seek out advice on water walking; there are DVDs and books available.\n\n  **Warning! Stretch Comfortably and Symmetrically**\n\nWhenever you do stretches, in the water or on land, try to find a position that is comfortable enough to hold for a count of 30 seconds. Take baby steps if you're recovering from back pain, and always, always make sure to stretch on both sides to keep your movement patterns symmetrical.\n\n#### **WATER AEROBICS**\n\nThis is a wonderful way to maintain and improve physical fitness for people with current or resolved back troubles. The best way to pick up water aerobics is to join a class. In some areas though, water aerobics is the domain of senior citizens, and this may or may not be the best fit. Ask if you can visit a class before signing up. You can check out some books at your library if there are no classes near to your home.\n\nYou will want to have access to some special equipment to facilitate your water aerobics workout. A flotation belt will boost your comfort and confidence in the water by allowing you to concentrate on your exercise routine and get your muscles working. Water barbells are not heavy, but work by increasing the drag on your arms as they move through the water. One wonderful aspect of water aerobics is that you are building muscle as you move in both directions, whereas on land, you are usually only building muscle as you move against gravity. Swim gloves can add resistance to your hand movements but are used in place of dumbbells, and flippers may build strength but should not be used during an acute episode of back pain as they may increase strain on the lower back.\n\n#### **WATER STRETCHING AND YOGA**\n\nYou can use the buoyancy that you gain in water to great advantage in stretching. Find a spot along the wall and practice some lunges and partial splits. You will find that you can focus on the stretch and worry less about straining ankles and knees thanks to the weightlessness. To do the water-lunge, stand next to the wall with one hand on the edge of the pool. Put the foot closest to the wall back about 30 inches (76 cm) and bend your other knee gradually until you feel a stretch in the front of your extending hip (the back leg) and the hamstrings of the flexing hip. Try to keep the heel of the back leg planted down if possible. If you can do this stretch comfortably, move your front foot further forward and repeat this stretch for 30 seconds each time, three to five times. Then turn around and stretch the other side.\n\nInversion therapy\n\n#### **WATER RELAXATION**\n\nThis is a wonderful way to end any trip to the pool. Simply find a quiet spot and lie back. Let you body relax as you feel the waves of the pool gently flexing and extending your spine. Close your eyes and empty your mind of worrying thoughts and troubles. You can consciously direct relaxation to your back muscles or just let go and feel at one with the water. Don't rush, just let you body absorb the benefits of your trip to the pool.\n\n### Inversion Therapies\n\nAlthough traction has been widely used for the treatment of back and neck problems, the use of inversion therapies has been relatively slow to gain widespread acceptance in the mainstream medical community. However, inversion therapies have long been popular with fitness buffs and yoga experts. Those who subscribe to inversion therapy tout wide-ranging health benefits, but this is not the objective here; the reason to consider inversion therapy as part of a back-health lifestyle is to ease the pressures on the back and to even begin to reverse the effects of gravity.\n\nInversion tables offer the widest range of flexibility in terms of being able to control the angle of inversion. You can begin (and continue) with a mild downward tilt of the head. Some inversion tables allow you to set the maximum angle of incline. Others prefer full, hanging-upside-down inversions, and for this, you either need some kind of bar or trapeze arrangement or your need an inversion table. For people of ordinary fitness levels, getting suspended from a bar is not entirely feasible.\n\nBesides the health restrictions on using inversion tables, as noted above, they do require an up-front investment. Even a basic inversion tables is relatively expensive, costing $200 or more, and more sophisticated models range into several hundred dollars. It is not clear why inversion tables have not received more formal testing from the medical community. It could be that inversion tables simply don't work. It could also be that the economics of inversion tables aren't optimal for our healthcare system: they cost just enough to prohibit individuals from wanting to buy them and not enough to be attractive to providers as part of a fee-basis treatment program. Nonetheless, there are many people that really believe that inversion therapy has radically improved their quality of life and taken away most of their back pain. The rationale for this seems sound, but the tables themselves will require further testing before the medical community will accept and promote this treatment.\n\n#### **SLANT BOARD, A COST-EFFECTIVE METHOD**\n\nA slant board is a less expensive alternative to an inversion table that offers some of the benefits, but also some challenges in terms of getting up and down from the partial-inversion position. For many, a slant board is a fitness item designed to increase the amount of work associated with abdominal crunches. It is intended that the user will hook his or her legs over the bars and that the upper body will lie on the negative incline of the board. Depending on the condition of your knees and over all physical condition, this may not sound very restful.\n\nThe goal of resting on the slant board is to get the pelvis into a neutral position (hence the need to support the feet) and to let gravity assist in stretching out the spine and muscles. Besides making sure that your slant board arrangement is stable, the real problem is getting on and off the board. If you have an acute disc or acutely painful back problem, it is not a trivial exercise to get yourself positioned on a slant board. If you try to get onto the slant board from a sitting position, you may actually experience some strong pressures on the disc while getting into position. If your back is acutely painful, you may have to lie down on the floor next to the board and slowly scoot yourself up the slope of the board.\n\nOnce in position, remember that you need a two-to-three-inch support for your head to make the neck comfortable. You should avoid sliding down the board and pressing on the top of the head, as this can create loading pressure on the spine, especially in the neck.\n\nSlant board Water and Inversion Therapies for Strengthening and Conditioning\n\n  **Warning! Inversion Therapy Is Not for All**\n\nFirst, it is important that your general health is good. People with heart conditions, high blood pressure, a history of blood clots, problems with circulation such as swelling of the leg, and breathing difficulties should not consider inversion therapies without prior clearance by a qualified physician. If you have particular concerns about trying inversion therapy, a safe alternative might be to try a \"zero-gravity\" chair.\n\nDo-it-Yourself Slant Board\n\nIt's possible to set up a slant board at home using a sturdy support, a solid board, a good foam cushion, and some pillows. You can actually create an arrangement whereby you position your head and spine on a negative incline and have a place that will support your feet as you flex your hips and knees.\n\n#### **INVERTED YOGA POSES**\n\nSome yoga poses take advantage of gravity, especially the downward dog. There is a less widely used yoga position called the _hanging dog_ that has been adopted by some to involve hanging over various stationary objects. It may be beneficial to suspend yourself upside down from a chair in a supported headstand configuration, but it also may not; you'll have to experiment and see if you can find relief from back pain this way.\n\n### The Explanation\n\nHumans enjoy tremendous benefits by virtue of standing on two feet, but, as you look around at other members of the animal kingdom, one curious fact becomes clear. Although myriad creatures from dinosaurs to goldfish follow the same basic outline of having boney spine running through the middle of the body, we are virtually alone in turning this spine upright. This means that gravity is constantly working against us. The problem is most acute in the lumbar spine, where the discs and other spine structures must bear the weight of the upper body. But the cervical spine is also compressed by gravity due to the weight of the head, and this can worsen compression of nerve roots by bulging discs and bone spurs on the spine.\n\nIt has been shown by applying traction to the body that unloading the pressures of the lower back can correct disc abnormalities and relieve pain. One study that looked at the effects of traction using serial CT scans of the spine found that traction could reduce the size of disc herniations by 25 percent and increase the space available for nerves exiting the spinal canal by another 25 percent. Traction may be prescribed for your back problem, applied to you by a physical therapist, or used by a chiropractor, but you can apply the basic principles of traction to your advantage using water-based therapies to neutralize gravity or inversion therapy to partially reverse effects of gravity.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. NHLBI. \"Body Mass Index,\" www.nhlbisupport.com\/bmi. Accessed January 10, 2010.\n\n2. Deurenberg, P., J.A. Weststrate, and J.C. Seidell. 1991. Body mass index as a measure of body fatness: Age- and sex-specific prediction formulas. _Br J Nutr_ 65 (2): 105-14.\n\n3. Huey, Lynda and Robert Forster. _The Complete Waterpower Workout Book_. New York: Random House, Inc., 1993.\n\n4. Pappas Baun, MaryBeth. _Fantastic Water Workouts_. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2008.\n\n5. Huey, Lynda and Robert Forster. _The Complete Waterpower Workout Book_. New York: Random House, Inc., 1993.\n\n6. Levin-Gervasi, Stephanie. _The Back Pain Sourcebook_. Lincolnwood, IL: Lowell House, 1998.\n\n7. Takasaki, H., T. Hall, G. Jull, S. Kaneko, T. Iizawa, and Y. Ikemoto. 2009. The influence of cervical traction, compression, and spurling test on cervical intervertebral foramen size. _Spine (Phila, Pa. 1976)_ 34 (16): 1658-62.\n\n8. Horseman, I. and M.W. Morningstar. 2008. Radiographic disk height increase after a trial of multimodal spine rehabilitation and vibration traction: A retrospective case series. _J Chiropr Med_ 7 (4): 140-145.\n\n9. Sari, H., U. Akarirmak, I. Karacan, and H. Akman. 2005. Computed tomographic evaluation of lumbar spinal structures during traction. _Physiother Theory Pract_ 21 (1): 3-11.\n\n## CHAPTER 21  \nEating Right to Prevent Pain and Promote Recovery\n\n**Moderate weight loss and avoiding trigger foods can improve back pain.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\nAlways include vegetables with the main meals of the day, choose grains that are high in fiber, and seek out calcium, because it is a good defense against worsening spine disease later in life. If you want to eat better for improved back health, read on!\n\n**>** Are you more than 10 pounds (4.5 kg) overweight?\n\n**>** Do you eat more than five servings a day of vegetables?\n\n**>** Do you get gas pains?\n\n**>** Do you have a burning feeling in your esophagus after meals, or often feel overly full?\n\n**>** Do you drink eight tall glasses of water a day?\n\n**>** Do you have a good feeling about any dietary supplements take?\n\n### The Treatment\n\nThere is no magic food that will cure back pain, but there are a number of positive changes that you can make in your diet to shift the balance toward better back health.\n\n#### **GET A GRIP ON YOUR WEIGHT**\n\nBecause a lot of back pain is driven by mechanical stresses, how much a person weighs has a profound impact on the back's function. Without question, obesity is a major contributor to back pain and back-related disability. For these reasons, weight control is a priority for those with back pain.\n\nYou need to know your numbers. Tomorrow morning, weigh yourself with a reliable scale. Then, get your height measured; you may need help to do this. Have someone make a mark on the doorframe and measure the distance from the floor. You should not have shoes on when measuring your height or weight. You can use the body mass index table in this chapter to find your body mass index (BMI): find your height in the left column of the table; mark this with a highlighter all the way across the table. Follow until you find the number closest to your weight in pounds. Follow this column up to the top row, and this is your BMI number. If your BMI is 24.9 or below, you are in the normal weight category. If your BMI is greater than 25 but less than 29.9, you are in the overweight weight category. If your BMI is 30 or greater, you are obese and should seek medical supervision for a weight-loss plan. If your weight is greater than normal, you should determine the maximum weight you can have to be within normal limits. Do this by following the row for your height until you reach the weight columns for BMI levels of 24 and 25. Your target weight is between these two numbers.\n\nLasting weight loss can only occur through a combination of decreased food consumption and increased exercise. It is sometimes true that a person can avoid gaining weight by either cutting back on food intake or increasing activity, but true weight loss requires both. If your back is healthy enough that you can engage in cardio-type exercise three times a week, you can realistically plan a new lifestyle that will include reaching a lower target weight. If your back is painful enough that you can't exercise moderately three times weekly, you should not be too hard on yourself if you can't seem to shake excess weight. In fact, for people suffering through an episode of strong back pain, the best, most realistic goal is to avoid weight gain.\n\n#### **BODY MASS INDEX TABLE**\n\n#### **WHOLE GRAINS, VEGETABLES, AND CALCIUM**\n\nYour diet is an important part of your recovery and prevention plan. Diet plays an important role in preventing or reversing obesity, ensuring lifelong overall health maintenance, and providing adequate stores of calcium for strong bones.\n\nFiber is an important part of staying healthy. The benefits of a high-fiber diet include the prevention of both constipation and diarrhea, potentially reducing cholesterol, a reduction in cancer risk, and (supposedly) the sensation of fullness. Vegetables are an excellent source of dietary fiber, but fiber supplements can be helpful in reaching daily fiber targets. Choosing whole grains whenever possible has become more attractive with the wide array of high-fiber breads now available. Lightly toasting whole grain breads can make them even more appealing.\n\nVegetables are the best food that you can include in any meal plan. An excellent source of fiber, vitamins, and minerals, they are the best choice for people who snack and should be a part of daily meal planning. Try to include two or more vegetable servings with the main meal of the day. It is best to avoid frying vegetables, but if you love that extra flavor, try saut\u00e9ing or grilling them instead. Fried vegetables may taste great, but the extra calories are way too much for the body to handle. Most Americans are suffering from caloric overload, and the consequences have been disastrous for the healthcare system.\n\nThe need for calcium is also high. The U.S. government recommends that most adults take in over 1,000 mg a day. Dairy products are an obvious choice for people who can tolerate dairy. An 8 oz (230 g) cup of plain yogurt (no fruit) has just over 400 mg. Other sources include calcium-enhanced orange juice, sardines, or canned salmon. Spinach appears to have high levels of calcium, but it also contains oxalic acid, which binds the calcium and interferes with absorption. Kale is a better alternative as a vegetable source of calcium. Turnip greens have twice as much calcium as kale, but also possess a strong flavor. You may want to consider the use of dietary supplements, discussed later in this chapter.\n\nGreen vegetables are an essential part of a healthy diet because in addition to calcium they contain magnesium, iron, and potassium. Eat your greens!\n\nThe CAPS Diet\n\nFoods to avoid:\n\nC \u2013 Caffeine and Chocolate\n\nA \u2013 Alcoholic beverages\n\nP \u2013 Peppermint\n\nS \u2013 Spicy foods\n\nTomatoes are especially high in acid and should be avoided as well.\n\n#### **FOODS THAT WORSEN BACK PAIN**\n\nYou may be wondering what you shouldn't eat to reduce your back pain. There are a couple of dietary changes that may help, chief among which is reducing gas in the digestive tract. Because the intestines and certain structures in the back share common nervous system pathways, abdominal gas can increase the amount of pain perceived as arising from the back. And while some people do not have any pain with abdominal gas, others have a surprising amount of pain. Look over the table and identify foods that might be part of the problem. The best way to test this is to eliminate a suspected food for a week or two and see if the abdominal pains get better.\n\nSpicy food might also enhance back pain through a similar mechanism. Some people experience a strong dull pain in the lower abdomen several hours after consuming foods rich in red hot pepper. Because of the time delay, sometimes this low stomach pain seems unrelated to your diet, but keep it in mind.\n\n#### **CAPS FOODS AFFECT THE STOMACH AND ESOPHAGUS**\n\nIf all the stress of living through an episode of back pain has your stomach churning, try taking control of your diet with the CAPS plan., Some of the CAPS plan foods increase stomach acid production, while others cause a loosening of the closed ring that connects the esophagus and stomach. This closed ring, called the _lower esophageal sphincter_ , normally opens to allow food into the stomach and stays closed at all other times. Loosening this closure allows stomach acid to enter the esophagus where it can burn the delicate lining (the stomach's lining is heavily protected against stomach acid). Peppermint is one food that loosens the ring between the esophagus and the stomach, so peppermint should be avoided by people with reflux symptoms. There are several mechanisms in place to keep stomach acid at effective levels, however, the stress of back pain and some aspects of managing back pain can weaken some of the body's natural defenses against acid reflux. Make sure to cut back on alcohol, as it promotes esophageal damage from reflux\u2014and doesn't mix with many of the medications used for back pain. The association between smoking and gastro esophageal reflux disease (GERD) is less well established, but it is believed that smoking irritates the esophageal sphincter and should be avoided to reduce GERD.\n\n#### **DRINK EIGHT FULL GLASSES OF WATER**\n\nDrinking adequate water is important for a healthy back. While it is possible to drink too much water, getting eight 8 oz (235 ml) glasses of water each day is a good goal. Especially if you are taking an NSAID (ibuprofen, naproxen), you will want to stay well hydrated as the combination of dehydration and NSAIDs can be especially taxing on the kidneys. Don't make the mistake of thinking that soda, sweetened teas, or juice can replace your need for water. Many sugar-sweetened sodas contain so much sugar that they are actually dehydrating to the body. Diet sodas seem to be singularly ineffective at helping people lose weight. Think of all the skinny people you know who drink diet soda; now think of all the heavy people you know who drink diet soda: which list is longer?\n\nThe benefits of drinking water are tremendous, from improving oral hygiene to reducing food consumption. Most diet experts recommend limiting water intake at mealtime to a few sips. It seems that drinking water in between meals and especially 20 minutes before mealtimes is a good strategy.\n\n### Know Your Supplements\n\n#### **GLUCOSAMINE AND CHONDROITIN SULFATE FOR JOINTS**\n\nGlucosamine and chondroitin sulfate is the most commonly used non-nutritive dietary supplement for the treatment of arthritis. Derived from cow's hooves and shark cartilage, glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate are compounds that are normally found in joints. The supplementation of these compounds in the diet is believed to contribute to joint motions that are smooth and relatively painless. There is some scientific evidence to support their use in osteoarthritis of the knee and hip., A specific benefit for spine arthritis has not yet been shown.\n\nAdditional mechanisms may explain the beneficial effects of the compounds against pain. One possibility is that glucosamine in particular may block the release of signaling factors that drive inflammation, but this has been shown in laboratory studies only. Another possibility, shown in several lab-based studies, it that chondroitin may block the sprouting on pain-sensing nerves, which may help prevent pain after back injury as a normally vigorous sprouting response contributes to extra pain sensitivity. There are no recommended doses for this supplement as it is not a nutritive element. A $12 million NIH-funded study examined the effects of glucosamine 1,500 mg and chondroitin 1,200 mg daily and found no benefit in the main study group; however those patients with more severe pain may have had a benefit from the treatment.\n\nFactors That Increase Stomach Acid Reflux\n\n\u2022 Stress\n\n\u2022 Ibuprofen and other NSAIDs\n\n\u2022 Lying down soon after meals\n\n\u2022 CAPS foods\n\n\u2022 Frequent bending over\n\n\u2022 Heavy lifting\n\n\u2022 Obesity\n\n\u2022 Fatty foods\n\n#### **CALCIUM FOR BONES**\n\nCalcium is clearly important for bone health. Most Americans are not getting enough calcium, and the consequences are a national epidemic of osteoporosis and pathological fractures. The bones prone to fracture include the vertebral bones, pelvic bones, and hips, all potential sources of severe back and buttock pain. As noted above, the daily requirement for calcium is at least 1,000 mg daily. Most adults have difficulty reaching this goal. The two main forms of calcium supplements available are calcium carbonate and calcium citrate. Calcium carbonate is usually less expensive and more readily available. Calcium citrate is probably better absorbed by people with low levels of stomach acid (those who may be taking medication for GERD\/reflux fall into this category). Additionally, it is recommended that the amount taken at any one time during the day is 500 mg, as this will improve overall absorption and limit troublesome side effects such as constipation and bloating that occur at higher doses.\n\n#### **VITAMIN D FOR BONES, NERVES, MUSCLES, AND IMMUNITY**\n\nVitamin D is vitally important for bone health. Without vitamin D, calcium is not properly deposited into bones and bones become thin and fragile. Not getting enough vitamin D can lead to osteoporosis and osteomalacia (severe decalcification of the bones), predisposing to vertebral fracture and ultimately spinal collapse.\n\nThe NIH has reported that vitamin D is also involved in the function of nerves, muscles, and the immune system (ODS\/NIH). Vitamin D has been shown to reduce inflammation. More controversial are the claims that vitamin D insufficiency is a leading cause of chronic pain. There are a number of studies, summarized by Leavitt, that suggest a possible link between supplementation of vitamin D and a cessation of chronic pain., More studies are needed before definitive recommendations can be made; however, many physicians are offering to order testing of vitamin D levels for their patients because of the serious risks of vitamin D deficiency. Factors that contribute to the need for increased dietary intake include decreased levels of sun exposure and the use of sun screens that block UV-B rays. The NIH recommends limiting vitamin D intake to no more than 2000 IU daily. Interestingly, the recommended intake of vitamin D increases with age, so while adults under 50 years old are advised to take in 200 international units (IU) a day, adults 50 to 70 should consume 400 IU daily, and adults over 70 should consume 600 IU.\n\nSpecial Tips:\n\n\u2022 Rinse canned tuna and packaged lunchmeats; this will lower your sodium intake. Avoid canned vegetables; substitute fresh or frozen wherever possible.\n\n\u2022 Only buy low-fat milk, or fat-free if you can tolerate the \"skim-milk\" taste.\n\n\u2022 Use only low-fat cheese.\n\n\u2022 Use your microwave to cook your vegetables: They come out brighter and tastier than stove-top veggies.\n\n\u2022 Make soup once a week in the winter (but get someone to help lift that heavy soup pot off the stove when necessary).\n\n\u2022 Grow your own herbs for seasoning: chives, dill, and basil are especially easy to cultivate.\n\n\u2022 Make sure to include fish in your diet.\n\n#### **VITAMIN B FOR MUSCLES AND NERVES**\n\nVitamin B12 may help alleviate back pain, as shown in a clinical trial. It is an essential element in the metabolism of muscles and nerves. In conditions of deficiency, people experience depression, bizarre tingling sensations, and often times diffuse, poorly explained pains. The association of B12 and back pain is probably limited in younger adults, although it is now believed that B12 deficiency is more prevalent than previously thought. The tendency to vitamin B12 deficiency increases with age and may exceed 15 percent of the population. There is essentially no upper limit to the consumption of vitamin B12; however, recommended intake levels are relatively small: 2.4 micrograms daily for most adults. Good food sources of vitamin B12 include beef liver, trout, salmon, and fortified breakfast cereal.\n\nAn important challenge to maintaining normal levels of vitamin B12 is that the absorption of this vitamin depends on a protein made in the stomach and also on normal stomach acidity. In many older adults, there is a failure of vitamin B12 absorption; as the stomach fails to make the necessary chaperone protein, B12 levels in the blood gradually fall and the onset of deficiency is creeping and insidious. A supplement of B12 dissolved under the tongue may be an effective replacement for the vitamin shots that have been prescribed in past years; however, this therapy should be implemented under the supervision of your doctor. It seems that many of the medicines used for acid reflux may also interfere with vitamin B12 absorption by reducing stomach acid. Talk with your doctor about checking your levels regularly if you are on long-term treatment with these medications.\n\n#### **DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS THAT MIGHT CAUSE HARM**\n\n\u2022 Vitamin B6 taken at high doses may actually cause a painful neuropathy. Taking vitamin B6 at doses significantly above the daily recommendations has been shown to destroy nerves and cause pain. It is prudent not to consume more than 250 percent of the daily recommended amounts of B6: Add up the percentages from all your vitamins to determine your current intake.\n\n\u2022 Excessive intake of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K should be avoided. It is difficult for the body to remove any unneeded amounts of these vitamins, and toxic accumulations can occur.\n\n#### **FOODS WITH ANTI-INFLAMMATORY PROPERTIES**\n\nTurmeric contains a compound, curcumin, which has been shown in laboratory studies to have activity against molecules that signal inflammation. However, the ability of this compound to enter the blood stream is limited, and the benefits of consuming turmeric as a food or supplement have not been definitively proven.\n\n#### **AVOID PRO-INFLAMMATORY FOODS**\n\nOmega-6 oils are precursors to pro-inflammatory compounds in the body, called eicosanoids. Eicosanoids drive inflammatory and pain signals in the body. Omega-6 oils are especially rich in corn, safflower, and sunflower cooking oils. It is better to limit the use of these oils; substitute olive and canola oils.\n\n#### **MORE RESOURCES**\n\nWhile losing weight when you are sidelined by back pain may be impossible, you can vary your diet to help with your back. In this chapter, I've highlighted some possible changes that may be helpful to you in your quest for improved back health. You will find other valuable resources at the American Heart Association, the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, the NIH, and the National Digestive Diseases Clearinghouse websites.\n\n#### **CHAPTER RESOURCES**\n\n* * *\n\n1. NIH. \"Calcium Fact Sheet,\" <http:\/\/dietarysupplements.info.nih.gov\/factsheets\/calcium.asp>. Accessed January 31, 2010.\n\n2. Gao, J., et al. 2006. Enhanced responses of the anterior cingulate cortex neurones to colonic distension in viscerally hypersensitive rats. _J Physiol_ 570: 169\u201383.\n\n3. Mullick, T., and J. E. Richter. 2000. Chronic GERD: Strategies to relieve symptoms and manage complications. _Geriatrics_ 55: 28\u201343.\n\n4. Kahrilas, P. J. 1996. Gastroesophageal reflux disease. _JAMA_ 276: 983\u201388.\n\n5. Herrero-Beaumont, G., et al. 2007. Glucosamine sulfate in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis symptoms. _Arthritis Rheum_ 56 (2): 555\u201367.\n\n6. Pavelk\u00e1, K., et al. 2002. Glucosamine sulfate use and delay of progression of knee osteoarthritis. _Arch Intern Med_ 162 (18): 2113\u201323.\n\n7. Leffler, C.T., et al. 1999. Glucosamine, chondroitin, and manganese ascorbate for degenerative joint disease of the knee or low back. _Mil Med_ 164 (2): 85\u201391.\n\n8. Walsh, A.J., C.W. O'Neill, and J.C. Lotz. 2007. Glucosamine HCl alters production of inflammatory mediators by rat intervertebral disc cells in vitro. _Spine J_ 7 (5): 601\u20138.\n\n9. Grimpe, B., et al. 2005. The role of proteoglycans in Schwann cell\/astrocyte interactions and in regeneration failure at PNS\/CNS interfaces. _Mol Cell Neurosci_ 28 (1): 18\u201329.\n\n10. Clegg, D.O., et al. 2006. Glucosamine, chondroitin sulfate, and the two in combination for painful knee osteoarthritis. _N Engl J Med_ 354 (8): 795\u2013808.\n\n11. Leavitt, S.B. \"Vitamin D \u2013 A Neglected 'Analgesic' for Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain, An Evidence-Based Review and Clinical Practice Guidance.\" Medical Reviewers Bruce Hollis, Ph.D., Michael F. Holick, M.D., Ph.D., et al. June 2008, <http:\/\/Pain-Topics.org\/VitaminD>.\n\n12. Schwalfenberg, G. 2009. Improvement of chronic back pain or failed back surgery with vitamin D repletion: A case series. _JABFM_ 22 (1): 69\u201374.\n\n13. Mauro, G.L., et al. 2000. Vitamin B12 in low back pain: A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Eur Rev Med _Pharmacol Sci_ 4 (3): 53\u20138.\n\n14. Henrotin, Y., et al. 2010. Biological actions of curcumin on articular chondrocytes. _Osteoarthritis Cartilage_ 18 (2): 141\u20139.\n\n15. Baskette, Michael and Eleanor Mainella. _The Art of Nutritional Cooking, Second Edition_. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999.\n\n## CHAPTER 22  \nYour Back: A Guided Tour\n\n**Know the mechanisms of your back pain.**\n\n### _the_ **DIAGNOSIS**\n\nLearning about the anatomy of your spine and the physiology of how pain works can help you answer questions such as these. This chapter will take you on a quick tour of the spine and provide a brief description of how your body processes pain.\n\n**>** Do you ever wonder how you can be hurting so much, but your doctors don't know reason why?\n\n**>** Why does some pain seem to last forever, while other pain goes away when the wound heals?\n\n### Anatomy of the Spine\n\nRegardless of size, spines follow a one-design-fits-all biological model, which involves bony structures called vertebrae stacked on top of each other in a canal. Dinosaurs, humans, monkeys, mice, and all related creatures have variations of the same model. Remarkably, they all share the same combination of vertebrae, from delicate structures in the neck to sturdier structures in the lower back. These common characteristics are where we get the name for our species: vertebrates.\n\nThere is one major difference in the spines of some vertebrates. Humans and other closely related animals have vertically organized spinal columns and walk on two legs. Most other vertebrates\u2014from big black bears to mice\u2014have horizontally organized spines and walk on all fours. The vertical spine has some advantages. For example, being upright gives us the use of our hands while walking or running, and we are taller than we would be on all fours. The downside is that our upright posture leaves us prone to wear and tear of the discs and related structures of the spine, as well as other problems of the back.\n\nSpines have three curves forming an S shape. They are the cervical, thoracic, and lumbrosacral curves, named for the types of vertebrae they include. Following the S-shaped path, your spine sits in a canal that runs down the length of your back from your brain to your bottom. The spine is made up of bones, ligaments, tendons, large muscles, weight-bearing joints, and highly sensitive nerves. It's the center of control for your posture and provides stability when you stand. It also houses and protects your all-important spinal cord, the communication route for your brain and nervous system. Unfortunately, because the spine has so many tasks, it is highly susceptible to injury, which can strike its vertabrae, ligaments, discs, or muscles. Bone spurs or scar tissue along the spine can also press against nerve roots causing pain.\n\n#### **VERTEBRAE SUPPORT MUSCLES AND ALLOW FOR MOTION**\n\nVertebrae are the box-shaped bones that provide the architecture for your spine and carry most of the weight placed on it. They are formed in part by strong, sturdy, and flexible cancellous (spongy) bone containing a core of marrow, which produces red blood cells. Most adults' spines have 32 vertebrae, stacked on top of each other. The vertebrae meet at joints, which allow for slight movement. Sometimes people have one fewer or one extra vertebra, but this is not mechanically advantageous.\n\nBack Facts: The Spine\n\n\u2022 Is the platform for and provides flexibility for your head, which weighs in the neighborhood of 11 pounds (5 kg).\n\n\u2022 Supports and provides flexibility for your upper body. Your spine allows you to bend forward, backward, and sideways.\n\n\u2022 Provides shelter for and protects your spinal cord and nerves.\n\n\u2022 Is one of the key structures in your skeleton, and has many essential muscles and ligaments attached.\n\nThere are five different types of vertebrae:\n\n\u2022 Cervical vertebrae: Seven vertebrae that hold up your neck and allow it to move right and left.\n\n\u2022 Thoracic vertebrae Two vertebrae that are located in the middle back and extend forward as the ribs. They help protect the heart and lungs and support the weight of the arms and shoulders. Because they are limited in movement, they rarely have herniated discs.\n\n\u2022 Lumbar vertebrae: Five vertebrae located in the lower back. They are the largest vertebrae and carry most of your body's weight, which is why so many people have pain in this area. These vertebrae allow forward and backward motion.\n\n\u2022 Sacrum: Five vertebrae located below the lumbar vertebrae. They are fused together in one triangular section. The sacrum provides attachment for the hip bones and protects organs.\n\n\u2022 Coccyx: Three vertebrae located at the very bottom of the spine. They are also fused. They support the muscles of the buttocks.\n\n#### **FACET JOINTS LINK THE VERTEBRAE**\n\nHoused between your vertebrae are structures called _facet joints_. The facets are bony knobs that link the vertebrae together and make it possible for them to move against each other. The facet joints give the spine its flexibility. A smooth lining called the synovium sits between the facet joints. The lining produces synovial fluid, which nourishes and lubricates the joint.\n\n#### **THE SPINAL CORD CARRIES CELLS AND NERVES**\n\nPart of the central nervous system, your spinal cord is rich with cells and nerve pathways that run about 18 inches (46 cm) from the bottom of your brainstem all the way down to your lower back. Although it plays a leading role in the nervous system, the spinal cord is relatively delicate and small. (It is the width of your little finger.) The spinal cord is protected by the 32 vertebrae of the spine.\n\nSpinal cords have two types of nerves: white matter, which are also called _long tracts_ because as nerves go, they are quite long, and grey matter. Long tracts control messages from the brain to distant parts of the body. They don't stop along the way to converse with individual neurons (cells that send electrical signals to other neurons). They also connect different sections of the spinal cord to each other. Grey matter makes connections between individual neurons.\n\nAnatomy of the Spine\n\n#### **THE SPINAL CANAL HOUSES THE SPINAL CORD**\n\nThe spinal cord sits in the spinal canal. Vertebral bodies form the floor of the canal and flat bones called _lamina_ form the roof. Ducts where nerves exit and enter the spine sit on the walls of the canal. Between each wall are supporting structures called pedicles.\n\n#### **DISCS ABSORB SHOCKS**\n\nDiscs sit between the vertebrae where they serve as spacers and provide cushioning. The discs contain a gel-like fluid called _nucleus pulposus_ , which is primarily water.\n\nVertebrae discs are supported in part by a tough outer layer called the _annulus fibrosis_. Along with the vertebrae, the discs and annulus fibrosis cushion the spine. When pressure occurs, such as when you lift something heavy or twist around, the nucleus pulposus is compressed. When the lifting, twisting, or other activity stops, the gel goes back to its original shape. The vertebrae discs also safeguard the openings where the nerves exit the spinal cord.\n\nVertebrae discs are often the guilty party behind back pain. The nucleus pulposus can rupture, leaking or bulging out and pressing against nerves that line the spine. The discs in the cervical and lumbar regions are the most likely to rupture. This painful back condition may be a torn disc, herniated disc, slipped disc, ruptured disc, bulging disc, prolapsed disc, or protruding disc.\n\n#### **MUSCLES, TENDONS, AND LIGAMENTS**\n\nThe muscles running up and down your back support your spine. When these muscles are strong, they also protect your back and help you move around with ease. But if they become weak due to lack of exercise, aging, obesity, or for other reasons, your spine is far less flexible and more easily injured.\n\nThe muscles in your stomach area and trunk also help support your spine and aid mobility. In addition, tendons connect your muscles to your bones, and ligaments join your vertebrae together. Ligaments also provide your spine with flexibility and control.\n\n### Pain Pathways: A Guided Tour\n\nIt is helpful to your understanding of back pain to know how nerve signals leave the site of an injury, travel to your brain, and return as a feeling that hurts. In addition, there are mysterious features of pain that you may encounter and would like to understand better. For example, pain may occur for what appears to be no reason at all. The cause of the pain has long since healed, has probably even been forgotten about, but pain continues, sometimes for a very long time. This is called _neuropathic pain_ , and I discuss it and other pain concepts in the following sections.\n\n#### **THE NERVOUS SYSTEM COMMUNICATES PAIN**\n\nYour nervous system is your body's communication highway for pain. It has two parts:\n\n\u2022 The brain and spinal cord, also known as the central nervous system (CNS).\n\n\u2022 The peripheral nervous system (PNS), which includes all the sensory and motor nerves that go to and from your CNS.\n\n#### **NERVE CELLS SEND SIGNALS**\n\nPain is a response to an injury by specific types of nerve cells (neurons) in your PNS called _nociceptors_. Their job is to warn your brain when an injury has occurred. In the case of back pain, the injury may be the result of any harmful event from small to catastrophic, such as a pinched nerve or a car crash. There are four others concepts in the pain process that you should be familiar with:\n\n\u2022 _Sensitization_ occurs when nerve cells release neurotransmitters that actually increase the strength of the pain messages being sent to your brain.\n\n\u2022 _Inflammation_ is your body's response from an injury that may result in redness, heat, pain, swelling, and loss of function. It often piles on additional pain in the area surrounding an injury. Inflammation can also be a cause of sensitization.\n\n\u2022 _Allodynia_ is pain caused by something that does not normally elicit it, such as a brush stroke or bed sheets. Allodynia can accompany many other painful conditions such as neuropathies and severe injuries.\n\n\u2022 _Hyperalgesia_ is an amplified pain response to an injury that normally would provoke far less pain. In medical terms, this means that the individual's \"pain threshold\" is reduced. Hyperalgesia can strike a discrete area of the body or be widespread. The condition has three subtypes:\n\n\\- _Primary hyperalgesia_ is increased pain sensitivity in the damaged tissues.\n\n\\- _Secondary hyperalgesia_ is increased pain sensitivity in surrounding undamaged tissues.\n\n\\- _Opioid-induced hyperalgesia_ is increased pain sensitivity caused by long-term opioid (narcotic) use.\n\n### Types Of Pain\n\nThere are three major types of pain: nociceptive, inflammatory, and neuropathic. All three types of pain are important for back pain: They can co-exist or occur separately. Treatment strategies vary depending on pain type involved.\n\n#### **NOCICEPTIVE PAIN**\n\nAs the name suggests, nociceptive pain occurs when pain-sensing nerve endings are stimulated by injury or an injurious stimulus. Anything that potentially damages body tissues, such as a blow, a cut, or a burn, can result in nociceptive pain.\n\n#### **INFLAMMATORY PAIN**\n\nInflammatory pain arises from changes in the pain signaling system due to inflammation. When inflammation arises, there is an increase in the local prod-uction of \"inflammatory signaling molecules;\" these change how sensory signals are processed.\n\nOften, inflammatory pain is characterized by a strong amplification of pain sensation: a mildly painful stimulus gets translated into a stronger, sharper pain. Inflammatory pain can also be characterized by pain in response to a stimulus that is not normally painful, for example gently bumping an ingrown toenail. NSAIDs are usually helpful for inflammatory pain.\n\n#### **NEUROPATHIC PAIN**\n\nNeuropathic pain is caused by damage to or malfunction of the body's sensory system. In neuropathic pain, the body's pain sensing system is no longer a faithful reporter of injury. Neuropathic nerves will signal damage where none exists and over-amplify minor insults. The result is a marked increase in pain and suffering. Neuropathic pain can occur after a stroke, spinal cord injury, or diabetes. NSAIDs usually do not help patients with neuropathic pain.\n\n#### **ACUTE VERSUS CHRONIC BACK PAIN**\n\nAcute pain leaves when the injury is healed. Chronic pain lingers on, often greatly affecting the quality of life of the patient. Sometimes the culprit behind chronic pain is a health problem such as rheumatoid arthritis, which by definition causes continuing and persistent damage to body tissues and keeps pain pathways busy. Sometimes the nervous system does not get the message to stop sending pain signals. In other words, it doesn't shut down even though the injury has long since healed. In such cases, the actual cause of the stubborn pain process can be difficult to detect.\n\nChronic back pain commonly hits (and stays with) you in one of two ways:\n\n\u2022 Constant: It's present for more than three months.\n\n\u2022 Recurring: The pain stays for long periods of time. Then it leaves only to come back again. This maddening pattern can continue for months or years.\n\n#### **KNOWLEDGE IS POWER FOR YOUR BACK**\n\nThe pain-sensing system plays a vital role in helping us to protect ourselves from bodily harm. It is a tragic, but valuable lesson to learn that children who are born without an intact pain system are prone to recurrent injuries, and often do not survive to adulthood. Nonetheless, if the sales of pain-medications are any indicator, we collectively have a lot more pain than we are really coping with.\n\nThis book was designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to live a better and healthier life, and \"make peace with your back.\" If the measures described here are not sufficient to get you comfortable and moving again, you'll need to speak with your doctor about surgery or prescription medications. If the recommendation is for medication, it's important to know that there are many, many medications that can be used in the treatment of back pain. Sometimes, these medications work better when used together; sometimes finding a single medication that targets the core of a problem is sufficient. Learn, ask questions, and learn some more. Learning more about your body and your back will only help you navigate this challenging course.\n\n### **ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**\n\nWith thanks to Jill Alexander, my senior editor at Fair Winds Press, who has brought this project to happy fruition; to Laura B. Smith, who ran like the wind with this manuscript, infusing positive energy along the way; to the production staff, who gave the book sparkle. To Marilyn Allen, an agent par excellence and a connoisseur of beautiful books.\n\nMany people contributed to the conceptualization and realization of this project: Pamela Talalay, for her indefatigable encouragement and keen wit; Thomas Brushart, who inspired me to write my own book; Justin McArthur, who has at many turns supported my career development; Dick Meyer, Jim Campbell, Jack Griffin, Marco Rizzo, Lew Levy, Steve Waxman, and Bob Kalb for their support of my interest in pain; Dina Adams for lending her expertise in physical therapy and her contributions to the therapeutic plan in earlier versions of this project; Michael Shear for his demonstration that an excellent physician must, as Hippocrates said, be prepared to \"make the patient, the attendants, and the externals cooperate.\"\n\nThanks to those who have read and provided sage comments on the manuscript: Ann Frontera-Rial, Chaim and Mindy Landau, and Zan Vautrinot. Thanks to my children: Eitan for doing his homework at the table and keeping me company, and Rachel, who has taught me to say \"goodnight computer.\" To Eleanor Mainella, for her careful reading of and guidance that improved the diet chapter. To my mom, Eila Mae, for teaching me to be a happy learner, and to my dad, Donald, who has always believed I could accomplish my dreams. To Sol Milgrome, who taught me to \"take a negative and make a positive.\" And to Sasha, my beloved, for his partnership, encouragement, and kindness in all things.\n\n### **ABOUT THE AUTHOR**\n\nBeth B. Murinson, M.S., M.D., Ph.D., is an attending physician, scientist, and director of pain education in Neurology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where she also chairs the Pain Management Task Force.\n\nMurinson, a 2001 Diplomate in Neurology, American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry, trained in neurology at Yale University under the direction of Stephen G. Waxman and completed a three-year clinical and research fellowship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine under the direction of John W. Griffin. She is currently part of a small team of Hopkins neurologists who spend significant clinical time in intraoperative monitoring. In this, she utilizes all electrodiagnostic modalities including electromyography; nerve conduction studies; electroencephalography; sensory, motor, and auditory evoked potentials; and cortical mapping. Murinson has clinical expertise on neuropathic pain and back pain, and she manages patients with both immune-mediated neurological disease as well as chronic pain due to injury or neuro-degenerative disease. Murinson is skilled in performing nerve and muscle biopsies. She has been recognized by peers as an outstanding physician and was selected as one of Baltimore's \"Top Doctors\" for 2007.\n\nMurinson has an active laboratory research program and has directed the training of numerous students in this context. Her current laboratory research focuses on two questions. The first is a translational science project that examines the origins of drug-induced effects on the peripheral nervous system. Taking a highly novel approach, she has led a team of experts in investigating the effects of widely prescribed drugs on nerves and related cells in culture. The results indicate that pathways related to neurotrophin signaling are likely to mediate these effects. The second is the development of a novel model of neuropathic nerve injury. In this model, Murinson is endeavoring to isolate the effects of neuronal degeneration and better define the role of the intact nerve in signaling the effects of injury. Murinson is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, as well as numerous book chapters on pain. She is a peer-reviewer for _Annals of Neurology, Neurology_ , and _Brain and Nature_.\n\nMurinson is one of a select group of core faculty members committed to medical education and chosen for inclusion in the Johns Hopkins Colleges Advisory and Clinical Skills Program. She leads a multidisciplinary team seeking to understand the emotional development of medical students and how medical trainees learn best about pain. Results of her educational research are published in the _Journal of Pain and Academic Medicine_ and have been presented at the American Pain Society and the International Association for the Study of Pain meetings. She has served as co-director of the research program for the 2007 national Learning Communities meeting in conjunction with the AAMC meeting and has served on a Panel for the U.S. National Board of Medical Examiners. Director of a new, clinically-focused curriculum in pain at Johns Hopkins, Murinson is a 2005 Diplomate of the American Board of Pain Medicine.\n\nMurinson is a wife and the mother of two children. She enjoys reading books with her kids and excels at helping with math homework, piano lessons, and art projects.\n\n### **IMAGE CREDITS**\n\nPage 21: originally published in _Yoga Beats the Blues_ ; page 26: \u00a9 Universal Images Group Limited \/ Alamy; page 35: \u00a9 Nucleus Medical Art, Inc. \/ Alamy; page 65: MEDICAL RF.COM \/ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY; page 88: \u00a9 medicalpicture \/ Alamy; page 100, top: NEIL BORDEN \/ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY; page 114: SCOTT CAMAZINE \/ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY; page 117: \u00a9 Nucleus Medical Art, Inc. \/ Alamy; page 127: ALAIN POL, ISM \/ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY; page 129, top: \u00a9 Nucleus Medical Art, Inc. \/ Alamy; page 136, top: LIVING ART ENTERPRISES \/ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY; page 136, bottom: LIVING ART ENTERPRISES \/ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY; page 137: DU CANE MEDICAL IMAGING LTD \/ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY; page 146: \u00a9 Sebastian Kaulitzki \/ Alamy; page 153: \u00a9 Nucleus Medical Art, Inc. \/ Alamy; page 163, top: BO VEISLAND \/ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY; page 182: originally published in _Tamilee Webb's Defy Gravity Workout_ ;\n\npage 183: originally published in Yoga _Turns Back the Clock_ ; page 184: originally published in _Yoga Turns Back the Clock_ ; page 186: originally published in _Yoga Turns Back the Clock_ ; page 224: Tony Hutchings \/ Getty Images; page 225: istockphoto.com; page 238: istockphoto.com; page 260: \u00a9 Nucleus Medical Art, Inc. \/ Alamy\n\n### **INDEX**\n\nacupuncture energy flow, \u2013217\n\ninsurance coverage,\n\nintroduction,\n\nmaximizing benefits,\n\noverview, \u2013217\n\nsafety,\n\nscientific research,\n\nacute back pain\n\nbed rest, \u2013173\n\nchanges,\n\ncommunicating, , , ,\n\ndelayed pain after injury,\n\ndiagnosis, \u2013170\n\nemployers and,\n\nexplanation,\n\nice therapy,\n\npain control risks, ,\n\nRed Flags, \u2013170\n\nthermal therapy, ,\n\ntopical agents,\n\nAlexander, F. Matthias,\n\naquatherapy\n\naerobics,\n\nbathtubs,\n\ndoctor recommendations,\n\nexplanation,\n\nintroduction, ,\n\npools,\n\nrelaxation,\n\nspecialists,\n\nstretching, \u2013240\n\nwalking,\n\nyoga, \u2013240\n\nback anatomy\n\nacute back pain, \u2013264\n\ncells,\n\nchronic back pain, \u2013264\n\ndiscs,\n\ninflammatory pain,\n\nligaments,\n\nmuscles,\n\nnerves, ,\n\nnerve signals, \u2013262\n\nnervous system and,\n\nneuropathic pain,\n\nnociceptive pain,\n\nspine, ,\n\ntendons,\n\nvertebrae, ,\n\nback strain. _See_ muscle-related back pain.\n\nchiropractic therapy\n\nspinal instability, , ,\n\nstrokes and, ,\n\ncoccydynia\n\nchildbirth,\n\nchronic cases, ,\n\nconstipation,\n\ncushions, ,\n\ndepression,\n\ndiagnosis,\n\nelectrical stimulation therapy,\n\nexplanation,\n\nice therapy,\n\nimportance of coccyx,\n\ninflammation control,\n\ninjection therapy, ,\n\nmanual manipulation,\n\nobesity and,\n\nphysical therapy,\n\npredispositions,\n\nsurgery,\n\ntesting, \u2013163\n\nthermal therapy,\n\nconditioning and strengthening. _See also_ exercises.\n\ndisc herniation,\n\nfacet joint disease, \u2013104\n\nsacroiliac (SI) joint disfunction,\n\nspinal stenosis, \u2013154\n\ntorn and painful discs,\n\nDavies, Clair, , ,\n\ndiet and nutrition\n\nanti-inflammatory,\n\nBMI (body mass index), , \u2013248\n\ncalcium, ,\n\nCAPS diet, ,\n\ngas-causing foods,\n\nglucosamine\/chondroitin supplements, , \u2013253\n\nharmful supplements,\n\nintroduction,\n\npain enhancement and,\n\npro-inflammatory,\n\nresources,\n\nspecial tips,\n\nvegetables,\n\nvitamin B12 supplements,\n\nvitamin D supplements, \u2013254\n\nwater,\n\nweight loss,\n\nwhole grains,\n\ndisc herniation\n\nareas of numbness,\n\ncause of pain, \u201349\n\nconditioning and strengthening,\n\ndelaying treatment,\n\ndiagnosis,\n\ndisc bulge,\n\ndisc fragment,\n\ndisc protrusion,\n\nelectrical stimulation,\n\nEMGs, ,\n\ninversion therapy,\n\nleg weakness,\n\nmanual therapies,\n\nmedication therapy, \u201335\n\nmicro-discectomies, \u201341\n\nMRIs, , \u201345\n\nNCSs,\n\npain below the knee,\n\nsecond opinions,\n\nsmoking and,\n\nspinal instability compared to,\n\nsurgery, , \u201342\n\ntesting, \u201347\n\nthermal therapy,\n\ntraction therapy,\n\nelectrical stimulation therapy\n\ncoccydynia,\n\ndisc herniation,\n\nfacet joint disease,\n\nsacroiliac (SI) joint disfunction,\n\nsciatic compressions,\n\nspinal stenosis,\n\ntorn and painful discs,\n\nergonomics\n\ndisc pressure, ,\n\nexplanation,\n\nintroduction,\n\nknee-to-opposite shoulder stretches,\n\nleaning,\n\nlifting,\n\nlumbar support,\n\npurses, \u2013198\n\nshoes and,\n\nshoulder-blade squeezes,\n\nsitting, , ,\n\nstanding, ,\n\ntelephone headsets,\n\nwall slides, \u2013199\n\nexercises. _See also_ conditioning and strengthening.\n\nabdominal crunches, \u201321\n\nback crunches,\n\nfacet joint disease, \u2013104\n\nmuscle-related back pain, \u201321\n\nPilates, \u2013113\n\nrest therapy and,\n\nsleep and,\n\nfacet joint disease\n\nconditioning and strengthening, \u2013104\n\ndiagnosis,\n\nelectrical stimulation therapy,\n\nexplanation of, \u2013106\n\nfacet dislocation,\n\nfacet joint degeneration,\n\ninflamed facet joints,\n\ninjection therapy, , ,\n\ninversion therapy,\n\nmanual therapies,\n\nname variations,\n\nnerve block procedures,\n\npain of,\n\n_pars defect_ ,\n\nphysical therapy,\n\nsurgery,\n\ntesting, ,\n\nthermal therapy,\n\ntraction therapy,\n\nFeldenkrais, Moshe,\n\nfoods. _See_ diet and nutrition.\n\nheat therapy. _See_ thermal therapy.\n\nice therapy\n\nacute back pain, ,\n\ncoccydynia,\n\nRICE-M therapy and, \u201317\n\nvertebral fractures,\n\ninjection therapy. _See also_ medication therapy.\n\ncoccydynia, ,\n\nfacet joint disease, , ,\n\npiriformis syndrome,\n\nsacroiliac (SI) joint disfunction, \u201393\n\nsciatic and other nerve compressions,\n\nspinal stenosis, ,\n\nsteroids,\n\nintimacy acute back pain and,\n\nback-safe positions,\n\ncommunication,\n\nfantasies, \u2013207\n\nice therapy,\n\nimportance,\n\npacing,\n\npain mitigation,\n\npersonal values,\n\npreparation,\n\nrecovery, \u2013208\n\nscents and,\n\ninversion therapy disc herniation,\n\ndoctor recommendations,\n\nexplanation,\n\nfacet joint disease,\n\nintroduction, ,\n\ninversion tables,\n\nmedical conditions and,\n\nrest as,\n\nslant boards,\n\ntorn and painful discs,\n\nyoga poses,\n\nJacobson, Edmond,\n\nLeavitt, S. B.,\n\nmanual therapies\n\ncoccydynia,\n\ndisc herniation,\n\nfacet joint disease,\n\nsacroiliac (SI) joint disfunction,\n\nsciatic compressions,\n\nspinal stenosis,\n\ntorn and painful discs,\n\nmassage therapy\n\nacupressure, , \u2013216\n\ncranio-sacral massage, ,\n\nexplanation,\n\ninsurance coverage,\n\nintroduction,\n\nmaximizing benefits of,\n\nmiracle balls,\n\nmyofascial release massage, \u2013215\n\noils,\n\npost-massage activity,\n\nrolfing,\n\nSwedish massage,\n\ntrigger points, , \u2013214\n\nmedication therapy. _See also_ injection therapy.\n\nCOX-2 inhibitors,\n\nEMGs and,\n\nmuscle-related back pain, ,\n\nNSAIDs, , , \u201362,\n\nopioid abuse,\n\npiriformis syndrome,\n\nsacroiliac (SI) joint disfunction, ,\n\nsciatic compressions, \u201377\n\nside effects,\n\nspinal cord compression,\n\nspinal instability,\n\nspinal stenosis, \u2013155\n\nsleeping pills,\n\nsurgery and,\n\ntorn and painful discs, , , \u201362\n\nvertebral fractures,\n\nmeditation. _See also_ mind\/body therapies. benefits, ,\n\nbreathing,\n\nchakra-centered,\n\nenergy-based, ,\n\nexplanation,\n\nguided imagery,\n\nintroduction,\n\nlocations,\n\nmantra-guided,\n\nmindfulness meditation, \u2013228\n\nmuscle relaxation meditation, \u2013225\n\npain-dissolving, \u2013227,\n\nvalue-centered,\n\nmind\/body therapies. _See also_ meditation.\n\nAlexander Technique, \u2013229\n\neducation,\n\nenergy-based therapies,\n\nexplanation,\n\nFeldenkrais technique,\n\nintroduction,\n\nmovement therapy specialists,\n\nQi Gong,\n\nReiki,\n\nself-hypnosis, \u2013231\n\nspinal breathing,\n\nMRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)\n\nbody metals,\n\ndisc herniation, , \u201345\n\nMR neurography,\n\nnecessity,\n\nsafety,\n\nspinal stenosis,\n\ntorn and painful discs, \u201363,\n\nmuscle-related back pain causes, ,\n\ncompression therapy,\n\ncramps compared to,\n\ndiagnosis,\n\nelevation therapy,\n\nice therapy, \u201317\n\nligament fatigue, ,\n\nmedical attention, ,\n\nmedication therapy, ,\n\nposture, ,\n\nprevention therapy, , \u201323\n\nprolonged sitting and,\n\nreprogramming and,\n\nrestoration exercises, \u201321\n\nrest therapy, \u201316\n\nRICE-M therapy, \u201319\n\nspinal instability compared to,\n\nsprains and strains, \u201328\n\ntesting,\n\nnerve compressions. _See_ sciatic and other nerve compressions.\n\nphysical therapy\n\ncoccydynia,\n\nfacet joint disease,\n\npiriformis syndrome, \u201375\n\nsacroiliac (SI) joint disfunction, , ,\n\nsciatic nerve compression, , ,\n\nscoliosis, ,\n\nspinal instability, ,\n\nspinal stenosis, ,\n\nsurgery and,\n\ntorn and painful discs, ,\n\nvertebral fractures,\n\npiriformis syndrome\n\ninjection therapy,\n\noverview,\n\nphysical therapy, \u201375\n\nprevention,\n\nrarity,\n\nprescriptions. _See_ medication therapy.\n\nprevention therapy\n\nacupressure,\n\nmuscle-related back pain, \u201323,\n\nposition-changes,\n\nposture, ,\n\nsacroiliac (SI) joint disfunction, ,\n\nstretches,\n\nsymmetry,\n\ntrigger points and,\n\nweight loss,\n\nRammazini, Bernardo,\n\nrecovery\n\naerobic exercises,\n\njob worries,\n\npain relievers, \u2013192\n\nplan customization, \u2013193\n\nrest and,\n\nrisk of alternative therapies,\n\nself-advocacy, , ,\n\nstress levels and,\n\nsupport for,\n\nRed Flags\n\nacute back pain, \u2013170\n\nimportance,\n\nmedical attention,\n\nspinal cord compression,\n\nvertebral fracture,\n\nsacroiliac (SI) joint disfunction\n\nback problems associated with,\n\nband therapy,\n\ncauses,\n\ncompression test,\n\nconditioning and strengthening,\n\ncore-strengthening exercises,\n\ndiagnosis, \u201388\n\ndistinguishing traits of,\n\ndistraction test,\n\nelectrical stimulation therapy,\n\nexplanation of, , \u201396\n\nFARBER test, \u201395\n\nGillet's movement test,\n\ninjection therapy, \u201393\n\n\"low back pain\" and,\n\nmanual therapies,\n\nmedication therapy, ,\n\nMR neurography,\n\npelvic torsion test,\n\nphysical therapy for, , ,\n\npinched nerve compared to,\n\npregnancy and, ,\n\nprevention, ,\n\nsacral sulcus tenderness test,\n\nsacral thrust test,\n\nsymptoms,\n\ntesting, , , \u201395\n\nthermal therapy,\n\nthigh thrust,\n\nsciatic and other nerve compressions\n\ndiagnosis, \u201372\n\nelectrical stimulation therapy,\n\nfoot\/lower leg pain,\n\ninjection therapy,\n\nknee-to-opposite shoulder stretches, \u201377\n\nmanual therapy,\n\nmedication therapy, \u201377\n\nphysical therapy, , ,\n\npost-herpetic neuralgia (PHN), \u201381\n\npudendal nerve compression,\n\npudendal neuropathy, \u201379\n\nsciatica compared to,\n\nstretching during recovery, \u201377\n\nsurgery, ,\n\nthermal therapy,\n\nthoracic nerve root problems,\n\ntrigger points and,\n\nscoliosis\n\nbracing, ,\n\ndiagnosis,\n\nexplanation,\n\ngeographic location and,\n\nlack of treatment,\n\noccurrences of,\n\nphysical therapy, ,\n\nsurgery, , , ,\n\ntesting,\n\nsex. _See_ intimacy.\n\nSimons, David,\n\nsleep\n\ndiet and,\n\nenvironment, \u2013205\n\nexercise and,\n\nexplanation,\n\nfutons,\n\nintroduction,\n\nmattresses, ,\n\nmedications,\n\npadding, , \u2013204\n\nsoothing activities, ,\n\nsupport pillows, ,\n\nwater mattresses,\n\nslipped disc. _See_ disc herniation.\n\nspinal cord compression\n\ndiagnosis,\n\nexplanation, \u2013138\n\nlower back region,\n\nmedication therapy,\n\nmiddle back region,\n\nneck,\n\nresearch,\n\nrehabilitation,\n\nspinal cord stroke compared to,\n\nsteroid therapy,\n\nsupport for,\n\nsurgery for,\n\ntesting,\n\nspinal instability (spondylolisthesis)\n\nbulging disc compared to,\n\nchiropractic therapy, , ,\n\ncomputer-controlled therapy,\n\ncorsets, ,\n\ndecompression therapy,\n\ndiagnosis, \u2013110\n\nexplanation, \u2013118\n\nhigh-risk groups,\n\nmedication therapy,\n\nphysical therapy, ,\n\nPilates and, \u2013113\n\npulled muscle compared to,\n\nsurgery, , \u2013116,\n\ntesting, \u2013117\n\ntriggers,\n\nspinal stenosis\n\ncauses,\n\nclinical trials,\n\nconditioning and strengthening, \u2013154\n\ndiagnosis,\n\nelectrical stimulation,\n\nexercises and,\n\nexplanation,\n\ninjection therapy, ,\n\nmanual therapies,\n\nmedication therapy, \u2013155\n\nMRIs,\n\nphysical therapy, ,\n\nsurgery, , ,\n\ntesting,\n\nthermal therapies,\n\nX-rays,\n\nspondylolisthesis. _See_ spinal instability.\n\nsurgery\n\ncoccydynia,\n\ndisc herniation,\n\neffectiveness,\n\nfacet joint disease,\n\nmedications,\n\nmicro-endoscopic discectomy, \u201341\n\nNSAIDs and,\n\nopen discectomy,\n\npost-op expectations,\n\npost-op physical therapy,\n\npost-op restrictions,\n\npreparation for,\n\npudendal nerve compression,\n\npudendal neuropathy,\n\nquestions to ask,\n\nsciatic compressions, ,\n\nscoliosis, , , ,\n\nsmoking and, , ,\n\nspinal cord compression,\n\nspinal fusion, \u2013116\n\nspinal instability, ,\n\nspinal stenosis, , ,\n\nsupport for, \u201339\n\nto-do list,\n\nvertebral fractures,\n\nthermal therapy\n\nacute back pain, ,\n\ncoccydynia,\n\ndisc herniation,\n\nfacet joint disease,\n\nsciatic compressions,\n\nsacroiliac (SI) joint disfunction,\n\nspinal stenosis,\n\ntorn and painful discs,\n\ntorn and painful discs\n\nbulging discs,\n\ndiagnosis,\n\ndisc anatomy,\n\ndisc core,\n\ndisc degeneration,\n\ndisc-endplate,\n\nexplanation, \u201367\n\nglucosamine\/chondroitin,\n\nmedication therapy, , , \u201362\n\nMRIs for, \u201363,\n\nouter disc ring, \u201367\n\npain medication specialists,\n\nphysical therapy, ,\n\nprovacative discography, \u201364\n\nrecovery time, ,\n\nsecond opinions,\n\nspinal cord stimulators,\n\ntesting, \u201364\n\ntraction therapy,\n\nTravell, Janet, ,\n\ntrigger points\n\ndisc herniation,\n\nfacet disease,\n\nintroduction, \u201325\n\nprevention therapy and,\n\nresearch on,\n\nsciatic compressions and,\n\ntherapies, , , \u2013214\n\nUsui, Mikao,\n\nvertebral fractures\n\ncancer and,\n\nclassifications of, \u2013129\n\ncorsets,\n\ndiagnosis,\n\nexercise and,\n\nexplanation of, \u2013130\n\nice therapy,\n\nimmobilization, , ,\n\nlower back region,\n\nmedication therapy,\n\nmiddle back region,\n\nneck,\n\nnerve compression and,\n\nosteoporosis and, , ,\n\nphysical therapy,\n\nprolonged pain,\n\nred flags,\n\nself-diagnosis,\n\nsmoking and,\n\nsurgery,\n\ntesting,\n\nvertebroplasty, ,\n\nwater therapy. _See_ aquatherapy.\n\nyoga\n\naquatherapy and, \u2013240\n\nbreathing exercises,\n\nBridge Pose,\n\nChild's Pose,\n\nCorpse Pose,\n\nDancer Pose,\n\nDownward-Facing Dog Pose,\n\nexplanation,\n\nFierce Pose, \u2013185\n\nForward Fold\/Ragdoll,\n\nHalf Locust Pose,\n\nHalf Wind-Relieving Posture,\n\nintroduction,\n\ninversion therapy and,\n\nlocations for,\n\nlying-down _vinyasa_ , \u2013183\n\nMountain Pose,\n\nStanding Backbend Pose,\n\nstanding _vinyasa_ , \u2013186\n\nTree Pose,\n\nWarrior Poses,\n\nYoung, Shinzen, \nText \u00a9 2011 Beth B. Murinson, M.S., M.D., Ph.D.\n\nFirst published in the USA in 2011 by\n\nFair Winds Press, a member of\n\nQuayside Publishing Group\n\n100 Cummings Center\n\nSuite 406-L\n\nBeverly, MA 01915-6101\n\nwww.fairwindspress.com\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.\n\n15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5\n\nISBN-13: 978-1-59233-406-3\n\nISBN-10: 1-59233-406-7\n\nDigital edition: 978-1-61059-377-9  \nSoftcover edition: 978-1-59233-406-3\n\n**Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data**\n\nMurinson, Beth B.\n\nTake back your back : everything you need to know to effectively reverse and manage back pain \/ Beth B. Murinson.\n\np. cm.\n\nIncludes index.\n\nISBN-13: 978-1-59233-406-3\n\nISBN-10: 1-59233-406-7\n\n1. Backache\u2014Poular works. I. Title.\n\nRD771.B217M867 2010\n\n617.5'64\u2014dc22 2010031796\n\nBook design: Kathie Alexander\n\nLayout: Kathie Alexander\n\nIllustrator: Robert Brandt\n\nPrinted and bound in China\n\nThe information in this book is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to replace the advice of a physician or medical practitioner. Please see your health-care provider before beginning any new health program.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nGerman For Dummies\u00ae, 2nd Edition\n\nby Paulina Christensen, Anne Fox, and Wendy Foster\n\nGerman For Dummies\u00ae, 2nd Edition\n\nPublished by  \nWiley Publishing, Inc.  \n111 River St.  \nHoboken, NJ 07030-5774  \nwww.wiley.com\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2011 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana\n\nPublished simultaneously in Canada\n\nNo part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at <http:\/\/www.wiley.com\/go\/permissions>.\n\nTrademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and\/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 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The fact that an organization or Website is referred to in this work as a citation and\/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.\n\nFor general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.\n\nFor technical support, please visit www.wiley.com\/techsupport.\n\nWiley publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that was not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at booksupport.wiley.com For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.\n\nLibrary of Congress Control Number: 2010942180\n\nISBN: 978-0-470-90101-4\n\nManufactured in the United States of America\n\n10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1\n\nAbout the Authors\n\nPaulina Christensen has been working as a writer, editor, and translator for almost ten years. She holds a degree in English and German literature and has developed, written, and edited numerous German-language textbooks and teachers' handbooks for Berlitz International. Her work as a translator ranges from new media art to science fiction (Starlog magazine). She occasionally works as a court interpreter and does consulting and interpreting at educational conferences, as well as voice-overs for educational videos and CD-ROMs. Dr. Christensen received her M.A. and Ph.D. from D\u00fcsseldorf University, Germany, and has taught at Berlitz Language Schools, New York University, and Fordham University.\n\nAnne Fox has been working as a translator, editor, and writer for the past twelve years. She studied at Interpreters' School, Zurich, Switzerland, and holds a degree in translation. Her various assignments have taken her to outer space, hyperspace, and around the world. She has also taught at Berlitz Language Schools and worked as a legal and technical proofreader in the editorial departments of several law firms. Most recently she has been developing, writing, and editing student textbooks and teacher handbooks for Berlitz.\n\nWendy Foster has been working as a teacher, writer, editor, and translator for longer than she can remember. She holds a degree in German from the Language and Interpreting Institute, Munich, Germany, an M.A. in French from Middlebury College, and a public school teaching certificate for German and French. She studied in France for two years, and then settled in Munich, Germany, where she worked in various teaching and writing capacities at various institutions, including Siemens, Hypovereinsbank, Munich Chamber of Commerce, and a number of publishers. She recently returned to her New England roots, where she works from her home overlooking a spectacular salt marsh that constantly beckons her to go kayaking, swimming, walking, and bird watching.\n\nBerlitz has meant excellence in language services for more than 120 years. At more than 400 locations and in 50 countries worldwide, Berlitz offers a full range of language and language-related services, including instruction, cross-cultural training, document translation, software localization, and interpretation services. Berlitz also offers a wide array of publishing products, such as self-study language courses, phrase books, travel guides, and dictionaries.\n\nThe world-famous Berlitz Method\u00ae is the core of all Berlitz language instruction. From the time of its introduction in 1878, millions have used this method to learn new languages. For more information about Berlitz classes and products, please consult your local telephone directory for the Language Center nearest you or visit the Berlitz Web site at www.berlitz.com, where you can enroll in classes or shop directly for products online.\n\nAuthor's Acknowledgments\n\nWendy: I must thank Paulina Christensen and Anne Fox, who put so much time, effort, and knowledge into the first edition of this book. Thanks also to the editorial staff at Wiley for their unwavering support and to the technical reviewers, Tom Beyer and Chris Bellmann, who provided invaluable assistance. Finally, I would like to thank my friends at Fisherman's Cove for their friendship, patience, and humor, especially Phil, Crista, and Kitty.\n\nPublisher's Acknowledgments\n\nWe're proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at <http:\/\/dummies.custhelp.com>. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.\n\nSome of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:\n\nAcquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development\n\nProject Editors: Corbin Collins, Tracy Barr\n\n(Previous Edition: Mary Goodwin)\n\nAcquisitions Editor: Michael Lewis\n\nCopy Editor: Christine Pingleton\n\nAssistant Editor: David Lutton\n\nTechnical Editors: Thomas Beyer, Christian Bellmann\n\nAssistant Project Manager:  Jenny Swisher\n\nAssociate Producer:  Josh Frank\n\nQuality Assurance:  Doug Kuhn\n\nCD Producer:  Her Voice Unlimited, LLC\n\nEditorial Manager:  Jennifer Ehrlich\n\nEditorial Assistant:  Jennette ElNaggar\n\nArt Coordinator:  Alicia B. South\n\nCover Photos: \u00a9iStockphoto.com \/ ihoe \/ Brian Chase \/ Amanda Cotton\n\nCartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)\n\nComposition Services\n\nProject Coordinator: Sheree Montgomery\n\nLayout and Graphics: Mark Pinto, SDJumper, Christin Swinford\n\nProofreaders: Linda Seifert, Dwight Ramsey\n\nIndexer: Potomac Indexing, LLC\n\nIllustrator: Elizabeth Kurtzman\n\nPublishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies\n\nDiane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher, Consumer Dummies\n\nKristin Ferguson-Wagstaffe, Product Development Director, Consumer Dummies\n\nEnsley Eikenburg, Associate Publisher, Travel\n\nKelly Regan, Editorial Director, Travel\n\nPublishing for Technology Dummies\n\nAndy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher, Dummies Technology\/General User\n\nComposition Services\n\nDebbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services\n\n# German For Dummies\u00ae, 2nd Edition\n\nVisit www.dummies.com\/cheatsheet\/german to view this book's cheat sheet.\n\n**Table of Contents**\n\nIntroduction\n\n> About This Book\n> \n> Conventions Used in This Book\n> \n> Foolish Assumptions\n> \n> How This Book Is Organized\n>\n>> Part I: Getting Started\n>> \n>> Part II: German in Action\n>> \n>> Part III: German on the Go\n>> \n>> Part IV: The Part of Tens\n>> \n>> Part V: Appendixes\n> \n> Icons Used in This Book\n> \n> Where to Go from Here\n\nPart I: Getting Started\n\n> Chapter 1: You Already Know a Little German\n>\n>> The German You Know\n>>\n>>> Friendly allies (perfect cognates)\n>>> \n>>> Kissing cousins (near cognates)\n>>> \n>>> False friends\n>>> \n>>> Lenders and borrowers\n>> \n>> Using Popular Expressions\n> \n> Chapter 2: The Nitty-Gritty: Basic German Grammar\n>\n>> Getting a Handle on Parts of Speech\n>>\n>>> Nouns\n>>> \n>>> Articles\n>>> \n>>> Pronouns\n>>> \n>>> Adjectives\n>>> \n>>> Verbs\n>>> \n>>> Adverbs\n>> \n>> Constructing Simple Sentences\n>>\n>>> Arranging words in the right order\n>>> \n>>> Putting the verb in second place\n>>> \n>>> Pushing the verb to the end\n>>> \n>>> Forming questions\n>> \n>> The Tenses: Past, Present, and Future\n>>\n>>> Looking at the present\n>>> \n>>> Talking about the past: The perfect tense\n>>> \n>>> Writing about the past: Using the simple past tense of verbs\n>>> \n>>> Talking about the future\n>> \n>> Putting the Language in the Proper Case\n>>\n>>> A quick trip through the different cases\n>>> \n>>> Why all these cases matter\n> \n> Chapter 3: Hallo! Pronunciation and Basic Expressions \n>\n>> Mouthing Off: Basic Pronunciation\n>>\n>>> Dealing with stress in German\n>>> \n>>> Building the alphabet blocks\n>>> \n>>> Pronouncing vowels\n>>> \n>>> Pronouncing \u00e4, \u00f6, and \u00fc\n>>> \n>>> Pronouncing diphthongs\n>>> \n>>> Pronouncing consonants\n>>> \n>>> Pronouncing combinations of consonants\n>> \n>> Getting Formal or Informal\n>> \n>> Saying \"Hello,\" \"Goodbye,\" and \"How Are You?\"\n>>\n>>> Asking \"How are you?\"\n>>> \n>>> Replying to \"How are you?\"\n>> \n>> Introducing Yourself and Your Friends\n>>\n>>> Introducing your friends\n>>> \n>>> Introductions for special occasions\n>>> \n>>> Introducing yourself\n> \n> Chapter 4: Getting Numbers, Time, andMeasurements Straight\n>\n>> Juggling Numbers\n>> \n>> Telling Time\n>>\n>>> Asking for the time\n>>> \n>>> Telling time with the 12-hour clock\n>>> \n>>> Using the 24-hour system\n>>> \n>>> Times of the day\n>>> \n>>> Days of the week\n>> \n>> Naming the Months\n>> \n>> Measurements, Quantities, and Weights\n> \n> Chapter 5: Talking about Home and Family\n>\n>> Living in an Apartment or House\n>>\n>>> Describing life within four walls\n>>> \n>>> Asking the right questions\n>> \n>> Talking about Your Family\n> \n> Part II: German in Action\n>\n>> Chapter 6: Getting to Know You: Making Small Talk\n>>\n>>> Talking about Yourself\n>>>\n>>>> Describing your work\n>>>> \n>>>> Providing your name and number(s)\n>>>> \n>>>> Looking at possessive pronouns\n>>> \n>>> Conversing about Cities, Countries, and Nationalities\n>>>\n>>>> Revealing where you come from\n>>>> \n>>>> Using the all-important verb \"sein\"\n>>>> \n>>>> Asking people where they come from\n>>>> \n>>>> Discovering nationalities\n>>>> \n>>>> Chatting about languages you speak\n>>> \n>>> Making Small Talk about the Weather\n>>>\n>>>> Noting what it's like out there\n>>>> \n>>>> Discussing the temperature\n>>>> \n>>>> Describing the day's weather\n>> \n>> Chapter 7: Asking for Directions\n>>\n>>> \"Wo?\" \u2014 Asking Where Something Is\n>>> \n>>> \"Wie weit?\" How Far Is It?\n>>> \n>>> Going Here and There\n>>> \n>>> Asking \"How Do I Get There?\"\n>>>\n>>>> Using \"in\" to get into a location\n>>>> \n>>>> Using \"nach\" to get to a city or country\n>>>> \n>>>> Using \"zu\" to get to institutions\n>>> \n>>> Describing a Position or Location in Relation to Some Other Place\n>>> \n>>> Getting Your Bearings Straight with Left, Right, North, and South\n>>>\n>>>> Left, right, straight ahead\n>>>> \n>>>> The cardinal points\n>>> \n>>> Taking This or That Street\n>>> \n>>> Using Ordinal Numbers: First, Second, Third, and More\n>>> \n>>> Traveling by Car or Other Vehicle\n>> \n>> Chapter 8: Guten Appetit! Dining Out and Going to the Market\n>>\n>>> Hast du Hunger? Hast du Durst?\n>>> \n>>> All about Meals\n>>> \n>>> Setting the Table for a Meal\n>>> \n>>> Dining Out: Visiting a Restaurant\n>>>\n>>>> Deciding where to eat\n>>>> \n>>>> Making reservations\n>>>> \n>>>> Arriving and being seated\n>>>> \n>>>> Deciphering the menu\n>>>> \n>>>> Placing your order\n>>>> \n>>>> Applying the subjunctive to express your wishes\n>>>> \n>>>> Using modals to modify what you say \n>>>> \n>>>> Ordering something special\n>>>> \n>>>> Replying to \"How did you like the food?\"\n>>>> \n>>>> Asking for the check\n>>> \n>>> Shopping for Food\n>>>\n>>>> Knowing where to shop\n>>>> \n>>>> Finding what you need\n>> \n>> Chapter 9: Shopping Made Easy\n>>\n>>> Places to Shop around Town\n>>> \n>>> Finding Out about Opening Hours\n>>> \n>>> Navigating Your Way around a Store\n>>> \n>>> Just Browsing: Taking a Look at Merchandise\n>>> \n>>> Getting Assistance as You Shop\n>>> \n>>> Shopping for Clothes\n>>>\n>>>> Familiarizing yourself with the colors available\n>>>> \n>>>> Knowing your size\n>>>> \n>>>> Trying on the items you find\n>>> \n>>> Paying for Your Shopping Items\n>>> \n>>> Comparatively Speaking: Making Comparisons Among Objects\n>> \n>> Chapter 10: Going Out on the Town\n>>\n>>> What Would You Like to Do?\n>>> \n>>> Going to the Movies\n>>>\n>>>> Getting to the show\n>>>> \n>>>> Buying tickets\n>>> \n>>> What Was That? The Simple Past Tense of \"Sein\"\n>>> \n>>> Going to the Museum\n>>> \n>>> Talking about Action in the Past\n>>>\n>>>> Forming the past participle\n>>>> \n>>>> Using \"haben\" in the perfect tense\n>>>> \n>>>> Using \"sein\" in the perfect tense\n>>> \n>>> Going Out for Entertainment\n>>> \n>>> How Was It? Talking about Entertainment\n>>>\n>>>> Asking for an opinion\n>>>> \n>>>> Telling people what you think\n>>> \n>>> Going to a Party\n>>>\n>>>> Getting an invitation\n>>>> \n>>>> Talking about a party\n>> \n>> Chapter 11: Taking Care of Business and Telecommunications\n>>\n>>> Phoning Made Simple\n>>>\n>>>> Asking for your party\n>>>> \n>>>> Making the connection\n>>> \n>>> Making Appointments\n>>> \n>>> Leaving Messages\n>>> \n>>> A Few Words about Dative Pronouns\n>>> \n>>> Sending Written Correspondence\n>>>\n>>>> Sending a letter or postcard\n>>>> \n>>>> E-mailing\n>>>> \n>>>> Sending a fax\n>>> \n>>> Getting to Know the Office\n>>>\n>>>> Mastering your desk and supplies\n>>>> \n>>>> Doing business in German\n>> \n>> Chapter 12: Recreation and the Great Outdoors\n>>\n>>> Playing Sports\n>>>\n>>>> Playing around with the verb \"spielen\"\n>>>> \n>>>> Verbalizing sports you enjoy \n>>>> \n>>>> Inviting someone to play\n>>> \n>>> Using Reflexive Verbs to Talk about Plans \n>>>\n>>>> Getting reflexive\n>>>> \n>>>> Accusing and dating your pronouns\n>>>> \n>>>> Some common reflexive verbs\n>>>> \n>>>> Reflexive verbs that are flexible\n>>> \n>>> Exploring the Outdoors\n>>>\n>>>> Getting out and going\n>>>> \n>>>> Things to see along the way\n>>>> \n>>>> Going to the mountains\n>>>> \n>>>> Going to the country\n>>>> \n>>>> Going to the sea\n> \n> Part III: German on the Go\n>\n>> Chapter 13: Planning a Trip\n>>\n>>> Getting Help from a Travel Agent\n>>> \n>>> Planning Ahead: Using the Future Tense\n>>>\n>>>> Describing events in specific months\n>>>> \n>>>> Naming specific times in the months\n>>>> \n>>>> Rethinking Dates\n>>> \n>>> Dealing with Passports and Visas\n>>>\n>>>> The all-important passport\n>>>> \n>>>> Inquiring about visas\n>> \n>> Chapter 14: Making Sense of Euros and Cents\n>>\n>>> Changing Currency\n>>> \n>>> Heading to the ATM\n>>> \n>>> Getting Imperative\n>>> \n>>> Understanding the Euro and Other Currencies\n>> \n>> Chapter 15: Getting Around: Planes, Trains, Taxis, and Buses\n>>\n>>> Using German at the Airport\n>>>\n>>>> Getting your ticket\n>>>> \n>>>> Checking in\n>>>> \n>>>> Going through immigration\n>>>> \n>>>> Going through customs\n>>> \n>>> Traveling by Car\n>>>\n>>>> Renting a car\n>>>> \n>>>> Making sense of maps\n>>>> \n>>>> Wrapping your brain around road signs\n>>> \n>>> Taking a Train\n>>>\n>>>> Interpreting train schedules\n>>>> \n>>>> Getting information\n>>>> \n>>>> Buying tickets\n>>> \n>>> Knowing When to Separate Your Verbs\n>>> \n>>> Navigating Buses, Subways, and Taxis\n>>>\n>>>> Catching the bus\n>>>> \n>>>> Getting a taxi\n>> \n>> Chapter 16: Finding a Place to Stay\n>>\n>>> Finding a Hotel\n>>> \n>>> Reserving Rooms\n>>>\n>>>> Saying when and how long you want to stay\n>>>> \n>>>> Specifying the kind of room you want\n>>>> \n>>>> Asking about the price\n>>>> \n>>>> Finalizing the reservation\n>>> \n>>> Checking In\n>>>\n>>>> Stating how long you're staying\n>>>> \n>>>> Filling out the registration form\n>>>> \n>>>> Getting keyed in\n>>>> \n>>>> Asking about amenities and facilities\n>>> \n>>> Checking Out and Paying the Bill\n>>>\n>>>> Asking for your bill\n>>>> \n>>>> Asking small favors\n>> \n>> Chapter 17: Handling Emergencies\n>>\n>>> Requesting Help\n>>>\n>>>> Shouting for help\n>>>> \n>>>> Reporting a problem\n>>>> \n>>>> Asking for English-speaking help\n>>> \n>>> Getting Medical Attention\n>>>\n>>>> Describing what ails you\n>>>> \n>>>> Telling about any special conditions\n>>>> \n>>>> Getting an examination\n>>>> \n>>>> Specifying parts of the body\n>>>> \n>>>> Getting the diagnosis\n>>>> \n>>>> Getting treatment\n>>> \n>>> Talking to the Police\n>>>\n>>>> Describing what was stolen\n>>>> \n>>>> Answering questions from the police\n>>>> \n>>>> Getting legal help\n> \n> Part IV: The Part of Tens\n>\n>> Chapter 18: Ten Ways to Pick Up German Quickly\n>>\n>>> Labeling the World Around You\n>>> \n>>> Organizing Useful Expressions\n>>> \n>>> Writing Shopping Lists\n>>> \n>>> Thinking in German\n>>> \n>>> Using Language CDs and Downloads\n>>> \n>>> Watching German TV and Listening to German Radio Online\n>>> \n>>> Trying an Interactive German Program\n>>> \n>>> Watching German Movies\n>>> \n>>> Reading German Publications\n>>> \n>>> Eating German Cuisine\n>> \n>> Chapter 19: Ten Things Never to Say in German\n>>\n>>> Using the Right Form of Address\n>>> \n>>> Addressing Service People Correctly\n>>> \n>>> Hot or Cold?\n>>> \n>>> I'm Not Loaded\n>>> \n>>> Speaking of the Law with Respect\n>>> \n>>> Using \"Gymnasium\" Correctly\n>>> \n>>> Knowing the Appropriate Form of \"Know\"\n>>> \n>>> Going to the Right Closet\n>>> \n>>> Using Bekommen Properly\n>>> \n>>> Using the Right Eating Verb\n>> \n>> Chapter 20: Ten Favorite German Expressions\n>>\n>>> Alles klar!\n>>> \n>>> Wirklich\n>>> \n>>> Kein Problem\n>>> \n>>> Vielleicht\n>>> \n>>> Doch\n>>> \n>>> Unglaublich!\n>>> \n>>> Hoffentlich\n>>> \n>>> Wie sch\u00f6n!\n>>> \n>>> Genau!\n>>> \n>>> Stimmt's?\n>> \n>> Chapter 21: Ten Phrases That Make You Sound German\n>>\n>>> Sch\u00f6nes Wochenende!\n>>> \n>>> Gehen wir!\n>>> \n>>> Was ist los?\n>>> \n>>> Das klingt gut!\n>>> \n>>> Keine Ahnung\n>>> \n>>> Es zieht!\n>>> \n>>> Nicht zu fassen!\n>>> \n>>> Du hast Recht!\/Sie haben Recht!\n>>> \n>>> Lass es!\n>>> \n>>> Nicht schlecht!\n> \n> Part V: Appendixes\n>\n>> Appendix B: Verb Tables\n>> \n>> Appendix C: On the CD\n>> \n>> Appendix D: Answer Key\n>> \n>> Cheat Sheet\n> \n> Download CD\/DVD Content\nIntroduction\n\nWe are the players in a fascinating era, one that interconnects us with others all around the world. With globalization and technology as the driving forces, we find ourselves getting in closer and closer contact with more and more people. As a result, knowing how to say at least a few words in a language such as German is becoming an ever-more-vital tool.\n\nOur natural curiosity to find out about other cultures motivates us to hop on a plane and find out firsthand what everyday life is like in the German-speaking regions: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol in northern Italy, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein. Conducting international business in an increasingly competitive market necessitates personal contact; hence, more businesspeople are traveling overseas to countries like Germany, which has the largest economy in the European Union. On a more personal level, you may have friends, relatives, and neighbors who speak German, or you may want to get in touch with your heritage by learning a little bit of the language that your ancestors spoke.\n\nWhatever your reasons for wanting to learn some German, German For Dummies, 2nd Edition, is a terrific choice because it gives you the skills you need for basic communication in German. We're not promising super fluency here, but if you want to know how to greet someone, purchase a train ticket, or order food from a menu in German, you need look no further than this book.\n\nAbout This Book\n\nGerman For Dummies, 2nd Edition, is set up so that you can use it any way you want to \u2014 as a reference to dip into for specific questions you have about German, as a means of gaining knowledge of German in a systematic way, or just for the fun of getting the feel for another language. Perhaps your goal is to learn some words and phrases to help you get around when you travel to a German-speaking country. Maybe you simply want to be able to say \"Hello, how are you?\" to your German-speaking neighbor. At any rate, you can go through this book at your own pace, reading as much or as little at a time as you like. You don't need to plod through the chapters in order, either; you're welcome to read the sections that interest you most.\n\nConventions Used in This Book\n\nTo make this book easy for you to navigate, we've set up a few conventions:\n\n  German terms are set in boldface to make them stand out.\n\n  Pronunciation is set in parentheses following the German terms, and the stressed syllables are italicized.\n\n  English translations are italicized. You'll find them set in parentheses following the pronunciation of German terms or sentences.\n\n  In some cases, German speakers use the same pronunciation as English speakers for words, many of which are borrowed from English or other languages. When such words are pronounced the same way in German as in English, you'll see the English word in the pronunciation followed by the notation \"as in English\" rather than the usual phonetic pronunciation. Of course, if the pronunciation differs between the English and German, we include the German pronunciation as usual.\n\n  Verb conjugations (lists that show you the forms of a verb) are given in tables in this order:\n\n\u2022 The \"I\" form\n\n\u2022 The \"you\" (singular, informal [or sing. inf.]) form\n\n\u2022 The \"you\" (singular, formal [or sing. form.]) form\n\n\u2022 The \"he, she, it\" form\n\n\u2022 The \"we\" form\n\n\u2022 The \"you\" (plural, informal [or pl. inf.]) form\n\n\u2022 The \"you\" (plural, formal [or pl. form.]) form\n\n\u2022 The \"they\" form\n\nPronunciations follow in the second column. The example shown uses the verb \"to be.\" The conjugation starts with the German equivalent of \"I am, you are,\" and so on.\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich bin | iH bin\n\ndu bist | dooh bist\n\nSie sind | zee zint\n\ner, sie, es ist | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas ist\n\nwir sind | veer zint\n\nihr seid | eer zayt\n\nSie sind | zee zint\n\nsie sind | zee zint\n\nTo help you make fast progress in German, this book includes a few elements to help you along:\n\n  Talkin' the Talk dialogues: The best way to learn a language is to see and hear how it's used in conversation, so we include dialogues throughout the book. The dialogues come under the heading \"Talkin' the Talk\" and show you the German words, their pronunciations, and the English translations.\n\n  Words to Know blackboards: Acquiring key words and phrases is also important in language learning, so we collect these important words in sections that resemble chalkboards, with the heading \"Words to Know.\" Note: In the pronunciations given in these sections, the stressed syllables are underlined rather than italicized.\n\n  Fun & Games activities: If you want to flex your new language muscles, you can use the Fun & Games activities to reinforce what you learn. These activities are fun ways to check your progress.\n\nAlso note that, because each language has its own ways of expressing ideas, the English translations that we provide for the German terms may not be exactly literal. We want you to know the essence of what's being said, not just the meanings of single words. For example, the phrase Es geht (\u00eas geyt) can be translated literally as It goes, but the phrase is actually the equivalent of So, so, or Okay, which is what you see as the translation.\n\nFoolish Assumptions\n\nTo write this book, we made some assumptions about who you are and what you hope to gain from this book:\n\n  You know no German \u2014 or if you took German somewhere in your deep, dark past, you don't remember much more than Ja, Nein, Kindergarten, Guten Tag, and auf Wiedersehen.\n\n  You're primarily interested in communicating verbally in German, not in reading or writing German.\n\n  You're definitely not looking for a ho-hum textbook that puts you to sleep, nor do you want to plod through monotonous language exercises that drill German into your brain. You just want to know some practical words, phrases, and sentence constructions so that you can communicate basic information in German \u2014 with confidence.\n\n  You have no interest in memorizing long lists of bookish-sounding vocabulary words or a bunch of boring grammar rules.\n\n  You're excited about German and are looking forward to having some fun as you pick up a bit of the language.\n\nIf any or all of these statements apply to you, you've found the right book!\n\nHow This Book Is Organized\n\nThis book is divided by topic: first into parts and then into chapters. The following sections tell you what types of information you can find in each part.\n\nPart I: Getting Started\n\nThis part gets you acclimated by providing you with some German basics: how to pronounce words, how to form sentences, and so on. You find a wealth of basic survival-type expressions such as greetings and numbers. We even challenge you to boost your confidence by activating some German words that you probably already know. Finally, we outline the basics of German grammar that you may need to know when you work through later chapters in the book.\n\nPart II: German in Action\n\nIn this part, you begin learning and using German. Instead of focusing on grammar points as many dull, dusty language textbooks do, this part focuses on communicating effectively in everyday situations, such as shopping, asking for directions, going to a museum, dining, phoning, and lots more.\n\nPart III: German on the Go\n\nThis part gives you the tools you need to take your German on the road, whether you're looking to change money, find a place to stay, plan a trip, or take public or private transportation. There's even a chapter on handling emergencies.\n\nPart IV: The Part of Tens\n\nIf you're looking for small, easily digestible pieces of information about German, this part is for you. Here, you can find ten ways to learn German quickly, ten useful German expressions to know, and more.\n\nPart V: Appendixes\n\nThis part of the book includes important information that you can use for reference. Appendix A is a handy mini-dictionary in both German-to-English and English-to-German formats. If you encounter a German word that you don't understand or you need to know a specific word in German, you can look it up here. Appendix B features verb tables that show you how to conjugate both regular verbs and those verbs that stubbornly don't fit the pattern. Appendix C gives you the answer keys to all of the Fun & Games activities that appear in the book. Finally, Appendix D provides a listing of the tracks that appear on the accompanying audio CD so you can find out where in the book those dialogues are and follow along.\n\nIcons Used in This Book\n\nYou may be looking for particular information while reading this book. To make certain types of information easier for you to find, the following icons have been placed in the left-hand margins throughout the book:\n\n  This icon highlights tips that can make learning German easier.\n\n  This icon points out interesting information that you won't want to forget.\n\n  Languages are full of quirks that may trip you up if you're not prepared for them. This icon points to discussions of important grammar points.\n\n  If you're looking for information and advice about culture and travel, look for these icons. They draw your attention to interesting tidbits about the countries in which German is spoken.\n\n  The audio CD that comes with this book gives you the opportunity to listen to real German speakers so that you can get a better understanding of what German sounds like. This icon marks the Talkin' the Talk dialogues that you can listen to on the CD.\n\nWhere to Go from Here\n\nLearning a language is all about jumping in and giving it a try (no matter how bad your pronunciation is at first). So take the plunge! Start at the beginning, pick a chapter that interests you, or use the CD to listen to a few dialogues. Before long, you'll be able to respond, \"Ja!\" (yah) (yes) when someone asks you Sprechen Sie Deutsch? (shpr\u00eaH-en zee doych?) (Do you speak German?)\n\nNote: If you've never been exposed to German before, you may want to read the chapters in Part I before you tackle the later chapters. Part I gives you some of the basics that you need to know about the language, such as how to pronounce the various sounds, some basic expressions and words, and the fundamentals of German sentence structure.\nPart I\n\nGetting Started\n\nIn this part . . .\n\nYou have to start somewhere, but we bet that you know a lot more German than you think. Don't think so? Then check out Chapter 1. Chapter 2 covers some nuts-and-bolts grammar info that, well, you need to absorb. But don't worry \u2014 we make it fun. The other chapters get you up to speed with some basic expressions and vocabulary you can use right away, such as saying hello and goodbye, expressing numbers, time, and measurements, or talking about your family. Jetzt geht's los! (y\u00eatst geyts lohs!) (Here we go!)\nChapter 1\n\nYou Already Know a Little German\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Recognizing the German you already know\n\n  Spotting words that aren't what they seem\n\n  Using German idioms\n\nThe best way to learn a new language is to jump right in \u2014 no pussyfooting around. In this chapter, you get a head start in German by seeing some of the language you're already familiar with. You also find out some popular German expressions, and you get the hang of why you need to be careful with what are called \"false friends,\" that is, words that seem to be the same in both languages but actually have different meanings.\n\nThe German You Know\n\nBecause both German and English belong to the group of Germanic languages, quite a few words are either identical or similar in both languages. Words that share a common source are called cognates. Another group of words common to German and English stem from Latin-based words that English speakers are familiar with. Many of these have direct equivalents in German, for example, nouns that end in \"-tion.\"\n\nFriendly allies (perfect cognates)\n\nThe following words are spelled the same way and have the same meaning in German and in English. The only differences are the pronunciation, as shown in parentheses, as well as the fact that in German, nouns are always capitalized. In addition, German nouns have one of three genders, as seen on this list by the words der (masculine), die (feminine), and das (neuter) in front of each noun. See Chapter 2 for details on what gender is all about and go to Chapter 3 for information on the pronunciation key for each word presented in this book. In a few instances, the German and English pronunciation for the word is the same, so you'll see the English word in the pronunciation (followed by the notation \"as in English.\")\n\n  der Arm (d\u00ear \u00e2rm)\n\n  der Bandit (d\u00ear b\u00e2n-deet)\n\n  die Bank (dee b\u00e2nk)\n\n  die Basis (dee bah-zis)\n\n  blind (blint)\n\n  die Butter (dee boot-er)\n\n  digital (di-gi-t\u00e2l)\n\n  elegant (\u00eal-\u00ea-g\u00e2nt)\n\n  die Emotion (dee \u00ea-moh-tsee-ohn)\n\n  emotional (\u00ea-moh-tsee-oh-nahl)\n\n  der Finger (d\u00ear fing-er)\n\n  die Hand (dee h\u00e2nt)\n\n  das Hotel (d\u00e2s hotel [as in English])\n\n  die Inspiration (dee in-spi-r\u00e2-tsee-ohn)\n\n  international (in-ter-n\u00e2-tsee-oh-nahl)\n\n  irrational (ir-r\u00e2-tsee-oh-nahl)\n\n  legal (ley-gahl)\n\n  liberal (lee-b\u00ear-ahl)\n\n  der Mast (d\u00ear mast)\n\n  die Mine (dee meen-e)\n\n  modern (moh-d\u00earn)\n\n  der Moment (d\u00ear moh-m\u00eant)\n\n  die Motivation (dee moh-ti-v\u00e2-tsee-ohn)\n\n  das Museum (d\u00e2s mooh-zey-oohm)\n\n  der Name (d\u00ear nah-me)\n\n  die Nation (dee n\u00e2-tsee-ohn)\n\n  normal (nor-mahl)\n\n  die Olive (dee oh-lee-ve)\n\n  parallel (p\u00e2r-\u00e2-leyl)\n\n  das Problem (d\u00e2s proh-bleym)\n\n  der Professor (d\u00ear professor [as in English])\n\n  das Radio (d\u00e2s rah-dee-oh)\n\n  die Religion (dee rey-li-gee-ohn)\n\n  das Restaurant (d\u00e2s r\u00eas-tuh-ron)\n\n  die Rose (dee roh-ze)\n\n  der Service (d\u00ear ser-vis)\n\n  das Signal (d\u00e2s zig-nahl)\n\n  der Sport (d\u00ear shport)\n\n  die Statue (dee shtah-tooh-e)\n\n  der Stress (d\u00ear shtr\u00eas)\n\n  das System (d\u00e2s zers-teym)\n\n  das Taxi (d\u00e2s t\u00e2x-ee)\n\n  der Tiger (d\u00ear tee-ger)\n\n  tolerant (to-l\u00ear-\u00e2nt)\n\n  die Tradition (dee tr\u00e2-di-tsee-ohn)\n\n  der Tunnel (d\u00ear toohn-el)\n\n  wild (vilt)\n\n  der Wind (d\u00ear vint)\n\nKissing cousins (near cognates)\n\nMany words, like the ones shown in Table 1-1, are spelled almost the same in German as in English and have the same meaning. Table 1-1 also shows you something about German spelling conventions, which include:\n\n  The English c is a k in most German words.\n\n  The ou in English words like house or mouse is often equivalent to au in German words.\n\n  Many English adjectives ending in -ic or -ical have an -isch ending in German.\n\n  Some English adjectives ending in -y are spelled with -ig in German.\n\n  Some English nouns ending in -y have an -ie ending in German.\n\nTable 1-1 Words Similar in Meaning, Slightly Different in Spelling\n\n---\n\nGerman | English\n\ndie Adresse (dee ah-dr\u00eas-e) | address\n\nder Aspekt (d\u00ear \u00e2s-p\u00eakt) | aspect\n\nder B\u00e4r (d\u00ear bear [as in English]) | bear\n\nblond (blont) | blond(e)\n\ndie Bluse (dee blooh-ze) | blouse\n\nbraun (brown [as in English]) | brown\n\ndie Demokratie (dee d\u00ea-moh-kr\u00e2-tee) | democracy\n\ndirekt (di-r\u00eakt) | direct\n\nder Doktor (d\u00ear dok-tohr) | doctor\n\nexzellent (\u00eax-tsel-\u00eant) | excellent\n\nfantastisch (f\u00e2n-t\u00e2s-tish) | fantastic\n\ndas Glas (d\u00e2s glahs) | glass\n\ndas Haus (d\u00e2s hous) | house\n\nhungrig (hoong-riH) | hungry\n\ndie Industrie (dee in-dooh-stree) | industry\n\nder Kaffee (d\u00ear k\u00e2f-ey) | coffee\n\ndie Kom\u00f6die (dee koh-mer-dee-e) | comedy\n\ndie Kondition (dee kon-di-tsee-ohn) | condition\n\ndas Konzert (d\u00e2s kon-ts\u00eart) | concert\n\ndie Kultur (dee kool-toohr) | culture\n\nlogisch (loh-gish) | logical\n\ndas Mandat (d\u00e2s m\u00e2n-daht) | mandate\n\nder Mann (d\u00ear m\u00e2n) | man\n\ndie Maschine (dee m\u00e2-sheen-e) | machine\n\ndie Maus (dee mouse [as in English]) | mouse\n\ndie Methode (dee m\u00ea-toh-de) | method\n\ndie Mobilit\u00e4t (dee moh-bi-li-tait) | mobility\n\ndie Musik (dee mooh-zeek) | music\n\ndie Nationalit\u00e4t (dee n\u00e2t-see-oh-nahl-i-tait) | nationality\n\ndie Natur (dee n\u00e2-toohr) | nature\n\noffiziell (oh-fits-ee-\u00eal) | official (adjective)\n\nder Ozean (d\u00ear oh-ts\u00ea-\u00e2n) | ocean\n\ndas Papier (d\u00e2s p\u00e2-peer) | paper\n\ndas Parlament (d\u00e2s p\u00e2r-l\u00e2-m\u00eant) | parliament\n\nperfekt (p\u00ear-f\u00eakt) | perfect\n\npolitisch (poh-li-tish) | political\n\npotenziell (po-t\u00ean-tsee-\u00eal) | potential (adjective)\n\npraktisch (pr\u00e2k-tish) | practical\n\ndas Programm (d\u00e2s proh-gr\u00e2m) | program\n\ndas Salz (d\u00e2s z\u00e2lts) | salt\n\nder Scheck (d\u00ear sh\u00eak) | check\n\nsonnig (zon-iH) | sunny\n\nder Supermarkt (d\u00ear zooh-p\u00ear-m\u00e2rkt) | supermarket\n\ndas Telefon (d\u00e2s t\u00ea-le-fohn) | telephone\n\ndie Theorie (dee tey-ohr-ee) | theory\n\ndie Trag\u00f6die (dee tr\u00e2-ger-dee-e) | tragedy\n\ndie Walnuss (dee vahl-noohs) | walnut\n\nFalse friends\n\nAs does every language, German contains some false friends \u2014 those words that look very similar to English but have a completely different meaning. As you read the following list, you can see why you should treat any new German word with kid gloves, especially if it looks like an English word, until, that is, you find out for sure what it means in English.\n\n  After (ahf-ter): If you want to avoid embarrassment, remember the meaning of this word. Its German meaning is anus and not after. The German word for after is nach (nahH) or nachdem (nahH-deym).\n\n  aktuell (\u00e2k-tooh-\u00eal): This word means up-to-date and current, not actual. The German translation for actual is tats\u00e4chlich (t\u00e2t-s\u00eaH-liH).\n\n  also (\u00e2l-zoh): This one means so, therefore, or thus; not also. The German word for also is auch (ouH).\n\n  bald (b\u00e2lt): This word means soon and is not a description for someone with little or no hair. The German word for bald is kahl (kahl) or glatzk\u00f6pfig (gl\u00e2ts-kerpf-iH).\n\n  bekommen (be-kom-en): This verb is an important one to remember. It means to get and not to become. The German word for to become is werden (v\u00ear-den).\n\n  Boot (boht): This is a boat and not a boot, which is Stiefel (shteef-el) in German. A sailboat is called a Segelboot (zey-g\u00eal-boht).\n\n  brav (brahf): This word means well-behaved and not brave. The German word for brave is tapfer (t\u00e2p-fer).\n\n  Brief (breef): This is a noun and means letter, not brief. The German translation for the English adjective brief is kurz (koorts), and, for the English noun, Auftrag (ouf-trahk) or Unterlagen (oon-ter-lah-gen).\n\n  Chef (sh\u00eaf): This is the German word for a person you take orders from, your boss or supervisor, not someone who's in charge of the cooking. The German word for chef is K\u00fcchenchef (kueH-\u00ean-sh\u00eaf) or Chefkoch (sh\u00eaf-koH). Otherwise, a plain cook is called a Koch (koH) in German.\n\n  eventuell (ey-v\u00ean-tooh-\u00eal): This one means possible or possibly, not eventual or eventually, both of which would be schlie\u00dflich (shlees-liH) in German.\n\n  fast (f\u00e2st): This is an adjective that means almost \u2014 not the speeds at which Formula One drivers race. The German word for fast is schnell (shn\u00eal) or rasch (r\u00e2sh).\n\n  genial (g\u00ea-nee-ahl): This adjective describes an idea or person of genius and has nothing to do with genial. The German word for genial is heiter (hay-ter).\n\n  Gift (gift [as in English]): The German meaning is poison, so when you're giving your German-speaking host a present, you should say you have a Geschenk (g\u00ea-sh\u00eank), that is, unless you really are giving something like weed killer or a green mamba.\n\n  Kind (kint): This is the German word for child. It has nothing to do with the English kind, which is nett (n\u00eat) or liebensw\u00fcrdig (lee-bens-vuerd-iH) in German.\n\n  Komfort (kom-fohr): This word means amenity, for example, the amenities you expect in a five-star hotel, not comfort. The German verb meaning to comfort [someone] is tr\u00f6sten (trers-ten).\n\n  kurios (koohr-ee-ohs): This word means strange, not curious. The German word for curious is neugierig (noy-geer-iH).\n\n  Mist (mist [as in English]): Be careful not to misuse this word that actually means manure in German! It doesn't describe heavy moisture resembling a fine rain, which is called Nebel (ney-bel) or Dunst (doonst).\n\n  Most (most): This is the German word for unfermented fruit juice, and in southern German-speaking regions, a young fruit wine. The German word for the English most is das meiste (d\u00e2s mays-te); for example, die meisten Leute (die mays-ten loy-te) (most people).\n\n  ordin\u00e4r (or-di-nair): This word means vulgar rather than ordinary. The German word for ordinary is normal (nor-mahl) or gew\u00f6hnlich (ge-vern-liH).\n\n  pathetisch (p\u00e2-tey-tish): This one means overly emotional, not pathetic, which, in German, is j\u00e4mmerlich (y\u00eam-er-liH) or armselig (\u00e2rm-zey-liH).\n\n  plump (ploomp): The German meaning is clumsy or tactless, not roundish, which in German is rundlich (roont-liH).\n\n  Pr\u00e4servativ (pr\u00ea-z\u00ear-vah-teef): Another embarrassing moment can be avoided when you know that this word means condom in German. The German equivalent of preservative is Konservierungsmittel (kon-s\u00ear-yeer-oongs-mit-el).\n\n  Provision (proh-vi-zee-ohn): The meaning of this word is commission, not provision. The German word for provision is Vorsorge (fohr-zor-ge) or Versorgung (f\u00ear-zohrg-oong).\n\n  See (zey): This word means lake or sea. In German, the verb to see is sehen (zey-en).\n\n  sensibel (zen-zee-bel): The meaning of this word is sensitive rather than sensible, which translates as vern\u00fcnftig (f\u00ear-nuenf-tiH).\n\n  sympathisch (zerm-pah-tish): This word means likeable or congenial,, not sympathetic. The German word for sympathetic is mitf\u00fchlend (mit-fuel-ent).\n\nLenders and borrowers\n\nA few German words have been adopted by the English language and have retained their meaning, such as Kindergarten (kin-der-g\u00e2r-ten), Angst (\u00e2nkst), kaputt (k\u00e2-poot), Ersatz (\u00ear-zats), Sauerkraut (zou-er-krout), Zeitgeist (tsayt-gayst), and Wanderlust (v\u00e2n-der-loost).\n\nHowever, the number of these German words is minimal compared to the English words that have made their way into the German language. At times, the combination of English and German makes for somewhat curious linguistic oddities. For example, you may hear das ist total in\/out (d\u00e2s ist toh-tahl in\/out [as in English]) (that's totally in\/out) or Sie k\u00f6nnen den File downloaden (zee kern-en deyn file [as in English] doun-lohd-en) (You can download the file).\n\nThe following is a list of German words that have been borrowed from the English language. Note that they all retain their English pronunciations, with a slight exception: The borrowed verbs are \"germanified,\" which simply means they combine the English verb, such as kill or jog, with -en, the German suffix that creates the infinitive form (to kill and to jog). Go to Chapter 2 for more on German infinitives:\n\n  der Boss\n\n  das Business\n\n  das Catering\n\n  die City (German meaning: downtown)\n\n  der Computer\n\n  cool\n\n  das Design\n\n  das Event\n\n  Fashion (used without article)\n\n  das Fast Food\n\n  das Feeling\n\n  flirten (to flirt)\n\n  der Headhunter\n\n  Hi\n\n  hip\n\n  der Hit\n\n  das Hotel\n\n  das Internet\n\n  das Interview\n\n  der Jetlag\n\n  der Job\n\n  joggen (to jog)\n\n  killen (to kill)\n\n  managen (to manage)\n\n  der Manager\n\n  das Marketing\n\n  das Meeting\n\n  Okay\n\n  online\n\n  outsourcen (to outsource)\n\n  die Party\n\n  pink\n\n  das Shopping\n\n  die Shorts\n\n  die Show\/Talkshow\n\n  das Steak\n\n  surfen (to surf waves or the Internet)\n\n  das Team\n\n  der Thriller\n\n  der Tourist\n\n  das T-Shirt\n\n  der Workshop\n\n  Wow\n\nFinally, a few English terms have different meanings in the German language. For example, the word Evergreen refers to a golden oldie, Handy means a cellphone, Mobbing means bullying or harassing, Oldtimer refers to a vintage car, and Wellness-Center means spa.\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nRead the following conversation with a grain of salt \u2014 and a smile. It gives you an idea of how many words have slid into German. However, you're not likely to overhear this many examples of mixed language in a single conversation. In this scenario, two friends, Claudia and Jana, meet on the street. Notice how some terms have a slightly different meaning in German.\n\nClaudia: | Hi Jana, wie geht's? Wie ist der neue Job?\n\nHi [as in English] y\u00e2-n\u00e2, vee geyts? vee ist d\u00ear noy-e job [as in English]?\n\nHi Jana, how are you? How's the new job?\n\n---|---\n\nJana: | Super! Heute war meine erste Presentation vor meinem big Boss, und er war total cool.\n\nsuper [as in English]! hoy-te vahr mayn-e \u00ears-te pre-zen-t\u00e2t-see-ohn fohr mayn-\u00eam big boss [as in English], oont \u00ear vahr toh-tahl cool [as in English].\n\nSuper! Today was my first presentation in front of my big boss, and he was totally cool.\n\nClaudia: | Wow! In meinem Office gibt es nur Stress. Mein Boss kann nichts managen. Mein Kollege checkt nichts, und denkt, er ist ein Sonnyboy, und alle anderen spinnen.\n\nwow [as in English]! in mayn-\u00eam office [as in English] gipt \u00eas noohr shtr\u00eas. mayn boss k\u00e2n niHts m\u00e2n-\u00e2-gen [g as in English]. mayn kol-ey-ge checkt niHts oont d\u00eankt \u00ear ist ayn sonny boy [as in English], oont \u00e2l-e \u00e2n-der-en spin-en.\n\nWow! In my office there's nothing but stress. My boss can't manage anything. My colleague isn't \"with it,\" and thinks he's a hot shot, and all the others are crazy.\n\nJana: | Ich gehe shoppen. Kommst du mit?\n\niH gey-e shop-en. Komst dooh mit?\n\nI'm going shopping. Do you want to come along?\n\nClaudia: | Nein, danke. Gestern war ich in einem Outlet und habe ein T-Shirt in pink und eine Jeans im Boyfriend-Look gekauft. Ich gehe jetzt joggen. Bye-bye!\n\nnayn, d\u00e2n-ke. g\u00eas-t\u00earn vahr iH in ayn-em outlet [as in English] oont hah-be ayn T-shirt [as in English] in pink [as in English] oont ayn-e jeans [as in English] im boyfriend-look [as in English] ge-kouft. iH gey-e y\u00eatst jog-en [jog as in English]. bye-bye [as in English]!\n\nNo, thanks. Yesterday I went to an outlet and bought a pink T-shirt and a pair of jeans in boyfriend look. I'm going jogging now. Bye!\n\nJana: | Schade. Bye-bye!\n\nshah-de. bye-bye!\n\nToo bad. Bye!\n\nUsing Popular Expressions\n\nJust like the English language, German has many idioms, which are expressions typical of a language and culture. If you translate these idioms word for word, they may sound obscure, silly, or just plain meaningless, so you definitely need to find out what they really mean in order to use them appropriately.\n\nSome expressions may have an English equivalent that's recognizable, so it's easier to get the hang of using them. For example, the German idiom ein Fisch auf dem Trockenen (ayn fish ouf deym trok-\u00ean-en) literally translates into a fish on the dry, which somewhat resembles the English a fish out of water. On the other hand, if you were to take apart the German expression Da liegt der Hund begraben (da leekt d\u00ear hoont be-grah-ben) word for word, you'd probably feel sorry for the poor dog, because in essence, it means something like That's where the dog is buried. However, the English equivalent is That's the heart of the matter.\n\nA few other typical German idioms are\n\nDie Daumen dr\u00fccken. (dee doum-en druek-en.) (Press the thumbs). The English meaning is Keep your fingers crossed.\n\nWo sich Fuchs und Hase gute Nacht sagen (voh ziH fooks oont hah-ze gooh-te n\u00e2Ht zah-gen) (where fox and hare say good night to one another), which means in the middle of nowhere, or in the sticks.\n\nIch bin fix und fertig. (iH bin fix oont f\u00ear-tiH.) (I'm quick and ready.) This means I'm wiped out, or I'm exhausted.\n\nDu nimmst mich auf den Arm! (dooh nimst miH ouf deyn \u00e2rm!) (You're taking me on your arm!), meaning You're pulling my leg!\n\nDas ist ein Katzensprung. (d\u00e2s ist ayn k\u00e2ts-en-shproong.) (That's a cat's jump.) The English meaning is It's a stone's throw away.\n\nSchlafen wie ein Murmeltier (shl\u00e2f-en vee ayn moor-mel-teer) (sleep like a woodchuck [marmot]). In English, you say sleep like a log.\n\nApart from such idioms, many handy and frequently used German expressions are easy to learn. Here are some of them:\n\nPrima!\/Klasse!\/Toll! (pree-mah!\/kl\u00e2s-e!\/t\u00f4l!) (Great!)\n\nFertig. (f\u00eart-iH.) (Ready.\/Finished.) This can be either a question or a statement.\n\nQuatsch! (qv\u00e2ch!) (Nonsense!\/How silly of me!)\n\nEinverstanden. (ayn-f\u00ear-sht\u00e2nd-en.) (Agreed.\/Okay.)\n\nVielleicht. (fee-layHt.) (Maybe.\/Perhaps.)\n\nMach's gut. (v\u00eert ge-m\u00e2Ht.) (Take it easy.) This is a casual way of saying good-bye.\n\nWie, bitte? (vee bi-te?) ([I beg your] pardon?\/What did you say?)\n\nMacht nichts. (m\u00e2Ht niHts.) (Never mind.\/That's okay.)\n\nNicht der Rede wert. (niHt d\u00ear rey-de v\u00eart.) (Don't mention it.)\n\nSchade! (shah-de!) (Too bad!\/What a pity!)\n\nSo ein Pech! (zoh ayn p\u00eaH!) (Bad luck!)\n\nViel Gl\u00fcck! (feel gluek!) (Good luck!)\n\nOder? (oh-der?) (Isn't that true?\/Don't you think so?)\n\nBis dann! (bis d\u00e2n!) (See you then!)\n\nBis bald! (bis b\u00e2lt!) (See you soon!)\nChapter 2\n\nThe Nitty-Gritty: Basic German Grammar\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Identifying parts of speech\n\n  Combining words to create sentences\n\n  Talking in terms of the past, present, and future\n\n  Making a case for cases\n\nWhen you think about grammar, imagine a big dresser with lots of drawers. Instead of being filled with all kinds of clothing, these drawers contain different types of words, called parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and so on. Each part of speech is in a separate drawer.\n\nNow imagine it's early morning and you're about to utter your first German sentence of the day. To begin, you reach into the noun drawer and pull out the word Socken (zok-en) (socks). Next, to describe your socks, you reach into the adjective drawer and pull out two words, neu (noy) (new) and schwarz (shv\u00e2rts) (black). To indicate what you do with your new black socks, you fish through the verb drawer and pull out the verb anziehen (\u00e2n-tsee-en) (to put on). And because you're running late, you dive straight into the adverb drawer and grab the word schnell (shn\u00eal) (quickly). Now, to construct a whole sentence, you need another item, this one from the pronoun drawer: ich (iH) (I). Before you know it, you've pulled a complete sentence out of the dresser: Ich ziehe schnell meine neuen schwarzen Socken an (iH tsee-he shn\u00eal mayn-e noy-en shv\u00e2rts-en zok-en \u00e2n) (I quickly put my new black socks on).\n\nTo construct a correct sentence, you need to know how to string all these words together, and that's what grammar is all about. This chapter makes using grammar as easy as getting dressed in the morning. With a few basic rules in your back pocket, you'll be using grammar with confidence in no time. So arrange your thoughts, grab the words you need, and before you know it, you'll be out the door and speaking \u2014 auf Deutsch (ouf doych) (in German).\n\nGetting a Handle on Parts of Speech\n\nTo construct a simple sentence, you need a certain number of building blocks, the parts of speech. The most essential of these are nouns, articles, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The following sections give you the lowdown on each of these.\n\nNouns\n\nA rose is a rose is a rose, right? Well, a rose is also a noun, and nouns aren't exactly the same in German and English. Although nouns in both languages name things (people, places, objects, concepts, and so on), the difference is that all German nouns are capitalized and have one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. The following sections go into more detail on gender and how to make singular German nouns plural.\n\nUnderstanding a noun's gender\n\nAs mentioned previously, German nouns have gender. That is, they are one of the following: masculine, feminine, or neuter. Unfortunately, the meaning of a noun isn't usually much help in predicting its grammatical gender. You need to keep in mind that in German, grammatical gender is an element of German grammar, and it's not related to the meaning of the noun. Instead, it's a kind of marker that identifies how the noun fits into a sentence. Sorry, no easy way out. You simply have to memorize the gender that belongs with each noun. However, a few guidelines can get you started:\n\n  Nouns for male persons, cars, nationalities, occupations, seasons, days, and months are usually masculine.\n\n  Nouns for most female persons, many flowers, and trees are feminine.\n\n  Nouns beginning with Ge- are usually neuter.\n\n  Nouns ending in -ist, -ich, -ismus, and -ner are usually masculine.\n\n  Nouns ending in -heit, -keit, -ik, -schaft, -ei, -t\u00e4t, and -ung are usually feminine.\n\n  Nouns ending in -chen, -lein, -ium, -um, and -tum are usually neuter.\n\n  Knowing a noun's gender becomes even more important when the noun is plopped into a sentence. How's that? Well, depending on the role the noun plays in the sentence, the three definite articles der (d\u00ear), die (dee), and das (d\u00e2s), all of which translate to the English the, can go through all kinds of spelling gyrations, and sometimes even the noun's spelling is altered. Same with the indefinite articles ein (ayn), eine (ayn-e), and ein (ayn), which correspond to the English a and an. In fact, because you can't really talk about German nouns without talking about the articles that accompany them, we devote a whole section to the topic. The key to all this morphing is what's known as case. Read the section \"Putting the Language in the Proper Case\" later in this chapter to shed more light on how to put German nouns and articles into sentences.\n\nMaking singular nouns plural\n\n  Throughout this book, you encounter nouns in their singular and\/or plural forms. You may notice that in German, there are several ways to change a singular noun to its plural form.\n\nTwo groups of words are easy to deal with:\n\n  The group of nouns that are the same in both the singular and plural forms, like the English noun \"sheep.\" Many of the nouns in this group are masculine- and neuter-gender words ending in -er, like das Fenster\/die Fenster (d\u00e2s fens-ter\/dee fens-ter) (window\/windows), and der Amerikaner\/die Amerikaner (d\u00ear \u00e2-mey-ree-kah-ner\/dee \u00e2-mey-ree-kah-ner) (American\/Americans).\n\n  The group of nouns that are mostly of foreign origin: The plural form of these nouns has an -s ending, for example das Radio\/die Radios (d\u00e2s rah-dee-oh\/dee rah-dee-ohs) (radio\/radios) and das Caf\u00e9\/die Caf\u00e9s (d\u00e2s caf\u00e9 [as in English] \/dee cafes) (caf\u00e9\/caf\u00e9s).\n\nOther plural form patterns include nouns that add -e, -er, or \u2013en; nouns that add an umlaut (represented by two dots over a vowel, as in \u00e4, \u00f6, and \u00fc); or a combination of both. Following are three examples: der Vater\/die V\u00e4ter (d\u00ear fah-ter\/dee fai-ter) (father\/fathers), die Lampe\/die Lampen (dee l\u00e2m-pe\/dee l\u00e2m-pen) (lamp\/lamps), and das Buch\/die B\u00fccher (das booH\/dee bueH-er) (book\/books). Sound complicated? You're right, so do try to make a point of remembering the plural form of a noun (and its gender!) when you first incorporate it into your active vocabulary.\n\nArticles\n\nNouns often appear in the company of a sidekick: a definite article (der, die, and das, which correspond to the English the) or an indefinite article (ein, eine, and ein, which correspond to a or an). Read on for more.\n\nThe definite articles (\"der,\" \"die,\" and \"das\" )\n\nHere's where German gets sticky. While the definite article the has only one form in English, in German, it has three forms: der (d\u00ear) (masculine), die (dee) (feminine), and das (d\u00e2s) (neuter). Which form you use depends on the gender of the German noun. Der is the definite article used with masculine nouns, die is used with feminine nouns, and das is used with neuter nouns.\n\n  When meeting a new noun, find out whether its definite article is der, die, or das \u2014 in other words, determine the gender of the noun. For example, memorize der Garten (d\u00ear g\u00e2r-ten) (the garden) rather than just Garten (g\u00e2r-ten) (garden), die T\u00fcr (dee tuer) (the door) rather than T\u00fcr (tuer) (door), and das Haus (d\u00e2s house [as in English]) (the house) rather than Haus (house) (house).\n\nFor plural nouns, things are comparatively easy. The definite article for all plural nouns, regardless of gender, is die (dee). And, as in English, the indefinite article a just vanishes in the plural: a garden becomes gardens.(The next section explains indefinite articles in more detail.)\n\nThe indefinite articles (\"ein,\" \"eine,\" and \"ein\")\n\nIn English, you use the indefinite article a or an when you want to specify one of a particular thing. Because you're dealing with three different genders in German, you also have to use three different indefinite articles. Luckily, the indefinite article for masculine and neuter nouns is the same:\n\n  For masculine nouns: You use ein (ayn), for example, ein Name (ayn nah-me) (a name), ein Mann (ayn m\u00e2n) (a man), and ein Berg (ayn b\u00earg) (a mountain).\n\n  For neuter nouns: You use ein (ayn), for example, ein Problem (ayn pro-bleym) (a problem), ein Museum (ayn moo-zey-oom) (a museum), ein Bier (ayn beer) (a beer).\n\n  For feminine nouns: You add an e to ein, making eine (ayn-e), for example, eine Nacht (ayn-e n\u00e2Ht) (a night), eine Adresse (ayn-e ah-dr\u00eas-e) (an address), and eine Cousine (ayn-e kooh-zeen-e) (a female cousin).\n\nNot too difficult, right? But things can get a little more complicated. You know that the gender of a noun determines the articles that are used with it. But the endings of the articles also change depending on whether the noun they're attached to is in the nominative, genitive, dative, or accusative case. The endings specified in the preceding list are those of the nominative case. For more information about case and how it affects both definite and indefinite articles, head to the later section \"Why all these cases matter.\"\n\nPronouns\n\nPronouns are the handy group of words that can punt for nouns so you don't sound redundant. In German, pronouns change form depending on their role in a sentence. For example, ich (iH) (I) can change into mich (miH) (me) or mir (mir) (me). For more on pronouns and case, see \"Putting the Language in the Proper Case\" later in this chapter.\n\nAdjectives\n\nAdjectives describe nouns. In German, adjectives have different endings depending on the gender, case (more about that later in this chapter), and number (singular or plural) of the noun they accompany. Adjective endings also depend on whether the adjective is accompanied by a definite article, an indefinite article, or no article at all.\n\nThe following list shows the endings for adjectives accompanied by a definite article in the nominative case (for more on case, see \"Putting the Language in the Proper Case\" later in this chapter). This list includes the adjectives sch\u00f6n (shern) (beautiful), wei\u00df (vays) (white), gro\u00df (grohs) (large), and klein (klayn) (small). The adjective endings appear in italics:\n\n  der sch\u00f6ne Garten (d\u00ear sher-ne g\u00e2r-ten) (the beautiful garden)\n\n  die wei\u00dfe T\u00fcr (dee vays-e tuer) (the white door)\n\n  das kleine Haus (d\u00e2s klayn-e hous) (the small house)\n\n  die gro\u00dfen H\u00e4user (dee grohs-en hoy-zer) (the large houses)\n\nFollowing are the nominative case endings for adjectives used alone (that is, without an accompanying article) or adjectives accompanied by an indefinite article:\n\n  (ein) sch\u00f6ner Garten ([ayn] sher-ner g\u00e2r-ten) ([a] beautiful garden)\n\n  (eine) wei\u00dfe T\u00fcr ([ayn -e] vays-e tuer) ([a] white door)\n\n  (ein) kleines Haus ([ayn] klayn-es hous) ([a] small house)\n\n  gro\u00dfe H\u00e4user (grohs-e hoy-zer) (large houses)\n\nAll the adjectives (and their corresponding endings) in the preceding examples are in the subject case (that is, the nominative case). The endings for the other cases follow a little later in this chapter.\n\nVerbs\n\nVerbs express actions or states of being. The person doing the action is the verb's subject, and the verb always adjusts its ending to the subject. For example, you say I open the door and the cat opens the door. In the present tense in English, most verbs have two different forms, or spellings, for example, open and opens. Most German verbs, on the other hand, have four different forms. (For further information on tenses, check out the section later in this chapter, \"The Tenses: Past, Present, and Future.\")\n\nThe verb form in its basic, static state is called the infinitive. It's what you see in the mini-dictionary at the back of this book, or in any dictionary for that matter. In English, the infinitive verb form looks like the following examples: to play, to think, or to ride, and you can put it into a sentence like this: I know how to ride a camel. German infinitives, however, usually have the ending -en, as in lachen (l\u00e2H-en) (to laugh), stuck onto what's called the stem. For example, the stem of lachen is lach-. A small number of verbs have the infinitive ending -n.\n\nThe stems of most verbs don't change, and the endings of such verbs are always the same. The following table shows the endings of the verb sagen (zah-gen) (to say). You tack the appropriate ending onto the stem sag-, depending on how you're expressing the verb.\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich sag-e | iH zah-ge\n\ndu sag-st | dooh z\u00e2gst\n\nSie sag-en | zee zah-gen\n\ner, sie, es sag-t | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas z\u00e2gt\n\nwir sag-en | veer zah-gen\n\nihr sag-t | eer z\u00e2gt\n\nSie sag-en | zee zah-gen\n\nsie sag-en | zee zah-gen\n\nSeems easy, doesn't it? But \u2014 as usual \u2014 some exceptions to the rule do exist. When the stem of the verb ends in -m, -n, -d, or -t, you need to insert an -e before the ending in the du, er\/sie\/es, and ihr constructions, as shown in the following examples:\n\ndu atm-e-st (\u00e2t-m\u00east) (you [singular, informal ] breathe)\n\ner arbeit-e-t (\u00e2r-bay-t\u00eat) (he works)\n\nihr bad-e-t (ba-d\u00eat) (you [plural, informal ] bathe)\n\nWhy the added e? Try to pronounce \"atmst,\" and you'll know.\n\nAdverbs\n\nAdverbs accompany verbs or adjectives and their purpose is to describe them. In English, most adverbs end with -ly (as in: I quickly put my new black socks on.) In German, adverbs are generally spelled the same as their adjective counterparts in their barebones form, without special endings.\n\nTake, for example, vorsichtig (fohr-ziH-tiH) (careful\/carefully), which has the same spelling for both its adjective and its adverb meaning. When you use vorsichtig in a sentence as an adverb, it keeps the same spelling, for example, Fahren Sie vorsichtig! (fahr-en zee fohr-ziH-tiH!) (Drive carefully!) However, when you use vorsichtig in a sentence as an adjective, it changes its form (spelling) the way all German adjectives do; see the previous section about adjectives. The following sentence shows how vorsichtig, when used as an adjective, changes its spelling according to the noun it describes:\n\nSie ist eine vorsichtige Fahrerin (zee ist ayn-e fohr-ziH-tig-e fahr-er-in) (She's a careful driver).\n\nConstructing Simple Sentences\n\nNouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs aren't just thrown together helter-skelter; instead, to create a logical sentence, you arrange words in a specific order. The correct order is determined by certain rules, which the next sections explain.\n\nArranging words in the right order\n\nStandard word order in German is much like English word order. The subject comes first, then the verb, followed by the rest of the sentence. Look at the following example sentence.\n\nSubject | Verb | Object\n\n---|---|---\n\nMeine Freundin | hat | einen Hund.\n\nmayn-e froyn-din | h\u00e2t | ayn-en hoont.\n\nMy girlfriend | has | a dog.\n\nPutting the verb in second place\n\nOne of the most important things to remember is the place of the verb in a German sentence. In freestanding clauses (known as independent clauses), like the one in the preceding section, a one-word verb is always in second place, no matter what. The term \"second place,\" however, doesn't necessarily mean the second word in the sentence. Rather, it refers to the second \"placeholder,\" which may be comprised of more than one word. For example, meine Freundin, the subject of the earlier sentence, consists of two words but it's the first placeholder. In the following examples, the verb is fahren (fahr-en) (to drive), and it follows the second place rule.\n\nMeine Freundin f\u00e4hrt nach D\u00e4nemark. (mayn-e froyn-din fairt n\u00e2H d\u00ea-ne-m\u00e2rk.) (My girlfriend is driving to Denmark.)\n\nHow about adding some more information?\n\nMeine Freundin f\u00e4hrt morgen nach D\u00e4nemark. (mayn-e froyn-din fairt mor-gen n\u00e2H d\u00ea-ne-m\u00e2rk.) (My girlfriend is driving to Denmark tomorrow.)\n\n  Standard practice in German sentences is to place the reference to time, morgen (mor-gen) (tomorrow), before the reference to place, nach D\u00e4nemark (n\u00e2H d\u00ea-ne-mark) (to Denmark), as you can see in the previous sentence. What happens if you start the sentence with morgen?\n\nMorgen f\u00e4hrt meine Freundin nach D\u00e4nemark. (mor-gen fairt mayn-e froyn-din n\u00e2H d\u00ea-ne-m\u00e2rk.) (Tomorrow my girlfriend is driving to Denmark.)\n\nMorgen is in first place, and because the verb has to be in second place, the subject follows the verb. Technically, this arrangement is called inversion of the verb. All it means is that the verb and the subject switch places. Inversion of the verb occurs whenever anything other than the subject occupies first place in a sentence.\n\nHaving said that, what about the statement Meine Freundin hat einen Hund (from the preceding section)? Can you give that one a twirl and change the word order? Absolutely, as long as the verb stays in second place, like this: Einen Hund hat meine Freundin. But why would you want to rearrange word order? Generally, you do so to shift emphasis in the meaning. For example, you may hear something along the lines of the following conversation:\n\nHat deine Schwester einen Hund? (h\u00e2t dayn-e shv\u00eas-ter ayn-en hoont?) (Does your sister have a dog?)\n\nNein, sie hat eine Katze. Einen Hund hat meine Freundin Heike. (nayn, zee h\u00e2t ayn-e k\u00e2ts-e. ayn-en hoont h\u00e2t mayn-e froyn-din hay-ke.) (No, she has a cat. It's my girlfriend Heike who has a dog.)\n\n  Don't German speakers get all confused playing around with word order like that? That's where the (in)famous German case system comes into play. Adjectives and articles that appear alongside nouns and, in some instances, the nouns themselves, assume different endings depending on their function in a sentence. So no matter where a noun appears in a German sentence, you can figure out its role by checking the ending of the article, the noun itself, and\/or the adjective. See \"Putting the Language in the Right Case\" later in this chapter for the details.\n\nPushing the verb to the end\n\nThe examples used so far in this section have all been independent, stand-alone sentences, but sometimes several thoughts combine to form a more complex structure:\n\nWir gehen nicht einkaufen, weil wir kein Geld haben. (veer gey-en niHt ayn-kouf-en, vayl veer kayn g\u00ealt hah-ben.) (We're not going shopping because we have no money.)\n\nThe verb gehen (gey-en) (go) is in second place as you would expect, but the verb in the second part of the sentence beginning with weil (vayl)) (because), gets kicked to the end. This arrangement of the verb happens in dependent clauses.\n\n  Dependent clauses typically start with subordinating conjunctions (words that link sentences) like dass (d\u00e2s) (that), weil (vayl) (because), damit (d\u00e2-mit) (so that), obwohl (op-vohl) (although), bevor (be-fohr) (before), and wenn (v\u00ean) (when), and they always end with the verb.\n\nForming questions\n\nThe German word order for asking yes or no questions is straightforward. You begin with a verb, and the subject follows.\n\nTanzen Sie gern? (tan-zen zee g\u00earn?) (Do you like to dance?)\n\nSpricht er Spanisch? (shpriHt \u00ear shp\u00e2n-ish?) (Does he speak Spanish?)\n\nNote that you don't have the verb do in German when forming questions.\n\nAnother way to elicit information is to form a question using a question word like wer (v\u00ear) (who), was (v\u00e2s) (what), wo (voh) (where), wann (v\u00e2n) (when), wie (vee) (how), or warum (vah-roohm) (why). You can also form a question with words and phrases like was f\u00fcr ein\/e\/en. . . ? (v\u00e2s fuer ayn\/e\/en. . . ?) (what kind of. . . ?) or welche\/r\/s. . . ? (v\u00ealH-e\/r\/s. . . ?) (which. . . ?). When forming questions with these words, the verb goes in its usual place \u2014 second:\n\nWas f\u00fcr ein Fahrrad kauft Helmut? (v\u00e2s fuer ayn fahr-r\u00e2d kouft h\u00eal-moot?) (What kind of bicycle is Helmut buying?)\n\nWer kauft ein Rennrad? (v\u00ear kouft ayn r\u00ean-r\u00e2d?) (Who's buying a racing bicycle?)\n\nWo kauft er das Rad? (voh kouft \u00ear d\u00e2s r\u00e2d) (Where's he buying the bike?)\n\nWarum kauft er ein Rennrad? (vah-roohm kouft \u00ear ayn r\u00ean-r\u00e2d?) (Why's he buying a racing bicycle?)\n\nThe Tenses: Past, Present, and Future\n\nIn grammar, the word \"tense\" is what the layperson calls \"time.\" You pick the appropriate tense to describe when the action you're talking about takes place. The ways to look at the concept of time differ slightly from one culture and language to the next, so the way tenses are used sometimes differs, too.\n\nLooking at the present\n\nThe present tense is an incredibly useful tense in German. You can go a long way using just this one tense. The German present tense corresponds to three forms in English. For example, ich denke (iH d\u00ean-ke) can be used as the equivalent of I think, I do think, or I am thinking in English. And it gets even better: Depending on the context, the German present tense can correspond to the past or future tense in English.\n\nThe present tense can be used to describe what's happening now:\n\nWas machst du gerade? (v\u00e2s m\u00e2Hst dooh ge-rah-de?) (What are you doing right now?)\n\nIch lese die Zeitung. (iH ley-ze dee tsay-toong.) (I'm reading the newspaper.)\n\nAdditionally, the present tense can describe what sometimes, usually, always, or never happens:\n\nFreitags gehe ich oft ins Kino. (fray-tahks gey-e iH oft ins kee-noh.) (I often go to the movies on Fridays.)\n\nThe German present tense can also describe what's going to happen:\n\nWir fliegen im Dezember nach Portugal. (veer fleeg-en im dey-ts\u00eam-ber n\u00e2H por-tooh-g\u00e2l.) (We're flying to Portugal in December.)\n\nN\u00e4chste Woche fahre ich nach Bremen. (naiH-ste voH-e fahr-e iH n\u00e2H brey-men.) (Next week I'm going to drive to Bremen.)\n\n  Using the present tense is a very common way of talking about future events in German, particularly if the sentence includes a time expression that anchors the action clearly in the future \u2014 for example, im Dezember (im dey-ts\u00eam-ber) (in December) or n\u00e4chste Woche (naiH-ste voH-e) (next week).\n\nAnd finally, Germans use the present tense to describe what's been happening up to now:\n\nIch lebe seit zehn Jahren in der selben Wohnung. (iH ley-be zayt tseyn yahr-en in d\u00ear z\u00eal-ben vohn-oong.) (I've been living in the same apartment for ten years.)\n\nWie lange lernst du schon Deutsch? (vee l\u00e2ng-e l\u00earnst dooh shohn doych?) (How long have you been learning German?)\n\nNote that English uses the present perfect tense to express the same thing.\n\nTalking about the past: The perfect tense\n\nThe perfect tense, for example, wir haben gegessen (veer hah-ben ge-g\u00eas-en) (we have eaten) or Jan hat gearbeitet (yahn h\u00e2t ge-ahr-bay-tet) (Jan has worked) is the main tense used to describe past events in spoken German. It's very versatile: You can use it to talk about most actions and situations in the past. Contrast this with the use of the English perfect tense (I have gone, I have eaten, and so on), which you can use only in specific contexts. For example, Ich habe Anna letzte Woche gesehen (iH hah-be \u00e2n-\u00e2 l\u00eats-te voH-e ge-zey-en) (I have seen Anna last week) is grammatically correct in German, even though it doesn't quite work in English.\n\n  In the preceding sentence, the verb has two parts, habe and gesehen. These two parts are described in grammatical terms as the conjugated verb (habe in this example) and the past participle (here, gesehen). German word order for using verbs that have two or more parts follows specific rules. When forming a sentence with multiple verb parts, the conjugated verb takes second position in the sentence, and the other part(s) of the verb \u2014 in this instance, it's the past participle \u2014 goes all the way to the end of the sentence. This rule holds true for all verbs that have two or more parts.\n\nMost verbs form the perfect tense by combining the conjugated form of the verb haben (hah-ben) (have) and the past participle form of the verb. The following examples follow the German word order rule, meaning that the conjugated form of the verb haben is in second position in the sentence, and the past participle of the verb that is being expressed is kicked to the end of the sentence:\n\nLuka hat mir geholfen. (looh-k\u00e2 h\u00e2t meer ge-holf-en.) (Luka [has] helped me.)\n\nGestern haben wir ein neues Auto gekauft. (g\u00eas-tern hah-ben veer ayn noy-\u00eas ou-toh ge-kouft.) (Yesterday we bought a new car.)\n\nHast du die Zeitung schon gelesen? (h\u00e2st dooh dee tsay-toong shohn ge-ley-zen?) (Have you read the newspaper yet?)\n\nIch habe den Film vor einer Woche gesehen. (iH hah-be deyn film fohr ayn-er woH-e ge-zey-en.) (I saw the film a week ago.)\n\nCertain verbs require sein (zayn) (to be) instead of haben (hah-ben) (to have) to form the perfect tense. These verbs often describe some form of movement or a state. Here are a few examples:\n\nGestern bin ich ins Kino gegangen. (g\u00eas-tern bin iH ins kee-noh ge-g\u00e2ng-en.) (I went to the movies yesterday.)\n\nIch bin in Hamburg gewesen. (iH bin in h\u00e2m-boorg ge-vey-zen.) (I've been to Hamburg.\/I was in Hamburg.)\n\nBist du mit dem Auto gekommen? (bist dooh mit deym ou-toh ge-kom-en?) (Did you come by car?)\n\nSie ist nicht mit dem Zug gefahren. (zee ist niHt mit deym tsoohk ge-fahr-en.) (She didn't take the train.)\n\n  You can find the verb forms for haben and sein in Appendix B.\n\nGerman verbs fall into two categories: weak and strong verbs. Regular verbs, known as weak verbs, make up the largest group of German verbs.\n\nForming the past participle of a weak verb\n\nHere's the formula for forming the past participle of a weak (regular) verb:\n\nge \\+ verb stem (the infinitive minus -en) + (e)t = past participle\n\nFor example, for the verb fragen (frah-gen) (to ask), the formula looks like this:\n\nge \\+ frag \\+ t = gefragt\n\nSome exceptions to this formula do exist. When the stem of the verb ends in -m, -n, -d, or -t, you need to insert an -e after the stem and before adding the -t, for example with the verbs arbeiten (\u00e2r-bay-ten) (to work) and atmen (\u00e2t-men) (to breathe) like this:\n\nge \\+ arbeit \\+ e \\+ t = gearbeitet\n\nge \\+ atm \\+ e \\+ t = geatmet\n\nForming the past participle of a strong verb\n\nHere's the formula for constructing the past participle of a strong (irregular) verb:\n\nge \\+ verb stem (the infinitive minus -en) + en = past participle\n\nFor the verb kommen (kom-en) (to come), the past participle is\n\nge \\+ komm \\+ en = gekommen\n\nSee Chapter 10 for more information on the perfect tense.\n\nWriting about the past: Using the simple past tense of verbs\n\nThe simple past verb tense is used all the time in printed German, such as newspapers or books, but it's much less common in spoken German. For this reason, you don't come across it much in this book. One exception is the simple past tense of sein (zayn) (to be), which is often preferable to the perfect tense in both speech and writing. The following table shows you the various forms of the simple past tense of the verb sein,\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich war | iH vahr\n\ndu warst | dooh vahrst\n\nSie waren | zee vahr-en\n\ner, sie, es war | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas vahr\n\nwir waren | veer vahr-en\n\nihr wart | eer vahrt\n\nSie waren | zee vahr-en\n\nsie waren | zee vahr-en\n\nThe following example sentences use the simple past tense of the verb sein:\n\nIch war heute Nachmittag nicht zu Hause. (iH vahr hoy-te n\u00e2H-mi-t\u00e2hk niHt tsooh hou-ze.) (I wasn't home this afternoon.)\n\nGestern waren wir sehr m\u00fcde. (g\u00eas-tern vahr-en veer zeyr mue-de.) (We were very tired yesterday.)\n\nTalking about the future\n\nThe future tense isn't used as frequently in German as it is in English. In many situations, you can use the present tense instead (refer to \"Looking at the present\" earlier in this chapter). When talking about events that will take place in the future, you can, of course, also use the future tense. The way to form the future tense in German is pretty similar to English. You take the verb werden (veyr-den) (will\/to become) and add an infinitive.\n\nThe following table shows you the forms of the verb werden in the present tense.\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich werde | iH veyr-de\n\ndu wirst | dooh virst\n\nSie werden | zee veyr-den\n\ner, sie, es wird | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas virt\n\nwir werden | veer veyr-den\n\nihr werdet | eer veyr-det\n\nSie werden | zee veyr-den\n\nsie werden | zee veyr-den\n\nTo incorporate the future tense of verbs into sentences, you follow the standard German word order for using verbs that have two parts: The conjugated verb, in this case it's werden, takes second position in the sentence. The other verb part, which, for the future tense, is the infinitive of the verb, goes all the way to the end of the sentence, as the following examples show:\n\nIch werde viel Geld verdienen. (iH veyr-de feel g\u00ealt f\u00ear-deen-en.) (I'm going to\/I'll earn a lot of money.)\n\nWir werden morgen skifahren. (veer veyr-den mor-gen shee-fahr-en.) (We'll go\/We're going skiing tomorrow.)\n\nEs wird regnen. (\u00eas virt reyg-nen.) (It's going to rain.)\n\nPutting the Language in the Proper Case\n\nAll languages have ways of showing what role each noun plays in a particular sentence, for example, who (or what) is doing what to whom. In English, you show a noun's role mainly by its position in a sentence. German speakers, on the other hand, indicate the function of a noun in a sentence mainly by adding endings to any articles or adjectives accompanying that noun (and sometimes to the noun itself).\n\nA quick trip through the different cases\n\nIn a sentence, nouns appear in one of four cases, depending on their role: nominative for the subject, accusative for the direct object, dative for the indirect object, and genitive to show possession.\n\n  Nominative case: The subject of a sentence is always in the nominative case. As a rule, the subject is the person or thing performing the action of the verb. For example, in the sentence Der Junge stiehlt eine Wurst (d\u00ear yoong-e shteelt ayn-e voorst) (The boy steals a sausage), the boy is the subject of the sentence: He's the one stealing a sausage.\n\n  Accusative case: The direct object of the sentence is always in the accusative case. The direct object is the person or thing directly affected by the action of the verb. So in the sentence Der Junge stiehlt eine Wurst (the example introduced in the preceding bullet), sausage is the direct object. It's the thing that's being stolen.\n\n  Dative case: The indirect object of the sentence is always in the dative case. Think of the indirect object as the person or thing that receives the direct object. Look at the sentence Der Junge gibt dem Hund die Wurst (d\u00ear yoong-e gipt deym hoont dee voorst) (The boy gives the sausage to the dog). Here, the dog is the indirect object because the boy gives the sausage to Fido. (The sausage is the direct object, the thing that's being given.)\n\n  If a sentence has two objects, one of them is probably an indirect object. If in doubt, try translating the sentence into English: If you can put \"to\" before one of the nouns, that's the indirect object in the German sentence.\n\n  Genitive case: The genitive case is used to indicate possession. The person or thing that possesses is in the genitive case. For example, in the phrase der Hund des Jungen (d\u00ear hoont d\u00eas yoong-en) (the boy's dog), the boy possesses the dog, so the boy is in the genitive case.\n\nIn this book, you mainly encounter the nominative, accusative, and dative cases. The genitive case is used less frequently; we mention it here only for the sake of completeness.\n\nWhy all these cases matter\n\nYou may be wondering why we're making such a big deal about this case business. Understanding the various cases is a complex but necessary step when learning German. The different cases make pronouns change form. And the cases also make the endings of articles and adjectives change. Read on for the nitty-gritty.\n\nHow pronouns change\n\nYou use pronouns instead of nouns as a way to avoid clumsy repetition. Pronouns change form depending on how they're used in a sentence. Table 2-1 shows you the pronouns in the nominative, dative, and accusative cases. Notice how the pronouns change according to case.\n\nFollowing are examples of the second person singular pronoun du appearing in the nominative, dative, and accusative cases depending on its function in a sentence:\n\nDu bist sehr sch\u00f6n. (dooh bist zeyr shern.) (You're very beautiful.) du = nominative.\n\nIch gebe dir einen Ring. (iH gey-be deer ayn-en ring.) (I'm giving you a ring.) dir = dative.\n\nIch habe dich lieb. (iH hah-be diH leep.) (I'm very fond of you). dich = accusative\n\nHow definite articles change\n\nThe definite articles (refer to the earlier section \"The definite article\") also morph depending on which case they're used in, as shown in Table 2-2.\n\nThe following examples show the masculine definite article der with its appropriate endings in the four different cases:\n\nDer Fuchs l\u00e4uft \u00fcber die Stra\u00dfe. (d\u00ear foox loyft ue-ber dee shtrah-se.) (The fox is running across the road.) der = nominative.\n\nSie lebt in der Wohnung des Freundes. (zee l\u00eapt in d\u00ear vohn-oong d\u00eas` `froyn-des.) (She lives in the friend's apartment.) des = genitive.\n\nIch leihe dem Freund mein Auto. (iH lay-he deym froynt mayn ou-toh.) (I'm lending my car to the friend.) dem = dative.\n\nKaufst du den Computer? (koufst dooh deyn computer [as in English]?) (Are you buying the computer?) den = accusative.\n\nHow indefinite articles change\n\nThe German indefinite article ein (ayn) (a) can assume different endings. Which ending ein takes depends on whether it accompanies the subject of a sentence (nominative), a possessive object (genitive), the direct object (accusative), or the indirect object (dative). Table 2-3 shows you the indefinite article ein being put through the paces of the various cases.\n\nThe following examples show the indefinite article ein with its appropriate masculine endings in the four different cases:\n\nEin Fuchs l\u00e4uft \u00fcber die Stra\u00dfe. (ayn foox loyft ue-ber dee shtrah-se.) (A fox is running across the road.) ein = nominative.\n\nSie lebt in der Wohnung eines Freundes. (zee l\u00eapt in d\u00ear vohn-oong` `ayn-es froyn-des.) (She lives in a friend's apartment.) eines = genitive.\n\nIch leihe einem Freund mein Auto. (iH lay-he ayn-em froynt mayn ou-toh.) (I'm lending my car to a friend.) einem = dative.\n\nKaufst du einen Computer? (koufst dooh ayn-en computer [as in English]) (Are you buying a computer?) einen = accusative.\n\nHow possessives change\n\nPossessive adjectives establish ownership. They mark the difference between what belongs to you (\"your book\") what belongs to me (\"my book\"), and so on. Here's a run-through of the forms for the different persons:\n\n  mein (mayn) (my)\n\n  dein (dayn) (your) (informal, singular address)\n\n  Ihr (eer) (your) (formal, singular address)\n\n  sein, ihr, sein (zayn, eer, zayn) (his, her, its)\n\n  unser (oon-zer) (our)\n\n  euer (oy-er) (your) (informal, plural address)\n\n  Ihr (eer) (your) (formal, plural address)\n\n  ihr (eer) (their)\n\nTable 2-4 presents all the forms in the singular of a sample possessive, mein (mayn) (my). The other possessives take the same endings. These endings may look familiar; they're the same as those for the indefinite article ein (ayn) (a, an), as well as for the adjective that negates a noun, kein (kayn) (no, not, not any).\n\nHow adjective endings change\n\nAs we mention earlier in this chapter, adjectives and articles that accompany nouns change their endings according to the role of the noun in the sentence. To illustrate the endings for both adjectives and articles with nouns they're describing, Table 2-5 shows the endings in combination with an indefinite article, and Table 2-6 shows the definite article.\n\nIn Table 2-5 you see how the adjective endings change when an indefinite article precedes them. The so-called ein- words also follow the same pattern. Ein- words include kein (kayn) (no, not, not any) and the possessive adjectives, a list of which is in the previous section. This table includes the word kein for the plural forms because the indefinite article has no plural. For more information on using kein, see Chapter 5.\n\nChapter 3\n\nHallo! Pronunciation and Basic Expressions\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Pronouncing German\n\n  Addressing people formally or informally\n\n  Greeting others and saying goodbye\n\n  Making introductions\n\nGreetings and introductions are your crucial first steps in establishing contact with other people and making a positive first impression. When handled correctly, that initial contact can open doors for you. To that end, this chapter helps you determine whether to use formal or informal language in various situations. Then it introduces the basic expressions of polite conversation: how to say hello and goodbye and how to ask and answer the universal question \"How are you?\" Finally, it shows you how to make introductions.\n\nOf course, before you can speak German, you need to know how to pronounce German letters, many of which are not pronounced the same as they are in English. For that reason, this chapter begins with the information you need to be able to pronounce German words, if not exactly like a native speaker, at least close enough to be clearly understood. As with anything else, practice makes perfect. Read on for specifics.\n\nMouthing Off: Basic Pronunciation\n\nSpeaking a foreign language correctly is all about mastering the basics of pronunciation. And the key to decent pronunciation is to start small by knowing how the individual letters sound \u2014 then expand to syllables, words, and finally sentences. The rest is practice, practice, practice.\n\nDealing with stress in German\n\nThis type of stress doesn't have anything to do with meeting deadlines or having a BMW tailgate you at 110 miles per hour on the Autobahn. Instead, it's about stressed syllables in German words. In the pronunciation key that you see in parentheses following each word, the syllables you should stress are in italics.\n\nBuilding the alphabet blocks\n\nThe German alphabet has all the letters that English does \u2014 26 of 'em \u2014 plus four special letters: \u00e4, \u00f6, \u00fc, and \u00df. The good news is that German words are generally pronounced just as they are spelled. This means there's no confusion, as we have in English with the likes of bow (tie), (take a) bow, and tree bough. The bad news is many of the normal-looking letters are pronounced differently from their English counterparts.\n\nTable 3-1 shows you the sound of each letter of the alphabet when it's pronounced alone. Knowing how to say each individual letter may come in very handy, for example, if you need to spell your name when you make a table reservation at a German restaurant, tell a hotel receptionist how to spell your name, or compete in a German spelling bee with a grand prize of 500,000 euros.\n\n  Track 1 on the CD gives you the sounds of the letters in the German alphabet as shown in Table 3-1. Note that the German pronunciation of a single letter may be different from the way it's pronounced within a German word.\n\nTable 3-1 Pronouncing the German Alphabet\n\n---\n\nLetter | German Pronunciation | German Word\n\na | ah | Ahnen (ahn-en) (ancestors)\n\nb | bey | Bild (bilt) (image, picture)\n\nc | tsey | Caf\u00e9 (k\u00e2-fey) (caf\u00e9)\n\nd | dey | durstig (doohrs-tiH) (thirsty)\n\ne | ey | Ehe (ey-e) (marriage)\n\nf | \u00eaf | Feuer (foy-er) (fire)\n\ng | gey | geben (gey-ben) (give)\n\nh | hah | Haus (house [as in English]) (house)\n\ni | ee | ihn (een) (him)\n\nj | yot | Januar (yahn-oo-\u00e2r) (January)\n\nk | kah | Kilometer (ki-loh-mey-ter) (kilometer)\n\nl | \u00eal | Liebe (lee-be) (love)\n\nm | \u00eam | Manager (as in English) (manager)\n\nn | \u00ean | Name (nah-me) (name)\n\no | oh | ohne (oh-ne) (without)\n\np | pey | Pause (pou-ze) (break, intermission)\n\nq | kooh | Quatsch (kv\u00e2ch) (nonsense)\n\nr  | \u00ear | rot (roht) (red)\n\ns | \u00eas | S-Bahn (es-bahn) (suburban train)\n\nt | tey | Taxi (t\u00e2x-ee) (taxi)\n\nu | ooh | U-Boot (ooh-boht) (submarine)\n\nv | fou | Vogel (foh-gel) (bird)\n\nw | veh | Wald (v\u00e2lt) (forest)\n\nx | iks | Fax (f\u00e2x) (fax)\n\ny | uep-si-lon | System (zers-teym) (system)\n\nz | tset | Zeit (tsayt) (time)\n\n\u00e4 | ah-oom-lout (Umlaut) | B\u00e4cker (b\u00eak-er) (baker)\n\n\u00f6 | oh-oom-lout (Umlaut) | h\u00f6ren (herr-en) (hear)\n\n\u00fc | ooh-oom-lout (Umlaut) | T\u00fcr (tuer) (system)\n\n\u00df | \u00eas-ts\u00eat | Stra\u00dfe (strah-se) (street)\n\nPronouncing vowels\n\nIn German, vowels (a, e, i, o, and u) can generally be pronounced in two ways \u2014 as short or long vowel sounds. The short vowel sounds are \"clipped,\" and they're pronounced shorter than their English equivalents. Long vowel sounds are \"steady-state\" or \"pure,\" meaning that the sound quality doesn't change even though it's a long sound. Here are the general rules:\n\n  A vowel is long when it's followed by the letter h, as in Stahl (shtahl) (steel).\n\n  A vowel is generally long when it's followed by a single consonant, as in Tag (tahk) (day).\n\n  A vowel is long when it's doubled, as in Teer (teyr) (tar) or Aal (ahl) (eel).\n\n  In general, a vowel is short when followed by two or more consonants, as in Tanne (t\u00e2n-e) (fir tree).\n\nTable 3-2 shows you how to pronounce German vowels by providing you with examples and a kind of phonetic script, the letter combinations that serve as the English equivalent of the German letter's pronunciation.\n\n  In this book's phonetic script, two short vowel sounds have a little \"hat\" over the letter, so they look like this: \u00e2 and \u00ea. Note that the phonetic spelling of \u00ea in Table 3-2 is the same as that of the German short umlaut sound \u00e4 in Table 3-3. Go to Track 2 on the CD to hear how to pronounce these German vowels.\n\nPronouncing \u00e4, \u00f6, and \u00fc\n\n  German has three extra vowels: \u00e4, \u00f6, and \u00fc. The German word for those curious double dots over the vowels is Umlaut (oom-lout) (umlaut). Umlauts slightly alter the sound of the vowels a, o, and u, as outlined in Table 3-3. These sounds have no equivalent in English, so try listening to them on Track 3, which demonstrates how to pronounce the German umlauts.\n\n  To make your German vowels \u00e4, \u00f6, and \u00fc sound a bit more authentic, try progressing through the \u00e4, \u00f6, and \u00fc sounds, pronouncing the vowels as though you're getting ready to kiss someone \u2014 in other words, round your lips and pucker up, baby! The \u00fc sound is pronounced with very pursed lips.\n\nPronouncing diphthongs\n\n  Diphthongs, which you can hear on Track 4 of the CD, are combinations of two vowels in one syllable (as in the English \"lie\"), and German has a few of them, as shown in Table 3-4.\n\n  Both the long German vowel i and the German vowel combination ie are pronounced like the English letter e in see, but the German ei, ai, and ay are pronounced like the English letter y in cry.\n\nPronouncing consonants\n\nAhh, relief! The sounds of German consonants are easier to master than the German vowel sounds. In fact, they're pronounced either almost the same as their English equivalents or like other English consonants. Okay, you will find a couple of oddities and exceptions, which we show you later.\n\nPronouncing \"f,\" \"h,\" \"k,\" \"m,\" \"n,\" \"p,\" \"t,\" \"x,\" and \"\u00df\"\n\nAs part of a word, the letters f, h, k, m, n, p, t, and x are pronounced the same in German as they are in English. The letter \u00df, on the other hand, doesn't exist in English. It's kind of cool looking, though, don't you think? But even if you don't care about looks, you'll be glad to know that you pronounce it just like ss or s.\n\n  As far as the written language goes, whether a given German word is spelled with ss or \u00df depends on a couple of rules. Here's the scoop:\n\n  After a long vowel or a diphthong, the s sound is spelled \u00df \u2014 for example, Fu\u00df (foohs) (foot).\n\n  After a short vowel, the s sound is spelled ss \u2014 for example, Fass (f\u00e2s) (barrel).\n\nNote: In Switzerland, the \u00df is not used at all. Instead, the Swiss always spell words with the double ss.\n\n  Table 3-5 tells you how to pronounce the rest of the German consonants by providing you with examples and a phonetic script. To hear them all, listen to Track 5.\n\nPronouncing the German \"r\" and \"l\"\n\n  The letters r and l are pronounced differently in German than they are in English. To replicate the \"gargled\" pronunciation of the German r, try making a gargling sound before saying aahh, so that you're saying ra. Also, don't roll the tip of your tongue or use it to pronounce the German r. To correctly pronounce the German letter l, you have to position your tongue differently than you do when you pronounce the English letter l. In English, you pronounce the l with your tongue in a spoon shape, hollowed out in the middle. To make the German l, you press the tip of your tongue against your gum ridge (just as you do in English), but you keep it flat instead of spoon-shaped. The German l sound is clipped, not drawled. On Track 6 of the CD, you can hear how to pronounce these letters. Here are some sample words:\n\n  l as in Bild (bilt) (picture)\n\n  r as in richtig (riH-tiH) (correct)\n\nPronouncing combinations of consonants\n\nThe German language has a few consonant sounds that are either different or don't occur in English. Most of them are easy to pronounce, except for the ch, which is unfamiliar to the English tongue.\n\nPronouncing \"ch,\" \"ck,\" \"sch,\" \"sp,\" \"st,\" and \"tsch\"\n\nThe German letter combination ch is the trickiest one for English speakers to pronounce. There's absolutely no equivalent for it in English (that's why it's represented by a capital H in this book's phonetic script), and you actually have to learn a new sound \u2014 a kind of gentle \"dry\" gargling sound \u2014 in order to say it. The sound is a bit like trying to pronounce \"hch,\" and not a \"k\" sound. The sound is similar to the guttural \"ch\" in Scottish, like in Loch Ness.\n\nThe good news is that in a few words, the ch is simply pronounced as an x sound, for example in Wachs (v\u00e2ks) (wax) or Fuchs (fooks) (fox). And in a few other words, generally foreign words, the ch is pronounced like the sound \"sh\" in English, for example in Champignon (sh\u00e2m-peen-yon) (mushroom) or Champagner (sh\u00e2m-p\u00e2n-yer) (champagne).\n\n  Table 3-6 shows you how to pronounce these common consonant combinations. Listen to Track 7 to hear how to pronounce these combinations.\n\n  The English \"th\" sound doesn't exist in the German language. The th combination is pronounced one of two ways in German:\n\n  The h is silent, as in the words Theorie (tey-oh-ree) (theory) and Theologie (tey-oh-loh-gee) (theology).\n\n  The t and h are pronounced separately, because they actually belong to different components of a compound noun, as in the words Gasthaus (g\u00e2st-hous) (inn), which is a combination of the German words for guest and house, or Basthut (b\u00e2st-hooht) (straw hat), a combo of the German for raffia and hat.\n\nGetting Formal or Informal\n\nGerman speakers generally place great value on showing respect toward each other and strangers. The language itself allows the speaker to make a clear distinction between formal and informal ways of saying you. (English used to do this too, but long ago the thee and thou forms were dropped.) In German, you use either the formal Sie (zee) (you) or one of the two informal forms: du (dooh) (you), if you're talking to one person, or ihr (eer) (you), if you're addressing two or more people.\n\nMaking the distinction between the informal and formal you forms is definitely important. Why? People are very likely to consider you impolite and disrespectful if you use the informal way of addressing them in a situation that calls for more formality.\n\n  In general, you use the formal Sie for everyday communication with people outside your circle of family and friends. Even among people who are in regular contact with one another, for example, neighbors or co-workers, Sie is often used as a means of showing respect. As you get to know somebody better, you may switch to du.\n\nHowever, no hard and fast rules apply when it comes to using du or Sie. In fact, many exceptions exist. For example, suppose a German friend takes you to a party. Even though you and the other guests are complete strangers, the other guests may just address you with du \u2014 especially if they're easy-going \u2014 so you may address them with du as well.\n\n  If you're the least bit unsure of whether to use du or Sie, use Sie until the person you're addressing asks you to use du or addresses you with du.\n\nSaying \"Hello,\" \"Goodbye,\" and \"How Are You?\"\n\nThe first part of your greeting is a basic hello. How you say hello depends on what time of day it is. Check out this list:\n\nGuten Morgen! (gooh-ten mor-gen!) (Good morning!) This is the greeting you use in the morning (until about noon).\n\nGuten Tag! (gooh-ten tahk!) (Hello!) This is the most common greeting you use, except early in the morning and late in the day.\n\nGuten Abend! (gooh-ten ah-bent!) (Good evening!) Obviously, this is the greeting of choice in the evening.\n\nHallo! (h\u00e2-loh!) (Hello!) You should be pretty comfortable with this informal greeting, because it's obviously very similar to English's hello.\n\nWhen the time comes to part, you can say:\n\nAuf Wiedersehen! (ouf vee-der-zey-en!) (Goodbye!) This is the standard, formal goodbye.\n\nGute Nacht! (gooh-te n\u00e2Ht!) (Good night!) You use this farewell when you say goodbye late at night.\n\nWar nett, Sie kennenzulernen. (vahr n\u00eat, zee k\u00ean-en-tsoo-l\u00earn-en.) (It was nice meeting you.) You use this phrase to tell people that you enjoyed meeting them for the first time.\n\nTsch\u00fcs! (chues!) (Bye!) This is the informal way of saying goodbye.\n\nYou say \"Gr\u00fc\u00df Gott,\" I say \"Gr\u00fcezi\"\n\nPeople in Southern Germany, Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland certainly understand you when you wish them Guten Morgen\/Guten Tag\/Guten Abend (depending on the time of day). However, people in these regions also use some other greetings.\n\nIn Switzerland, you hear Gr\u00fcezi (grue-e-tsee) (hello) most often. And people who know each other well use salut (s\u00e2-lue) to say both hi and bye.)\n\nIn Southern Germany and Austria, you say hello with Gr\u00fc\u00df Gott (grues g\u00f4t) or its informal version, Gr\u00fc\u00df dich. Good friends express both hi and bye with the casual Servus (s\u00ear-voohs).\n\nEspecially among younger German speakers, you hear the informal goodbye, Ciao (chou), which has made its way north across the Alps from Italy.\n\nMr., Mrs., and the slippery Miss\n\nHerr (h\u00ear) is the German word for Mr., and Frau (frou) expresses Mrs. The same word, die Frau (dee frou), also means woman, as well as wife, as in meine Frau (mayn-e frou) (my wife). No German equivalent for the English Ms. exists, so you need to use Frau.\n\nGerman also has the word Fr\u00e4ulein (froy-layn), which used to be the German version of Miss and was the proper way to address an unmarried woman. However, those days are long gone. So address a woman as Frau, regardless of her marital status. Or, when in doubt, leave it out. But what if you need to catch the attention of any person (for example, someone who has just dropped something)? Simply say Entschuldigung! (\u00eant-shool-dee-goong!) (Excuse me!)\n\nFr\u00e4ulein is also a bygone expression for a waitress, relegated to the days of yore. To get a German waitress's attention, simply apply the tried-and-true methods of making eye contact or raising your hand unobtrusively.\n\nAsking \"How are you?\"\n\nThe next step after greeting someone in German is, of course, asking the question How are you? Whether you use the formal or the informal version of the question depends on whom you're talking to. Sound complicated? Well, figuring out which form to use is easier than you may think.\n\nThe following three versions of How are you? use three dative-case pronouns that represent you. Ihnen (een-en) is the dative equivalent of Sie, dir (deer) represents du, and euch (oyH) stands in for ihr. (See Chapter 2 for more information on personal pronouns in the dative case.) Here's a breakdown of what to use when:\n\nWie geht es Ihnen? (vee geyt \u00eas een-en?) (How are you?) This is the formal version.\n\nWie geht es dir? (vee geyt \u00eas deer?) (How are you?) This is the informal, singular version.\n\nWie geht's? (vee geyts?) (How's it going?) When you know someone really well, you can use this casual question.\n\nWie geht es euch? (vee geyt \u00eas oyH?) (How are you?) Use this when talking to several people informally.\n\nMeeting and greeting go hand in hand\n\nGreetings and introductions are often accompanied by some form of bodily contact. In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, hand-shaking is the most common form of bodily contact during greetings and introductions. Female friends may kiss each other on the cheek or give each other a hug. Men usually don't kiss or hug each other, although they may greet a woman friend with a hug (and a kiss). You may notice that people in Europe often stand closer to you than you're used to, for example, in stores, on the bus or subway, or when they're talking to you.\n\nReplying to \"How are you?\"\n\nIn English, the question How are you? is often just a way of saying hello, and no one will raise an eyebrow if you don't answer. In German, however, a reply is customary. The following are acceptable answers to the question How are you?\n\nDanke, gut. (d\u00e2n-ke, gooht.) (Thanks, I'm fine.) or Gut, danke. (gooht, d\u00e2n-ke.) (Fine, thanks.)\n\nSehr gut. (zeyr gooht.) (Very good.)\n\nGanz gut. (g\u00e2nts gooht.) (Really good.)\n\nEs geht. (\u00eas geyt.) (So, so.) This German expression actually means it goes.\n\nNicht so gut. (niHt zoh gooht.) (Not so good.)\n\nAs in English, the reply would usually be accompanied by the question And (how are) you?, which is easy: First the formal version:\n\nUnd Ihnen? (oont een-en?) (And you?)\n\nAnd here's how you pose the question informally:\n\nUnd dir? (oont deer?) (And you?) (singular, informal you)\n\nUnd euch? (oont oyH?) (And you?) (plural, informal you)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nIn the following dialogue, you find some phrases that are commonly used for greetings in a more formal setting. (Track 8)\n\n---\n\nHerr Schulte: | Guten Tag, Frau Berger!\n\ngooh-ten tahk, frou b\u00ear-ger!\n\nHello, Ms. Berger!\n\nFrau Berger: | Herr Schulte, guten Tag! Wie geht es Ihnen?\n\nh\u00ear shool-te, gooh-ten tahk! vee geyt \u00eas een-en?\n\nMr. Schulte, hello! How are you?\n\nHerr Schulte: | Danke, gut! Und Ihnen?\n\nd\u00e2n-ke, gooht! oont een-en?\n\nThanks, I'm fine! And how are you?\n\nFrau Berger: | Danke, gut.\n\nd\u00e2n-ke, gooht.\n\nThanks, I'm fine.\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nNow check out this dialog between Mike and Christa, two old friends who run into each other on the street. (Track 9)\n\n---\n\nMike: | Hallo Christa!\n\nh\u00e2-loh christa [as in English]!\n\nHello Christa!\n\nChrista: | Mike, hallo! Wie geht's?\n\nmike [as in English], h\u00e2-loh! vee geyts?\n\nMike, hello! How's it going?\n\nMike: | Danke, mir geht's gut! Und selbst?\n\nd\u00e2n-ke, meer geyts gooht! oont z\u00ealpst?\n\nThanks, I'm fine! And yourself?\n\nChrista: | Auch gut.\n\nouH gooht.\n\nI'm fine, too.\n\nIntroducing Yourself and Your Friends\n\nMeeting and greeting often requires introductions. Your friends may want you to meet someone they know, or you may have to introduce your significant other to your colleague at a formal occasion. This section gives you the lowdown.\n\nIntroducing your friends\n\nCommonplace, everyday introductions are easy to make. You start with\n\nDas ist . . . (d\u00e2s ist . . .) (This is . . .)\n\nThen you simply add the name of the person. Or if you're introducing a friend, begin with\n\nDas ist meine Freundin (female)\/mein Freund (male) . . . (d\u00e2s ist mayn-e froyn-din\/mayn froynt . . .) (This is my friend . . .)\n\nIf you're introduced to someone, you may want to indicate that you're pleased to meet that person. In German, the casual, informal way of saying this is simply Hallo (h\u00e2-loh) (hello) or Guten Tag (gooh-ten tahk) (hello).\n\nIf the introductions have been more formal, you express Nice to meet you by saying\n\nFreut mich. (froyt miH) (Nice to meet you.)\n\nThe person you have been introduced to may then reply\n\nMich auch. (miH ouH) (Pleased to meet you, too.)\n\nIntroductions for special occasions\n\nYou may find yourself in a situation that calls for a very high level of formality. Here are some phrases you'd use then:\n\n  Darf ich Ihnen . . . vorstellen? (d\u00e2rf iH een-en . . . fohr-sht\u00eal-len?) (May I introduce you to. . . ?)\n\n  Freut mich, Sie kennenzulernen. (froyt miH, zee k\u00ean-en-tsoo-l\u00earn-en.) (I'm pleased to meet you.)\n\n  Meinerseits. (mayn-er-zayts.)\/Ganz meinerseits. (g\u00e2nts mayn-er-zayts.) (The pleasure is all mine. Literally, mine or all mine.)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nIn this dialogue between the directors of two companies, listen to Herr Kramer and Herr Huber. They meet at an official function, and Herr Huber introduces his wife.\n\n---\n\nHerr Kramer: | Guten Abend, Herr Huber.\n\ngooh-ten ah-bent, h\u00ear hooh-ber.\n\nGood evening, Mr. Huber.\n\nHerr Huber: | Guten Abend, Herr Kramer. Darf ich Ihnen meine Frau vorstellen?\n\ngooh-ten ah-bent, h\u00ear krah-mer. d\u00e2rf iH een-en mayn-e frou fohr-sht\u00eal-len?\n\nGood evening, Mr. Kramer. May I introduce my wife to you?\n\nHerr Kramer: | Guten Abend, Frau Huber. Freut mich sehr, Sie kennenzulernen.\n\ngooh-ten ah-bent, frou hooh-ber. froyt miH zeyr, zee k\u00ean-en-tsoo-l\u00earn-en.\n\nGood evening, Mrs. Huber. Very nice to meet you.\n\nHerr Huber: | Ganz meinerseits, Herr Kramer.\n\ng\u00e2nts mayn-er-zayts, h\u00ear krah-mer.\n\nAnd nice to meet you, Mr. Kramer.\n\nIntroducing yourself\n\nYou can't always rely on someone else to introduce you. In those situations, you simply introduce yourself, which is easy. Often, you can introduce yourself simply by stating your name, even in a more formal setting. Simply say\n\nMein Name ist. . . . (mayn nah-me ist. . . .) (My name is. . . .)\n\nOr use the verb that expresses the same idea, hei\u00dfen (hay-sen) (to be called):\n\nIch hei\u00dfe. . . . (iH hay-se. . . .) (My name is. . . .)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nIn the following conversation, Herr Hauser arrives at a meeting with several people he hasn't been introduced to yet. He's looking for a seat at the conference table.\n\n---\n\nHerr Hauser: | Guten Tag. Ist dieser Platz noch frei?\n\ngooh-ten tahk. \u00eest dee-zer pl\u00e2ts noH fray?\n\nHello. Is this seat still free?\n\nFrau Berger: | Ja. Nehmen Sie doch bitte Platz.\n\nyah. ney-men zee doH bi-te pl\u00e2ts.\n\nYes, it is. Do sit down.\n\nHerr Hauser: | Vielen Dank. Mein Name ist Max Hauser.\n\nfee-len d\u00e2nk. mayn nah-me ist m\u00e2x houz-er.\n\nThank you very much. My name is Max Hauser.\n\nFrau Berger: | Freut mich. Ich hei\u00dfe Karin Berger.\n\nfroyt miH. iH hay-se kah-rin b\u00ear-ger.\n\nPleased to meet you. I'm Karin Berger.\n\nThe preceding conversation would sound very different among younger people meeting in an informal setting, like a party. They'd probably introduce each other like this:\n\nMartin: | Hallo, wie hei\u00dft du?\n\nh\u00e2-loh, vee hayst dooh?\n\nHello, what's your name?\n\nSusanne: | Ich hei\u00dfe Susanne. Und du?\n\niH hay-se zooh-z\u00e2n-e. oont dooh?\n\nMy name is Susanne. And you?\n\nMartin: | Ich bin der Martin. Und wer ist das?\n\niH bin d\u00ear m\u00e2r-tin. oont v\u00ear ist d\u00e2s?\n\nI'm Martin. And who is that?\n\nSusanne: | Das ist meine Freundin Anne.\n\nd\u00e2s ist mayn-e froyn-din \u00e2n-e.\n\nThis is my friend Anne.\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nIn the next two conversations, people on a train are saying goodbye as the train comes into a station. Frau Egli is getting ready to exit the train. (Track 10)\n\n---\n\nFrau Egli: | Das ist meine Station. War nett, Sie kennenzulernen, Frau Myers.\n\nd\u00e2s ist mayn-e sht\u00e2ts-ee-ohn. vahr n\u00eat, zee k\u00ean-en-tsoo-l\u00earn-en, frou myers [as in English].\n\nThis is my stop. It was nice to meet you, Ms. Myers.\n\nFrau Myers: | Ganz meinerseits. Auf Wiedersehen, Frau Egli.\n\ng\u00e2nts mayn-er-zayts. ouf vee-der-zey-en, frou eyg-lee.\n\nAnd nice to meet you. Good bye, Ms. Egli.\n\nFrau Egli: | Auf Wiedersehen.\n\nouf vee-der-zey-en\n\nGood bye.\n\nMichelle and Claire are getting off the train as well.\n\nMichelle und Claire: | Tsch\u00fcs Mark.\n\nchues mark [as in English]\n\nBye, Mark.\n\nMark: | Tsch\u00fcs Claire, tsch\u00fcs Michelle. Sch\u00f6ne Ferien!\n\nchues Claire [as in English], chues michelle [as in English]. shern-e f\u00ea-ree-en!\n\nBye Claire, bye Michelle. Have a nice vacation!\n\n Fun & Games\n\nIn each of the three conversations that follow, some words have gotten loose. See whether you can find a place for them.\n\n1. Here's a dialog between Frau Lempert and the Hubers.\n\nIhnen gut geht freut ist auch\n\nHerr Huber: Guten Tag, Frau Lempert. Wie _____________ es Ihnen?\n\nFrau Lempert: Danke, gut. Und _____________?\n\nHerr Huber: Danke, auch _____________ . Frau Lempert, das _____________ meine Frau.\n\nFrau Lempert: Guten Tag, Frau Huber! _____________ mich sehr, Sie kennenzulernen.\n\nFrau Huber: Mich _____________.\n\n2. In this conversation, Mike and Christa run into each other on the street.\n\nmir auch selbst geht's hallo\n\nMike: Hallo Christa!\n\nChrista: Mike, _____________! Wie _____________?\n\nMike: Danke, _____________ geht's gut! Und _____________?\n\nChrista: _____________ gut.\n\n3. Susanne and Martin are making introductions at a party.\n\ndu hei\u00dfe meine wer bin hei\u00dft\n\nMartin: Hallo, wie _____________ du?\n\nSusanne: Ich _____________ Susanne. Und _____________?\n\nMartin: Ich _____________ der Martin. Und _____________ ist das?\n\nSusanne: Das ist _____________ Freundin Anne.\nChapter 4\n\nGetting Numbers, Time, andMeasurements Straight\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Naming numbers and counting\n\n  Tackling time and the days of the week\n\n  Managing months and calendars\n\n  Getting a handle on metric measurements\n\nHow much does that Mercedes cost? What time do you close? When did you move to Augsburg? How much cheese do I need to make fondue for four people? Knowing how to ask such questions in German is half the battle of communicating effectively. But understanding the answers makes you a major league player. In this chapter, you get up to speed with using numbers, dates, time, and measurements.\n\nJuggling Numbers\n\nChances are you'll encounter German numbers in all kinds of situations: when you're trying to decipher prices, for example, or street numbers, departure times, exchange rates, and so on. Knowing the following numbers makes counting anything easy (for money matters, such as changing currency and accessing funds, see Chapter 14):\n\n  0 null (nool)\n\n  1 eins (ayns)\n\n  2 zwei (tsvay)\n\n  3 drei (dray)\n\n  4 vier (feer)\n\n  5 f\u00fcnf (fuenf)\n\n  6 sechs (z\u00eaks)\n\n  7 sieben (zee-ben)\n\n  8 acht (\u00e2Ht)\n\n  9 neun (noyn)\n\n  10 zehn (tseyn)\n\n  11 elf (\u00ealf)\n\n  12 zw\u00f6lf (tsverlf)\n\n  13 dreizehn (dray-tseyn)\n\n  14 vierzehn (feer-tseyn)\n\n  15 f\u00fcnfzehn (fuenf-tseyn)\n\n  16 sechzehn (z\u00eaH-tseyn)\n\n  17 siebzehn (zeep-tseyn)\n\n  18 achtzehn (\u00e2Ht-tseyn)\n\n  19 neunzehn (noyn-tseyn)\n\n  20 zwanzig (tsv\u00e2n-tsiH)\n\n  21 einundzwanzig (ayn-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH)\n\n  22 zweiundzwanzig (tsvay-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH)\n\n  23 dreiundzwanzig (dray-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH)\n\n  24 vierundzwanzig (feer-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH)\n\n  25 f\u00fcnfundzwanzig (fuenf-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH)\n\n  30 drei\u00dfig (dray-siH)\n\n  40 vierzig (feer-tsiH)\n\n  50 f\u00fcnfzig (fuenf-tsiH)\n\n  60 sechzig (z\u00eaH-tsiH)\n\n  70 siebzig (zeep-tsiH)\n\n  80 achtzig (\u00e2Ht-tsiH)\n\n  90 neunzig (noyn-tsiH)\n\n  100 hundert (hoon-dert)\n\n  200 zweihundert (tsvay-hoon-dert)\n\n  300 dreihundert (dray-hoon-dert)\n\n  400 vierhundert (feer-hoon-dert)\n\n  500 f\u00fcnfhundert (fuenf-hoon-dert)\n\n  1000 tausend (tou-zent)\n\nNotice that, as words, the numbers between 21 and 25 in the preceding list appear to be backward. Take the number 21, einundzwanzig (ayn-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH), for example. In German, you actually say, \"One and twenty.\" Just remember to stick to this pattern for all the double-digit numbers, except for numbers in multiples of ten, like 30, 40, 50, and so on.\n\n  When describing one thing in a sentence, the number eins (ayns) (one) changes spelling. That's because, in these situations, eins is working as an adjective, and in German, adjectives can go through all kinds of spelling changes in a sentence. (See Chapter 2 for more info on adjectives.) Look at this example:\n\nEr hat einen gro\u00dfen Hund. (\u00ear h\u00e2t ayn-en grohs-en hoont.) (He has a large dog.)\n\nTelling Time\n\nImagine you're sitting in a park under a tree on a hot sunny day, wondering what time it is. Suddenly, a white rabbit in a checkered jacket runs by, stops, pulls out a pocket watch, and mumbles about being late. My advice: Don't ask him what time it is. You're better off reading the following information on asking about and telling time, German style.\n\n  German speakers have two systems for telling time: one using the numbers 1\u201312 on a standard clock and one using a 24-hour format. They use the 12-hour system in casual conversation and the 24-hour system when they want to avoid any chance of misunderstanding. They don't use the a.m.\/p.m. system.\n\nAsking for the time\n\nMost people have at least one sort of device on them that tells the time. However, you should know the following two interchangeable phrases. With these, you can ask for the time just in case your devices fail you or you're looking for a safe way to start up a conversation:\n\nWie viel Uhr ist es? (vee feel oohr ist \u00eas?) (What time is it?)\n\nWie sp\u00e4t ist es? (vee shpait ist \u00eas?) (What time is it?)\n\n  When approaching somebody to ask the time, you can, as usual, make the request a little more polite by adding the phrase Entschuldigen Sie, bitte (\u00eant-shool-di-gen zee, bi-te) (Excuse me, please) to the beginning of your question.\n\nTelling time with the 12-hour clock\n\nMany German speakers choose the 12-hour format when talking casually. This system is one you're already familiar with: You use the numbers 1-12 on a standard clock. However, German doesn't have the expressions a.m. and p.m., so German speakers revert to the 24-hour format to avoid potential misunderstandings, for example, when discussing schedules. (For more about the 24-hour system, head to the upcoming section.)\n\nOn the hour\n\nAt the top of the hour, telling the time is very easy. You just say\n\nEs ist . . . Uhr. (\u00eas ist . . . oohr.) (It's . . . o'clock.)\n\nOf course, you include the number of the appropriate hour before the word Uhr.\n\nBefore and after the hour\n\nIndicating times like quarter past three, ten to eight, or half past eleven is a little more complicated, but you only need to know three key expressions.\n\nTo use the German word for quarter, you include Viertel (feer-tel) (quarter) plus the word nach (n\u00e2H) (past\/after) or vor (fohr) (to\/before) followed by the appropriate hour, as shown in these examples:\n\nEs ist Viertel nach. . . . (\u00eas ist feer-tel n\u00e2H. . . .) (It's quarter past. . . .)\n\nEs ist Viertel vor. . . . (\u00eas ist feer-tel fohr. . . .) (It's quarter to. . . .)\n\nExpressing the half hour isn't quite as straightforward. In German, the word halb (h\u00e2lp) (half) indicates half of the hour to come, rather than the past hour. You use the phrase Es ist halb. . . . (\u00eas ist h\u00e2lp. . . .) (It's half an hour before. . . .) followed by the appropriate hour. For example, when it's 4:30, you say this:\n\nEs ist halb f\u00fcnf. (\u00eas ist h\u00e2lp fuenf.) (It's half an hour before 5:00.)\n\nA few minutes before and after\n\nWhen you need to break down the time in terms of minutes before or after the hour, you use nach (n\u00e2H) (past\/after) and vor (fohr) (to\/before), like this:\n\nEs ist f\u00fcnf Minuten vor zw\u00f6lf. (\u00eas ist fuenf mi-nooh-ten fohr tsverlf.) (It's five minutes to twelve.)\n\nEs ist zwanzig Minuten nach sechs. (\u00eas ist tsv\u00e2n-tsiH mi-nooh-ten n\u00e2H z\u00eaks.) (It's twenty minutes past six.)\n\n  An alternative is to leave out the word Minuten in phrases such as those in the preceding list. For example, you can say Es ist f\u00fcnf vor zw\u00f6lf or Es ist f\u00fcnf Minuten vor zw\u00f6lf. Both phrases mean the same thing: It's five [minutes] to twelve.\n\nUsing the 24-hour system\n\nJust as the a.m.\/p.m. system prevents misunderstanding, so does the 24-hour system. This is the key reason why all kinds of businesses \u2014 banks, stores, airlines, theaters, museums, cinemas, and so forth \u2014 use the 24-hour system.\n\nHere's how this system works: After you reach 12, you keep on adding hours (13, 14, 15, and so on) until you get to 24 or Mitternacht (mit-er-n\u00e2Ht) (midnight), which is also referred to as null Uhr (nool oohr) (literally: zero hour).\n\nIn this system of telling time, you don't use phrases like \"half past\" or \"a quarter to\" (the hour.) Everything is expressed in terms of minutes after the hour. Note in the following examples how the hour comes first and then the minutes:\n\nEs ist 15 Uhr drei\u00dfig. (\u00eas ist fuenf-tseyn oohr dray-siH.) (It's fifteen hours and thirty.) This corresponds to 3:30 p.m.\n\nEs ist 21 Uhr f\u00fcnfzehn. (\u00eas ist ayn-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH oohr fuenf-tseyn.) (It's twenty one hours and fifteen.) That's 9:15 p.m.\n\nEs ist 22 Uhr vierundvierzig. (\u00eas ist tsvay-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH oohr feer-oont-feer-tsiH.) (It's twenty two hours and forty-four.) You got it \u2014 10:44 p.m.\n\nEs ist null Uhr siebenundrei\u00dfig. (\u00eas ist nool oohr zee-ben-oont-dray-siH.) (It's zero hours and thirty-seven.) That's the early, early morning \u2014 12:37 a.m!\n\nTimes of the day\n\nWhen you want to describe a slice of the day, such as morning or afternoon, you have several options in German. However, take the following time periods with a grain of salt; they're meant as guidelines. After all, night owls and early morning joggers have different ideas about when one part of the day starts and another ends.\n\n  der Morgen (d\u00ear mor-gen) (morning; 4:00 a.m. to noon)\n\n  der Vormittag (d\u00ear fohr-mi-tahk) (morning; 9:00 a.m. to noon)\n\n  der Mittag (d\u00ear mi-tahk) (noon; 12 noon to 2:00 p.m.)\n\n  der Nachmitag (d\u00ear n\u00e2H-mi-tahk) (afternoon; 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.)\n\n  der Abend (d\u00ear ah-bent) (evening; 6:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m.)\n\n  die Nacht (dee n\u00e2Ht) (tonight; 12:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m.)\n\nDays of the week\n\nLooking at a German calendar, you find that the week, die Woche (dee woH-e), starts on a Monday. In addition, the days of the week are all the same gender, masculine (d\u00ear), but generally they're used without an article. For example, if you want to say that today is Monday, you say Heute ist Montag (hoy-te ist mohn-tahk).\n\nYour basic days\n\nHere are the days of the week followed by the abbreviations that you often see on schedules:\n\n  Montag (mohn-tahk) (Mo) (Monday)\n\n  Dienstag (deens-tahk) (Di) (Tuesday)\n\n  Mittwoch (mit-voH) (Mi) (Wednesday)\n\n  Donnerstag (don-ers-tahk) (Do) (Thursday)\n\n  Freitag (fray-t\u00e2k) (Fr) (Friday)\n\n  Samstag\/Sonnabend (z\u00e2ms-tahk\/zon-ah-b\u00eant) (Sa) (Saturday)\n\n  Sonntag (zon-tahk) (So) (Sunday)\n\n  In northern Germany, Saturday is called Sonnabend. People living in southern Germany, Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland use the term Samstag.\n\nTo indicate that something always happens on a particular day of the week, an s is added to the word, and it's no longer capitalized. For example, you may get to a museum or a restaurant on a Monday and find it closed, in which case you're likely to see a sign on the door reading montags geschlossen (mohn-tahks ge-shlos-en) (closed on Mondays).\n\nDoing double duty\n\nThe word morgen (mor-gen) shows up in two different versions. Written with a lowercase m, morgen means tomorrow. The noun der Morgen, written with an uppercase m, means morning. Theoretically, morgen Morgen should mean tomorrow morning, but German speakers don't say that. Instead, they say morgen fr\u00fch (mor-gen frue).\n\nMorgen, morgen does, however, exist. It's the beginning of a German proverb, and sometimes only the auspicious beginning is invoked. The complete proverb is\n\nMorgen, morgen, nur nicht heute, sagen alle faulen Leute. (mor-gen, mor-gen, noor niHt hoy-te, lz\u00e2-gen \u00e2l-e fou-len loy-te.)\n\nThe more or less literal translation is Tomorrow, tomorrow, just not today, is what all lazy folk say. In essence, it's roughly equivalent to the English \"Don't put off 'til tomorrow what you can do today.\"\n\nSpeaking of days . . .\n\nSay it's Tuesday, and you want to confirm that you've planned to meet someone the next day. You can ask whether you're meeting on Wednesday, or you can ask whether the meeting is tomorrow. The following word list helps you refer to specific days:\n\n  heute (hoy-te) (today)\n\n  gestern (g\u00eas-tern) (yesterday)\n\n  vorgestern (fohr-g\u00eas-tern) (the day before yesterday)\n\n  morgen (mor-gen) (tomorrow)\n\n  \u00fcbermorgen (ue-ber-mor-gen) (the day after tomorrow)\n\nTo speak precisely about a particular time on a specific day, you can combine the preceding words with the times of day discussed in the section \"Times of the day\" earlier in this chapter. Try the following examples on for size:\n\nheute Morgen (hoy-te mor-gen) (this morning)\n\nheute Vormittag (hoy-te fohr-mi-tahk) (this morning)\n\ngestern Abend (g\u00eas-tern ah-bent) (yesterday evening\/last night)\n\nNaming the Months\n\nThe following list shows you all the names of the months \u2014 notice how similar the German names are to the English! All the months' names are masculine, meaning that their article is der:\n\n  Januar (y\u00e2-noo-ahr) (January)\n\n  Februar (fey-broo-ahr) (February)\n\n  M\u00e4rz (m\u00earts) (March)\n\n  April (ah-pril) (April)\n\n  Mai (may) (May)\n\n  Juni (yooh-nee) (June)\n\n  Juli (yooh-lee) (July)\n\n  August (ou-goost) (August)\n\n  September (z\u00eap-t\u00eam-ber) (September)\n\n  Oktober (ok-toh-ber) (October)\n\n  November (no-v\u00eam-ber) (November)\n\n  Dezember (dey-ts\u00eam-ber) (December)\n\nThe following sentences show you how to build the calendar, der Kalender (der k\u00e2-l\u00ean-der), in German:\n\nEin Jahr hat 12 Monate. (ayn yahr h\u00e2t tsverlf moh-n\u00e2-te.) (A year has 12 months.)\n\nEin Monat hat 30 oder 31 Tage. (ayn moh-n\u00e2t h\u00e2t dray-siH oh-der ayn-oont-dray-siH tah-ge.) (A month has 30 or 31 days.)\n\nDer Februar hat 28 oder 29 Tage. (d\u00ear fey-broo-ahr h\u00e2t \u00e2Ht-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH oh-der noyn-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH tah-ge.) (February has 28 or 29 days.)\n\nEine Woche hat 7 Tage. (ayn-e voH-e h\u00e2t zee-ben tah-ge.) (A week has seven days.)\n\nMeasurements, Quantities, and Weights\n\nYou use the metric system in German-speaking countries, as well as most other countries around the globe. The various metric units crop up in all sorts of everyday situations, so coming to grips with the various equivalents for units of length, weight, and capacity is definitely worth your time. For example, you buy milk in a Liter (lee-ter) (liter) quantity rather than a quart, speed limits are indicated in Kilometer (ki-lo-mey-ter) (kilometers) per hour (1 kilometer = 0.6 mile), and a roughly 2.2-pound sack of potatoes sells as a unit of 1 Kilo(gramm) (kee-loh-[gram]) (kilo[gram]). Note: German speakers refer to 1,000 grams as either Kilo or Kilogramm, and neither one has an s in the plural form.\n\nHere's what you need to know to buy something at a tantalizing open-air market. In fact, it's just the same as ordering in a restaurant, which you can read about in Chapter 8. You say\n\nIch h\u00e4tte gern. . . . (iH h\u00eat-e g\u00earn. . . .) (I would like to have. . . .)\n\nAt the end of that phrase, simply say how much you want, which could include any of the following weights and measurements. Note that the plural forms for most of these measurements are the same as the singular form:\n\nein\/zwei Kilo (ayn\/tsvay kee-loh) (1 kilogram\/2 kilograms) (1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds)\n\nein\/zwei Pfund (ayn pfoont\/tsvay pfoont) (1 pound\/2 pounds) (1 metric pound = 500 grams) (In the U.S., a pound is 454 grams.)\n\nein\/einhundert Gramm (ayn\/ayn-hoon-d\u00eart gr\u00e2m) (1\/100 grams)\n\nein\/zwei St\u00fcck (ayn\/tsvay shtuek) (one piece\/two pieces)\n\neine Scheibe\/zwei Scheiben (ayn-e shay-be\/tsvay shay-ben) (one slice\/two slices)\n\nTo specify exactly what you want, simply add the appropriate word to the end of the whole phrase. For example, if you want one Kilo of apples, you say\n\nIch h\u00e4tte gern ein Kilo \u00c4pfel. (iH h\u00eat-e g\u00earn ayn kee-loh \u00eap-fel.) (I'd like to have one kilogram of apples.)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nFrau Bauer buys all her produce at the open air market. Today she needs apples and tomatoes. Looking at the various stands, she approaches one where she's bought produce before and speaks to the saleswoman. (Track 11)\n\n---\n\nVerk\u00e4uferin: | Guten Tag. Was darf es sein?\n\ngooh-ten tahk. v\u00e2s d\u00e2rf \u00eas zayn?\n\nHello. What would you like?\n\nFrau Bauer: | Zwei Kilo \u00c4pfel und ein Pfund Tomaten, bitte.\n\ntsvay kee-loh \u00eap-fel oont ayn pfoont toh-mah-ten, bi-te.\n\nTwo kilograms of apples and one pound of tomatoes, please.\n\nVerk\u00e4uferin: | Sonst noch etwas?\n\nzonst noH \u00eat-v\u00e2s?\n\nAnything else?\n\nFrau Bauer: | Danke, das ist alles.\n\nd\u00e2n-ke, d\u00e2s ist \u00e2l-\u00eas.\n\nThank you, that's all.\n\nNext, Frau Bauer goes to a stand that sells dairy products.\n\nFrau Bauer: | Ich h\u00e4tte gern etwas von dem Gouda.\n\niH h\u00eat-e g\u00earn \u00eat-v\u00e2s fon deym gou-d\u00e2.\n\nI'd like to have some Gouda.\n\nVerk\u00e4uferin: | Wie viel h\u00e4tten Sie denn gern?\n\nvee-feel h\u00eat-en zee d\u00ean g\u00earn?\n\nHow much would you like?\n\nFrau Bauer: | Zweihundert Gramm, bitte.\n\ntsvay-hoon-dert gr\u00e2m, bi-te.\n\nTwo hundred grams, please.\n\nVerk\u00e4uferin: | Sonst noch etwas?\n\nzonst noH \u00eat-v\u00e2s?\n\nAnything else?\n\nFrau Bauer: | Nein, danke. Das w\u00e4r's.\n\nnayn, d\u00e2n-ke. d\u00e2s v\u00ears.\n\nNo thank you. That's it.\n\n Fun & Games\n\nAlois Hailer needs to update his electronic calendar. Last week, the technology failed him, so to be on the safe side, he's writing out this week's appointments. Write each day, time, and appointment out as words. The activities are numbered in the calendar, and the first activity on Monday has already been done.\n\n1. Montag, acht Uhr, anrufen Herr Hegele\n\n2. _________________________________________________________________________________\n\n3. _________________________________________________________________________________\n\n4. _________________________________________________________________________________\n\n5. _________________________________________________________________________________\n\n6. _________________________________________________________________________________\n\n7. _________________________________________________________________________________\n\n8. _________________________________________________________________________________\n\n9. _________________________________________________________________________________\nChapter 5\n\nTalking about Home and Family\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Describing home life\n\n  Talking about family\n\nTalking about where you live and your family is a great way to open the lines of communication to a new acquaintance. In this chapter, I take you on a tour of the rooms in the home and provide useful information on German domestic lifestyles. You also find out about names of family members and how to talk about them.\n\nLiving in an Apartment or House\n\nA far greater number of Germans live in apartments, either rented or owned, than do North Americans, and great value is placed on being able to own a single family dwelling. Land and construction materials are very costly, so living quarters tend to be smaller and more energy efficient.\n\nDescribing life within four walls\n\nHere's some basic vocabulary you need to know to describe rooms in a home, along with a few other residence-related details:\n\n  das Bad\/das Badezimmer (d\u00e2s baht\/d\u00e2s bah-de-tsi-mer) (bathroom)\n\n  der Balkon (d\u00ear b\u00e2l-kon) (balcony)\n\n  die Eigentumswohnung (dee ay-g\u00ean-tooms-vohn-oong) (condominium)\n\n  das Einfamilienhaus (d\u00e2s ayn-f\u00e2-mi-lee-en-hous) (single family home)\n\n  das Esszimmer (d\u00e2s \u00eas-tsi-mer) (dining room)\n\n  der Garten (d\u00ear g\u00e2r-ten) (yard\/garden)\n\n  der Keller (d\u00ear k\u00eal-er) (basement)\n\n  die K\u00fcche (dee kueH-e) (kitchen)\n\n  die Mietwohnung (dee meet-vohn-oong) (rented apartment)\n\n  das Reihenhaus (d\u00e2s ray-\u00ean-hous) (townhouse)\n\n  das Schlafzimmer (d\u00e2s shlahf-tsi-mer) (bedroom)\n\n  die Wohnung (dee vohn-oong) (apartment)\n\n  das Wohnzimmer (d\u00e2s vohn-tsi-mer) (living room)\n\n  das Zimmer (d\u00e2s tsi-mer) (room)\n\nAsking the right questions\n\nNothing is more embarrassing than being a guest in someone's home and making a blunder because you're not sure how to ask (and respond to) some simple questions.\n\nThe bathroom\/toilet issue\n\nYou may find yourself in an uncomfortable situation if you ask to use the Badezimmer (bad-e-tsi-mer) (bathroom), when what you're probably looking for, believe it or not, is die Toilette (dee toy-l\u00eat-e) (the toilet). So what's the story? Well, first, Germans have no hang-ups about using the T-word.\n\nIn addition, what constitutes a \"bathroom\" in German homes differs from the definition you're probably accustomed to. In Germany, the bathroom is a room where you can take a bath or shower, but it may or may not have a toilet. The toilet may be located in a separate room, euphemistically described in real-estate lingo as a half-bath. You, the guest, are probably not interested in taking a shower in the Badezimmer. So to avoid any confusion, whatever the plumbing situation may be, here's what you actually need to ask:\n\nDarf ich ihre Toilette benutzen? (d\u00e2rf iH eer-e toy-l\u00eat-e be-noots-en?) (May I use the bathroom? Literally: May I use the toilet?)\n\nAt the dinner table\n\n  Table etiquette in German-speaking countries involves a couple of polite phrases at the start of the meal, as well as appropriate eating customs. Before beginning a meal, it's customary to say Guten Appetit (gooh-ten \u00e2p-e-teet) (enjoy your meal) or its more informal version, Mahlzeit (m\u00e2l-tsayt) (enjoy your meal). You may also hear Mahlzeit used as a means of greeting colleagues at the workplace around the lunchtime. People gathered around a dinner table also use the phrase zum Wohl (tsoom vohl) (cheers) as they raise their glasses before taking the first sip of something like wine. Prost (prohst) (cheers) is an alternative expression more typically associated with drinking only.\n\n  Table manners in the German-speaking world deem it polite to have both hands on the table, but not the elbows. In fact, it would be considered strange to keep one hand hidden in one's lap. (No funny business, please, under the table!) By the same token, eating with your fork while still holding your knife in the other hand is acceptable.\n\nDuring meal preparation, if you'd like to offer your help, by all means do so. You may use either the formal or informal version of \"you.\" First, the formal \"you\" formulation:\n\nKann ich Ihnen helfen? (k\u00e2n iH een-en h\u00ealf-en?) (Can I help you?)\n\nThe informal \"you\" version looks like this:\n\nKann ich dir helfen? (k\u00e2n iH deer h\u00ealf-en?) (Can I help you?)\n\nIn another situation, you may be offered something (more) to eat or drink. Check out the question and some replies:\n\nDarf\/Kann ich Ihnen . . . anbieten? (d\u00e2rf\/k\u00e2n iH een-en . . . \u00e2n-beet-en?) (May\/Can I offer you. . . ?)\n\nJa, bitte. Ich m\u00f6chte . . . . (yah, bi-te. iH merH-te . . . .) (Yes, please. I'd like . . . .)\n\nDanke, nein. (d\u00e2n-ke, nayn.) (No, thank you.)\n\nLiving behind closed doors\n\nPrivacy plays a big role in German-speaking countries, so in general, people close doors between rooms in homes and office buildings. As an added benefit to maintaining privacy, closed doors keep noise levels down and may conserve energy. Germans are also great fans of fresh air, and even in winter, they like to sleep with the window open and the bedroom door closed. If this has you wondering how they stay warm in a cold bedroom, well, the secret is a Federbett (fey-der-b\u00eat) (down-filled comforter) that keeps them toasty warm, even with snow blowing in the window.\n\nTalking about Your Family\n\nDiscussing your family, die Familie (dee f\u00e2-mee-lee-e) is a great way to get to know someone. Some people may even feel prompted to show their photos of family members. However, talking at great length about little Gretchen and Hansi, Jr. is a far less popular pastime in Germany than in America. It just may have to do with the value Germans place on privacy. At any rate, another reason you're not likely to fall asleep gazing at endless baby pictures is that the birth rate in Germany is very low.\n\nYou should find all the members of your family tree in the following list. Even if you don't have kids or in-laws, it's good to be familiar with these words so that you recognize them when discussing someone else's family (see Figure 5-1):\n\n  der Bruder (d\u00ear brooh-der) (brother)\n\n  der Cousin (d\u00ear kooh-zen) (male cousin)\n\n  die Cousine (dee kooh-zeen-e) (female cousin)\n\n  die Eltern (dee \u00eal-tern) (parents)\n\n  die Frau (dee frou) (woman\/wife)\n\n  die Geschwister (dee ge-shvis-ter) (siblings)\n\n  die Gro\u00dfeltern (dee grohs-\u00eal-tern) (grandparents)\n\n  die Gro\u00dfmutter (dee grohs-moot-er) (grandmother)\n\n  der Gro\u00dfvater (d\u00ear grohs-fah-ter) (grandfather)\n\n  der Junge (d\u00ear yoong-e) (boy)\n\n  die Kinder (dee kin-der) (children, kids)\n\n  das M\u00e4dchen (d\u00e2s maid-H\u00ean) (girl)\n\n  der Mann (d\u00ear m\u00e2n) (man\/husband)\n\n  die Mutter (dee moot-er) (mother)\n\n  der Onkel (d\u00ear on-kel) (uncle)\n\n  die Schwester (dee shv\u00eas-ter) (sister)\n\n  der Sohn (d\u00ear zohn) (son)\n\n  die Tante (dee t\u00e2n-te) (aunt)\n\n  die Tochter (dee toH-ter) (daughter)\n\n  der Vater (d\u00ear fah-ter) (father)\n\n**Figure 5-1:** Who's who in the family.\n\nUse the following words for the in-laws:\n\n  der Schwager (d\u00ear shvah-ger) (brother-in-law)\n\n  die Schw\u00e4gerin (dee shvai-ger-in) (sister-in-law)\n\n  die Schwiegereltern (dee shvee-ger-\u00eal-tern) (parents-in-law)\n\n  die Schwiegermutter (dee shvee-ger-moot-er) (mother-in-law)\n\n  der Schwiegersohn (d\u00ear shvee-ger-zohn) (son-in-law)\n\n  die Schwiegertochter (dee shvee-ger-toH-ter) (daughter-in-law)\n\n  der Schwiegervater (d\u00ear shvee-ger-fah-ter) (father-in-law)\n\nTo express the term \"step-,\" you use the prefix Stief- with the name of the relative, like this example: Stiefbruder (steef-brooh-der) (step-brother). The term for a \"half\" relative uses the prefix Halb-, so half-sister looks like this: Halbschwester (h\u00e2lp-shv\u00eas-ter).\n\nSaying that you have a certain type of relative involves the following simple phrase:\n\nIch habe einen\/eine\/ein. . . . (\u00eeH hah-be ayn-en\/ayn-e\/ayn. . . .) (I have a. . . .)\n\n  The correct form of the indefinite article einen (masculine)\/eine (feminine)\/ein (neuter) (ayn-en\/ayn-e\/ayn) (a) depends on both gender and case. In the preceding phrase, you're using the accusative (direct object) case. The feminine and the neuter indefinite articles happen to be the same in the nominative (subject) case and the accusative (direct object) case, so their spelling doesn't change. The masculine indefinite article, however, takes a different form in the accusative. Here's how it works:\n\n  Masculine nouns: Nouns like der Mann, der Bruder, der Garten (d\u00ear g\u00e2r-ten) (garden), and der Balkon (d\u00ear b\u00e2l-kon) (balcony) use the form einen.\n\n  Feminine nouns: Nouns, like die Frau, die Tochter, die Wohnung (dee vohn-oong) (apartment), and die K\u00fcche (dee kueH-e) (kitchen) use eine.\n\n  Neuter nouns: Nouns like das M\u00e4dchen, das Haus (d\u00e2s house [as in English]) (house), and das Wohnzimmer (d\u00e2s vohn-tsi-mer) (living room) use ein.\n\nSo what do you do if you want to express that you don't have siblings, a dog, a house, or whatever it may be? In English, you would say \"I don't have any siblings\/a dog\/a house.\"\n\n  In German, you just use the negative, accusative form of the indefinite article einen\/eine\/ein, which you form by adding the letter k to the beginning of the word like this: keinen\/keine\/kein (kayn-en\/kayn-e\/kayn) (no). Look at the negative, accusative forms in the following sentences:\n\n  Masculine nouns: Masculine nouns, such as der Schwiegervater, use keinen: Ich habe keinen Schwiegervater. (iH hah-be kayn-en shvee-ger-fah-ter.) (I don't have a father-in-law.)\n\n  Feminine nouns: Feminine nouns, such as die Familie, use keine: Ich habe keine gro\u00dfe Familie. (iH hah-be kayn-e groh-se f\u00e2-mi-lee-e.) (I don't have a large family.)\n\n  Neuter nouns: Neuter nouns, such as das Haus, use kein: Ich habe kein Haus. (iH hah-be kayn house.) (I don't have a house.)\n\n  Plural nouns: Nouns in their plural form, or those that are always plural, like die Geschwister, use keine: Ich habe keine Geschwister. (iH hah-be kayn-e ge-shvis-ter.) (I don't have any siblings.)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nHerr Hanser and Frau Schneider have just met at a symposium in Frankfurt. They're talking about their families during a coffee break. (Track 12)\n\n---\n\nHerr Hanser: | Wohnen Sie in Frankfurt?\n\nvohn-en zee in fr\u00e2nk-foort?\n\nDo you live in Frankfurt?\n\nFrau Schneider: | Nicht direkt. Mein Mann und ich haben ein Reihenhaus in M\u00fchlheim. Und Sie?\n\nniHt dee-r\u00eakt. mayn mahn oont iH hah-ben ayn ray-\u00ean-hous in muel-haym. oont zee?\n\nNot exactly. My husband and I have a townhouse in M\u00fchlheim. And you?\n\nHerr Hanser: | Wir haben eine Wohnung in der Innenstadt, aber unser Sohn wohnt in M\u00fcnchen. Haben Sie Kinder?\n\nveer hah-ben ayn-e vohn-oong in d\u00ear in-en-sht\u00e2t, ah-ber oon-zer zohn vohnt in muen-Hen. hah-ben zee kin-der?\n\nWe have an apartment in the center of the city, but our son lives in Munich. Do you have any kids?\n\nFrau Schneider: | Ja, zwei Kinder. Mein Sohn Andreas arbeitet bei Siemens, und meine Tochter Claudia wohnt mit ihrem Mann in Italien.\n\nyah, tsvay kin-der. mayn zohn \u00e2n-drey-\u00e2s \u00e2r-bay-tet bay zee-mens, oont mayn-e toH-ter klou-dee-\u00e2 wohnt mit eer-em m\u00e2n in i-tah-lee-en.\n\nYes, two children. My son Andreas works at Siemens, and my daughter Claudia lives with her husband in Italy.\n\nHerr Hanser: | Ach, meine Frau kommt aus Italien, aber ihre Eltern und ihre vier Geschwister wohnen alle in Deutschland.\n\n\u00e2H, mayn-e frou komt ous i-tah-lee-en, ah-ber eer-e \u00eal-tern oont eer-e feer ge-shvis-ter vohn-en \u00e2l-e \u00een doych-l\u00e2nt.\n\nOh, my wife is from Italy, but her parents and her four siblings all live in Germany.\n\n Fun & Games\n\nName the rooms of the house that are illustrated in the following drawing.\n\nA. ____________________________________________________________________\n\nB. ____________________________________________________________________\n\nC. ____________________________________________________________________\n\nD. ____________________________________________________________________\n\nE. ____________________________________________________________________\nPart II\n\nGerman in Action\n\nIn this part . . .\n\nIn this part, we present German in the context of daily life. We show you how to carry on a casual conversation about such topics as the weather, where you live, or what you do for a living. You find out how to talk about what you do in your free time. You get the hang of how to order food in a German restaurant, what to say when you're shopping, how to communicate on the phone, and much, much more. And we throw in some helpful grammar lessons to boot. Das klingt gut, oder? (d\u00e2s klinkt gooht, oh-der?) (That sounds good, doesn't it?)\nChapter 6\n\nGetting to Know You: Making Small Talk\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Answering questions about yourself\n\n  Exchanging stories about where you're from\n\n  Chatting about the weather\n\nIf you really want to get to know somebody, you have to engage in conversation. Small talk is an easy way to develop contacts and improve your German. Making small talk can be considered a social skill in itself, but luckily, starting up a light and casual conversation isn't too difficult. Whether you're meeting somebody at a party or want to talk to the person sitting next to you on the train, plane, or bus, you have several topics that always work as an opener: yourself, your job, where you're from, and, of course, the weather. We help you become familiar with discussing these topics throughout this chapter.\n\nTalking about Yourself\n\nWhen talking about yourself to a new acquaintance, you often answer many of the same key questions: What kind of job do you do? Where do you work? Are you self-employed? Are you a student? Where do you live? And later on in a conversation, your acquaintance may ask for your address and phone number. Because you'll encounter these topics often, you want to be prepared. The following sections provide you with the information you need.\n\nDescribing your work\n\nIf you start chatting with someone, that person may ask you what you do for a living. For example, he or she may ask any of the following:\n\nBei welcher Firma arbeiten Sie? (bay v\u00ealH-er fir-m\u00e2 \u00e2r-bay-ten zee?) (What company are you working for?)\n\nWas machen Sie beruflich? (v\u00e2s m\u00e2H-en zee be-roohf-liH?) (What kind of work do you do?)\n\nSind Sie berufst\u00e4tig? (zint zee be-roohfs-t\u00ea-tiH?) (Are you employed?)\n\nA few simple words and expressions help you describe your job and company. In most cases, you can describe what kind of work you do by connecting Ich bin . . . (iH bin . . .) (I am . . .) with the name of your occupation, without using any article. Most names for jobs exist in a female and male form. The male form frequently ends with \u2013er; the female form usually ends with \u2013in. Here are some examples:\n\nIch bin Handelsvertreter (m) \/ Handelsvertreterin (f). (iH bin h\u00e2n-dels-f\u00ear-trey-ter \/ h\u00e2n-dels-f\u00ear-trey-ter-in.) (I am a sales representative.)\n\nIch bin Student (m) \/ Studentin (f). (iH bin shtoo-d\u00eant \/ shtoo-d\u00ean-tin.) (I am a student.)\n\nIf you're a student, you may want to say what you're studying. You do this with the phrase Ich studiere . . . (iH shtoo-dee-re . . .) (I am studying . . .). At the end of the sentence, you add the name of your field (without any article). Some fields you may use include the following:\n\n  Architektur (\u00e2r-Hi-t\u00eak-toohr) (architecture)\n\n  Betriebswirtschaft (be-treeps-virt-sh\u00e2ft) (business administration)\n\n  Softwaretechnik (soft-wair-t\u00eaH-nik) (software engineering)\n\n  Kunst (koonst) (art)\n\n  Literaturwissenschaft (li-te-rah-toohr-vis-en-sh\u00e2ft) (literature)\n\n  Biochemie (bee-oh-Hey-mee) (biochemistry)\n\nYou also can describe what you do with the phrase Ich bin . . . (iH bin . . .) (I am . . .). You end the phrase with an appropriate adjective. For example, you may say any of the following:\n\nIch bin berufst\u00e4tig \/ nicht berufst\u00e4tig. (iH bin be-roohfs-t\u00ea-tiH \/ niHt be-roohfs-t\u00ea-tiH.) (I am employed \/ not employed.)\n\nIch bin pensioniert. (iH bin p\u00e2n-zee-o-neert.) (I am retired.)\n\nIch bin \u00f6fteres gesch\u00e4ftlich unterwegs. (iH bin erf-ter-es ge-sh\u00eaft-liH oon-ter-veyks.) (I often travel on business.)\n\nIch bin selbst\u00e4ndig. (iH bin zelpst-sht\u00eand-iH.) (I am self-employed.)\n\nYour company name, place of work, or line of work may be almost as important as the actual work you do. The phrase Ich arbeite bei . . . \/ in . . . (iH \u00e2r-bay-te bay . . . \/ in . . .) (I work at . . . \/ in . . .) tells someone, in a nutshell, where you earn your money. Consider these examples:\n\nIch arbeite bei der Firma . . . (iH \u00e2r-bay-te bay d\u00ear fir-m\u00e2 . . .) (I work at the company . . .) After the word Firma, you simply insert the name of the company you work for.\n\nIch arbeite in einem Krankenhaus. (iH \u00e2r-bay-te in ayn-em kr\u00e2nk-en-hous.) (I work in a hospital.)\n\nIch arbeite in der Gentechnik \/ in der Umweltforschung. (iH \u00e2r-bay-te in d\u00ear geyn-teH-nik \/ in d\u00ear oom-velt-fohrsh-oong. ) (I work in genetic engineering \/ in environmental research.)\n\nIch arbeite in einem Architekturb\u00fcro \/ in einem Forschungslabor. (iH \u00e2r-bay-te in ayn-em \u00e2r-Hi-t\u00eak-toohr-bue-roh \/ in ayn-em forsh-oongs-lah-bor.) (I work at an architecture office \/ in a research lab.)\n\nProviding your name and number(s)\n\nTelling people where you live and how you can be reached is the key to continuing your social and business contacts. The following sections give you everything you need to offer your personal information to others.\n\n  A business card is worth 1,000 words, especially if your German is a little shaky. So if someone asks you about your personal info and you have your business card with you, why not save yourself the struggle of telling your vital statistics and present it with the following words: Hier ist meine Visitenkarte. (heer ist mayn-e vi-zeet-en-k\u00e2r-te.) (Here is my business card.). The later section \"Looking at possessive pronouns\" provides more information on how to use mein (mayn) and other possessive pronouns.\n\nTelling someone where you live\n\nWhen someone asks you Wo wohnen Sie? (voh vohn-en zee?) (Where do you live?), you can respond with any of the following:\n\nIch wohne in Berlin \/ in einem Vorort von Berlin. (iH vohn-e in b\u00ear-leen \/ in ayn-em vohr-ort von b\u00ear-leen.) (I live in Berlin \/ in a suburb of Berlin.) Simply insert the name of your city into this expression.\n\nIch wohne in einer Kleinstadt \/ auf dem Land. (iH vohn-e in ayn-er klayn-sht\u00e2t \/ ouf deym l\u00e2nt.) (I live in a small town \/ in the country.)\n\nIch habe ein Haus \/ eine Wohnung. (iH hah-be ayn hous \/ ayn-e vohn-oong.) (I have a house \/ an apartment.)\n\nSaying phone numbers\n\nGermans often \"spell\" their phone numbers in pairs of numbers. If, for example, your number is 23 86 50, you say dreiundzwanzig sechsundachtzig f\u00fcnfzig (dray-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH z\u00eaks-oont-\u00e2H-tsiH fuenf-tsiH). If the numbers are read one by one, you may hear the number 2, or zwei (tsvay), pronounced as zwo (tsvoh), making 23 86 50 sound like zwo drei acht sechs f\u00fcnf null (tsvoh dray \u00e2Ht zeks fuenf nool). Numbers in groups of three, such as area codes, are usually read one by one. For example, the area code for M\u00fcnchen is 089, so you would hear null acht neun (nool \u00e2Ht noyn). (See Chapter 4 for more information on saying numbers in German.)\n\nDepending on the circumstances, someone may ask you Wie ist Ihre Adresse? (vee ist eer-e \u00e2-dr\u00eas-e?) (What is your address?). When you need to get down to specifics on where you live, you need to know the following words:\n\n  die Adresse (dee \u00e2-dr\u00eas-e) (address)\n\n  die Stra\u00dfe (dee shtrah-se) (street)\n\n  die Hausnummer (dee hous-noom-er) (house \/ building number)\n\n  die Postleitzahl (dee post-layt-tsahl) (zip code)\n\nWhen you tell someone your address, substitute the appropriate word into the following sentence: Die Adresse \/ Stra\u00dfe \/ Hausnummer \/ Postleitzahl ist . . . (dee \u00e2-dr\u00eas-e \/ shtrah-se \/ hous-noom-er\/ post-layt-tsahl ist . . .) (The address \/ street \/ house number \/ zip code is . . .)\n\nHanding out your phone number and e-mail address\n\nIf your new acquaintance asks you for your phone number and e-mail address, don't worry. You can easily provide him or her with your contact information. Here's what you say:\n\nDie Telefonnummer \/ die Handynummer \/ die Vorwahl \/ die Nebenstelle ist . . . (dee t\u00ea-le-fohn-noom-er \/ dee h\u00e2n-dee-noom-er \/ dee fohr-vahl \/ dee ney-ben-sht\u00eal-e ist . . .) (The telephone number \/ the cell phone number \/ the area code \/ the extension is . . .)\n\nMeine E-mail Adresse ist . . . @ . . . dot com \/ net. (mayn-e e-mail [as in English] a-dr\u00eas-e ist . . . at . . . dot com \/ net [as in English].) (My e-mail address is . . . at . . . dot com \/ net)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nKurt Hanser is on the plane from M\u00fcnchen to Frankfurt. His seat is next to Frau Schneider, a businesswoman. After the two have introduced themselves, they talk about their jobs. (Track 13)\n\n---\n\nHerr Hanser: | Was machen Sie beruflich, wenn ich fragen darf?\n\nv\u00e2s m\u00e2H-en zee be-roohf-liH, v\u00ean iH frah-gen d\u00e2rf?\n\nWhat kind of work do you do, if I may ask?\n\nFrau Schneider: | Ich arbeite als Biochemikerin bei der Firma Agrolab.\n\niH \u00e2r-bay-te \u00e2ls bee-oh-H\u00ea-mee-ker-in bay d\u00ear fir-m\u00e2 \u00e2-groh-l\u00e2b.\n\nI work as a biochemist at a company called Agrolab.\n\nHerr Hanser: | Das ist ja interessant. Haben Sie eine Visitenkarte?\n\nd\u00e2s ist yah in-te-re-s\u00e2nt. hah-ben zee ayn-e vi-zeet-en-k\u00e2r-te?\n\nThat's interesting. Do you have a business card?\n\nFrau Schneider: | Ja, hier bitte. Und was machen Sie beruflich?\n\nyah, heer bi-te. oont v\u00e2s m\u00e2H-en zee be-roohf-liH?\n\nYes, here it is. And what kind of work do you do?\n\nHerr Hanser: | Ich arbeite in einem Architekturb\u00fcro. Leider habe ich meine Visitenkarte nicht dabei.\n\niH \u00e2r-bay-te in ayn-em \u00e2r-Hi-t\u00eak-toohr-bue-roh. lay-der hah-be iH mayn-e vi-zeet-en-k\u00e2r-te niHt d\u00e2-bay.\n\nI work at an architecture office. Unfortunately, I don't have my business card with me.\n\nFrau Schneider: | Ist Ihre Firma in Frankfurt?\n\nist eer-e fir-m\u00e2 in fr\u00e2nk-foort?\n\nIs your company in Frankfurt?\n\nHerr Hanser: | Ja, unser B\u00fcro ist in der Bockenheimer Stra\u00dfe 27.\n\nyah, oon-zer bue-roh ist in deyr bok-en-haym-er shtrah-se zee-ben-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH.\n\nYes, our office is at Bockenheimer Street 27.\n\nLooking at possessive pronouns\n\n  Take a moment to look at the German forms of \"my,\" \"our,\" and \"your,\" which you can see in the previous dialogue: mein (mayn), unser (oon-zer), and Ihr (eer), respectively. These possessive pronouns are used to show that a noun belongs to somebody or something. The endings that these pronouns take depend on the gender, case, and number of the thing being possessed. Consider this example:\n\nHier ist meine Visitenkarte. (heer ist mayn-e vi-zeet-en-k\u00e2r-te.) (Here is my business card.)\n\nVisitenkarte (vi-zeet-en-k\u00e2r-te) is feminine, and the feminine possessive pronoun in the first person singular is meine.\n\nThe basic forms of the possessives (masculine and neuter) in the nominative case are\n\n  mein (mayn) (my)\n\n  dein (dayn) (your; singular, informal)\n\n  Ihr (eer) (your; singular, formal)\n\n  sein, ihr, sein (zayn, eer, zayn) (his, her, its)\n\n  unser (oon-zer) (our)\n\n  euer (oy-er) (your; plural, informal)\n\n  Ihr (eer) (your; plural, formal)\n\n  ihr (eer) (their)\n\nTable 6-1 shows all the forms of mein (mayn) for all genders and all the different cases (the other possessives take the same endings).\n\nConversing about Cities, Countries, and Nationalities\n\nWhen you're getting to know someone, the conversation at some point will probably turn to familial origins. Most people enjoy exchanging such information about themselves. Using the handful of vocabulary words from this section, you can describe yourself with confidence. You'll be ready to step into situations where you tell people what city or country you're from and ask them where they come from, as well as what languages they speak.\n\nRevealing where you come from\n\nSaying where you're from in German in fairly easy. The magic words are\n\nIch komme aus . . . (iH kom-e ous . . .) (I come from . . .)\n\nIch bin aus . . . (iH bin ous . . .) (I am from . . .)\n\nThese few words go a long way. They work for countries, states, and cities. Take a look at these examples:\n\nIch komme aus Amerika. (iH kom-e ous \u00e2-mey-ree-k\u00e2.) (I come from America.)\n\nIch bin aus Pennsylvania. (iH bin ous pennsylvania [as in English].) (I am from Pennsylvania.)\n\nIch komme aus Z\u00fcrich. (iH kom-e ous tsue-riH.) (I come from Zurich.)\n\nIch bin aus Wien. (iH bin ous veen.) (I am from Vienna.)\n\n  The German language likes to be a bit challenging at times, so watch your step when discussing your origins. Here are a few specifics to be aware of:\n\n  Some countries' and regions' names are considered plural. In this case, they use the plural definite article, die (dee) (the). The United States of America (USA) is one such country. In German, it's referred to as die USA (dee ooh-\u00eas-ah) or die Vereinigten Staaten (dee fer-ay-nik-ten shtah-ten). It's quite easy to say Ich bin aus Amerika. (iH bin ous \u00e2-mey-ree-k\u00e2.) (I'm from America.). However, technically, you could be referring to one of two American continents. So, to be a little more specific, you may say Ich bin aus den USA. (iH bin ous deyn ooh-\u00eas-ah.) (I'm from the USA.). Or you may want to challenge yourself with Ich bin aus den Vereinigten Staaten. (iH bin ous deyn fer-ay-nik-ten shtah-ten.) (I'm from the United States.)\n\n  Some countries' names are considered female. Switzerland, for example, is die Schweiz (dee shvayts) in German. Ms. Egli, whom you meet later in this chapter in a Talkin' the Talk dialogue, is Swiss. So to say where Ms. Egli is from, you say Frau Egli ist aus der Schweiz. (frou ey-glee ist ous d\u00ear shvayts.) (Ms. Egli is from Switzerland.) The article die changes to the dative case \u2014 der \u2014 when it's combined with the preposition aus (ous) (from). (See Chapter 2 for more info on the dative case.)\n\nUsing the all-important verb \"sein\"\n\nOne of the most common and fundamental verbs in any language is \"to be,\" or, in German, sein (zayn). You use this verb in the expressions Das ist . . . (d\u00e2s ist . . .) (This is . . ) and Ich bin . . . (iH bin . . .) (I am . . .). As in English, the verb \"to be\" is used to describe everything from states of being (happy, sick, sad, and so on) to physical characteristics (such as being tall and dark-haired). And, unfortunately, sein is an irregular verb just as \"to be\" is in English. So the only way to figure this verb out is to dig in and memorize the different forms. The following table lays them out in German for you:\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich bin | iH bin\n\ndu bist | dooh bist\n\nSie sind | zee zint\n\ner, sie, es ist | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas ist\n\nwir sind | veer zint\n\nihr seid | eer zayt\n\nSie sind | zee zint\n\nsie sind | zee zint\n\nAsking people where they come from\n\nTo ask people where they're from, you first need to decide whether to use the formal term of address Sie, or one of the two informal terms, du (for one person) or ihr (for several people). (Chapter 2 provides more information on when to use formal and informal pronouns.) Then you choose one of these three versions of the question:\n\nWoher kommen Sie? (voh-h\u00ear kom-en zee?) (Where are you from?)\n\nWoher kommst du? (voh-h\u00ear komst doo?) (Where are you from?)\n\nWoher kommt ihr? (voh-h\u00ear komt eer?) (Where are you from?)\n\nThe verb kommen (kom-en) (to come) is a verb that you hear often when speaking German. This regular verb is quite easy to remember; it even resembles its English cousin. Here's how it conjugates:\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich komme | iH kom-e\n\ndu kommst | dooh komst\n\nSie kommen | zee kom-en\n\ner, sie, es kommt | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas komt\n\nwir kommen | veer kom-en\n\nihr kommt | eer komt\n\nSie kommen | zee kom-en\n\nsie kommen | zee kom-en\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nFrau Egli and Frau Myers are on a train. During their trip, they strike up a conversation. They have just introduced themselves and are curious to learn a little more about each other.\n\n---\n\nFrau Egli: | Und woher kommen Sie, Frau Myers?\n\noont voh-h\u00ear kom-en zee, frou myers [as in English]?\n\nAnd where do you come from, Ms. Myers?\n\nFrau Myers: | Ich komme aus den USA, aus Pennsylvania.\n\nIH kom-e ous deyn ooh-\u00eas-ah, ous pennsylvania [as in English].\n\nI come from the USA, from Pennsylvania.\n\nFrau Egli: | Aus den USA, wie interessant. Kommen Sie aus einer Gro\u00dfstadt?\n\nous deyn ooh-\u00eas-ah, vee in-te-re-s\u00e2nt. kom-en zee ous ayn-er grohs-sht\u00e2t?\n\nFrom the U.S., how interesting. Do you come from a large city?\n\nFrau Myers: | Nein, ich komme aus Doylestown, eine Kleinstadt, aber sie ist sehr sch\u00f6n. Und Sie, Frau Egli, woher kommen Sie?\n\nnayn, iH kom-e ous Doylestown [as in English], ayn-e klayn-shtat, ah-ber zee ist zeyr shern. oont zee, frou ey-glee, voh-h\u00ear kom-\u00ean zee?\n\nNo, I come from Doylestown, a small town, but it's very pretty. And you, Ms. Egli, where do you come from?\n\nFrau Egli: | Ich bin aus der Schweiz, aus Z\u00fcrich.\n\niH bin ous d\u00ear shvayts, ous tsue-riH.\n\nI'm from Switzerland, from Zurich.\n\nIn the next compartment, Claire and Michelle, two young backpackers, are getting to know Mark, another backpacker. Being easygoing teenagers, they use the informal address du and ihr right from the start.\n\nClaire: | Bist du aus Deutschland?\n\nBist dooh ous doych-l\u00e2nt?\n\nAre you from Germany?\n\nMark: | Nein, ich bin aus \u00d6sterreich, aus Wien. Und ihr, woher kommt ihr?\n\nnayn, iH bin ous er-ste-rayH, ous veen. oont eer, voh-h\u00ear komt eer?\n\nNo, I'm from Austria, from Vienna. And you, where do you come from?\n\nMichelle: | Wir sind aus Frankreich. Meine Freundin Claire kommt aus Lyon, und ich komme aus Avignon.\n\nveer zint ous fr\u00e2nk-rayH. mayn-e froyn-din claire [as in English] komt ous lee-on, oont iH kom-e ous ah-vee-nyon.\n\nWe're from France. My friend Claire comes from Lyon, and I come from Avignon.\n\nDiscovering nationalities\n\nUnlike English, which describes nationality by using the adjective of a country's name (such as She is French), German indicates nationality with a noun. As you probably already know, genders are important in German. And these nationality nouns have genders, too. So an American man or boy is ein Amerikaner (ayn \u00e2-mey-ree-kah-ner), and a woman or girl is eine Amerikanerin (ayn-e \u00e2-mey-ree-kah-ner-in).\n\nTable 6-2 lists the names of some selected countries along with the corresponding nationality (a noun) and adjective.\n\nHere are a few examples of how these words may be used in sentences:\n\nHerr Marsh ist Engl\u00e4nder. (h\u00ear marsh [as in English] ist \u00eang-lain-der.) (Mr. Marsh is English.)\n\nMaria ist Italienerin. (mah-ree-ah ist i-tah-lee-eyn-er-in.) (Maria is Italian.)\n\nIch bin Schweizerin. (iH bin shvayts-er-in.) (I am Swiss.)\n\nIch bin \u00d6sterreicher. (iH bin er-ste-rayH-er.) (I am Austrian.)\n\nChatting about languages you speak\n\nTo tell people what language you speak, you use the verb sprechen (shpr\u00eaH-en) (to speak) and combine it with the language's name (see Table 6-2 for a list of some common language names). If you want to ask somebody whether he speaks English, the question is (informally):\n\nSprichst du Englisch? (shpriHst dooh \u00eang-lish?) (Do you speak English?)\n\nOr (formally)\n\nSprechen Sie Englisch? (shpr\u00eaH-en zee \u00eang-lish?) (Do you speak English?)\n\nHere's the conjugation of the verb sprechen:\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich spreche | iH shpr\u00eaH-e\n\ndu sprichst | dooh shpriHst\n\nSie sprechen | zee shpr\u00eaH-en\n\ner, sie, es spricht | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas shpriHt\n\nwir sprechen | veer shpr\u00eaH-en\n\nihr sprecht | eer shpr\u00eaHt\n\nSie sprechen | zee shpr\u00eaH-en\n\nsie sprechen | zee shpr\u00eaH-en\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nClaire, Michelle, and Mark are talking about languages they speak.\n\n---\n\nClaire: | Sprichst du Franz\u00f6sisch?\n\nshpriHst dooh fr\u00e2n-tser-zish?\n\nDo you speak French?\n\nMark: | Nein, \u00fbberhaupt nicht. Aber ich spreche Englisch. Und ihr?\n\nnayn, ue-ber-houpt niHt. ah-ber iH shpr\u00eaH-e \u00eang-lish. oont eer?\n\nNo, not at all. But I speak English. How about you?\n\nMichelle: | Ich spreche ein bisschen Englisch, und ich spreche auch Spanisch.\n\niH shpr\u00eaH-e ayn bis-Hen \u00eang-lish, oont iH shpr\u00eaH-e ouH shpah-nish.\n\nI speak a little English, and I speak Spanish, too.\n\nClaire: | Spanisch spreche ich nicht, aber ich spreche Englisch sehr gut. Englisch finde ich leicht.\n\nshpah-nish shpr\u00eaH-e iH niHt, ah-ber iH shpr\u00eaH-e \u00eang-lish zeyr gooht. \u00eang-lish fin-de iH layHt.\n\nI don't speak Spanish, but I speak English very well. I think English is easy.\n\nMark: | Deutsch ist auch leicht, oder?\n\ndoych ist ouH layHt, oh-der?\n\nGerman is easy, too, isn't it?\n\nClaire: | F\u00fcr mich nicht. Deutsch kann ich \u00fcberhaupt nicht aussprechen!\n\nfuer miH niHt. doych k\u00e2n iH ue-ber-houpt niHt ous-spr\u00ea-Hen!\n\nNot for me. I can't pronounce German at all!\n\nMaking Small Talk about the Weather\n\nPeople everywhere love to talk about das Wetter (d\u00e2s v\u00eat-er) (the weather). After all, it affects major aspects of life \u2014 your commute to work, your plans for outdoor activities, and sometimes even your mood. Plus, it's always a safe topic of conversation that you can rant or rave about! In the following sections, we help you get comfortable making small talk about the goings-on outside.\n\nNoting what it's like out there\n\nThe phrase Es ist . . . (\u00eas ist . . .) (It is . . .) helps you describe the weather no matter what the forecast looks like. You simply supply the appropriate adjective at the end of the sentence. Check out these examples:\n\nEs ist kalt. (\u00eas ist k\u00e2lt.) (It is cold.)\n\nEs ist hei\u00df. (\u00eas ist hays.) (It is hot.)\n\nEs ist sch\u00f6n. (\u00eas ist shern.) (It is beautiful.)\n\nThe following vocabulary allows you to describe almost any kind of weather:\n\n  bew\u00f6lkt (be-verlkt) (cloudy)\n\n  neblig (neyb-liH) (foggy)\n\n  regnerisch (reyk-ner-ish) (rainy)\n\n  feucht (foyHt) (humid)\n\n  windig (vin-diH) (windy)\n\n  k\u00fchl (kuehl) (cool)\n\n  schw\u00fcl (shvuel) (muggy)\n\n  eiskalt (ays-k\u00e2lt) (freezing)\n\n  warm (v\u00e2rm) (warm)\n\n  sonnig (son-iH) (sunny)\n\nYou can also use the following phrases to give your personal weather report:\n\nDie Sonne scheint. (dee son-e shaynt.) (The sun is shining.)\n\nEs regnet \/ schneit. (\u00eas reyk-n\u00eat \/ shnayt.) (It is raining \/ snowing.)\n\nEs gibt ein Unwetter. Es blitzt und donnert. (\u00eas gipt ayn oon-v\u00eat-er. \u00eas blitst oont don-ert.) (There's a storm. There's lightning and thunder.)\n\nEs wird hell \/ dunkel. (\u00eas virt h\u00eal \/ doon-kel.) (It is getting light \/ dark.)\n\nDiscussing the temperature\n\nIn the old country, 30-degree weather means you can break out your swimming gear, not your skis! In Europe (and most everywhere else in the world), the temperature isn't measured in degrees Fahrenheit but in degrees Celsius (ts\u00eal-zee-oos) (also called Centigrade). If you want to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit and the other way around, you can use these formulas:\n\n  Celsius to Fahrenheit: Multiply the Celsius temperature by 1.8 and then add 32.\n\n  Fahrenheit to Celsius: Subtract 32 from the Fahrenheit temperature and multiply the result by .5.\n\n  It may help you to know that 0 degrees Celsius corresponds to 32 degrees Fahrenheit, 10 degrees Celsius to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, 20 Celsius to 68 Fahrenheit, and 30 Celsius to 86 Fahrenheit.\n\nWhen the temperature is the topic of conversation, the following phrases are sure to come up:\n\nEs ist zehn Grad. (\u00eas ist tseyn graht.) (It's ten degrees.) Of course, you substitute the appropriate number before the word Grad. (See Chapter 4 for more information on numbers.)\n\nEs ist minus zehn Grad. (\u00eas ist mee-noos tseyn graht.) (It is minus ten degrees.) Again, substitute the proper number before Grad.\n\nEs ist zehn Grad unter Null. (\u00eas ist tseyn graht oon-ter nool.) (It is ten degrees below zero.)\n\nDie Temperatur f\u00e4llt \/ steigt. (dee t\u00eam-p\u00ea-rah-toohr f\u00ealt \/ shtaykt.) (The temperature is falling \/ is rising.)\n\nDescribing the day's weather\n\nAny of the following phrases can get the ball rolling on a discussion of the weather:\n\nWas f\u00fcr ein herrliches \/ pr\u00e4chtiges Wetter! (v\u00e2s fuer ayn h\u00ear-liH-\u00eas \/ praiH-tig-es v\u00eat-er!) (What wonderful \/ glorious weather!)\n\nWas f\u00fcr ein schreckliches \/ schlechtes Wetter! (v\u00e2s fuer ayn shr\u00eak-liH-\u00eas \/ shl\u00eaHt-\u00eas v\u00eat-er!) (What horrible \/ bad weather!)\n\nWas f\u00fcr ein sch\u00f6ner \/ herrlicher Tag! (v\u00e2s fuer ayn shern-er \/ h\u00ear-liH-er tahk!) (What a beautiful \/ lovely day!)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nAnita and Rolf live across the hall from each other in the same apartment building. They have been planning to go to the park this Sunday afternoon. On Sunday morning, Rolf knocks on Anita's door to discuss their plans. (Track 14)\n\n---\n\nRolf: | Was machen wir jetzt? Bei so einem Wetter k\u00f6nnen wir nicht in den Park gehen. Es ist regnerisch und windig.\n\nv\u00e2s m\u00e2H-en veer y\u00eatst? bay zoh ayn-em v\u00eat-er kern-nen veer niHt in deyn p\u00e2rk gey-en. \u00eas ist reyk-ner-ish oont vin-diH.\n\nWhat do we do now? We can't go to the park in this weather. It's rainy and windy.\n\nAnita: | Ja, ja, ich wei\u00df. Aber gegen Mittag soll es aufh\u00f6ren zu regnen.\n\nyah, yah, iH vays. ah-ber gey-gen mi-tahk zoll \u00eas ouf-herr-en tsooh reyk-nen.\n\nYeah, yeah, I know. But around noon it's supposed to stop raining.\n\nRolf: | Wirklich? Ich sehe nur Wolken am Himmel . . .\n\nvirk-liH? iH zey-he noohr vol-ken \u00e2m him-el . . .\n\nReally? I only see clouds in the sky. . . .\n\nAnita: | Keine Panik! Heute Mittag scheint bestimmt wieder die Sonne.\n\nkayn-e pah-nik! hoy-te mi-tahk shaynt be-stimmt vee-der dee zon-e.\n\nDon't panic! Surely the sun will shine again around noon today.\n\nRolf: | Na gut. Vielleicht hast du recht. Ich kann bis Mittag warten.\n\nn\u00e2 gooht. vee-layHt h\u00e2st dooh r\u00eaHt. iH k\u00e2n bis mi-tahk v\u00e2r-ten.\n\nOkay. Perhaps you're right. I can wait until noon.\n\nAnita: | Okay, bis sp\u00e4ter! Tsch\u00fcs!\n\nokay [as in English], bis shpai-ter! chues!\n\nOkay, see you later! Bye!\n\n Fun & Games\n\nIt's Saturday, and you're planning some outdoor activities for the next few days. Read the following four-day weather forecast and fill in the missing weather words.\n\nRegen schneit Temperatur Unwetter\n\ndonnert regnen unter Null\n\n1. Heute Nachmittag gibt es ein _____________, und es blitzt und _____________. (hoy-te n\u00e2H-mi-tahk gipt es ayn _____________, oont \u00eas blitst oont _____________.) (This afternoon there'll be a _____________, and there'll be lightning and _____________.)\n\n2. Sonntag f\u00e4llt die Temperatur _____________, und es _____________ ein bisschen. (zon-tahk f\u00ealt dee t\u00eam-p\u00ea-rah-toohr _____________, oont \u00eas _____________ ayn bis-Hen.) (On Sunday, the temperature will drop _____________, and it'll _____________ a little bit.)\n\n3. Montag steigt die _____________, und es f\u00e4ngt an zu _____________. (mohn-tahk shtaykt dee _____________, oont \u00eas f\u00eankt \u00e2n tsooh _____________.) (On Monday the _____________ will rise, and it will start to _____________.)\n\n4. In Berlin h\u00f6rt der _____________ nicht vor Dienstag auf. (in b\u00ear-leen herrt deyr _____________ niHt fohr deens-tahk ouf.) (In Berlin, the _____________ won't stop before Tuesday.)\nChapter 7\n\nAsking for Directions\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Finding the places you want to go\n\n  Discovering the German ordinal numbers\n\n  Going by car or other vehicle\n\nThe key to getting around is knowing how to get where you're going. Before you hop on that bus or train, or set out on your journey by car or on foot, you naturally want to plan your trip. Being able to ask about the location of a train station, open-air market, or museum is a good start.\n\nAnd, of course, you also want to understand the directions someone gives you to your destination. For example, someone may say that the market is across from the subway station, behind the hotel, or next to the post office. Or they may tell you to take the second street on the left, turn right at the third traffic light, and so on. If you don't relish the thought of getting lost, read on. This chapter gets you on the right track.\n\n\"Wo?\" \u2014 Asking Where Something Is\n\nWhere am I? Where do we go from here? Where would you be without the word \"where\"? Probably lost. Luckily, asking where something is in German is pretty easy. You start with the word wo (voh) (where) and frame your question like this:\n\nWo ist . . .? (voh ist . . .?) (Where is . . .?)\n\n  Whenever you ask a stranger a question, you sound more polite (and therefore are more likely to get more or better assistance) if you preface the question with the following:\n\nEntschuldigen Sie bitte . . . (\u00eant-shool-di-gen zee bi-te . . .) (Excuse me, please . . .)\n\nAfter you flag down a stranger and start your question with Entschuldigen Sie bitte, wo ist . . ., you can finish the question. You do so by supplying the name of the location you're looking for, which could include any of the following:\n\n  der Bahnhof (d\u00ear bahn-hohf) (train station)\n\n  der Taxistand (d\u00ear t\u00e2x-ee-sht\u00e2nt) (taxi stand)\n\n  die U-Bahnstation (dee ooh-bahn-sht\u00e2t-see-ohn) (subway station)\n\n  die Bushaltestelle \/ die Stra\u00dfenbahnhaltestelle (dee boos-h\u00e2l-te-sht\u00eal-e \/ dee shtrah-sen-bahn h\u00e2l-te-sht\u00eal-e) (bus stop \/ streetcar or tram stop)\n\n  der Platz (d\u00ear pl\u00e2tz) ([town] square)\n\n  der Hafen (d\u00ear hah-fen) (harbor)\n\n  die Bank (dee b\u00e2nk) (bank)\n\n  das Hotel (d\u00e2s hotel [as in English]) (hotel)\n\n  die Kirche (dee kirH-e) (church)\n\n  die Post (dee post) (post office)\n\n  der Markt (d\u00ear m\u00e2rkt) (market)\n\n  das Museum (d\u00e2s moo-zey-oom) (museum)\n\n  der Park (d\u00ear p\u00e2rk) (park)\n\n  das Theater (d\u00e2s tey-ah-ter) (theater)\n\nOf course, if you're in a town of any size at all, a general question like \"Where is the bus stop?\" or \"Where is the bank\" may be met with a quizzical look. After all, multiple bus stops or banks may be in close proximity. To make your questions as specific as possible, include the proper name of the bus stop, theater, church, or other location in your question. For example, you could ask any of the following:\n\nWo ist die Bushaltestelle Karlsplatz? (voh ist dee boos-h\u00e2l-te-sht\u00eal-e k\u00e2rlz-pl\u00e2ts?) (Where is the bus stop Karlsplatz?)\n\nWo ist das Staatstheater? (voh ist d\u00e2s sht\u00e2ts-tey-ah-ter?) (Where is the Staatstheater?)\n\nWo ist der Viktualienmarkt? (voh ist d\u00ear vik-too-ahl-ee-en-m\u00e2rkt?) (Where is the Viktualien Market?)\n\nIf you don't know the proper name of your destination, you can ask for directions to the nearest of whatever you're looking for. You simply insert the word n\u00e4chste (naiH-ste) (nearest) after the article of the location in question. Check out the following questions that use n\u00e4chste:\n\nWo ist der n\u00e4chste Park? (voh ist d\u00ear naiH-ste p\u00e2rk?) (Where is the nearest park?)\n\nWo ist die n\u00e4chste Bank? (voh ist dee naiH-ste b\u00e2nk?) (Where is the nearest bank?)\n\nWo ist das n\u00e4chste Hotel? (voh ist d\u00e2s naiH-ste hotel?) (Where is the nearest hotel?)\n\n  When it comes to getting around and asking for directions, you can use this helpful verb to indicate that you don't know your way around a place: auskennen (ous-k\u00ean-en) (to know one's way around). Here's an expression using this verb that you may want to memorize:\n\nIch kenne mich hier nicht aus. (iH k\u00ean-e miH heer niHt ous.) (I don't know my way around here.)\n\nThe verb auskennen belongs to a group of verbs called separable verbs. They all have a prefix that separates from the main part of the verb and gets shoved to the end of the sentence. The prefix of the verb auskennen is aus-. Notice how this prefix appears at the very end of the sentence. For more information on separable verbs, read the scoop in Chapter 15.\n\n\"Wie weit?\" How Far Is It?\n\nBefore you decide whether you want to walk someplace or take public transportation, you probably want to find out how far away your destination is. You have a few options that help you discover how distant a location is, and the key word to know is weit (vayt) (far):\n\nIst . . . weit entfernt \/ weit von hier? (ist . . . vayt \u00eant-f\u00earnt \/ vayt fon heer?) (Is . . . far away \/ far from here?)\n\nYou just fill in the name of the location you're asking about. So, for example, if you're headed to the art museum, you may ask someone one of the following:\n\nIst das Kunstmuseum weit entfernt? (ist d\u00e2s koonst moo-zey-oom vayt \u00eant-f\u00earnt?) (Is the art museum far away?)\n\nIst das Kunstuseum weit von hier? (ist d\u00e2s koonst moo-zey-oom vayt fon heer?) (Is the art museum far from here?)\n\nHopefully, you'll get the answer\n\nNein, das Kunstmuseum ist nicht weit von hier. (nayn, d\u00e2s koonst moo-zey-oom ist niHt vayt fon heer.) (No, the art museum isn't far from here.)\n\nIf you want to know specifically how far away a location is, you can use this question:\n\nWie weit ist . . . von hier? (vee vayt ist . . . fon heer?) (How far is . . . from here?)\n\nYou may also approach the issue the other way around and find out how close something is by using the word nah (nah) (near). You usually find the word nah in the following combination: in der N\u00e4he (in d\u00ear nai-he) (nearby). You can ask the question\n\nIst . . . in der N\u00e4he? (ist . . . in d\u00ear nai-he?) (Is . . . nearby?)\n\nGoing Here and There\n\nThe words hier (heer) (here) and dort (dort) (there) may be small words, but they play an important part in communicating directions. How? Well, as their English equivalents do, they make directions just a little more concrete. Look at the following sample sentences to see how hier and dort work in explaining directions:\n\nDas Museum ist nicht weit von hier. (d\u00e2s moo-zey-oom ist niHt vayt fon heer.) (The museum isn't far from here.)\n\nDas Hotel ist dort, neben dem Caf\u00e9. (d\u00e2s hotel [as in English] ist dort, ney-ben deym caf\u00e9 [as in English].) (The hotel is there, next to the caf\u00e9.)\n\n  Some key words that answer the question \"where?\" more specifically are easier to remember when you recognize them in commonly used word combinations. Try these combos on for size:\n\n  hier vorne (heer forn-e) (here in front)\n\n  dort dr\u00fcben (dort drue-ben) (over there)\n\n  ziemlich weit \/ sehr weit (tseem-leeH vayt \/ zeyr vayt) (quite far \/ very far)\n\n  gleich um die Ecke (glayH oom dee \u00eak-e) (just around the corner)\n\n  direkt gegen\u00fcber (di-r\u00eakt gey-gen-ue-ber) (directly opposite)\n\nCheck out the following sentences that use some of the preceding expressions:\n\nDer Hauptbahnhof ist gleich um die Ecke. (d\u00ear houpt-bahn-hohf ist glayH oom dee \u00eak-e.) (The main train station is just around the corner.)\n\nDie U-Bahnstation ist dort dr\u00fcben. (dee ooh-bahn-sht\u00e2t-see-ohn ist dort drue-ben.) (The subway station is over there.)\n\nAsking \"How Do I Get There?\"\n\nWhen you want to ask \"How do I get there?\" you use the verb kommen (kom-en), which means both \"to come\" and, when used with a preposition, \"to get to.\" Refer to Chapter 6 for the conjugation of kommen.\n\nThe basic form of the question \"How do I get there?\" is\n\nWie komme ich . . .? (vee kom-e iH . . .?) (How do I get . . .?)\n\nTo finish the rest of the sentence, you need to use a preposition to help you say \"to the train station\" or \"to the city center.\" At this point, you need to shift into high gear \u2014 that is, high grammar gear.\n\n  In German, you don't just deal with one preposition as you do in English, in which you would simply use \"to\" (How do I get to . . .?). In fact, you may need to use any of a number of prepositions, all of which can mean \"to.\" The most commonly used \"to\" prepositions in German are the following:\n\n  in (in)\n\n  nach (nahH)\n\n  zu (tsooh)\n\nThe following sections discuss each of these prepositions and how to use them.\n\nUsing \"in\" to get into a location\n\nYou use the preposition in (in) when you want to get to, or into, a certain location, such as the city center, the zoo, or the mountains. For example:\n\nWie komme ich in die Innenstadt? (vee kom-e iH in dee in-\u00ean-sht\u00e2t?) (How do I get to the center of the city?)\n\n  When you use the preposition in this way, the article that comes after it goes into the accusative case, meaning that some of the articles change form slightly. Chapter 2 has a complete explanation of the accusative case, but here's a quick reminder of how the articles change (or don't change):\n\n  der becomes den (deyn) (masculine)\n\n  die stays die (dee) (feminine)\n\n  das stays das (d\u00e2s) (neuter)\n\n  die stays die (dee) (plural)\n\nFor example, the article of a feminine noun like die City (dee si-tee) (city center) stays the same:\n\nWie komme ich in die City? (vee kom-e iH in dee si-tee?) (How do I get to the city center?)\n\nThe article of a masculine noun like der Zoo (d\u00ear tsoh) (zoo) changes like this:\n\nWie kommen wir in den Zoo? (vee kom-en veer in deyn tsoh?) (How do we get to the zoo?)\n\nThe article of a plural noun like die Berge (dee b\u00ear-ge) (mountains), stays the same:\n\nWie komme ich in die Berge? (vee kom-e iH in dee b\u00ear-ge?) (How do I get to the mountains?)\n\n  The article of a neuter noun like das Zentrum (d\u00e2s ts\u00ean-troom) (center) stays the same, but when the preposition in is used with neuter nouns in the accusative case, the preposition and article contract to form the word ins:\n\nin \\+ das = ins\n\nThis contraction is almost always used, giving you phrases like\n\nWie komme ich ins Zentrum? (vee kom-e iH ins ts\u00ean-troom?) (How do I get to the city center?)\n\nUsing \"nach\" to get to a city or country\n\nThe preposition nach (nahH), luckily, only comes into play in a specific context: when you want to get to a city or country:\n\nWie komme ich nach K\u00f6ln? (vee kom-e iH nahH kerln?) (How do I get to Cologne?)\n\nYou have no troublesome articles to bother with when using nach because city names and most country names don't need articles.\n\nUsing \"zu\" to get to institutions\n\nIf you're asking how to get to a place such as a train station or a museum, the preposition zu (tsooh) is a pretty safe bet. It may, however, go through a slight spelling change when used in a sentence. For example:\n\nWie kommen wir zum Flughafen? (vee kom-en veer tsoom floohk-h\u00e2-fen?) (How do we get to the airport?)\n\nWie komme ich zur Deutschen Bank? (vee kom-e iH tsoor doych-en b\u00e2nk?) (How do I get to the German bank?)\n\n  The preposition zu requires the dative case. (See Chapter 2 for a complete explanation of the dative case.) As a result, the articles used right after zu change in the following ways:\n\n  der becomes dem (deym) (masculine)\n\n  die becomes der (d\u00ear) (feminine)\n\n  das becomes dem (deym) (neuter)\n\n  die becomes den (deyn) (plural)\n\nWhen zu is used with masculine nouns, like der Bahnhof, and neuter nouns, like das Hotel, the preposition and article contract to form the word zum. In other words, zu + dem = zum. The following two examples both use zum:\n\nWie komme ich zum Bahnhof? (vee kom-e iH tsoom bahn-hohf?) (How do I get to the train station?)\n\nWie komme ich zum Hotel Kempinski? (vee kom-e iH tsoom hotel k\u00eam-pin-skee?) (How do I get to Hotel Kempinski?)\n\nSimilarly, take a look at how zu combines with a feminine noun like die Post (dee post) (post office) in its dative form, der Post: zu + der = zur. Look at this example:\n\nWie komme ich zur Post? (vee kom-e iH tsoor post?) (How do I get to the post office?)\n\nTracking down a taxi cab\n\nThe secret to getting a taxi cab in Germany is making a phone call or actually walking to the nearest taxi stand. You may be used to the idea that in big cities, you can just hail a cab on the street, but doing so isn't common practice in Germany \u2014 even in the larger cities. Why? Well, with the astronomical cost of gas in Europe, consider how much cab drivers would spend if they drove around until being hailed. So you have several choices: You can ask someone on the street where the nearest taxi stand is located and walk to it. Alternatively, you can find out the phone number of the taxi stand closest to you and call. And if you're at a restaurant or some other business, you can ask an employee to call a cab for you. Of course, you do find taxi stands in front of airports, train stations, and major hotels. Head to Chapter 15 for more on travelling by taxi.\n\nTo use plural nouns like die Souvenirl\u00e4den (dee zoo-ven-eer-l\u00ea-den) (souvenir shops) together with zu, you simply change the article to den, like this:\n\nWie kommen wir zu den Souvenirl\u00e4den? (vee kom-en veer tsooh deyn zoo-ven-eer-l\u00ea-den?) (How do we get to the souvenir shops?)\n\nDescribing a Position or Location in Relation to Some Other Place\n\nAfter you ask for directions, you must be ready to understand the answers you may receive. People commonly express the location of a place in relation to a well-known landmark or location. You can use quite a few prepositions to describe locations in this way. Luckily, all these prepositions used in this context use the dative case, so any articles after the preposition behave just like they do for the use of zu, as described in the preceding section. In addition, the preposition bei (bay) (near \/ next to) and the article dem almost always contract like this: bei + dem = beim.\n\nTable 7-1 shows you some common prepositions that are used to express the location of one thing in relation to another.\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nMike is on a business trip to M\u00fcnchen (muen-Hen) (Munich), a city he hasn't visited before. He wants to take a cab to get to a friend's house, but he needs some help finding the nearest taxi stand. So he approaches a woman on the street. (Track 15)\n\n---\n\nMike: | Entschuldigen Sie bitte, wo ist der n\u00e4chste Taxistand?\n\n\u00eant-shool-di-gen zee bi-te, voh ist d\u00ear naiH-ste t\u00e2x-ee-shtant?\n\nExcuse me, where is the nearest taxi stand?\n\nFrau: | In der Sonnenstra\u00dfe.\n\nin d\u00ear zon-en-shtrah-se.\n\nOn Sonnen Street.\n\nMike: | Ich kenne mich in M\u00fcnchen leider nicht aus. Wie komme ich zur Sonnenstra\u00dfe?\n\niH k\u00ean-e miH in muen-Hen lay-der niHt ous. vee kom-e iH tsoor zon-en-shtrah-se?\n\nUnfortunately, I don't know my way around Munich. How do I get to Sonnen Street?\n\nFrau: | Sehen Sie die Kirche dort dr\u00fcben? Hinter der Kirche ist der Sendlinger-Tor-Platz und direkt gegen\u00fcber ist der Taxistand.\n\nzey-en zee dee kirH-e dort drue-ben? hin-ter d\u00ear kirH-e ist d\u00ear z\u00eand-leeng-er-tohr-pl\u00e2ts oont di-r\u00eakt gey-gen-ue-ber ist d\u00ear t\u00e2x-ee-sht\u00e2nt.\n\nDo you see the church over there? Behind the church is Sendlinger-Tor Square and directly opposite is the taxi stand.\n\nMike: | Vielen Dank!\n\nfee-len d\u00e2nk!\n\nThank you very much!\n\nGetting Your Bearings Straight with Left, Right, North, and South\n\nUnless you tackle the words for the various directions \u2014 such as left, right, straight ahead, and the compass points \u2014 you may find yourself trying to find the town hall by tugging at some stranger's sleeve and chanting Rathaus (r\u00e2t-hous) over and over, hoping they'll lead you to the right building. With this section, you can put an end to your helplessness by mastering the few simple words you need to understand (and ask about) the various directions.\n\nLeft, right, straight ahead\n\nWhen you ask for or give directions, you can't avoid using the key words for defining position: left, right, and straight ahead. Here are these key words in German:\n\n  links (links) (left)\n\n  rechts (r\u00eaHts) (right)\n\n  geradeaus (ge-rah-de-ous) (straight ahead)\n\nIf you want to express that something is located to the left or right of something else, you add the preposition von (fon) (of), making the following:\n\n  links von (links fon) (to the left of)\n\n  rechts von (r\u00eaHts fon) (to the right of)\n\nCheck out these examples that use von and a defining position:\n\nDer Markt ist links von der Kirche. (d\u00ear m\u00e2rkt ist links fon d\u00ear kirH-e.) (The market is to the left of the church.)\n\nDie U-Bahnstation ist rechts vom Theater. (dee ooh-bahn-sht\u00e2t-see-ohn ist r\u00eaHts fom tey-ah-ter.) (The subway station is to the right of the theater.)\n\n  When the preposition von combines with dem, it usually contracts like this: von + dem = vom. (Dem is the dative form of the masculine definite article der and the neuter definite article das. Chapter 2 gives you more info on the dative case.)\n\nYou also may hear the word for side, die Seite (dee zay-te) in connection with directions. Seite can help directions be more specific. For example:\n\nDas Museum ist auf der linken Seite. (d\u00e2s moo-zey-oom ist ouf d\u00ear lin-ken zay-te.) (The museum is on the left side.)\n\nDie Bank ist auf der rechten Seite. (dee b\u00e2nk ist ouf d\u00ear r\u00eaHt-en zay-te.) (The bank is on the right side.)\n\nThe cardinal points\n\nInstead of using left, right, or straight ahead, some folks give directions using the points of the compass (also called the cardinal points). These points are\n\n  der Norden (d\u00ear nor-den) (the north)\n\n  der S\u00fcden (d\u00ear zue-den) (the south)\n\n  der Osten (d\u00ear os-ten) (the east)\n\n  der Westen (d\u00ear w\u00eas-ten) (the west)\n\nIf someone uses cardinal points to tell you the specific location of a place, you may hear something like\n\nDer Hafen liegt im Norden (d\u00ear hah-fen leekt im nor-den) \/ S\u00fcden (zue-den) \/ Osten (os-ten) \/ Westen (w\u00eas-ten). (The harbor lies [is] in the north \/ south \/ east \/ west.\n\n  To describe a location, for example, in the north, you use the preposition in with a definite article in the dative case. When the definite article is masculine (der) or neuter (das), it changes to dem, and the preposition in usually contracts to im like this: in \\+ dem = im.\n\nTaking This or That Street\n\nWhen you ask for directions, you may get the answer that you should take a specific street \u2014 the second street on the left or the first street on the right, for example. (The next section talks more about ordinals \u2014 first, second, and so on.)\n\nThe verbs you need to be familiar with in this context are gehen (gey-en) (to go) and nehmen (ney-men) (to take). In order to give directions, you use the imperative. (For the moment, just focus on the word order. You find out more about imperative sentences \u2014 those that give commands \u2014 in Chapter 14.) With the imperative, the verb goes at the beginning of the sentence. For example:\n\nNehmen Sie die zweite Stra\u00dfe links. (ney-men zee dee tsvay-te shtrah-se links.) (Take the second street on the left.)\n\nGehen Sie die erste Stra\u00dfe rechts. (gey-en zee dee \u00ears-te shtrah-se r\u00eaHts.) (Go down the first street on the right.)\n\nAnd if you simply have to go straight ahead, the person may give you these instructions:\n\nGehen Sie geradeaus. (gey-en zee ge-rah-de-ous.) (Go straight ahead.)\n\nIf you're looking for a specific building, you may hear something like:\n\nEs ist das dritte Haus auf der linken Seite. (\u00eas ist d\u00e2s drit-e house [as in English] ouf d\u00ear lin-ken zay-te.) (It is the third house on the left side.)\n\nUsing Ordinal Numbers: First, Second, Third, and More\n\nOne, two, and three are referred to as cardinal numbers. Numbers like first, second, third, fourth, and so on are called ordinal numbers. They indicate the specific order of something. For example, to answer the question \"Which house?\" you use an ordinal number to say, \"The second house on the left.\"\n\n  In German, you form ordinal numbers by adding the suffix -te to the cardinal numbers for numbers between 1 and 19 \u2014 with the following exceptions:\n\n  eins (ayns) (one) \/ erste (\u00ears-te) (first)\n\n  drei (dray) (three) \/ dritte (drit-e) (third)\n\n  sieben (zee-ben) (seven) \/ siebte (zeep-te) (seventh)\n\n  acht (\u00e2Ht) (eight) \/ achte (\u00e2Ht-e) (eighth)\n\nOrdinals 20 and above all add the suffix -ste to the cardinal number. Table 7-2 shows how to form the ordinal numbers 1 through 10, including one example of an ordinal number formed with a \"-teen\" number and another example for an ordinal above 20.\n\nTable 7-2 Sample Cardinal and Ordinal Numbers\n\n---\n\nCardinal Number | Ordinal Number\n\neins (ayns) (one) | der \/ die \/ das erste (\u00ears-te) (first)\n\nzwei (tsvay) (two) | zweite (tsvay-te) (second)\n\ndrei (dray) (three) | dritte (drit-e) (third)\n\nvier (feer) (four) | vierte (feer-te) (fourth)\n\nf\u00fcnf (fuenf) (five) | f\u00fcnfte (fuenf-te) (fifth)\n\nsechs (z\u00eaks) (six) | sechste (z\u00eaks-te) (sixth)\n\nsieben (zeeb-en) (seven) | siebte (zeep-te) (seventh)\n\nacht (\u00e2Ht) (eight) | achte (\u00e2Ht-e) (eighth)\n\nneun (noyn) (nine) | neunte (noyn-te) (ninth)\n\nzehn (tseyn) (ten) | zehnte (tseyn-te) (tenth)\n\nsiebzehn (zeep-tseyn) (seventeen) | siebzehnte (zeep-tseyn-te) (seventeenth)\n\nvierzig (fir-tsiH) (forty) | vierzigste (fir-tsiH-ste) (fortieth)\n\nSee Chapter 4 for a list of the cardinal numbers.\n\n  Because they're used like adjectives, the ordinal numbers take the gender and case of the noun they refer to. Table 7-3 shows you how the adjective erste changes in each case along with the article that comes before it.\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nErika is in town on business and wants to meet an old friend who also happens to be in town on business. She has the address of the hotel her friend is staying at, but she isn't sure where the street is located, so she asks for help. (Track 16)\n\n---\n\nErika: | Entschuldigung?\n\n\u00eant-shool-di-goong?\n\nExcuse me?\n\nMann: | Ja, bitte?\n\nyah, bi-te?\n\nYes, please?\n\nErika: | Wie komme ich zur Beethovenstra\u00dfe?\n\nvee kom-e iH tsoor bey-toh-f\u00ean-shtrah-se?\n\nHow do I get to Beethoven Street?\n\nMann: | Nehmen Sie die U-Bahn am Opernplatz.\n\nney-men zee dee ooh-bahn \u00e2m oh-p\u00earn-pl\u00e2ts.\n\nYou have to take the subway at Opera Square.\n\nErika: | Und wo ist der Opernplatz?\n\noont voh ist d\u00ear oh-p\u00earn-pl\u00e2ts?\n\nAnd where is Opera Square?\n\nMann: | Gehen Sie die Wodanstra\u00dfe geradeaus. Dann gehen Sie links in die Reuterstra\u00dfe. Rechts liegt die Post und direkt gegen\u00fcber ist der Opernplatz.\n\ngey-en zee dee voh-dahn-shtrah-se ge-rah-de-ous. d\u00e2n gey-en zee links in dee roy-ter-shtrah-se. r\u00eaHts leekt dee post oont dee-r\u00eakt gey-gen-ue-ber ist d\u00ear oh-p\u00earn-pl\u00e2ts.\n\nGo straight down Wodan Street. Then go left onto Reuter Street. On the right you see the post office and directly opposite is Opera Square.\n\nErika: | Und welche U-Bahn nehme ich?\n\noont v\u00ealH-e ooh-bahn ney-me iH?\n\nAnd which subway do I take?\n\nMann: | Die U5 bis zur Station Beethovenstra\u00dfe.\n\ndee ooh fuenf bis tsoor shtat-tsee-ohn bey-toh-f\u00ean-shtrah-se.\n\nTake the subway 5 to the stop Beethoven Street.\n\nErika: | Vielen Dank!\n\nfee-len d\u00e2nk!\n\nThank you very much!\n\nTraveling by Car or Other Vehicle\n\nIn English, it doesn't make a big difference whether you're going by car or on foot \u2014 distance aside, you're still going somewhere. However, the German verb gehen (gey-en) (to go) isn't that flexible. You may \"go\" on foot, which would require zu Fu\u00df gehen (tsooh foohs gey-en). But if you take the car, the bus, or another form of transportation, you're \"driving,\" which takes fahren (fahr-en) \u2014 not gehen \u2014 even if you aren't behind the wheel.\n\nWhen using fahren in a sentence, you need three things: the word for the type of vehicle in which you're traveling, the preposition mit (mit) (with), and the dative version of the vehicle's article. Here's an example of how you use the verb fahren in a sentence to say that you're taking a specific kind of transportation:\n\nIch fahre mit dem Auto. (iH fahr-e mit deym ou-toh.) (I'm going by car. Literally: I'm driving with the car.)\n\nYou don't need to be driving a car to use the following words and phrases about turning left and right. You can use them to describe turns you make on a bike, inline skates, a snowboard, and so on.\n\nTo tell somebody to make a left or right turn, you can use your old friend, the verb fahren. You say\n\nFahren Sie links \/ rechts. (fahr-en zee links \/ r\u00eaHts.) (Go left \/ right. Literally: Drive left \/ right.)\n\n  If you get lost driving around, always remember to pull this expression from your memory:\n\nIch habe mich verfahren. Ich suche . . . (iH hah-be miH f\u00ear-fahr-en. iH zoohH-e . . .) (I've lost my way. I'm looking for . . .)\n\nSee Chapter 15 for more information on words you need for getting around in a car or other vehicle.\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nPaula has rented a car to go to Frankfurt for a day trip. She's on her way to Bockenheim, a district of Frankfurt, and she stops at a gas station to ask for directions.\n\n---\n\nPaula: | Entschuldigen Sie, wie komme ich nach Bockenheim?\n\n\u00eant-shool-di-g\u00ean zee, vee kom-e iH nahH bok-en-haym?\n\nExcuse me, how do I get to Bockenheim?\n\nTankwart: | Nehmen Sie die Ausfahrt Frankfurt-Messe. Das sind ungef\u00e4hr vier Kilometer von hier.\n\nney-men zee dee ous-fahrt fr\u00e2nk-foort m\u00eas-e. D\u00e2s zint oon-ge-fair feer ki-lo-mey-ter fon heer.\n\nTake the exit Frankfurt-Messe. That is approximately 4 kilometers from here.\n\nPaula: | Alles klar! Danke.\n\n\u00e2l-es klahr! d\u00e2n-ke.\n\nOkay! Thank you.\n\nPaula makes it to Bockenheim but then seems to have lost her way. She stops her car and asks a policeman for directions.\n\nPaula: | Entschuldigen Sie, ich habe mich verfahren. Ich suche den Hessenplatz.\n\n\u00eant-shool-di-g\u00ean zee, iH hah-be miH f\u00ear-fahr-en. iH zoohH-e deyn h\u00eas-\u00ean-pl\u00e2ts.\n\nExcuse me, I've lost my way. I'm looking for Hessen Square.\n\nPolizei: | An der n\u00e4chsten Kreuzung fahren Sie rechts. Dann fahren Sie geradeaus, ungef\u00e4hr einen Kilometer. Der Hessenplatz liegt auf der linken Seite.\n\n\u00e2n d\u00ear naiH-sten kroy-tsoong fahr-en zee r\u00eaHts. d\u00e2n fahr-en zee ge-rah-de-ous, oon-ge-fair ayn-en ki-lo-mey-ter. d\u00ear h\u00eas-en-pl\u00e2ts leekt ouf d\u00ear lin-ken zay-te.\n\nGo left at the next intersection. Then go straight on, approximately one kilometer. Hessen Square is on the left side.\n\nPaula: | Vielen Dank!\n\nfee-len d\u00e2nk!\n\nThank you very much!\n\n Fun & Games\n\nMatch the descriptions to the pictures.\n\n1.______Das Haus ist direkt gegen\u00fcber.\n\n2.______Das Haus ist auf der rechten Seite.\n\n3.______Es ist das dritte Haus auf der rechten Seite.\n\n4.______Fahren Sie geradeaus.\n\n5.______Das Haus ist auf der linken Seite.\n\n6.______Es ist das zweite Haus auf der linken Seite.\n\n7.______Das Haus ist zwischen den zwei Stra\u00dfen.\n\n8.______Biegen Sie rechts ab.\nChapter 8\n\nGuten Appetit! Dining Out and Going to the Market\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Talking about hunger, thirst, and meals\n\n  Navigating a restaurant or other eatery\n\n  Buying food at a grocery store or other shop\n\nFinding out about the food and eating habits in another country is one of the most interesting \u2014 and tasty \u2014 ways of learning about its culture. Whether you're interested in having a business lunch, enjoying a casual dinner, or cooking for yourself, this chapter helps you find your way around food.\n\nWhen eating out in German-speaking Europe, you'll likely notice that the food variety isn't much different from what you're used to. A typical German meal consists of meat, potatoes, and vegetables or a salad, and it isn't particularly fancy. However, local cuisines vary from region to region. We suggest you try them. In addition, you're also likely to find a surprisingly wide variety of authentic international cuisines, ranging from Spanish to Sicilian, Portuguese to Philippine, and Turkish to Tibetan.\n\nWhatever your meal, remember to say Guten Appetit (gooh-ten \u00e2p-e-teet) (enjoy your meal) as the Germans do with each other before they start to eat!\n\nHast du Hunger? Hast du Durst?\n\nWhen it comes to food, expressing your hunger and thirst are important! Otherwise, you have no cure for your grumbling stomach and parched throat. Here's how you talk about being hungry or thirsty in German:\n\nIch habe Hunger \/ Durst. (iH hah-be hoong-er \/ doorst.) (I am hungry \/ thirsty. Literally: I have hunger\/thirst.)\n\nIch bin hungrig \/ durstig. (iH bin hoong-riH \/ door-stiH.) (I am hungry \/ thirsty.)\n\nTo satisfy your hunger or thirst, you have to eat \u2014 essen (\u00eas-en) \u2014 and to drink \u2014 trinken (trin-ken). Here are the conjugations for essen, which is an irregular verb, and trinken (see Chapter 2 for more information on conjugating verbs):\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich esse | iH \u00eas-e\n\ndu isst (singular, informal) | dooh ist\n\nSie essen (singular, formal) | zee \u00eas-en\n\ner, sie, es isst | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas ist\n\nwir essen | veer \u00eas-en\n\nihr esst (plural, informal) | eer \u00east\n\nSie essen (plural, formal) | zee \u00eas-en\n\nsie essen | zee \u00eas-en\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich trinke | iH trin-ke\n\ndu trinkst (singular, informal) | dooh trinkst\n\nSie trinken (singular, formal) | zee trin-ken\n\ner, sie, es trinkt | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas trinkt\n\nwir trinken | veer trin-ken\n\nihr trinkt (plural, informal) | eer trinkt\n\nSie trinken (plural, formal) | zee trin-ken\n\nsie trinken | zee trin-ken\n\nHere are two examples using essen and trinken:\n\nWir essen gern Fisch. (veer \u00eas-en g\u00earn fish.) (We like to eat fish.)\n\nTrinkst du Bier? (trinkst dooh beer?) (Do you drink beer?)\n\nAll about Meals\n\nGerman meals and meal times don't differ too much from their American counterparts. The three Mahlzeiten (mahl-tsayt-en) (meals) of the day are the following:\n\n  das Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck (d\u00e2s frue-shtuek) (breakfast)\n\n  das Mittagessen (d\u00e2s mi-tahk-\u00eas-en) (lunch)\n\n  das Abendessen (d\u00e2s ah-bent-\u00eas-en) (dinner)\n\nIn most caf\u00e9s and hotels, breakfast is served from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., and it's often more substantial than the typical continental breakfast. Lunch is usually served between 11:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. For some Germans, lunch is the main meal of the day; for others the main meal comes at dinnertime. In restaurants, a full menu generally is available between 6:30 and 9:00 p.m. In larger cities and restaurants, a full menu may be served until 11 p.m. In addition, fast food places abound, including several well-known American hamburger restaurant chains, where, interestingly, you can order beer.\n\nThe traditional cold evening meal in German homes consists of bread with cold meats, cheeses, salad, and other cold dishes. This same fare is what families and friends in southern Germany have at the local Biergarten (d\u00ear beer-g\u00e2r-ten) (beer garden), where they spread their food out on a picnic table and enjoy warm summer evenings with eine Ma\u00df Bier (ayn-e mahs beer [as in English]) (a liter of beer).\n\n  You may occasionally hear people say Mahlzeit! (mahl-tsayt) as a greeting at lunchtime. Roughly translated, the word means mealtime in English, and there is no equivalent greeting in English. This greeting is especially common among colleagues at the workplace. If someone says this to you, just say the same \u2014 Mahlzeit! \u2014 and smile.\n\nSetting the Table for a Meal\n\nThe German table features all the same items that you find on your table at home, including the following:\n\n  das Glas (d\u00e2s glahs) (glass)\n\n  die Tasse (dee t\u00e2s-e) (cup)\n\n  der Teller (d\u00ear t\u00eal-er) (plate)\n\n  der Suppenteller (d\u00ear zoop-en-t\u00eal-er) (soup bowl)\n\n  die Serviette (dee s\u00ear-vee-\u00eat-e) (napkin)\n\n  das Messer (d\u00e2s m\u00eas-er) (knife)\n\n  die Gabel (dee gah-bel) (fork)\n\n  der L\u00f6ffel (d\u00ear ler-fel) (spoon)\n\n  das Besteck (d\u00e2s be-sht\u00eak) (a set of a knife, fork, and spoon)\n\nIf you're in a restaurant and need an item not found on the table (for example, a spoon, fork, or knife), call the waiter over by saying\n\nEntschuldigen Sie bitte! (\u00eant-shool-di-gen zee bi-te!) (Excuse me, please!)\n\nAfter you get the waiter's attention, ask for what you need:\n\nKann ich bitte einen L\u00f6ffel \/ eine Gabel \/ ein Messer haben? (k\u00e2n iH bi-te ayn-en ler-fel \/ ayn-e gah-bel \/ ayn m\u00eas-er hah-ben?) (Can I please have a spoon \/ a fork \/ a knife?)\n\nDining Out: Visiting a Restaurant\n\nEating out is quite popular in Germany, and you'll find little difference between going out to a restaurant in Germany and going to one in the U.S. Just a few minor differences exist. For instance, in many German restaurants, you don't have to wait to be seated as you do in the U.S. However, the waiter or waitress in more upscale places usually takes you to your table. Also, doggie bags aren't common practice in Germany. But, surprisingly, dogs are generally welcome in many restaurants if they sit under the table.\n\n  Europeans in general place great value on the dining experience. You can expect a more leisurely pace while enjoying your meal in Europe. In fact, don't expect to see the check after you've finished your meal \u2014 you have to ask for it.\n\nIn the following sections, we help you become acquainted with dining out so you get the most from your experience.\n\nDeciding where to eat\n\nMost German eateries post a menu (see Figure 8-1) at their entrances, making it easy to tell what kind of dining experience you can get there. This display is helpful when you're wandering around looking for a place to eat. However, if you want to ask someone about a particular kind of eatery, it helps to know what different kinds are available. Here are the most common ones:\n\n  das Restaurant (d\u00e2s r\u00eas-tuh-ron) (restaurant): You can find a similar variety of restaurants in Germany that you can in the U.S., ranging from simple to fancy establishments with corresponding menus and prices.\n\n  die Gastst\u00e4tte (dee g\u00e2st-sht\u00eat-e) (local type of restaurant): This restaurant is a simpler type where you're likely to find local specialties.\n\n  das Gasthaus (d\u00e2s g\u00e2st-hous) \/ der Gasthof (d\u00ear g\u00e2st-hohf) (inn): You usually find these inns in the country. They often offer home cooking, and the atmosphere may be rather folksy. In rural areas, some offer lodging.\n\n  die Rastst\u00e4tte (dee r\u00e2st-sht\u00eat-e) (roadside restaurant): These restaurants usually are found on the Autobahn and have service station facilities and sometimes lodging. Note: In Austria, these restaurants are called der Rasthof (d\u00ear r\u00e2st-hohf).\n\n  der Ratskeller (d\u00ear rahts-k\u00eal-er): This type of restaurant is named after an eatery in the Keller (k\u00eal-er) (cellar) of the Rathaus (raht-hous) (town hall). You often find these in historic buildings.\n\n  die Bierhalle (dee beer-h\u00e2l-e) \/ die Bierstube (dee beer-shtooh-be) (beer hall): Beer halls, of course, specialize in beer served from huge barrels. But, besides beer, you can also order hot dishes (usually deciding among a few dishes of the day), salads, and pretzels. The best-known beer halls are in Munich, Bavaria, where the Oktoberfest (ok-toh-ber-f\u00east) takes place for two weeks beginning in late September. At this event, each Munich brewery sets up a massive Bierzelt (beer-ts\u00ealt) (beer tent).\n\n  die Weinstube (dee vayn-shtooh-be) (wine bar): At this cozy restaurant, often found in wine-producing areas, you can sample wine with bar food and snacks.\n\n  die Kneipe (dee knayp-e) (bar-restaurant): This type of bar-restaurant combination is similar to what you may find in the U.S. You usually find a casual atmosphere here where the locals hang out.\n\n  das Caf\u00e9 (d\u00e2s caf\u00e9 [as in English]) (caf\u00e9): Caf\u00e9s may range from places to have Kaffee und Kuchen (k\u00e2f-ey oont koohH-en) (coffee and cake) to upscale establishments with full menus. Vienna's caf\u00e9 tradition is famous. In these caf\u00e9s, you can sit down for a leisurely cup of fine coffee and read the newspaper.\n\n  der (Schnell)imbiss (d\u00ear (shn\u00eal-)im-bis) (snack bar, fast-food restaurant): Here you can get food like Wurst (woorst) (sausage) and Pommes frites (pom frit) (french fries).\n\n**Figure 8-1:** German restaurants typically post a menu near the door.\n\nMaking reservations\n\nMaking reservations isn't always necessary in Germany. In fact, during the week you may be able to get a table without a reservation \u2014 unless you're going to a particularly trendy place or one with limited seating. You usually don't make reservations at a Kneipe or Gastst\u00e4tte \u2014 you get a table on a first-come-first-served basis. However, when you want to be on the safe side, call ahead to make a reservation.\n\nWhen making a reservation, consider using the following expressions:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern einen Tisch reservieren \/ bestellen. (iH merH-te g\u00earn ayn-en tish r\u00ea-z\u00ear-vee-ren \/ be-sht\u00eal-en.) (I would like to reserve a table.)\n\nHaben Sie um . . . Uhr einen Tisch frei? (hah-ben zee oom . . . oohr ayn-en tish fray?) (Do you have a table free at . . . o'clock?)\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern einen Tisch f\u00fcr . . . Personen um . . . Uhr. (iH merH-te g\u00earn ayn-en tish fuer . . . p\u00ear-zohn-en oom . . . oohr.) (I would like a table for . . . people at . . . o'clock.)\n\n  To get more specific about when you want the reservation, you can add the specific day of the week to your request, or one of the following appropriate phrases:\n\n  am Freitag Abend (\u00e2m fray-tahk ah-bent) (on Friday evening)\n\n  heute Abend (hoy-te ah-bent) (this evening)\n\n  morgen Abend (mor-gen ah-bent) (tomorrow evening)\n\n  heute Mittag (hoy-te mi-tahk) (today at lunchtime)\n\n  morgen Mittag (mor-gen mi-tahk) (tomorrow at lunchtime)\n\nSo here's what you may say:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern f\u00fcr heute Abend einen Tisch reservieren. (iH merH-te g\u00earn fuer hoy-te ah-bent ayn-en tish r\u00ea-z\u00ear-vee-ren.) (I would like to reserve a table for this evening.)\n\nHaben Sie am Sonntag Abend um . . . Uhr einen Tisch frei? (hah-ben zee \u00e2m zon-tahk ah-bent oom . . . oohr ayn-en tish fray?) (Do you have a table free on Sunday evening at . . . o'clock?)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nMike and his friend Ute want to check out the trendy new Restaurant Galleria. Mike calls the restaurant to make a reservation.\n\n---\n\nRestaurant: | Restaurant Galleria.\n\nr\u00eas-tuh-ron g\u00e2-le-ree-\u00e2.\n\nRestaurant Galleria.\n\nMike: | Guten Tag. Ich m\u00f6chte gern einen Tisch f\u00fcr heute Abend bestellen.\n\ngooh-ten tahk. iH merH-te g\u00earn ayn-en tish fuer hoy-te ah-bent be-sht\u00eal-en.\n\nHello. I would like to reserve a table for this evening.\n\nRestaurant: | F\u00fcr wie viele Personen?\n\nfuer vee fee-le p\u00ear-zohn-en?\n\nFor how many people?\n\nMike: | Zwei Personen, bitte. Haben Sie um acht Uhr einen Tisch frei?\n\ntsvay p\u00ear-zohn-en, bi-te. hah-ben zee oom \u00e2Ht oohr ayn-en tish fray?\n\nTwo people, please. Do you have a table free at eight o'clock?\n\nRestaurant: | Tut mir leid. Um acht Uhr ist alles ausgebucht. Sie k\u00f6nnen aber um acht Uhr drei\u00dfig einen Tisch haben.\n\ntooht meer layt. oom \u00e2Ht oohr ist \u00e2l-\u00eas ous-ge-boohHt. zee kern-en ah-b\u00ear oom \u00e2Ht oohr dray-siH ayn-en tish hah-ben.\n\nI'm sorry. At 8:00 everything's booked. But you could have a table at 8:30.\n\nMike: | Acht Uhr drei\u00dfig w\u00e4re auch gut.\n\n\u00e2Ht oohr dray-siH vai-re ouH gooht.\n\n8:30 would be good, too.\n\nRestaurant: | Und Ihr Name, bitte?\n\noont eer nah-me, bi-te?\n\nAnd your name, please?\n\nMike: | Evans.\n\nevans [as in English].\n\nEvans.\n\nRestaurant: | Geht in Ordnung, ich habe den Tisch f\u00fcr Sie reserviert.\n\ngeyt in ort-noong, iH hah-be deyn tish fuer zee r\u00ea-z\u00ear-veert.\n\nThat's all set. I have reserved the table for you.\n\nMike: | Vielen Dank. Bis heute Abend.\n\nfee-l\u00ean d\u00e2nk. bis hoy-te ah-bent.\n\nThank you very much. Until this evening.\n\nOccasionally, you'll call for a reservation and discover that no tables are available. In those instances, you may hear the following:\n\nEs tut mir leid. Wir sind v\u00f6llig ausgebucht. (\u00eas tooht meer layt. veer zint fer-liH ous-ge-boohHt.) (I'm sorry. We are totally booked.)\n\nIf you show up at a busy restaurant without making a reservation, expect to hear one of the following:\n\nIn . . . Minuten wird ein Tisch frei. (in . . . mi-nooh-ten virt ayn tish fray.) (In . . . minutes a table will be free.)\n\nK\u00f6nnen Sie in . . . Minuten wiederkommen? (kern-en zee in . . . mi-nooh-ten vee-der-kom-en.) (Could you come back in . . . minutes?)\n\nSharing a table\n\nWith the exception of upscale restaurants, in German-speaking Europe, you're bound to notice that sharing a table with strangers is not unusual. Sharing is especially common in places that tend to be crowded and in places with large tables. If seats are still available at the table where you're sitting, someone may ask you Ist hier noch frei? (ist heer noH fray?) (Is this place still available?) or K\u00f6nnen wir uns dazu setzen? (kern-en veer oons d\u00e2-tsooh z\u00eats-en?) (May we sit down with you?). It's a very casual arrangement, and you're not obligated to start up a conversation with the party who's sharing the table with you. Some people may find the lack of privacy a little irritating, but it's also a good opportunity to meet the locals.\n\nArriving and being seated\n\nWhen you arrive at a restaurant, you want to take your seat, Platz nehmen (pl\u00e2ts neym-en) and get your Speisekarte (shpayz-e-k\u00e2r-t\u00ea) (menu). In casual restaurants, you seat yourself. In upscale restaurants, a waiter, der Kellner (d\u00ear k\u00eal-ner), or a waitress, die Kellnerin (dee k\u00eal-ner-in), directs you to your table.\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nMike and Ute have been looking forward to eating at Restaurant Galleria since Mike made the reservation. They arrive at the restaurant and are seated. (Track 17)\n\n---\n\nMike: | Guten Abend. Mein Name ist Evans. Wir haben einen Tisch f\u00fcr zwei Personen bestellt.\n\ngooh-ten ah-bent. mayn nah-me ist evans [as in English]. veer hah-ben ayn-en tish fuer tsvay p\u00ear-zohn-en be-sht\u00ealt.\n\nGood evening. My name is Evans. We reserved a table for two people.\n\nKellner: | Guten Abend. Bitte, nehmen Sie hier vorne Platz.\n\ngooh-ten ah-bent. bi-te, neym-en zee heer forn-e pl\u00e2ts.\n\nGood evening. Please take a seat over here.\n\nUte: | K\u00f6nnten wir vielleicht den Tisch dort dr\u00fcben am Fenster haben?\n\nkern-ten veer fee-layHt deyn tish dort drue-ben \u00e2m f\u00ean-ster hah-ben?\n\nCould we perhaps have the table over there by the window?\n\nKellner: | Aber sicher, kein Problem. Setzen Sie sich. Ich bringe Ihnen sofort die Speisekarte.\n\nah-ber ziH-er, kayn pro-bleym. z\u00eats-en zee ziH. iH bring-e een-en zo-fort dee shpayz-e-k\u00e2r-te.\n\nBut of course, no problem. Have a seat. I'll bring you the menu right away.\n\nDeciphering the menu\n\nAfter you decide where to eat and how to get a reservation and table, you're ready for the fun part \u2014 deciding what you want to eat! Of course, what's on the menu depends entirely on what kind of place you go to. Unlike in the U.S., the prices shown on a German menu normally include taxes and service.\n\n  If you go to a French, Spanish, or Chinese restaurant, the menu may be in the language of the respective country, with a German translation below the original name of the dish. In popular tourist areas, you may even find an English translation.\n\nThe following sections tell you about foods you may find in European restaurants. Keep in mind, however, that these sections don't tell you about local cuisine, which differs substantially from region to region; many areas have their local specialties. For example, there are certain regional dishes that you would commonly find on the menu in Bavaria or southern Germany but never in Hamburg or the northern parts of the country. Austria and Switzerland also have their own regional specialties.\n\nBreakfast\n\nThe following items may be offered zum Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck (tsoom frue-shtuek) (for breakfast) in a German-speaking country:\n\n  das Brot (d\u00e2s broht) (bread)\n\n  das Br\u00f6tchen (d\u00e2s brert-H\u00ean) (roll)\n\n  der Toast (d\u00ear tohst) (toast)\n\n  der Aufschnitt (d\u00ear ouf-shnit) (cold meats and cheese)\n\n  die Butter (dee boot-er) (butter)\n\n  die Marmelade (dee m\u00e2r-me-lah-de) (marmelade, jam)\n\n  das M\u00fcsli (d\u00e2s mues-lee) (muesli)\n\n  die Milch (dee milH) (milk)\n\n  der Saft (d\u00ear z\u00e2ft) (juice)\n\n  die Wurst (dee voorst) (sausage)\n\n  das Ei (d\u00e2s ay) (egg)\n\n  das Spiegelei (d\u00e2s shpee-g\u00eal-ay) (fried egg, sunny side up)\n\n  die R\u00fchreier (dee ruehr-ay-er) (scrambled eggs)\n\n  In Germany, Br\u00f6tchen are popular for breakfast; however, you also may get all kinds of bread or croissants. It's also common to eat cold cuts for breakfast in Germany. And if you order an egg without specifying that you want it scrambled or sunny side up, you'll get it soft-boiled, served in an egg cup.\n\nAppetizers\n\nFor Vorspeisen (fohr-shpayz-en) (appetizers), you may see the following German favorites:\n\n  Gemischter Salat (ge-mish-ter z\u00e2-laht) (mixed salad)\n\n  Gr\u00fcner Salat (gruen-er z\u00e2-laht) (green salad)\n\n  Melone mit Schinken (m\u00ea-loh-ne mit shin-ken) (melon with ham)\n\n  Meeresfr\u00fcchtesalat mit Toast (meyr-es-frueH-te-z\u00e2-laht mit tohst) (seafood salad with toast)\n\nSoups\n\nYou may see the following Suppen (zoop-en) (soups) on a German menu:\n\n  Tomatensuppe (to-mah-ten-zoop-e) (tomato soup)\n\n  Kartoffelcremesuppe (k\u00e2r-tof-el-kreym-zoop-e) (cream of potato soup)\n\n  Gulaschsuppe (gooh-lash-zoop-e) (hearty beef and occasionally pork soup)\n\n  Franz\u00f6sische Zwiebelsuppe (fr\u00e2n-tser-zi-she tsvee-bel-zoop-e) (French onion soup)\n\nMain dishes\n\nHauptspeisen (houpt-shpayz-en) (main dishes) are as diverse in Germany as they are in any culture; here are some you may find on a German menu:\n\n  gef\u00fcllte H\u00fchnerbrust mit Kartoffelp\u00fcree (ge-fuel-te huen-er-broost mit k\u00e2r-tof-el-puer-ey) (stuffed chicken breast with mashed potatoes)\n\n  Frischer Spargel mit R\u00e4ucherschinken (frish-er shp\u00e2r-gel mit royH-er-shin-ken) (fresh asparagus with smoked ham)\n\n  Rumpsteak mit Pommes Frites und gemischtem Salat (roomp-steak mit pom frit oont ge-mish-tem z\u00e2-laht) (rump steak with french fries and mixed salad)\n\n  Kalbsschnitzel nach Art des Hauses (k\u00e2lps-shnits-el nahH \u00e2rt d\u00eas houz-es) (chef's style veal cutlet)\n\n  Lammfrikassee mit Reis (l\u00e2m-frik-\u00e2-sey mit rays) (lamb fricassee with rice)\n\n  Lachs an Safranso\u00dfe mit Spinat und Salzkartoffeln (l\u00e2ks \u00e2n z\u00e2f-rahn-zohs-e mit shpi-naht oont z\u00e2lts-k\u00e2r-tof-eln) (salmon in saffron sauce with spinach and boiled potatoes)\n\n  Fisch des Tages (fish d\u00eas tah-ges) (fish of the day)\n\nSide dishes\n\nYou can sometimes order Beilagen (bay-lah-gen) (side dishes) separately from your main course. Consider the following popular items:\n\n  Butterbohnen (boot-er-bohn-en) (buttered beans)\n\n  Gurkensalat (goork-en-z\u00e2-laht) (cucumber salad)\n\n  Kartoffelkroketten (k\u00e2r-tof-el-kroh-ket-en) (potato croquettes)\n\nDessert\n\nGerman restaurants commonly offer many fine dishes zum Nachtisch (tsoom naH-tish) (for dessert), including the following:\n\n  Frischer Obstsalat (frish-er ohpst-z\u00e2-laht) (fresh fruit salad)\n\n  Apfelstrudel (\u00e2p-fel-shtrooh-del) (apple strudel)\n\n  Gemischtes Eis mit Sahne (ge-mish-tes ays mit zahn-e) (mixed ice cream with whipped cream)\n\n  Rote Gr\u00fctze mit Vanilleso\u00dfe (roh-te grue-tse mit v\u00e2-ni-le-zohs-e) (red berry compote with vanilla sauce)\n\nBeverages\n\nWhen it comes to ordering Wasser (v\u00e2s-er) (water), you have the choice between the carbonated or noncarbonated one \u2014 ein Wasser mit Kohlens\u00e4ure (ayn v\u00e2s-er mit koh-len-zoy-re) (carbonated water) or ein Wasser ohne Kohlens\u00e4ure (ayn v\u00e2s-er oh-ne koh-len-zoy-re) (noncarbonated water). If you ask the waiter or waitress for ein Mineralwasser (ayn min-\u00ear-ahl-v\u00e2s-\u00ear) (mineral water), you usually get carbonated water. Germans usually don't drink Leitungswasser (lay-toongs-v\u00e2s-er) (tap water) in restaurants. However, if you'd like a glass of tap water, you can say this:\n\nein Glas Leitungswasser, bitte. (ayn glahs lay-toongs-v\u00e2s-er, bi-te.) (a glass of tap water, please.)\n\nYou can order Wein (vayn) (wine) by the bottle \u2014 die Flasche (dee fl\u00e2sh-e) \u2014 or by the glass \u2014 das Glas (d\u00e2s glahs). Occasionally, you also can get a carafe of wine, which is die Karaffe (dee kah-r\u00e2f-e).\n\nIn the following list, you find some common beverages, Getr\u00e4nke (g\u00ea-train-ke), that you may see on a German menu:\n\n  Bier (beer [as in English]) (beer)\n\n  das Export (d\u00e2s export [as in English]) (smooth lager beer)\n\n  das Bier vom Fass (d\u00e2s beer fom f\u00e2s) (draft beer)\n\n  das Pils \/ Pilsner (d\u00e2s pils \/ pilsner [as in English]) (pale lager beer)\n\n  helles \/ dunkles Bier (hel-es \/ dunk-les beer) (light \/ dark beer) (Helles refers to the beer's light color, not its alcoholic content.)\n\n  Wein (vayn) (wine)\n\n  der Wei\u00dfwein (d\u00ear vays-vayn) (white wine)\n\n  der Rotwein (d\u00ear roht-vayn) (red wine)\n\n  der Tafelwein (d\u00ear tahf-el-vayn) (table wine, lowest quality)\n\n  der Kaffee (d\u00ear k\u00e2f-\u00ea) (coffee)\n\n  der Tee (d\u00ear tey) (tea)\n\nPlacing your order\n\nAs in English, in German you use a variety of common expressions to order your food. Luckily, they aren't too complicated, and you can use them both for ordering anything from food to drinks and for buying food at a store. Consider these expressions:\n\nIch h\u00e4tte gern . . . (iH h\u00eat-e g\u00earn . . .) (I would like to have . . .)\n\nF\u00fcr mich bitte . . . (fuer miH bi-te . . .) (For me . . . please)\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern . . . (iH merH-te g\u00earn . . .) (I would like to have . . .)\n\nWhen ordering, you may decide to be adventurous and ask the waiter or waitress to suggest something for you. Here's how:\n\nK\u00f6nnten Sie etwas empfehlen? (kern-ten zee \u00eat-v\u00e2s \u00eam-pfey-len?) (Could you recommend something?)\n\n  Be prepared for your waiter or waitress to rattle off names of dishes you may be unfamiliar with. To avoid any confusion, try holding out your menu so he or she can point at it while responding.\n\nApplying the subjunctive to express your wishes\n\nTake a closer look at the verb forms h\u00e4tte, k\u00f6nnte, and m\u00f6chte in the previous section. These verbs require you to be able to use the subjunctive.\n\n  The subjunctive has a number of uses in German, such as describing a wish or condition or expressing your opinion. In the examples in this section, you use it for making polite requests. Basically, the subjunctive acts like the English \"would.\"\n\nIch h\u00e4tte . . . (iH h\u00eat-e . . .) (I would have . . .) comes from haben (hah-ben) (to have). The big difference here between the German and the English usage is that in German you can combine \"would\" and \"have\" into one word: h\u00e4tte. Add gern to h\u00e4tte and presto! You have the form for ordering: Ich h\u00e4tte gern . . . (iH h\u00eat-e g\u00earn) (I would like to have . . .)\n\nYou also have Ich m\u00f6chte . . . (iH merH-te . . .) (I would like . . .), which comes from m\u00f6gen (mer-gen) (to like). It's quite simple: m\u00f6chte basically corresponds to the English \"would like.\" You use it in a similar way when ordering. Consider the following example:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern ein Glas Mineralwasser. (iH merH-te g\u00earn ayn glahs min-\u00ear-ahl-v\u00e2s-er.) (I would like a glass of mineral water.)\n\nBoth h\u00e4tte and m\u00f6chte are commonly used without the infinitive of a verb.\n\nThe phrase Ich k\u00f6nnte . . . (iH kern-te . . .) (I could . . .) comes from the verb k\u00f6nnen (kern-en) (to be able to or can). K\u00f6nnte combines with the infinitive of a verb to make the following request:\n\nK\u00f6nnten Sie uns helfen? (kern-ten zee oons helf-en?) (Could you help us?)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nMike and Ute have had a chance to look at the menu. The waiter returns to take their orders. (Track 18)\n\n---\n\nKellner: | Darf ich Ihnen etwas zu trinken bringen?\n\nd\u00e2rf iH een-en \u00eat-v\u00e2s tsooh trin-ken bring-en?\n\nMay I bring you something to drink?\n\nMike: | Ja, ich m\u00f6chte gern ein Bier.\n\nyah, iH merH-te g\u00earn ayn beer.\n\nYes, I'd like a beer.\n\nKellner: | Pils oder Export?\n\npils oh-der export?\n\nA pils or an export?\n\nMike: | Export, bitte.\n\nexport, bi-te.\n\nExport, please.\n\nKellner: | Ein Export. Und was darf es f\u00fcr Sie sein?\n\nayn export. oont v\u00e2s d\u00e2rf \u00eas fuer zee zayn?\n\nOne export. And what would you like?\n\nUte: | Mmm . . . Soll ich den Sylvaner oder den Riesling bestellen?\n\nMmm . . . zol iH deyn Sylvaner [as in English] oh-der deyn Riesling [as in English] be-sht\u00eal-en?\n\nMmm. Should I order the Sylvaner or the Riesling?\n\nKellner: | Ich kann Ihnen beide Wei\u00dfweine empfehlen.\n\niH kahn een-en bay-de vays-vayn-e \u00eam-pfey-len.\n\nI can recommend both white wines.\n\nUte: | Gut. Ich h\u00e4tte gern ein Glas Sylvaner.\n\ngooht. iH h\u00eat-e g\u00earn ayn glahs Sylvaner.\n\nGood. I would like to have a glass of Sylvaner.\n\nUsing modals to modify what you say\n\n  You may want to know a little more about the verbs darf, soll, and kann. Here's the story: These verbs help you further determine or modify the action expressed by another verb (that's why they're called modal auxiliaries), and they work in a similar way as their English equivalents \"may,\" \"should\" and \"can.\" M\u00f6chte, which we discuss in the preceding section, does double duty as a modal auxiliary and as a subjunctive. You can find the conjugations for these verbs in Appendix B.\n\nIch darf . . . (iH d\u00e2rf . . .) (I may\/I'm allowed to . . .) comes from the verb d\u00fcrfen (duerf-en) (may\/to be allowed to). Ich soll . . . (iH zol . . .) (I should . . .) comes from the verb sollen (zol-en) (should). Ich kann . . . (iH k\u00e2n . . .) (I can . . .) comes from the verb k\u00f6nnen (kern-en) (can). Here are some example sentences to familiarize you with darf, soll, and kann:\n\nDarf ich die Speisekarte haben? (d\u00e2rf iH dee shpayz-e-k\u00e2r-te hah-ben?) (May I have the menu, please?)\n\nD\u00fcrfen wir dort dr\u00fcben sitzen? (duerf-en veer dort drueb-en zits-en?) (May we sit over there?)\n\nSie sollten den Apfelstrudel bestellen. (zee zol-ten den \u00e2p-fel-shtrooh-del be-sht\u00eal-en.) (You should order the apple strudel.)\n\nLighting up\n\nYou'll find only a few parts of Europe where smoking in restaurants is still permitted. In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, you can generally expect public places to be smoke-free nowadays, and that includes restaurants and bars.\n\nHow would you like that prepared?\n\nIf you order meat \u2014 steak, for example \u2014 the waiter may ask you Wie h\u00e4tten Sie das Steak gern? (vee h\u00eat-en zee d\u00e2s steak g\u00earn?) (How would you like your steak?). You can respond with any of the following, depending on your tastes:\n\n  englisch (\u00eang-lish) (rare)\n\n  medium (mey-dee-oom) (medium)\n\n  durchgebraten (doorH-ge-braht-en) (well-done)\n\nSoll ich Ihnen zwei L\u00f6ffel bringen? (zol iH een-en tsvay ler-fel bring-en?) (Shall I bring you two spoons?)\n\nKann ich bitte eine Serviette haben? (k\u00e2n iH bi-te ayn-e s\u00ear-vee-\u00eat-e hah-ben?) (Can I have a napkin, please?)\n\nK\u00f6nnen Sie uns bitte noch zwei Bier bringen? (kern-en zee oons bi-te noH tsvay beer bring-en?) (Can you bring us two more beers, please?)\n\nOrdering something special\n\nPeople all over the world are now more conscientious than ever about what they're eating, whether due to health or ethical concerns. So you may need the following phrases to order something a little out of the ordinary:\n\nHaben Sie vegetarische Gerichte? (hah-ben zee vey-g\u00ea-tahr-ish-e ge-riH-te?) (Do you have vegetarian dishes?)\n\nIch kann nichts essen, was . . . enth\u00e4lt (iH k\u00e2n niHts \u00eas-en, v\u00e2s . . . \u00eant-hailt) (I can't eat anything that contains . . .)\n\nHaben Sie Gerichte f\u00fcr Diabetiker? (hah-ben zee ge-riH-te fuer dee-\u00e2-bey-ti-ker?) (Do you have dishes for diabetics?)\n\nHaben Sie Kinderportionen? (hah-ben zee kin-der-por-tsee-ohn-en?) (Do you have children's portions?)\n\nReplying to \"How did you like the food?\"\n\nAfter a meal, it's traditional for the server to inquire whether you liked the food by asking this question:\n\nHat es Ihnen geschmeckt? (h\u00e2t \u00eas een-en ge-shm\u00eakt?) (Did you enjoy the food?)\n\nAsking for your check and tipping your server\n\nWondering why the server is letting you sit at your table without ever bringing your check? In German-speaking regions, you have to ask for the check if you want to pay. It would be considered pushy and impolite to put the check on your table before you request it. In more casual establishments, such as a Kneipe, it's common to simply tell the waiter that you want to pay, and the payment is then made directly at the table, usually with cash. But don't feel like you have to tip as much as you do in North America. The servers receive a salary, and they don't live off their tips. If you're paying cash for the check at your table, just round up the sum of money you're paying by 8 to 10 percent. Consider using the phrase Stimmt so. (shtimt zoh.) (Keep the change.) It tells the server that the sum added on to the bill is their tip.\n\nHopefully, you enjoyed your meal and answer the question with one of the following:\n\n  danke, gut (d\u00e2n-ke, gooht) (thanks, good)\n\n  sehr gut (zeyr gooht) (very good)\n\n  ausgezeichnet (ous-ge-tsayH-net) (excellent)\n\nAsking for the check\n\nAt the end of your meal, your server may ask you the following expression as a way to bring your meal to a close and find out whether you're ready for the check:\n\nSonst noch etwas? (zonst noH \u00eat-v\u00e2s?) (Anything else?)\n\nUnless you'd like to order something else, it's time to pay die Rechnung (r\u00eaH-noong) (bill). You can ask for the bill in the following ways:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte bezahlen. (iH merH-te be-tsahl-en.) (I would like to pay.)\n\nDie Rechnung, bitte. (dee r\u00eaH-noong, bi-te.) (The check, please.)\n\nIf necessary, you can pay together with the other people you're dining with. In that case, use this phrase: Alles zusammen, bitte. (\u00e2l-es tsoo-z\u00e2m-en, bi-te.) (Everything together, please.). Or you can ask to pay separately with Wir m\u00f6chten getrennt bezahlen. (veer merH-ten ge-tr\u00eant be-tsahl-en.) (We would like to pay separately.).\n\n  Many German restaurants, especially upscale establishments, allow you to pay with a credit card \u2014 die Kreditkarte (dee kr\u00ea-dit-k\u00e2r-te). These restaurants have signs in the window or one at the door, indicating which cards they take (just as they do in American restaurants). If it's essential for you to pay with a credit card, simply look for these signs.\n\nIf you need a Quittung (kvit-oong) (receipt), ask the server for one after you've asked for the check:\n\nUnd eine Quittung, bitte. (oont ayn-e kvit-oong, bi-te.) (And a receipt, please.)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nMike and Ute have enjoyed a great meal. They ask for the check, pay, and then tip the waiter. (Track 19)\n\n---\n\nMike: | Die Rechnung, bitte.\n\ndee r\u00eaH-noong, bi-te.\n\nThe check, please.\n\nKellner: | Sofort. Das macht 45 Euro 80.\n\nzoh-fort. d\u00e2s m\u00e2Ht fuenf-oont-feer-tsiH oy-roh \u00e2Ht-tsiH.\n\nComing right up. That would be 45 euros 80 cents.\n\nMike puts 50 euros on the table.\n\nMike: | Stimmt so.\n\nshtimt zoh.\n\nKeep the change.\n\nKellner: | Vielen Dank.\n\nfee-len d\u00e2nk.\n\nThank you very much.\n\nMike: | Bitte.\n\nbi-te.\n\nYou're welcome.\n\nShopping for Food\n\nSometimes you may not feel like eating out. You may prefer to buy food for a picnic or to do the cooking yourself. If you want to shop for food, you need to know where to go and what to buy. The following section provides you with words for types of stores and food. To find out about how to order specific quantities of food, check out the section in Chapter 4 on weights and measurements.\n\nKnowing where to shop\n\nAs in the U.S., in Germany you can shop for food at a number of different stores and shops. The following is a list of stores you may visit:\n\n  das Lebensmittelgesch\u00e4ft (d\u00e2s ley-benz-mit-el-ge-sh\u00eaft) (grocery store)\n\n  der Supermarkt (d\u00ear zooh-p\u00ear-m\u00e2rkt) (supermarket)\n\n  der Markt (d\u00ear m\u00e2rkt) (market)\n\n  die Metzgerei (dee m\u00eats-ge-ray) (butcher shop)\n\n  die B\u00e4ckerei (dee b\u00eak-e-ray) (bakery)\n\n  die Konditorei (dee kon-dee-to-ray) (cake and pastry shop)\n\n  die Weinhandlung (dee vayn-h\u00e2nd-loong) (wine store)\n\n  You may purchase beer, wine, and other alcoholic beverages in German supermarkets, grocery stores, discount stores, and even some gas stations. Large train stations may also have stores that sell food and alcoholic beverages, and some of the larger department stores have a full-fledged supermarket located in the basement.\n\nFinding what you need\n\nIn the various shops listed in the preceding section, you may find the following types of foods:\n\n  die Backwaren (dee b\u00e2k-v\u00e2r-en) (bakery goods)\n\n  das Geb\u00e4ck (d\u00e2s ge-b\u00eak) (cookies, pastries)\n\n  das Gem\u00fcse (d\u00e2s ge-mue-ze) (vegetables)\n\n  der Fisch (d\u00ear fish) (fish)\n\n  das Fleisch (d\u00e2s flaysh) (meat)\n\n  das Obst (d\u00e2s ohpst) (fruit)\n\nHere are some specific food items you may be interested in purchasing:\n\n  das Brot (d\u00e2s broht) (bread)\n\n  das Br\u00f6tchen (d\u00e2s brert-Hen) (roll)\n\n  das Roggenbrot (d\u00e2s rog-en-broht) (rye bread)\n\n  das Schwarzbrot (d\u00e2s shv\u00e2rts-broht) (brown bread)\n\n  der Kuchen (d\u00ear koohH-en) (cake)\n\n  die Torte (dee tor-te) (cake, often multilayered)\n\n  die Butter (dee boot-er) (butter)\n\n  der K\u00e4se (d\u00ear kai-ze) (cheese)\n\n  die Milch (dee milH) (milk)\n\n  die Sahne (dee zahn-e) (cream)\n\n  die Flunder (dee floon-der) (flounder)\n\n  die Forelle (dee fohr-e-le) (trout)\n\n  der Kabeljau (d\u00ear kah-bel-you) (cod)\n\n  die Krabben (dee kr\u00e2b-en) (shrimp)\n\n  der Krebs (d\u00ear kreyps) (crab)\n\n  der Tunfisch (d\u00ear toohn-fish) (tuna)\n\n  die Bratwurst (dee braht-voorst) (fried sausage)\n\n  das H\u00e4hnchen (d\u00e2s hain-Hen) (chicken)\n\n  das Rindfleisch (d\u00e2s rint-flaysh) (beef)\n\n  der Schinken (d\u00ear shin-ken) (ham)\n\n  das Schweinefleisch (d\u00e2s shvayn-e-flaysh) (pork)\n\n  der Speck (d\u00ear shp\u00eak) (bacon)\n\n  die Wurst (dee voorst) (sausage)\n\n  der Apfel (d\u00ear \u00e2p-fel) (apple)\n\n  die Banane (dee b\u00e2-nah-ne) (banana)\n\n  die Birne (dee birn-e) (pear)\n\n  die Bohne (dee bohn-e) (bean)\n\n  der Brokkoli (d\u00ear broh-ko-lee) (broccoli)\n\n  die Erbse (dee \u00earp-se) (pea)\n\n  die Erdbeere (dee eyrt-beyr-e) (strawberry)\n\n  die Gurke (dee goork-e) (cucumber)\n\n  die Karotte (dee k\u00e2-rot-e) (carrot)\n\n  die Kartoffel (dee k\u00e2r-tof-el) (potato)\n\n  der Knoblauch (d\u00ear knoh-blouH) (garlic)\n\n  der Kohl (d\u00ear kohl) (cabbage)\n\n  der Kopfsalat (d\u00ear kopf-z\u00e2-laht) (lettuce)\n\n  die Orange (dee oh-ron-ge [g as in the word genre]) (orange)\n\n  der Paprika (d\u00ear p\u00e2p-ree-kah) (bell pepper)\n\n  der Pilz (d\u00ear pilts) (mushroom)\n\n  der Reis (d\u00ear rays) (rice)\n\n  der Salat (d\u00ear z\u00e2-laht) (salad)\n\n  das Sauerkraut (d\u00e2s zou-er-krout) (sauerkraut)\n\n  der Spinat (d\u00ear shpi-naht) (spinach)\n\n  die Tomate (dee to-mah-te) (tomato)\n\n  die Zucchini (dee tsoo-kee-ni) (zucchini)\n\n  die Zwiebel (dee tsvee-bel) (onion)\n\n  If you go shopping at a supermarket in Germany, you're bound to notice that plastic bags for your groceries aren't something you just get for free. You either have to bring your own bag or pay a small amount for a plastic bag at the cashier. So why not go with the flow and purchase a few cloth bags that you can reuse? Oh, and keep in mind that bagging your own groceries is customary.\n\n Fun & Games\n\nYou have just ordered a glass of water, a cup of coffee, soup, salad, steak, and mashed potatoes for lunch at a caf\u00e9. Identify everything on the table to make sure that your waiter hasn't forgotten anything. Use the definite articles der, die, or das whenever you know which article to use.\n\nA. ______________________________\n\nB. ______________________________\n\nC. ______________________________\n\nD. ______________________________\n\nE. ______________________________\n\nF. ______________________________\n\nG. ______________________________\n\nH. ______________________________\n\nI. ______________________________\n\nJ. ______________________________\nChapter 9\n\nShopping Made Easy\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Deciding where and when to shop\n\n  Finding items, browsing, and asking for help\n\n  Looking for clothes while you shop\n\n  Making purchases after finding what you need\n\n  Comparing items before buying\n\nShopping in another country can be a fun way to dive into the culture and rub elbows with the locals. In European cities, you have a choice of hunting for unique items in enticing shops and boutiques, or if you're in the mood for one-stop shopping, you can head for the major department stores found in all the larger towns and cities.\n\nCity centers often have large pedestrian zones featuring all kinds of stores and restaurants, making them the ideal setting for a leisurely stroll or for some window shopping, which is called Schaufensterbummel (shou-f\u00eans-ter-boom-el).\n\nIn this chapter, we help you become familiar with the terms and phrases you would use during a shopping trip \u2014 from asking for help and browsing to trying on and purchasing your finds.\n\nPlaces to Shop around Town\n\nIf you need to purchase something, you can find plenty of shopping opportunities in all kinds of locales, including the following:\n\n  das Kaufhaus (d\u00e2s kouf-hous) (department store)\n\n  das Fachgesch\u00e4ft (d\u00e2s f\u00e2H-ge-sh\u00eaft) (store specializing in a line of products)\n\n  die Boutique (dee booh-teek) (a small, often high-end shop generally selling clothes or gifts)\n\n  die Buchhandlung (dee boohH-h\u00e2nd-loong) (bookstore)\n\n  die Fu\u00dfg\u00e4ngerzone (dee foohs-g\u00eang-er-tsoh-ne) (pedestrian zone)\n\n  der Kiosk (d\u00ear kee-osk) (newsstand)\n\n  der Flohmarkt (d\u00ear floh-m\u00e2rkt) (flea market)\n\nFinding Out about Opening Hours\n\n  Shopping hours in Germany aren't quite what you're used to in the U.S. Opening hours are regulated by law. For the most part, stores may open at 6 a.m., and they close by 8 p.m. from Monday through Saturday. In small towns, some stores close between noon and 2 p.m. for lunch. Don't count on banks being open after 4 p.m. However, you may find some banks that stay open until about 6 p.m. on Thursdays. On Sundays, most businesses remain closed.\n\n  Bakeries, which sell fresh rolls, or Br\u00f6tchen (brert-Hen), are an exception to the rule that businesses remain closed on Sundays. And some stores may be open in popular resort towns. Can't find any places to buy sandwich fixings? Look for 24\/7 gas stations that sell a wide variety of grocery items. Also some shops at train stations in larger cities are open on Sundays.\n\nTo find out a store's open hours, ask the following questions:\n\n  Wann \u00f6ffnen Sie? (v\u00e2n erf-nen zee?) (When do you open?)\n\n  Wann schlie\u00dfen Sie? (v\u00e2n shlees-en zee?) (When do you close?)\n\n  Haben Sie mittags ge\u00f6ffnet? (hah-ben zee mi-tahks ge-erf-net?) (Are you open during lunch?)\n\nNavigating Your Way around a Store\n\nIf you need help finding a certain item or section in a department store, you can consult the information desk \u2014 die Auskunft (dee ous-koonft) or die Information (dee in-for-m\u00e2-tsee-ohn). The people there should have all the answers you need, and talking to the folks at the information desk provides you with a terrific opportunity to practice your questioning skills.\n\nIf you're searching for a certain item, you can ask for it by name with either of these phrases (at the end of the phrase, just fill in the plural form of the item you're looking for):\n\n  Wo bekomme ich . . .? (voh be-kom-e iH . . .?) (Where do I get . . .?)\n\n  Wo finde ich . . .? (voh fin-de iH . . .?) (Where do I find . . .?)\n\nWhatever happened to the first floor?\n\nGermans (and other Europeans) look at buildings differently than Americans do. They don't count the ground floor, das Erdgeschoss (d\u00e2s \u00eart-ge-shos), as the first floor. They start numbering with the floor above the ground floor. That system makes the American second floor the German first floor, and so on, all the way to the top.\n\nWhen you question the people at the information desk, they may say . . . f\u00fchren wir nicht (fuer-en veer niHt . . . ) (We don't carry . . .). Or they may direct you to the appropriate section of the store, using one of the following phrases:\n\n  Im Erdgeschoss. (im \u00eart-ge-shos.) (On the ground floor.)\n\n  Im Untergeschoss. (im oon-ter-ge-shos.) (In the basement.)\n\n  In der . . . Etage. (in d\u00ear . . . \u00ea-tah-zhe.) (On the . . . floor.)\n\n  Im . . . Stock. (im . . . shtok.) (On the . . . floor.)\n\n  Eine Etage h\u00f6her. (ayn-e \u00ea-tah-zhe her-her.) (One floor above.)\n\n  Eine Etage tiefer. (ayn-e \u00ea-tah-zhe teef-er.) (One floor below.)\n\nIf you'd like to browse through a section of the store or you're looking for a special feature of the store, you can use the phrase Wo finde ich . . .? (voh fin-de iH . . .?) (Where do I find . . .?), ending the phrase with one of the following expressions:\n\n  die Toiletten (dee toy-l\u00eat-en) (restrooms)\n\n  die Herrenabteilung (dee h\u00ear-en-\u00e2p-tay-loong) (men's department)\n\n  die Damenabteilung (dee dah-m\u00ean-\u00e2p-tay-loong) (ladies' department)\n\n  die Kinderabteilung (dee kin-der-\u00e2p-tay-loong) (children's department)\n\n  die Schuhabteilung (dee shooh-\u00e2p-tay-loong) (shoe department)\n\n  die Schmuckabteilung (dee shmook-\u00e2p-tay-loong) (jewelry department)\n\n  den Aufzug \/ den Fahrstuhl (deyn ouf-tsook \/ deyn f\u00e2r-shtoohl) (elevator)\n\n  die Rolltreppe (dee rol-tr\u00eap-e) (escalator)\n\n  When you want to sound particularly nice as you ask for help, you're always safe using the polite phrase Entschuldigen Sie bitte (ent-shool-di-gen zee bi-te) (Excuse me, please). Consider, for example, the following polite question:\n\nEntschuldigen Sie bitte, wo ist die Rolltreppe? (ent-shool-di-gen zee bi-te, voh ist dee rol-tr\u00eap-e?) (Excuse me, please, where is the escalator?)\n\nSee Chapter 3 for more details on polite expressions.\n\nJust Browsing: Taking a Look at Merchandise\n\nSometimes you just want to check out the merchandise in the store on your own without anybody breathing down your neck. However, store assistants may offer their help by saying something like the following:\n\nSuchen Sie etwas Bestimmtes? (zoohH-en zee \u00eat-v\u00e2s be-shtim-tes?) (Are you looking for something in particular?)\n\nKann ich Ihnen behilflich sein? (k\u00e2n iH eehn-en be-hilf-liH zayn?) (Can I help you?)\n\nWhen all you want to do is browse, this phrase can help you politely turn down help:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte mich nur umsehen. (iH merH-te miH noohr oom-zey-en.) (I just want to look around.)\n\nThe store assistant will probably tell you it's okay to keep browsing by saying either of the following:\n\nAber nat\u00fcrlich. Sagen Sie Bescheid, wenn Sie eine Frage haben. (ah-ber n\u00e2-tuer-liH. zah-gen zee be-shayt, v\u00ean zee ayn-e frah-ge hah-ben.) (Of course. Just let me know if you need help.)\n\nRufen Sie mich, wenn Sie eine Frage haben. (rooh-fen zee miH, v\u00ean zee ayn-e frah-ge hah-ben.) (Call me if you have a question.)\n\nGetting Assistance as You Shop\n\nIn some situations, you may want or need assistance while you're shopping. Here are some useful phrases you may say or hear:\n\nW\u00fcrden Sie mir bitte helfen? Ich suche . . . (vuer-den zee meer bi-te h\u00eal-fen. iH zoohH-e . . .) (Would you help me, please? I'm looking for . . .)\n\nAber gern, hier entlang bitte. (ah-ber g\u00earn, heer \u00eant-l\u00e2ng bi-te.) (Certainly. This way please.)\n\nWelche Gr\u00f6\u00dfe suchen Sie? (v\u00eal-He grer-se zoohH-en zee?) (What size are you looking for?)\n\nHaben Sie so etwas in Gr\u00f6\u00dfe . . .? (hah-ben zee zoh \u00eat-v\u00e2s in grer-se . . .?) (Do you have something like this in size . . .?)\n\nWie gef\u00e4llt Ihnen diese Farbe? (vee ge-f\u00ealt een-en deez-e f\u00e2r-be?) (How do you like this color?)\n\n  Most sales people in Austrian, German, and Swiss stores are competent and knowledgeable. That's due in part to the education system. Salespeople, as is the case in most trades, generally complete a comprehensive three-year apprenticeship that combines on-the-job training with trade school instruction.\n\nShopping for Clothes\n\nWhen out shopping for clothes, you just have to decide what you want in terms of item, color, size, and, of course, price. Many terms for clothing are unisex, and others are typical for either men or women.\n\nSome items that women wear include the following:\n\n  die Bluse (dee blooh-ze) (blouse)\n\n  das Kleid (d\u00e2s klayt) (dress)\n\n  das Kost\u00fcm (d\u00e2s kos-tuem) (suit)\n\n  der Hosenanzug (d\u00ear hoh-zen-\u00e2n-tsook) (pantsuit)\n\n  der Rock (d\u00ear rok) (skirt)\n\nThe following words usually apply to clothing for men:\n\n  die Krawatte (dee kr\u00e2-v\u00e2t-e) (tie)\n\n  der Anzug (d\u00ear \u00e2n-tsook) (suit)\n\nThe following items are generally considered to be worn by both men and women:\n\n  der Pullover, der Pulli (d\u00ear poo-loh-ver, d\u00ear poo-lee) (sweater)\n\n  die Strickjacke (dee shtrik-y\u00e2-ke) (cardigan)\n\n  das Jackett, die Jacke (d\u00e2s jh\u00e2-k\u00eat, dee y\u00e2-ke) (jacket)\n\n  der Blazer (d\u00ear bley-zer) (blazer)\n\n  die Weste (dee v\u00eas-te) (vest)\n\n  die Schuhe (dee shooh-e) (shoes)\n\n  der Mantel (d\u00ear m\u00e2n-tel) (coat)\n\n  die Hose (dee hoh-ze) (pants)\n\n  das Hemd (d\u00e2s h\u00eamt) (shirt)\n\n  das T-Shirt (d\u00e2s T-shirt [as in English]) (T-shirt)\n\nClothing items such as the ones in the preceding lists can come in any number of fabrics and styles, including the following:\n\n  die Seide (dee zay-de) (silk)\n\n  die Wolle (dee vol-e) (wool)\n\n  die Baumwolle (dee boum-vol-e) (cotton)\n\n  das Leinen (d\u00e2s layn-en) (linen)\n\n  das Leder (d\u00e2s ley-der) (leather)\n\n  gestreift (ge-shtrayft) (striped)\n\n  kariert (k\u00e2r-eert) (checkered)\n\n  bunt (boont) (multicolored)\n\n  gepunktet (ge-poonk-tet) (with dots)\n\n  einfarbig (ayn-f\u00e2r-biH) (solid color)\n\n  sportlich (shport-liH) (sporty, casual)\n\n  elegant (\u00ea-le-g\u00e2nt) (elegant)\n\nFigure 9-1 shows a variety of clothing items with their German names.\n\n**Figure 9-1:** Common clothing items\n\nFamiliarizing yourself with the colors available\n\nThe basic Farben (f\u00e2r-ben) (colors) are\n\n  schwarz (shv\u00e2rts) (black)\n\n  wei\u00df (vays) (white)\n\n  rot (roht) (red)\n\n  gr\u00fcn (gruen) (green)\n\n  gelb (g\u00ealp) (yellow)\n\n  braun (brown [as in English]) (brown)\n\n  lila (lee-l\u00e2) (purple)\n\n  orange (o-r\u00e2nch) (orange)\n\n  grau (grou) (gray)\n\n  blau (blou) (blue)\n\nThese color words are all adjectives. To find out more about how to fit them into phrases and sentences, check out Chapter 2.\n\nKnowing your size\n\nFinding the right size clothing can be a pain in the neck in any shopping situation. When shopping in German-speaking countries, though, you get a double whammy: Clothes sizes aren't the same as in the U.S. The following charts are a useful guideline to help you crack the code.\n\nHere are the approximate equivalents for sizes of women's clothes:\n\nFor men's jacket and suit sizes, use the following approximate conversions:\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nFrau Schulte is in the ladies' section of a department store. She wants to buy a blouse and is getting assistance from a saleswoman. (Track 20)\n\n---\n\nVerk\u00e4uferin: | Kann ich Ihnen behilflich sein?\n\nk\u00e2n iH een-en be-hilf-liH zayn?\n\nCan I help you?\n\nFrau Schulte: | Ja bitte. Ich suche eine Bluse.\n\nyah bi-te. iH zoohH-e ayn-e blooh-ze.\n\nYes, please. I'm looking for a blouse.\n\nVerk\u00e4uferin: | Hier entlang, bitte. Welche Farbe soll es denn sein?\n\nheer \u00eant-lang, bi-te. v\u00ealH-e f\u00e2r-be zol \u00eas d\u00ean zayn?\n\nPlease come this way. What color do you want?\n\nFrau Schulte: | Wei\u00df.\n\nVays.\n\nWhite.\n\nVerk\u00e4uferin: | Suchen Sie etwas L\u00e4ssiges?\n\nzoohH-en zee \u00eat-v\u00e2s l\u00eas-ee-ges?\n\nAre you looking for something casual?\n\nFrau Schulte: | Nein, eher etwas Elegantes.\n\nnayn, \u00ea-her \u00eat-v\u00e2s ey-le-g\u00e2n-tes.\n\nNo, rather something elegant.\n\nVerk\u00e4uferin: | Gut. Welche Gr\u00f6\u00dfe haben Sie?\n\ngooht. v\u00ealH-e grer-se hah-ben zee?\n\nGood. What is your size?\n\nFrau Schulte: | Gr\u00f6\u00dfe 38.\n\ngrer-se \u00e2Ht-oon-dray-siH.\n\nSize 38.\n\nVerk\u00e4uferin: | Wie gef\u00e4llt Ihnen dieses Modell?\n\nvee ge-f\u00ealt een-en deez-es mo-d\u00eal?\n\nHow do you like this style?\n\nFrau Schulte: | Sehr gut.\n\nzeyr gooht.\n\nVery much.\n\nTrying on the items you find\n\nWhen you find something that looks promising, you probably want to try it on. In that case, you can ask the sales assistant the following question, supplying the name of the article that you want to try on:\n\nKann ich . . . anprobieren? (k\u00e2n iH . . . \u00e2n-pro-bee-ren?) (Can I try . . . on?)\n\nOr a sales assistant may anticipate your question and ask this question:\n\nM\u00f6chten Sie . . . anprobieren? (merH-ten zee . . . \u00e2n-pro-bee-ren?) (Would you like to try . . . on?)\n\nIn either case, the next step is going to the dressing rooms, which you can ask about by saying:\n\nWo sind die Umkleidekabinen? (voh zint dee oom-klay-de-k\u00e2-been-en?) (Where are the fitting rooms?)\n\nAfter you try your item on, the sales assistant may ask you one of the following questions to find out what you think of the article of clothing:\n\nPasst . . .? (p\u00e2st . . .?) (Does . . . fit?)\n\nWie passt Ihnen . . .? (wie p\u00e2st een-en . . .?) (How does . . . fit you?)\n\nGef\u00e4llt Ihnen . . .? (ge-f\u00ealt een-en . . .?) (Do you like . . .?)\n\nYou can answer with any of the following, depending on how things went when you tried on your item:\n\nNein, . . . ist zu lang \/ kurz \/ eng \/ weit \/ gro\u00df \/ klein. (nayn, . . . ist tsooh l\u00e2ng \/ koorts \/ \u00eang \/ vayt \/ grohs \/ klayn.) (No, . . . is too long \/ short \/ tight \/ loose \/ big \/ small.)\n\nK\u00f6nnen Sie mir eine andere Gr\u00f6\u00dfe bringen? (kern-en zee meer ayn-e \u00e2n-de-re grer-se bring-en?) (Can you get me another size?)\n\n. . . passt sehr gut. (. . . p\u00e2st zeyr gooht.) (. . . fits very well.)\n\n. . . steht mir. (. . . shteyt meer.) (. . . suits me.)\n\n. . . gef\u00e4llt mir. (. . . ge-f\u00ealt meer.) (I like . . .)\n\nIch nehme . . . (IH ney-me . . . ) (I'll take . . .)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nFrau Schulte likes the blouse the saleswoman has shown her and wants to try it on. Here's how their conversation may go. (Track 21)\n\n---\n\nFrau Schulte: | Ich m\u00f6chte diese Bluse anprobieren. Wo sind die Umkleidekabinen, bitte?\n\niH merH-te deez-e blooh-ze \u00e2n-pro-bee-ren. voh zint dee oom-klay-de-k\u00e2-been-en, bi-te?\n\nI would like to try this blouse on. Where are the fitting rooms, please?\n\nVerk\u00e4uferin: | Ja, nat\u00fcrlich. Da dr\u00fcben sind die Umkleidekabinen.\n\nyah, n\u00e2-tuer-liH. d\u00e2 drue-ben zint dee oom-klay-de-k\u00e2-been-en.\n\nOf course. The fitting rooms are over there.\n\n(A few minutes later Frau Schulte returns.)\n\nVerk\u00e4uferin: | Passt die Bluse?\n\np\u00e2st dee blooh-ze?\n\nDoes the blouse fit?\n\nFrau Schulte: | Ja. Ich nehme die Bluse.\n\nyah. iH ney-me dee blooh-ze.\n\nYes. I'll take the blouse.\n\nPaying for Your Shopping Items\n\nMost of the time, when you go shopping, every piece of merchandise has a tag that tells you exactly how much it costs. The price you see on a price tag is what you pay for the item at the cash register, including sales tax, called the VAT (or value added tax). German word for VAT is die Mehrwertsteuer (Mwst) (dee m\u00ear-v\u00eart-shtoy-er).\n\n  If you don't reside in a country of the European Union (EU), you usually can get a refund for the VAT tax when you leave the EU. The VAT refund is referred to as \u2014 take a deep breath \u2014 die Mehrwertsteuerr\u00fcckerstattung (dee m\u00ear-v\u00eart-shtoy-er-ruek-\u00ear-sht\u00e2t-oong). Although the German word for the VAT refund looks a bit daunting, the process for getting it back is usually simple. Just ask for a VAT refund form when you pay at the register. Collect all the receipts for merchandise you're taking out of the European Union, as well as the forms, and then you can have the lot approved by a customs agent at the airport before you leave the EU to return home. (Because you must show the items, don't pack them with your checked luggage!)\n\nOccasionally, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to ask about the price (der Preis) (d\u00ear prays) of an item. Price tags, being the devious little critters that they are, have a way of falling off or being indecipherable, especially when handwritten. Consider this case in point: The German number 1 can look a lot like the American number 7 when scrawled by hand. But not to worry. The following simple phrases take care of the price question should you need to ask it:\n\nWas kostet . . .? (v\u00e2s kos-tet . . .?) (What does . . . cost?)\n\nWie viel kostet . . .? (vee feel kos-tet . . .?) (How much does . . . cost?)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nFrau Schulte heads to the cash register to pay for her purchase. Consider how her conversation with the cashier goes:\n\n---\n\nKassiererin: | Das macht 49 Euro.\n\nd\u00e2s m\u00e2Ht noyn-oont-feer-tsiH oy-roh.\n\nThat's 49 euros, please.\n\nFrau Schulte: | Nehmen Sie Kreditkarten?\n\nney-men see krey-dit-k\u00e2r-ten?\n\nCan I pay by credit card?\n\nKassiererin: | Kein Problem.\n\nkayn pro-bleym.\n\nNo problem.\n\nFrau Schulte: | Hier bitte.\n\nheer bi-te.\n\nHere you are.\n\nKassiererin: | Danke. W\u00fcrden Sie bitte unterschreiben? Und hier ist Ihre Quittung.\n\nd\u00e2n-ke. wuer-den zee bi-te un-ter-schray-ben? oont heer ist eer-e kvit-oong.\n\nThanks. Would you please sign here? And here is your receipt.\n\nFrau Schulte: | Danke!\n\nd\u00e2n-ke!\n\nThanks!\n\nComparatively Speaking: Making Comparisons Among Objects\n\nComparisons are important when you're out shopping for gifts for yourself or others. In English, when you want to compare two things, you use the word \"than\" and an appropriate adjective or adverb. Comparisons in German are made in exactly the same way \u2014 all you need is the word als (\u00e2ls) (than) plus the appropriate adverb or adjective. Consider these examples:\n\n  Die braunen Schuhe sind billiger als die schwarzen. (dee broun-en shooh-e zint bil-ee-ger \u00e2ls dee shv\u00e2rts-en.) (The brown shoes are cheaper than the black ones.)\n\n  Das blaue Kleid gef\u00e4llt mir besser als das Rote. (d\u00e2s blou-e klayt ge-f\u00ealt meer b\u00eas-er \u00e2ls d\u00e2s roh-te.) (I like the blue dress better than the red one.)\n\n  Dieses Gesch\u00e4ft hat modischere Kleidung als das Andere gegen\u00fcber. (deez-es ge-sh\u00eaft h\u00e2t moh-dish-er-e klay-doong \u00e2ls d\u00e2s \u00e2n-d\u00eare gey-gen-ue-ber.) (This store has more fashionable clothes than the one across from it.)\n\n Fun & Games\n\nWrite the correct German word for the department beside the floor number where it is located. Read the following phrases to decide which department belongs on which floor. Notice that sentence A gives a clue for sentence B; sentence C has a clue for sentence D, and so on. (Hint: Erdgeschoss is the North American first floor, 1. Etage is the North American second floor, and so on. Untergeschoss is the German word for basement.)\n\nA. Sie finden Schuhe im vierten Stock, und...\n\nB.... die Kinderabteilung ist eine Etage tiefer.\n\nC. Der Supermarkt ist im Untergeschoss, und...\n\nD.... die Schmuckabteilung ist eine Etage h\u00f6her.\n\nE. Steve Jobs & Bill Gates sind im sechsten Stock, und ...\n\nF....das Restaurant ist eine Etage h\u00f6her.\n\nG. Die Herrenabteilung ist im zweiten Stock, und...\n\nH.... die Damenabteilung ist eine Etage tiefer.\n\nI. TV\/Telekommunikation sind im f\u00fcnften Stock.\n\nKaufhaus Schlummer map\n\nEtage\/Stock (floor) Abteilung (department)\n\n7 ______________________________\n\n6 ______________________________\n\n5 ______________________________\n\n4 ______________________________\n\n3 ______________________________\n\n2 ______________________________\n\n1 ______________________________\n\nErdgeschoss ______________________________\n\nUntergeschoss ______________________________\nChapter 10\n\nGoing Out on the Town\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Deciding where to go\n\n  Talking about an event you attend\n\n  Going to a concert, an art exhibition, or a party\n\nYou find a surprisingly large number of cultural venues in Germany, and that's mostly true all across Europe. Not only do the arts receive state and federal funds to support their efforts, but Europeans also have a long-standing appreciation of their cultural assets. To get a taste of German culture, check the media to find out what's going on. Along with local Web sites, the local newspapers and other media offer weekly guides of local events by publishing a Veranstaltungskalender (f\u00ear-\u00e2n-sht\u00e2l-toongs-k\u00e2-len-der) (calendar of events).\n\nWhat Would You Like to Do?\n\nSometimes you may want to go out by yourself, and other times you may want company. If you're in the mood for companionship and want to toss around ideas with someone about what to do, you can ask\n\nWas wollen wir unternehmen? (v\u00e2s vol-en veer oon-ter-ney-men?) (What do we want to do?)\n\nUse the following phrases if you want to find out about somebody's plans. These phrases are also very useful when you want to know whether somebody is available:\n\nHaben Sie (heute Abend) etwas vor? (hah-ben zee [hoy-te ah-b\u00eant] \u00eat-v\u00e2s fohr?) (Do you have anything planned [for this evening]?)\n\nHaben Sie (heute Abend) Zeit? (hah-ben zee [hoy-te ah-b\u00eant] tsayt) (Do you have time this evening?)\n\nHast du (morgen Vormittag) etwas vor? (h\u00e2st dooh [mor-gen fohr-mi-tahk] \u00eat-v\u00e2s fohr?) (Do you have anything planned [for tomorrow morning]?)\n\n  Use the formal Sie (zee) (you) when you don't know the person you're speaking with very well, and use the informal du (dooh) (you) only when you're on mutually familiar terms.\n\nGoing to the Movies\n\nWhen you want to tell someone that you're interested in going to the movies, you can use the following phrases:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte ins Kino gehen. (iH merH-te ins kee-noh gey-en.) (I would like to go to the movies.)\n\nIch m\u00f6chte einen Film sehen. (iH merH-te ayn-en film zey-en.) (I would like to see a film.)\n\n  Watching films in a language you want to learn is a terrific way of getting your ear accustomed to how the language sounds. At the same time, you can get used to understanding many different speakers. All around the world, in fact, people learn English by watching American movies.\n\nGetting to the show\n\nIf you're searching for a movie to go to, your best bet is to check out local Web sites, weekly guides of local events, or newspaper listings. The listings usually tell you everything you need to know about die Vorstellung (dee fohr-st\u00eal-oong) (the show): when and where the show is playing, who the actors are, and whether the movie is in its original language \u2014 im Original (im o-ri-gi-nahl) (original); OmU, which stands for Original mit Untertiteln (o-ri-gi-nahl mit oon-t\u00ear-ti-teln) (original with subtitles); or synchronisiert (zyn-kro-nee-zeert) (dubbed). (See the sidebar \"What a strange voice you have\" for more about language in movies.)\n\nIf you don't have access to the Internet or other sources of information, the following phrases can help you ask for information about a movie:\n\nIn welchem Kino l\u00e4uft . . .? (in v\u00ealH-\u00eam kee-noh loyft . . .?) (In which movie theater is . . . showing?)\n\nUm wie viel Uhr beginnt die Vorstellung? (oom vee feel oohr be-gint dee fohr-st\u00eal-oong?) (At what time does the show start?)\n\nL\u00e4uft der Film im Original oder ist er synchronisiert? (loyft d\u00ear film im o-ri-gi-nahl oh-der ist \u00ear zyn-kro-nee-zeert?) (Is the film shown in the original [language] or is it dubbed?)\n\nWhat a strange voice you have\n\nMost foreign films shown in Germany are dubbed into German, although some movie theaters, especially the small independents, specialize in showing foreign films in the original language with German subtitles \u2014Originalfassung mit deutschen Untertiteln (o-ri-gi-nahl-f\u00e2s-oong mit doy-chen oon-t\u00ear-ti-teln) (original version with German subtitles). So if you're not into the mind-altering experience of listening to Hollywood actors assume strange voices and speak in tongues, keep an eye open for the undubbed version of the film or go see movies filmed in German exclusively. And if you do go to the Originalfassung mit Untertiteln (o-ri-gi-nahl-f\u00e2s-oong mit oon-t\u00ear-ti-teln) (original version with subtitles) of an American movie, you have the advantage of reading the German as you listen to the English, and you may pick up some useful expressions.\n\nBuying tickets\n\nYou can use the following phrase whenever you want to buy tickets, be it for the opera, the movies, or the museum:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte (zwei) Karten \/ Eintrittskarten f\u00fcr . . . (iH merH-te [tsvay] k\u00e2r-ten \/ ayn-trits-k\u00e2r-ten fuer . . .) (I would like [two] tickets \/ entrance tickets for . . .)\n\nAfter buying your tickets, you may get some information from the ticket seller, including the following:\n\nDie Vorstellung hat schon begonnen. (dee fohr-sht\u00eal-oong h\u00e2t shon be-gon-en.) (The show has already started.)\n\nDie . . . -Uhr-Vorstellung ist leider ausverkauft. (dee . . .-oohr-fohr-st\u00eal-oong ist lay-der ous-f\u00ear-kouft.) (The . . . o'clock show is unfortunately sold out.)\n\nWir haben noch Karten f\u00fcr die Vorstellung um . . . Uhr. (veer hah-ben noH k\u00e2r-ten fuer dee fohr-sht\u00eal-oong oom . . . oohr.) (There are tickets left for the show at . . . o'clock.)\n\nThese phrases work for any type of show or performance, not just movies.\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nAntje is talking to her friend Robert on the phone. Antje wants to go to the movies. After greeting her friend, Antje gets right to the point. (Track 22)\n\n---\n\nAntje: | Der neue Zeichentrickfilm von Pixar Studios soll super witzig sein.\n\nd\u00ear noy-e tsayH-en-trik-film fon pix-ahr shtooh-dee-ohs sol sooh-per vits-eeH zayn.\n\nThe new animated film from Pixar Studios is supposed to be incredibly funny.\n\nRobert: | Wann willst du gehen?\n\nv\u00e2n vilst dooh gey-en?\n\nWhen do you want to go?\n\nAntje: | Morgen Abend habe ich Zeit.\n\nmor-gen ah-b\u00eant hah-be iH tsayt.\n\nI have time tomorrow evening.\n\nRobert: | Morgen passt mir auch. In welchem Kino l\u00e4uft der Film?\n\nmor-gen p\u00e2st meer ouH. in v\u00ealH-\u00eam kee-noh loyft d\u00ear film?\n\nTomorrow works for me as well. In which movie theater is the film showing?\n\nAntje: | Im Hansatheater. Die Vorstellung beginnt um 20 Uhr.\n\nim h\u00e2n-s\u00e2-tey-ah-ter. dee fohr-sht\u00eal-oong be-gint oom tsv\u00e2n-tsiH oohr.\n\nIn the Hansa Theater. The show starts at 8 p.m.\n\nRobert: | Gut, treffen wir uns um Viertel vor acht vor dem Kino.\n\ngooht, tr\u00eaf-en veer oons oom fir-tel fohr \u00e2Ht fohr deym kee-noh.\n\nOkay. Let's meet at a quarter to eight in front of the movie theater.\n\nAntje: | Prima. Bis morgen dann.\n\npree-m\u00e2. bis mor-gen d\u00e2n.\n\nGreat. Until tomorrow then.\n\n  There are two German words that mean ticket (for a show), Karte and Eintrittskarte. The difference is simply the fact that Eintrittskarte is a compound word that translates roughly as entrance ticket. You come across many such compound words in German, and they're frequently a combination of two words, in this case, Eintritt(s) and Karte.\n\nWhat Was That? The Simple Past Tense of \"Sein\"\n\nChapter 2 discusses the present tense of sein (zayn) (to be): Ich bin . . . \/ du bist . . . (iH bin . . . \/ dooh bist . . .) (I am . . . \/ you are . . .) and so on. When talking about things that happened in the past \u2014 with phrases such as \"I was . . .\", \"You were . . .,\" and \"They were . . .\" \u2014 you put the verb sein into the simple past tense. The simple past tense of the verb sein looks like this:\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich war | iH vahr\n\ndu warst | dooh v\u00e2rst\n\nSie waren | zee vah-ren\n\ner, sie, es war | \u00ear, zee, es vahr\n\nwir waren | veer vah-ren\n\nihr wart | eer v\u00e2rt\n\nSie waren | zee vah-ren\n\nsie waren | zee vah-ren\n\nYou can use the simple past tense of sein to express many different ideas and questions. Take a look at the past tense of sein in action:\n\nIch war gestern im Kino. (iH vahr g\u00eas-tern im kee-noh.) (I was at the movies yesterday.)\n\nWie war der Film? (vee vahr d\u00ear film?) (How was the film?)\n\nWir waren heute Morgen im Kunstmuseum. (veer vah-ren hoy-te mor-gen im koonst-moo-sey-oom.) (We were at the art museum this morning.)\n\nWarst du letzte Woche in Wien? (v\u00e2rst dooh l\u00eats-te voH-e in veen?) (Were you in Vienna last week?)\n\nWo waren Sie am Freitag? (vo vah-ren zee \u00e2m fray-tahk?) (Where were you on Friday?)\n\nGoing to the Museum\n\n  Germany has a long and rich museum tradition, with many world-renowned museums sprinkled liberally across the country. Most German museums receive state or federal funds and, as a consequence, often charge surprisingly low entrance fees.\n\nIf you're into art, keep an eye open for the Kunstmuseum (koonst-moo-sey-oom) (art museum). If you want to find out more about the traditional lifestyle of a certain area, go to the Freilichtmuseum (fray-leeHt-moo-sey\u2013oom) (open-air museum). You can find museums for virtually everything a human being might fancy, including a Biermuseum (beer-moo-sey-um) (beer museum) in Munich and several other locations!\n\nClosed on Mondays\n\nMuseum mavens beware: German museums, like many European museums and other cultural centers, are closed on Mondays \u2014 montags geschlossen (mohn-tahks ge-shlos-en). Others are closed on dienstags (deens-tahks) (Tuesdays). Make sure to check die \u00d6ffnungszeiten (dee erf-noongs-tsayt-en) (the opening hours) before heading out.\n\nWhen you want to catch an exhibition \u2014 Ausstellung (ous-sht\u00eal-oong) \u2014 the following phrases come in handy:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte ins Museum gehen. (iH merH-te ins moo-sey-oom gey-en.) (I would like to go to the museum.)\n\nIch m\u00f6chte die . . . Ausstellung sehen. (iH merH-te dee . . . ous-sht\u00eal-oong zey-en.) (I would like to see the . . . exhibition.)\n\nIn welchem Museum l\u00e4uft die . . . Ausstellung? (in v\u00ealH-em moo-sey-oom loyft dee . . . ous-sht\u00eal-oong?) (At which museum is the . . . exhibit running?)\n\nIst das Museum montags ge\u00f6ffnet? (ist d\u00e2s moo-sey-oom mohn-tahks ge-erf-net?) (Is the museum open on Mondays?)\n\nUm wie viel Uhr \u00f6ffnet das Museum? (oom vee-feel oohr erf-net d\u00e2s moo-sey-oom?) (At what time does the museum open?)\n\nGibt es eine Sonderausstellung? (gipt \u00eas ayn-e zon-der-ous-sht\u00eal-oong?) (Is there a special exhibit?)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nJan and Mona are planning a trip to a museum. They invite their friend Ingo to join them.\n\n---\n\nJan: | Hallo, Ingo. Wir wollen morgen ins St\u00e4dtische Museum.\n\nh\u00e2-lo, in-go. veer vol-en mor-gen ins sht\u00ea-ti-she moo-sey-oom.\n\nHi, Ingo. We want to go to the city museum tomorrow.\n\nMona: | Wir wollen uns die Ausstellung \u00fcber die Bronzezeit ansehen. Kommst du mit?\n\nveer vol-en oons dee ous-sht\u00eal-oong ue-ber dee bron-tse-tsayt \u00e2n-zey-en. komst dooh mit?\n\nWe want to see the exhibit about the Bronze Age. Do you want to come along?\n\nIngo: | Hmm, ich wei\u00df nicht. Die Ausstellung habe ich schon letzte Woche gesehen.\n\nhmm, iH vays niHt. dee ous-sht\u00eal-oong hah-be iH shohn lets-te voH-e ge-zey-en.\n\nHmm, I don't know. I already saw the exhibit last week.\n\nMona: | Hat sie dir gefallen?\n\nh\u00e2t zee deer ge-f\u00e2l-en?\n\nDid you like it?\n\nIngo: | Ja. Vielleicht komme ich noch einmal mit.\n\nyah. fee-layHt kom-e iH noH ayn-mahl mit.\n\nYes. Maybe I'll come along for a second time.\n\nJan: | Wir wollen morgen um 10.00 Uhr in die Ausstellung.\n\nveer vol-en mor-gen oom tseyn oohr in dee ous-sht\u00eal-oong.\n\nWe want to go to the exhibit tomorrow at ten o'clock.\n\nIngo: | Gut. Ich treffe euch dort.\n\ngooht. iH tr\u00eaf-e oyH dohrt.\n\nGood. I'll meet you there.\n\nTalking about Action in the Past\n\nEarlier in this chapter, you discover how to use the simple past tense of the verb sein (zayn) (to be) in order to say things like \"I was at the museum yesterday\" or \"It was cold yesterday.\" To communicate a full range of actions that happened in the past, you need to use a different form of the verb.\n\nTo refer to actions that took place in the past, the perfect tense is the name of the beast you need to use. To form the perfect tense, you need two verb parts, and you need to know where to put them in a sentence:\n\n  You need the appropriate present tense form of either haben (hah-ben) (have) or sein. If you're asking a yes\/no type of question, this present tense form appears as the first word of the question. If your sentence is a straightforward statement, it appears in the second position of the sentence.\n\n  You need the past participle of the verb, which goes at the end of the sentence (or phrase). Whether you use haben or sein with the past participle of the verb depends on which verb you're working with. Simply put, most verbs require haben, and some use sein. You simply have to memorize which verbs use haben and which ones use sein. (We tell you more about how to form the past participle of a verb in the next section.)\n\n  You should consider the perfect tense a real lifesaver. This tense is very versatile in German, and you can use it to refer to most actions and situations that took place in the past. In fact, you won't have much use for the other past tenses until you're writing a novel in German or are preparing to address the German Parliament. Hey, stranger things have happened!\n\nForming the past participle\n\nTry to get to know the past participle form of each new verb. A few rules make grasping the past participles easier. To apply the rules, you need to know which category the verb in question falls into.\n\nWeak (regular) verbs\n\nWeak verbs, also known as regular verbs, form the largest group of German verbs. When forming the past participle of a weak verb, use this formula:\n\nge + verb stem (the infinitive minus -en) + (e)t = past participle\n\nHonest, this isn't really as hard as algebra! Look at how the formula plays out on the common verb fragen (frah-gen) (to ask):\n\nge + frag + t = gefragt\n\nNow check out a verb that has the ending -et instead of -t, like reden (rey-den) (to talk):\n\nge + red + et = geredet\n\nIn this case, you add -et, and consequently another syllable. The -et ending is added to verbs that have a stem ending in -d, -t, -fn or -gn, and the reason for doing this is so you can actually pronounce (and hear) the word ending.\n\nAnother verb that follows this pattern is \u00f6ffnen (erf-nen) (to open):\n\nge + \u00f6ffn + et = ge\u00f6ffnet\n\nStrong (irregular) verbs\n\nSome verbs, the so-called strong verbs (also known as irregular verbs) follow a different pattern. They add ge\\- in the beginning and -en at the end. Forming the past participle of a strong verb entails the following:\n\nge + verb stem (the infinitive minus -en) \\+ en = past participle\n\nThe verb kommen (kom-en) (to come) is a good example of this:\n\nge + komm + en = gekommen\n\n  Pesky critters that they are, some strong verbs change the spelling of their verb stem when forming a past participle. For example, a stem vowel, and sometimes even a stem consonant, can change.\n\nThe verb helfen (h\u00ealf-en) (to help) changes its stem vowel from e to o:\n\nge + holf + en = geholfen\n\nThe verb gehen (gey-en) (to go) undergoes a bigger change, from geh to gang:\n\nge + gang + en = gegangen\n\nUsing \"haben\" in the perfect tense\n\nBecause the present tense forms of haben are so important to forming the perfect tense with many verbs, here's a quick reminder of the conjugation of haben in the present tense:\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich habe  | iH hah-be\n\ndu hast | dooh h\u00e2st\n\nSie haben | zee hah-ben\n\ner, sie, es hat | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas h\u00e2t\n\nwir haben | veer hah-ben\n\nihr habt | eer h\u00e2pt\n\nSie haben | zee hah-ben\n\nsie haben | zee hah-ben\n\nTable 10-1 shows you some common German verbs that use haben in the perfect tense.\n\nTable 10-1 Verbs That Use Haben in the Perfect Tense\n\n---\n\nVerb | Past Participle\n\narbeiten (\u00e2r-bay-ten) (to work) | gearbeitet\n\nessen (\u00eas-en) (to eat) | gegessen\n\nh\u00f6ren (her-en) (to hear) | geh\u00f6rt\n\nkaufen (kouf-en) (to buy) | gekauft\n\nlachen (l\u00e2H-en) (to laugh) | gelacht\n\nlesen (ley-zen) (to read) | gelesen\n\nmachen (m\u00e2H-en) (to make, do) | gemacht\n\nnehmen (ney-men) (to take) | genommen\n\nschlafen (shl\u00e2f-en) (to sleep) | geschlafen\n\nsehen (zey-en) (to see) | gesehen\n\nspielen (shpee-len) (to play) | gespielt\n\ntrinken (trin-ken) (to drink) | getrunken\n\nTake a look at some examples of how the verb haben combines with a past participle to make the perfect tense:\n\nIch habe den Film gesehen. (iH hah-be deyn film ge-zey-en.) (I have seen the film.)\n\nHast du eine Theaterkarte bekommen? (h\u00e2st dooh ayn-e tey-ah-ter-k\u00e2r-te be-kom-en?) (Did you get a theater ticket?)\n\nWir haben das Kino verlassen. (veer hah-ben d\u00e2s kee-noh v\u00ear-l\u00e2s-en.) (We left the movie theater.)\n\nHabt ihr Karten f\u00fcr die Matinee gekauft? (h\u00e2pt eer k\u00e2r-ten fuer dee m\u00e2-tee-ney ge-kouft?) (Did you buy tickets for the matinee?)\n\nIch habe viel gelacht. (iH hah-be feel ge-l\u00e2Ht.) (I laughed a lot.)\n\nUsing \"sein\" in the perfect tense\n\nSome verbs don't use the present tense of haben to form the perfect tense; instead they use sein. As a reminder, here are the present tense forms of sein:\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich bin | iH bin\n\ndu bist | dooh bist\n\nSie sind | zee z\u00eent\n\ner, sie, es ist | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas ist\n\nwir sind | veer zint\n\nihr seid | eer zayt\n\nSie sind | zee zint\n\nsie sind | zee zint\n\nVerbs in that category include the verb sein itself as well as many verbs that indicate a change of place or a change of state. Sound a bit theoretical? Table 10-2 shows you some common verbs that take sein in the perfect tense.\n\n  All verbs conjugated with sein are strong verbs: Their past participles are irregular. Try to memorize the past participle whenever you pick up a new verb that's used with sein.\n\nTable 10-2 Verbs That Use \"sein\" in the Perfect Tense\n\n---\n\nVerb | Past Participle\n\nfahren (fahr-en) (to drive\/ride) | gefahren\n\nfliegen (flee-gen) (to fly) | geflogen\n\ngeb\u00e4ren (g\u00ea-b\u00ea-ren) (to give birth) | geboren\n\ngehen (gey-en) (to go) | gegangen\n\nkommen (kom-en) (to come) | gekommen\n\nlaufen (louf-en) (to run) | gelaufen\n\nsein (zayn) (to be) | gewesen\n\nsterben (sht\u00ear-ben) (to die) | gestorben\n\nTake a look at these examples of verbs forming the present perfect tense with the present tense of sein and the past participle:\n\nIch bin ins Theater gegangen. (iH bin ins tey-ah-ter ge-g\u00e2ng-en.) (I went to the theater.)\n\nBist du mit dem Auto gekommen? (bist dooh mit deym ou-to ge-kom-en?) (Did you come by car?)\n\nSie ist mit dem Zug gefahren. (zee ist mit deym tsoohk ge-fahr-en.) (She went by train.)\n\nWir sind letzte Woche ins Kino gegangen. (veer zint l\u00eats-te woH-e ins kee-noh ge-g\u00e2ng-en.) (We went to the movies last week.)\n\nGoing Out for Entertainment\n\nWherever you may be staying in Europe, you're probably just a short trip away from cultural centers presenting Oper (oh-per) (opera), Konzert (kon-ts\u00eart) (concert), Sinfonie (sin-foh-nee) (symphony), and Theater (tey-ah-ter) (theater). Performing arts centers abound in Europe.\n\nIf you're up for going out on the town, say\n\nIch m\u00f6chte heute Abend ausgehen. (iH merH-te hoy-te ah-b\u00eant ous-gey-en.) (I would like to go out this evening.)\n\n  Worried about the dress code? It's relatively liberal, although Europeans do enjoy getting decked out for opera and symphony performances, especially for Premiere (pr\u00eam-yee-re) (opening night) or a Galavorstellung (g\u00e2-l\u00e2-fohr-sht\u00eal-oong) (gala performance). Other than that, as long as you stay away from the T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers look, you won't stick out like a sore thumb.\n\nThe following words and phrases may be helpful during a night out:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte ins Theater\/Konzert gehen. (iH merH-te ins tey-ah-ter\/kon-tsert gey-en.) (I would like to go to the theater\/a concert.)\n\nIch m\u00f6chte in die Oper gehen. (iH merH-te in dee oh-per gey-en.) (I would like to go to the opera.)\n\nGehen wir ins Theater\/Konzert. (gey-en veer ins tey-ah-ter\/kon-tsert.) (Let's go to the theater\/a concert.)\n\nGehen wir ins Ballet. (gey-en veer ins b\u00e2-l\u00eat.) (Let's go to the ballet.)\n\nWann ist die Premiere von. . . ? (v\u00e2n ist dee pr\u00eam-yee-re fon. . . ?) (When is the opening night of. . . ?)\n\nIn welchem Theater spielt. . . ? (in v\u00ealH-em tey-ah-ter shpeelt. . . ?) (In which theater is . . . showing?)\n\nHow Was It? Talking about Entertainment\n\nWhen it comes to entertainment, everybody seems to have an opinion. So why miss out on the fun?\n\nAsking for an opinion\n\nSomebody may ask you one of the following questions \u2014 or you may pose one of them to someone else \u2014 in order to start a conversation about an exhibition, film, or performance (the first version is for speaking with someone formally; the second is for informal speaking):\n\nHat Ihnen die Ausstellung\/der Film\/die Oper gefallen? (h\u00e2t een-en dee ous-sht\u00eal-oong\/d\u00ear film\/dee oh-per ge-f\u00e2l-en?) (Did you like the exhibition\/the movie\/the opera?)\n\nHat dir die Ausstellung\/der Film\/die Oper gefallen? (h\u00e2t deer dee ous-sht\u00eal-oong\/d\u00ear film\/dee oh-per ge-f\u00e2l-en?) (Did you like the exhibition\/the movie\/the opera?)\n\nTelling people what you think\n\nNow comes the fun part \u2014 telling someone what you think about a film or performance you've just seen. For starters, you can say whether you liked the entertainment. Try one of the following on for size:\n\nDie Ausstellung\/der Film\/die Oper hat mir (sehr) gut gefallen. (dee ous-sht\u00eal-oong\/d\u00ear film\/dee oh-per h\u00e2t meer [zeyr] gooht ge-f\u00e2l-en.) (I liked the exhibition\/the movie\/the opera [a lot].)\n\nDie Ausstellung\/der Film\/die Oper hat mir (gar) nicht gefallen. (dee ous-sht\u00eal-oong\/d\u00ear film\/dee oh-per h\u00e2t meer [g\u00e2r] niHt ge-f\u00e2l-en.) (I didn't like the exhibition\/the movie\/the opera [at all].)\n\nYou may want to follow up a statement with a reason. Start out by saying\n\nDie Ausstellung\/der Film\/die Oper war wirklich. . . . (dee ous-sht\u00eal-oong\/d\u00ear film\/dee oh-per vahr virk-liH. . . .) (The exhibition\/the movie\/the opera was really. . . .)\n\nThen you can finish the thought with any of the following adjectives that apply. You can always string a few of them together with the conjunction und (oont) (and) if you like:\n\n  aufregend (ouf-rey-gent) (exciting)\n\n  ausgezeichnet (ous-ge-tsayH-net) (excellent)\n\n  entt\u00e4uschend (\u00eant-toy-sh\u00eant) (disappointing)\n\n  fantastisch (f\u00e2n-t\u00e2s-tish) (fantastic)\n\n  langweilig (l\u00e2ng-vay-liH) (boring)\n\n  sehenswert (zey-\u00eans-veyrt) (worth seeing)\n\n  spannend (shp\u00e2n-\u00eant) (thrilling, suspenseful)\n\n  unterhaltsam (oon-ter-h\u00e2lt-tsahm) (entertaining)\n\n  wundersch\u00f6n (voon-der-shern) (beautiful)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nFrau Peters went to the theater last night. Today, at the office, she's telling her colleague Herr Kr\u00fcger about the show. (Track 23)\n\n---\n\nHerr Kr\u00fcger: | Sind Sie nicht gestern im Theater gewesen?\n\nzint zee niHt g\u00eas-tern im teh-ah-ter ge-vey-zen?\n\nWeren't you at the theater last night?\n\nFrau Peters: | Doch. Ich habe das neue BalIet gesehen.\n\ndoH. iH hah-be d\u00e2s noy-e b\u00e2-l\u00eat ge-zey-en.\n\nIndeed. I saw the new ballet.\n\nHerr Kr\u00fcger: | Wie hat es Ihnen gefallen?\n\nvee h\u00e2t \u00eas een-en ge-f\u00e2l-en?\n\nHow did you like it?\n\nFrau Peters: | Die T\u00e4nzer waren fantastisch. Die Vorstellung hat mir ausgezeichnet gefallen.\n\ndee t\u00ean-tser vahr-ren f\u00e2n-t\u00e2s-tish. dee fohr-sht\u00eal-oong h\u00e2t meer ous-ge-tsayH-net ge-f\u00e2l-en.\n\nThe dancers were fantastic. I liked the performance very much.\n\nHerr Kr\u00fcger: | War es einfach, Karten zu bekommen?\n\nvahr \u00eas ayn-f\u00e2H, k\u00e2r-ten tsooh be-kom-en?\n\nWas it easy to get tickets?\n\nFrau Peters: | Ja. Ich habe die Karte gestern Morgen an der Theaterkasse gekauft.\n\nyah. iH hah-be dee k\u00e2r-te g\u00eas-tern mor-gen \u00e2n d\u00ear tey-ah-ter-k\u00e2s-e ge-kouft.\n\nYes. I bought the ticket at the box office yesterday morning.\n\nGoing to a Party\n\nJust as Americans do, German speakers have different ideas about what makes a good party. They enjoy organizing all kinds of gatherings, ranging from formal sit-down dinners to Sunday afternoon barbecues. If you're invited to a rather formal gathering at somebody's home, it's considered polite to bring a small gift, such as a bottle of wine or a bouquet of flowers.\n\nAnd if you're invited to an informal get-together, your host or hostess may ask you to bring along something to eat or drink. You can also take the initiative and ask whether you should bring anything by asking\n\nSoll ich etwas mitbringen? (zol iH \u00eat-v\u00e2s mit-bring-en?) (Do you want me to bring anything?)\n\n  If you're invited to Kaffee und Kuchen (k\u00e2-fey oont koohH-en) (coffee and cake) in the afternoon, a German institution, do arrive on time. In fact, some Germans like to arrive ten minutes early just to be on the safe side, and they wait out on the street until the exact hour to ring the doorbell. Don't expect to stay for dinner. You may be asked, but don't count on it.\n\nGetting an invitation\n\nYou may hear any of the following common phrases when receiving an invitation \u2014 die Einladung (dee ayn-lah-doong) \u2014 to a party:\n\nIch w\u00fcrde Sie gern zu einer Party einladen. (iH vuer-de zee g\u00earn tsooh ayn-er p\u00e2r-tee ayn-lah-den.) (I would like to invite you to a party.)\n\nWir wollen ein Fest feiern. Hast du Lust zu kommen? (veer vol-en ayn f\u00east fay-ern. h\u00e2st dooh loost tsooh kom-en?) (We want to have a party. Do you feel like coming?)\n\nDeclining\n\nIf you can't make it (or don't want to go for some reason), you can politely turn down the invitation by saying the following:\n\nNein, tut mir leid, ich kann leider nicht kommen. (nayn, toot meer layt, iH k\u00e2n lay-der niHt kom-en.) (No, sorry, unfortunately I won't be able to make it.)\n\nNein, da kann ich leider nicht. Ich habe schon etwas anderes vor. (nayn, d\u00e2 k\u00e2n iH lay-der niHt. iH hah-be shohn \u00eat-v\u00e2s \u00e2n-de-res fohr.) (No, unfortunately I won't be able to make it. I have other plans.)\n\nAccepting\n\nIf you'd like to go, you can accept an invitation with the following phrases:\n\nVielen Dank. Ich nehme die Einladung gern an. (fee-len d\u00e2nk. iH neh-me dee ayn-lah-doong g\u00earn \u00e2n.) (Thank you very much. I'll gladly accept the invitation.)\n\nGut, ich komme gern. (gooht, iH kom-en g\u00earn) (Good, I'd like to come.)\n\nTalking about a party\n\nWhen someone asks you Wie war die Party am Samstag? (vee vahr dee p\u00e2r-tee \u00e2m z\u00e2ms-tahk?) (How was the party on Saturday?), here are some possible responses:\n\nToll, wir haben bis . . . Uhr gefeiert. (tol, veer hah-ben bis . . . oohr ge-fay-\u00eart.) (Great. We partied until . . . o'clock.)\n\nWir haben uns ausgezeichnet unterhalten. (veer hah-ben oons ous-ge-tsayH-net oon-ter-h\u00e2l-ten.) (We had a great time.)\n\nDas Essen war. . . . (d\u00e2s \u00eas-en vahr. . . .) (The food was. . . .)\n\nWir haben sogar getanzt. (veer hah-ben zoh-gahr ge-t\u00e2ntst.) (We even danced.)\n\nDie Musik war. . . . (dee mooh-zeek vahr. . . .) (The music was. . . .)\n\nDas Fest war. . . . (d\u00e2s f\u00east vahr. . . .) (The party was . . . .)\n\nCheck out the list of adjectives in the earlier section \"Telling people what you think\" for appropriate descriptions to fill in the preceding phrases.\n\n Fun & Games\n\nMany words in German have cognates (words similar in meaning and spelling) in English. In the following statements, some people are describing what they thought of an event. You decide which form of entertainment they're speaking of and then write that word at the end of the statement. Choose from the list of cognates shown below.\n\n1. Die Ausstellung hat uns sehr gut gefallen. ______________________________\n\n2. Die Zugabe war auch ausgezeichnet. ______________________________\n\n3. Ich habe die Originalfassung gesehen. ______________________________\n\n4. Die T\u00e4nzer haben mir gut gefallen. ______________________________\n\n5. Die S\u00e4nger sind fantastisch gewesen. ______________________________\n\n6. Wir haben viel gegessen und getrunken. ______________________________\nChapter 11\n\nTaking Care of Business and Telecommunications\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Placing phone calls\n\n  Sending letters, faxes, and e-mails\n\n  Becoming familiar with basic business terminology\n\nTelecommunications increasingly drive daily interaction with others, from ordering pizza to conducting business between continents. The first step involves deciding which interface you want to use in order to convey your message \u2014 phone, e-mail, fax, or a good old-fashioned letter. This chapter delves into each of these mediums. We wrap things up with a brief primer in office terminology and some tips on conducting business.\n\nPhoning Made Simple\n\nWhen German speakers pick up das Telefon (d\u00e2s t\u00ea-le-fohn) (the telephone), they usually answer the call by stating their last name \u2014 particularly when they're at the office. If you call somebody at home, you sometimes may hear a simple Hallo? (h\u00e2-loh?) (Hello?).\n\nIf you want to express that you're going to call somebody or that you want somebody to call you, you use the verb anrufen (\u00e2n-roohf-en) (to call). It's a separable verb, so the prefix an (\u00e2n) (to) gets separated from the stem rufen (roohf-en) (call), when you conjugate it:\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich rufe an | \u00eeH roohf-e \u00e2n\n\ndu rufst an | dooh roohfst \u00e2n\n\nSie rufen an | zee roohf-en \u00e2n\n\ner, sie, es ruft an | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas roohft \u00e2n\n\nwir rufen an | veer roohf-en \u00e2n\n\nihr ruft an | eer roohft \u00e2n\n\nSie rufen an | zee roohf-en \u00e2n\n\nsie rufen an | zee roohf-en \u00e2n\n\nFor more info on separable verbs, see Chapter 15.\n\nAsking for your party\n\nIf the person you want to speak to doesn't pick up the phone, you need to ask for your party. As in English, you have some options when it comes to expressing that you want to speak with somebody:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern Herrn\/Frau . . . sprechen. (\u00eeH merH-te g\u00earn h\u00earn\/frou . . . shpr\u00eaH-en.) (I would like to talk to Mr.\/Mrs. . . .)\n\nIst Herr\/Frau . . . zu sprechen? (ist h\u00ear\/frou . . . tsooh shpr\u00eaH-en?) (Is Mr.\/Mrs. . . . available?)\n\nKann ich bitte mit Herrn\/Frau . . . , sprechen? (k\u00e2n \u00eeH bi-te mit h\u00earn\/frou . . . , shpr\u00eaH-en?) (Can I speak to Mr.\/Mrs. . . . , please?)\n\nHerrn\/Frau . . . , bitte. (h\u00earn\/frou . . . , bi-te.) (Mr.\/Mrs. . . . , please.)\n\nIf you find that somebody talks too fast for you to understand, try these solutions:\n\nK\u00f6nnen Sie bitte langsamer sprechen? (kern-en zee bi-te l\u00e2ng-zahm-er spr\u00eaH-en?) (Could you please talk more slowly?)\n\nK\u00f6nnen Sie das bitte wiederholen? (kern-en zee d\u00e2s bi-te vee-der-hoh-len?) (Could you repeat that, please?)\n\nAnd if the person on the other end starts speaking English in response to your question, don't consider it a failure on your part. The other person probably just wants to practice his or her English!\n\nSaying goodbye on the phone\n\nDoes auf Wiederh\u00f6ren! (ouf vee-der-herr-en!) sound somewhat familiar? It's the phone equivalent to auf Wiedersehen (ouf vee-der-zey-en), the expression you use if you say good-bye to somebody you've just seen in person. Auf Wiedersehen combines wieder (vee-der) (again) with the verb sehen (zey-en) (to see), whereas auf Wiederh\u00f6ren uses the verb h\u00f6ren (herr-en) (to hear), so it literally means \"hear you again.\" Makes sense, doesn't it?\n\nMaking the connection\n\nAfter you ask to speak to a specific person, you may hear any number of responses depending on whom you're calling and where they are:\n\nAm Apparat. (\u00e2m \u00e2-pa-raht.) (Speaking. [literally, on the phone])\n\nEinen Moment bitte, ich verbinde. (ayn-en moh-m\u00eant bi-te, \u00eeH f\u00ear-bin-de.) (One moment please, I'll put you through.)\n\nEr\/sie telefoniert gerade. (\u00ear\/zee t\u00ea-le-foh-neert ge-rah-de.) (He\/she is on the telephone right now.)\n\nDie Leitung ist besetzt. (dee lay-toong ist be-z\u00eatst.) (The line is busy.)\n\nK\u00f6nnen Sie sp\u00e4ter noch einmal anrufen? (kern-en zee shpai-ter noH ayn-mahl \u00e2n-roohf-en?) (Could you call again later?)\n\nKann er\/sie Sie zur\u00fcckrufen? (k\u00e2n \u00ear\/zee zee tsoo-ruek-roohf-en?) (Can he\/she call you back?)\n\nHat er\/sie Ihre Telefonnummer? (h\u00e2t \u00ear\/zee eer-e t\u00ea-le-fohn-noom-er?) (Does he\/she have your phone number?)\n\nHere are some expressions that may be helpful if something goes wrong with your connection:\n\nEs tut mir leid. Ich habe mich verw\u00e4hlt. (\u00eas tooht meer layt. iH hah-be miH fer-vailt.) (I'm sorry. I have dialed the wrong number.)\n\nDie Verbindung ist schlecht. (dee f\u00ear-bin-doong ist shl\u00eaHt.) (It's a bad connection.)\n\nEr\/sie meldet sich nicht. (\u00ear\/zee m\u00eal-det ziH niHt.) (He\/she doesn't answer the phone.)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\n  The following is a conversation between Frau Bauer, the personal assistant of Herr Huber, and Herr Mei\u00dfner, a client of the company. (Track 24)\n\nFrau Bauer: | Firma TransEuropa, Bauer. Guten Morgen!\n\nfir-m\u00e2 tr\u00e2ns-oy-roh-p\u00e2, bou-er. gooh-ten mor-gen!\n\nTransEuropa company, (Mrs.) Bauer speaking. Good morning!\n\n---|---\n\nHerr Mei\u00dfner: | Guten Morgen! Herrn Huber, bitte.\n\ngooh-ten mor-gen! h\u00earn hooh-ber, bi-te.\n\nGood morning! Mr. Huber, please.\n\nFrau Bauer: | Wie ist ihr Name, bitte?\n\nvee ist eer nah-me, bi-te?\n\nWhat is your name, please?\n\nHerr Mei\u00dfner: | Mei\u00dfner. Ich bin von der Firma Schlecker.\n\nmays-ner. iH bin fon d\u00ear fir-m\u00e2 shl\u00eak-er.\n\n(This is Mr.) Mei\u00dfner. I'm from the Schlecker company.\n\nFrau Bauer: | Ich verbinde . . .Tut mir leid. Herr Huber ist in einer Besprechung. Kann er Sie zur\u00fcckrufen?\n\niH f\u00ear-bin-de . . . tooht meer layt. h\u00ear hooh-ber ist in ayn-er be-shpr\u00eaH-oong. k\u00e2n \u00ear zee tsoo-ruek-roohf-en?\n\nI'll connect you . . . I'm sorry. Mr. Huber is in a meeting. Can he call you back?\n\nHerr Mei\u00dfner: | Selbstverst\u00e4ndlich. Er hat meine Telefonnummer.\n\nz\u00ealpst-f\u00ear-shtant-liH. \u00ear h\u00e2t mayn-e t\u00ea-le-fohn-noom-er.\n\nOf course. He has my telephone number.\n\nFrau Bauer: | Gut, Herr Mei\u00dfner. Auf Wiederh\u00f6ren!\n\ngooht, h\u00ear mays-ner. ouf vee-der-herr-en!\n\nGood, Mr. Mei\u00dfner. Good bye!\n\nHerr Mei\u00dfner: | Vielen Dank. Auf Wiederh\u00f6ren!\n\nfee-len d\u00e2nk. ouf vee-der-herr-en!\n\nThanks a lot. Good bye!\n\nUsing the phone\n\nIf you'd like the convenience of using a cellphone while you're in Germany, or almost anywhere in Europe for that matter, shop around before you leave for Europe. You may want a prepaid SIM card for your cellphone, but you need to ask your provider beforehand whether it works in Europe. Your other options are to get a prepaid cellphone or a rental cellphone. If you want to make a call from a public phone \u2014 die Telefonzelle (dee t\u00ea-le-fohn-ts\u00eal-e) (the phone booth) \u2014 in Germany, be prepared to do some sleuthing to find one. When you do, you'll need to figure out how it works (and you'll probably need to purchase a telephone card \u2014 Telefonkarte (t\u00ea-le-fohn-k\u00e2r-te) \u2014 elsewhere beforehand). It may be easier to get your own cellphone \u2014 das Handy (d\u00e2s h\u00ean-dee) \u2014 at a telephone shop in Germany.\n\nMaking Appointments\n\nYou may need to make an appointment to see someone. Here's some of the vocabulary that can help you get past the gatekeepers:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern einen Termin machen. (iH merH-te g\u00earn ayn-en t\u00ear-meen m\u00e2H-en.) (I would like to make an appointment.)\n\nKann ich meinen Termin verschieben? (k\u00e2n iH mayn-en t\u00ear-meen f\u00ear-shee-ben?) (Can I change my appointment?)\n\nAnd here are some of the answers you may hear:\n\nWann passt es Ihnen? (v\u00e2n p\u00e2st \u00eas een-en?) (What time suits you?)\n\nWie w\u00e4re es mit . . . ? (vee vai-re \u00eas mit . . . ?) (How about . . . ?)\n\nHeute ist leider kein Termin mehr frei. (hoy-te ist lay-der kayn t\u00ear-meen meyr fray.) (Unfortunately, there is no appointment available today.)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nFrau Bauer has to make an appointment at the doctor's office. She is talking to the doctor's assistant, Liza.\n\nLiza: | Praxis Dr. Eggert.\n\npr\u00e2x-is dok-tor \u00eag-ert.\n\nDr. Eggert's office.\n\n---|---\n\nFrau Bauer: | Guten Tag, Anita Bauer. Ich m\u00f6chte einen Termin f\u00fcr n\u00e4chste Woche machen.\n\ngooh-ten tahk, \u00e2-nee-t\u00e2 bou-er. iH merH-te ayn-en t\u00ear-meen fuer naiH-ste voH-e m\u00e2H-en.\n\nHello. (This is) Anita Bauer. I would like to make an appointment for next week.\n\nLiza: | Wann passt es Ihnen?\n\nv\u00e2n p\u00e2st \u00eas een-en?\n\nWhat time suits you?\n\nFrau Bauer: | Mittwoch w\u00e4re gut.\n\nmit-v\u00f4H vai-re gooht.\n\nWednesday would be good.\n\nLiza: | Mittwoch ist leider kein Termin mehr frei. Wie w\u00e4re es mit Donnerstag?\n\nmit-voH \u00eest lay-der kayn t\u00ear-meen meyr fray. vee vai-re \u00eas mit don-ers-tahk?\n\nUnfortunately, there is no appointment available on Wednesday. How about Thursday?\n\nFrau Bauer: | Donnerstag ist auch gut. Geht f\u00fcnfzehn Uhr?\n\ndon-ers-tahk ist ouH gooht. geyt fuenf-tseyn oohr?\n\nThursday is good, too. Does 3:00 p.m. work?\n\nLiza: | Kein Problem. Dann bis Donnerstag.\n\nkayn proh-bleym. d\u00e2n bis don-ers-tahk.\n\nNo problem. Until Thursday.\n\nFrau Bauer: | Danke sch\u00f6n. Auf Wiederh\u00f6ren.\n\nd\u00e2n-ke shern. ouf vee-der-herr-en.\n\nThank you very much. Good-bye.\n\nLeaving Messages\n\nUnfortunately, you often don't get through to the person you're trying to reach, and you have to leave a message. In that case, some of the following expressions may come in handy (some of these phrases use dative pronouns, which you can read about in the next section):\n\nKann ich ihm\/ihr eine Nachricht hinterlassen? (k\u00e2n \u00eeH eem\/eer ayn-e nahH-riHt hin-ter-l\u00e2s-en?) (Can I leave him\/her a message?)\n\nKann ich ihm\/ihr etwas ausrichten? (k\u00e2n iH eem\/eer \u00eat-v\u00e2s ous-r\u00eeH-ten?) (Can I give him\/her a message?)\n\nM\u00f6chten Sie eine Nachricht hinterlassen? (merH-ten zee ayn-e naH-riHt hin-ter-l\u00e2s-en?) (Would you like to leave a message?)\n\nIch bin unter der Nummer . . . zu erreichen. (iH bin oon-ter d\u00ear noom-er . . . tsooh \u00ear-ayH-en.) (I can be reached at the number . . . .)\n\nA Few Words about Dative Pronouns\n\n  Ihm (eem) (him) and ihr (eer) (her) are personal pronouns in the dative case. In German, you need the dative case of these pronouns when they are combined with the dative preposition mit (mit) (with). So when you want to express that you'd like to talk to or speak with a person (him or her), you can say\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern mit ihm\/ihr sprechen. (iH merH-te g\u00earn mit eem\/eer shpr\u00eaH-en.) (I would like to speak with him\/her.)\n\nAnd if you can't get through to the person you want to speak to, here's how to indicate that you're leaving that person a message:\n\nIch hinterlasse ihm\/ihr eine Nachricht. (iH hin-ter-l\u00e2s-e eem\/eer ayn-e nahH-riHt.) (I'm leaving him\/her a message.)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nFrau Bauer, an assistant at the company TransEuropa, answers a phone call from Hans Seibold, who is an old friend of her boss, Herr Huber.\n\nFrau Bauer: | Firma TransEuropa, guten Tag!\n\nfir-m\u00e2 tr\u00e2ns-oy-roh-p\u00e2, gooh-ten tahk!\n\nTransEuropa company, hello!\n\n---|---\n\nHerr Seibold: | Guten Tag, Seibold hier. Kann ich bitte mit Herrn Huber, sprechen?\n\ngooh-ten tahk zay-bolt heer. k\u00e2n iH bi-te mit h\u00earn hooh-ber, shpr\u00eaH-en?\n\nHello,( this is Mr.) Seibold. Can I speak to Mr. Huber, please?\n\nFrau Bauer: | Guten Tag, Herr Seibold. Einen Moment bitte, ich verbinde.\n\ngooh-ten tahk h\u00ear zay-bolt. ayn-en moh-m\u00eant bi-te, iH f\u00ear-bin-de.\n\nHello, Mr. Seibold. One moment, please. I'll connect you.\n\n(After a short moment)\n\n|\n\nFrau Bauer: | Herr Seibold? Herr Huber spricht gerade auf der anderen Leitung. M\u00f6chten Sie ihm eine Nachricht hinterlassen?\n\nh\u00ear zay-bolt? h\u00ear hooh-ber shpriHt ge-rah-de ouf d\u00ear \u00e2n-de-ren lay-toong. merH-ten zee eem ayn-e nahH-riHt hin-ter-l\u00e2s-en?\n\nMr. Seibold? Mr. Huber is on the other line. Would you like to leave him a message?\n\nHerr Seibold: | Ja bitte. Ich bin unter der Nummer 089 57 36 488 zu erreichen.\n\nyah, bi-te. iH bin oon-t\u00ear d\u00ear noom-er nool \u00e2Ht noyn fuenf zee-ben dray zeks feer \u00e2Ht \u00e2Ht tsooh \u00ear-rayH-en.\n\nYes, please. I can be reached at the number 089 57 36 488.\n\nFrau Bauer: | Ich werde es ausrichten!\n\niH v\u00ear-de \u00eas ous-riH-ten!\n\nI'll forward the message!\n\nHerr Seibold: | Vielen Dank! Auf Wiederh\u00f6ren!\n\nvee-len d\u00e2nk! ouf vee-der-herr-en!\n\nThanks a lot! Good-bye!\n\nSending Written Correspondence\n\nConsidering all the tasks you can accomplish with a (cell)phone, you may ask yourself why anyone would bother with the hassle of putting pen to paper. Yet people still like, and need, to send written correspondence from time to time. Entire books have been written about the art of writing letters in German; this section just gives you enough information to begin and end a letter appropriately.\n\nYou use certain conventions in German, just as you do in English, to write letters. In German, the phrase you begin with is Sehr geehrte Frau . . .\/ Sehr geehrter Herr . . . (zeyr ge-eyr-te frou\/zeyr ge-eyr-ter h\u00ear) (Dear Mrs . . .\/ Dear Mr . . .). And the phrase most often used to sign off a letter is Mit freundlichen Gr\u00fc\u00dfen (mit froynt-liH-en grues-en) (Sincerely).\n\n  Contrary to English convention, the first letter of the first word in the opening sentence of a German letter is not capitalized, unless it's a noun.\n\nAssuming you don't have a carrier pigeon at your disposal, the following sections explain how to send your correspondence where it needs to go.\n\nSending a letter or postcard\n\nWith people standing in line behind you, it pays to be prepared with some simple phrases that get you in and out of das Postamt (d\u00e2s post-\u00e2mt) (post office) as quickly and hassle-free as possible and send der Brief (d\u00ear breef) (letter), die Postkarte (dee post-k\u00e2r-te) (postcard), die Ansichtskarte (dee ahn-z\u00eeHts-k\u00e2r-te) (picture postcard) or das Paket (d\u00e2s p\u00e2-keyt) (package) on its merry way.\n\nBuying stamps\n\nIn Germany, you usually buy Briefmarken (breef-m\u00e2r-ken) (stamps) \u2014 or, if you need only one, die Briefmarke (dee breef-m\u00e2r-ke) (stamp) \u2014 at the post office. To get your stamps, say the following to the postal worker:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern Briefmarken kaufen. (iH merH-te gern breef-m\u00e2r-ken kouf-en.) (I would like to buy stamps.)\n\nTo specify how many stamps and what values you want, state your request like this:\n\n5-mal 50 Cent und 10-mal 20 Cent. (fuenf-mahl fuenf-tsiH sent oont tseyn-mahl tsv\u00e2n-tsiH sent.) (5 times 50 cents and 10 times 20 cents.)\n\nIf you want to know the postage for an item you're sending to the U.S. \u2014 for example, a letter or a postcard \u2014 ask the following as you hand your correspondence over the counter:\n\nWie viel kostet es, diesen Brief\/diese Ansichtskarte nach Amerika zu schicken? (vee feel kos-tet \u00eas, deez-en breef\/deez-e ahn-ziHts-k\u00e2r-te nahH \u00e2-mey-ree-kah tsooh shik-en?) (How much does it cost to send this letter\/this picture postcard to the U.S.?)\n\nPutting your mail in the mailbox\n\nAs in the U.S., you can give your mail to a postal worker, drop it into one of the receptacles at the post office (those slits in the wall), or put it into a Briefkasten (breef-k\u00e2st-en) (mailbox) found on street corners or in front of post offices (in Germany, mailboxes are yellow, not blue). Sometimes separate mailboxes are available: one for the city you're in and the surrounding area, and another one for other places. So the mailboxes may have signs saying, for example, K\u00f6ln und Umgebung (kerln oont oom-gey-boong) (Cologne and surrounding area) and Andere Orte (\u00e2n-de-re or-te) (other places).\n\n  In Germany, you can't put items to mail in your mailbox to be picked up.\n\nAsking for special services\n\nIf you want to send an express letter, airmail, certified mail, or a package, you need to be familiar with these words:\n\n  der Eilbrief (d\u00ear ayl-breef) (express letter)\n\n  das Einschreiben (d\u00e2s ayn-shrayb-en) (registered letter\/certified mail)\n\n  die Luftpost (dee looft-post) (airmail)\n\n  das Paket (d\u00e2s p\u00e2-keyt) (package)\n\nTo get these pieces of mail on their way, tell the postal worker\n\nIch m\u00f6chte diesen Brief per Eilzustellung\/per Luftpost\/per Einschreiben schicken. (\u00eeH merH-te deez-en breef p\u00ear ayl-tsooh-sht\u00eal-oong\/p\u00ear looft-post\/p\u00ear ayn-shrayb-en shik-en.) (I would like to send this letter express\/by air mail\/by registered mail.)\n\nIch m\u00f6chte dieses Paket aufgeben. (iH merH-te deez-es p\u00e2-keyt ouf-gey-ben.) (I would like to send this package.)\n\nThe following words are helpful when it comes to sending mail (and you also find them on the form you have to fill out when you're sending certified mail):\n\n  der Absender (d\u00ear \u00e2p-z\u00ean-der) (sender)\n\n  der Empf\u00e4nger (d\u00ear \u00eam-pf\u00eang-er) (addressee)\n\n  das Porto (d\u00e2s por-toh) (postage)\n\nE-mailing\n\nIf you want to catch up on your e-mail, your hotel will probably have Wi-Fi Internet access. Otherwise, head for a cybercaf\u00e9 or ask whether a (free) Wi-Fi hotspot is nearby.\n\nThe great thing about e-mail and the Internet is that they involve an international language \u2014 the language of computers, which is, for the most part, English. However, being aware of the German equivalents for a few words connected with e-mailing is still handy:\n\n  der Computer (d\u00ear computer [as in English]) (computer)\n\n  die E-mail (dee e-mail [as in English]) (e-mail)\n\n  die E-mail-Adresse (dee e-mail ah-dr\u00eas-e) (e-mail address)\n\n  das Internet (d\u00e2s Internet [as in English]) (Internet)\n\nSending a fax\n\nIf you can't conveniently use somebody's Faxger\u00e4t (f\u00e2x-ge-r\u00eat) (fax machine), you should be able to send a Fax (f\u00e2x) (fax) from most cybercaf\u00e9s, hotels, and some copy shops. Just walk up to the counter and tell the person working there\n\nIch m\u00f6chte etwas faxen. (iH merH-te \u00eat-v\u00e2s f\u00e2x-en.) (I would like to fax something.)\n\nAfter you find a place that can send your fax, the person operating the machine will ask you for die Faxnummer (dee f\u00e2x-noom-er) (the fax number).\n\n  Write the fax number on a piece of paper beforehand so that, when you're asked, you can just hand it over with a confident smile.\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nFrau Bauer's workday is almost over, and she only has to mail a package at the post office. Listen in on her conversation with der Postangestellte (d\u00ear post-\u00e2n-ge-sht\u00eal-te) (post office worker).\n\nFrau Bauer: | Guten Tag. Ich m\u00f6chte ein Paket aufgeben.\n\ngooh-ten tahk. iH merH-te ayn p\u00e2-keyt ouf-gey-ben.\n\nHello. I would like to send a package.\n\n---|---\n\nDer Postangestellte: | Jawohl. F\u00fcllen Sie bitte dieses Formular aus.\n\nyah-vohl. fuel-en zee bi-te deez-es fohr-moo-lahr ous.\n\nCertainly. Please fill out this form.\n\nFrau Bauer: | Was f\u00fcr ein Formular ist das?\n\nv\u00e2s fuer ayn fohr-moo-lahr ist d\u00e2s?\n\nWhat kind of a form is that?\n\nDer Postangestellte: | Es ist eine Zollerkl\u00e4rung.\n\n\u00eas ist ayn-e tsol-\u00ear-klair-oong.\n\nIt's a customs declaration.\n\n(Frau Bauer fills out the form and hands it back)\n\n|\n\nFrau Bauer: | Bitte.\n\nbi-te\n\nHere you are.\n\nDer Postangestellte: | Also, das macht 12,60 Euro.\n\n\u00e2l-zoh, d\u00e2s maHt tsverlf oy-roh s\u00eaH-tsiH.\n\nSo, that'll be 12 euros 60.\n\nGetting to Know the Office\n\nWhen it comes to the workplace, Germans have a reputation for being straightforward, productive, and efficient, but you may be surprised to find out that, statistically speaking, they don't work as many hours as Americans do. Not that people don't work late, but Germans enjoy much more generous vacation time. And on Fridays, many companies close early.\n\nWhen you're working in a German-speaking B\u00fcro (bue-roh) (office), you're assigned various tasks, or B\u00fcroarbeit (bue-roh-\u00e2r-bayt) (office work).\n\nWhat do you call all that paraphernalia on your desk or all the stuff in the supply closet? Read on. After you have those terms down, you need to know how to describe what to do with them. Time to get to work!\n\nA vacationer's paradise\n\nGermans get far more vacation time than Americans: 30 workdays of vacation plus paid holidays \u2014 and some states of Germany have as many as 12 legal holidays. However, Germans typically have trouble finding the time to actually take vacations. Thus, vacation time is sometimes carried over into the next year.\n\nOffice work entails assignments and tasks you may be given or have to give to someone else. Here are a few expressions that come into play in such circumstances. They also come in handy when you need some help:\n\nWo finde ich den Fotokopierer \/ das Faxger\u00e4t? (voh fin-de iH deyn foh-toh-ko-peer-er\/d\u00e2s f\u00e2x-g\u00ea-reyt?) (Where can I find the copy machine\/fax machine?)\n\nK\u00f6nnen Sie mir bitte zeigen, wie das funktioniert? (kern-en zee meer bi-te tsay-gen vee d\u00e2s foonk-tsee-oh-neert?) (Could you please show me how that works?)\n\nW\u00fcrden Sie bitte diesen Brief f\u00fcr mich \u00fcbersetzen? (vuer-den zee bi-te deez-en breef fuer miH ue-ber-z\u00eats-en?) (Would you translate this letter for me, please?)\n\nMastering your desk and supplies\n\nTypically, you may find \u2014 or hope to find \u2014 the following items on or around your Schreibtisch (shrayp-tish) (desk):\n\n  der Brief (d\u00ear breef) (letter)\n\n  der B\u00fcrostuhl (d\u00ear bue-roh-shtool) (office chair)\n\n  der Computer (d\u00ear computer [as in English]) (computer)\n\n  der Drucker (d\u00ear drook-er) (printer)\n\n  das Faxger\u00e4t (d\u00e2s f\u00e2x-g\u00ea-reyt) (fax machine)\n\n  der Fotokopierer (d\u00ear foh-toh-ko-peer-er) (copy machine)\n\n  die Lampe (dee l\u00e2m-pe) (lamp)\n\n  die Maus (dee mouse [as in English]) (mouse)\n\n  das Telefon (d\u00e2s t\u00ea-le-fohn) (telephone)\n\n  die Unterlagen (dee oon-ter-lah-gen) (documents, files)\n\n  Don't forget the question Wo ist . . . ? (voh ist) (Where is . . . ?) if you need to ask someone for help finding something around the office.\n\nSooner or later, you're likely to need one of the following supplies:\n\n  der Bleistift (d\u00ear blay-shtift) (pencil)\n\n  der Kugelschreiber (d\u00ear kooh-gel-shray-ber) (pen)\n\n  das Papier (d\u00e2s p\u00e2-peer) (paper)\n\n  der Umschlag (d\u00ear oom-shlahk) (envelope)\n\nWhen you need some of these supplies, and you can't find them on your own after rummaging around, ask a colleague to help you find them by saying\n\nHaben Sie einen Kugelschreiber\/einen Umschlag f\u00fcr mich? (hah-ben zee ayn-en kooh-gel-shray-ber\/ayn-en oom-shlahk fuer miH?) (Could you give me a pen\/envelope? Literally: Do you have a pen\/envelope for me?)\n\nK\u00f6nnen Sie mir sagen, wo ich Umschl\u00e4ge\/Bleistifte\/Papier finde? (kern-en zee meer zah-gen, voh iH oom-shl\u00ea-ge\/blay-shtift-e\/p\u00e2-peer fin-de?) (Could you tell me where I would find envelopes\/pencils\/paper?)\n\nDoing business in German\n\nJust like everywhere else, German-speaking countries have their own business world with their own culture and specialized language. Non-native speakers study for many years, taking special courses on meetings and negotiations, telephoning, and giving speeches, in order to be successful at doing business in German. This chapter (or book, for that matter) doesn't have the space to provide all the details you need to communicate at the business level \u2014 and you probably don't have the time it would take to learn all you'd need to know. But you may find yourself in a situation where a few business terms \u2014 and a little advice on how to proceed \u2014 can come in pretty handy.\n\n  If you plan to perform business with German speakers, you may want to call ahead and ask whether the services of der Dolmetscher (d\u00ear dol-m\u00each-er)\/die Dolmetscherin (dee dol-m\u00each-er-in) (interpreter) or der \u00dcbersetzer (d\u00ear ue-ber-z\u00eats-\u00ear)\/die \u00dcbersetzerin (dee ue-ber-z\u00eats-\u00ear-in) (translator) can be made available to you. Also find out whether the translator will take die Notizen (dee noh-tits-en) (notes) in English during the meeting so that you have a written record of the goings-on. Don't feel the slightest bit shy about asking for an interpreter or a translator. Business people all over the world respect someone who knows when it's time to delegate.\n\n  Many German job titles have two versions to show whether a man or a woman is doing that job. Often, the title used for men ends in -er, like the term for a male interpreter: der Dolmetscher. The women's title ends in -erin, as is the case with die Dolmetscherin.\n\nFollowing are a few more steps to take before you start doing business auf Deutsch (ouf doych) (in German):\n\n  Study up on the formal introductions in Chapter 3. Nailing the introductions shows your interest in the proceedings, even if you don't understand much more of what's being said.\n\n  Read the section \"Describing your work\" in Chapter 6. This will arm you with a few words you need to make small talk about your job.\n\n  Acquaint yourself with the following common office terms:\n\n\u2022 anrufen (\u00e2n-roohf-en) (to phone)\n\n\u2022 die Besprechung (dee be-shpr\u00eaH-oong) (meeting)\n\n\u2022 der Chef\/die Chefin (d\u00ear sh\u00eaf\/die sh\u00eaf-\u00een) (boss)\n\n\u2022 der Direktor\/die Direktorin (d\u00ear di-r\u00eak-tohr\/dee di-r\u00eak-tohr-in) (director)\n\n\u2022 der Mitarbeiter\/die Mitarbeiterin (d\u00ear mit-\u00e2r-bay-ter\/dee mit-\u00e2r-bay-ter-in) (colleague\/employee)\n\n\u2022 der Sekret\u00e4r\/die Sekret\u00e4rin (d\u00ear z\u00ea-kr\u00ea-t\u00ear\/dee z\u00ea-kr\u00ea-t\u00ear-in) (secretary).\n\n\u2022 der Termin (d\u00ear t\u00ear-meen) (appointment)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nListen in on the following conversation between Frau Seifert and her assistant, Frau. Remmert. Frau Seifert has come to the office early because she has an important meeting.\n\nFrau Seifert: | Guten Morgen, Frau Remmert.\n\ngooh-ten mor-gen, frou r\u00eam-ert.\n\nGood morning, Ms. Remmert.\n\n---|---\n\nFrau Remmert: | Guten Morgen, Frau Seifert.\n\ngooh-ten mor-gen, frou zayf-\u00eart.\n\nGood morning, Ms. Seifert.\n\nFrau Seifert: | Wissen Sie, ob Herr Krause heute im Hause ist?\n\nvis-en zee, op h\u00ear krouz-e hoy-te im houz-e ist?\n\nDo you know if Mr. Krause is in the office today?\n\nFrau Remmert: | Ich glaube ja.\n\niH glou-be yah.\n\nI think so.\n\nFrau Seifert: | Ich muss dringend mit ihm sprechen.\n\niH moos dring-end mit eem shpr\u00eaH-en.\n\nI have to speak to him urgently.\n\nFrau Remmert: | In Ordnung. Ach ja, Frau Hoffmann von der Firma Solag hat angerufen.\n\nin ord-noong. ahH yah, frou hof-m\u00e2n fon d\u00ear fir-m\u00e2 soh-lahk h\u00e2t \u00e2n-g\u00ea-roohf-en.\n\nOkay. Oh yes, Ms. Hoffman from (the company) Solag called.\n\nFrau Seifert: | Gut, ich rufe sie gleich an. Und w\u00fcrden Sie bitte diesen Brief f\u00fcr mich \u00fcbersetzen?\n\ngooht, iH roohf-e zee glayH \u00e2n. oont vuer-den zee bi-te deez-en breef fuer miH ue-ber-z\u00eats-en?\n\nGood, I'll call her right away. And would you translate this letter for me, please?\n\nFrau Remmert: | Wird gemacht, Frau Seifert.\n\nvirt g\u00ea-m\u00e2Ht frou zayf-\u00eart\n\nI'll do that, Ms. Seifert.\n\n Fun & Games\n\nThe following picture shows the kinds of items you would find in a typical office. Write the German terms for each in the blanks provided.\n\n1. Office chair: _______________\n\n2. Lamp: _______________\n\n3. Envelope: _______________\n\n4. Calendar: _______________\n\n5. Computer: _______________\n\n6. Printer: _______________\n\n7. Telephone: _______________\n\n8. Copy machine: _______________\n\n9. Desk: _______________\n\n10. Paper: _______________\n\n11. Pen: _______________\n\n12. Pencil: _______________\n\n13. Files: _______________\n\n14. Mouse: _______________\nChapter 12\n\nRecreation and the Great Outdoors\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Talking about sports\n\n  Understanding reflexive verbs and pronouns\n\n  Taking a trip to the mountains, the country, or the sea\n\nThis chapter looks at the fun things people do when they're not working. Europeans like to make the most of their time off. Germans in particular are among the world's most seasoned globetrotters, yet they also enjoy visiting the many beautiful spots inside their own country.\n\nWithin German-speaking Europe, you can enjoy a vast range of sports and recreation opportunities. Take your pick! You can sail on one of many lakes, ski in the mountains, go mountain biking, relax at the shore, or simply enjoy nature while walking on one of the many well-marked hiking trails, to name just a few possibilities.\n\nPlaying Sports\n\nEuropeans, like Americans and people all over the world, enjoy participating in and watching a wide variety of indoor and outdoor sports. Traditional favorites include soccer (by far the most popular sport), volleyball, bicycling, skiing, and hiking. Some relative newcomers are tennis, golf, and windsurfing. By using the words and phrases in this section, you can share your interest in sports with other people, auf Deutsch (ouf doych) (in German)!\n\nPlaying around with the verb \"spielen\"\n\nYou can express your general interest in playing many sports by using the verb spielen (shpeel-en) (to play) together with the noun that describes the sport in the following phrase:\n\nIch spiele gern. . . . (iH shpeel-e g\u00earn. . . .) (I like to play. . . .)\n\nYou can insert the names of the following sports at the end of the sentence, and then let the games begin!\n\n  Basketball (basketball [as in English]) (basketball)\n\n  Fu\u00dfball (foohs-b\u00e2l) (soccer)\n\n  Golf (golf [as in English]) (golf)\n\n  Tennis (tennis [as in English]) (tennis)\n\n  Volleyball (volleyball [as in English]) (volleyball)\n\nVerbalizing sports you enjoy\n\nSome sports are expressed as verbs, so you don't use the verb spielen to talk about them. You can use the following expression to communicate what you're interested in doing:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern. . . . (iH merH-te g\u00earn. . . .) (I would like to. . . .)\n\nTo complete the sentence, you simply tack on the verb that expresses the sport \u2014 no conjugating necessary \u2014 at the end of the expression. For example:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern segeln. (iH merH-te g\u00earn zey-geln.) (I would like to sail.)\n\nHere are a few verbs to choose from:\n\n  Fahrrad fahren (fahr-r\u00e2t fahr-en) (to ride a bike)\n\n  joggen (jog-en) (to jog)\n\n  schwimmen (shvim-en) (to swim)\n\n  segeln (zey-geln) (to sail)\n\n  Ski fahren (shee fahr-en) (to ski)\n\n  windsurfen (vint-soorf-en) (to windsurf)\n\nThe following construction will get you far when discussing favorite activities:\n\nIch . . . gern. (iH . . . g\u00earn.) (I like to. . . .)\n\nHere you need to remember to conjugate the verb that you put in the blank. Check out these examples:\n\nIch schwimme gern. (iH shvim-e g\u00earn.) (I like to swim.)\n\nIch fahre gern Fahrrad. (iH fahr-e g\u00earn fahr-r\u00e2t.) (I like to bike.)\n\nInviting someone to play\n\nTo ask someone to join you in an activity, use one of the following expressions and add on either the verb (in infinitive form) that expresses the sport or the noun that expresses the sport plus the verb spielen:\n\nLass uns . . . gehen! (l\u00e2s oons . . . gey-en!) (Let's go . . . !)\n\nM\u00f6chtest du . . . ? (merH-test dooh . . . ) (Would you like to . . . ?)\n\nTake a look at these two examples:\n\nLass uns windsurfen gehen! (l\u00e2s oons vint-soorf-en gey-en!) (Let's go windsurfing!)\n\nM\u00f6chtest du Volleyball spielen? (merH-test dooh volleyball speel-en?) (Would you like to play volleyball?)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nIt's Friday afternoon, and Michael spots his friend Ingo on the subway.\n\nMichael: | Gr\u00fc\u00df dich Ingo. Was machst du morgen?\n\ngrues d\u00eeH een-goh. V\u00e2s m\u00e2Hst dooh mor-g\u00ean?\n\nHi Ingo. What are you doing tomorrow?\n\n---|---\n\nIngo: | Nichts Besonderes. Joggen oder schwimmen. Was hast du vor?\n\nniHts be-zon-der-es. jog-en oh-der shvim-en. v\u00e2s h\u00e2st du for?\n\nNothing special. Jogging or swimming. What are your plans?\n\nMichael: | Ich m\u00f6chte gern Fahrrad fahren. Kommst du mit?\n\niH merH-te g\u00earn fahr-r\u00e2t fahr-en. Komst du mit?\n\nI'd really like to take a bike ride. Want to come along?\n\nIngo: | Ja, sicher. Wohin fahren wir?\n\ny\u00e2h, zeeH-er. voh-hin fahr-en veer?\n\nYes, sure. Where shall we go?\n\nMichael: | Lass uns zum Starnberger See fahren. Wir k\u00f6nnen dort in den Biergarten gehen.\n\nl\u00e2s oons tsoom shtahrn-b\u00ear-ger zey fahr-en. veer kern-en dort in deyn beer-g\u00e2r-ten gey-en.\n\nLet's ride to Starnberger Lake. We can go to the beergarden there.\n\nIngo: | Abgemacht! Bis morgen!\n\nahp-ge-m\u00e2Ht. bis mor-gen!\n\nThat's a deal! Until tomorrow!\n\nUsing Reflexive Verbs to Talk about Plans\n\nYou've made vacation plans, and you're excited about participating in activities you're really interested in. How do you tell someone that you're looking forward to something? Germans say\n\nIch freue mich auf den Urlaub. (iH froy-e miH ouf deyn oor-loup.) I'm looking forward to the vacation.\n\nNote that this sentence contains a reflexive verb. Reflexive verbs are a lot more commonly used in German than in English. This section explores reflexive verbs a bit more.\n\nGetting reflexive\n\n  German verbs have a reputation for acting a bit strangely. They do things that English verbs just don't do. For example, German verbs can be at the end of a sentence. And sometimes they split in two, with only one part of the verb going to the end of a sentence! (See Chapter 14 for more on verbs that split.) You need to flex your German grammar muscles as you read on about reflexive verbs.\n\nSome German verbs just can't work alone and must be accompanied by a helping pronoun in the accusative or the dative case, depending on the pronoun's function in the sentence. The pronoun reflects back (just like a mirror) on the subject. That's why these verbs are commonly called reflexive verbs, and the pronouns are called reflexive pronouns.\n\nAccusing and dating your pronouns\n\nWhat are these so-called reflexive pronouns, and what's this about accusing and dating them? Well, many of them may look and sound familiar. Table 12-1 shows you the reflexive pronouns in the accusative and dative cases and, for reference, the corresponding personal pronouns. Note that only two reflexive forms aren't the same in the two cases, namely mich\/mir (miH\/meer) (me) and dich\/dir (diH\/deer) (you). Accusative and dative reflexive pronouns have the same meanings.\n\nTable 12-1 Accusative and Dative Reflexive Pronouns\n\n---\n\nPersonal Pronoun | Accusative Reflexive Pronoun | Dative Reflexive Pronoun\n\nich (iH) (I) | mich (miH) (myself) | mir (meer) (myself)\n\ndu (dooh) (you) (singular, informal) | dich (diH) (yourself) | dir (deer) (yourself)\n\ner, sie, es (\u00ear, zee, \u00eas) (he,she,it) | sich (ziH) (himself, herself, itself) | sich (ziH) (himself, herself, itself)\n\nwir (veer) (we) | uns (oons) (ourselves) | uns (oons) (ourselves)\n\nihr (eer) (you) (plural, informal) | euch (oyH) (yourselves) | euch (oyH) (yourselves)\n\nsie (zee) (they) | sich (ziH) (themselves) | sich (ziH) (themselves)\n\nSie (zee) (you) singular\/plural, formal) | sich (ziH) (yourself\/yourselves) | sich (ziH) (yourself\/yourselves)\n\nThe reflexive pronoun goes after the conjugated verb in a normal sentence. In a question starting with a verb, the reflexive pronoun goes after the subject. (See Chapter 2 for more information on forming questions in German.)\n\nTake a look at the following examples of reflexive verbs and reflexive pronouns doing their thing in sentences:\n\nIch interessiere mich f\u00fcr die Natur. (iH in-te-r\u00ea-see-re miH fuer dee n\u00e2-toohr.) (I am interested in nature.) Literally, this sentence translates as I interest myself in nature. The subject ich (I) is reflected in the pronoun mich (myself).\n\nFreust du dich auf deinen Urlaub? (froyst dooh diH ouf dayn-en oor-loup?) (Are you looking forward to your vacation?)\n\nHerr Grobe hat sich f\u00fcr einen Segelkurs angemeldet. (h\u00ear groh-be h\u00e2t ziH fuer ayn-en zey-gel-koors \u00e2n-ge-m\u00eal-det.) (Mr. Grobe enrolled in a sailing class.)\n\nHerr und Frau Weber erholen sich im Urlaub an der K\u00fcste. (h\u00ear oont frou vey-ber \u00ear-hohl-en ziH \u00eem oor-loup \u00e2n d\u00ear kues-te.) (Mr. and Mrs. Weber are relaxing during their vacation on the coast.)\n\nSome common reflexive verbs\n\nIf you're wondering how in the world you're supposed to know which verbs are reflexive and which ones aren't, good for you \u2014 it's an excellent question. Unfortunately, the answer may not please you: You have to memorize them.\n\nTo give you a leg up, start with some common reflexive verbs that use the accusative reflexive pronouns. Take sich freuen (ziH froy-en) (to be glad about, to look forward to) as an example.\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich freue mich | iH froy-e miH\n\ndu freust dich | dooh froyst diH\n\nSie frauen sich  | zee froy-en ziH\n\ner, sie, es freut sich | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas froyt ziH\n\nwir freuen uns | veer froy-en oons\n\nihr freut euch | eer froyt oyH\n\nSie freuen sich | zee froy-en ziH\n\nsie freuen sich | zee froy-en ziH\n\nSome of the most common reflexive verbs with accusative reflexive pronouns include the following:\n\n  sich anmelden (ziH an-m\u00eal-den) (to enroll in or register for)\n\n  sich aufregen (ziH ouf-rey-gen) (to get excited or upset)\n\n  sich beeilen (ziH b\u00ea-ay-len) (to hurry)\n\n  sich entscheiden (ziH \u00eant-shay-den) (to decide)\n\n  sich erholen (ziH \u00ear-hohl-en) (to relax or recover)\n\n  sich erinnern (ziH \u00ear-in-ern) (to remember)\n\n  sich freuen auf (ziH froy-en ouf) (to look forward to)\n\n  sich freuen \u00fcber (ziH froy-en ue-ber) (to be glad about)\n\n  sich gew\u00f6hnen an (ziH ge-vern-en \u00e2n) (to get used to)\n\n  sich interessieren f\u00fcr (ziH in-te-r\u00ea-see-ren fuer) (to be interested in)\n\n  sich setzen (ziH z\u00eats-en) (to sit down)\n\n  sich unterhalten (ziH oon-t\u00ear-h\u00e2l-ten) (to talk, to enjoy oneself)\n\n  sich verletzen (ziH f\u00ear-lets-en) (to get hurt)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\n  Anke runs into her friend J\u00fcrgen at the supermarket. The two are talking about Anke's vacation plans. (Track 25)\n\nJ\u00fcrgen: | Hallo Anke. Wie gehts? Wir haben uns lange nicht gesehen.\n\nh\u00e2-lo \u00e2n-ke. vee geyts? veer hah-ben oons l\u00e2ng-e niHt ge-zey-en.\n\nHello Anke. How are you? We haven't seen each other in a long time.\n\n---|---\n\nAnke: | Ich hatte viel zu tun. Aber jetzt mache ich endlich Urlaub.\n\niH h\u00e2t-e feel tsooh toohn. ah-ber y\u00eatst m\u00e2H-e iH \u00eant-liH oor-loup\n\nI had a lot of work. But now I'm finally going on vacation.\n\nJ\u00fcrgen: | Wie sch\u00f6n. Hast du was vor?\n\nvee shern. h\u00e2st dooh v\u00e2s for?\n\nHow nice. Do you have anything planned?\n\nAnke: | Ja. Ich fahre in die Schweiz. Ich nehme an einem Snowboardkurs teil.\n\nyah. iH fahr-e in dee schvayts. iH ney-me \u00e2n ayn-em snoh-bord-koors tayl.\n\nYes. I'm going to Switzerland. I'm taking part in a snowboarding class.\n\nJ\u00fcrgen: | Wie lange bleibst du?\n\nvee l\u00e2ng-e blaypst dooh?\n\nHow long are you staying?\n\nAnke: | Zwei Wochen. Ich freue mich riesig auf den Kurs.\n\ntsvay voH-en. iH froy-e miH ree-ziH ouf deyn koors.\n\nTwo weeks. I'm really looking forward to the course.\n\nJ\u00fcrgen: | Ich hoffe, du verletzt dich nicht!\n\niH hof-e, dooh v\u00ear-l\u00eatst diH niHt!\n\nI hope you don't get hurt!\n\nReflexive verbs that are flexible\n\nUntil this point, you've seen verbs with the accusative reflexive pronouns. In order to strengthen the reputation that German verbs can act strangely, here's yet another aspect to consider. Some verbs \u2014 many of them to do with personal hygiene \u2014 use dative reflexive pronouns. Look at these examples:\n\nIch putze mir die Z\u00e4hne. (iH poots-e meer dee tsai-ne.) (I'm brushing my teeth.)\n\nIch wasche mir die H\u00e4nde. (iH v\u00e2sh-e meer dee h\u00ean-de.) (I'm washing my hands.)\n\nAnd one more quirk: You can also find verbs that work three ways! Without going into too much detail, look at the verb waschen. In addition to using the dative reflexive pronoun in the previous sentence, you can use the accusative reflexive pronoun, like this example:\n\nIch wasche mich schnell. (iH v\u00e2sh-e miH shn\u00eal.) (I wash [myself] in a hurry.)\n\nYou can also use waschen alone:\n\nIch wasche das Auto morgen. (iH v\u00e2sh-e d\u00e2s ou-toh mor-gen.) (I'm washing my car tomorrow.)\n\n  If you're the curious type and want to find out more about relative pronouns and verbs, as well as many other details of German grammar, check out the book Intermediate German For Dummies (Wiley).\n\nExploring the Outdoors\n\nHad a hectic week at work? Tired of working out at the gym? Maybe you just want to get away from it all and experience the great outdoors alone or with your family and friends. In that case, lace up your hiking boots and grab your binoculars and guidebook. And don't forget to pack a lunch, because you may not find a snack bar at the end of the trail!\n\nGetting out and going\n\nIf you're interested in walking and hiking, the following phrases should get you on your way:\n\nWollen wir spazieren\/wandern gehen? (vol-en veer shp\u00e2-tsee-ren\/v\u00e2n-dern gey-en?) (Should we take a walk\/go hiking?)\n\nIch m\u00f6chte spazieren\/wandern gehen. (iH merH-te shp\u00e2-tsee-ren\/v\u00e2n-dern gey-en.) (I would like to take a walk\/go hiking.)\n\nThings to see along the way\n\nWhen you return from your tour of the great outdoors, you can tell people about what you saw by saying\n\nIch habe . . . gesehen. (iH hah-be . . . g\u00ea-zey-en.) (I saw. . . .)\n\nIch habe . . . beobachtet. (iH hah-be . . . b\u00ea-oh-b\u00e2H-tet.) (I was watching. . . .)\n\nJust fill in the blanks. You may encounter any of the following along the way:\n\n  der Baum (d\u00ear boum) (tree)\n\n  der Fluss (d\u00ear floos) (river)\n\n  die Kuh (dee kooh) (cow)\n\n  das Meer (d\u00e2s meyr) (sea, ocean)\n\n  das Pferd (d\u00e2s pf\u00eart) (horse)\n\n  das Reh (d\u00e2s rey) (deer)\n\n  das Schaf (d\u00e2s shahf) (sheep)\n\n  der See (d\u00ear zey) (lake)\n\n  der Vogel (d\u00ear foh-gel) (bird)\n\n  Remember that you use the accusative case when completing these sentences. (See Chapter 2 for more information on the accusative case.) For masculine nouns, you phrase your sentences in this way:\n\nIch habe einen Adler gesehen. (iH hah-be ayn-en \u00e2d-ler ge-zey-en.) (I saw an eagle.)\n\nFor feminine nouns, follow this phrasing:\n\nIch habe eine lilafarbene Kuh gesehen! (iH hah-be ayn-e lee-l\u00e2-f\u00e2r-b\u00ean-e kooh ge-zey-en!) (I saw a purple-colored cow!) Well, maybe not in the Alps, but you can see the purple cow on the wrapper of a well-known brand of chocolate.\n\nExpress neuter nouns this way:\n\nIch habe ein Reh gesehen. (iH hah-be ayn rey ge-zey-en.) (I saw a deer.)\n\nOr you may want to use the plural form, which is generally easier:\n\nIch habe viele V\u00f6gel gesehen. (iH hah-be fee-le fer-gel ge-zey-en.) (I saw a lot of birds.)\n\n  The Alps offer a panoply of hiking opportunities for the casual hiker as well as for the expert climber. When you meet German-speaking people in the mountains and strike up a conversation, you're bound to notice that complete strangers may address each other with du. Using the familiar form is a means of showing camaraderie with others interested in the experience of hiking.\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\n  Mr. and Mrs. Paulsen are in a small town in the mountains. Today they want to go hiking. They are speaking with Frau Kreutzer at the local tourist information office to find out about hiking trails in the area. (Track 26)\n\nFrau Paulsen: | Guten Morgen. Wir m\u00f6chten eine Wanderung machen.\n\ngooh-ten mor-gen. veer merH-ten ayn-e v\u00e2n-der-oong m\u00e2H-en.\n\nGood morning. We would like to go hiking.\n\n---|---\n\nFrau Kreutzer: | Ich kann Ihnen eine Wanderkarte f\u00fcr diese Gegend geben.\n\niH k\u00e2n een-en ayn-e v\u00e2n-d\u00ear-k\u00e2r-te fuer deez-e gey-gend gey-ben.\n\nI can give you a hiking map of this area.\n\nHerr Paulsen: | Das ist genau das, was wir brauchen.\n\nd\u00e2s ist ge-nou d\u00e2s, v\u00e2s veer brouH-en.\n\nThat's exactly what we need.\n\nFrau Kreutzer: | Wie w\u00e4re es mit dem Hornberg? Wenn Sie Gl\u00fcck haben, k\u00f6nnen Sie sogar einige Murmeltiere sehen.\n\nvee vair-e \u00eas mit deym hohrn-b\u00earg? v\u00ean zee gluek hah-ben, kern-en zee zoh-g\u00e2r ayn-ee-ge moor-mel-teer-e zey-en.\n\nHow about Horn mountain? If you're lucky, you can even see some marmots.\n\nHerr Paulsen: | Das klingt gut. K\u00f6nnen Sie uns den Weg auf der Karte markieren?\n\nd\u00e2s klinkt gooht. keer-en zee oons deyn v\u00eag ouf d\u00ear k\u00e2r-te m\u00e2r-keer-en?\n\nSounds good. Can you mark the trail for us on the map?\n\nFrau Kreutzer: | Ja, nat\u00fcrlich.\n\nyah, n\u00e2-tuer-liH.\n\nYes, of course.\n\nFrau Paulsen: | Vielen Dank f\u00fcr ihre Hilfe.\n\nfee-len d\u00e2nk fuer eer-e hil-fe.\n\nThank you very much for your help.\n\nGoing to the mountains\n\nWhether you plan to explore the ever-popular Alps or one of the other mountain ranges, you're sure to meet the locals. In fact, you're likely to see whole families out hiking on a Sunday afternoon. Before you join them, fortify yourself with some sustaining vocabulary:\n\n  der Berg (d\u00ear b\u00earg) (mountain)\n\n  das Gebirge (d\u00e2s ge-bir-ge) (mountain range)\n\n  der Gipfel (d\u00ear gip-fel) (peak)\n\n  der H\u00fcgel (d\u00ear hue-gel) (hill)\n\n  das Naturschutzgebiet (d\u00e2s n\u00e2-toohr-shoots-ge-beet) (nature preserve)\n\n  das Tal (d\u00e2s tahl) (valley)\n\nHere are a few examples of sentences:\n\nWir fahren in die Berge. (veer fahr-en in dee b\u00ear-ge.) (We're going to the mountains.)\n\nWir wollen wandern gehen. (veer vol-en v\u00e2n-dern gey-en.) (We want to go hiking.)\n\nIch will bergsteigen. (iH vil b\u00earg-shtayg-en.) (I want to go mountain climbing.)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nHerr Mahler meets Frau Pohl on his way home from work. They start talking about their travel plans.\n\nFrau Pohl: | Tag Herr Mahler. Na, haben Sie schon Urlaubspl\u00e4ne gemacht?\n\ntahk h\u00ear mah-ler. nah, hah-ben zee shon oor-loups-pl\u00ean-e ge-m\u00e2Ht?\n\nHello, Mr. Mahler. So, have you made plans for your vacation yet?\n\n---|---\n\nHerr Mahler: | Aber ja, meine Frau und ich werden wieder in die Berge fahren.\n\nah-ber yah, mayn-e frou oont iH v\u00ear-den vee-der in dee b\u00ear-ge fahr-en.\n\nOh yes, my wife and I will go to the mountains again.\n\nFrau Pohl: | Wieder in die Alpen?\n\nvee-der in dee \u00e2lp-en?\n\nBack to the Alps?\n\nHerr Mahler: | Nein, diesmal gehen wir in den Pyren\u00e4en wandern. Und Sie?\n\nnayn, dees-m\u00e2l gey-en veer in deyn per-re-n\u00ea-en v\u00e2n-dern. oont zee?\n\nNo, this time we're going hiking in the Pyrenees. And you?\n\nFrau Pohl: | Wir wollen im Herbst in die Dolomiten zum Bergsteigen.\n\nveer vol-en im h\u00earpst in dee do-lo-meet-en tsoom b\u00earg-shtayg-en.\n\nWe want to go mountain climbing in the Dolomite Alps in the fall.\n\nHerr Mahler: | Haben Sie schon ein Hotel gebucht?\n\nhah-ben zee shohn ayn hotel [as in English] ge-booHt?\n\nDid you book a hotel yet?\n\nFrau Pohl: | Nein, wir werden in Bergh\u00fctten \u00fcbernachten.\n\nnayn, veer v\u00ear-den \u00een b\u00earg-huet-en ue-ber-n\u00e2H-ten.\n\nNo, we're going to stay in mountain huts.\n\nGoing to the country\n\nMountains not your idea of fun? How about some fresh country air then? Despite a population of around 82 million people in Germany, you can still find quiet rural areas and out-of-the-way places, sometimes surprisingly close to bustling urban centers. And it goes without saying that you can also find peace and quiet in the Austrian and Swiss countryside. All you need to get started is the right language:\n\n  der Bauernhof (d\u00ear bou-ern-hohf) (farm)\n\n  das Dorf (d\u00e2s dorf) (village)\n\n  das Feld (d\u00e2s f\u00ealt) (field)\n\n  das Land (d\u00e2s l\u00e2nt) (countryside)\n\n  der Wald (d\u00ear v\u00e2lt) (forest)\n\n  die Wiese (dee veez-e) (meadow)\n\nFollowing are a few sample sentences:\n\nWir fahren aufs Land. (veer fahr-en oufs l\u00e2nt.) (We're going to the countryside.)\n\nWir machen Urlaub auf dem Bauernhof. (veer m\u00e2H-en oor-loup ouf deym bou-ern-hohf.) (We're vacationing on a farm.)\n\nIch gehe im Wald spazieren. (iH gey-e im v\u00e2lt shp\u00e2-tsee-ren.) (I'm going for a walk in the woods.)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nDaniel runs into his friend Ellen. After greeting each other, Daniel tells Ellen about his upcoming vacation.\n\nDaniel: | Ich fahre in der letzten Juli Woche aufs Land.\n\niH fahr-e in d\u00ear l\u00eats-te yooh-lee voH-e oufs l\u00e2nt.\n\nI'm going to the countryside the last week in July.\n\n---|---\n\nEllen: | F\u00e4hrst du allein?\n\nfairst dooh \u00e2l-ayn?\n\nAre you going alone?\n\nDaniel: | Nein, ich verreise zusammen mit meiner Schwester und ihren Kindern.\n\nnayn, iH f\u00ear-ray-ze tsoo-z\u00e2m-en mit mayn-er shv\u00eas-ter oont eer-en kin-dern.\n\nNo, I'm traveling together with my sister and her children.\n\nEllen: | Habt ihr eine Ferienwohnung gemietet?\n\nhahpt eer ayn-e feyr-ee-\u00ean-vohn-oong ge-meet-et?\n\nDid you rent a vacation apartment?\n\nDaniel: | Nein. Wir \u00fcbernachten auf einem Bauernhof in einem kleinen Dorf.\n\nnayn. veer ue-b\u00ear-n\u00e2Ht-en ouf ayn-em bou-ern-hohf in ayn-em klayn-en dorf.\n\nNo. We're staying on a farm in a small village.\n\nEllen: | Die Kindern freuen sich sicher.\n\ndee kin-der froy-en ziH ziH-er.\n\nThe kids are probably looking forward to that.\n\nDaniel: | Und wie!\n\noont vee!\n\nOh, yes!\n\nGoing to the sea\n\nIf hiking through the mountains or countryside sounds somewhat dry and tame to you, maybe what you need is a stiff breeze and the cry of gulls overhead. Whether you decide to go to one of the windswept islands in the North Sea or settle for the more serene Baltic Sea, you'll be able to enjoy nature and meet the locals at the same time using the following words:\n\n  die Ebbe (dee \u00eab-e) (low tide)\n\n  die Flut (dee flooht) (high tide)\n\n  die Gezeiten (dee g\u00ea-tsayt-en) (tides)\n\n  die K\u00fcste (dee kues-te) (coast)\n\n  das Meer (d\u00e2s meyr) (sea)\n\n  die Nordsee (dee nort-zey) (North Sea)\n\n  die Ostsee (dee ost-zey) (Baltic Sea)\n\n  der Sturm (d\u00ear shtoorm) (storm)\n\n  die Wellen (dee v\u00eal-en) (waves)\n\n  der Wind (d\u00ear vint) (wind)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nUdo and Karin are talking about their holiday trips. They both like the seaside but have different ideas about what's fun.\n\nUdo: | Wir wollen dieses Jahr an die Ostsee.\n\nveer vol-en deez-es yahr \u00e2n dee ost-zey.\n\nWe want to go to the Baltic Sea this year.\n\n---|---\n\nKarin: | Toll! Und was macht ihr dort?\n\nTol! oont v\u00e2s m\u00e2Ht eer dort?\n\nCool! And what are you going to do there?\n\nUdo: | Wir wollen windsurfen. Und ihr?\n\nveer vol-en vint-soorf-en. oont eer?\n\nWe want to go windsurfing. And you?\n\nKarin: | Wir werden auf eine Nordseeinsel fahren. Wir wollen im Watt wandern gehen.\n\nveer v\u00ear-den ouf ayn-e nort-zey-in-zel fahr-en. veer vol-en im v\u00e2t v\u00e2n-dern gey-en.\n\nWe'll go to a North Sea island. We want to go walking in the tidal flats.\n\nUdo: | Ist das nicht gef\u00e4hrlich?\n\nist d\u00e2s niHt ge-fair-liH?\n\nIsn't that dangerous?\n\nKarin: | Nein, man geht bei Ebbe los, und dann hat man einige Stunden Zeit, bevor die Flut kommt.\n\nnayn, m\u00e2n geyt bay \u00eab-e lohs, oont d\u00e2n h\u00e2t m\u00e2n ayn-ee-ge shtoon-den tsayt, b\u00ea-fohr dee flooht komt.\n\nNo, you set out at low tide, and then you have several hours before high tide sets in.\n\n Fun & Games\n\nFill in the boxes with the correct German words.\n\nAcross\n\n1. I\n\n3. You (informal, singular )\n\n8. Class\n\n10. Yes\n\n11. Tomorrow\n\n12. Lake\n\n13. She\n\n14. Low tide\n\n15. Mountain\n\n18. And\n\n21. North Sea\n\nDown\n\n2. Hi\n\n3. Article (masculine)\n\n4. Trail\n\n5. Skateboard\n\n6. Article (neuter)\n\n7. Island\n\n9. Skiing\n\n11. Ocean\n\n16. It\n\n17. Good\n\n19. Village\n\n20. a (feminine article)\nPart III\n\nGerman on the Go\n\nIn this part . . .\n\nAt some point in time, you may very well find yourself doing a bit of traveling in German-speaking parts of Europe, so that's what this part of the book is all about. We cover all aspects of travel, including the planning stages, exchanging money, using public transportation, and reserving a hotel room. Gute Reise! (gooh-te ray-ze!) (Have a good trip!)\nChapter 13\n\nPlanning a Trip\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Booking a trip\n\n  Naming specific dates\n\n  Gathering passports, visas, and other travel necessities\n\nWould you like to go hiking in the Alps or head to the sea? How about a one-day Ausflug (ous-floohk) (excursion), perhaps from Munich to the pristine Bavarian lake of K\u00f6nigsee (ker-nig-zee)? Or what about a weeklong vacation Pauschalreise (pou-shahl-ray-ze) (package) to Turkey? No matter what destination you decide on, every trip requires some preparation. You need to check your calendar and set the dates, make sure your passport is valid for six months past the length of your trip (especially if you're traveling across borders), make reservations, and so on. Whether you prefer gathering information online or having human interaction while planning a trip, you'll find the information in this chapter useful.\n\nGetting Help from a Travel Agent\n\nBooking your trip online is fast and convenient, yet you may find that a travel agent can better serve your needs when you're already in Europe and want to plan a short trip from there. After all, you don't want to get stuck spending five nights at a hotel that blasts ear-splitting music 24\/7 from its poolside disco!\n\nWhen you contact the travel agency, das Reiseb\u00fcro (d\u00e2s ray-ze-bue-roh), tell the employee the following:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern . . . (iH merH-te g\u00earn . . .) (I would like to . . .)\n\nAt the end of this phrase, you can say any of the following to specify what you want them to do for you:\n\n. . . einen Flug nach . . . buchen. (ayn-en floohk nahH . . . boohH-en.) (book a flight to. . . .)\n\n. . . am . . . abfliegen. (\u00e2m . . . \u00e2p-fleeg-en.) (depart [fly] on the. . . .)\n\n. . . am . . . zur\u00fcckfliegen. (\u00e2m . . . tsoo-ruek-fleeg-en.) (return [fly back] on the . . . .)\n\n. . . eine Pauschalreise nach . . . buchen. (ayn-e pou-shahl-ray-ze nahH . . . boohH-en.) (book a vacation package to. . . .)\n\n. . . einen Ausflug nach . . . buchen. (ayn-en ous-floohk nahH . . . boohH-en.) (book an excursion to. . . .)\n\n. . . ein Hotelzimmer reservieren. (ayn hoh-t\u00eal-tsi-mer r\u00ea-z\u00ear-vee-ren.) (reserve a hotel room.)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nFrau Burger wants to book a vacation package to the Spanish island of Mallorca (may-yor-k\u00e2), a very popular destination for Germans. She calls a travel agency to book her trip. (Track 27)\n\n---\n\nAngestellter: | Reiseb\u00fcro Kunze, guten Tag!\n\nray-ze-bue-roh koon-tse, gooh-ten tahk!\n\nTravel agency Kunze, hello!\n\nFrau Burger: | Guten Tag. Ich m\u00f6chte eine Pauschalreise f\u00fcr eine Woche nach Mallorca buchen.\n\ngooh-ten tahk. iH merH-te ayn-e pou-sh\u00e2l-ray-ze fuer ayn-e woH-e naH may-yor-k\u00e2 boohH-en.\n\nHello, I'd like to book a one-week vacation package to Mallorca.\n\nAngestellter: | Gut. Wann m\u00f6chten Sie hinfliegen?\n\ngooht. v\u00e2n merH-ten zee hin-fleeg-en?\n\nGood. When do you want to fly there?\n\nFrau Burger: | Im Oktober. Aber wie sind die Preise?\n\nim ok-toh-ber. ah-ber vee zint dee pray-ze?\n\nIn October. But what are the prices like?\n\nAngestellter: | Keine Sorge. Oktober ist Nebensaison. M\u00f6chten Sie am 5. Oktober abfliegen?\n\nkayn-e zohr-ge. ok-toh-ber ist ney-ben-zey-zon. merH-ten zee \u00e2m fuenf-ten ok-toh-ber \u00e2p-fleeg-en?\n\nNot to worry. October is the low season. Would you like to leave on the fifth of October?\n\nFrau Burger: | Perfekt. Das passt ausgezeichnet.\n\np\u00ear-f\u00eakt. d\u00e2s p\u00e2st ous-ge-tsayH-n\u00eat.\n\nPerfect. That suits me perfectly.\n\nAngestellter: | Sehr gut. Ich buche den Flug und die \u00dcbernachtung f\u00fcr Sie. Ich empfehle Ihnen das f\u00fbnf Stern Hotel Eden.\n\nzeyr gooht. iH boohH-e deyn floohk oont dee ue-ber-n\u00e2Ht-oong fuer zee. iH em-pfey-le een-en d\u00e2s fuenf sht\u00earn hotel [as in English] ey-den.\n\nVery good. I'll book the flight and accommodation for you. I recommend the five-star Hotel Eden.\n\nFrau Burger: | Danke.\n\nd\u00e2n-ke.\n\nThank you.\n\nPlanning Ahead: Using the Future Tense\n\nWhen talking about things that will take place in the future, you use the future tense. In English, you create the future tense by adding the word \"will\" to the verb. Forming the future tense in German is pretty similar to English except that you need to conjugate the German equivalent of the verb \"will.\" You take the appropriate form of the verb werden (veyr-den) (will) and add the infinitive form of another verb. The conjugated form of werden goes in the usual second place for the verb, and the infinitive goes at the very end of the sentence. In this case, werden is used as an auxiliary verb meaning \"will\" (when used on its own, the verb werden means \"to become\").\n\nThe proper conjugation of the verb werden looks like this:\n\nConjugation | Pronunciation\n\n---|---\n\nich werde | iH veyr-de\n\ndu wirst | dooh virst\n\nSie werden | zee veyr-den\n\ner, sie, es wird | \u00ear, zee, \u00eas virt\n\nwir werden | veer veyr-den\n\nihr werdet | eer veyr-det\n\nSie werden | zee veyr-den\n\nsie werden | zee veyr-den\n\nThe following sentences show examples of the future tense. Note how the infinitives always go at the end of the sentences and that you create the negative (will not) by placing nicht directly after werden:\n\nWirst du n\u00e4chstes Jahr nach Kroatien fahren? (virst dooh naiH-stes yahr nahH kroh-ahts-ee-en fahr-en?) (Will you go\/Are you going to Croatia next year?)\n\nWir werden nicht zum Fest kommen. (veer veyr-den niHt tsoom f\u00east kom-en.) (We will not come\/we're not coming to the party.)\n\nFrau Meier wird heute Abend zur\u00fcckfliegen. (frou may-er virt hoy-te ah-bent tsoo-ruek-fleeg-en.) (Ms. Meier will fly\/is flying back this evening.)\n\n  German speakers are pretty lackadaisical about the future tense; they use it much less frequently than English speakers. Even more important, unlike English, with its various ways of expressing a future meaning, such as \"I'm going to visit my parents for Thanksgiving\" or \"We're taking a trip to Niagara Falls in August,\" German expresses the future tense only with werden. Very often, German speakers prefer to talk about the future using the present tense. Expressions like morgen (mor-gen) (tomorrow) or n\u00e4chstes Jahr (naiH-stes yahr) (next year) serve to indicate future meaning. The following statements all refer to events that will take place in the future, although the verb in each one of them is in the present tense:\n\nMorgen gehe ich wandern. (mor-gen gey-e iH v\u00e2n-d\u00earn.) (Tomorrow I'll go hiking.) Literally, Tomorrow I go hiking.\n\nF\u00e4hrst du n\u00e4chstes Jahr wieder zum Filmfest Hamburg? (fairst dooh naiH-stes yahr vee-der tsoom film-f\u00east h\u00e2m-boorg?) (Are you going to go to the Hamburg film festival next year?) Roughly translated: Do you go to the Hamburg film festival next year?\n\nSusanne geht \u00fcbermorgen zum Konsulat. (soo-z\u00e2n-e geyt ue-ber-mor-gen tsoom kon-zoo-laht.) (Susanne is going to the consulate the day after tomorrow.) Literally, Susanne goes to the consulate the day after tomorrow.\n\nDescribing events in specific months\n\nIf something takes place in a particular month, you combine the name of the month with the preposition im (im) (in):\n\nIch fliege im Januar nach Z\u00fcrich. (iH fleeg-e im y\u00e2n-oo-ahr nahH tsuer-iH.) (I'm flying to Zurich in January.)\n\nIch fliege im Februar zur\u00fcck. (iH fleeg-e im fey-broo-ahr tsoo-ruek.) (I'm flying back in February.)\n\nIm M\u00e4rz werde ich zu Hause sein. (im m\u00earts veyr-de iH tsooh houz-e zayn.) (In March, I'll be home.)\n\nNaming specific times in the months\n\nIf you need to be more specific about a particular time of the month, the following phrases help narrow down the field:\n\nAnfang Januar (\u00e2n-f\u00e2ng y\u00e2n-oo-ahr) (in the beginning of January)\n\nMitte Februar (mit-e fey-broo-ahr) (in the middle of February)\n\nEnde M\u00e4rz (\u00ean-de m\u00earts) (at the end of March)\n\nOf course, you can substitute the name of any month after Anfang, Mitte, and Ende:\n\nAnfang April fliegen wir nach Berlin. (\u00e2n-f\u00e2ng \u00e2-pril fleeg-en veer nahH b\u00ear-leen.) (In the beginning of April we're flying to Berlin.)\n\nIch werde Ende Mai verreisen. (iH v\u00ear-de \u00ean-de may f\u00ear-ray-zen.) (I'll go traveling at the end of May.)\n\nHerr Behr wird Mitte Februar in den Skiurlaub fahren. (h\u00ear beyr virt mit-e fey-broo-ahr in deyn shee-oor-loup fahr-en.) (Mr. Behr is going on a skiing trip in the middle of February.)\n\nRethinking Dates\n\nWhen talking about the date \u2014 das Datum (d\u00e2s dah-toom) \u2014 you need to adjust your way of thinking a little bit. In German (and many other languages, for that matter), the day always comes first, and the month comes second. In addition, the day of the month is an ordinal number, and a period is placed after the number, for example: 15. Juni 2011 (fuenf-tseyn-ter yooh-nee tsvay-tou-z\u00eant-\u00ealf) (June 15th, 2011). (Chapter 7 has more info on ordinal numbers.)\n\nThat was the long version. You often see or hear a shorter version. For example, you would write 14.10.2000, and you would say vierzehnter zehnter zweitausend (veer-tseyn-ter tseyn-ter tsvay-tou-z\u00eant) ([the] 14th of October, 2000). Again, note the periods after the numerals (both the day and month are ordinals).\n\nIf you want to find out what today's date is, ask this way:\n\nWelches Datum ist heute? (v\u00ealH-es dah-toom ist hoy-te?) (What's today's date?)\n\nThe answer will be one of the following:\n\nHeute ist der. . . . (hoy-te ist d\u00ear. . . .) (Today is the. . . .)\n\nHeute haben wir den. . . . (hoy-te hah-ben veer deyn. . . .) (Today we have the. . . .)\n\n  You may hear the name of a year integrated into a sentence in one of two ways. The first, longer way uses the preposition im to create the phrase im Jahr . . . (im yahr) (in the year). The second, shorter way omits this phrase. The following sentences show you examples of both ways of talking about the year in which an event takes place:\n\nIm Jahr 2010 arbeitete Herr Diebold in den USA. (im yahr tsvay-tou-z\u00eant tseyn \u00e2r-bay-te-te h\u00ear dee-bolt in deyn ooh-\u00eas-ah.) (In the year 2010, Mr. Diebold worked in the United States.)\n\n2008 war er in Kanada. (tsvay-tou-z\u00eant-\u00e2Ht v\u00e2r \u00ear in k\u00e2-n\u00e2-d\u00e2.) (In 2008 he was in Canada.)\n\nDealing with Passports and Visas\n\nAlthough the world seems to be shrinking faster and faster thanks to the Internet, you still need paperwork to go places. Specifically, you need a passport (you know, that handy little booklet with the embarrassing picture that you always seem to misplace or let expire just before you're about to leave on a trip?) And then there's the issue of visas.\n\nThe all-important passport\n\nBefore you leave on a trip, you want to check to make sure that your passport is valid for the entire length of your stay and then some (many countries allow you to stay for between three and six months total). After all, you don't want to spend your time away from home trying to find an American consulate in order to renew your passport. If you forget to take care of this very important task, you'll hear the following when you show your passport at the airline ticket counter, or worse yet, at the border:\n\nIhr Pass ist abgelaufen! (eer p\u00e2s ist \u00e2p-ge-louf-en!) (Your passport has expired!)\n\nAt that point, you'll be directed to the nearest American consulate \u2014 das amerikanische Konsulat (d\u00e2s \u00e2-m\u00ea-ree-kah-ni-she kon-zoo-laht) \u2014 in order to take care of the necessary paperwork.\n\nIn the event that you notice your passport is missing, head straight to the American consulate to report it. If necessary, you can stop a policeman or file a report at a police station and say the following in order to get help:\n\nIch habe meinen Pass verloren. (iH hah-be mayn-en p\u00e2s f\u00ear-lohr-en.) (I lost my passport.)\n\nInquiring about visas\n\nMost countries in Europe don't require you to have a visa if you're traveling on vacation and are planning to stay a few weeks or a couple of months. But just in case you like your destination so much that you want to stay longer, or you decide to continue on to a place where you're required to have a visa, the following phrases can come in handy when you apply for one:\n\nBraucht man ein Visum f\u00fcr Reisen nach. . . ? (brouHt m\u00e2n ayn vee-zoom fuer ray-zen nahH. . . ?) (Does one need a visa for trips to. . . ?)\n\nWie lange ist das Visum g\u00fcltig? (vee l\u00e2ng-e ist d\u00e2s vee-zoom guel-tiH?) (For how long is the visa valid?)\n\nIch m\u00f6chte ein Visum beantragen. (iH merH-te ayn vee-zoom b\u00ea-\u00e2n-trah-gen.) (I would like to apply for a visa.)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nGeorge Beck, an American living in Germany, wants to go on a trip to Phuket (fooh-ket), Thailand. As he's making the necessary arrangements at the travel agency, he talks to the agent about entering the country.\n\n---\n\nGeorge: | Brauche ich ein Visum f\u00fcr Thailand?\n\nbrouH-e iH ayn vee-zoom fuer tay-l\u00e2nt?\n\nDo I need a visa for Thailand?\n\nAngestellte: | Nein, f\u00fcr Thailand nicht, aber Sie brauchen nat\u00fcrlich Ihren Reisepass. Ist er noch g\u00fcltig?\n\nnayn, fuer tay-l\u00e2nt niHt, aber zee brouH-en na-tuer-liH eer-en ray-ze-p\u00e2s. ist \u00ear noH guel-tiH?\n\nNo, not for Thailand, but you need your passport, of course. Is it still valid?\n\nGeorge: | Ja, doch.\n\nyah, doH.\n\nYes, it is.\n\nAngestellte: | Prima! Noch irgendwelche Fragen, Herr Beck?\n\npree-m\u00e2! noH eer-g\u00eant-velH-\u00ea frah-gen h\u00ear b\u00eak?\n\nGreat! Any other questions, Mr. Beck?\n\nGeorge: | Nein, das war's. Vielen Dank.\n\nnayn, d\u00e2s vahrs. fee-len d\u00e2nk.\n\nNo, that was it. Thank you very much.\n\nAngestellte: | Gern geschehen. Und, Gute Reise!\n\ng\u00earn ge-shey-en. oont, gooh-te ray-ze!\n\nYou're welcome. And have a nice trip!\n\n Fun & Games\n\nThe following statements all describe events that take place in the future. Your job is to put the verb werden into the appropriate form.\n\n1. Wir _____ ans Meer fahren.\n\n2. _____ du mit deiner Familie in die USA fliegen?\n\n3. Ich _____ meinen Urlaub im Reiseb\u00fcro buchen.\n\n4. _____ ihr mit dem Zug nach D\u00e4nemark fahren?\n\n5. Kai _____ ein Visum f\u00fcr Kanada beantragen.\n\n6. Claudia und B\u00e4rbel _____ dieses Jahr nach Polen reisen.\nChapter 14\n\nMaking Sense of Euros and Cents\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Exchanging money\n\n  Getting money from an ATM\n\n  Understanding Euroland\n\nMoney does indeed make the world go 'round. And Euroland revolves around its multinational currency, the euro. So what about the good old greenback? In this chapter, we get you up to speed on exchanging your bucks for multicolored, multi-sized euros. Oh, and there's also the matter of those countries such as Switzerland that still have their own respective currencies. Whether you're dealing with a personable teller or an impersonal ATM, a pocketful of the right expressions can get you, well, a pocketful of euros.\n\nChanging Currency\n\nObtaining local currency in Europe is generally a hassle-free experience. Practically every bank is willing to accept your dollars and provide you with the local cash. And you can easily withdraw cash in the local currency from an ATM machine, provided you're using a major credit card (preferably Visa or Mastercard) and know your PIN.\n\nYou usually find a notice posted in or outside the bank with the current exchange rates (Wechselkurse) (v\u00eak-sel-koorz-e). Look for the column marked Ankauf (\u00e2n-kouf) (purchase\/buy). Then saunter up to the teller window, der Schalter (d\u00ear sh\u00e2l-ter). The Bankangestellter (b\u00e2nk-an-ge-st\u00eal-ter) (bank teller) at the counter will either complete your transaction on the spot or send you on to the Kasse (k\u00e2s-e) (cashier).\n\nIn airports and major train stations, you often find businesses that specialize in exchanging currencies, called Wechselstube (v\u00eak-sel-stooh-be) in German. No matter where you decide to change your money, the whole process is simple. All you need are the following phrases:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte . . . Dollar in Euro wechseln\/tauschen. (iH merH-te . . . dol-\u00e2r in oy-roh v\u00eak-seln\/toush-en.) (I would like to change . . . dollars into euros.) Note: Both wechseln and tauschen can mean change or exchange \u2014 in this case, money.\n\nWie ist der Wechselkurs? (vee ist d\u00ear v\u00eak-sel-koors?) (What's the exchange rate?)\n\nWie hoch sind die Geb\u00fchren? (vee hohH zint dee ge-buer-en?) (How much are the transaction fees?)\n\nNehmen Sie Reiseschecks? (ney-men zee ray-ze-sh\u00eaks?) (Do you take traveler's checks?)\n\n  When you exchange money, you'll probably be asked for your passport (Reisepass) (ray-ze-p\u00e2s). The teller will ask you\n\nHaben Sie ihren Reisepass? (hah-ben zee eer-en ray-ze-p\u00e2s?) (Do you have your passport?)\n\nAfter you show your official mug shot \u2014 and assuming it appears to be you \u2014 the teller may ask you how you want the money:\n\nWelche Scheine h\u00e4tten Sie gern? (v\u00ealH-e shayn-e h\u00eat-en zee g\u00earn?) (What size denominations would you like?)\n\nYou can respond\n\nIn Zehnern\/in Zwanzigern\/in F\u00fcnfzigern\/in Hundertern, bitte. (in tseyn-ern\/in tsv\u00e2n-zig-ern\/in fuenf-tsig-ern\/in hoon-dert-ern, bi-te.) (In bills of 10\/20\/50\/100, please.)\n\nGerman payment system\n\nIn Germany, and many European Union (EU) countries, practically all regularly occurring financial transactions are carried out by direct debit, from paychecks to electric bills. When shopping, customers use either paper (that is, hard currency) or plastic. Many Germans prefer to use cash almost exclusively. Plastic, at least for Germans, would mean the electronic cash (EC) card, a debit card. Alternatively, credit cards are used, although many stores and restaurants do not readily accept them. Checks have been relegated to the dinosaur era. It's the EC card that works seamlessly at ATM machines across the EU.\n\nAs a non-European, your credit card will work in much the same way as it does at home, but before traveling, you may want to check with the institution that issued your card to find out whether any transaction fees apply. When you want to use your credit card to withdraw cash at an ATM, you need to use your four-digit PIN.\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nAnne, an American tourist, heads to a bank to exchange money. (Track 28)\n\n---\n\nBankangestellter: | Guten Morgen.\n\ngooh-ten mor-gen.\n\nGood morning.\n\nAnne: | Guten Morgen. Ich m\u00f6chte 300 US-Dollar wechseln. Wie ist der Wechselkurs, bitte?\n\ngooh-ten mor-gen. iH merH-te dray-hoon-dert ooh-\u00eas dol-\u00e2r v\u00eak-seln. vee ist d\u00ear v\u00eak-selkoors, bi-te?\n\nGood morning. I'd like to change 300 U.S. dollars. What's the exchange rate, please?\n\nBankangestellter: | Einen Moment, bitte. F\u00fcr einen Dollar bekommen Sie 0,78 Euro.\n\nayn-en moh-ment, bi-te. fuer ayn-en dol-\u00e2r be-kom-en zee nool kom-\u00e2 \u00e2Ht oont zeep-tsiH oy-roh.\n\nOne moment, please. One dollar is currently 0.78 euros.\n\nAnne: | K\u00f4nnen Sie mir bitte Reiseschecks \u00fcber 300 Dollar in Euro wechseln?\n\nkern-en zee meer bi-te ray-ze-sh\u00eaks ue-ber dray-hoon-d\u00eart dol-\u00e2r in oy-roh v\u00eak-seln?\n\nCould you exchange 300 dollars in traveler's checks into euros, please?\n\nBankangestellter: | Kein Problem. Haben Sie ihren Reisepass?\n\nkayn pro-bleym. hah-ben zee eer-en ray-ze-p\u00e2s?\n\nNo problem. Do you have your passport?\n\nAnne: | Ja, hier ist er.\n\nyah, heer ist \u00ear.\n\nYes, here it is.\n\nBankangestellter: | F\u00fcr 300 Dollar bekommen Sie 234 Euro. Abz\u00fcglich 3,30 Euro Wechselgeb\u00fchr macht das 230,70 Euro.\n\nfuer dray-hoon-dert dol-\u00e2r b\u00ea-kom-en zee d\u00e2s tsvay-hoon-dert-feer-oont-dray-siH oy-roh. \u00e2b-tsueg-liH dray oy-roh dray-siH v\u00eak-sel-ge-buer m\u00e2Ht d\u00e2s tsvay-hoon-dert-dray-siH oy-roh zeep-tsiH.\n\nThank you very much.\n\nAnne: | Vielen Dank.\n\nfee-len d\u00e2nk\n\nThank you very much.\n\nHeading to the ATM\n\nInstead of changing money at the teller window of a bank, you can use a Geldautomat (g\u00ealt-ou-toh-maht) (ATM machine). Just look for your card symbol on the machine to make sure that the machine takes your kind of card.\n\nMany ATM machines give you a choice of languages to communicate in, but just in case German is your only option, you want to be prepared. ATMs use phrases that are direct and to the point \u2014 infinitives are the order of the day (see the following section for an explanation). A typical run-through of prompts may look like this:\n\nKarte einf\u00fchren (k\u00e2r-te ayn-fuer-en) (Insert card)\n\nSprache w\u00e4hlen (shprahH-e vai-len) (Choose a language)\n\nGeheimzahl eingeben (ge-haym-tsahl ayn-gey-ben) (Enter PIN)\n\nBetrag eingeben (be-trahk ayn-gey-ben) (Enter amount)\n\nBetrag best\u00e4tigen (be-trahk be-sht\u00ea-ti-gen) (Confirm amount)\n\nKarte entnehmen (k\u00e2r-te \u00eant-ney-men) (Remove card)\n\nGeld entnehmen (g\u00ealt \u00eant-ney-men) (Take cash)\n\nTransaction completed. Your wallet should now be bulging with local currency \u2014 that is, unless something went wrong. The ATM machine may be out of order, in which case, you see the following message:\n\nGeldautomat au\u00dfer Betrieb. (g\u00ealt-ou-toh-maht ous-er be-treep.) (ATM out of service.)\n\nOr the ATM may spit out your card without parting with any of its largesse. In that case, you may receive this message:\n\nDie Karte ist ung\u00fcltig.\/Die Karte wird nicht akzeptiert. (dee k\u00e2r-te ist oon-guel-tiH.\/dee k\u00e2r-te virt niHt \u00e2k-tsep-teert.) (The card is not valid\/can't be accepted.)\n\nThe worst case scenario? The ATM machine may swallow your card whole, leaving you with only this message for consolation:\n\nDie Karte wurde eingezogen. Bitte gehen Sie zum Bankschalter. (dee k\u00e2r-te voor-de ayn-ge-tsoh-gen. bi-te gey-en zee tsoom b\u00e2nk-sh\u00e2l-ter.) (The card was confiscated. Please go to the counter in the bank.)\n\nDecimal points and commas in numbers\n\nThe English and German languages present numbers differently. The use of the comma and decimal point in the numbers are switched. Look at the following examples of German and English numbers to see how it works:\n\n  English: 8.4 20.75 490.99\n\n  German: 8,4 20,75 490,99\n\nAnd this is how you say one of these numbers: 20,75 = zwanzig Komma sieben f\u00fcnf (tsv\u00e2n-tsiH kom-\u00e2 zee-ben fuenf). The English equivalent has a decimal point in place of the comma in German, so you'd say the number as twenty point seven five.\n\nThe next set of numbers shows you one million dollars expressed in both languages:\n\n  English: 1,000,000 dollars\n\n  German: 1.000.000 Dollar\n\nGetting Imperative\n\n  ATMs and other machines often use terse-sounding phrases, like Geheimzahl eingeben (ge-haym-tsahl ayn-gey-ben) (Enter PIN). Although these phrases may not sound very polite, they're used quite a bit as a way to save space. For example, a more polite way to say Geheimzahl eingeben would be\n\nBitte geben Sie Ihre Geheimzahl ein. (bi-te gey-ben zee eer-e ge-haym-tsahl ayn.) (Please enter your PIN.)\n\nGrammatically speaking, such terse phrases are infinitives posing as imperatives (commands). You encounter these forms wherever language efficiency is of utmost importance to the writer or speaker, or instructions are being given.\n\nWhen you enter a building, such as a bank, you often find the word ziehen (tsee-hen) (Pull) on the door as you go in and the word dr\u00fccken (druek-en) (Push) as you leave. Speaking of doors, you may notice a sign asking you to close the doors behind you \u2014 T\u00fcren schlie\u00dfen (tuer-en shlees-en) (Close doors) \u2014 when you're entering a building or a train. When you're on a subway, you may hear a similar command that goes something like this: Vorsicht, die T\u00fcren werden geschlossen (for-ziHt, dee tuer-en v\u00ear-den ge-shlos-en) (Be careful; the doors are closing).\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nMike is about to meet his girlfriend for a cup of coffee when he realizes that he only has a 200 euro bill in his wallet. He goes to a bank to change his bill into smaller denominations.\n\n---\n\nMike: | K\u00f6nnen Sie bitte diesen 200-Euro-Schein in kleinere Scheine wechseln?\n\nkern-en zee bi-te deez-en tsavy hoon-dert-oy-roh-shayn in klayn-er-e shayn-e v\u00eak-seln?\n\nCould you exchange this 200-euro bill for smaller bills, please?\n\nBankangestellte: | Welche Scheine darf ich Ihnen geben?\n\nv\u00ealH-e shayn-e d\u00e2rf iH een-en gey-ben?\n\nWhat denominations would you like?\n\nMike: | Ich h\u00e4tte gern einen 50-Euro-Schein, 5 Zwanziger und 5 Zehner.\n\niH h\u00eat-e g\u00earn ayn-en fuenf-tsiH-oy-roh-shayn, fuenf tsv\u00e2n-tsee-ger oont fuenf tseyn-er.\n\nI'd like one 50 euro bill, five 20 euro bills, and five 10 euro bills.\n\nBankangestellte: | Bitte. Haben Sie sonst noch einen Wunsch?\n\nbi-te. hah-ben zee sonst noH ayn-en voonsh?\n\nHere you are. Do you need anything else?\n\nMike: | Danke. Das ist alles.\n\nd\u00e2n-ke. d\u00e2s ist \u00e2l-es.\n\nThanks. That's all.\n\nUnderstanding the Euro and Other Currencies\n\nWith the introduction of the European Monetary Union in 2002, the euro became the currency for 12 countries, including Germany and Austria. Euroland, the term coined (no pun intended) for countries that have adopted the euro, currently comprises 16 nations, and the numbers are still growing. Switzerland, the UK, Denmark, and Poland are among those countries that still use their respective currencies.\n\nWhen referring to the plural of der Euro (d\u00ear oy-roh) (euro), you have two choices, die Euro or die Euros, yet both are pronounced the same, (dee oy-roh) (euros). Each Euro has 100 Cent(s) (s\u00eant) (cents). The official abbreviation for the euro is EUR. When using the symbol for the euro, \u20ac, it appears after the number like this: 47\u20ac.\n\nThe currencies of other countries are as follows:\n\n  Czechoslovakia: die tschechische Krone (dee ch\u00eaH-ish-e kroh-ne) (Czech crown)\n\n  Denmark: die d\u00e4nische Krone (dee deyn-ish-e kroh-ne) (Danish crown)\n\n  Poland: der polnische Zloty (d\u00ear poln-ish-e slo-tee) (Polish zloty)\n\n  Switzerland: der schweizer Franken (d\u00ear shvayts-er fr\u00e2n-ken) (Swiss franc)\n\n  U.K.: das Pfund (d\u00e2s pfoont) (pound)\n\n  United States: der Dollar (d\u00ear dol-\u00e2r) (dollar)\n\n Fun & Games\n\nWho doesn't like to count money \u2014 especially when it's their own? Count up how much money is represented in the following problems and write the correct amount in German words on the blank lines provided.\n\nChapter 15\n\nGetting Around: Planes, Trains, Taxis, and Buses\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Flying: Airport lingo you need to know\n\n  Driving: Reading road signs and maps\n\n  Traveling by train\n\n  Taking a bus, streetcar, subway, or taxi\n\nPlanes, trains, taxis, streetcars, buses, subways, and automobiles \u2014 you have lots of options when it comes to getting around German-speaking countries. In this chapter, we tell you what you need to know to deal with ticket agents, customs officials, car-rental staff, and public transportation personnel. We also show you how to ask the occasional bystander for help, all while keeping a cool head, smiling, and being polite.\n\nUsing German at the Airport\n\nMost airline personnel speak several languages, so they're usually able to assist you in English. But in case you need a little backup, this section provides you with enough vocabulary to navigate the airport with confidence and a smile.\n\nFor starters, das Flugticket\/der Flugschein (d\u00e2s floohk-ti-ket\/d\u00ear floohk-shayn) is your airplane ticket. It's probably a R\u00fcckflugticket (ruek-floohk-ti-ket) (roundtrip ticket). When you're checking in, you also need to have die Bordkarte (dee bord-k\u00e2r-te) (boarding pass).\n\nGetting your ticket\n\nIf you're not able to print out your ticket and boarding pass at home before you get to the airport, you'll need to find the appropriate airline counter. Hopefully the signs at the airport are clear enough, but just in case you're feeling like Alice in Wonderland and don't know which way to go, stop an employee and ask for directions to your airline's ticket counter:\n\nWo ist der . . . Schalter? (voh ist d\u00ear . . . sh\u00e2l-ter?) (Where is the . . . counter?)\n\nWhen you arrive at the ticket counter, just say the following to inquire about your ticket:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte mein Ticket abholen. (iH merH-te mayn ticket [as in English] \u00e2p-hoh-len) (I would like to pick up my ticket.)\n\nChecking in\n\nWhen you're at the check-in counter, the attendant will ask you a few questions to prepare you for boarding the plane:\n\nHaben Sie Gep\u00e4ck? (hah-ben zee ge-p\u00eak?) (Do you have luggage?)\n\nWo m\u00f6chten Sie sitzen, am Fenster oder am Gang? (voh merH-ten zee zits-en, \u00e2m f\u00eans-ter oh-der \u00e2m g\u00e2ng?) (Where would you like to sit, by the window or on the aisle?)\n\nIn response to the question about where you want to sit, you can respond simply am Fenster\/am Gang (\u00e2m f\u00eans-ter\/\u00e2m g\u00e2ng) (by a window\/on the aisle), according to your preference.\n\nYou may also want to ask the following questions to get some details about the flight:\n\nWie lange dauert der Flug? (vee l\u00e2ng-e dou-\u00eart d\u00ear floohk?) (How long is the flight?)\n\nWann fliegt die Maschine ab? (v\u00e2n fleekt dee m\u00e2-sheen-e \u00e2p?) (When does the plane leave?)\n\nIf you're at the airport to meet somebody who is arriving on another plane, you can ask\n\nWann kommt die Maschine aus . . . an? (v\u00e2n komt dee m\u00e2-sheen-e ous . . . \u00e2n?) (When does the plane from . . . arrive?)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nFrau Sch\u00f6ller is flying to Prague. At the airport she's getting her boarding pass at the Lufthansa counter. (Track 29)\n\n---\n\nFrau Sch\u00f6ller: | Guten Morgen. Ich brauche eine Bordkarte. Hier ist mein Ticket.\n\ngooh-ten mor-gen. iH brauH-e ayn-e bord-k\u00e2r-te. Heer ist mayn ticket.\n\nGood morning. I need a boarding pass. Here is my ticket.\n\nAngestellter: | Ihren Pass, bitte.\n\neer-en p\u00e2s, bi-te.\n\nYour passport, please.\n\nFrau Sch\u00f6ller hands the counter agent her passport.\n\nFrau Sch\u00f6ller: | Bitte sch\u00f6n.\n\nbi-te shern.\n\nHere you are.\n\nAngestellter: | Danke. Wo m\u00f6chten Sie sitzen, am Fenster oder am Gang?\n\nd\u00e2n-ke. voh merH-ten zee zits-en, \u00e2m f\u00eans-ter oh-der \u00e2m g\u00e2ng?\n\nThank you. Where would you like to sit, by the window or by the aisle?\n\nFrau Sch\u00f6ller: | Am Fenster, bitte.\n\n\u00e2m f\u00eans-ter, bi-te.\n\nBy the window, please.\n\nAngestellter: | Sie haben Platz 15A, einen Fensterplatz. Hier ist Ihre Bordkarte. Haben Sie Gep\u00e4ck?\n\nzee hah-ben pl\u00e2ts fuenf-tseyn ah, ayn-en f\u00ean-ster-pl\u00e2ts. heer ist eer-e bord-k\u00e2r-te. hah-ben zee ge-p\u00eak?\n\nYou have seat 15A, a window seat. Here is your boarding pass. Do you have any luggage?\n\nFrau Sch\u00f6ller: | Ich habe nur Handgep\u00e4ck, diese Tasche.\n\niH hah-be noohr h\u00e2nd-ge-p\u00eak, deez-e t\u00e2sh-e.\n\nI only have a carry-on, this bag.\n\nAngestellter: | Dann k\u00f6nnen Sie direkt zum Flugsteig gehen.\n\nd\u00e2n kern-en zee di-r\u00eakt tsoom floohk-shtayk gey-en.\n\nThen you can go straight to the gate.\n\nFrau Sch\u00f6ller: | Danke.\n\nd\u00e2n-ke.\n\nThank you.\n\nGoing through immigration\n\nWhen you're getting off a transatlantic flight, you're directed straight to die Passkontrolle (dee p\u00e2s-kon-trol-e) (passport control). Make sure that you have your passport handy.\n\nMost of the time you get to choose between two lines: One is for EU-B\u00fcrger (ey-ooh-buer-ger) (citizens of countries in the European Union) and the other is for Nicht-EU-B\u00fcrger (niHt-ey-ooh-buer-ger) (citizens of countries outside the EU, such as the U.S.). After passing through passport control, you claim your baggage and go through der Zoll (d\u00ear tsol) (customs), where you may have to open your luggage for inspection.\n\n  Matters are more laid back when you're traveling from one member country of die europ\u00e4ische Union (dee oy-roh-pey-i-she oon-ee-yohn) (the European Union) to another by car or train. With the number of member states currently at 27 \u2014 and still counting \u2014 you may find yourself crossing many internal borders of the EU without being checked. So when you drive from Germany to France, for example, you may not even notice where the border is until you suddenly discover that the signs are all in French. And you can import virtually unlimited quantities of goods bought from one EU country to another country.\n\nJet-lagged after a long flight, all you want to do is leave the airport. But first you have two hurdles to overcome. To help you in your foggy state of mind, these are the words you may need to be familiar with when you go through passport control:\n\nder Reisepass\/der Pass (d\u00ear ray-ze-p\u00e2s\/d\u00ear p\u00e2s) (passport)\n\nEU-B\u00fcrger (ey-ooh-buer-ger) (citizen of a country of the European Union)\n\nNicht-EU-B\u00fcrger (niHt-ey-ooh-buer-ger) (citizen of a country outside the EU)\n\nIch bin im Urlaub hier. (iH bin im oor-loup heer.) (I'm here on vacation.)\n\nIch bin gesch\u00e4ftlich hier. (iH bin ge-sh\u00eaft-liH heer.) (I'm here on business.)\n\nIch bin auf der Durchreise nach. . . . (iH bin ouf d\u00ear doorH-ray-ze n\u00e2hH. . . .) (I am on my way to. . . .)\n\nGoing through customs\n\nYou passed the first hurdle and are on your way to customs. Are you one of those people who feel guilty even when you have nothing to hide? Customs officers can make you feel that way. It pays to know how to answer their questions succinctly so you can get past them as quickly as possible.\n\nAt der Zoll (d\u00ear tsol) (customs), you usually get to choose between two options: the red exit for people who have to declare goods or the green exit for those people who are carrying only things they don't need to declare.\n\nSo far, so good. Customs officers may, of course, use this phrase to ask you personally whether you have anything to declare, in which case you may need to pay duty:\n\nHaben Sie etwas zu verzollen? (hah-ben zee \u00eat-v\u00e2s tsooh f\u00ear-tsol-en?) (Do you have anything to declare?)\n\nTo this question, you can respond with either of the following:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte . . . verzollen. (iH merH-te . . . f\u00ear-tsol-en) (I would like to declare. . . .)\n\nIch habe nichts zu verzollen. (iH hah-be niHts tsooh f\u00ear-tsol-en.) (I have nothing to declare.)\n\nDespite your most engaging smile, the customs officer may ask to have a look at your not-so-suspicious-looking stuff by saying\n\nBitte \u00f6ffnen Sie diesen Koffer\/diese Tasche. (bi-te erf-nen zee deez-en kof-er\/deez-e t\u00e2sh-e.) (Please open this suitcase\/bag.)\n\nAnd when the customs officer asks what you're planning to do with a purchase, you may answer\n\nEs ist f\u00fcr meinen pers\u00f6nlichen Gebrauch. (\u00eas ist fuer mayn-en p\u00ear-sern-liH-en ge-brouH.) (It's for my personal use.)\n\nEs ist ein Geschenk. (\u00eas ist ayn ge-sh\u00eank.) (It's a gift.)\n\nTraveling by Car\n\nBefore setting out on a European road trip in a rental car, consider acquiring an internationaler F\u00fchrerschein (in-t\u00ear-n\u00e2-tee-oh-n\u00e2-ler fuer-er-shayn) (international driving permit). You can apply for one at the local AAA (American Automobile Association) Web site. (You can find your local club at www.aaa.com). Even with an internationaler F\u00fchrerschein, you still need a valid driver's license. Then you're all set to discover new territory.\n\nYou're most likely to travel the following types of roads:\n\n  die Autobahn (dee ou-toh-bahn) (freeway, four to six lanes)\n\n  die Bundesstra\u00dfe (dee boon-des-shtrah-se) or, in Switzerland, Nationalstrasse (n\u00e2-tee-oh-nahl-shtrah-se) (two- to four-lane highway)\n\n  die Landstra\u00dfe (dee l\u00e2nt-shtrah-se) (two-lane highway)\n\nRenting a car\n\nYou're likely to find that making car reservations is cheaper and more hassle-free if you do it before leaving for your European trip. However, if you decide to rent a car when you're already in Europe, you need to make your way to the Autovermietung (ou-toh-f\u00ear-meet-oong) (car rental agency). When you arrive at the car rental agency, you can start out by saying\n\nIch m\u00f6chte ein Auto mieten. (iH merH-te ayn ou-toh meet-en.) (I would like to rent a car.)\n\nThe attendant will ask you questions about what kind of car you want by saying something like\n\nWas f\u00fcr ein Auto m\u00f6chten Sie? (v\u00e2s fuer ayn ou-toh merH-ten zee?) (What kind of car would you like?)\n\nYou can respond with any of the following:\n\n  ein zweit\u00fcriges\/viert\u00fcriges Auto (ayn tsvay-tuer-ee-ges\/feer-tuer-ee-ges ou-toh) (a two-door\/four-door car)\n\n  einen Kleinwagen (ayn-en klayn-wah-gen) (compact car)\n\n  mit Automatik (mit ou-toh-mah-tik) (car with automatic transmission)\n\n  mit Gangschaltung (mit g\u00e2ng-sh\u00e2lt-oong) (car with standard transmission)\n\nYou may also be asked one or more of the following questions:\n\nAb wann m\u00f6chten Sie den Wagen mieten? (\u00e2p v\u00e2n merH-ten zee deyn vah-gen meet-en?) (Starting when would you like to rent the car?)\n\nWann\/Wo m\u00f6chten Sie den Wagen zur\u00fcckgeben? (v\u00e2n\/voh merH-ten zee deyn vah-gen tsoo-ruek-gey-ben?) (Where\/When would you like to return the car?)\n\nHere are some possible answers:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte den Wagen ab dem . . . mieten. (iH merH-te deyn vah-gen \u00e2p deym . . . meet-en.) (I would like to rent the car starting. . . . )\n\nIch m\u00f6chte den Wagen am . . . zur\u00fcckgeben. (iH merH-te deyn vah-gen \u00e2m . . . tsoo-ruek-gey-ben.) (I would like to return the car on the. . . .)\n\nIch m\u00f6chte den Wagen in . . . zur\u00fcckgeben. (iH merH-te deyn vah-gen in . . . tsoo-ruek-gey-ben.) (I would like to return the car in. . . .)\n\nDuring the rental process, you'll hear the following words as well:\n\n  der F\u00fchrerschein (d\u00ear fuer-er-shayn) (driver's license)\n\n  die Vollkaskoversicherung (dee fol-k\u00e2s-koh-f\u00ear-zeeH-er-oong) (comprehensive collision insurance)\n\n  inbegriffen (in-be-grif-en) (included)\n\n  ohne Kilometerbegrenzung (oh-ne ki-lo-mey-ter-be-gr\u00eants-oong) (unlimited mileage)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nAnke has just arrived in Frankfurt. After going through customs, she heads for a car rental agency where she's talking to an employee.\n\n---\n\nAnke: | Guten Morgen. Ich m\u00f6chte ein Auto mieten.\n\ngooh-ten mor-gen. iH merH-te ayn ou-toh meet-en.\n\nGood morning. I would like to rent a car.\n\nAngestellter: | Was f\u00fcr ein Auto m\u00f6chten Sie?\n\nv\u00e2s fuer ayn ou-toh merH-ten zee?\n\nWhat kind of car would you like?\n\nAnke: | Einen Kleinwagen mit Automatik.\n\nayn-en klayn-vah-gen mit ou-toh-mah-tik.\n\nA compact car with automatic transmission.\n\nAngestellter: | Wie lange brauchen Sie den Wagen?\n\nvee l\u00e2ng-e brouH-en zee deyn vah-gen?\n\nHow long do you need the car?\n\nAnke: | Eine Woche.\n\nayn-e voH-e.\n\nFor one week.\n\nAngestellter: | Ein VW Polo kostet f\u00fcr eine Woche ohne Kilometerbregrenzung 299 Euro inklusive Versicherung.\n\nayn vou-vey poh-loh kos-tet fuer ayn-e voH-e oh-ne ki-lo-mey-ter-be-gr\u00eants-oong tsvay-hoon-d\u00eart-noyn-oont\u2013noyn-tsiH oy-roh in-kloo-zee-ve f\u00ear-ziH-er-oong.\n\nA VW Polo costs 299 euros for one week, including unlimited mileage and insurance.\n\nMaking sense of maps\n\nA good map tells you plenty more than how to get from Point A to Point B \u2014 and you can mark your route as you travel. Another advantage of maps is that they're primarily visual, so you don't need to know too much of the language in order to read one. However, you may find that knowing the words for different kinds of maps helpful, in case you need to ask for one:\n\n  die Landkarte (dee l\u00e2nt-k\u00e2r-te) (map)\n\n  der Stadtplan (d\u00ear sht\u00e2t-plahn) (map of a city)\n\n  die Stra\u00dfenkarte (dee shtrah-sen-k\u00e2r-te) (road map)\n\nOn a map written in German (and also on road signs), you may see the following words:\n\n  die Altstadt (dee \u00e2lt-sht\u00e2t) (historic center)\n\n  die Ausfahrt (dee ous-fahrt) (exit ramp)\n\n  das Autobahndreieck (d\u00e2s ou-toh-bahn-dray-\u00eak) (where one freeway splits off from another freeway)\n\n  das Autobahnkreuz (d\u00e2s ou-toh-bahn-kroyts) (junction of two freeways)\n\n  die Einfahrt (dee ayn-fahrt) (entrance ramp)\n\n  die Fu\u00dfg\u00e4ngerzone (dee foohs-g\u00ean-ger-tsohn-e) (pedestrian zone)\n\n  die Kirche (dee kirH-e) (church)\n\n  das Parkhaus (d\u00e2s p\u00e2rk-hous) (parking garage)\n\n  das Theater (d\u00e2s tey-ah-ter) (theater)\n\nWrapping your brain around road signs\n\nYou surely don't want to get stopped for driving too fast in the wrong direction down a one-way street that's been closed for construction. To prevent a scenario like this, here are some of the most common road signs that you encounter in German-speaking countries:\n\n  Anlieger frei (\u00e2n-lee-ger fray) (access only; no exit)\n\n  Baustelle (bou-sht\u00eal-e) (construction site)\n\n  Einbahnstra\u00dfe (ayn-bahn-shtrah-se) (one-way street)\n\n  Einordnen (ayn-ord-nen) (merge)\n\n  50 bei Nebel (fuenf-tsiH bay ney-bel) (50 kilometers per hour when foggy)\n\n  Gesperrt (ge-shp\u00eart) (closed)\n\n  Licht an\/aus (liHt \u00e2n\/ous) (lights on\/off \u2014 you see these signs at tunnels)\n\n  Umleitung (oom-lay-toong) (detour)\n\n  Vorsicht Gl\u00e4tte (fohr-ziHt gl\u00eat-e) (slippery when wet)\n\nTaking a Train\n\nTraveling by rail is a very comfortable way of getting around Europe. No matter whether you'd like to whiz from Stuttgart to Paris on the Intercity Express (ICE) (in-t\u00ear-si-tee-\u00eaks-pr\u00eas [ee-tsey-ey]) or feel like heading to quaint towns along the Mosel River aboard the (much) slower Interregio (IR) (in-t\u00ear-rey-gee-oh [ee-\u00ear]), you can get practically anywhere by train.\n\n  Rail travel is very popular among Europeans, so during peak traveling times making a reservation is advisable. You may be interested in a combination ticket that allows you to rent a bicycle or a car from a train station. Or, if you're covering a lot of ground in a short time, go online and check out the various types of rail passes before you leave home.\n\nInterpreting train schedules\n\nEvery train station displays schedules for all the trains that run through that particular station. However, with the flood of information, you may find it difficult to figure out what you need to know about the specific train you want to take. The following expressions provide some guidance for demystifying train schedules:\n\n  die Abfahrt (dee \u00e2p-fahrt) (departure)\n\n  die Ankunft (dee \u00e2n-koonft) (arrival)\n\n  der Fahrplan (d\u00ear fahr-plahn) (train schedule)\n\n  sonn- und feiertags (zon oont fay-er-t\u00e2hks) (Sundays and holidays)\n\n  \u00fcber (ue-ber) (via)\n\n  werktags (v\u00eark-t\u00e2hks) (workdays)\n\nGetting information\n\nWhen you have questions about a train you want to take, head to die Auskunft (dee ous-koonft) (the information counter). There, you may ask any of the following questions:\n\nVon welchem Gleis f\u00e4hrt der Zug nach . . . ab? (fon v\u00ealH-Hem glays fairt d\u00ear tsoohk nahH . . . ap?) (Which track does the train to . . . leave from?)\n\nAuf welchem Gleis kommt der Zug aus . . . an? (ouf v\u00ealH-em glays komt d\u00ear tsoohk ous . . . \u00e2n?) (Which track does the train from . . . arrive on?)\n\nHat der Zug Versp\u00e4tung? (h\u00e2t d\u00ear tsoohk f\u00ear-shp\u00eat-oong?) (Is the train delayed?)\n\nBuying tickets\n\nFor tickets, you need to go to der Fahrkartenautomat (d\u00ear fahr-k\u00e2r-ten-ou-toh-m\u00e2t) (ticket machine) or der Fahrkartenschalter (d\u00ear fahr-k\u00e2r-ten-sh\u00e2l-ter) (the ticket counter). With the help of the words in this section, you can buy a ticket to virtually anywhere you want to go.\n\nThe basics\n\nWhen it's your turn to talk to the ticket agent, just say the following to get yourself a ticket:\n\nEine Fahrkarte nach . . . , bitte. (ayn-e fahr-k\u00e2r-te nahH . . . , bi-te.) (A train ticket to . . . please.)\n\nTo find out whether you want a one-way or a round-trip ticket, the ticket agent will ask\n\nEinfach oder hin und zur\u00fcck? (ayn-f\u00e2H oh-der hin oont tsoo-ruek?) (One-way or round-trip?)\n\nAnd to find out whether you want a first class or a second class ticket, the ticket agent will ask\n\nErster oder zweiter Klasse? (eyrs-ter oh-der tsvay-ter kl\u00e2s-e?) (In first or second class?)\n\nExtras\n\nOn all trains, there's a set base price per kilometer for first and second class. In addition, you have to pay der Zuschlag (d\u00ear tsooh-shlahk) (surcharge) for the very fast trains marked ICE (Intercity Express), IC (Intercity), or EC (Eurocity). For these trains, the word Zuschlag usually appears on the train schedule or the board displaying departures.\n\nOn especially busy trains, you may be better off reserving a seat in advance. To do so, simply ask\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern eine Platzkarte f\u00fcr den . . . von . . . nach. . . . (iH merH-te g\u00earn ayn-e pl\u00e2ts-k\u00e2r-te fuer deyn . . . fon . . . nahH. . . .) (I would like to reserve a seat on the . . . from . . . to. . . .)\n\nKnowing When to Separate Your Verbs\n\n  Many German verbs, including many of the verbs used in this chapter, share a peculiar trait. They have prefixes that are detachable from the body (stem) of the verb. When used in the present tense in a sentence, the verb stem and prefix of these verbs separate. The normal verb ending is added to the verb stem, which takes its usual place in the sentence, while the prefix is pushed to the very end of the sentence.\n\nTake a look at this phenomenon in action, using the verb ankommen (\u00e2n-kom-en) (to arrive). Notice how the prefix always goes to the end of the sentence, no matter how many words come between it and the verb:\n\nDer Zug kommt um 18.15 Uhr an. (d\u00ear tsoohk komt oom \u00e2Ht-tseyn oohr fuenf-tseyn \u00e2n.) (The train arrives at 6:15 p.m.)\n\nAuf welchem Gleis kommt der Zug aus Dessau an? (ouf v\u00ealH-em glays komt d\u00ear tsoohk ous d\u00eas-ou \u00e2n?) (Which track does the train from Dessau arrive on?)\n\nHow do you know whether a verb is separable? These guidelines indicate that it is:\n\n  The verb has a short word at the beginning of the verb to serve as a prefix.\n\n  The infinitive is stressed on the first syllable; this is the prefix.\n\nHere are a few verbs that follow this pattern. You encounter several more separable verbs throughout this book. Notice how the first syllable is stressed:\n\n  abfahren (\u00e2p-fahr-en) (to depart [train])\n\n  abfliegen (\u00e2p-fleeg-en) (to depart [plane])\n\n  anfangen (\u00e2n-f\u00e2ng-en) (to start)\n\n  ankommen (\u00e2n-kom-en) (to arrive)\n\n  aufmachen (ouf-m\u00e2H-en) (to open)\n\n  aufstehen (ouf-shtey-en) (to get up)\n\n  aussteigen (ous-shtayg-en) (to get off)\n\n  einsteigen (ayn-shtayg-en) (to get on)\n\n  zumachen (tsoo-m\u00e2H-en) (to close)\n\nThe honor system\n\nWhen entering a subway station in a German-speaking country, you won't see any turnstiles. So how do people pay for the ride? They buy tickets first and validate them by inserting the ticket into a validating machine. You find these machines at the entrance to the station or aboard streetcars or buses. So when you purchase a ticket, remember that you have to validate the ticket before getting on a train or subway or when boarding a streetcar or bus. Plainclothes ticket inspectors make frequent checks, and anyone caught without a valid ticket can count on a hefty on-the-spot fine.\n\n  When using separable verbs, the main verb stem with the appropriate ending goes in its usual place. The prefix becomes the last word in the sentence. This rule works for the present and simple past tenses.\n\nNavigating Buses, Subways, and Taxis\n\nGerman cities and towns usually have excellent public transportation systems. A combination of Bus (boos) (bus), U-Bahn (ooh-bahn) (subway), Stra\u00dfenbahn (shtrah-sen-bahn) (streetcar), and S-Bahn (\u00eas-bahn) (light rail train to the suburbs) should get you rapidly and safely where you want to go.\n\nCatching the bus\n\nIf you need help finding the right bus or train to take, you can ask the agent at the Fahrkartenschalter (fahr-k\u00e2r-ten-sh\u00e2l-ter) (ticket window), or any bus driver (der Busfahrer) (d\u00ear boos-fahr-er) any of the following questions:\n\nWelcher Bus f\u00e4hrt ins Stadtzentrum? (v\u00ealH-er boos fairt ins sht\u00e2t-ts\u00ean-troom?) (Which bus goes to the city center?)\n\nIst das die richtige Stra\u00dfenbahn zum Stadion? (ist d\u00e2s dee riH-tee-ge shtrah-sen-bahn tsoom shtah-dee-on?) (Is this the right streetcar to the stadium?)\n\nMuss ich umsteigen? (moos iH oom-shtayg-en?) (Do I have to switch [buses]?)\n\nH\u00e4lt diese U-Bahn am Hauptbahnhof? (h\u00ealt deez-e ooh-bahn \u00e2m houpt-bahn-hohf?) (Does this subway stop at the main train station?)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nBen wants to take the bus to city hall, but he's not quite sure which bus he should take. So he approaches a teenager who is standing next to him at the bus stop. (Track 30)\n\n---\n\nBen: | Entschuldigen Sie bitte, h\u00e4lt hier der Bus Nummer 9?\n\n\u00eant-shool-dee-gen zee bi-te, h\u00ealt heer d\u00ear boos-noom-er noyn?\n\nExcuse me please, does the bus number 9 stop here?\n\nTeenager: | Nein, hier h\u00e4lt nur die Linie 8. Wohin wollen Sie denn?\n\nnayn, heer h\u00ealt noohr dee leen-ye \u00e2Ht. vo-hin vol-en zee d\u00ean?\n\nNo, only number 8 stops here. Where do you want to go?\n\nBen: | Zum Rathaus.\n\ntsoom raht-hous.\n\nTo the town hall.\n\nTeenager: | Fahren Sie mit der Linie 8 bis zum Goetheplatz, und dort steigen Sie in die Linie 9 um.\n\nfahr-en zee mit d\u00ear leen-ye \u00e2Ht bis tsoom ger-te-pl\u00e2ts, oont dort shtayg-en zee in dee leen-ye noyn oom.\n\nTake this bus to Goetheplatz, and switch there to number 9.\n\nBen: | Wie viele Haltestellen sind es bis zum Goetheplatz?\n\nvee feel-e h\u00e2l-te-sht\u00eal-en zint \u00eas bis tsoom ger-te-pl\u00e2ts?\n\nHow many stops are there to Goetheplatz?\n\nTeenager: | Von hier sind es vier Haltestellen.\n\nfon heer zint \u00eas feer h\u00e2l-te-sht\u00eal-en.\n\nIt's four stops from here.\n\nBen: | Vielen Dank f\u00fcr die Auskunft.\n\nfeel-en d\u00e2nk fuer dee ous-koonft.\n\nThank you very much for the information.\n\nGetting a taxi\n\nTaking a taxi isn't hard. Just make your way over to the nearest Taxistand (t\u00e2x-ee-sht\u00e2nt) (taxi stand) and go straight up to the first car in the line. When you get in, the Taxifahrer (t\u00e2x-ee-fahr-er) (taxi driver) will turn on the meter and ask you\n\nWohin m\u00f6chten Sie? (vo-hin merH-ten zee?) (Where would you like to go?)\n\nAt the end of the trip, you pay the price indicated on the meter, along with a modest tip.\n\n  Many Germans taking a taxi alone sit in the passenger seat. You may enjoy doing the same. You have a far greater chance of seeing where you're going, and you can take the opportunity to ask questions.\n\n Fun & Games\n\nOne part of driving safely is understanding and obeying road signs. To see how well you'd do on a German road, match each German road sign to its English translation.\n\n1._____Exit\n\n2._____Slippery road\n\n3._____One way street\n\n4._____Road closed, no entry\n\n5._____Construction site\n\n6._____Highway\n\n7._____Pedestrians only\n\n8._____Connecting highway\n\n9._____Get in lane\n\n10._____Detour \nChapter 16\n\nFinding a Place to Stay\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Finding accommodations\n\n  Making reservations\n\n  Checking in and out of your hotel\n\nRegardless of whether you're traveling on business or taking a vacation, having a clean and comfortable place to spend the night is an important part of your trip. In this chapter, we help you with the vocabulary and phrases that you need to find accommodations, inquire about facilities, make reservations, and check in and out.\n\nFinding a Hotel\n\nIf you're one of those people who like the adventure of doing things on the spur of the moment or if you simply need assistance in finding a hotel, you can get reliable information about all types of accommodations through the tourist information center in any town, which is called das Fremdenverkehrsb\u00fcro or Fremdenverkehrsamt (d\u00e2s fr\u00eam-den-f\u00ear-keyrs-bue-roh\/fr\u00eam-den-f\u00ear-keyrs-\u00e2mt). These places are often located conveniently in the center of town or next to the train station.\n\nPerhaps you want to ask other people you know or meet whether they can recommend a hotel. In this case, ask\n\nK\u00f6nnen Sie mir ein Hotel in . . . empfehlen? (kern-en zee meer ayn hotel [as in English] in . . . \u00eam-pfey-len?) (Can you recommend a hotel in. . . ?)\n\nYou can find a wide range of hotels and hotel-like accommodations in German-speaking countries. Outside urban areas, you're especially likely to see different types of lodging, including the following:\n\n  die Ferienwohnung (dee feyr-ree-\u00ean-vohn-oong): A furnished vacation apartment located in a popular tourist destination.\n\n  das Fremdenzimmer (d\u00e2s fr\u00eam-d\u00ean-tsi-mer): A bed and breakfast, often with shared bathroom facilities.\n\n  das Gasthaus\/der Gasthof (d\u00e2s g\u00e2st-hous\/d\u00ear g\u00e2st-hohf): An inn providing food, drinks, and often lodging.\n\n  das Hotel garni (d\u00e2s hotel g\u00e2r-nee): A hotel that serves only breakfast.\n\n  die Jugendherberge (die yooh-g\u00eant-h\u00ear-b\u00ear-ge): A youth hostel, but not only for the under-25 crowd. This is an inexpensive option, but you generally need a Youth Hostel ID, which you can get before you travel.\n\n  die Pension (dee p\u00ean-zee-ohn): A bed-and-breakfast type of place. In addition to breakfast, it may also serve lunch and dinner.\n\n  der Rasthof\/das Motel (d\u00ear r\u00e2st-hohf\/d\u00e2s motel [as in English]): A roadside lodge or motel located just off a highway.\n\nReserving Rooms\n\nTo avoid last-minute hassles, booking a hotel room in advance is best, especially during the peak season or when a special event in town may mean that hotels are booked solid for months in advance. If you're having difficulty finding a room, you're more likely to find a place outside of towns and city centers. Ask for some assistance at the Fremdenverkehrsamt (fr\u00eam-den-f\u00ear-keyrs-\u00e2mt). (See the preceding section for more information on that helpful office with the long name.)\n\nOf course, you can make reservations for hotel rooms online, but if you're using the phone, you may want to read Chapter 11 beforehand. When you call, the following sentence can help you explain the purpose of your call:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern ein Zimmer reservieren. (iH merH-te g\u00earn ayn tsi-mer r\u00ea-z\u00ear-vee-ren.) (I would like to reserve a room.)\n\nIf you want to book more than one room, simply substitute the appropriate number \u2014 zwei (tsvay) (two), drei (dray) (three), and so on \u2014 in place of ein.\n\nSaying when and how long you want to stay\n\nThe person taking your reservation is likely to ask you for some information. Among the first of these questions, you may hear something like\n\nVon wann bis wann m\u00f6chten Sie das Zimmer reservieren? (fon v\u00e2n bis v\u00e2n merH-ten zee d\u00e2s tsi-mer r\u00ea-z\u00ear-vee-ren?) (For what dates would you like to reserve the room?)\n\nTo specify how many nights you want to stay or for what dates you want to reserve a room, you can say either of the following, depending on what suits your needs (Chapter 4 gives more details on how to specify the date):\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern ein Zimmer f\u00fcr . . . N\u00e4chte reservieren. (iH merH-te g\u00earn ayn tsi-mer fuer . . . naiHt-e r\u00ea-z\u00ear-vee-ren.) (I would like to reserve a room for . . . nights.)\n\nIch m\u00f6chte gern ein Zimmer vom 11. 3. bis zum 15. 3. reservieren. (iH merH-te g\u00earn ayn tsi-mer fom \u00ealf-ten drit-en bis tsoom fuenf-tseyn-ten drit-en r\u00ea-z\u00ear-vee-ren.) (I would like to reserve a room from the 11th to the 15th of March.)\n\nSpecifying the kind of room you want\n\nThe person taking your reservation is certain to ask you something like the following in order to find out what kind of room you want:\n\nWas f\u00fcr ein Zimmer m\u00f6chten Sie gern? (v\u00e2s fuer ayn tsi-mer merH-ten zee g\u00earn?) (What kind of room would you like?)\n\nOr you can take the initiative and state what kind of room you want with the phrase\n\nIch h\u00e4tte gern. . . . (iH h\u00eat-e g\u00earn. . . .) (I would like. . . .)\n\nAt the end of the phrase, add any of the following (or a combination of them) to specify exactly what kind of room you want to rest your weary bones in:\n\n  ein Doppelzimmer (ayn d\u00f4p-el-tsi-mer) (a double room)\n\n  ein Einzelzimmer (ayn ayn-ts\u00eal-tsi-mer) (a single room)\n\n  ein Zimmer mit . . . (ayn tsi-mer mit . . .) (a room with . . .) and then choose from the following features:\n\n\u2022 Bad (baht) (bathtub)\n\n\u2022 Dusche (dooh-she) (shower)\n\n\u2022 einem Doppelbett (ayn-\u00eam d\u00f4p-el-b\u00eat) (one double bed)\n\n\u2022 zwei Einzelbetten (tsvay ayn-ts\u00eal-b\u00eat-en) (two twin beds)\n\nA phrase that comes in handy: Was f\u00fcr. . . ?\n\nWas f\u00fcr. . . ? (v\u00e2s fuer. . . ?) (What kind of. . . ?) is a handy phrase to remember. It can come up whenever you're speaking with customer service people, from a store assistant to someone at the Fremdenverkehrsb\u00fcro. These questions help people find out exactly what you're looking for. Check out these examples:\n\nWas f\u00fcr eine Ferienwohnung m\u00f6chten Sie gern? (v\u00e2s fuer ayn-e feyr-ree-\u00ean-vohn-oong merH-ten zee g\u00earn?) (What kind of vacation apartment would you like?)\n\nWas f\u00fcr eine Unterkunft suchen Sie? (v\u00e2s fuer ayn-e oon-ter-koonft zoohH-en zee?) (What kind of accommodation are you looking for?)\n\nRemember that the question Was f\u00fcr. . . ? is always used with the indefinite article in the accusative case. (See Chapter 2 for the lowdown on indefinite articles and the accusative case.)\n\nAsking about the price\n\nEven if your last name is Moneybags, you probably want to find out what the hotel room costs. Look at the following variations on the question, depending on whether you want to know the basic price or the price with other features included:\n\nWas kostet das Zimmer pro Nacht? (v\u00e2s kos-tet d\u00e2s tsi-mer proh n\u00e2Ht?) (What does the room cost per night?)\n\nWas kostet eine \u00dcbernachtung mit Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck? (v\u00e2s kos-tet ayn-e ue-ber-n\u00e2Ht-oong mit frue-shtuek?) (What does accommodation including breakfast cost?)\n\nWas kostet ein Zimmer mit Halbpension\/Vollpension? (v\u00e2s kos-tet ayn tsi-mer mit h\u00e2lp-p\u00e2n-zee-ohn\/fol-p\u00e2n-zee-ohn?) (What does a room with half board\/full board cost?)\n\nFinalizing the reservation\n\nIf the room is available and the price doesn't cause you to faint, you can seal the deal by saying\n\nK\u00f6nnen Sie das Zimmer bitte reservieren? (kern-en zee d\u00e2s tsi-mer bi-te r\u00ea-z\u00ear-vee-ren?) (Could you reserve that room, please?)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nKlaus und Ulrike Huber want to take a vacation in \u00d6sterreich (erst-\u00ear-ayH) (Austria), and they've found a hotel on Lake Mondsee where they'd like to stay. Klaus calls the Hotel Alpenhof and talks to the receptionist. (Track 31)\n\n---\n\nRezeption: | Hotel Alpenhof, guten Tag.\n\nhotel [as in English] \u00e2lp-en-hohf, gooh-ten tahk.\n\nHello, Hotel Alpenhof.\n\nKlaus: | Guten Tag. Ich m\u00f6chte ein Zimmer vom 15. bis zum 23. Juni reservieren.\n\ngooh-ten tahk. iH merH-te ayn tsi-mer fom fuenf-tseyn-ten bis tsoom dray-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH-sten yooh-nee r\u00ea-z\u00ear-vee-ren.\n\nHello. I'd like to book a room from the 15th to the 23rd of June.\n\nRezeption: | Ja, das geht. Was f\u00fcr ein Zimmer m\u00f6chten Sie?\n\nyah, d\u00e2s geyt. v\u00e2s fuer ayn tsi-mer merH-ten zee?\n\nYes, that's fine. What kind of room would you like?\n\nKlaus: | Ein Doppelzimmer mit Bad, bitte. Was kostet das Zimmer pro Nacht?\n\nayn d\u00f4p-el-tsi-mer mit baht bi-te. v\u00e2s k\u00f4s-tet d\u00e2s tsi-mer proh n\u00e2Ht?\n\nA double room with bathroom, please. What does the room cost per night?\n\nRezeption: | 129 Euro f\u00fcr die \u00dcbernachtung mit Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck.\n\nayn-hoon-dert-noyn-oont-tsv\u00e2n-tsiH oy-roh fuer dee ue-ber-n\u00e2Ht-oong mit frue-shtuek.\n\n129 euros for accommodation including breakfast.\n\nKlaus: | Sehr gut. K\u00f6nnen Sie es bitte reservieren? Mein Name ist Huber.\n\nzeyr gooht. kern-en zee \u00eas bi-te r\u00ea-z\u00ear-vee-ren? mayn nah-me ist hooh-ber.\n\nThat's very good. Could you please reserve it? My name is Huber.\n\nRezeption: | Geht in Ordnung, Herr Huber.\n\ngeyt in ort-noong, h\u00ear hooh-ber.\n\nOkay, Mr. Huber.\n\nKlaus: | Vielen Dank!\n\nfee-len d\u00e2nk\n\nThank you very much!\n\nChecking In\n\nAfter you arrive at your hotel, you have to check in at the Rezeption (r\u00ea-ts\u00eap-tsee-ohn)\/Empfang (\u00eam-pf\u00e2ng) (reception desk). To let the receptionist know that you have made reservations, say\n\nIch habe ein Zimmer reserviert. (iH hah-be ayn tsi-mer r\u00ea-z\u00ear-veert.) (I have reserved a room.)\n\nOf course, you also have to let the receptionist know what your name is:\n\nMein Name ist. . . . (mayn nah-me ist. . . .) (My name is. . . .)\n\nStating how long you're staying\n\nIf you haven't made a reservation or the receptionist wants to double-check the length of your stay, you may hear the question\n\nWie lange bleiben Sie? (vee l\u00e2ng-e blay-ben zee?) (How long are you going to stay?)\n\nTo the question about how long you want to stay, you can reply with the phrase\n\nIch bleibe\/Wir bleiben. . . . (iH blay-be\/veer blay-ben. . . .) (I'm going to stay\/We're going to stay. . . .)\n\nThen end the phrase with any of the appropriate lengths of time:\n\nnur eine Nacht (noohr ayn-e n\u00e2Ht) (only one night)\n\nbis zum elften (bis tsoom \u00ealf-ten) (until the 11th)\n\neine Woche (ayn-e v\u00f4H-e) (one week)\n\nFilling out the registration form\n\nAt most hotels, you have to fill out der Meldeschein (d\u00ear m\u00eal-de-shayn) (reservation form), commonly referred to as das Formular (d\u00e2s for-mooh-lahr) (the form) as part of the check-in process. The receptionist will hand you the form, saying something like the following:\n\nBitte f\u00fcllen Sie dieses Formular aus. (bi-te fuel-en zee deez-\u00eas for-mooh-lahr ous.) (Please fill out this form.)\n\nThe registration form asks you for all or most of the following information:\n\n  Tag der Ankunft (tahk d\u00ear \u00e2n-koonft ) (Date of arrival)\n\n  Name\/Vorname (nah-me\/fohr-nah-me) (Surname\/First name)\n\n  Stra\u00dfe\/Nummer (Nr.) (shtrah-se\/noom-er) (Street\/Number)\n\n  Postleitzahl (PLZ)\/Wohnort (post-layt-tsahl\/vohn-ort) (Zip code\/Town)\n\n  Geburtsdatum\/Geburtsort (g\u00ea-boorts-dah-toohm\/g\u00ea-boorts-ort) (Birth date\/Place of birth)\n\n  Staatsangeh\u00f6rigkeit\/Nationalit\u00e4t (stahts-\u00e2n-ge-herr-iH-kayt\/n\u00e2-tsee-oh-nahl-i-tait) (Nationality)\n\n  Beruf (b\u00ea-roohf) (Occupation)\n\n  Passnummer (p\u00e2s-noom-er) (Passport number)\n\n  Ort\/Datum (ort\/dah-toohm) (Place\/Date)\n\n  Unterschrift (oon-ter-shrift) (Signature)\n\nGetting your luggage in hand\n\nIn all likelihood, you'll travel with some kind of das Gep\u00e4ck (d\u00e2s ge-p\u00eak) (luggage). Your luggage could be der Koffer (d\u00ear kof-er) (a suitcase) or maybe even die Koffer (dee kof-er) (suitcases). No, that's not a mistake \u2014 the only difference between the singular and plural forms of suitcase is the article. (Chapter 2 gives you more details on plural endings for nouns.)\n\nGetting keyed in\n\nAfter you check in, the receptionist hands you your room key and says something like\n\nSie haben Zimmer Nummer 203. (zee hah-ben tsi-mer noom-er tsvay-hoon-dert-dray.) (You have room number 203.)\n\n  In some hotels, usually the more tradition-bound, your room key is on a massive, metal key holder. You may be asked to leave your heavy metal key at the reception desk when you go out. When you arrive back at the hotel and need the key to your room, you can use the following phrase:\n\nK\u00f6nnen Sie mir bitte den Schl\u00fcssel f\u00fcr Zimmer Nummer . . . geben? (kern-nen zee meer bi-te deyn shlues-\u00eal fuer tsi-mer noom-er . . . gey-ben?) (Could you give me the key for room number. . . ?)\n\nAsking about amenities and facilities\n\nYou may want to find out what kind of services and facilities the hotel offers \u2014 does your room have Wi-Fi or a minibar? Does the hotel have a laundry service?\n\nYour room\n\nWhen you want to ask about specific features of your room, start with the phrase\n\nHat das Zimmer. . . ? (h\u00e2t d\u00e2s tsi-mer. . . ?) (Does the room have. . . ?)\n\nThen end the phrase with any of the following items:\n\neinen Balkon (ayn-en b\u00e2l-kohn) (a balcony)\n\nSatellitenfernsehen\/Kabelfernsehen (z\u00e2-t\u00ea-lee-ten-f\u00earn-zey-en\/kah-bel-f\u00earn-zey-en) (satellite TV\/cable TV)\n\nein Telefon (ayn t\u00ea-le-fohn) (a phone)\n\nWi-Fi (wee-fee) (Wi-Fi)\n\neine Minibar (ayn-e minibar [as in English]) (a minibar)\n\nThe hotel\n\nThe hotel may offer a number of services that are outlined in a brochure you find in your room. However, if you need to ask about the hotel's amenities before you arrive or because you misplaced your reading glasses, just ask\n\nHat das Hotel. . . ? (h\u00e2t d\u00e2s hotel. . . ?) (Does the hotel have. . . ?)\n\nHotel breakfast\n\nMost big hotels offer a breakfast buffet, from which you can usually choose among cereals, eggs, a variety of breads and juices, jam, cheese, and so on. In smaller towns or hotels, however, you may still get the traditional German breakfast: rolls and bread, jam, a soft-boiled egg served in an egg cup, and a choice of cold cuts and cheeses. So if you can't do without your scrambled eggs in the morning, you may have to put in a special order. (See Chapter 8 for help on how to do that.)\n\nYou can then ask about any of the following services by ending the preceding phrase with\n\neine Sauna (ayn-e zou-n\u00e2) (a sauna)\n\nein Schwimmbad (ayn shvim-baht) (a swimming pool)\n\neinen Fitnessraum (ayn-en fit-nes-roum) (a fitness room)\n\neinen W\u00e4schedienst (ayn-en v\u00eash-e-deenst) (laundry service)\n\neine Klimaanlage (ayn-e klee-mah-\u00e2n-lah-ge) (air-conditioning)\n\neine Hotelgarage (ayn-e hoh-t\u00eal-g\u00e2-rah-ge [second g pronounced as g in genre]) (a hotel garage)\n\neinen Parkplatz (ayn-en p\u00e2rk-pl\u00e2ts) (a parking lot)\n\nHere are the questions that allow you to inquire about breakfast and room service:\n\nWann wird das Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck serviert? (v\u00e2n virt d\u00e2s frue-shtuek z\u00ear-veert?) (At what time is breakfast served?)\n\nGibt es Zimmerservice? (gipt \u00eas tsi-mer-ser-vis?) (Is there room service?)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nKlaus und Ulrike Huber arrive at the Hotel Alpenhof. They park their car at the entrance and go to the reception desk to check in. (Track 32)\n\n---\n\nKlaus: | Guten Abend! Mein Name ist Huber. Wir haben ein Zimmer reserviert.\n\ngooht-en ah-bent! mayn nah-me ist hooh-ber. veer hah-ben ayn tsi-mer r\u00ea-z\u00ear-veert.\n\nGood evening! My name is Huber. We've reserved a room.\n\nRezeption: | Ja richtig, ein Doppelzimmer mit Bad. Bitte f\u00fcllen Sie dieses Formular aus.\n\nyah riH-tiH, ayn d\u00f4p-el-tsi-mer mit baht. bi-te fuel-en zee deez-es for-mooh-lahr ous.\n\nYes right, a double room with bath. Please fill out this form.\n\nKlaus: | Haben Sie eine Garage oder einen Parkplatz?\n\nhah-ben zee ayn-e g\u00e2-rah-ge oh-der ayn-en p\u00e2rk-pl\u00e2ts?\n\nDo you have a garage or a parking lot?\n\nRezeption: | Jawohl. Der Parkplatz ist hinter dem Hotel. Und hier ist Ihr Zimmerschl\u00fcssel, Nummer 203.\n\nyah-vohl. d\u00ear p\u00e2rk-pl\u00e2ts ist hin-ter deym hotel [as in English]. oont heer ist eer tsi-mer-shlues-\u00eal, noom-er tsavy-hoon-dert-dray.\n\nYes, indeed. The parking lot is behind the hotel. And here is your key, number 203.\n\nUlrike: | Wann servieren Sie Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck?\n\nv\u00e2n z\u00ear-vee-ren zee frue-shtuek?\n\nWhen do you serve breakfast?\n\nRezeption: | Von sieben bis zehn Uhr.\n\nfon zee-ben bis tseyn oohr.\n\nFrom 7 to 10 o'clock.\n\nUlrike: | Vielen Dank.\n\nfee-len d\u00e2nk\n\nThank you very much.\n\nTipping at a hotel\n\nAlthough service charges are usually included in the price of your hotel room, you may want to give a das Trinkgeld (d\u00e2s trink-g\u00ealt) (tip) to the porter who brings up your luggage. In this case, 1 or 2 euros per bag is a reasonable amount. On rare occasions, you also may see a little envelope in your room where you can leave money for the cleaning staff. Depending on the hotel and service, you can give a tip of 10 to 15 euros per week.\n\nChecking Out and Paying the Bill\n\nThe German language has no exact equivalent for the convenient English term \"to check out.\" The German term you use for checking out of your room is das Zimmer r\u00e4umen (d\u00e2s tsi-m\u00ear roy-men), which literally translates into to clear out the room. If you want to ask what time you have to vacate your room, inquire\n\nBis wann m\u00fcssen wir\/muss ich das Zimmer r\u00e4umen? (bis v\u00e2n mues-en veer\/moos iH d\u00e2s tsi-m\u00ear roy-men?) (At what time do we\/I have to check out of the room?)\n\nAsking for your bill\n\nWhen it comes to checking out of the hotel, the word commonly used is abreisen (\u00e2p-ray-zen) (to leave, literally, to travel on). When you want to leave, tell the receptionist\n\nIch reise ab.\/Wir reisen ab. (iH ray-ze \u00e2p.\/veer ray-zen \u00e2p.) (I'm leaving.\/We're leaving.)\n\nThe preceding phrase will probably be enough to get the receptionist busy preparing your bill. However, if you need to drive home the point that you'd like to have your bill, you can say\n\nKann ich bitte die Rechnung haben? (k\u00e2n iH bi-te dee r\u00eaH-noong hah-ben?) (Could I have the bill, please?)\n\nChapter 14 tells you all about dealing with bills, paying with a credit card, and asking for a receipt.\n\nAsking small favors\n\nIf you have to check out of the hotel before you're actually ready to continue on your trip, you may want to leave your luggage for a couple of hours (most hotels allow you to do this). Simply ask\n\nK\u00f6nnen wir unser\/Kann ich mein Gep\u00e4ck bis . . . Uhr hier lassen? (kern-en veer oon-zer\/k\u00e2n iH mayn ge-p\u00eak bis . . . oohr heer l\u00e2s-en?) (Could we leave our\/Could I leave my luggage here until . . . o'clock?)\n\nWhen you return to pick up your luggage, you can say\n\nK\u00f6nnen wir\/Kann ich bitte unser\/mein Gep\u00e4ck haben? (kern-en veer\/k\u00e2n iH bi-te oon-zer\/mayn ge-p\u00eak hah-ben?) (Could we\/Could I get our\/my luggage, please?)\n\nReady to go to the airport or train station? If you want the receptionist to call you a cab, ask\n\nK\u00f6nnen Sie mir bitte ein Taxi bestellen? (kern-en zee meer bi-te ayn t\u00e2x-ee be-sht\u00eal-en?) (Could you call a cab for me?)\n\n  The receptionist will need to know where you intend to go before calling for your taxi. The receptionist may ask you\n\nWo m\u00f6chten Sie hin? (voh merH-ten zee hin?) (Where would you like to go?)\n\nMake sure you know the name of the place you want to go to before you approach the receptionist.\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nKlaus and Ulrike Huber are ready to move on and explore other parts of the country. They go to the reception desk to check out.\n\n---\n\nKlaus: | Guten Morgen! Wir reisen heute ab. Kann ich bitte die Rechnung haben?\n\ngooh-ten m\u00f4r-gen! veer ray-zen hoy-te \u00e2p. k\u00e2n iH bi-te dee r\u00eaH-noong hah-ben?\n\nGood morning! We're leaving today. May I have the bill, please?\n\nRezeption: | Sicher, einen Moment bitte. Haben Sie gestern abend noch etwas aus der Minibar genommen?\n\nziH-er, ayn-en moh-m\u00eant bi-te. hah-ben zee g\u00eas-tern ah-bent n\u00f4H \u00eat-v\u00e2s ous d\u00ear minibar g\u00ea-n\u00f4m-en?\n\nSure, one moment please. Did you take anything from the minibar last night?\n\nKlaus: | Ja, zwei Bier.\n\nyah, tsvay beer.\n\nYes, two beers.\n\nRezeption: | Danke. Also, hier ist ihre Rechnung.\n\nd\u00e2n-ke. al-zoh, heer ist eer-e r\u00eaH-noong.\n\nThank you. So, here is your bill.\n\nKlaus: | Kann ich mit Kreditkarte bezahlen?\n\nk\u00e2n iH mit kr\u00ea-dit-k\u00e2r-te be-tsahl-en?\n\nCan I pay with a credit card?\n\nRezeption: | Selbstverst\u00e4ndlich. Unterschreiben Sie hier, bitte.\n\nz\u00ealpst-f\u00ear-sht\u00eant-liH. oon-ter-shray-ben zee heer bi-te.\n\nOf course. Please sign here.\n\nKlaus: | Vielen Dank und auf Wiedersehen.\n\nfee-len d\u00e2nk oont ouf vee-der-zey-en.\n\nThank you very much and good-bye.\n\nRezeption: | Gute Reise!\n\ngooh-te ray-ze!\n\nHave a good trip!\n\n Fun & Games\n\nUse the correct words to complete the questions:\n\nWo Was f\u00fcr Wie Wann Was\n\n1. kostet das Zimmer ? (How much is the room?)\n\n2. lange bleiben Sie? (How long are you going to stay?)\n\n3. wird das Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck serviert? (At what time is breakfast served?)\n\n4. m\u00f6chten Sie hin? (Where would you like to go?)\n\n5. ein Zimmer m\u00f6chten Sie? (What kind of room would you like?)\n\nYou're checking into the Hotel Schlumberger and you need to fill out the following registration form \u2014 Meldeschein (m\u00eal-de-shayn). In the blanks provided, write the English equivalents for the requested information showin in German.\n\nChapter 17\n\nHandling Emergencies\n\nIn This Chapter\n\n  Asking for assistance\n\n  Getting help for a medical problem\n\n  Communicating with the police\n\nHopefully, you'll never need to use the vocabulary and information in this chapter, but you never know, so read on. Aside from dealing with accidents and talking to the police, you may need to handle other kinds of emergencies \u2014 what if you wake up in the morning with a bout of nausea and stomach cramps? This chapter assists you in dealing with various emergency situations, from seeking medical attention to reporting a theft.\n\nRequesting Help\n\nThe hardest part of handling emergencies is keeping your cool so that you can communicate the situation clearly and calmly to someone, be it a police officer, emergency medical technician, or a doctor. So don't panic if you have to express these unpleasant facts in German. In case you really get tongue-tied, we tell you how to ask for someone who speaks English.\n\nShouting for help\n\nThe following expressions come in handy if you need to grab someone's attention to get help in an emergency situation:\n\nHilfe! (hilf-e!) (Help!)\n\nRufen Sie die Polizei! (roohf-en zee dee po-li-tsay!) (Call the police!)\n\nRufen Sie einen Krankenwagen! (roohf-en zee ayn-en kr\u00e2nk-en-vahg-en!) (Call an ambulance!)\n\nRufen Sie die Feuerwehr! (roohf-en zee dee foy-er-veyr!) (Call the fire department!)\n\nHolen Sie einen Arzt! (hohl-en zee ayn-en \u00e2rtst!) (Get a doctor!)\n\nFeuer! (foy-\u00ear!) (Fire!)\n\nReporting a problem\n\nIf you need to report an accident or let people know that you or other people are hurt, this basic vocabulary can help:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte einen Unfall melden. (iH merH-te ayn-en oon-f\u00e2l m\u00eal-den.) (I want to report an accident.)\n\nIch m\u00f6chte einen Autounfall melden. (iH merH-te ayn-en ou-toh-oon-f\u00e2l m\u00eal-den.) (I want to report a car accident.)\n\nIch bin verletzt. (iH bin f\u00ear-l\u00eatst.) (I am hurt.)\n\nEs gibt Verletzte. (\u00eas gipt f\u00ear-l\u00eats-te.) (There are injured people.)\n\nAccidents aside, there are other emergencies you should be prepared for, such as robbery or theft:\n\nIch m\u00f6chte einen Diebstahl\/Raub\u00fcberfall melden. (iH merH-te ayn-en deep-shtahl\/roup-ue-ber-f\u00e2l m\u00eal-den.) (I want to report a theft\/robbery.)\n\nHalten Sie den Dieb! (h\u00e2l-ten zee deyn deep!) (Catch the thief!)\n\nAsking for English-speaking help\n\n  If you aren't able to get the help you need by speaking German, ask this question:\n\nSpricht hier jemand Englisch? (shpriHt heer yey-m\u00e2nt \u00eang-lish?) (Does anybody here speak English?)\n\nGetting Medical Attention\n\nOpen your mouth. Say ahhhhhh. Good. Now breathe deeply. Relax. Breathe deeply again. Great! Now you, dear reader, should be relaxed enough to learn how to explain what ails you. Hopefully, you won't need to seek medical assistance, but if you do, this section is exactly what the doctor ordered.\n\nWhat kind of medical professional do you need? Where do you want to go? Here are a few words you'll need in case you're feeling out of sorts and need medical attention:\n\n  die Apotheke (dee ah-poh-tey-ke) (pharmacy)\n\n  der Arzt\/die \u00c4rztin (d\u00ear \u00e2rtst\/dee \u00earts-tin) (male\/female medical doctor)\n\n  die Arztpraxis\/die Zahnarztpraxis (dee \u00e2rtst-pr\u00e2x-is\/dee tsahn-\u00e2rtst-prax-is) (doctor's office\/dentist's office)\n\n  der Doktor (d\u00ear dok-tohr) (doctor \u2014 profession and form of address)\n\n  das Krankenhaus (d\u00e2s kr\u00e2nk-en-hous) (hospital)\n\n  die Notaufnahme (dee noht-ouf-nah-me) (emergency room)\n\n  der Zahnarzt\/die Zahn\u00e4rztin (d\u00ear tsahn-\u00e2rtst\/dee tsahn-\u00earts-tin) (male\/female dentist)\n\nIf you need medical help, you can ask for a doctor or find out where the nearest doctor's office, hospital, or pharmacy is located by saying one of the following:\n\nIch brauche einen Arzt. (iH brouH-e ayn-en \u00e2rtst.) (I need a doctor.)\n\nWo ist die n\u00e4chste Arztpraxis\/das n\u00e4chste Krankenhaus\/die n\u00e4chste Apotheke? (voh ist dee naiH-ste \u00e2rtst-pr\u00e2x-is\/d\u00e2s naiH-ste kr\u00e2nk-en-hous\/dee naiH-ste ah-poh-tey-ke?) (Where is the nearest doctor's office\/the nearest hospital\/the nearest pharmacy?)\n\nDescribing what ails you\n\nWhat's up? Got a fever? Shooting pains down your leg? Nausea or worse? Then you've come to the right place. If you want to express that you aren't feeling well and explain where it hurts, use the following sentences:\n\nIch f\u00fchle mich nicht wohl. (iH fuel-e miH niHt vohl.) (I'm not feeling well.)\n\nIch bin krank. (iH bin kr\u00e2nk.) (I am sick.)\n\nIch habe Fieber\/Durchfall. (iH hah-be feeb-er\/doorH-f\u00e2l.) (I have a fever\/diarrhea.)\n\nMir tut der Fu\u00df\/Bauch\/R\u00fccken weh. (meer tooht d\u00ear foohs\/bouH\/ruek-en vey.) (My foot\/stomach\/back hurts.)\n\nIch habe Schmerzen im Arm\/Bauch. (iH hah-be shm\u00earts-en im \u00e2rm\/bouH.) (I feel pain in my arm\/stomach.)\n\nIch habe (starke) Bauchschmerzen\/Kopfschmerzen\/Zahnschmerzen. (iH hah-be (sht\u00e2rk-e) bouH-shm\u00earts-en\/kopf-shm\u00earts-en\/tsahn-shm\u00earts-en.) (I have (a severe) stomachache\/headache\/toothache.)\n\nIch habe Halsschmerzen\/R\u00fcckenschmerzen. (iH hah-be h\u00e2ls-shm\u00earts-en\/ruek-en-shm\u00earts-en.) (I have a sore throat\/back pain.)\n\nTelling about any special conditions\n\nAn important part of getting treatment is letting the doctor know whether you're allergic to something or have any other medical conditions. To do so, start out by saying\n\nIch bin . . . . (ih bin . . . .) (I am . . . .)\n\nThen finish the sentence with any of the following:\n\nallergisch gegen . . . (\u00e2-l\u00ear-gish gey-gen . . .) (allergic to . . .)\n\nbehindert (b\u00ea-hin-d\u00eart) (handicapped)\n\nschwanger (shv\u00e2ng-er) (pregnant)\n\nDiabetiker (dee-ah-bey-ti-ker) (a diabetic)\n\nEpileptiker (ey-pi-l\u00eap-ti-ker) (an epileptic)\n\nA few specific conditions may require that you begin with the following:\n\nIch habe . . . . (iH hah-be . . . .) (I have . . . .)\n\nThen state the condition. Here are some examples:\n\neine Intoleranz gegen (Penizillin) (ayn-e in-tol-er-ants gey-gen [p\u00ea-ni-tsi-leen]) (an intolerance to [penicillin])\n\nein Herzleiden (ayn h\u00earts-layd-en) (a heart condition)\n\nzu hohen\/niedrigen Blutdruck (tsooh hoh-en\/need-reeg-gen blooht-drook) (high\/low blood pressure)\n\nEmergency calls\n\nIn case of an emergency, it's always good to have the right phone numbers handy. If you find yourself in an emergency situation while you're in European Union countries, including Germany and Austria, the crucial number you may want to memorize or keep in your wallet is 112. Switzerland and most other non-EU countries in western Europe have also adopted the 112 number for emergencies. When you dial 112, which should work even from a cellphone, your call is routed to the nearest emergency call center. The center is prepared to dispatch the Polizei (po-li-tsay) (police), call the Feuerwehr (foy-\u00ear-veyr) (fire department), or contact a Rettungsdienst (r\u00eat-oongs-deenst) (emergency service)\n\nIf you're driving on the Autobahn and you have to report an accident, the highway systems in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and many other western European countries have motorist aid call boxes at regular intervals. On the Autobahn in German-speaking countries, such call boxes are labeled Notruf or S.O.S. (noht-roohf or s.o.s. [as in English]) (emergency call or S.O.S.) You'll also see arrows on guard rails or posts that point in the direction of the nearest emergency phone.\n\nGetting an examination\n\nAfter you get into the examination room, you want to make sure you understand the doctor's questions and the instructions you need to follow to get the proper diagnosis. The doctor may ask you questions like\n\nWas haben Sie f\u00fcr Beschwerden? (v\u00e2s hah-ben zee fuer be-shveyr-den?) (What symptoms do you have?)\n\nHaben Sie Schmerzen? (hah-ben zee shm\u00earts-en?) (Are you in pain?)\n\nWo tut es weh? (voh tooht \u00eas vey?) (Where does it hurt?)\n\nTut es hier weh? (tooht \u00eas heer vey?) (Does it hurt here?)\n\nWie lange f\u00fchlen Sie sich schon so? (vee l\u00e2ng-e fuel-en zee ziH shon zoh?) (How long have you been feeling this way?)\n\nSind Sie gegen irgendetwas allergisch? (zint zee gey-gen ir-g\u00eant-\u00eat-v\u00e2s \u00e2-l\u00ear-gish?) (Are you allergic to anything?)\n\nHere are some (not-so-fun) instructions you may hear from the doctor:\n\nBitte streifen Sie den \u00c4rmel hoch. (bi-te shtrayf-en zee deyn \u00ear-mel hoH.) (Please pull up your sleeve.)\n\nBitte machen Sie den Oberk\u00f6rper frei. (bi-te m\u00e2H-en zee deyn oh-b\u00ear-kerr-per fray.) (Please take off your shirt.)\n\nBitte legen Sie sich hin. (bi-te ley-gen zee ziH hin.) (Please lie down.)\n\nMachen Sie bitte den Mund auf. (m\u00e2H-en zee bi-te deyn moont ouf.) (Please open your mouth.)\n\nAtmen Sie bitte tief durch. (aht-men zee bi-te teef doorH.) (Please take a deep breath.)\n\nHusten Sie bitte. (hoohs-ten zee bi-te.) (Please cough.)\n\nWir m\u00fcssen eine R\u00f6ntgenaufnahme machen. (veer mues-en ayn-e rernt-g\u00ean-ouf-nah-me m\u00e2H-en.) (We have to take an X-ray.)\n\nSie m\u00fcssen ger\u00f6ntgt werden. (zee mues-en ge-rerngt v\u00ear-den.) (You have to get an X-ray.)\n\nSpecifying parts of the body\n\nTo the question Wo tut es weh? (voh tooht \u00eas vey?) (Where does it hurt?), you can answer any of the following:\n\n  der Arm (d\u00ear \u00e2rm) (arm)\n\n  das Auge (d\u00e2s oug-e) (eye)\n\n  der Bauch (d\u00ear bouH) (stomach)\n\n  das Bein (d\u00e2s bayn) (leg)\n\n  die Brust (dee broost) (chest)\n\n  der Daumen (d\u00ear doum-en) (thumb)\n\n  der Finger (d\u00ear fing-er) (finger)\n\n  der Fu\u00df (d\u00ear foohs) (foot)\n\n  der Fu\u00dfkn\u00f6chel (d\u00ear foohs-knerH-el) (ankle)\n\n  der Hals (d\u00ear h\u00e2ls) (neck)\n\n  die Hand (dee h\u00e2nt) (hand)\n\n  das Herz (d\u00e2s h\u00earts) (heart)\n\n  der Kiefer (d\u00ear keef-er) (jaw)\n\n  das Knie (d\u00e2s knee) (knee)\n\n  der Magen (d\u00ear mah-gen) (stomach)\n\n  der Mund (d\u00ear moont) (mouth)\n\n  der Muskel (d\u00ear moos-kel) (muscle)\n\n  die Nase (dee nah-ze) (nose)\n\n  das Ohr (d\u00e2s ohr) (ear)\n\n  der R\u00fccken ( d\u00ear ruek-en) (back)\n\n  die Schulter (dee shool-ter) (shoulder)\n\n  der Zahn (d\u00ear tsahn) (tooth)\n\n  der Zeh (d\u00ear tsey) (toe)\n\n  die Zunge (dee tsoong-e) (tongue)\n\nYou may also need to identify the following parts of the body:\n\n  das Gesicht (d\u00e2s ge-ziHt) (face)\n\n  das Haar (d\u00e2s hahr) (hair)\n\n  der Kopf (d\u00ear kopf) (head)\n\n  die Lippe (dee lip-e) (lip)\n\nGetting the diagnosis\n\nAfter the doctor has gathered the information she needs, she'll tell you what she thinks is wrong. Here are some very useful phrases that keep you from being left in the dark:\n\ndie Diagnose (dee dee-\u00e2g-noh-ze) (diagnosis)\n\nSie haben . . . . (zee hah-ben . . . .) (You have . . . .)\n\neine Erk\u00e4ltung (ayn-e \u00ear-k\u00ealt-oong) (a cold)\n\neine Grippe (ayn-e grip-e) (the flu)\n\neine Entz\u00fcndung (ayn-e \u00eant-tsuend-oong) (an inflammation)\n\nBlinddarmentz\u00fcndung (blint-d\u00e2rm-\u00eant-tsuend-oong) (appendicitis)\n\nLungenentz\u00fcndung (lung-en-\u00eant-tsuend-oong) (pneumonia)\n\nMandelentz\u00fcndung (m\u00e2n-del-\u00eant-tsuend-oong) (tonsillitis)\n\nIhr Fu\u00dfkn\u00f6chel ist gebrochen\/verstaucht\/verrenkt. (eer foohs-knerH-\u00eal ist ge-broH-en\/f\u00ear-shtouHt\/f\u00ear-r\u00eankt.) (Your ankle is broken\/sprained\/dislocated.)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\n  Ulrich Lempert hasn't been feeling well for a couple days and has made an appointment with his doctor, Dr. Grawen. (Track 33)\n\nDr. Grawen: | Guten Morgen, Herr Lempert. Was haben Sie f\u00fcr Beschwerden?\n\ngooht-en mor-gen, h\u00ear l\u00eam-p\u00eart. v\u00e2s hah-ben zee fuer be-shveyr-den?\n\nGood morning, Mr. Lempert. What symptoms do you have?\n\n---|---\n\nUlrich: | Ich f\u00fchle mich seit ein paar Tagen nicht wohl.\n\niH fuel-e miH zayt ayn pahr tah-gen niHt vohl.\n\nI haven't been feeling well for a couple of days.\n\nDr. Grawen: | Haben Sie Schmerzen?\n\nhah-ben zee shm\u00earts-en?\n\nAre you in pain?\n\nUlrich: | Ja, ich habe starke Kopf- und Magenschmerzen.\n\nyah, iH hah-be st\u00e2r-ke kopf- oont mah-gen-shm\u00earts-en.\n\nYes, I have a severe headache and stomachache.\n\nDr. Grawen: | Bitte setzen Sie sich hier hin und machen Sie den Oberk\u00f6rper frei.\n\nbi-te z\u00eats-en zee ziH heer hin oont m\u00e2H-en zee deyn oh-b\u00ear-kerr-p\u00ear fray.\n\nPlease sit down here and take off your shirt.\n\nDr. Grawen starts examining Ulrich.\n\n|\n\nDr. Grawen: | Machen Sie bitte den Mund auf \u2014 danke. Atmen Sie bitte tief durch. Husten Sie bitte.\n\nm\u00e2H-en zee bi-te deyn moont ouf \u2014 d\u00e2n-ke. aht-m\u00ean zee bi-te teef doorH. hoohs-ten zee bi-te.\n\nPlease open your mouth \u2014 thank you. Take a deep breath, please. Please cough.\n\nUlrich: | Und, was stimmt nicht mit mir?\n\noont, v\u00e2s shtimt niHt mit meer?\n\nAnd what's wrong with me?\n\nDr. Grawen: | Sie haben eine Grippe. Ich gebe Ihnen ein Rezept. Und bleiben Sie die n\u00e4chsten Tage im Bett.\n\nzee hah-ben ayn-e grip-e. iH gey-be een-en ayn r\u00ea-ts\u00eapt. oont blay-ben zee dee naiH-sten tah-ge im b\u00eat.\n\nYou have the flu. I'm giving you a prescription. And stay in bed for the next few days.\n\nGetting your medicine\n\nYou may be used to getting your prescription medicine at a drugstore. In Germany, however, filling a prescription works a little differently. The German equivalent of the drugstore is the Drogerie (droh-ge-ree), where you get everything from toothpaste to sunblock, as well as non-prescription drugs, such as aspirin and cough syrup. For prescription drugs, however, you have to go to the Apotheke (\u00e2poh-tey-ke) (pharmacy). You'll find that the people working there are very helpful and often as knowledgeable as a doctor. When it comes to prescriptions, the German laws are very strict, which means that a lot of the medicine (such as allergy medication) you can buy over the counter in the United States requires a prescription in Germany (and thus, a trip to the doctor).\n\nGetting treatment\n\nAfter the doctor tells you what the problem is, he or she will tell you what to do about it. The doctor may ask you one final question before deciding what treatment would be best for you:\n\nNehmen Sie noch andere Medikamente? (ney-men zee noH \u00e2n-de-re mey-dee-k\u00e2-m\u00ean-te?) (Are you taking any other medicine?)\n\nThe doctor may then begin with\n\nIch gebe Ihnen . . . . \/Ich verschreibe Ihnen . . . (iH gey-be een-en . . .\/iH f\u00ear-shray-be een-en . . . .) (I'll give you . . . .\/I'll prescribe for you . . . .)\n\nThe sentence may be finished with any of the following:\n\n  Antibiotika (\u00e2n-tee-bee-oh-ti-k\u00e2) (antibiotics)\n\n  das Medikament\/die Medikamente (pl) (d\u00e2s mey-dee-k\u00e2-m\u00eant\/dee mey-dee-k\u00e2-m\u00ean-te) (medicine)\n\n  ein Schmerzmittel (ayn shm\u00earts-mit-el) (a painkiller)\n\n  Tabletten (t\u00e2-bl\u00eat-en) (pills)\n\nFinally, the doctor may indicate that he wants to see you again by saying\n\nKommen Sie in . . . Tagen\/einer Woche wieder. (kom-en zee in . . . tah-gen\/ayn-er voH-e vee-der.) (Come back in . . . days\/one week.)\n\nThe doctor will give you a prescription, das Rezept (d\u00e2s r\u00ea-ts\u00eapt), that you take to a pharmacy, called die Apotheke (dee \u00e2po-tey-ke), to be filled.\n\nThe following phrases can help you to understand the instructions for taking your medicine:\n\nBitte, nehmen Sie . . . Tabletten\/Teel\u00f6ffel . . . (bi-te ney-men zee . . . tah-bl\u00eat-en\/tey-lerf-el . . .) (Please take . . . pills\/teaspoons. . . .)\n\ndreimal am Tag\/t\u00e4glich (dray-mahl \u00e2m tahk\/taig-liH) (three times a day\/daily)\n\nalle . . . Stunden (\u00e2l-e . . . shtoon-den) (every . . . hours)\n\nvor\/nach dem Essen (fohr\/naH deym \u00eas-en) (before\/after meals)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nAfter Ulrich gets his diagnosis, he takes the prescription to his neighborhood pharmacy and talks to the pharmacist.\n\nUlrich: | Guten Morgen. Mein \u00c4rzt hat mir dieses Rezept gegeben.\n\ngooht-en mor-gen. Mayn \u00e2rtst h\u00e2t meer deez-es r\u00ea-ts\u00eapt ge-gey-ben.\n\nGood morning. My doctor has given me this prescription.\n\n---|---\n\nApothekerin: | Einen Moment.\n\nayn-en moh-ment.\n\nJust a moment.\n\nThe pharmacist fills Ulrich's prescription and returns.\n\n|\n\nApothekerin: | So, Herr Lempert. Bitte nehmen Sie dreimal am Tag zwei von diesen Tabletten.\n\nzoh, h\u00ear l\u00eam-p\u00eart. bi-te ney-men zee dray-mahl \u00e2m tahk tsavy fon deez-en t\u00e2-bl\u00eat-en.\n\nOkay, Mr. Lempert. Please take two of these pills three times a day.\n\nUlrich: | Vor oder nach dem Essen?\n\nfohr oh-der nahH deym \u00eas-en?\n\nBefore or after meals?\n\nApothekerin: | Nach dem Essen.\n\nnahH deym \u00eas-en.\n\nAfter meals.\n\nUlrich: | Wird gemacht.\n\nvirt ge-m\u00e2Ht.\n\nI'll do that.\n\nApothekerin: | Gute Besserung, Herr Lempert!\n\ngooh-te b\u00eas-er-oong, h\u00ear l\u00eam-p\u00eart!\n\nHope you feel better, Mr. Lempert!\n\nTalking to the Police\n\nYou've just discovered that your hotel room has been robbed. The thieves made off with a lot, but fortunately, they left German For Dummies behind. Their loss, your gain!\n\nHere are some helpful expressions for handling the situation:\n\nWo ist das n\u00e4chste Polizeirevier? (voh ist d\u00e2s naiH-ste po-li-tsay-re-veer?) (Where is the closest police station?)\n\nIch m\u00f6chte einen Diebstahl melden. (iH merH-te ayn-en deep-shtahl m\u00eal-den.) (I would like to report a theft.)\n\nDescribing what was stolen\n\nTo describe a theft, you start out by saying\n\nMan hat mir . . . gestohlen. (m\u00e2n h\u00e2t meer . . . ge-shtohl-en.) (Someone has stolen. . . .)\n\nYou can then finish the sentence by inserting any of the following:\n\n  mein Auto (mayn ou-toh) (my car)\n\n  meine Brieftasche\/mein Portemonnaie (mayn-e breef-t\u00e2sh-e\/mayn port- mon-ey) (my wallet)\n\n  mein Geld (mayn g\u00ealt) (my money)\n\n  meinen Pass (mayn-en p\u00e2s) (my passport)\n\n  meine Tasche (mayn-e t\u00e2sh-e) (my bag)\n\nIf you want to express that someone has broken into your room or office, you use the verb einbrechen (ayn-br\u00eaH-en) (break into):\n\nMan hat bei mir eingebrochen. (m\u00e2n h\u00e2t bay meer ayn-ge-broH-en.) (Someone has broken into [my room.])\n\nIf you're talking about your car, however, you use a similar but slightly different verb, aufbrechen (ouf-br\u00eaH-en), which literally means to break open:\n\nMan hat mein Auto aufgebrochen. (m\u00e2n h\u00e2t mayn ou-toh ouf-ge-broH-en.) (Someone has broken into my car.)\n\n  The indefinite pronoun man (m\u00e2n), which means one, someone, or you (in the sense of people in general), comes in handy. Better yet, it's easy to use because it always has the same form and spelling \u2014 man. Consider these examples:\n\nMan hat seine Tasche gestohlen. (m\u00e2n h\u00e2t zayn-e t\u00e2sh-e ge-shtohl-en.) (Someone has stolen his bag.)\n\nWas macht man jetzt? (v\u00e2s m\u00e2Ht m\u00e2n y\u00eatst?) (What does one do now?)\n\nAnswering questions from the police\n\nSo you got a good look at the thug. Was he or she tall or short, thin or fat, hairy or bald? The police will want to know everything. And after you discover how to describe people, you'll also be ready to peruse personal ads.\n\nThe police will ask\n\nK\u00f6nnen Sie die Person beschreiben? (kern-en zee dee p\u00ear-zohn be-shrayb-en?) (Can you describe that person?)\n\nYour answer to this question can begin\n\nDie Person\/Er\/Sie hatte . . . (dee per-zohn\/\u00ear\/zee h\u00e2t-e . . .) (The person\/he\/she had . . .)\n\nThen finish the sentence with any of the following. You can combine traits by saying und between any of the following terms:\n\n  blonde\/schwarze\/rote\/graue\/lange\/kurze Haare (blon-de\/shv\u00e2rts-e\/roh-te\/grou-e\/l\u00e2ng-e\/koorts-e hahr-e) (blond\/black\/red\/gray\/long\/short hair)\n\n  einen Bart\/einen Schnurrbart\/keinen Bart (ayn-en bahrt\/ayn-en shnoohr-bahrt\/kayn-en bahrt) (a beard\/a mustache\/no beard)\n\n  eine Glatze (ayn-e gl\u00e2ts-e) (a bald head)\n\n  eine Brille (ayn-e bril-e) (glasses)\n\nAlternatively, your answer may begin\n\nDie Person\/ Er\/Sie war . . . . (dee p\u00ear-zohn\/\u00ear\/zee vahr . . . .) (The person\/he\/she was . . . .)\n\nYou can then end with any of the following:\n\n  gro\u00df\/klein (grohs\/klayn) (tall\/short)\n\n  schlank\/dick (shl\u00e2nk\/dik) (thin\/fat)\n\n  ungef\u00e4hr . . . Meter . . . gro\u00df (oon-ge-fair . . . mey-ter . . . grohs) (approximately . . . meters tall)\n\n  ungef\u00e4hr . . . Jahre alt (oon-ge-fair . . . yahr-e \u00e2lt) (approximately . . . years old)\n\nThe police may also ask you the following questions:\n\nWann ist das passiert? (v\u00e2n ist d\u00e2s p\u00e2s-eert?) (When did it happen?)\n\nWo waren Sie in dem Moment? (voh vahr-en zee in deym moh-m\u00eant?) (Where were you at that moment?)\n\nGetting legal help\n\n  Had enough for the day? If you're really not up to conversing with the law on your own, here are two very important phrases that you should know:\n\nIch brauche einen Anwalt. (iH brouH-e ayn-en \u00e2n-v\u00e2lt.) (I need a lawyer.)\n\nIch m\u00f6chte das Konsulat anrufen. (iH merH-te d\u00e2s kon-zoo-laht \u00e2n-roohf-en) (I would like to call the consulate.)\n\nTalkin' the Talk\n\nErika Berger has to drop off some documents at one of her client's offices. When she returns to her car half an hour later, she sees that somebody has broken into it and stolen her bag. Luckily, the nearest police station is right around the corner.\n\nErika: | Guten Tag. Ich m\u00f6chte einen Diebstahl melden. Man hat mein Auto aufgebrochen und meine Tasche gestohlen.\n\ngooht-en tahk. iH merH-te ayn-en deep-shtahl m\u00eal-den. m\u00e2n h\u00e2t mayn ou-toh ouf-ge-broH-en oont mayn-e t\u00e2sh-e ge-shtohl-en.\n\nHello. I would like to report a theft. Someone has broken into my car and stolen my bag.\n\n---|---\n\nPolizist: | Moment mal. Wie ist ihr Name?\n\nmoh-m\u00eant m\u00e2l. vee ist eer nah-me?\n\nOne moment. What is your name?\n\nErika: | Erika Berger.\n\n\u00ear-i-k\u00e2 b\u00ear-ger.\n\nErika Berger.\n\nPolizist: | Wann ist das passiert?\n\nv\u00e2n ist d\u00e2s p\u00e2s-eert?\n\nWhen did it happen?\n\nErika: | Zwischen elf und halb zw\u00f6lf.\n\ntsvish-en \u00ealf oont h\u00e2lp tsverlf.\n\nBetween 11:00 and 11:30.\n\nPolizist: | Und wo?\n\noont voh?\n\nAnd where?\n\nErika: | Gleich um die Ecke, in der Rothmundstra\u00dfe.\n\nglayH um dee \u00eak-e, \u00een d\u00ear roht-moont shtrah-se.\n\nRight around the corner, on Rothmundstra\u00dfe.\n\nPolizist: | Was war in Ihrer Tasche?\n\nv\u00e2s vahr in eer-er t\u00e2sh-e?\n\nWhat was in your bag?\n\nErika: | Meine Brieftasche mit ungef\u00e4hr f\u00fcnfzig Euro, meine Kreditkarten und mein F\u00fchrerschein!\n\nmayn-e breef-t\u00e2sh-e mit oon-ge-fair fuenf-tsiH oy-roh, mayn-e kr\u00ea-deet-k\u00e2rt-en oont mayn fuer-er-shayn!\n\nMy wallet with approximately 50 euros in it, my credit cards, and my driver's license!\n\nPolizist: | Nun, ich habe noch einige Fragen. Wir erstatten dann Anzeige.\n\nnoon, iH hah-be noH ayn-ee-ge frah-gen. veer \u00ear-sht\u00e2t-en d\u00e2n \u00e2n-tsayg-e.\n\nNow I have some more questions. Then we'll file a report.\n\n Fun & Games\n\nYour friend Markus is a daredevil snowboarder, and as fate would have it, you're the first person to find him after he has crashed into a tree. He seems okay, but just to make sure, you ask him about each body part. To make sure you know the German words for the body parts, write them on the corresponding lines.\n\n1. chest________________\n\n2. shoulder_____________\n\n3. eye_________________\n\n4. head________________\n\n5. nose________________\n\n6. mouth_______________\n\n7. neck________________\n\n8. arm_________________\n\n9. hand________________\n\n10. stomach____________\n\n11. leg_________________\n\n12. foot________________\n\n13. ankle_______________\n\n14. knee_______________\nPart IV\n\nThe Part of Tens\n\nIn this part . . .\n\nEvery For Dummies book ends with top-ten lists of handy information, and this book has some very useful ones. In addition to offering tips on how to learn German more effectively, we provide you with German phrases you should avoid, German expressions that make you sound (even more) German, and more. Viel Spa\u00df! (feel shp\u00e2s!) (Have fun!)\nChapter 18\n\nTen Ways to Pick Up German Quickly\n\nGetting comfortable with speaking and understanding a new language and its culture can be a really fun and rewarding experience. So what if you find yourself getting bogged down with grammar explanations? Where do you turn if you're feeling overwhelmed by the sheer detail involved in putting the right word in the right place in a sentence? Above all, don't beat yourself up. Instead, be patient with yourself. Take baby steps; after all, that's how you learned to walk, right? Try out some or all these tips for expanding your German. See which ideas work best for you. Whatever you do, we hope you enjoy experimenting with German.\n\nLabeling the World Around You\n\nGet going on some vocabulary around your home, your car, or even your office by labeling the objects around you. This strategy is fun and simple. Use a German\/English dictionary (or the dictionary at the back of this book) to find out the German equivalent of words such as the window (das Fenster) (d\u00e2s f\u00eans-ter), the door (die T\u00fcr) (dee tuer), the fridge (der K\u00fchlschrank) (d\u00ear kuel-shr\u00e2nk), or a cup (eine Tasse) (ayn-e t\u00e2s-e). Write each word on a sticky note and attach it to the thing it describes. When you come across the object, touch it and pronounce the word to yourself. Who knows, maybe your friends and family will join in!\n\nOrganizing Useful Expressions\n\nIf you want to memorize words within a certain context, compile lists of expressions or entire sentences that have to do with the topic you're interested in. As you go through a chapter in this book, write down no more than ten or so phrases you'd like to pick up quickly. For example, write down the phrases you find most important for asking directions (How do I get to. . . ? How far is it?) or dining at a German restaurant (I'd like the. . . . Could I have the check, please?).\n\nThen look for one or more convenient spots around the house to post your list; next to the mirror in the bathroom works well, for example. Then every time you preen yourself, practice saying the expressions in a logical sequence. Before long, you'll know all those handy expressions. When you do, it's time to put up a new list.\n\nWriting Shopping Lists\n\nAnother way to retain more vocabulary is to make out your shopping lists in German. Write the English equivalents after the German, though, just so you won't get annoyed in the store when you can't remember what you meant. For example, write Birnen (birn-en) (pears), Karotten (k\u00e2r-rot-en) (carrots), or Zwiebeln (tsvee-beln) (onions) on your list. Take this activity one step further by pronouncing the German word to yourself as you pick up each item. You may find yourself making simple sentences as you're shopping, such as the following:\n\nDer K\u00e4se is sehr teuer. (d\u00ear kai-ze ist zeyr toy-er.) (The cheese is very expensive.)\n\nWo sind die Kartoffen? (voh vint dee K\u00e2r-tof-en?) (Where are the potatoes?)\n\nDer Fisch ist sehr frish. (d\u00ear fish ist zeyr frish.) (The fish is very fresh.)\n\nThinking in German\n\nActivate your German by formulating your daily routine into phrases as you go through some simple steps. For example, you might say\n\nIch gehe in die K\u00fcche. (iH gey-e in dee kueH-e.) (I'm going to the kitchen.)\n\nIch mache Kaffee. (iH m\u00e2H-e k\u00e2f-ey.) (I'm making coffee.)\n\nDas Wetter ist sehr sch\u00f6n. (das w\u00eat-er is zeyr shern.) (The weather's really beautiful.)\n\nWie viel Uhr is es? Es ist 20.30. (vee feel oohr is \u00eas? Es ist tsv\u00e2n-tsiH oohr drays-iH.) (What time is it? It's 8:30 p.m.)\n\nUsing Language CDs and Downloads\n\nOn your way to and from work, try listening to language-learning CDs or download German language broadcasts. Just listening to German voices over and over can do wonders to help you retain words and phrases. Get some German music and listen to it when you're in the mood.\n\nWatching German TV and Listening to German Radio Online\n\nThe government-funded German television stations ARD and ZDF are terrific ways to get excellent quality news in German. Simply go to their Web sites \u2014 `www.ard.de` and `www.zdf.de` \u2014 and choose the type of information you're interested in: politics, culture, sports, or, of course, Nachrichten (n\u00e2H-reeH-ten) (news). At ARD, you can watch a classic weekly TV series, Tatort (taht-ort) (Crime Scene), a murder mystery\/thriller. You may want to try more: Deutsche Welle (doy-che v\u00eal-e) (German radio) (`www.dw-world.de`) broadcasts both radio and TV programs in many languages, including German and English, and quality radio broadcasts are at radioWissen (rah-dee-oh vis-en) (radio knowledge) (`www.br-online.de\/bayern2\/radiowissen`). Looking for something else in German? Punch in a major search engine's name, plus the international code: `.de` for Germany, `.at` for Austria, and `.ch` for Switzerland.\n\nTrying an Interactive German Program\n\nTo delve deeper into the intricacies of the German language, check out the selection of interactive German courses on the market. Price may be a factor in your budget, but the best ones offer quality visuals, logical language progression, and excellent speech recognition programs.\n\nWatching German Movies\n\nAnother fun way to pick up expressions, the accent, cultural habits, and the like is by getting German movies online and watching them several times. Try selecting a movie by genre, director, or actors you're interested in. You may be surprised at how much you can understand. As you watch, enjoy some German Bier (beer) (beer) or Wein (vayn) (wine).\n\nReading German Publications\n\nBuy German magazines, especially those with visuals, or have someone bring you back a few from a trip to a German-speaking country. Start by looking at the captions under the pictures and see whether you can figure out what the picture and its accompanying text are all about. Reading ads is another fun way to discover words. On international flights, you can grab a bilingual in-flight magazine with German on one side and English on the other. German comics for kids are also fun for adults, for example, Asterix and Tim und Struppi.\n\nEating German Cuisine\n\nTreat your taste buds to some authentic German food. You may find a German restaurant nearby, but there are plenty of other opportunities to sample German cuisine. Splurge on some imported cheese from Germany or Switzerland. Think humble: The nearby health food store may have out-of-this-world fresh sauerkraut. Go all out and try some German recipes. You'll be delighted to discover that not all German cuisine is your basic meat-and-potatoes fare. Oh, and Guten Appetit! (gooh-ten \u00e2-p\u00ea-teet) (Enjoy!)\nChapter 19\n\nTen Things Never to Say in German\n\nThis chapter's aim is to save you from turning crimson, and we're not talking about a sunburn. You've probably heard non-native English speakers say things that made you want to either crack up or, even worse, hold your breath. Well, making a terrible blunder can happen just when you least expect it, so this chapter offers some pointers to help you avoid the very worst pitfalls!\n\nUsing the Right Form of Address\n\nIf you've read Chapter 3, you already know that you have to be careful about using the familiar form of address, du (dooh) (you). If you don't want to be insulting or sound uneducated, never use du when speaking to anyone you don't know well who is older than 16. Instead, use the formal Sie (zee) (you) and say, for example, M\u00f6chten Sie ins Kino gehen? (merH-t\u00ean zee ins kee-noh gey-en?) (Do you want to go to the movies?), not M\u00f6chtest du ins Kino gehen?\n\nIn most situations, the correct form to use is probably obvious. If you arrive at a party and everybody addresses you with the familiar form du, just go with the flow. And of course, you may be offered the opportunity to use du:\n\nWir k\u00f6nnen uns duzen. (veer kern-en oons doohts-en.) (We can use the familiar form of you.)\n\nTurning such an offer down would be equally impolite.\n\nAddressing Service People Correctly\n\nWhen you want to address a waitress or female salesperson, don't call her Fr\u00e4ulein (froy-layn), which used to be the German version of Miss. Fr\u00e4ulein literally means little woman (the syllable lein is a diminutive form). Most women find this form of address offensive. At the very least, they'll suspect that you aren't familiar enough with the German language to know about the word's connotations. No real substitute for it exists, so you have to rely on Entschuldigen Sie bitte (\u00eant-shool-di-gen zee bi-te) (Excuse me, please) or eye contact to get attention.\n\nThe same goes for addressing a waiter in a restaurant: Don't call him Kellner (k\u00eal-ner) (waiter). Waiters don't like it, and it's considered patronizing and condescending. Again, eye contact and gestures or a simple Entschuldigen Sie bitte are the best way to get attention.\n\nHot or Cold?\n\nIf you'd like to express that you're hot or cold, be sure not to say Ich bin hei\u00df (iH bin hays) (I am hot) or Ich bin kalt (iH bin k\u00e2lt) (I am cold). These expressions mean that you're in heat or have a cold personality! Unless you really want people to think such things about you, remember to use one of the following expressions, both of which use the personal pronoun mir (meer) (me):\n\nMir ist hei\u00df. (meer ist hays.) (I feel hot\/I'm hot.)\n\nMir ist kalt. (meer ist k\u00e2lt.) (I feel cold\/I'm cold.)\n\nI'm Not Loaded\n\nIf someone asks you at dinner or lunch whether you want another helping and you're really full, you certainly don't want to translate the word \"full\" into German. Saying Ich bin voll (iH bin fol) (I am full) means that you are completely drunk \u2014 it's actually the colloquial expression for I'm loaded. Unless you want to let the person who's asking know that you've had too many drinks, you should say Ich bin satt (iH bin z\u00e2t) (I am full) in an informal situation. Otherwise, a simple Nein, danke (nayn d\u00e2n-ke) (No, thank you) is appropriate.\n\nSpeaking of the Law with Respect\n\nDon't call a police officer Bulle (bool-e). Although you may hear a lot of people using this word, it's a slang expression that means bull. The German words for policeman and policewoman are der Polizist (d\u00ear po-li-tsist) and die Polizistin (dee po-li-tsis-tin), respectively.\n\nUsing \"Gymnasium\" Correctly\n\nIf you're trying to tell a German person that you're going to the gym by saying Ich gehe zum Gymnasium (iH gey-e tsoom germ-nahz-ee-oom), you will cause some serious confusion because a Gymnasium is not a place to work out; it's a high school. The previous sentence actually says I'm going to the high school. Three types of secondary schools exist in Germany, and the Gymnasium is the highest level. The German word you want to use for gym is Fitnesscenter (fitness center [as in English]).\n\nKnowing the Appropriate Form of \"Know\"\n\nIn English, you can use the versatile verb to know to express that you know a person, a locality, a fact, and the answer to a question. The German verb you use to express familiarity with people and places is kennen (k\u00ean-en) (to know\/to be acquainted with); for example, you say\n\nIch kenne ihn\/sie\/sie. (iH k\u00ean-e een\/zee\/zee.) (I know him\/her\/them.)\n\nWhen it comes to knowledge of facts, you have to use the verb wissen (vis-en) (to know), which is usually used with a subordinate clause. So, in German you say for example\n\nIch weiss nicht, wie viel Uhr es ist. (iH vays niHt, vee feel oohr \u00eas ist.) (I don't know what time it is.)\n\nA shorter way to say the same thing is\n\nIch weiss es nicht. (iH vays \u00eas niHt.) (I don't know [the answer].)\n\nGoing to the Right Closet\n\nDon't mistake the German word Klosett (kloh-z\u00eat) (toilet) for the English closet. If you want to find out where the closet is, don't ask Wo ist das Klosett? (voh ist d\u00e2s kloh-z\u00eat?) (Where is the toilet?), because people will give you a confused look and then direct you to the bathroom. Klosett is the antiquated term for toilet, and the right word for closet is der Einbauschrank (d\u00ear ayn-bou-shr\u00e2nk). If you're at someone's home and you're on informal du (dooh) (you) terms, the colloquial way to ask where the bathroom is located is\n\nWo ist das Klo? (voh ist d\u00e2s kloh?) (Where's the bathroom?)\n\nOtherwise, stick to something like this:\n\nDarf ich Ihre Toilette benutzen? (d\u00e2rf iH eer-e toy-l\u00eat-e b\u00ea-noots-en?) (May I use your bathroom?)\n\nUsing Bekommen Properly\n\nYou may conclude that the German verb bekommen (be-kom-en) corresponds to the English to become \u2014 a mistake commonly made by English speakers learning the German language and vice versa. Don't try to tell someone that your brother's going to be\/become a doctor by saying Mein Bruder bekommt einen Arzt (mayn brooh-der b\u00ea-komt ayn-en \u00e2rtst). What you're expressing here is My brother's getting a doctor, meaning he's getting or receiving a doctor, for example, as a birthday present. The German word for to become is werden (veyr-den), so you have to say\n\nEr wird Arzt. (\u00ear virt \u00e2rtst.) (He's going to be\/become a doctor.)\n\nGerman speakers use the verb bekommen in the sense of get to say, for example, get lots of visitors, like this:\n\nSie bekommen viel Besuch. (zee be-kom-en feel be-zoohH.) (They get lots of visitors.)\n\nWhen you want to order a glass of white wine, you can say\n\nIch bekomme ein Glas Weisswein, bitte. (iH be-kom-e ayn gl\u00e2s vays\\- vayn, bi-te.) (I'd like a glass of white wine, please.)\n\nUsing the Right Eating Verb\n\nIn Germany, you may hear someone say K\u00fche fressen Gras (kue-he fr\u00eas-en grahs) (Cows eat grass). But don't conclude that fressen (fr\u00eas-en) just means to eat and then say something such as Ich fresse gern Pommes frites (ih fr\u00eas-e g\u00earn pom frit.) (I like to eat French fries). The German listener may think that you revel in stuffing your face with a super-sized order of fries. The verb fressen is reserved for animals. If you're referring to human beings, use essen (\u00eas-en) (to eat): Ich esse gern Pommes frites (iH \u00eas-e g\u00earn pom frit). In connection with human beings, fressen is used only in a derogatory sense.\nChapter 20\n\nTen Favorite German Expressions\n\nAfter you get tuned into German a little, you may start noticing that native German speakers use certain expressions frequently, as though they're putting salt and pepper on their thoughts. Indeed, you can think of such words as the flavoring that makes the language more natural, alive, and interesting. Try out the following expressions yourself to give your German a bit of sparkle.\n\nAlles klar!\n\nThe literal translation of Alles klar! (\u00e2l-es klahr!) is everything clear, but in English you'd actually say Got it! You can use this expression to indicate that you understand when somebody explains something to you or to signal your agreement when someone has gone over the details of a plan.\n\nWirklich\n\nUse the expression Wirklich (virk-liH) when you want to say really to emphasize an adjective, such as \"really interesting.\" You can also use the word just the way you say Really? or Really! in English.\n\nKein Problem\n\nThe literal translation of Kein Problem (kayn proh-bleym) is no problem. Use it to let somebody know that you'll take care of something. You can also agree to a change in plans with this phrase.\n\nVielleicht\n\nVielleicht (fee-layHt) is the equivalent of maybe or perhaps, and you can use it, for example, as a short answer to someone's question. Alternatively, this expression comes in handy at the beginning of a sentence when you want to say that something may or may not happen. In the latter case, you say Vielleicht nicht (fee-layHt niHt) (maybe not).\n\nDoch\n\nThis simple word has lots of uses. It doesn't have any exact English equivalents, but you use it to express your attitude about a statement. You can use doch (doH) to say indeed, after all, really, and however. When you use it to respond positively to a negative statement or a question, it means roughly but yes, of course or on the contrary.\n\nUnglaublich!\n\nUnglaublich! (oon-gloub-liH!) translates as Unbelievable! You can also use it to mean unbelievably, adding oomph to the adjective that follows it, for example, Das Wetter ist unglaublich gut! (d\u00e2s w\u00eat-er ist oon-gloub-liH gooht!) (The weather is unbelievably good!)\n\nHoffentlich\n\nHoffentlich (hof-ent-liH) means hopefully, and you hear people saying it all alone to express optimism. In its negative form, Hoffentlich nicht, it's the equivalent of hopefully not.\n\nWie sch\u00f6n!\n\nThe literal translation of Wie sch\u00f6n! (vee shern!) is How nice! It can mean that, but sometimes the phrase is used sarcastically as a way to show annoyance or exasperation.\n\nGenau!\n\nGenau! (ge-nou!) means exactly! or precisely! You use it to show that you agree with what someone is saying.\n\nStimmt's?\n\nStimmt's? (shtimts?) translates as Isn't it true? or Don't you agree? Use this expression when you want your listener to confirm something you just said. It's usually answered with Stimmt! (shtimt!) meaning I agree! When you want to signal to the server in a restaurant that the amount of money you're handing over includes the tip, you say Stimmt so (shtimt zoh) (That's okay). In English, you'd probably say Keep the change.\nChapter 21\n\nTen Phrases That Make You Sound German\n\nThis chapter provides you with some typical German expressions that almost everyone who speaks German knows and uses. These phrases are so very German that you may even pass for a native German speaker when you use them.\n\nSch\u00f6nes Wochenende!\n\nSch\u00f6nes Wochenende! (shern-es voH-en-en-de!) means Have a good weekend! You hear people wishing this to one another starting as early as Friday morning if they won't see each other again until the next week.\n\nGehen wir!\n\nGehen wir! (gey-en veer!) translates to Let's go! You can also use this as a question to say Shall we go? by ending the phrase with a rising intonation.\n\nWas ist los?\n\nThe question Was ist los? (v\u00e2s ist lohs?) or What's happening? is most commonly used in the sense of What's wrong?\n\nDas klingt gut!\n\nDas klingt gut! (d\u00e2s klinkt gooht!) is the German way of saying That sounds good! You can tell someone that his suggestion to do something is a good idea with this phrase.\n\nKeine Ahnung\n\nKeine Ahnung (kayn-e ahn-oong) translates to no idea. This is the short version of Ich habe keine Ahnung (iH hah-be kayn-e anh-oong) (I have no idea) and is frequently used to express that you know nothing about the matter in question.\n\nEs zieht!\n\nUse Es zieht! (\u00eas tseet!) to declare There's a draft! For some reason, Germans are very sensitive about drafts, so if you're feeling cold because the window's open, this expression is for you. Word for word, it actually means It pulls.\n\nNicht zu fassen!\n\nNicht zu fassen! (niHt tsooh f\u00e2s-en!) means I can't believe it! If you want to express disbelief, concern, or agitation, use this typically German phrase.\n\nDu hast Recht!\/Sie haben Recht!\n\nThe informal expression Du hast Recht! (dooh h\u00e2st r\u00eaHt!) and it's formal equivalent, Sie haben Recht! (zee hah-ben r\u00eaHt!) translate to You're right! This is a typical way of expressing agreement in German.\n\nLass es!\n\nLass es! (l\u00e2s \u00eas!) is the informal German way of saying Let it be! When you want to say Leave that matter alone, you can use this phrase.\n\nNicht schlecht!\n\nNicht schlecht! (niHt shl\u00eaHt!) is the German equivalent of Not bad! As in English, this phrase not only means that something is not too bad, but it's also a reserved way of expressing appreciation and approval.\nPart V\n\nAppendixes\n\nIn this part . . .\n\nLast but not least, we include the appendixes, which you will no doubt find quite useful. In addition to a pretty comprehensive mini-dictionary, we provide verb tables that show you how to conjugate regular and irregular German verbs. You can also find answer keys for all of the Fun & Games activities that appear throughout the book and a guide to the audio CD that's attached to the book's inside back cover. Deutsch ist doch leicht, nicht wahr? (doych ist doH layHt, niHt wahr?) (German's really easy, isn't it?) \nGerman-English Mini-Dictionary\n\nA\n\nabbiegen (\u00e2p-beeg-en): to make a turn\n\nAbend (ah-bent) m: evening\n\nAbendessen (ah-bent-\u00eas-en) n: dinner\n\naber (ah-ber) but\n\nabfliegen (\u00e2p-fleeg-en) to depart (by plane)\n\nAbflug (\u00e2p-floohk) m: departure (by plane)\n\nabreisen (\u00e2p-rayz-en) to leave\n\nalles (\u00e2l-es) all\n\nAmpel (\u00e2m-pel) f: traffic light\n\nan (\u00e2n) at\n\nAnfang (\u00e2n-f\u00e2ng) m: beginning\n\nAnkauf (\u00e2n-kouf) m: purchase\n\nAnkunft (\u00e2n-koonft) f: arrival\n\nAnrufbeantworter (\u00e2n-roohf-be-\u00e2nt-for-ter) m: answering machine\n\nanrufen (\u00e2n-roohf-en) to call (on the phone)\n\nAnwalt (ahn-v\u00e2lt) m: lawyer\n\nApril (\u00e2-pril) m: April\n\nArzt (\u00e2rtst) m: doctor (male)\n\nArztpraxis (\u00e2rtst-pr\u00e2x-is) f: doctor's office\n\nauch (ouH) also\n\nauf (ouf) on\n\nAuf Wiedersehen (ouf vee-der-zey-en) Good-bye\n\nAugust (ou-goost) m: August\n\nAusfahrt (ous-f\u00e2rt) f: exit\n\nausf\u00fcllen (ous-fuel-en) to fill out\n\nausgezeichnet (ous-ge-tsayH-net) excellent\n\nau\u00dfer (ous-er) except\n\nAusstellung (ous-shtel-oong) f: exhibition\n\nAuto (ou-toh) n: car\n\nAutobahn (ou-toh-bahn) f: highway\n\nB\n\nBad (baht) n: bath(room)\n\nBahnhof (bahn-hohf) m: train station\n\nBank (b\u00e2nk) f: bank\n\nbar (bahr) cash\n\nBart (b\u00e2rt) m: beard\n\nBasketball (basketball [as in English]) m: basketball\n\nBauernhof (bou-ern-hohf) m: farm\n\nBaum (boum) m: tree\n\nbeginnen (be-gin-en) to begin\n\nbei (bay) near, at, by\n\nbeim (baym) near, at, by (the)\n\nBerg (b\u00eark) m: mountain\n\nBeruf (be-roohf) m: occupation\n\nbeschreiben (be-shrayb-en) to describe\n\nbesetzt (be-z\u00eatst) busy\n\nBesprechung (be-shpr\u00eaH-oong) f: meeting\n\nbest\u00e4tigen (be-sht\u00ea-ti-gen) to confirm\n\nBetrag (be-trahk) m: amount\n\nbezahlen (be-tsahl-en) to pay\n\nBier (beer) n: beer\n\nbisschen (bis-Hen) a little\n\nbitte (bi-te) please\n\nbleiben (blay-ben) to stay\n\nBordkarte (bord-k\u00e2r-te) f: boarding pass\n\nBotschaft (boht-sh\u00e2ft) f: embassy\n\nBrief (breef) m: letter\n\nBriefkasten (breef-k\u00e2s-ten) m: mailbox\n\nBriefmarke (breef-m\u00e2r-ke) f: stamp\n\nBrieftasche (breef-t\u00e2sh-e) f: wallet\n\nbringen (bring-en) to bring\n\nBrot (broht) n: bread\n\nBr\u00f6tchen (brert-H\u00ean) n: roll\n\nBuch (boohH) n: book\n\nbuchen (boohH-en) to book\n\nBus (boos) m: bus\n\nBushaltestelle (boos-h\u00e2l-te-sht\u00eal-e) f: bus stop\n\nButter (boot-er) f: butter\n\nD\n\ndanke (d\u00e2n-ke) thanks\n\ndanke sch\u00f6n (d\u00e2n-ke shern) thank you very much\n\nDatum (dah-toom) n: date\n\ndein (dayn) your (familiar, singular)\n\ndeutsch (doych) German\n\nDezember (dey-ts\u00eam-ber) m: December\n\nDienstag (deens-tahk) m: Tuesday\n\nDonnerstag (don-ners-tahk) m: Thursday\n\nDoppelzimmer (dop-el-tsi-mer) n: double room\n\nDorf (dorf) n: village\n\ndort (dort) there\n\ndritte (drit-e) third\n\ndr\u00fccken (druek-en) to push\n\nd\u00fcrfen (duerf-en) to be allowed to, may\n\ndurstig (doors-tiH) thirsty\n\nDusche (dooh-she) f: shower\n\nE\n\neinfach (ayn-f\u00e2H) easy, one-way (ticket)\n\neinladen (ayn-lah-den) to invite\n\nEinladung (ayn-lah-doong) f: invitation\n\neinverstanden (ayn-f\u00ear-sht\u00e2nt-en) agreed\n\nEinzelzimmer (ayn-ts\u00eal-tsi-mer) n: single room\n\nE-mail (email [as in English]) f: e-mail\n\nempfehlen (em-pfey-len) to recommend\n\nEnde (\u00ean-de) n: end\n\nEntschuldigung (ent-shool-di-goong) Excuse me\n\nErk\u00e4ltung (\u00ear-k\u00ealt-oong) f: cold\n\nerste (\u00ears-te) first\n\nessen (\u00eas-en) to eat\n\netwas (\u00eat-v\u00e2s) something\n\nEuro (oy-roh) m: euro\n\nF\n\nfahren (fahr-en) to go, drive, travel\n\nFahrkarte (fahr-k\u00e2r-te) f: ticket (train\/bus)\n\nFahrrad (fahr-r\u00e2t) n: bicycle\n\nFamilie (f\u00e2-mi-lee-e) f: family\n\nFamilienname (f\u00e2-mi-lee-en-n\u00e2-me) m: last name\n\nfantastisch (f\u00e2n-t\u00e2s-tish) fantastic\n\nfaxen (f\u00e2ks-en) to fax\n\nFebruar (fey-broo-ahr) m: February\n\nFeld (felt) n: field\n\nFenster (f\u00eans-ter) n: window\n\nFeuerwehr (foy-er-veyr) f: fire department\n\nFieber (fee-ber) n: fever\n\nFirma (fir-m\u00e2) f: company\n\nFisch (fish) m: fish\n\nFleisch (flaysh) n: meat\n\nfliegen (fleeg-en) to fly\n\nFlug (floohk) m: flight\n\nFlughafen (floohk-hah-fen) m: airport\n\nFlugsteig (floohk-shtayk) m: airport gate\n\nFlugticket (floohk-ti-ket) n: airplane ticket\n\nFlugzeug (floohk-tsoyk) n: airplane\n\nFluss (floos) m: river\n\nFormular (for-moo-lahr) n: form\n\nfragen (frah-gen) to ask\n\nFreitag (fray-tahk) m: Friday\n\nFremdenverkehrsb\u00fcro (fr\u00eam-den-f\u00ear-k\u00ears-bue-roh) n: tourist information office\n\nFreund (froynt) m: friend (male)\n\nFreundin (froyn-din) f: friend (female)\n\nfr\u00fch (frue) early\n\nFr\u00fchling (frue-ling) m: spring (the season)\n\nFr\u00fchst\u00fcck (frue-shtuek) n: breakfast\n\nf\u00fcr (fuer) for\n\nFu\u00dfball (foohs-b\u00e2l) m: soccer\n\nG\n\nGabel (gah-bel) f: fork\n\nGang (g\u00e2ng) m: aisle\n\nganz (g\u00e2nts) complete(ly)\n\nGarten (g\u00e2r-ten) m: garden, lawn\n\ngeben (gey-ben) to give\n\nGebirge (ge-bir-ge) n: mountains\n\nGeb\u00fchr (ge-buer) f: fee\n\ngef\u00e4hrlich (ge-fair-liH) dangerous\n\ngefallen (ge-f\u00e2l-en) to like\n\nGegend (gey-gent) f: area\n\ngegen\u00fcber (gey-gen-ue-ber) opposite\n\nGeheimzahl (ge-haym-tsahl) f: Personal Identification Number (PIN)\n\ngehen (gey-en) to walk, go\n\nGeld (g\u00ealt) n: money\n\nGeldautomat (g\u00ealt-ou-toh-maht) m: ATM\n\nGem\u00fcse (ge-mue-ze) n: vegetable\n\ngenau (ge-nou) exact(ly)\n\ngenie\u00dfen (ge-nees-en) to enjoy\n\nge\u00f6ffnet (ge-erf-net) open\n\nGep\u00e4ck (ge-p\u00eak) n: luggage\n\ngeradeaus (ge-rah-de-ous) straight ahead\n\ngeschlossen (ge-shlos-en) closed\n\ngestern (g\u00eas-tern) yesterday\n\ngetrennt (ge-tr\u00eant) separate\n\ngewinnen (ge-vin-en) to win\n\nGlas (glahs) n: glass\n\nGleis (glays) n: track\n\nGl\u00fcck (gluek) n: luck, fortune\n\nGolf (as in English) n: golf\n\ngro\u00df (grohs) tall, big, large\n\ng\u00fcltig (guel-tiH) valid\n\ngut (gooht) good\n\nGute Nacht (gooh-te n\u00e2Ht) good night\n\nGute Reise (gooh-te ray-ze) have a good trip\n\nGuten Abend (gooh-ten ah-bent) good evening\n\nGuten Morgen (gooh-ten mor-gen) good morning\n\nGuten Tag ( gooh-ten tahk) hello (standard greeting, used throughout the day)\n\nH\n\nHaar (hahr) n: hair\n\nhaben (hah-ben) to have\n\nHafen (hah-fen) m: harbor\n\nHalbpension (h\u00e2lp-p\u00ean-see-ohn) f: room with half board\n\nHallo (h\u00e2-loh) hello\n\nhalten (h\u00e2l-ten) to stop\n\nHaltestelle (h\u00e2l-te-sht\u00eal-e) f: station, stop\n\nHandy (h\u00ean-dee) n: cellphone\n\nHauptspeise (houpt-shpayz-e) f: main dish\n\nHaus (house [as in English]) n: house\n\nhei\u00df (hays) hot\n\nheissen (hays-en) to be called\n\nhelfen (h\u00ealf-en) to help\n\nHerbst (h\u00earpst) m: fall, autumn\n\nheute (hoy-te) today\n\nheute Nacht (hoy-te n\u00e2Ht) tonight\n\nhier (heer) here\n\nHilfe (hilf-e) f: help\n\nhin und zur\u00fcck (hin oont tsoo-ruek) round-trip\n\nhinter (hin-ter) behind\n\nHobby (hob-ee) n: hobby\n\nh\u00f6ren (herr-en) to hear\n\nHotel (as in English) n: hotel\n\nH\u00fcgel (hue-gel) m: hill\n\nhungrig (hoong-riH) hungry\n\nI\n\ninteressant (in-te-re-s\u00e2nt) interesting\n\nInternet (internet [as in English]) n: Internet\n\nInternetanschlu\u00df (in-ter-n\u00eat-\u00e2n-shloos) m: internet connection\n\nJ\n\nja (yah) yes\n\nJahr (yahr) n: year\n\nJanuar (yahn-oo-ahr) m: January\n\njemand (yey-m\u00e2nt) somebody\n\njoggen (jog-en [j pronounced as in English]) to jog\n\nJugendherberge (yooh-gent-h\u00ear-b\u00ear-ge) f: youth hostel\n\nJuli (yooh-lee) m: July\n\nJuni (yooh-nee) m: June\n\nK\n\nKaffee (k\u00e2f-ey) m: coffee\n\nKalender (k\u00e2-l\u00ean-der) m: calendar\n\nkalt (k\u00e2lt) cold\n\nKarte (k\u00e2r-te) f: map, ticket\n\nKasse (k\u00e2s-e) f: cash register\n\nkaufen (kouf-en) to buy\n\nkein (kayn) no, not, not any\n\nKellner (k\u00eal-ner) m: waiter\n\nkennen (k\u00ean-en) to know (a person, place)\n\nkennenlernen (k\u00ean-en-l\u00earn-en) to become acquainted with\n\nKino (kee-noh) n: movie theater\n\nKirche (kirH-e) f: church\n\nklasse! (kl\u00e2s-e!) great!\n\nklatschen (kl\u00e2ch-en) to clap\n\nklein (klayn) short, small\n\nKlimaanlage (klee-mah-\u00e2n-l\u00e2-ge) f: air conditioning\n\nKneipe (knay-pe) f: bar, pub\n\nKoffer (kof-er) m: suitcase\n\nkommen (kom-en) to come\n\nk\u00f6nnen (kern-en) to be able to, can\n\nKonsulat (kon-zoo-laht) n: consulate\n\nKonzert (kon-ts\u00eart) n: concert\n\nkosten (kos-ten) to cost\n\nkrank (kr\u00e2nk) sick\n\nKrankenhaus (kr\u00e2n-ken-hous) n: hospital\n\nKrankenschwester ( kr\u00e2n-ken-shv\u00eas-ter) f: nurse\n\nKrankenwagen ( kr\u00e2n-ken-vah-gen) m: ambulance\n\nKreditkarte (kre-deet-k\u00e2r-te) f: credit card\n\nKreuzung (kroyts-oong) f: intersection\n\nKuchen (koohH-en) m: cake\n\nKuh (kooh) f: cow\n\nkurz (koorts) short (in length)\n\nK\u00fcste (kues-te) f: coast\n\nL\n\nlachen (l\u00e2H-en) to laugh\n\nLand (l\u00e2nt) n: countryside, country\n\nlang (l\u00e2ng) long (in length)\n\nlangweilig (l\u00e2ng-vay-liH) boring\n\nlaufen (louf-en) to run, walk, go\n\nleben (ley-ben) to live\n\nlegen (ley-gen) to lay\n\nleider (lay-der) unfortunately\n\nLeitung (lay-toong) f: line\n\nlesen (ley-zen) to read\n\nletzte (lets-te) last (opposite of first)\n\nlinks (links) left\n\nLiter (lee-ter) m: liter\n\nL\u00f6ffel (lerf-el) m: spoon\n\nLuftpost (looft-post) f: airmail\n\nM\n\nmachen (m\u00e2H-en) to do\n\nmacht nichts (m\u00e2Ht niHts) never mind\n\nMai (may) m: May\n\nMannschaft (m\u00e2n-sh\u00e2ft) f: team\n\nMarkt (m\u00e2rkt) m: market\n\nM\u00e4rz (m\u00earts) m: March\n\nMeer (meyr) n: sea, ocean\n\nmein (mayn) my\n\nMesser (m\u00eas-er) n: knife\n\nMilch (milH) f: milk\n\nMinute (mi-nooh-te) f: minute\n\nmit (mit) with\n\nmitbringen (mit-bring-en) to bring (along)\n\nMittag (mi-tahk) m: noon\n\nMittagessen (mi-tahk-\u00eas-en) n: lunch\n\nMitte (mit-e) f: middle\n\nMittwoch (mit-voH) m: Wednesday\n\nm\u00f6chten (merH-ten) would like\n\nm\u00f6gen (mer-gen) to like\n\nMoment (moh-m\u00eant) m: moment\n\nMonat (moh-n\u00e2t) m: month\n\nMontag (mohn-tahk) m: Monday\n\nMorgen (mor-gen) m: morning\n\nmorgen (mor-gen) tomorrow\n\nMuseum (mooh-zey-oom) n: museum\n\nm\u00fcssen (mues-en) must, to have to\n\nN\n\nnach (nahH) to\n\nNachmittag (nahH-mi-tahk) m: afternoon\n\nNachricht (nahH-reeHt) f: message\n\nn\u00e4chste (naiH-ste) nearest\n\nNacht (n\u00e2Ht) f: night\n\nNachtisch (nahH-tish) m: dessert\n\nnah (nah) close, near\n\nName (nah-me) m: name\n\nNationalit\u00e4t (n\u00e2-tsee-oh-n\u00e2-li-tait) f: nationality\n\nnat\u00fcrlich (n\u00e2-tuer-liH) naturally\n\nNaturschutzgebiet (n\u00e2-toohr-shoots-ge-beet) n: nature reserve\n\nneben (ney-ben) next to\n\nnehmen (ney-men) to take\n\nnein (nayn) no (opposite of yes)\n\nnicht (niHt) not\n\nnie (nee) never\n\nNorden (nor-den) m: north\n\nNotaufnahme: (noht-ouf-nah-me) f: emergency room\n\nNovember (noh-v\u00eam-ber) m: November\n\nnur (noohr) just, only\n\nO\n\nObst (ohpst) n: fruit\n\n\u00f6ffnen (erf-nen) to open\n\nOktober (ok-toh-ber) m: October\n\nOper (oh-per) f: opera\n\nOsten (os-ten) m: east\n\nOzean (oh-ts\u00ea-\u00e2n) m: ocean\n\nP\n\nPaket (p\u00e2-keyt) n: package\n\nPark (p\u00e2rk) m: park\n\nParkplatz (p\u00e2rk-pl\u00e2ts) m: parking lot\n\npassen (p\u00e2s-en) to suit\n\nPferd (pf\u00eart) n: horse\n\nPolizei (po-li-tsay) f: police\n\nPortier (por-tee-ey) m: doorman\n\nPost (post) f: post office, mail\n\nPostamt (post-\u00e2mt) n: post office\n\nPostkarte (post-k\u00e2r-te) f: postcard\n\nPostleitzahl (post-layt-tsahl) f: zip code\n\nprima! (pree-m\u00e2!) great!\n\npro (proh) per\n\nProst! (prohst!) Cheers!\n\np\u00fcnktlich (puenkt-liH) on time\n\nQ\n\nQuittung (kvit-oong) f: receipt\n\nR\n\nRathaus (r\u00e2t-hous) n: town hall\n\nRechnung (r\u00eaH-noong) f: check, bill\n\nrechts (r\u00eaHts) right\n\nreden (rey-den) to talk\n\nRegen (rey-gen) m: rain\n\nregnen (reyk-nen) to rain\n\nReh (rey) n: deer\n\nReise (ray-ze) f: trip\n\nReiseb\u00fcro (ray-ze-bue-roh) n: travel agency\n\nreisen (ray-zen) to travel\n\nReisepass (ray-ze-p\u00e2s) m: passport\n\nReisescheck (ray-ze-sh\u00eak) m: traveler's check\n\nreservieren (r\u00ea-z\u00ear-veer-en) to reserve\n\nRestaurant (r\u00eas-tuh-ron) n: restaurant\n\nRezeption (rey-ts\u00eap-tsee-ohn) f: reception desk\n\nR\u00fcckflugticket (ruek-floohk-ti-ket) n: round-trip ticket\n\nS\n\nSaft (z\u00e2ft) m: juice\n\nsagen (zah-gen) to say\n\nSamstag (z\u00e2ms-tahk) m: Saturday\n\nS\u00e4nger (z\u00eang-er) m: singer\n\nS-Bahn (\u00eas-bahn) f: local train\n\nSchaf (shahf) n: sheep\n\nSchalter (sh\u00e2l-ter) m: teller window, counter\n\nSchauspieler (shou-shpeel-er) m: actor\n\nScheck (sh\u00eak) m: check\n\nSchein (shayn) m: bill\n\nschicken (shik-en) to send\n\nSchl\u00fcssel (shlues-el) m: key\n\nSchmerz (shm\u00earts) m: pain\n\nSchnee (shney) m: snow\n\nschneien (shnay-en) to snow\n\nsch\u00f6n (shern) pretty\n\nSchule (shooh-le) f: school\n\nSchwimmbad (shvim-baht) n: swimming pool\n\nschwimmen (shvim-en) to swim\n\nSee (zey) m: lake; f: sea\n\nsegeln (zey-geln) to sail\n\nsehen (zey-en) to see\n\nsehr (zeyr) very\n\nsein (zayn) to be\n\nSekunde (s\u00ea-koon-de) f: second\n\nselbstverst\u00e4ndlich (z\u00ealpst-f\u00ear-sht\u00eant-liH) of course, certainly\n\nSeptember (z\u00eap-t\u00eam-ber) m: September\n\nsich auskennen (ziH ous-k\u00ean-en) to know one's way around\n\nsich erinnern (ziH \u00ear-in-ern) to remember\n\nsich freuen (ziH froy-en) to be happy\n\nsich freuen auf (ziH froy-en ouf) to look forward to\n\nsich freuen \u00fcber (ziH froy-en ue-ber) to be glad about\n\nsich interessieren f\u00fcr (ziH in-te-r\u00ea-seer-en fuer) to be interested in\n\nsich setzen (ziH z\u00eats-en) to sit down\n\nsich treffen (ziH tr\u00eaf-en) to meet\n\nsich unterhalten (ziH oon-t\u00ear-h\u00e2l-ten) to talk, enjoy oneself\n\nsich vorstellen (ziH fohr-sht\u00eal-en) to introduce oneself, imagine\n\nsingen (zing-en) to sing\n\nSki fahren (shee fahr-en) to ski\n\nSommer (zom-er) m: summer\n\nSonnabend (zon-ah-bent) m: Saturday\n\nSonne (zon-e) f: sun\n\nSonntag (zon-tahk) m: Sunday\n\nspannend (shp\u00e2n-ent) suspenseful\n\nspazieren gehen (shp\u00e2-tsee-ren gey-en) to take a walk\n\nSpeisekarte (shpayz-e-k\u00e2r-te) f: menu\n\nSpiel (shpeel) n: game\n\nspielen (shpeel-en) to play\n\nsprechen (shpr\u00eaH-en) to speak\n\nStadt (sht\u00e2t) f: city\n\nstattfinden (sht\u00e2t-fin-den) to take place\n\nStra\u00dfe (shtrah-se) f: street\n\nStra\u00dfenbahn (shtrah-sen-bahn) f: streetcar\n\nStunde (shtoon-de) f: hour\n\nS\u00fcden (zue-den) m: south\n\nSuppe (zoop-e) f: soup\n\nT\n\nTag (tahk) m: day\n\nTal (tahl) n: valley\n\ntanzen (t\u00e2n-tsen) to dance\n\nTasche (t\u00e2sh-e) f: bag\n\nTasse (t\u00e2s-e) f: cup\n\nTaxi (t\u00e2x-ee) n: taxi\n\nTaxistand (t\u00e2x-ee-sht\u00e2nt) m: taxi stand\n\nTee (tey) m: tea\n\nteilnehmen (tayl-ney-men) to participate\n\nTelefon (t\u00ea-le-fohn) n: phone\n\nTelefonbuch (t\u00ea-le-fohn-booH) n: phone book\n\ntelefonieren (t\u00ea-le-fohn-eer-en) to make a call\n\nTelefonnummer (t\u00ea-le-fohn-noom-er) f: phone number\n\nTelefonzelle (t\u00ea-le-fohn-ts\u00eal-e) f: phone booth\n\nTeller (t\u00eal-er) m: plate\n\nTennis (tennis [as in English]) n: tennis\n\nTermin (t\u00ear-meen) m: appointment\n\nTheater (tey-ah-ter) n: theater\n\nTisch (tish) m: table\n\nToast (tohst) m: toast\n\nToilette (toy-l\u00eat-e) f: toilet (bathroom)\n\ntoll! (tol!) great!\n\ntragen (trah-gen) to carry, wear\n\ntrinken (trink-en) to drink\n\nTrinkgeld (trink-g\u00ealt) n: tip\n\nTsch\u00fcs (chues) bye (informal)\n\nT\u00fcr (tuer) f: door\n\nU\n\nU-Bahnhaltestelle (ooh-bahn-h\u00e2l-te-sht\u00eal-e) f: subway station\n\nU-Bahnstation (ooh-bahn-sht\u00e2ts-ee-ohn) f: subway station\n\n\u00dcbernachtung (ue-ber-n\u00e2Ht-oong) f: accommodation\n\nUhr (oohr) f: clock, o'clock\n\nund (oont) and\n\nUnfall (oon-f\u00e2l) m: accident\n\nungef\u00e4hr (oon-ge-fair) approximately\n\nung\u00fcltig (oon-guel-tiH) invalid\n\nUnterschrift (oon-ter-shrift) f: signature\n\nUrlaub (oohr-loup) m: vacation\n\nV\n\nVerbindung (f\u00ear-bin-doong) f: connection\n\nVerkauf (f\u00ear-kouf) m: sale\n\nverletzt (f\u00ear-l\u00eatst) hurt\n\nverlieren (f\u00ear-leer-en) to lose\n\nverreisen (f\u00ear-ray-zen) to travel\n\nversp\u00e4tet (f\u00ear-shpai-tet) delayed\n\nVersp\u00e4tung (f\u00ear-shpai-toong) f: delay\n\nverstehen (f\u00ear-shtey-en) to understand\n\nvielen Dank (fee-len d\u00e2nk) thank you very much\n\nvielleicht (fee-layHt) perhaps\n\nVisum (vee-zoom) n: visa\n\nVogel (foh-gel) m: bird\n\nVollpension (fol-p\u00ean-see-ohn) f: room with full board\n\nvor (fohr) in front of\n\nVormittag (fohr-mi-tahk) m: morning\n\nVorname (fohr-n\u00e2-me) m: first name\n\nVorsicht (fohr-ziHt) f: caution\n\nvorstellen (fohr-sht\u00eal-en) to introduce\n\nVorstellung (fohr-sht\u00eal-oong) f: show\n\nVorwahl (fohr-v\u00e2l) f: area code\n\nW\n\nWald (v\u00e2lt) m: forest\n\nwalk (gehen) gey-en\n\nwandern (v\u00e2n-dern) hike\n\nwann (v\u00e2n) when\n\nwarm (v\u00e2rm) warm\n\nwas (v\u00e2s) what\n\nWasser (v\u00e2s-er) n: water\n\nWechselkurs (v\u00eak-sel-koors) m: exchange rate\n\nWeg (veyg) m: trail, path, way\n\nWein (vayn) m: wine\n\nweit (vayt) far\n\nwer (v\u00ear) who\n\nwerden (v\u00ear-den) to become, will\n\nWesten (v\u00eas-ten) m: west\n\nwie (vee) how\n\nwieder (vee-der) again\n\nwiederholen (vee-der-hoh-len) to repeat\n\nWind (vint) m: wind\n\nwindsurfen (vint-soorf-en) to windsurf\n\nWinter (vin-ter) m: winter\n\nwirklich (virk-liH) really\n\nwissen (vis-en) to know (a fact)\n\nwo (voh) where\n\nWoche (voH-e) f: week\n\nwohin (voh-hin) where . . . to\n\nwollen (vol-en) to want to\n\nWurst (voorst) f: sausage\n\nZ\n\nZeit (tsayt) f: time\n\nZentrum (ts\u00ean-troom) n: center\n\nziehen (tsee-hen) to pull\n\nZimmer (tsi-mer) n: room\n\nZimmerservice (tsi-mer-ser-vis) m: room service\n\nZoll (tsol) m: customs\n\nzu Hause (tsooh hou-ze) at home\n\nZug (tsoohk) m: train\n\nZugabe (tsooh-g\u00e2-be) f: encore\n\nzusammen (tsoo-z\u00e2m-en) together\n\nzweite (tsvay-te) second (ordinal number)\n\nzwischen (tsvish-en) between\n\nEnglish-German Mini-Dictionary\n\nA\n\naccident: Unfall (oon-f\u00e2l) m\n\naccommodation: \u00dcbernachtung (ue-ber-n\u00e2Ht-oong) f\n\nactor: Schauspieler (shou-shpeel-er) m\n\nafternoon: Nachmittag (nahH-mi-tahk) m\n\nagain: wieder (vee-der)\n\nagreed: einverstanden (ayn-f\u00ear-sht\u00e2nt-en)\n\nair conditioning: Klimaanlage (klee-mah-\u00e2n-l\u00e2-ge) f\n\nairmail: Luftpost (looft-post) f\n\nairplane: Flugzeug (floohk-tsoyk) n\n\nairplane ticket: Flugticket (floohk-ti-ket) n\n\nairport: Flughafen (floohk-hah-fen) m\n\nairport gate: Flugsteig (floohk-shtayk) m\n\naisle: Gang (g\u00e2ng) m\n\nall: alles (\u00e2l-es)\n\nallowed to: d\u00fcrfen (duerf-en)\n\nalso: auch (ouH)\n\nambulance: Krankenwagen (kr\u00e2n-ken-vah-gen) m\n\namount: Betrag (be-trahk) m\n\nand: und (oont)\n\nanswering machine: Anrufbeantworter (\u00e2n-roohf-be-\u00e2nt-for-ter) m\n\nappointment: Termin (t\u00ear-meen) m\n\napproximately: ungef\u00e4hr (oon-ge-fair)\n\nApril: April (\u00e2-pril) m\n\narea: Gegend (gey-gent) f\n\narea code: Vorwahl (fohr-v\u00e2l) f\n\narrival: Ankunft (\u00e2n-koonft) f\n\nask: fragen (frah-gen)\n\nat: an (\u00e2n)\n\nat home: zu Hause (tsooh hou-ze)\n\nATM: Geldautomat (g\u00ealt-ou-toh-maht) m\n\nAugust: August (ou-goost) m\n\nB\n\nbag: Tasche (t\u00e2sh-e) f\n\nbank: Bank (b\u00e2nk) f\n\nbar, restaurant: Kneipe (knay-pe) f\n\nbasketball: Basketball [as in English] m\n\nbath(room): Bad (baht) n, Toilette (toy-let-e) f\n\nbe: sein (zayn)\n\nbe called: hei\u00dfen (hays-en)\n\nbe glad about: sich freuen \u00fcber (ziH froy-en ue-ber)\n\nbe happy: sich freuen (ziH froy-en)\n\nbe interested in: sich interessieren f\u00fcr (ziH in-te-r\u00ea-seer-en fuer)\n\nbeard: Bart (b\u00e2rt) m\n\nbecome: werden (v\u00ear-den)\n\nbecome acquainted with: kennenlernen (k\u00ean-en-l\u00earn-en)\n\nbeer: Bier (beer) n\n\nbegin: beginnen (be-gin-en)\n\nbeginning: Anfang (\u00e2n-f\u00e2ng) m\n\nbehind: hinter (hin-ter)\n\nbetween: zwischen (tsvish-en)\n\nbicycle: Fahrrad (fahr-r\u00e2t) n\n\nbig: gro\u00df (grohs)\n\nbill: Schein (shayn) m\n\nbird: Vogel (foh-gel) m\n\nboarding pass: Bordkarte (bord-k\u00e2r-te) f\n\nbook: Buch (boohH) n\n\nbook (verb): buchen (boohH-en)\n\nboring: langweilig (l\u00e2ng-vay-liH)\n\nbread: Brot (broht) n\n\nbreakfast: Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck (frue-shtuek) n\n\nbring: bringen (bring-en)\n\nbring along: mitbringen (mit-bring-en)\n\nbus: Bus (boos) m\n\nbus stop: Bushaltestelle (boos-h\u00e2l-te-sht\u00eal-e) f\n\nbusy: besetzt (be-z\u00eatst)\n\nbut: aber (ah-ber)\n\nbutter: Butter (boot-er) f\n\nbuy: kaufen (kouf-en)\n\nby: bei (bay)\n\nbye (informal): Tsch\u00fcs (chues)\n\nC\n\ncake: Kuchen (koohH-en) m\n\ncalendar: Kalender (k\u00e2-l\u00ean-der) m\n\ncall (to telephone): anrufen (\u00e2n-roohf-en)\n\ncan: k\u00f6nnen (kern-en)\n\ncar: Auto (ou-toh) n\n\ncarry: tragen (trah-gen)\n\ncash: bar (bahr)\n\ncash register: Kasse (k\u00e2s-e) f\n\ncaution: Vorsicht (fohr-ziHt) f\n\ncellphone: Handy (h\u00ean-dee) n\n\ncenter: Zentrum (ts\u00ean-troom) n\n\ncertainly: selbstverst\u00e4ndlich (z\u00ealpst-f\u00ear-sht\u00eant-liH)\n\ncheck: Scheck (sh\u00eak) m\n\ncheck (bill): Rechnung (r\u00eaH-noong) f\n\ncheers!: Prost! (prohst!)\n\nchurch: Kirche (kirH-e) f\n\ncity: Stadt (sht\u00e2t) f\n\nclap: klatschen (kl\u00e2ch-en)\n\nclock: Uhr (oohr) f\n\nclose: nah (nah)\n\nclosed: geschlossen (ge-shlos-en)\n\ncoast: K\u00fcste (kues-te) f\n\ncoffee: Kaffee (k\u00e2f-ey) m\n\ncold: Erk\u00e4ltung (\u00ear-k\u00ealt-oong) f\n\ncold: kalt (k\u00e2lt)\n\ncome: kommen (kom-en)\n\ncompany: Firma (fir-m\u00e2) f\n\ncomplete(ly): ganz (g\u00e2nts)\n\nconcert: Konzert (kon-ts\u00eart) n\n\nconfirm: best\u00e4tigen (be-sht\u00ea-ti-gen)\n\nconnection: Verbindung (f\u00ear-bin-doong) f\n\nconsulate: Konsulat (kon-zoo-laht) n\n\ncost: kosten (kos-ten)\n\ncountry(side): Land (l\u00e2nt) n\n\ncow: Kuh (kooh) f\n\ncredit card: Kreditkarte (kr\u00ea-deet-k\u00e2r-te) f\n\ncup: Tasse (t\u00e2s-e) f\n\ncustoms: Zoll (tsol) m\n\nD\n\ndance: tanzen (t\u00e2n-tsen)\n\ndangerous: gef\u00e4hrlich (ge-fair-liH)\n\ndate: Datum (dah-toom) n\n\nday: Tag (tahk) m\n\nDecember: Dezember (dey-ts\u00eam-ber) m\n\ndeer: Reh (rey) n\n\ndelay: Versp\u00e4tung (f\u00ear-shpai-toong) f\n\ndelayed: versp\u00e4tet (f\u00ear-shpai-tet)\n\ndepart (by plane): abfliegen (\u00e2p-fleeg-en)\n\ndeparture (by plane): Abflug (\u00e2p-floohk) m\n\ndescribe: beschreiben (be-shrayb-en)\n\ndessert: Nachtisch (nahH-tish) m\n\ndinner: Abendessen (ah-bent-\u00eas-en) n\n\ndo: machen (m\u00e2H-en)\n\ndoctor: Arzt (\u00e2rtst) m\n\ndoctor's office: Arztpraxis (\u00e2rtst-pr\u00e2x-is) f\n\ndoor: T\u00fcr (tuer) f\n\ndoorman: Portier (por-tee-ey) m\n\ndouble room: Doppelzimmer (dop-el-tsi-mer) n\n\ndrink: trinken (trink-en)\n\ndrive: fahren (fahr-en)\n\nE\n\nearly: fr\u00fch (frue)\n\neast: Osten (os-ten) m\n\neasy: einfach (ayn-f\u00e2H)\n\neat: essen (\u00eas-en)\n\ne-mail: E-mail (email [as in English]) f\n\nembassy: Botschaft (boht-sh\u00e2ft) f\n\nemergency room: Notaufnahme (noht-ouf-nah-me) f\n\nencore: Zugabe (tsooh-g\u00e2-be) f\n\nend: Ende (\u00ean-de) n\n\nenjoy: genie\u00dfen (ge-nees-en)\n\nenjoy oneself: sich unterhalten (ziH oon-t\u00ear-h\u00e2l-ten)\n\neuro: Euro (oy-roh) m\n\nevening: Abend (ah-bent) m\n\nexact(ly): genau (ge-nou)\n\nexcellent: ausgezeichnet (ous-ge-tsayH-net)\n\nexcept: au\u00dfer (ous-er)\n\nexchange rate: Wechselkurs (v\u00eak-sel-koors) m\n\nexcuse me: Entschuldigung (ent-shool-di-goong)\n\nexhibition: Ausstellung (ous-shtel-oong) f\n\nexit: Ausfahrt (ous-f\u00e2rt) f\n\nF\n\nfall: Herbst (h\u00earpst) m\n\nfamily: Familie (f\u00e2-mi-lee-e) f\n\nfantastic: fantastisch (f\u00e2n-t\u00e2s-tish)\n\nfar: weit (vayt)\n\nfarm: Bauernhof (bou-ern-hohf) m\n\nfax: faxen (f\u00e2ks-en)\n\nFebruary: Februar (fey-broo-ahr) m\n\nfee: Geb\u00fchr (ge-buer) f\n\nfever: Fieber (fee-ber) n\n\nfield: Feld (f\u00ealt) n\n\nfill out: ausf\u00fcllen (ous-fuel-en)\n\nfire department: Feuerwehr (foy-er-veyr) f\n\nfirst: erste (\u00ears-te)\n\nfirst name: Vorname (fohr-n\u00e2-me) m\n\nfish: Fisch (fish) m\n\nflight: Flug (floohk) m\n\nfly: fliegen (fleeg-en)\n\nfor: f\u00fcr (fuer)\n\nforest: Wald (v\u00e2lt) m\n\nfork: Gabel (gah-bel) f\n\nform: Formular (for-moo-lahr) n\n\nfortune: Gl\u00fcck (gluek) n\n\nFriday: Freitag (fray-tahk) m\n\nfriend: Freund (froynt) m\n\nfriend: Freundin (froyn-din) f\n\nfruit: Obst (ohpst) n\n\nG\n\ngame: Spiel (shpeel) n\n\ngarden: Garten (g\u00e2r-ten) m\n\ngate (airport): Flugsteig (floohk-shtayk) m\n\nGerman: deutsch (doych)\n\ngive: geben (gey-ben)\n\nglass: Glas (glahs) n\n\ngo: gehen (gey-en)\n\ngolf: Golf [as in English] n\n\ngood: gut (gooht)\n\ngood-bye: Auf Wiedersehen (ouf vee-der-zey-en)\n\ngood evening: Guten Abend (gooh-ten ah-bent)\n\ngood morning: Guten Morgen (gooh-ten mor-gen)\n\ngood night: Gute Nacht (gooh-te n\u00e2Ht)\n\ngreat!: prima!\/klasse!\/toll! (pree-m\u00e2!\/kl\u00e2s-e!\/tol!)\n\nH\n\nhair: Haar (hahr) n\n\nharbor: Hafen (hah-fen) m\n\nhave: haben (hah-ben)\n\nhave to: m\u00fcssen (mues-en)\n\nhave a good trip: Gute Reise (gooh-te ray-ze)\n\nhear: h\u00f6ren (herr-en)\n\nhello (standard greeting, used throughout the day): Guten Tag (gooh-ten tahk)\n\nhello (informal): Hallo (h\u00e2-loh)\n\nhelp: helfen (h\u00ealf-en)\n\nhelp: Hilfe (hilf-en) f\n\nhere: hier (heer)\n\nhighway: Autobahn (ou-toh-bahn) f\n\nhike: wandern (v\u00e2n-dern)\n\nhill: H\u00fcgel (hue-gel) m\n\nhobby: Hobby (hob-ee) n\n\nhorse: Pferd (pf\u00eart) n\n\nhospital: Krankenhaus (kr\u00e2n-ken-hous) n\n\nhot: hei\u00df (hays)\n\nhotel: Hotel (hotel [as in English]) n\n\nhour: Stunde (shtoon-de) f\n\nhouse: Haus (house [as in English]) n\n\nhow: wie (vee)\n\nhungry: hungrig (hoong-riH)\n\nhurt: verletzt (f\u00ear-l\u00eatst)\n\nI\n\nimagine: sich vorstellen (ziH fohr-sht\u00eal-en)\n\nin front of: vor (fohr)\n\ninteresting: interessant (in-te-re-s\u00e2nt)\n\ninternet: Internet [as in English] n\n\ninternet connection: Internetanschluss (in-ter-n\u00eat-\u00e2n-shloos) m\n\nintersection: Kreuzung (kroyts-oong) f\n\nintroduce: vorstellen (fohr-sht\u00eal-en)\n\nintroduce oneself: sich vorstellen (ziH fohr-sht\u00eal-en)\n\ninvalid: ung\u00fcltig (oon-guel-tiH)\n\ninvitation: Einladung (ayn-lah-doong) f\n\ninvite: einladen (ayn-lah-den)\n\nJ\n\nJanuary: Januar (yahn-oo-ahr) m\n\njog: joggen (jog-en [j pronounced as in English])\n\njuice: Saft (z\u00e2ft) m\n\nJuly: Juli (yooh-lee) m\n\nJune: Juni (yooh-nee) m\n\njust: nur (noohr)\n\nK\n\nkey: Schl\u00fcssel (shlues-el) m\n\nknife: Messer (m\u00eas-er) n\n\nknow (a fact): wissen (vis-en)\n\nknow (a person, place): kennen (k\u00ean-en)\n\nknow one's way around: sich auskennen (ziH ous-k\u00ean-en)\n\nL\n\nlake: See (zey) m\n\nlarge (in size): gro\u00df (grohs)\n\nlast (opposite of first): letzte (lets-te)\n\nlast name: Familienname (f\u00e2-mi-lee-en-n\u00e2-me) m\n\nlaugh: lachen (l\u00e2H-en)\n\nlawyer: Anwalt (ahn-v\u00e2lt) m\n\nlay: legen (ley-gen)\n\nleave: abreisen (\u00e2p-ray-zen)\n\nleft: links (links)\n\nletter: Brief (breef) m\n\nlike: m\u00f6gen (mer-gen), gefallen (ge-f\u00e2l-en)\n\nline: Leitung (lay-toong) f\n\nliter: Liter (lee-ter) m\n\nlittle (a little): bisschen (bis-Hen)\n\nlive: leben (ley-ben)\n\nlocal train: S-Bahn (\u00eas-bahn) f\n\nlong (in length): lang (l\u00e2ng)\n\nlook forward to: sich freuen auf (ziH froy-en ouf)\n\nlose: verlieren (f\u00ear-leer-en)\n\nluck: Gl\u00fcck (gluek) n\n\nluggage: Gep\u00e4ck (ge-p\u00eak) n\n\nlunch: Mittagessen (mi-tahk-\u00eas-en) n\n\nM\n\nmail: Post (post) f\n\nmailbox: Briefkasten (breef-k\u00e2s-ten) m\n\nmain dish: Hauptspeise (houpt-shpayz-e) f\n\nmake: machen (m\u00e2H-en)\n\nmake a call: telefonieren (t\u00ea-le-fohn-eer-en)\n\nmake a turn: abbiegen (\u00e2p-beeg-en)\n\nmap: Karte (k\u00e2r-te) f\n\nMarch: M\u00e4rz (m\u00earts) m\n\nmarket: Markt (m\u00e2rkt) m\n\nmay: d\u00fcrfen (duerf-en)\n\nMay: Mai (may) m\n\nmeat: Fleisch (flaysh) n\n\nmeet: sich treffen (ziH tr\u00eaf-en)\n\nmeeting: Besprechung (be-shpr\u00eaH-oong) f\n\nmenu: Speisekarte (shpayz-e-k\u00e2r-te) f\n\nmessage: Nachricht (nahH-reeHt) f\n\nmiddle: Mitte (mit-e) f\n\nmilk: Milch (milH) f\n\nminute: Minute (mi-nooh-te) f\n\nMonday: Montag (mohn-tahk) m\n\nmoney: Geld (g\u00ealt) n\n\nmonth: Monat (moh-n\u00e2t) m\n\nmorning: Morgen (mor-gen) m\n\nmorning (forenoon): Vormittag (fohr-mi-tahk) m\n\nmountain: Berg (b\u00earg) m\n\nmountains: Gebirge (ge-bir-ge) n\n\nmovie theater: Kino (kee-noh) n\n\nmuseum: Museum (mooh-zey-oom) n\n\nmust: m\u00fcssen (mues-en)\n\nmy: mein (mayn)\n\nN\n\nname: Name (nah-me) m\n\nnationality: Nationalit\u00e4t (n\u00e2-tsee-oh-n\u00e2-li-tait) f\n\nnaturally: nat\u00fcrlich (n\u00e2-tuer-liH)\n\nnature reserve: Naturschutzgebiet (n\u00e2-toohr-shoots-ge-beet) n\n\nnear: bei (bay)\n\nnear (the): beim (baym)\n\nnearest: n\u00e4chste (naiH-ste)\n\nnever: nie (nee)\n\nnever mind: macht nichts (m\u00e2Ht niHts)\n\nnext to: neben (ney-ben)\n\nnight: Nacht (nahHt) f\n\nno (opposite of yes): nein (nayn)\n\nno, not, not any: kein (kayn)\n\nnoon: Mittag (mi-tahk) m\n\nnorth: Norden (nor-den) m\n\nnot: nicht (niHt); kein (kayn)\n\nNovember: November (noh-v\u00eam-ber) m\n\nnurse: Krankenschwester (kr\u00e2n-ken-shv\u00eas-ter) f\n\nO\n\noccupation: Beruf (be-roohf) m\n\nocean: Ozean (oh-ts\u00ea-\u00e2n) m\n\no'clock: Uhr (oohr) f\n\nOctober: Oktober (ok-toh-ber) m\n\nof course: selbstverst\u00e4ndlich (z\u00ealpst-f\u00ear-sht\u00eant-liH)\n\non: auf (ouf)\n\none-way (ticket): einfach (ayn-f\u00e2H)\n\non time: p\u00fcnktlich (puenkt-liH)\n\nopen (adjective): ge\u00f6ffnet (ge-erf-net)\n\nopen (verb): \u00f6ffnen (erf-nen)\n\nopera: Oper (oh-per) f\n\nopposite: gegen\u00fcber (gey-gen-ue-ber)\n\nP\n\npackage: Paket (p\u00e2-keyt) n\n\npain: Schmerz (shm\u00earts) m\n\npark: Park (p\u00e2rk) m\n\nparking lot: Parkplatz (p\u00e2rk-pl\u00e2ts) m\n\nparticipate: teilnehmen an (tayl-ney-men \u00e2n)\n\npassport: Reisepass (ray-ze-p\u00e2s) m\n\npay: bezahlen (be-tsahl-en)\n\nper: pro (proh)\n\nperhaps: vielleicht (fee-layHt)\n\nPersonal Identification Number (PIN): Geheimzahl (ge-haym-tsahl) f\n\nphone: Telefon (t\u00ea-le-fohn) n\n\nphone book: Telefonbuch (t\u00ea-le-fohn-booH) n\n\nphone booth: Telefonzelle (t\u00ea-le-fohn-ts\u00eal-e) f\n\nphone number: Telefonnummer (t\u00ea-le-fohn-noom-er) f\n\nplate: Teller (t\u00eal-er) m\n\nplay: spielen (shpeel-en)\n\nplease: bitte (bi-te)\n\npolice: Polizei (po-li-tsay) f\n\npost office: Post (post) f; Postamt (post-\u00e2mt) n\n\npostcard: Postkarte (post-k\u00e2r-te) f\n\npretty: sch\u00f6n (shern)\n\npull: ziehen (tsee-hen)\n\npurchase: kaufen (kouf-en)\n\npush: dr\u00fccken (druek-en)\n\nR\n\nrain: Regen (rey-gen) m\n\nrain (to rain): regnen (reyk-nen)\n\nread: lesen (ley-zen)\n\nreally: wirklich (virk-liH)\n\nreceipt: Quittung (kvit-oong) f\n\nreception desk: Rezeption (rey-ts\u00eap-tsee-ohn) f\n\nrecommend: empfehlen (em-pfey-len)\n\nremember: sich erinnern (ziH \u00ear-in-ern)\n\nrepeat: wiederholen (vee-der-hoh-len)\n\nreserve: reservieren (r\u00ea-z\u00ear-veer-en)\n\nrestaurant: Restaurant (r\u00eas-tuh-ron) n\n\nright: rechts (r\u00eaHts)\n\nriver: Fluss (floos) m\n\nroll: Br\u00f6tchen (brert-H\u00ean) n\n\nroom: Zimmer (tsi-mer) n\n\nroom service: Zimmerservice (tsi-mer-ser-vis) m\n\nroom with full board: Vollpension (fol-p\u00ean-see-ohn) f\n\nroom with half board: Halbpension (h\u00e2lp-p\u00ean-see-ohn) f\n\nround-trip: hin und zur\u00fcck (hin oont tsoo-ruek)\n\nround-trip ticket: R\u00fcckflugticket (ruek-floohk-ti-ket) n\n\nrun: laufen (louf-en)\n\nS\n\nsail: segeln (zey-geln)\n\nsale: Verkauf (f\u00ear-kouf) m\n\nSaturday (in northern Germany): Samstag (z\u00e2ms-tahk) m\n\nSaturday (in southern Germany, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland): Sonnabend (zon-ah-bent) m\n\nsausage: Wurst (voorst) f\n\nsay: sagen (zah-gen)\n\nschool: Schule (shooh-le) f\n\nsea, ocean: Meer (meyr) n\n\nsecond: Sekunde (s\u00ea-koon-de) f\n\nsecond (ordinal number): zweite (tsvay-te)\n\nsee: sehen (zey-en)\n\nsend: schicken (shik-en)\n\nseparate: getrennt (ge-tr\u00eant)\n\nSeptember: September (z\u00eap-t\u00eam-ber) m\n\nsheep: Schaf (shahf) n\n\nshort (in size): klein (klayn)\n\nshort (in length): kurz (koorts)\n\nshow: Vorstellung (fohr-sht\u00eal-oong) f\n\nshower: Dusche (dooh-she) f\n\nsick: krank (kr\u00e2nk)\n\nsignature: Unterschrift (oon-ter-shrift) f\n\nsing: singen (zing-en)\n\nsinger: S\u00e4nger (z\u00eang-er) m\n\nsingle room: Einzelzimmer (ayn-ts\u00eal-tsi-mer) n\n\nsit down: sich setzen (ziH z\u00eats-en)\n\nski: Ski fahren (shee fahr-en)\n\nsmall: klein (klayn)\n\nsnow: Schnee (shney) m\n\nsnow (to snow): scheien (shnay-en)\n\nsoccer: Fu\u00dfball (foohs-b\u00e2l) m\n\nsomebody: jemand (yey-m\u00e2nt)\n\nsomething: etwas (\u00eat-v\u00e2s)\n\nsoup: Suppe (zoop-e) f\n\nsouth: S\u00fcden (zue-den) m\n\nspeak: sprechen (shpr\u00eaH-en)\n\nspoon: L\u00f6ffel (lerf-el) m\n\nspring: Fr\u00fchling (frue-ling) m\n\nstamp: Briefmarke (breef-m\u00e2r-ke) f\n\nstation, stop: Haltestelle (h\u00e2l-te-sht\u00eal-e) f\n\nstay: bleiben (blay-ben)\n\nstop: halten (h\u00e2l-ten)\n\nstraight ahead: geradeaus (ge-rah-de-ous)\n\nstreet: Stra\u00dfe (shtrah-se) f\n\nstreetcar: Stra\u00dfenbahn (shtrah-sen-bahn) f\n\nsubway station: U-Bahnhaltestelle (ooh-bahn-h\u00e2l-te-sht\u00eal-e) f; U-Bahnstation (ooh-bahn-sht\u00e2ts-ee-ohn) f\n\nsuit: passen (pas-en) (to fit)\n\nsuitcase: Koffer (kof-er) m\n\nsummer: Sommer (zom-er) m\n\nsun: Sonne (zon-e) f\n\nSunday: Sonntag (zon-tahk) m\n\nsuspenseful: spannend (shp\u00e2n-ent)\n\nswim schwimmen (shvim-en)\n\nswimming pool: Schwimmbad (shvim-baht) n\n\nT\n\ntable: Tisch (tish) m\n\ntake: nehmen (ney-men)\n\ntake a walk: spazieren gehen (shp\u00e2-tsee-ren gey-en)\n\ntake place: stattfinden (sht\u00e2t-fin-den)\n\ntalk: reden (rey-den)\n\ntalk, to enjoy oneself: sich unterhalten (ziH oon-t\u00ear-h\u00e2l-ten)\n\ntall: gro\u00df (grohs )\n\ntaxi: Taxi (t\u00e2x-ee) n\n\ntaxi stand: Taxistand (t\u00e2x-ee-sht\u00e2nt) m\n\ntea: Tee (tey) m\n\nteam: Mannschaft (m\u00e2n-sh\u00e2ft) f\n\nteller window: Schalter (sh\u00e2l-ter) m\n\ntennis: Tennis [as in English] n\n\nthanks: danke (d\u00e2n-ke)\n\ntheater: Theater (tey-ah-ter) n\n\nthere: dort (dort)\n\nthird: dritte (drit-e)\n\nthirsty: durstig (doors-tiH)\n\nThursday: Donnerstag (don-ers-tahk) m\n\nticket: Karte (k\u00e2r-te) f\n\nticket (train\/bus): Fahrkarte (fahr-k\u00e2r-te) f\n\ntime: Zeit (tsayt) f\n\ntip: Trinkgeld (trink-g\u00ealt) n\n\nto: nach (nahH)\n\ntoast: Toast (tohst) m\n\ntoday: heute (hoy-te)\n\ntogether: zusammen (tsoo-z\u00e2m-en)\n\ntomorrow: morgen (mor-gen)\n\ntonight: heute Nacht (hoy-te n\u00e2Ht)\n\ntourist information office: Fremdenverkehrsb\u00fcro (fr\u00eam-den-f\u00ear-k\u00ears-bue-roh) n\n\ntown hall: Rathaus (r\u00e2t-hous) n\n\ntrack: Gleis (glays) n\n\ntraffic light: Ampel (\u00e2m-pel) f\n\ntrail, path, way: Weg (veyg) m\n\ntrain: Zug (tsoohk) m\n\ntrain station: Bahnhof (bahn-hohf) m\n\ntravel: reisen (ray-zen)\n\ntravel (to go\/be away [on a trip]): verreisen (f\u00ear-ray-zen)\n\ntravel agency: Reiseb\u00fcro (ray-ze-bue-roh) n\n\ntraveler's check: Reisescheck (ray-ze-sh\u00eak) m\n\ntree: Baum (boum) m\n\ntrip: Reise (ray-ze) f\n\nTuesday: Dienstag (deens-tahk) m\n\nturn: abbiegen (ap-beeg-en)\n\nU\n\nunderstand: verstehen (f\u00ear-shtey-en)\n\nunfortunately: leider (lay-der)\n\nV\n\nvacation: Urlaub (oor-loup) m\n\nvalid: g\u00fcltig (guel-tiH)\n\nvalley: Tal (tahl) n\n\nvegetable: Gem\u00fcse (ge-mue-ze) n\n\nvery: sehr (zeyr)\n\nvillage: Dorf (dorf) n\n\nvisa: Visum (vee-zoom) n\n\nW\n\nwaiter: Kellner (k\u00eal-ner) m\n\nwallet: Brieftasche (breef-t\u00e2sh-e) f\n\nwant to: wollen (vol-en)\n\nwarm: warm (v\u00e2rm)\n\nwater: Wasser (v\u00e2s-er) n\n\nwear: tragen (trah-gen)\n\nWednesday: Mittwoch (mit-voH) m\n\nweek: Woche (voH-e) f\n\nwest: Westen (v\u00eas-ten) m\n\nwhat: was (v\u00e2s)\n\nwhen: wann (v\u00e2n)\n\nwhere: wo (voh)\n\nwhere . . . to: wohin (voh-hin)\n\nwho: wer (v\u00ear)\n\nwill: werden (v\u00ear-den)\n\nwin: gewinnen (ge-vin-en)\n\nwind: Wind (vint) m\n\nwindow: Fenster (f\u00eans-ter) n\n\nwindsurf: windsurfen (vint-soorf-en)\n\nwine: Wein (vayn) m\n\nwinter: Winter (vin-ter) m\n\nwith: mit (mit)\n\nwoods: Wald (v\u00e2lt) m\n\nwould like: m\u00f6chten (merH-ten)\n\nY\n\nyear: Jahr (yahr) n\n\nyes: ja (yah)\n\nyesterday: gestern (g\u00eas-tern)\n\nyour: dein (dayn) (familiar, singular)\n\nyouth hostel: Jugendherberge (yooh-g\u00eant-h\u00ear-b\u00ear-ge) f\n\nZ\n\nzip code: Postleitzahl (post-layt-tsahl) f\nAppendix B\n\nVerb Tables\n\nNote: Many German verbs fall into multiple categories, but in general, they break down into two groups: regular, also known as weak verbs, and irregular, also described as strong verbs. Irregular verbs have a stem vowel change in one or more tenses. Some irregular verbs are conjugated with haben, others with sein in the present perfect tense. This appendix is arranged to accommodate these idiosyncrasies of the German language.\n\nRegular Verbs (No Stem Vowel Change)\n\nNote: To form the future tense of such verbs, use the infinitive form of another verb and the conjugated form of the verb werden (will). The past is conjugated with haben (to have).\n\nSpecial Conjugations\n\nNote: For more information on the verb sein\u2014for example, how to use it in the past tense\u2014see Chapters 2 and 10.\n\nNote: For more information on how to use the future tense, see Chapter 13.\n\nNote: For more information on how to use separable verbs and a list of separable verbs, go to Chapter 15.\n\nNote: For more details on dative and accusative reflexive verbs, look at Chapter 12.\n\nIrregular and Modal Verbs\n\nNote: To form the future tense of the verbs in this list, use the infinitive form of another verb and the conjugated form of the verb werden (will). Most of these verbs are conjugated in the present perfect tense with haben (to have); some are conjugated with sein (to be).\n\nAppendix C\n\nOn the CD\n\nTrack Listing\n\nThe following is a list of the tracks that appear on this book's audio CD. Note that this is an audio-only CD \u2014 it'll play in any standard CD player or in your computer's CD-ROM drive. Viel Spa\u00df! (feel shpahs!) (Have fun!).\n\nTrack 1: The German alphabet (Chapter 3)\n\nTrack 2: Pronouncing German vowels (Chapter 3)\n\nTrack 3: Pronouncing vowels with umlauts (Chapter 3)\n\nTrack 4: Pronouncing diphthongs (Chapter 3)\n\nTrack 5: Pronouncing German consonants (Chapter 3)\n\nTrack 6: Pronouncing the German \"r\" and \"l\" (Chapter 3)\n\nTrack 7: Pronouncing consonant combinations (Chapter 3)\n\nTrack 8: Formal greetings (Chapter 3)\n\nTrack 9: Informal greetings between old friends (Chapter 3)\n\nTrack 10: Saying goodbye at the train station (Chapter 3)\n\nTrack 11: Buying food, using the metric system (Chapter 4)\n\nTrack 12: Chatting about family (Chapter 5)\n\nTrack 13: Discussing jobs (Chapter 6)\n\nTrack 14: Chatting about plans and the weather (Chapter 6)\n\nTrack 15: Asking for directions to a taxi stand (Chapter 7)\n\nTrack 16: Finding a friend's hotel (Chapter 7)\n\nTrack 17: Being seated at a restaurant (Chapter 8)\n\nTrack 18: Ordering a meal (Chapter 8)\n\nTrack 19: Paying the check and tipping (Chapter 8)\n\nTrack 20: Buying a ladies' shirt (Chapter 9)\n\nTrack 21: Trying on a blouse (Chapter 9)\n\nTrack 22: Making a date to go to the movies (Chapter 10)\n\nTrack 23: Talking about the ballet (Chapter 10)\n\nTrack 24: Making a business call (Chapter 11)\n\nTrack 25: Talking about vacation plans (Chapter 12)\n\nTrack 26: Getting information at the tourist office (Chapter 12)\n\nTrack 27: Booking a flight with a travel agent (Chapter 13)\n\nTrack 28: Exchanging money (Chapter 14)\n\nTrack 29: Checking in at the airport (Chapter 15)\n\nTrack 30: Asking which bus to take (Chapter 15)\n\nTrack 31: Reserving a room (Chapter 16)\n\nTrack 32: Checking into a hotel (Chapter 16)\n\nTrack 33: Discussing symptoms with a doctor (Chapter 17)\n\nCustomer Care\n\nIf you have trouble with the CD, please call Wiley Product Technical Support at 877-762-2974. Outside the United States, call 317-572-3993. You can also contact Wiley Product Technical Support at support.wiley.com. Wiley Publishing will provide technical support only for installation and other general quality control items.\n\nTo place additional orders or to request information about other Wiley products, please call 877-762-2974.\nAppendix D\n\nAnswer Key\n\nThe following pages provide you with the answer keys to the Fun & Games activities that you find at the end of the chapters.\n\nChapter 3: Hallo! Pronunciation and Basic Expressions\n\n1. geht, Ihnen, gut, ist, freut, auch; 2. hallo, geht's, mir, selbst, auch; 3. hei\u00dft, hei\u00dfe, du, bin, wer, meine\n\nChapter 4: Getting Numbers, Time, and Measurements Straight\n\n1, Montag, acht Uhr, anrufen (call) Herr Hegele; 2. Montag, zehn Uhr drei\u00dfig\u2013elf Uhr drei\u00dfig, Meeting; 3. Dienstag, neun Uhr f\u00fcnfundvierzig, Golf; 4. Mittwoch, ICE Zug (train) nach (to) Dortmund, vierzehn Uhr einundzwanzig; 5. Donnerstag, fliegen (fly) nach (to) Innsbruck, sieben Uhr vierzig; 6. Freitag, Abendessen (dinner), zwanzig Uhr; 7. Samstag, Museum Haus der Kunst, zw\u00f6lf Uhr; 8. Samstag, Theater Faust, neunzehn Uhr drei\u00dfig; 9. Sonntag, Cocktail mit (with) Andrea, achtzehn Uhr\n\nChapter 5: Talking about Home and Family\n\nA. Bad; B. Schlafzimmer; C. Esszimmer; D. K\u00fcche; E. Wohnzimmer\n\nChapter 6: Getting to Know You: Making Small Talk\n\n1. Unwetter, donnert; 2. unter Null, schneit; 3. Temperatur, regnen; 4. Regen\n\nChapter 7: Asking for Directions\n\n1. D; 2. G; 3. E; 4. C; 5. H; 6. B; 7. A; 8. F\n\nChapter 8: Guten Appetit! Dining Out and Going to the Market\n\nA. die Suppe; B. die Serviette; C. die Gabel; D. der Teller; E. das Steak; F. das Kartoffelp\u00fcree; G. das Messer; H. die Tasse Kaffee; I. das Glas Wasser; J. der L\u00f6ffel. (The waiter forgot der Salat.)\n\nChapter 9: Shopping Made Easy\n\n7th floor: Restaurant; 6th floor: Computer; 5th floor: TV\/Telekommunikation; 4th floor: Schuhe; 3rd floor: Kinderabteilung; 2nd floor: Herrenabteilung; 1st floor: Damenabteilung; Erdgeschoss: Schmuckabteilung; Untergeschoss: Supermarkt\n\nChapter 10: Going Out on the Town\n\n1. Museum; 2. Sinfonie; 3. Film; 4. Ballet; 5. Oper; 6. Party\n\nChapter 11: Taking Care of Business and Telecommunications\n\n1. der B\u00fcrostuhl; 2. die Lampe; 3. der Umschlag; 4. der Kalender; 5. der Computer; 6. der Drucker; 7. das Telefon; 8. der Fotokopierer; 9. der Schreibtisch; 10. das Papier; 11. der Kugelschreiber; 12. der Bleistift; 13. die Unterlagen; 14. die Maus\n\nChapter 12: Recreation and the Great Outdoors\n\nChapter 13: Planning a Trip\n\n1. werden; 2. Wirst; 3. werde; 4. Werdet; 5. wird; 6. werden\n\nChapter 14: Making Sense of Euros and Cents\n\n1. f\u00fcnfhundertzehn Euro, drei\u00dfig Cent; 2. zweihundertsechs Euro, sechzig Cent; 3. sechshundert Euro, f\u00fcnfzig Cent; 4. zw\u00f6lf Euro; 5. zwei Euro, f\u00fcnfzig Cent\n\nChapter 15: Getting Around: Planes, Trains, Taxis, and More\n\n1. G; 2. D; 3. B; 4. E; 5. A; 6. F; 7. J; 8. H; 9. I; 10. C\n\nChapter 16: Finding a Place to Stay\n\nFirst Activity: 1. Was; 2. Wie; 3. Wann; 4. Wo; 5. Was f\u00fcr\n\nSecond Activity: 1. Date of Arrival; 2. Last name; 3. First name; 4. Occupation; 5. Birth date; 6. Place of birth; 7. Nationality; 8. Street Number; 9. Zip Code; 10. City; 11. Town\/Date; 12. Signature\n\nChapter 17: Handling Emergencies\n\n1. die Brust; 2. die Schulter; 3. das Auge; 4. der Kopf; 5. die Nase; 6. der Mund; 7. der Hals; 8. der Arm; 9. die Hand; 10. der Bauch\/der Magen; 11. das Bein; 12. der Fu\u00df; 13. der Fu\u00dfkn\u00f6chel; 14. das Knie\n\nTo access the cheat sheet specifically for this book, go to www.dummies.com\/cheatsheet\/german.\n\nFind out \"HOW\" at Dummies.com\nIf this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD, you may download this material at booksupport.wiley.com For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\n1. about forsaking and not\n\n2. plans a & b and the bee-wing book\n\n3. feathers for old charlie\n\n4. alice's book of flying\n\n5. communication strategies\n\n6. house of silence\n\n7. kith and kin\n\n8. on birthday number fifteen\n\n9. Runaway\n\n10. The First Poem\n\n11. lamentation \u2014 an utterance of grief\n\n12. the comeuppance of jack faulkner\n\n13. dove among the pie wrappers\n\n14. ballerina on a bicycle\n\n15. french knots and falling down\n\n16. bargaining with the god of flying things\n\n17. Finding That Girl Who Made Snow on the Roof\n\n18. speaking to the dead\n\n19. the legend of teddy english\n\n20. down to the river\n\n21. The Boy Who Loved Dares\n\n22. Tilda and the Tar Pit\n\n23. Twelve Thoughts\n\n24. letting go\n\n25. Keeping Tilda Safe\n\n26. between the cracks\n\n27. The Sound of Anon\n\n28. things i wrote\n\n29. things i did not\n\n30. old charlie's table\n\n31. A Fisherman's Table\n\n32. my grandmother's chest\n\n33. a question of color\n\n34. in a field of significant weeds\n\n35. anthem\n\n36. heroes and villains\n\n37. Shame\n\n38. troubled\n\n39. forgotten thing\n\n40. still alice, still\n\n41. Running to Alice\n\n42. a decent thing to be\n\n43. river sonnet\n\n44. letting manny in\n\n45. Two Heads, One Heart\n\n46. july\n\n47. the game\n\n48. A Little Reminder\n\n49. mountain climbing\n\n50. precious\n\n51. in which manny has come to warn me and joey\n\n52. the o'leary question\n\n53. the traffic on tullamarine freeway\n\n54. Sailing Away\n\n55. submarines and sirens\n\n56. shipwrecked\n\n57. love letters to gram\n\nafter words\n\ni am the girl manny loves. the girl who writes our story in the book of flying. i am alice.\n\nthey sewed me up when i was twelve. mended my broken head with fishbone stitches. tucked my frayed edges in. tucked everything in. things meant to be and things not. do it quick. stem the flow. stop life leaking out of alice. that's all that they wanted. so gram said.\n\nbroken alice. and forsaken. there was always forsaking in our family. first our father. then our mother, april \u2014 and after the stitching, our papa, old charlie, went too. only gram \u2014 grandma glorious \u2014 and joey stayed. brother joey, who said that love was at the bottom of all that forsaking. wrong love. love that hurt. he was ten when he said it. but older, much older. promised he'd never forsake me. and i believed him.\n\njoey would have bled us both. nicked our finger-skins with old charlie's pocketknife. smudged our blood together like we used to when we were little. when we made promises we thought we could keep. but joey couldn't cut me when i was number twelve. not even a little bit. not after what happened. he didn't have the guts to. instead he took tools from the shed. chisel, rasp, and hammer. sharp he filed the chisel's blade. sharp enough to slit a lamb's throat. for weeks of afternoons he disappeared. chipped and chiseled in secret. showed me what he'd done when it was finished. wrote his promise for all the world to see. scraped it on the red gum tree that held up the bridge down on oktober bend.\n\njoey and alice forever\n\nbetween him and me he'd scratched a crooked heart.\n\nthen came bear and it was like the beginning of something new. no one ever came before. dear bear, constant companion, maremma, shepherd dog. strong, swift, silent bear. teeth and hearing sharp. wiring perfect. could have torn a man's throat out in seconds. would have. for me.\n\nplan a: joey would take me to school. to high school with him when i was mended. but there was too much noise and my electrics went haywire. there was no plan b. so i went home. was sent home. stayed home.\n\ni remembered words, struggled to speak them. forgot how to arrange them. how to join them on a page. to begin with, i wrote short things. lists and notes to self. some lines finished with a word that reminded me of what i wanted to say next.\n\nschool is loud too\n\nmany people\n\njoey brings me\n\nbooks teaches\n\nme things looks\n\nafter me.\n\nbefore manny came, before i saw his face or knew his name, before i touched his skin, i spent my days indoors. then bear beguiled me. waved her feathered tail and smiled and led me down sunlit paths. through our paradise garden. i tried to write about the things i saw. simple things.\n\nghost dog\n\nsage spears\n\nrosemary blue and new-minted\n\ngreen\n\nleaves\n\nthen gram thought of plan b. joey took me to the bus and i went to the day center. for two weeks i went. it was like school but worse and i came home. again.\n\nwe had books at home. quiet books that did not short-circuit my electricals. our dictionary lived on the mantelpiece. squeezed between the chimney bricks and canisters, tea leaves, rice, and sugar. gram's bible hid in her underwear drawer, holy pages thin as bee-wings. joey said the little-lettered stories on them were only make-believe. like make-believe didn't count. but i loved gram's holy book for its gold-edged pages, strange words, and mysteries. when joey forgot to bring proper books home from the library, i read the dictionary. or sometimes stole gram's bible from its tangled nest of petticoats and underpants. sneaked under the house with it and read aloud to bear.\n\nonce upon a time there were two kings. one called david, the other solomon. the kings wrote poems. they were poet kings and the poems they wrote were called psalms.\n\ntheir poems were recorded on the bee-wing pages. i used them to remind me of how to arrange my own words together. the poet kings wrote of wars and sheep and goats, lovers with nice teeth and red cheeks, and someone called the lord. i wrote mostly about joey and bear. strange, old-fashioned poems like this:\n\njoey leads me beside the river\n\nlets* me lie down in green paddocks and\n\nbrings library books home for me.\n\nthough i walk through charlotte's pass\n\ni will fear no evil\n\nfor bear is with me\n\npapa's gun is in the washhouse to protect me.\n\njoey and bear will stay beside me\n\nand we will live at oktober bend forever.\n\n* note: the poet kings might have used \"makes\" instead of \"lets.\" but some words happen my heart to thunder in my chest. my electrics to hiss and fizz like wetted sherbet in my head. \"makes\" is one of them. \"makes\" and \"make\" and \"made.\" they remind me of when someone forces you to do something. in green paddocks or under the stars at oktober bend. or anywhere else. i think careful before i use these words. sometimes i find better words. like \"lets.\" \"lets\" gives you a choice.\n\njoey's skinned knuckles gnarled over. his hammered fingernails purpled and peeled. new ones grew pale as scalded almonds. other sores didn't heal. joey wouldn't let them. picked at the scabs. kept them raw so he wouldn't forget. scars to remind him like the message on the bridge.\n\nmy scars hid under hair grown long and curly as old mattress springs. strangers looked at my wild red locks and weed-green eyes. stared at my colors and curves. didn't know about invisible stitches or crazy circuits. didn't understand that my slow, unjoined speech began as perfect thoughts. hadn't heard of the curse cast upon me. the spell of twelveness.\n\nonly nearest and dearest knew that. it was family business. like the calm pills that snuffed out joy and sadness equally. balanced moods. made life flat. gram and joey saw the sideways shift of strangers' eyes when i spoke. watched blood rush to their cheeks when they figured out i was not what they expected. i didn't care what strangers thought. but i cared about gram and joey. so me and bear stayed mostly home.\n\nwhen i grew braver, bear walked me to the river. under the swing bridge at charlotte's pass we went. out over the small bald hills through the black ironbark forest to places only me and bear, joey, and old charlie knew about.\n\nthere i gathered the wild\n\nflowers bright\n\nbilly buttons\n\nbread and butter bush and\n\ncreeping purple\n\nsarsaparilla\n\narranged them into jam jar posies for the sill above the sink.\n\nbut mostly i took feathers home. surprising gifts from the birds, floating, falling, free. i learned the art of fly tying from papa charlie. while i searched for feathers, wool, and other ingredients that i needed, i wore papa's canvas bag across my shoulder. striped orange, brown, and white with moss-green underneath. offcuts from gram's deck chair.\n\nthe deck-chair satchel bulged with papa's tools:\n\na capstan ready-rubbed tobacco tin filled\n\nwith bright, sharp hooks\n\nfine-pointed scissors\n\nheavy-pointed scissors\n\nclippers and a\n\ndubbing needle a\n\nsharpening stone and a book\n\nthe book was titled _fly tying: the definitive guide to hand tying flies for trout._\n\nin a pocket on the outside of the deck-chair bag was _my_ book of flying. i kept the two books apart. it seemed wrong for them to touch. there were pictures inside papa's book i did not like. especially the one on page 44. i glued it to page 45 with flour-and-water paste. that way i could not see the picture by mistake if i was looking for how to tie a silver doctor or a muddle minnow. or reminding myself of the difference between a hair-wing coachman and a hair-wing _royal_ coachman.\n\nsince then i have discovered the story of how the royal coachman came to be. a man named john hailey once made a coachman. but he added a little band of silk around the middle and a tail of wood duck feathers. someone, when they saw it, said, \"here is a fly intended to be a coachman, but it is not the true coachman. what can you call it?\"\n\n\"oh, that's easy enough. call it the royal coachman, for it is so finely dressed\" was the answer.*\n\n* marbury, mary orvis. _favorite flies and their histories,_ 1892.\n\nold charlie knew the lures all by heart. learned them from his father when he was number eight. but they did not let my papa charlie have scissors, hooks, or dubbing needles in that little room without stars. in case he used them to rip the veins out of his wrists or damage his keepers. gram said that no allowances were made for an old man who committed a crime of passion.\n\ni missed papa. missed all the things we did together. especially making flies.\n\njoey said there was no reason why i should not make them. no reason why i shouldn't sell them to jack faulkner like our grandfather did.\n\ni told myself all the reasons why i should.\n\nto pay the debt\n\ni owed old charlie and\n\nbecause they were beautiful and because\n\ni could and\n\nthen i told myself not to think\n\nabout page 44\n\nand the two rainbow trout\n\nbloodied red\n\ngills and mouths kissing the air and\n\nthe shut-eyed man holding them\n\nas though he cannot bear to look\n\nat the terrible thing he has done.\n\ntold myself that if\n\nthat picture should spring\n\nto mind like a hook\n\nin my throat then\n\ni must imagine the ghosts\n\nof the fish\n\ncoming out of their mouths\n\nand going back into the river,\n\nwhere they belong.\n\nbegun by chance\n\nby happy accident\n\non stolen pages\n\nis less about\n\nfeathers or flies\n\nor wings and more\n\nabout words\n\nhow they caught me\n\nby surprise\n\nraised me\n\nin their rushing\n\nupdraft\n\nlifted me\n\nfrom pen and page\n\ninto the clear midair\n\ngave me a bird's-\n\neye view.\n\nit was begun that one brave day when i emptied out my mediocre-making medicine.\n\nflushed my calm pills away with toilet water. then filled myself with fright that i had poisoned oceans and rivers. imagined fish, belly-up like capsized smiles. no more shimmering, swimming, or cool blue dives. flushing was a risk i could not take again. from then i kept my pills in a cadbury's roses tin that smelled of a christmas past.\n\ntinned pills set my thoughts loose. some pressed heavy on me. unspeakable questions of what did or did not happen when i was number twelve. unanswerable wonderings of what eternal twelveness meant and what might or might not happen in the ever after.\n\nother thoughts lit like wings upon my shoulders. and because of them i one day wished aloud. said words for what i wanted. pens and inks, and clean white pages. joey brought them in the morning. jars tumbled from his emptied pockets down the blankety hills. lay there like jewels in the soft valley between my thighs while i stared jumble-headed in the earliness.\n\n\"pinched them from the newsagent.\" joey's warm brother-breath curled like feathers in the cold air. \"made a speedy getaway,\" he said, and i, still dream-eyed, saw him on his bicycle, paper-stuffed shirt. jars clinking, legs pumping with fright and daring.\n\nhe sat beside me while i held the stolen colors up to the new morning light. one by one. the violet, the blue, and the black. a book of empty pages lay open on my lap. a journey to be taken. was this what love looked like? stolen inks and empty pages? was it good love? in the quiet of the afterward i wrote down a thing i thought. a small and simple thing. a gift for joey.\n\nif it's not love that makes you stay  \ni set you free\n\ni did not show the words to him. not then. not ever. on a stolen page i wrote them. a small step on a long path to learn the power of words. even my words. i named my book for what words gave me. alice's book of flying.\n\noh, patient book of flying! at first the words i put on paper came slow. not like the quick, careless voicewords i heard other people use. in my separateness i searched for fresh words and old forgotten ones. looked for them in the bee-wing book, the dictionary, and in library books joey brought home for me. others i collected from the yarns gram spun. book of flying had no ears to judge me. what i wrote there was a conversation with myself.\n\nbut even i knew words are made for sharing. sometimes i wrote mine on scraps of paper and took them to the railway waiting room. offered them to passengers and passersby. no one ever stopped; no one ever took a poem. i guessed they'd heard the stories of my madness and what had made me the way i am. or maybe it was old charlie they'd heard about.\n\n\"most people don't understand giving that's for free,\" joey said. \"they probably think you want money or you're a religious freak or something.\"\n\nthat's the way it was in the world outside oktober bend, he said, and i believed him. i couldn't remember what it was like before.\n\nsince no one would take my scraps, i pinned them in places where people might stop and read. railway waiting room, fish-and-chip shops, church notice boards, and bus shelters. squeezed them between and under and beside lawn-mowing cards, lost-and-found notices, and babysitting ads. sometimes i pasted speech bubbles on the paper lips of poster models. gave them words so they'd never be like me.\n\n_\"in any language a scream is a scream and a smile is a smile.\"_\n\ni even invented a word to describe the things i wrote. called them alicisms. i liked that word. it was mine.\n\nin quiet corners, i pinned questions.\n\n_is love or flying the quickest way between two hearts?_\n\n_is love or flying the most dangerous?_\n\n_is love the only cause of forsaking?_\n\ni left spaces for answers and pencils tied to string and did not wonder if my odd questions were signs of shedding twelveness. the only responses were rude ones. until manny came.\n\nonce upon a time we had a grandfather who lived with us and a telephone that did not work. joey said the phone company disconnected it because we didn't pay the bills. but that didn't stop gram shouting into the receiver when she got the debt collector's letters. she did it to fool us, joey said.\n\ni don't remember gram shouting. that was before. i only remember after, when gram, joey, bear, and me were all who were left. when gram was easier to say than grandma glorious. when i wrote lists instead of sentences and sounded like a tuba with a sock stuffed in its throat. when gram looked old and tired like other people's grandmothers.\n\nafter was when the landlord sent us an eviction letter. said the council wanted to demolish the house. told us we had to get out. out of our home. out of our place in the world.\n\n\"where will we go? what will happen to us if we don't?\" i asked gram. \"will they put us in jail, like papa?\"\n\n\"don't be stupid,\" she snapped. \"we're not going anywhere. we pay our rent. we got a right to be here.\" from then on she burned council letters and letters from our landlord in the stove. without even opening them. like that was going to save us.\n\njoey was more practical. he cleaned old charlie's gun. oiled its two blue barrels. kept it shipshape. and in spring when the rains came and the river rose, it was joey who dragged the boat out from under the house. tied it to a veranda post. safe as we could be. all of us. papa in the slammer. letters in the stove, gun under the house, boat on the veranda, companion constant, and secret at the angel's feet.\n\nthe secret appeared one morning in the earliness of my homecoming. body weak, stitching raw, thoughts unruly. but still i spied. spied it resting on the blue petals of a cloth daisy. thought i had found a little soul upon my sheet. pure as light, it was. clear and glistening. shapeless as a cloud. i cut around the flower. snip-snipped, careful as i could. hid it in a matchbox. the red-haired lady kept her heart-shaped lips closed. wouldn't tell. but i told joey. bothered him with questions he couldn't answer. bothered him to bury it. to his why i answered, \"in case it is the beginning or the ending of something precious.\"\n\nperhaps to please me, perhaps to end my botherings, dearest brother, gentle joey, scratched a hole near the angel's stony feet. laid the matchbox there, covered it with sweet black soil and tufts of tender moss, he said. patted it down, snug and safe. a secret between him and me. a dear departed soul to keep teddy company. to this day i do not really know what was in the matchbox. perhaps it was filled with longing or with fear. or maybe with nothing at all.\n\nfor weeks afterward, i wanted to ask joey to dig it up again. to make sure it was still there. scared it was or wasn't. scared it was part of my madness. only a dream. scared there might be loose ends after all. one thread pulled and i might come undone. so i said nothing.\n\nmonths later, when a thread of fear fizzed like a lit wick, i wrote an antidote to fright in my book of flying.\n\nwe strange birds are safe\n\nin our rust-chewed nest perched\n\non deep-driven bridge\n\npiles on the mudflats of oktober\n\nbend.\n\ni was not the only one who left words unsaid. ours was a house of many silences. most of them left by the people who'd gone away: our father, sunny; and then april, our mother, who took her cello with her. papa charlie would have stayed, but they took him. made him go. he had no say in it. silence swelled with time. grew thick and heavy. not only because we couldn't hear the voices of our missing ones, but because sadness, hurt, and anger made it too hard for us to talk about them. gram most of all. she ignored joey's questions like she ignored the demolition letters. and pretended she couldn't understand my slow, thick speech. days joey went to school, there was another silence. i learned to fill it by writing poems that nobody read. and questions no one answered.\n\nthey don't let you receive phone calls when you're in jail. not even from kith and kin. but you can make them if the people you want to talk to have a phone that works. the only way we could talk to papa was to visit him. he didn't answer letters.\n\n\"how will we get there?\" joey said.\n\n\"train,\" answered gram.\n\n\"do you think you can make it up to the station?\"\n\n\"i'll just have to, won't i?\"\n\n\"we'll have to leave early, then. leave plenty of time so's you can have a rest on the way.\"\n\n\"i've done it plenty of times before.\"\n\n\"before your lungs were stuffed.\"\n\ni wished joey would shut up. gram had never let us go with her before. she might change her mind if he didn't be quiet. but she ignored him.\n\n\"we'll go on sunday. children are allowed on sundays,\" gram said. she made me promise to take my tablets. \"and if you don't feel too good, tell joey and he can take you outside.\"\n\nthe security people checked us to see if we had any contraband. all we had were explorer socks with extra-padded soles, licorice allsorts, a fishing magazine, and a poem. i wanted to show papa how i could write now. wanted to give him a clue that the doctors might have gotten it wrong. i could not bring my lures to show him. we had to hand old charlie's gifts over to security even though they were not contraband. they promised us they would pass them on to papa after we left. they let me sign my name on the poem so he would know i wrote it.\n\nthere were other people in the visitors' room when we got there. men wearing green tracksuits, talking to their families. then they brought old charlie in. papa in a green tracksuit. i never saw him in a tracksuit before. never ever. least i don't think so. whenever i thought of him, he was wearing a flannel shirt and khaki overalls. on visiting sunday he looked shrunken down into his clothes. like a turtle with its head pulled halfway into its shell. he smiled when he saw us. didn't talk much. just kept smiling and nodding. biting his lip. trying not to cry. i had my pills inside me. chemicals hurtling around inside my veins. i did not cry. i held papa's hand and my electrics hummed smooth as summer honey through the wires in my brain. kith and kin we were. love made us strong. joey put coins into a machine and got us potato chips and soft drinks. i ate the chips and listened to the others. did not say many things. did not want my voice to remind papa about what happened. about the reason he could not come home with us.\n\nit was a long way from home to the jail where papa was. three hours to get there and three hours back. that is a long time for someone whose breathing apparatus is buggered. every time i asked gram when we could go again, she'd say, \"when my chest is better.\"\n\nwhen i asked joey if he and i could go by ourselves, he said, \"you've got to be eighteen to go without an accompanying adult. that's the rules,\" he said. \"we go with gram or not at all.\"\n\ngram's bad chest meant that arrangements had to be made. she signed her name on a pile of green-and-white slips so joey could get her pension money out of the bank. joey and me talked about next of kin and what happens when you haven't got any who are not locked up. kin is family. kith and kin is friends and family. kindred is likeness. joey didn't count april as kin. didn't count our mother as anything. he never knew our daddy, sunny, and i couldn't remember much about him either. our daddy who is dead. our father who art in heaven.\n\nsome things we tried not to\n\nthink about like\n\nwhat number gram was up to\n\nand we shut our ears to her\n\nstrangled breath.\n\njoey said so long as he turned eighteen before anything happened to gram, we'd be okay.\n\nif something happened before\n\nno one need know\n\nexcept us he said and\n\nthe small hill of green and white was\n\nlike a key\n\nto gram's money.\n\njoey never asked anyone\n\nto the house or\n\ntalked about gram,\n\nold charlie, or me.\n\njoey, bear, and me were kith and kin, kindred. we were everything to each other. that was before joey met tilda. before manny came. tilda and manny were complications.\n\nnot even jack faulkner came to the house. gram wouldn't allow it. the less that people knew about nightingale business the better, she said. joey and me knew it wasn't just the fly business she meant; it was personal stuff like\n\ntar in her lungs,\n\neviction letters\n\nold charlie behind bars\n\nand me\n\nnot going to school.\n\nmeeting faulkner at the community center was another one of gram's arrangements. made while she had breath enough to make them. faulkner lived in the city. came once a month on a thursday. after the country women's association meeting was over. gram volunteered to mop the floor. they gave her a key and she laid my trout flies on the kitchen table and let jack in the back door. when her emphysema got worse, i took over the mopping. joey did the business. faulkner made out he was sorry for our gram.\n\n\"must be tough trying to raise two kids on the pension while her old man's in the slammer,\" he said. he offered cash for my flies like he was doing us a favor. named a price. stuck out his right hand. hairy, gold-ringed pinky. but joey wouldn't shake.\n\n\"they're worth more than that and you know it!\"\n\nso faulkner said he'd pay more for flies made from rare feathers.\n\n\"it's damn good money for a retarded girl with no prospects,\" he told joey. he never looked at me.\n\ni took things into my own hands. took the dictionary down from its place between the tea leaves and the sugar. did some research into acquired brain injury and wrote my findings on the pages of the book of flying.\n\n_acquire_ v. gain possession of.\n\n_gain_ v. 1. obtain, esp. something desirable. 3. achieve. 7. reach (a desired place).\n\n_possess_ v. 1. have or own. 2. occupy or dominate the mind of (she's possessed of the devil).\n\n_be possessed of_ own, have.\n\n_desire_ n. 1. a feeling that one would get pleasure or satisfaction by obtaining or possessing something.\n\ndoctors say my brain has acquired, gained possession of, obtained, or got, an injury. this much might or might not be true. the rest is incorrect. here are the facts:\n\n\u2022 having a brain that does not work properly is not desirable. is not an achievement.\n\n\u2022 i do not feel any pleasure or satisfaction in having a brain that does not work the way it should.\n\n\u2022 there's no devil in there. just me and my thoughts hammering away at the walls. trying to break free.\n\ndot point facts are\n\neasy found, hard\n\nto form\n\nsaywords come\n\nslow and slurred\n\nsound stupid\n\nbut heartwords fly\n\nfrom my pen\n\nthe research part was easy. all i did was copy what someone else had written. nonfiction. stating my opinion took hours. finding the right words. arranging them on the page. when my work was done, i wished there was someone i could show it to. someone who would read it and tell me it didn't look like a girl with crazy wiring had written it.\n\nI am the running boy. The one who loves Alice. I am called Manny James.\n\nThe first time I saw Alice it was late at night and she was sitting on the roof of her house. You do not forget a thing like that.\n\nThe moon was big and bright that night and I was out running. Running is what I do when I cannot sleep. When I got to the footbridge over Charlotte's Pass, I stopped to catch my breath. The air was hot and still and I could hear a train in the distance. I looked down at the trees and bushes that grew between the railway and the river and that is where I saw a very strange thing.\n\nIt was a house on stilts I saw. I ran that way often, but I swear I never saw that house before. Way up high near the treetops it was. Like it was floating there.\n\n_You must be dreaming, Manny James. Even in this land, houses do not float in the trees._ That is what I was thinking when a light came on in a window, high up near the roof of that house. The window opened and a person stepped out onto a small balcony. It was a girl. Her hair was very long. Down to her waist it was. That is how I knew that person was a girl. She climbed onto the railing, and my heart was beating fast and loud. Almost as loud as the train. Not fast because I had been running, fast because that long-haired girl started crawling up the steep roof and because the ground was a long way down. But I did not shout at her. I did not call out, _Be careful, girl!_ I could not. My tongue was dry, like the leather tongue of a shoe, and my chest was tight with air that could not escape. The train got closer and louder and I watched that girl climb higher.\n\nWhen she safely reached the top, the air went quickly out of me and I was very glad. But then she stood up and again I was afraid. This time I thought that girl was going to jump. I know what it is like to have no hope. I have been that way.\n\n\"No! Don't do it. Don't!\" I screamed at the top of my voice, but the train was much louder than me and that girl did not move. She looked like a carving on an old-fashioned ship, sailing through the stars. That is what she looked like. The seconds ticked slowly, slowly. Then she threw her hands up, that girl did, and tiny fragments came drifting down all around her. In the place where I came from, there is no snow, but I have seen it in the movies. That is what the falling pieces looked like. I did not know it then, but that girl was Alice and that is the picture of her that I keep in my head. That girl on the roof making snow fall in summer. It is a thing I will never forget. The train passed slowly between us. Its trucks carried grain, not people, and it did not stop at Bridgewater Station. At the far end of the platform, the train began to move faster, and by the time it disappeared, the roof of the house on Oktober Bend was empty.\n\nI found the first poem that night. It was very quiet, as if the train had taken all the sound in the world away with it. I raced across the rail yards, past the empty goods sheds and the broken train cars all covered in graffiti. I did not know why I was running so fast. The train had gone, and the girl, and I could not find a way to get down to that house in the trees, but still I kept running. I ran through the subway and up the steps to platform one, then I sat down on a wooden bench and wiped the sweat off my face and chest with my tank top. I looked at the medallion hanging around my neck. It was a gift from kind Louisa James. She said it was a charm.\n\n\"A charm is like good luck, Manny,\" she said. \"It will keep you safe.\" That is what she told me. It was a shock when she said that. I did not think there were things to be kept safe from in Australia. No one had told me what happened to the girl called Alice. I wore the charm every day but only to please Louisa James. You do not need a golden charm around your neck to bring luck. Luck brought me to Bull and Louisa James, and they gave me a home in the house of many windows. They gave me many other things also, but nothing or nobody can keep you safe all the time. Not a charm, not a person, not luck. Not anything. That is a fact.\n\nWhen I had stopped thinking about luck, I stood up to leave and put my foot on the seat to tighten the laces on the running shoes that Bull and Louisa James had given to me. That is when I saw the poster that was on the notice board behind the seat. It had a picture of a pretty lady on it. She was drinking Coca-Cola and someone had written _\"Read My Lips\"_ beside her mouth, which was open just enough to let the Coca-Cola in. Then I noticed that pretty lady also had something pinned to her hand. It was a piece of paper folded to look like a small fan. The pleats were tied with thread to stop them from coming undone. I took the pin out of the lady's hand, unwound the thread, and straightened the paper, and then I saw that the fan was made from an emptied packet of flower seeds.\n\n\"Yates Blue Velvet pansies,\" I read. \"Shades of indigo, violet, and midnight.\" I had never heard of pansies. Flowers do not grow well where land mines are buried. I studied the picture on the packet, and those flowers reminded me of the faces that I saw in my dreams. They had big frightened eyes and no mouths. I dropped the paper on the seat and picked up my tank top. I needed to run again. That was the feeling I had inside me when I thought of the faces. But before I ran, I saw that there was handwriting on the back of the flower packet. That is what stopped me from running.\n\n_desire_\n\nmy desire is\n\nto be\n\nunderstood\n\nmy soul is filled\n\nwith songbirds\n\nbut when I open myself to\n\nset them free\n\nthey shit\n\non my lips.\n\nanon\n\nIt was a night for big surprises. First that girl making snow on the roof and then that small poem on the number one railway platform. I read that poem many times and many times it made me sad. Sad for Anon, who had songs that no one understood, and sad because I had no songs left inside me. I did not know if I had a soul, but if I did, I was sure there was nothing there worth letting out.\n\nI took that poem home with me, to the house of many windows. I pulled the bedcovers back and lay down, but only long enough to leave the shape of me there. Every night I did this for Louisa James to give her hope that I would one day learn to fit into her world. The moon transformed the floorboards into a shining sea and soon I fell asleep like an island in the middle of it.\n\nThat night was the first I did not dream of my homeland, Sierra Leone \u2014 of the things I had seen there, of the people I had left behind. Instead I dreamed of finding a way to the house in the treetops and that girl on the roof. That girl I would later learn was Alice.\n\ni am the girl manny dreamed of. the silent voice that called him in his waking and his sleeping. i am the nightingale. i am alice and i have music as well as words.\n\nno one could tell me how the music came to be. and i could not remember how long it had been there. was it since the beginning \u2014 me listening while i floated like a star on a string in my mother's warm dark sea? april, humming prettily to the mermaidenly being in her belly? maybe, maybe not. old charlie left his guitar and his harmonica under the bed. joey said they had to drag him away. our mother left joey and me in our beds, put her favorite child, her cello, in its velvet-lined case in the airplane seat next to her. in my dreams i am velvet-lined. and i am empty.\n\nwhen i woke up with fishbone stitches in my head, the music was there. it landed like fairy-wrens. tiny round bodies, long straight tails. lone birds and couples or flocks of three. perched on electricity wires, some with tails up, others with tails down. and upside-down birds, hanging like acrobats on a high trapeze. crotchets and quavers, semiquavers and demisemiquavers. beautiful names for beautiful sounds. i knew from where the wrens perched which notes they'd sing. drew them, beak to tail on the gray underneaths of empty cereal packets. and later, in the book of flying. the words came after. from where i do not know. perhaps they were gifts from the wrens. sent to comfort me, to fill the silences others had left.\n\nsongs: many-splendored things made of words, music, and mystery. the mystery was why the birds came to me. did they know me by name: alice the nightingale? bird-girl? had they seen me naked at the mirror, staring at my hills and valleys, the landscape of my body? did they know how i imagined my shoulder blades were wing buds? days i climbed onto the roof and dreamed of flying to canada, had the wrens watched me?\n\nthe ravens came later. scratched the sky with sorrows. chased the wrens away. brought no joy, no song, no dreams of flying.\n\nthere is a line on a map called the forty-ninth parallel. i have seen it for myself \u2014 in an atlas joey brought home from school. the forty-ninth parallel is where canada is. canada and our mother, april. i tore the page out and kept it. thought my mother might know what to do about my brokenness. about the mediocre pills. about why the birds came.\n\napril played cello with the royal philharmonic orchestra on the forty-ninth parallel and other faraway places. i knew this only because i heard gram tell hattie fox.\n\nhattie\n\nran the post office\n\nwore a gray-lead\n\npencil behind her ear and\n\nhad ways\n\nof finding out\n\ncould bore a hole\n\ninto your soul with\n\nher ice-colored eyes.\n\ngram never flinched. told hattie that april was young and talented. no one should stand in the way of her success, gram said sternly. hattie was first to look away. she gave gram her stamps, fiddled with the parcel string, and talked about the weather until we left. at home gram did not speak of april. joey said that when i was in the hospital, old charlie tried to bring me back from my long, strange sleep with promises of our mother's return.\n\n\"april will come,\" he'd whispered. \"she always comes.\" april did not come. but old charlie's words trickled down into the soft pink labyrinths of my unlistening ears. stayed there till i was fifteen, when the want to remember rose up like cool green sap inside me. hard to know if what i remembered was dreams or truth, wishes or lies. i never dreamed about april. only the velvet-lined case. dreamed there had been a child there. was i the child or was the child mine?\n\ni woke unafraid of falling. unafraid of stepping off the edge. the falling had been done. now there was only flying. joey wasn't afraid either but he was too heavy to fly. twelveness sometimes made things seem simpler than they really were. complicated when they weren't.\n\ni once believed anger was the only thing that heavied my brother and old charlie, kept them earthbound. i wrote a poem for them. an utterance of grief. a lamentation.\n\nflying\n\nis letting go\n\nfury\n\nis a ball and chain\n\nwhat poor birds are we\n\nhe won't fly and\n\ni can't sing and\n\nno one listens\n\nwhen a caged nightingale cries\n\nfreedom.\n\npoems mean whatever people want them to. that is why i like them.\n\njoey pinched a magazine with shining pages and photographs of boats. he only took it to show me an advertisement for a company called faulkner flies. there were colored pictures of lures \u2014 my lures with information about each one. the caption called them _collector's items_. joey said that meant they'd never touch water. they'd be mounted and framed and hung on walls in the homes of rich people, or stored in purpose-made wooden boxes with brass hinges and clasps. lures to catch people instead of fish. flies to be envied and admired. i felt happy. no dead fish. no bleeding gills. then joey said faulkner sold my flies for ten times the money he paid us. he said it was time faulkner got his comeuppance.\n\nsome words disappeared from me altogether. leaked out before the fishbone stitches mended me. comeuppance must have been one of them. i had no idea what joey meant. he pointed to the photographs of my lures.\n\n\"look at the labels they've made for your flies. they're pretty ordinary. you could do better. you could draw pictures too. why don't you make some before faulkner comes up next time?\"\n\nat the day center they showed us how to make things like paper, aprons, and library bags. then they sold them to people who could have made anything they wanted, but didn't because they went to school and university and got jobs and then there was no time left over for making anything. i didn't go to day center for very long because of my crazy electrics. but i took my paper home and kept it until joey said about making labels for faulkner.\n\ni made my labels like tiny books\n\nfolded the paper\n\ntore it careful\n\nalong the crease marks\n\nsewed pages\n\ninside covers\n\nwith a needle gram used\n\nto stitch roasting chickens after\n\nshe filled their emptied stomachs\n\nwith bread and thyme\n\negg and sage and onion.\n\ninside each book i wrote\n\nthe name of the fly\n\nits type\n\nwet or dry\n\nlongtail matuka or parachute\n\nopposite i listed what\n\nfeathers i used and where\n\nthey were found\n\nwhether the bindings were\n\nlinen or silk and\n\nthe weight and\n\nthe size\n\nof the hook.\n\nlast of all, on the covers of all my tiny books, i wrote a fancy \"n\" for nightingale and decorated it with drawings. pictures were easier for me to make than words. seemed to come from a different place in me. i made them look like the ones i'd seen in a book the priest gave to gram. i was in the hospital when he brought it to the house, but joey was there. saw and heard it all. gram told him she didn't want his book.\n\nsaid\n\nshe would rather\n\nher granddaughter undamaged\n\nher husband out of jail and\n\nhoped the people responsible\n\nwould rot in hell\n\ntold the priest never\n\nto set foot\n\nin her house again\n\njoey said the priest laid the book down\n\nand when he was gone\n\ngram threw it\n\nafter him\n\nmy heart is weighed down to\n\nthink of its twisted spine\n\ncrushed pages\n\nwords and pictures smothered\n\nby the cold\n\nhard floor.\n\njoey saved the book. smoothed its pages, looked inside the cover where the priest had written words that riled our gram. the curly script was mysterious as the foreign language printed on its pages to a boy who was ten. but he kept the book. put it under the house with the gun that our grandfather hid before the police came.\n\nlater, much later, after i woke from my strange sleep. after they took me home and i learned to trust bear, i followed her under the house where she kept bones, rain boots, and tennis balls. there i found the unwanted gift wrapped in plastic, hanging from the ceiling in a string bag. it was called the book of kells. i thought it must be the most beautiful book in the world. the pictures inside were mostly of saints, animals, and birds.\n\ni thought of gram while i looked at them.\n\nshe, hollow as a roasting chicken,\n\nheart and soul and giblets\n\nall torn out,\n\nwished\n\ni could persuade her to look\n\nat the pictures,\n\nthought\n\ntheir wonderfulness might help\n\nfill her\n\nsilences and spaces.\n\nand when i finished making labels for my lures, i wished i could show _them_ to gram. did not want to be the cause of her everlasting despair. wanted her to know that not all of me was damaged. on the cover of every label where i drew the \"n\" for nightingale i disguised joey's head among dragonflies and flowers, birds and feathers and fish. twined them all together, tangled as dreams. colored them with inks i made from\n\nberries, beets, and bracken\n\nonion skins and walnut shells\n\nbut dared not show gram what i'd done for fear she'd guess we'd kept the book of kells.\n\nwhen the inks were dry, i pressed the labels flat between the dictionary's leaves till the next time joey went to the country women's rooms. he said i didn't have to come. but i wanted to. was curious to see faulkner's face when he looked at my labels. when he got his comeuppance.\n\ni stood with joey, opposite the man from the city.\n\n\"ah, the flymaker of bridgewater,\" he said. his eyes crawled over me.\n\ni lifted my labels\n\nfrom between the wordy pages\n\nlaid them flat on the table\n\nwatched him fill his lungs with smoke\n\nand drop his stinking cigarette end\n\non the clean mopped floor\n\ngrind it\n\nunder his hard city sole\n\nsaw his arms spread wide\n\non the aluminum rim\n\nof the pink laminate table\n\nhead hung low\n\nbetween his shoulders\n\nclose to my labels\n\nwe stared\n\nme at him and he at\n\nmy labels while\n\nearth moved\n\ntides turned\n\nand the universe grew a little older\n\nsmoke leaked from\n\nfaulkner's nose spilled\n\nfrom the corners of his mouth\n\ncurled upward to\n\nthe ceiling like\n\nthe holy ghost and he\n\ncrossed himself and whispered\n\no sweet jesus\n\njoey looked at me and said nothing. i kept my eyes on faulkner till he could no longer ignore the loud silence between us. he straightened his spine. tore his eyes from the labels. looked at me like he was trying to read a book with pictures but no words. i did not look away.\n\n\"holy shit, they're genius,\" he hissed.\n\n\"yeah, they're genius all right, and they'll cost you fifteen bucks each, on top of the lures,\" joey said.\n\nbefore we went home, joey took me to the newsagent, peeled off a note from the roll faulkner had paid him, and bought me a small, square bottle of gold ink.\n\ni never saw faulkner again. cannot remember\n\nthe color of his eyes\n\nthe lines of his past\n\nthe shape of his lips\n\nthe pitch of his voice or\n\nthe smell of his money\n\nbut i cannot forget how both the sacred and the sinful slipped so easy from his tongue. light and dark together. fire and ice. i loved the way holy howled like a hymn up the back of his throat, how shit hissed and spat like hail on the fires of hell. perfect opposites. the one made the other deeper, richer, more terrible, and true.\n\nlater, much later\n\nwhen manny and i found\n\none another when\n\nwe met and touched\n\nskin and breath and soul\n\nthe only way we could\n\nunpick the stitches\n\nthat locked our secrets inside\n\nwas to use words\n\nthe way faulkner did\n\nas though she knew that even wishes thought impossible sometimes come true. as though she knew about the boy on the bridge, bear woke me early. on the morning after manny james watched summer snow fall from my roof, she led me through the dewy garden, ducking apple-clustered branches. sunlight fingered scarlet runner beans, x-rayed peas in see-through pods. bear stopped at the fence behind the waiting room. sniffed the new sky, squeezed through a gap in the wire diamonds. and i followed.\n\nas though she knew exactly where that boy had been: on the bridge, across the steel spaghetti in the rail yard, and onto platform one, bear led me.\n\nthe poster model gazed at me,\n\nthe girl who put words in her mouth,\n\ni stared back\n\nlooking at her empty hand\n\nlooking for that missing thing i\n\nlifted the gardener's notice\n\nshifted the theater royal program\n\nchecked the rubbish bin and between\n\nthe slats on seats where people pushed\n\nbrown paper pie bags\n\nsat and stared\n\ninto the cotton candy morning\n\ngiddy-minded with the\n\ndelicious mystery of who\n\nhad taken my words\n\ni dipped into my bag. took a handful of papers on my lap. searched for something to fill a gap the size of the pansy-packet poem. took way too long. bear nudged me with her snout. i eyed the station clock, heard its ticking and its tocking. saw its narrow arm point to a dangerous black number. ten to departure time. bear trembled with faint sounds of faraway engines and wheels and footsteps of soon-to-come passengers. a distant runner jogged past the scout hall. i wanted to believe he was the night runner i'd seen on the bridge, small as a thumb in the moonlight. wanted to wait till he came close. to use saywords instead of written ones. to ask if he remembered a girl on a roof at oktober bend. wished for impossible things. that a few words of the poem i'd tossed into the night had found their way to the running boy. a fragment of me. a thought or two from my crazy brain.\n\nbear's teeth tugged the hem of my skirt. i dared not let anyone see me with my bag of words. catch me in the act. anon, the girl with weird electrics. else my words might never be read. thoughts never shared. before the runner was close enough to see my face, bear and me vanished ourselves.\n\ni did not see the poem escape my bag. drift like a feather. nestle like a dove in the litter and the weeds. did not see the running boy, straight as a spear, scan the notice board, in the pocket of his pants a poem tied with purple thread. bear and me were long gone when he found my fallen paper. smoothed it with his hands. sat and read my words.\n\ni am\n\na rooftop poet\n\nhigh on haiku\n\nsilently shouting\n\nsonnets to the stars\n\ngiving wings to\n\nwords giving wings to me\n\ntogether we fly\n\nmy milky-way words\n\nand i\n\ni did not know the runner was manny james. did not know my poem persuaded him that the person who wrote it, dropped it then vanished away, was the same girl he'd seen on the roof of the house at oktober bend. i did not know that wishes thought impossible sometimes come true.\n\nbear and me knew all\n\nthe detours\n\nshortcuts\n\nhidey-holes and how\n\nto disappear\n\nbe safe\n\nin seconds we were racing along the damp dirt trail beside the river. tiger-striped with sunlight and shadow. filled with fruity air. my wires did not meander. my electricity ran in straight black lines. no sparklers fizzed inside my head. no clouds of ravens hovered. my eyes streamed, but only with gladness. because someone had taken my words.\n\njoey sat\n\nunbuttoned\n\nin the garden\n\ncrunching snow peas and\n\nwearing rosella feathers and\n\nfingers of light in his curls.\n\nstriped tie stuffed\n\nin the pocket of his blue shirt ready\n\nfor school.\n\nwe flopped down beside him, bear and me.\n\n\"where've you been?\" joey asked, and i opened my bag to show him.\n\n\"one gone!\" i said. joey listened. heard excitement in my shapeless words. saw the salt marks on my cheeks. no one could protect me from tears. not all the time. not even joey. they happened mostly when my pills were in the cadbury's roses tin. not in me. i had not taken them that morning. gram woke before me. watched while i swallowed. asked me afterward to open my mouth. prove its emptiness. i hid them well and now the tears came. joey's eyebrows worried themselves into a knot.\n\n\"did something happen?\"\n\ni shook my head.\n\n\"happy,\" i said.\n\n\"good. i gotta go now or i'll be late again.\"\n\nwe walked under the bridge and i pointed up at his carving.\n\n\"not forsaking?\" i teased.\n\n\"nope. when i come back, we'll go dancing. go home now. home, bear, home.\"\n\njoey\n\nwas a garden-grower\n\nday-dreamer\n\nstone-skimmer\n\ntree-climber\n\ntune-whistler\n\nfisherman\n\nliar\n\nand thief.\n\nhe did the shopping too and paid the bills. joey was not a dancer. but on wednesday afternoons he took me to ballet lessons. another activity someone thought would be good for a girl who might stay twelve until forever. joey rode his bicycle. my ballet shoes tied to the handlebars. me on the rack behind him. bear was not allowed inside the scout hall unless she was muzzled. imagining bear with a cage on her face overloaded my electrics. muzzles were on the list with _make, makes,_ and _made_. reminded me of big hands and of not breathing. so on wednesdays bear stayed home under the house while joey took me dancing.\n\ni put on the ballet slippers that the teacher, mrs. cassidy, had loaned me. crisscrossed the wide satin ribbons. fastened them with loose loopy bows that drooped around my ankles. could not wear them tight. mrs. cassidy always looked like she wanted to fix them. she never did. i think she was afraid of me. afraid of the falling down that sometimes happened. when i was ready, i sat on a long wooden bench by the wall. watched a girl whose face was a perfect oval. joey watched her too. her name was tilda. i should have known by the way he watched her, the way she danced ever closer to him, like a moth to a light, that she might become a complication.\n\ntilda's hair was shiny as a raven's wing. she pulled it back, knotted it tight at the back of her head. wore three silver clips on each side and two at the back. her hair never moved. even when she leaped and spun, not a strand escaped. it was truly magnificent ballerina hair. perfect hair, perfect face, perfect tilda. sometimes i imagined having hair like tilda's and dancing on the toes of my pink slippers. but mostly i didn't think about dancing at all. i let my thoughts meander. let myself feel sorry for tilda. none of her graceful movements sprang from joy, her smiles from gladness. even i knew that her kind of dancing was just a complicated kind of make-believe. planned in advance.\n\nwhile i watched\n\nperfect tilda,\n\ni swayed to the music\n\nate furry peaches from a brown paper bag\n\ntraced initials\n\ncarved on the seat\n\nfingered ancient chewing\n\ngum underneath and\n\nwondered\n\nif the birds would come\n\nhoped they would be wrens\n\nnot ravens.\n\ntilda's dancing got better every week. things stayed much the same for me. i didn't dance at all. not even a step. sometimes i ate cherries instead of peaches, or dangled them from my ears. imagined me, dancing the flamenco and writing birdsong on pure white pages. not at the same time. but on the day manny rescued my poem from the weeds something else happened. without warning.\n\nbear was sleeping\n\nin the shade\n\nunder the house\n\nnear the cadbury's roses tin and\n\njoey was spellbound\n\nby the hot, sweet scent of tilda\n\nthe grace of her arms\n\nthe tilt of her head.\n\nhe did not hear the young men's voices\n\ndid not feel the air move\n\ndid not see the shadow of the raven's wings\n\nor smell the fear\n\nbleeding out\n\nof me.\n\ncoach cassidy had brought the bridgewater bombers to the scout hall for preseason football practice. his wife, mrs. cassidy, was going to help them with their stretching out, limbering up, and flexibility.\n\nthe bombers were on the grass and on the porch and on the hard hot gravel. waiting for the dancing to stop. for the music to end. their voices bombarded the windows. bounced off the walls. rattled me.\n\nthe ribbons around my ankles grew tighter and tighter as i tugged, tried frantically to untie them. i wanted to shout, _let's go, joey!_\n\nwanted to scream at mrs. cassidy that dancing does not fix your electrics.\n\nbut panic was huge and hot\n\na hand across my mouth and nose,\n\nclouds of ravens\n\nbeat their wings\n\nblocked the light\n\nstole my air and i\n\nslow-spiraled like\n\na dying swan.\n\na patch of grass. a bicycle shed. joey crouching. this is what i saw when i came back with arms and legs and eyes all heavy. stroke after slow stroke, joey wiped my forehead with something cool and damp. afternoon was thick with sunlight. quiet now. dancers disappeared. footballers limbering up. inside all but one. my eyes opened quick and wide to see that last one. that one standing like my brother's shadow.\n\ncarved from ebony\n\npolished with beeswax\n\na saint from the book of kells\n\na warrior\n\na dream with\n\nembroidered-on hair\n\nrow on row of\n\ntight french knots\n\nsecret messages in braille\n\ni wanted to read them\n\nto run my fingers\n\nalong the lumpy scar\n\nthat joined shoulder\n\nto elbow\n\nto know its meaning\n\nto understand\n\nwhat shaped this boy?\n\nthe coach put his head around the door and yelled, \"move it, jamesy!\"\n\nthen i knew i was back from wherever i'd been. the boy in front of me was real and true.\n\njoey held a wet handkerchief toward him.\n\n\"she'll be okay now, thanks,\" he said, but the boy didn't seem to hear joey or the coach. ignored the handkerchief. stared at me. my hands crept to my skirt but joey had fixed everything. arranged my legs straight and together, tugged my skirt down over my thighs. like he always did when i was away. i made myself look into the other boy's eyes.\n\n_don't be scared, beautiful boy. please don't be scared. i was born normal and i'm still mostly normal. and anyway, it wasn't my fault. they warn you about everything else \u2014 don't take lollies from strangers, don't get in cars with people you don't know. but they never tell you why not. no one ever said don't watch the stars at oktober bend, little alice nightingale. no one told me there were people who did things like that to children. now my electrics are wrecked and my words come out weird and doctors say i might stay twelve until forever. maybe that's what my mother thinks. alice will still be twelve when she gets back. i can't know for sure, but i think i'm pretty much as fifteen as anyone else. and joey says that someday someone will invent a way to fix my crazy wiring. till then i guess i'll put my words on paper. but for a boy like you, i'd take my mediocre pills. if that's what you want,_ i thought, _if that's what you want._\n\nthe cicadas kept up their racket. the coach hollered again and the boy left. i did not know he was the boy i'd seen, small as a thumb in the middle of the night and in the early morning. the running boy.\n\nmanny james following my paper trail. each poem bringing him one step closer to finding anon. finding me.\n\na hand touched my face. i looked at my wet fingers and felt despair leaking quietly all over my cheeks. i took the blue handkerchief from joey. sopped my sadness on its red-and-white border and wondered where and who and why.\n\nwhere had the boy come from\n\nwho was he and\n\nwhy had the coach called him jamesy when\n\nthere was a red \"e\"\n\nstitched on the corner of his handkerchief?\n\ni pushed it into the toe of my dancing shoe. joey took my hand.\n\n\"let's go home,\" he said.\n\nhe wheeled his bike. i dawdled beside him. still not quite right. but already thoughts of my falling down faded in the bright memory of the boy.\n\n\"don't tell gram,\" i said when we were nearly at hattie fox's post office. i didn't want her going on about the pills i never took. joey nodded. we wouldn't tell her about the boy either. gram was suspicious or superstitious. or both. especially of anyone who was good-looking. once she told me a story about an angel called lucifer, which means light. lucifer did something he shouldn't have. something so awful he was banished from heaven and transformed into a devil. prince of darkness was his devil name. he could masquerade as anything or anyone, and ordinary people were fooled because he was so beautiful. i didn't want to be like gram. scared, suspicious, superstitious.\n\n_could the dark prince make himself look like a boy with french knots on his head?_ i asked myself.\n\nby the time we passed the post office, i decided i didn't care.\n\nbear met us at the chain-link fence. inhaled the smell of stale fright from my skin and clothes. if she'd been allowed to sit on the steps at the scout hall, she would have known what was going to happen before it did. if mrs. cassidy had let her lie at my feet, i might have held her till she drove the birds away. bear and me were more than kin or kindred. spoke a language of our own. i put my arms around her. let her lick my hands and face till my wires lay slack as cooked spaghetti. untangled, loose. then she led us down the steep embankment to the river trail and home.\n\ngram was dozing in old charlie's hammock, painted by the red-gold afternoon. shadows gathered in her gullies and folds. hair soft as dandelion fluff. arms folded like a kiss across her apron. once as tough as any man's\n\nthey swung an ax\n\nshoveled river loam\n\npatched up our falling-down house\n\ndragged old charlie away\n\nfrom trouble\n\nfrom the pub\n\nhome\n\narms gentled by love\n\ngathered us in\n\ntold us when\n\nour daddy was dead and when\n\nour mother was gone\n\ntough and tender arms\n\ncarried me home\n\nbroken and bloody\n\nunder the stars.\n\n\"everlasting arms,\" i said softly, \"leaning on the everlasting arms.\"\n\nlines of a hymn. gram had one for every occasion. did she sing when she carried me home? i don't remember much of that night. don't want to.\n\nthe best of it\n\na skyful of stars\n\nbright as new fishhooks\n\nold charlie and joey\n\ndown on oktober bend\n\nbaiting shrimp nets.\n\nthe worst of it\n\nhands coming down\n\nover my face\n\nscreams\n\ni couldn't scream,\n\nbreath\n\ni couldn't take and,\n\nafterward,\n\nthe rock coming\n\ndown and\n\ndown and\n\ndown.\n\n\"hurry up. get your things,\" joey said.\n\non our way through the orchard, we jammed our pockets full of hot blue plums. seven o'clock, daylight saving time, and still scorching. crickets sang; cicadas shrilled. bear led the way. shrubs crowded the banks, alive with wrens and finches and firetails. we stopped at a fallen tree that spanned the river. joey baited a hook, tied a teaspoon-shaped sinker to the line, and cast it across the water's tight gray skin. the reel spun; the float bobbed. joey planted the cork handle of his rod in the mud. swallows skimmed. caught gnats and mosquitoes. and i watched it all and willed the shy kingfisher to come.\n\nsometimes while joey fished, i read _fly tying: the definitive guide to hand tying flies for trout_ or wrote things in my own book. imagined wings i could have made from all the feathers i'd ever found. saw myself standing on the roof with them fixed to my shoulders, words and wings. it makes no difference. in my mind i am stepping off. there is no falling. only flying. i rise. born again. made new.\n\nbut this time, this airy evening, i was not seduced to fly. my body was anchored firm to earth by want to see the boy again. i chanted quiet charms and incantations. lips moving like a mad thing's. stealthy as night falls, i stole a bright hook from joey's tackle box. swift as a breath i pressed its barb to my wrist. closed my eyes and tugged. a bright bead of blood welled up. a ruby jewel. a sacrifice. a gift for the god of feathered things. i begged him to bring the sacred kingfisher, bring down a shimmering feather. vowed i'd use it to create the finest lure ever made. a pretty thing to bring the broidery boy to me.\n\nand when he comes\n\ni will\n\npass to him\n\nnew poems\n\non fine white pages,\n\nsonnets and songs\n\nrows of notes\n\nfor words to waltz to\n\nand when he reads them he will\n\nknow that i am\n\nmore\n\nthan twelve\n\nmore\n\nthan broken much\n\nmore\n\nhe will take\n\nmy hand press my fingers\n\ngently into his\n\nscarred places and i\n\nwill know their meaning.\n\nthe spell was cast; the pact was made. blood was the scarlet seal on the witch's wrist. then joey spied the question mark in my hand, snatched the hook. sucked the pretty beads from my skin. pulled me rough, held me tight against his chest.\n\n\"no more blood, alice,\" he said. \"no more!\" he dreamed of blood, he said. of my face after the rock split my skull open. \"no more blood.\"\n\nthat night the crickets sang love songs in earth's cool dark. and i wrote an introduction to the boy i had bargained for.\n\nfor some\n\ntwelve is a nice number\n\nbut i\n\nam alice\n\nfifteen times\n\nover\n\nI remember thinking, when I saw her lying there, that her hair was red as fire and her skin was pale as bone. I watched the boy straighten her skirt and make sure that her underclothing did not show. I saw how gently he stroked her arms and hair while her body jerked and twitched. His voice was calm and quiet when he spoke to her, but he seemed angry with everyone else.\n\n\"Piss off, you bloody morons!\" That is what he said. I was not exactly sure what these words meant, but it was clear he loved that girl.\n\nWhen she woke up, the girl did not speak. But when she looked at me, her eyes and her quietness reminded me of other faces. Those faces were sad faces. Their eyes were very full because they had seen many things, but their lips could not be opened to speak of what they had seen. These were faces that followed me from the other side of the world because I had done nothing to help them. When I looked at that girl, I wondered what she had seen that made her eyes so full. And I wondered if her lips, also, could not be opened to speak of those things.\n\nThen I looked at the boy who loved her and I knew that girl was different from the people in my dreams. It was because of that boy that she was different. That boy was not like me. He would not run away. That is what I was thinking while I watched them outside the scout hall.\n\nThat morning when I was running, I saw a girl and a dog in the distance. This girl, lying on the small green hill, did not have a dog. But they both had long hair and so did the girl on the roof in the night. Was it the same person? Was this bright-haired girl the one who made it snow in summer? Did she write the poem on the pansy packet? Was she leaving the poems for me? These are the questions that I asked myself, and with all my heart I hoped she was that girl. I wanted to ask her the meaning of her poems. I did not know then that she would tell me that a poem can mean whatever your heart wants it to.\n\nWhen the coach called to me, I became a shadow. It was a long time since I had shadowed anyone, but I had not forgotten how to. I walked close to the coach. Very close I walked, so that he could feel me like a cloak around his shoulders and he could see me from the corner of his eye. He knew that I was there. Then, when he walked back into the hall, I slipped away. There in the room surrounded by all those other boys, he would not have noticed that I was gone. That is how it is with a shadow. There it is, as close as a brother, as close as skin. So close that you forget to pay attention and then it disappears. That is what happens. That is what happened to Coach Cassidy. I was with him and then I was not.\n\nI ran in the direction the boy had gone when he led the girl away. Behind the railway station waiting room and across the rail yards, that is where they went. Just like that morning when the girl and her dog disappeared. On the other side of the rail yards was a tall wire fence. It was covered with creeping plants and fist-size blue flowers and I could not find an opening. Voices came to me from somewhere on the other side. I listened carefully to hear which direction they were coming from and then I climbed the fence, dropped quietly to the ground on the other side, and took off my shoes and socks. That is when I became a shadow again. A shadow has no substance. It makes no sound. Leaves do not rustle when a shadow passes by and the tall grass does not bend. A shadow leaves no footsteps. In Sierra Leone the soldiers said that small boys make good shadows.\n\nI looked and listened. It was easy to find them. The river and the birds helped me. The river carried their voices to me, and when I looked down toward the place where the sound came from, tiny birds flew out from the tops of the bushes. That is what birds do when someone comes near. Even if a shadow falls across them, they fly. Small birds watch the ground for the shadows of birds of prey. The yellow dog was not looking for shadows. I kept downwind where _she_ could not catch my scent.\n\nI crept through clumps of pampas grass. The feathery plumes were taller than I was. I could not see the river but I could smell it and I could feel damp, cool air rising up from the earth. Rivers everywhere have a way of doing that, a way of telling you where they are.\n\nI found a place at the edge of the pampas grass from where I could see the river. Where I could watch them, that boy and that girl from the scout hall. I was thinking about the small green hill and the girl's hair and her sad eyes when I saw the boy take her in his arms. He did not put them gently around her, did not touch her kindly, carefully, the way he did at the scout hall. He moved suddenly as though he wanted to prevent her from doing something. I heard his voice rise but I could not hear what he said. Perhaps he was angry. The muscles in my legs grew tight with wanting to run. But the girl did not struggle. She leaned her head on the boy's shoulder, put it there herself. It was a puzzling thing for me to see, a boy who did not know they were family, who did not know their secrets and sorrows. I knew what I saw and that is all.\n\nI felt the poems in my pocket. I did not need to read them. I knew the words by heart. And in my heart I was sure that girl had written them. A girl like that did not need someone like me. I should have left her alone with that other boy, but instead I curled up in my hiding place. I was very tired of running away.\n\nprayers or pacts or promises to\n\nthe god of flying things\n\nblood and bleeding\n\nchanged nothing\n\nchanged everything\n\nchanged me\n\nplanted in me\n\na seed of knowing that i\n\neven i could make\n\nthings happen.\n\nso small, that seed, that i did not feel manny's eyes upon me. did not expect him to come so soon. or at all.\n\na fortnight of slow days dawdled by, yet no kingfisher's feather fell from the heavenlies. march arrived and with it grew the feeling that blood and promises brought. the knowing. something in the universe had shifted. a universe so big and mysterious not even joey could explain it to me properly. the feeling was not new. i'd had it before. but never about kingfisher feathers or black boys. knowing filled me with fright but, at the same time, made me feel safe. tiny and powerful i was. and light, light enough to fly. like my bones were hollow as a bird's. as an angel's.\n\njoey wouldn't listen when i tried to explain _knowing_ to him. he only believed in what could be proved. maybe that was why he stole things. put himself in danger of being caught to give me what i wanted. proof he loved me. or did he think that _knowing_ was an odd belief, like unicorns, fairies, and true love, that girls grew out of. other girls.\n\nwhile joey was at school, i went to talk to teddy about things known but not seen. teddy's place was fifteen minutes west of our house. halfway up the cutting near charlotte's pass. above it, the coin-in-the-slot barbecue. in the river below it was the tar pit, where the water was black as pitch to hide its secrets. deep as hell. bottomless, they said. no place for bones to rest.\n\na fancy metal fence surrounded teddy's grave. reminded me of an old-fashioned crib i'd seen in a photograph of baby gram. a stern stone angel stood at one end of teddy's crib. stared at the scroll between her gray feet as if her blind eyes could read the words carved there.\n\nhere lies  \nedward (teddy) english  \nchosen son of the reverend and mrs. lillian english  \nleaning on the everlasting arms  \nDec 18, 1907 \u2013 Nov 1, 1914\n\ni wondered if lillian english held her boy that morning, that first day of everlasting loss?\n\nonce\n\ni envied teddy\n\nsafe in the everlasting arms\n\nwhile _i_ tried\n\nto remember\n\nhow to sleep\n\nhow to speak\n\nhow to write\n\nwhen to take my pills and\n\nwhat it was like\n\nbefore\n\ntrying to forget\n\nother things.\n\nno one could hurt teddy now. but we nightingales kept old charlie's gun under the house. were shadowed by bear and thoughts of our past.\n\nteddy seemed almost like kith and kin to me, like kindred. the tar pit and what happened there couldn't keep me away. i stepped over the low fence and sat on the edge of his forever bed. i spoke aloud to him of pacts and promises, of boys and knowing. teddy had stuttered, they said, so i was sure his ghost would understand my slurred and stumbling speech. while i talked, i scraped lichen from the angel's feet, washed her face with the hem of my dress. crowned her hard gray hair with wildflowers and, when there was nothing more to be said about knowing, reminded teddy about our secret.\n\n\"do you remember, teddy?\" i said. \"you _must_ \u2014 remember when joey scraped the dirt out from under the angel's feet? that's where it's hidden, where no one else can find it. no one can take it away from me. never again. it's the best thing i ever gave anyone, teddy. better than all the nightingale labels put together. better than the book of kells. it squeezes my heart to leave it in the ground. but we didn't know what else to do.\"\n\nbefore i left, i kissed the angel's feet and asked her to watch over us all, those on earth and those under the earth or wherever else they might be. when i stood up, her cheeks were as pink as a pigeon's feet, and the paper daisies in her crown shone like gold. you might think my electrics went crazy. you can think what you like but i swear it's true.\n\nfrom teddy's grave, there was a clear view of the tar pit. down the cutting to the sheer rock walls. it was a lonely place.\n\nwindless\n\nsoundless\n\nno children's voices\n\nno bird songs\n\nrope thick as\n\na baby's arm hung\n\nfrom a river\n\nred gum\n\nunmoved except\n\non hot nights when\n\nboys came\n\ndrank beer\n\nsmoked\n\ncigarettes and launched themselves off\n\nthe rope into\n\nthe still black\n\ninto the pit.\n\nno one used the concrete-block barbecue at the top. traveling fruit-pickers sometimes stayed a night. rolled out their sleeping bags and left again in the morning. families never came.\n\ni was a water baby. swam before i walked, first in the warm dark sea of april. after in the sparkle and glimmer of oktober bend.\n\nbecause of my twelveness\n\nshort-circuiting electricals and powerful\n\nimagination\n\ni sometimes believed or\n\nwanted to\n\nmy mother was a mermaiden\n\nand i\n\na child of mer then\n\nand now a mermaiden\n\nwondering if the smear\n\non my sheets might have grown\n\ninto some sparkling thing\n\na soul with fins.\n\nbut for all that, i was afraid to think of water with no end. even oceans and seas had floors and shores, could be measured.\n\ni was not disturbed by\n\nthe legend of teddy english\n\nwhich might or might not be true because\n\nthat is the nature of legends.\n\nor by the story\n\nthat the rope sometimes swung\n\nby itself,\n\nto didgeridoo\n\na dirge\n\nfor a boy who died trying\n\nto do what no one else had,\n\ntouch the bottom\n\nof the tar pit.\n\nteddy was\n\nthat boy\n\nthey made of him\n\na hero\n\nto hide\n\nthe shame of\n\nfathers and grandfathers\n\nteenaged when teddy fell\n\nlike a leaf from the tree.\n\nold charlie's dad was there when it happened. said teddy was bullied because he stammered. teased because his daddy's skin was white as teddy's was black. teddy did as they told him \u2014 to escape his misery one way or another. let the other kids fasten a potato sack filled with river stones to his back.\n\n\"dad told us teddy was just a little fella,\" old charlie said, \"too short to reach the rope, and the sack of rocks on his back was so heavy he couldn't climb the tree. so the bastards towed the rope ashore and heaved teddy up on their shoulders so he could reach it. he twined his arms and legs around it and he clung there scared out of his wits while they pushed him. singing out to him, they was, eggin' him on, dad said.\n\n\"dive, dive, dive! like that they went. but the little feller was too scared to let go and they got sick of waitin' and left him hangin' there while they got stuck into the home brew. swiggin' it outta sauce bottles they was.\n\n\"me old dad was there and he swore it was true. he was only seven or eight at the time but he seen it all with his own eyes. him and teddy was mates. dad ran all the way to town but by the time he convinced the coppers to come back with him it was too late. teddy never cried out, dad said. from the top of the ridge they seen him drop into the water, quiet as a pin, and the water closed over him smooth as his mother's silk nightie. dad never forgot. broke his heart it did. poor little begger. teddy weren't no hero. the bastards just said he was so they wouldn't feel so guilty about what they done to him.\"\n\npapa charlie was a good storyteller. teddy's was a hand-me-down tale. one not written with pen on paper. but i remembered it ever after. word for word it's in my head. old charlie's telling of it.\n\nteddy was never seen again, never found. there were no bones, no remains. nothing at all of him in the grave on the hillside. it was an empty memorial. only his spirit was there. i feel the cold on my arms and on the walls of my heart when i sit with him.\n\njoey hated me going anywhere near teddy's grave. gram said the site was cursed. after i talked with teddy and the angel, bear and me walked to the fence that separated us nightingales from the rest of bridgewater. we waited there for joey.\n\nand when he came\n\ni didn't tell him\n\nwhere i'd been or mention\n\nthe quiet excitement\n\nthe feeling\n\nbuilding\n\nin me\n\ndidn't say anything\n\nto make joey mad anything\n\nabout my wager with the god of feathered things.\n\ni nodded when he said, \"feel like a swim?\"\n\n\"you and me goin' down to the river, down to the river,\" i half hummed, half sang in my broken voice. \"you and me goin' down to the river to wash our sins away.\"\n\n\"don't sing that bullshit,\" joey said. \"you've got nothin' to wash away.\"\n\nhe was serious too often. got mad too quick. maybe he was always that way. maybe not. he might have changed because of what happened. to me. and to all of us \u2014 because of me. sometimes i thought joey and gram were more messed up than me. our family history was a game of dominoes played with people instead of tiles.\n\nour daddy\n\nsunny jim\n\ntoppled first,\n\ntoo much drink\n\ntoo many pills\n\nnot enough sleep and\n\na runaway road train.\n\nthen april, our mother, went looking for something else to hold her up. left joey and me behind. we might have been okay, just the four of us: joey, gram, old charlie, and me. but then i fell and old charlie grabbed the snake gun, waited under the bridge. emptied both barrels into the windshield of the stolen pickup truck. sent it somersaulting through the starstruck sky. he paid with everything that mattered. his family and freedom.\n\nand gram\n\ngot eaten up\n\nfrom inside out\n\nby grief\n\narthritis and\n\nnicotine.\n\njoey was the last man standing and he was only fourteen.\n\ni grabbed my brother's hand and ran. tugged him away from his blues. twelveness is not all bad. at twelve you still play. under the bridge we went. under our names and under the crooked heart. i peeled off my dress, tossed it onto the bulrushes, and threw myself into the river.\n\nEvery week on Wednesday I went to football practice early. And every week when the dancing girls came out of the hall and the footballers went in, I felt a girl watching me. She was small and neat with shining black hair. Other boys liked to look at her but I kept my eyes down. I wished that poetry girl would walk through the door. That is what I wished. But she did not come.\n\nLouisa James says summers are always long and hot in Bridgewater. But my first summer in that place was very hot. In the second half of March the temperatures broke all of the records. That is how hot it was. After football practice one afternoon, the other boys said they were going to swim at a place they called the Tar Pit. I had heard of that place before but I had not been there. I thought it was a very strange name to call a place where people went swimming. I did not really want to go with them. But because it was very hot, I said that I would.\n\nAll of us footballers were jogging along the footpath on Kennedy Street when a person came from behind and started running beside me. I turned my head to look and saw that girl with shining black hair and she was looking back at me.\n\n\"Hi,\" she said. \"Are you going to the Tar Pit?\"\n\n\"Yes, I am going,\" I answered her. Then I did not know what else to say. There were two boys running in front of me. One of them was our captain, Lucas Stewart. The other one was Hamish O'Leary. I stared straight ahead at Hamish O'Leary. There was a black dagger tattooed between his shoulder blades and three drops falling from its tip. I wondered why anyone would want a picture of such a thing between their shoulder blades. A bird of paradise or an eagle would have been better. This is what I was thinking when Hamish swung around. He ran backward and smiled at that girl who was running next to me.\n\n\"Checking out my body art, eh babe?\" he said to her, although I do not think she had been looking at his dagger.\n\nShe did not answer his question but he just laughed and said, \"One day I'll get a tatt of your name, sweetheart. Just deciding the best place to put it. Close to me heart or lower down? Waddya think, babe?\"\n\n\"You wouldn't dare,\" she said carelessly.\n\nIt was not a smart thing to say to a boy like O'Leary. I wondered if the girl knew that here was a boy who loved dares. He laughed and sprinted ahead. I looked at the girl and I saw that pieces of her hair were coming loose from her silver clips and her cheeks had become dark pink. She slowed down and I thought that she might leave us. But she did not and I stayed with her. I could not run away.\n\n\"He's scum, that O'Leary,\" she said.\n\nI did not answer. I wondered what she would think of me if she knew about the things that I had done.\n\n\"I'm Tilda Cassidy,\" she said. \"Lucas Stewart is my stepbrother.'\"\n\n\"My name is Manny James.\"\n\n\"I know who you are,\" she said. \"Everyone does.\"\n\nShe was wrong. No one knew who I really was, but I did not tell her that.\n\n\"I sometimes see you after dancing,\" Tilda said. \"You know, outside the hall. I was there that day the girl had a seizure.\"\n\nWe entered the subway under the railway tracks. It stank of piss and damp and other things that people do in dark places.\n\n\"She does not come anymore,\" I said softly. I did not mean to say the words at all. I ran faster then. I hoped that girl called Tilda had not heard me. Just before we reached the other end of the subway, she reached out and grabbed my hand. Then she stopped running and held tight as though she were afraid that I would leave her. I did not want to stay in the subway and I did not want to hear what she might say. I looked at her hand and I saw that it was very small and mine was very large. I tried to meet her eyes and that is when I saw the writing on the wall behind her. It was not like the writing and pictures that I had seen on railway sheds and broken train cars. This writing was arranged in neat rows. It looked like writing I had seen before. I wanted to pull Tilda out of the way so that I could read it.\n\n\"I know,\" said Tilda softly, and for a short moment I did not understand what she meant. \"It's because my . . . the teacher thinks Alice disturbs the class. That's kind of why I wanted to talk to you.\"\n\n\"Alice?\"\n\n\"Alice Nightingale.\"\n\nTilda still held my hand, but I did not feel it there. My thoughts were all of that girl on the small green hill outside the scout hall. That girl I had seen by the river and on the roof. The one called Alice. Alice. It was the first time I had heard her name, the first time I had spoken it. Her words were on the wall; her name was in my ears and on my tongue. Alice. Alice Nightingale. In another time, another place, there were nightingales in my life. Small, plain brown birds with voices you would give anything to hear. But when war came, the birds left. Bull and Louisa James had given me a new life. They gave me food and shelter, an education, and a chance to forget the past. There were some things that I did not want to forget. But now there was Alice and I wondered if I might once again hear a nightingale sing. This is what I was thinking while I was standing in the subway under the Bridgewater railway station and that girl called Tilda was holding my hand.\n\n\"Manny,\" Tilda said, \"I want you to find out where Joey and Alice live.\"\n\n\"Joey?\"\n\nTilda nodded.\n\n\"Alice's brother. The boy who took her to dancing, who was with her when \u2014\"\n\n\"He is her brother?\"\n\n\"Yeah, what did you think?\"\n\nI shrugged. I could not begin to tell her all the things I had thought.\n\n\"Someone's coming,\" she said. \"Let's go. It might be Lucas or O'Leary.\"\n\nTilda let my hand go and we ran toward the exit. A man and a small boy on a green tandem bicycle rode in as we burst out into the light. There was a big orange pumpkin and a bunch of flowers in a basket on the handlebars of the bicycle and the air smelled clean and hot. That man was whistling like a bird.\n\nThe Tar Pit was a deep pool in the river. That is all it was, a swimming hole below the picnic ground. When we arrived, some of the boys were already swimming in the black water and others were swinging on a rope that was fastened to a tree beside it. Hamish O'Leary was not in the water. He had taken all his clothes off and stood with his back toward Tilda and me. I saw the dagger and the drops of blood.\n\n\"You should go now,\" I said to Tilda. \"This is not a good place for a girl to be.\"\n\nHamish looked over his shoulder at us. Perhaps he heard me speak. He said something to Lucas and the others and made a crude gesture. It was not something you would want your sister to see. But Lucas and his friends all laughed.\n\n\"Go now,\" I said again to Tilda, afraid of what Hamish O'Leary might do next. He did not know how to behave in front of that small neat girl.\n\n\"You haven't told me if you'll do what I asked,\" Tilda said.\n\nI did not need reminding.\n\n\"Please, Manny, I've only lived here since Dad married Lucas's mother, so I don't know that many people here yet. Everyone seems to know my stepbrother and he seems to know just about everyone else.\"\n\n\"Why don't you ask him about Joey Nightingale, then?\"\n\n\"I don't want him to know. That's why I asked you. You're different from Lucas and his friends.\"\n\n\"What makes you think I am different?\"\n\n\"Well, for starters, none of Lucas's friends would have told me to go home from here.\"\n\nI could have told her that the Nightingales' house was hidden in the bush only a few minutes away from where we stood. But then she might ask me how I knew. I could not tell her that I had followed them home. What would she think of me if she knew I had hidden and watched them?\n\nAnd even if I had not done these things, all I knew about that small neat girl was that her father was a policeman and the coach of our football team, her stepbrother was the captain, and her stepmother was a ballet teacher. There were many other things that I did not know about her. For all I knew, she might be like Bull James, who gave me a name and a family and told me that someday I could have a house like his.\n\n\"There's nothing you can't have. It's simply a matter of choice and hard work.\" That is what Bull said.\n\nI could not tell him that no amount of hard work could give me the things I would have chosen: my family, my country, peace. These were the things I dreamed of. I wondered what Alice and Joey dreamed of. They seemed different from all the other people that I had met since I came to Bridgewater. I could not tell what it was that made them seem that way. Their house was old and falling down but they had each other and their wild garden. Perhaps that was what they wanted, all they dreamed of. Perhaps, like me, they did not want a house of windows. That was something I could understand, but would Tilda?\n\nHamish and Lucas were almost at the water's edge and the others were running after them.\n\n\"Why do you want to know where they live?\" I asked Tilda.\n\n\"I just \u2014 please, Manny, say you'll do it for me.\"\n\nThe air was hot and still. I needed more time to think. Tilda's stepbrother swung backward and forward on the rope while the others sat around the Tar Pit and watched him. Lucas liked to be admired. That was the thing that drove him. He went higher on the rope than anyone else. When it was almost at right angles to the tree trunk, he tucked his knees into his body and somersaulted through the sky. The water closed over him. I waited with his stepsister. The stillness and her unanswered question pressed down on me. At last Lucas surfaced and slammed his fist against the water. He looked up toward Tilda and me.\n\nThen I heard Hamish shout, \"C'mon, Captain Congo, shift your ass and show us what you can do!\"\n\nI did not want to show anyone anything, but these were only boys. If they knew the things that I had done, they would be afraid of me. That is what I told myself. I turned to speak to Tilda but she had moved away. She was standing by the small grave that we had passed on our way to the water hole. There was a stone angel at one end and someone had placed flowers on its head. Tilda's face was not smiling. It was as serious as the angel's. That girl is angry with you because you have not agreed to do what she wants. That is what I was thinking when I saw Tilda's stern face. I was surprised by what she said next and I wondered if I had been wrong about other things too. Perhaps the falling-down house would not matter to her.\n\n\"Whatever you decide, Manny,\" she said, \"be careful of Lucas and his mates. I have to go now. My stepmother would kill me if she knew I was here.\"\n\nTilda had gone by the time I got to the bottom of the hill, and I was glad. I grabbed the rope and threw myself into the Tar Pit. The water was cold and deep and dark like a never-ending well. Heads and shoulders blocked the light as I came closer to the surface. That is when I remembered Tilda's warning and that is when my lungs felt ready to explode. Pale hands reached down toward me. I knew who they belonged to. Lucas and O'Leary. They hauled me out, slapped my back, and smiled at me.\n\n\"Twelve Thoughts\" was the name of the poem written inside the subway. I was like a detective following clues. I studied the handwriting on the wall. I compared it to the writing on the papers in my pocket and I was certain the same person had written them. Who is this person who wrote all three poems? That is the big question I asked myself when I was standing underneath the Bridgewater railway station. There was no doubt, I had discovered the identity of Anon. I knew her name. It was Alice. That is who it was. The girl with long red hair. I saw her on the roof at night and again at the railway station, and although I was not close, I could see she had long hair. Hair right down to her waist. After she ran away from the waiting room, I found another poem. It was the one about a poet on a roof. When I saw her next, she was outside the scout hall. Her long hair was spread like a curtain on the green grass. Her poems were in my pocket. I had memorized the lines. Such hair, such poems, such things you do not forget. I would not forget that girl. The subway walls closed me in. I forgot the smells and Tilda's warning and I read Alice's \"Twelve Thoughts.\"\n\nthere are twelve months\n\ntwelve signs of the zodiac\n\ntwelve images of\n\ntwelve beautiful women buried\n\nbeneath cleopatra's needle and\n\ntwelve men have walked on earth's moon.\n\ni wonder if any of them noticed\n\nthe stars\n\nat oktober bend\n\nand did i mention\n\nthat hercules was given twelve labors\n\nfor killing his family\n\nor that a jury of twelve gave an old man\n\ntwelve years\n\nfor trying to avenge his?\n\nbut still i would rather be\n\ntwelve than not to be\n\nat all.\n\nanon\n\nAt first I tried to define twelve thoughts in Alice's poem. Then I stumbled on another truth. I smiled when I realized that the poem was simply a collection of facts about the number twelve.\n\nIf I had been braver, I would have written a response to \"Twelve Thoughts.\" I might have asked Alice Nightingale if the old man was real or imagined. I could have suggested another line about the men who walked on Earth's moon, begging them to notice a small ruined country called Sierra Leone. I should have asked Alice if she was the girl in the poem and told her that if she was, then I, too, would rather she was twelve than that she wasn't at all.\n\nBut thoughts of Hercules weighed heavy on me. I had held the weapons that killed my family, but I had not stopped the men who did. Would I pay with twelve labors, and what would they be? How should I pay, and was running a labor?\n\nTilda Cassidy said everyone knew who I was, but how much did they know? And did Alice also know these things? Bull and kind Louisa James had offered me a new beginning in Bridgewater. I would be safe, they said, and so would my secrets. Was it safe to believe them? That is what I asked myself.\n\nThe house on stilts seemed empty when I arrived. I heard no sounds, saw no old lady on the veranda, no dog on the wooden steps, no Alice, and no Joey. I found my way to the fishing hole in the river, where I had seen them last time. Footprints were stamped in the mud by the river. It was easy to follow them. Ten minutes later I found Alice and Joey swimming in a pool surrounded by large gray boulders. Farther on was the bridge that carried cars and trucks and bicycles in and out of Bridgewater. A crooked heart and childish letters had been carved into one of the beams that stretched its length, but I was too far away to read what they said.\n\nif i had known manny was there, i might not have felt so all alone when i tried to let joey go. set us free.\n\ni sank low\n\non the pebbled riverbed and watched\n\nmy words metamorphose into\n\npure and perfect bubbles\n\nsaw them rise and ride\n\nthe current\n\ndown-streaming,\n\nimagined them floating\n\nto the ocean\n\nto canada and april,\n\ndidn't know\n\nor care if i was\n\nun-fifteen-like\n\ni was\n\nalice-like.\n\ni stayed in my underwater world too long for anxious joey. he hauled me back into his world of air and light, shouting his little-boy name for me.\n\n\"birdie! birdie!\"\n\ni sat on the rocks, runny with river. tributaries trickled from my hair, and bear's tongue warmed my face. joey picked our clothes off the reeds and tossed mine for me to catch.\n\n\"put them on,\" he said, sharp-tongued, zippered his cardboardy shorts, yanked his crumpled shirt over his damp body.\n\ni dragged my dress on, dry cloth awkward over wet skin. watched the sun bleed pink and orange into the river. our skins were dry when joey said, \"so . . . did you know crickets' ears are on their knees?\"\n\nplayful as a lamb he was now and i laughed out loud. looked at his face to see if what he said was truth or lie.\n\n\"truth,\" he said, magic at hearing words unspoken. \"and they build burrows shaped like trumpets so's their mating calls can be heard two football fields away.\"\n\nmost days joey told me\n\nat least one interesting fact\n\nto make up for school cut short\n\nbecause of what happened\n\none starry, starry night,\n\nand the fear\n\nthat sometimes still\n\nsqueezed my lungs\n\nfroze my limbs and tongue and talk,\n\nas though he thought\n\ninteresting facts would\n\nsomehow subtract all that\n\nand the disgrace that followed\n\nour family.\n\ni thought about ears and knees and other parts of footballers while I waited for joey to speak again. but he said no more about the love lives of crickets. he said other things instead.\n\n\"do you, i mean, i think . . . that girl called tilda's a good dancer, isn't she?\" his words were as awkward as putting dry clothes on wet skin. as awkward as me. and i guessed that even my brother sometimes wondered how damaged i was. which parts were broken. which were not. and if i understood about different kinds of love. till then joey loved only me. loved me the way april should have.\n\nbut now there was tilda\n\nand joey needing\n\nclothes to cover\n\nsex\n\nthat burned in him.\n\nnow we saw each other in new ways\n\nwere two not one\n\nmaybe more than kith and kin\n\nmaybe less kindred\n\nand i knew\n\nif ever i was going to grow\n\nout of my twelveness\n\ni had to get used to joey\n\nloving someone else.\n\ni turned my head away from him on my pillow of dandelions and dock. closed my eyes to stop the trickles on my cheeks.\n\n\"sexy tilda,\"\n\ni said so he'd know\n\nthat i knew what it was like\n\nto feel hot white fire\n\nin all the places\n\nthat made me\n\ngirl.\n\nthe laughter i laughed for my brother sounded ugly. false. but sometimes even brothers do not hear emptiness and pain. they are listening to their own joy. joey's arms went around me. grateful. glad he had to say no more. i stayed there with my heavied heart until the sun was gone, not knowing what would happen now. how to be. wondering if brother love was big enough, or if this was the beginning of forsaking. then we walked home slow as winter treacle along the river trail, under the bridge of never-forsaking. together and apart. our new separateness mysterious and strange.\n\nOnly two days had gone by since Tilda Cassidy came with me to the Tar Pit. It was Friday. I did not think I would see her again until the following Wednesday. I was not ready to see her. But there she was, under the trees outside St. Simeon's. I tried to make myself invisible in the middle of a group of boys passing through the gate and did not look at Tilda. But I am tall and black and she darted to my side, small and neat in her navy-blue dress and white socks.\n\n\"Hi, Manny,\" she said. She looked up at me, waiting. All she wanted was to know where Joey Nightingale lived. But I could not speak, not even those few words. Especially those few words. Not now and maybe not ever.\n\nI had seen Alice and her brother in the river. Their bodies were not the bodies of children. But they played like children in the water. I was once like Alice and Joey. Before the soldiers came, I did not know what it was to feel dirty or ashamed. I wished I could feel that way again. I did not want anyone else to find the house where Alice and her brother lived. I did not want anyone else to see what I had seen, to spoil what was unspoiled. I would not betray the Nightingales.\n\nThere are people who can make you say things you do not want to. I have known men like these. \"Tell us where your mother is, boy, and your sister will be safe.\" That is what they said. But they were liars. For all I knew, Tilda might betray me, or if not Tilda, Hamish O'Leary or Lucas Stewart.\n\nI remembered Tilda's small hand in mine. I remembered how she said she hated her stepbrother's friends, and I remembered her stony face when she warned me about them. I saw them now, leaning on the school fence not far ahead. They were watching us. Perhaps they were waiting for Tilda. Perhaps they were not. But I would not tell the coach's daughter what she wanted to know. It would be best, I decided, if I had no more to do with Tilda Cassidy. I did what I did to keep her safe and to keep the Nightingales safe. I kept walking and I lied.\n\n\"I have not had time yet,\" I said.\n\n\"See you after dancing next week, then?\" she said. But I did not answer. I stepped off the footpath and crossed the street. I knew without turning that she had not left, that she was standing with her small, neat feet together on the curb, watching me go. They all were. It was hard not to run.\n\nlike kites cut loose\n\nin the gunmetal sky,\n\nwe danced\n\nhigher, faster\n\nmore daring than safe\n\nmore brave than afraid\n\nthe ballerina, my brother, the stranger,\n\nand me.\n\nsometimes i didn't know this new joey. yesterday as familiar as my own skin. today a riddle to be solved.\n\none night i heard him arguing with gram. when it was quiet, i slipped into her room. crawled in beside her. she stroked my hair. tried to work her buggered breathing apparatus. i tried not to listen. thought about how easy air slipped in and out of me. i looked at the moon while i quietly filled up and emptied out. thought about the men who once walked there.\n\n\"maybe joey could get you one of those oxygen tanks,\" i said.\n\n\"where'd he get one of them?\"\n\n\"he'll know.\"\n\n\"i aint goin' near no damn hospital.\"\n\n\"joey won't let that happen.\"\n\n\"you never know what he might do, that boy,\" she said. \"one minute he's sweet-talkin' me, callin' me his glory girl. next thing he's pinching me pension money.\"\n\n\"he only does it when the fly money runs out. we have to eat, gram. he's trying to look after us.\"\n\ni didn't want her getting mad at joey. getting mad was one step nearer to not loving. i wished i could explain about joey trying to get free. peeling off from me. pushing off from her. getting himself separate. tell her it might take a while for him to get used to being properly fourteen.\n\n\"i'm done wastin' my breath on that boy,\" she said. \"he's got his grandpa in him.\"\n\nshe said it like there was something wrong with that. wrong with old charlie, who'd maybe done more for me than the rest of my family put together. done time.\n\nthe morning after the argument, joey said, \"want to come to ballet with me tomorrow?\"\n\nhe didn't tell me what mrs. cassidy said. that it might be best if he didn't bring me anymore. that my last seizure had disrupted the class. i said yes. i didn't want to dance but i was still hopeful a feather would fall, my wish would be granted, the tall dark boy would be there.\n\n\"we'll bring bear,\" joey said, boyish and cheeky and charming. \"she can wait under the steps. old ma cassidy won't even know she's there.\" old ma. that's what he called her. i knew then he didn't like her. didn't know why. didn't know she'd warned her perfect stepdaughter to keep away from boys like him. didn't know that tilda had told joey.\n\ni met his cool green gaze\n\nsaw the straight line of his jaw\n\nthe shadow on his lip\n\nthe spread of his shoulders\n\nand wondered\n\nfor how long\n\nhe'd been\n\nthis way \u2014\n\nhard and beautiful.\n\njoey lifted the rice canister down from the mantelpiece and took a banknote from gram's pension money. we'd used all faulkner's fly money. i felt sick in the stomach because of what gram said the night before about joey stealing.\n\n\"i think gram's getting funny,\" i said. \"funny in the head.\"\n\n\"why? what's she been saying?\" he answered, quick and sharp, and i decided not to say anything about the money.\n\n\"nothing.\"\n\n\"i s'pose she's been complaining about me.\"\n\n\"her breathing's getting worse.\"\n\n\"and what am i s'posed to do about that?\"\n\n\"there's oxygen tanks . . .\"\n\n\"hell, alice, grow up! you can't just walk into the drugstore and ask for a tank of oxygen.\"\n\ni felt as twelve as i ever had.\n\n\"what are we going to do?\" i said, and joey answered, \"shit, i haven't got answers for everything.\"\n\nmy brother had always known the answers before. had always been sure and strong. but now he needed to be fourteen and gram needed more than we could give her and it was hard being just me when i'd been part of us for so long. i closed my eyes and saw our separation scars, felt the pain of them zigzagging like sharks' teeth between our hearts.\n\njoey skipped school. caught a bus to kalinda and spent the money on black tights and a tank top with narrow straps. for him, not me. i wondered how mrs. cassidy would feel when he peeled off his baggy shorts and her perfect stepdaughter first saw joey in his dancing skin.\n\nno songs or stories or interesting facts spilled out of joey on the way to the scout hall. but he crackled with strange electric energy. pedaled hard and fast with my dancing slippers tied to the handlebars and me on the back rack, legs out wide. wide like they used to be when i was a little girl. when the only thing you had to be careful of was not getting your feet caught in the spokes. joey's straw curls, bunched with string and feathers and beads, bounced between his bare brown shoulder blades. bear ran beside us and for a little while our separate hearts seemed one again.\n\n\"we're too early for ma cassidy,\" joey said.\n\npropped his bicycle in\n\nthe square black shade\n\nbehind the hall\n\nshowed bear her place\n\nleaned his head\n\nover the gully trap\n\nturned the tap and\n\nopened his mouth\n\nthe water went\n\nin him and\n\nover him and\n\nwhen he straightened himself his\n\nsunburned hair was scattered\n\nwith diamonds.\n\nhe was dazzling and for a heartbeat i wished he could be mine forever. then tilda came.\n\nwhen she saw joey, her eyes grew wide and her lips came apart. but mrs. cassidy was at her side. eyes like lizard slits. mouth a red gash between nose and chin. joey went to meet them. stood tall and straight.\n\n\"i've come to join beginners' class,\" he said. his voice deep and cool as the river. he took more money out of his pants and tilda took the skin-warmed notes from his hand. mrs. cassidy said nothing. but i saw joey's sweet, cruel smile. watched perfect tilda trying not to laugh.\n\nwhen the seven beginners lined up at the barre, it was tilda's job to teach them. joey was the only one taller than her. the only one with hair on his face. the only boy. when he dropped his shorts, i went outside and crawled underneath the porch. i lay in the dust beside bear, who was transformed by the slats and the sun into an odd striped beast.\n\ni wondered if i could learn to like tilda even though she was so perfect. or if she could like me. could mrs. cassidy ever learn to like joey? perhaps she'd once had a brother like mine.\n\na boy so much part of her\n\nthat there was no you or i, only we.\n\nhad they left their clothes on a bank somewhere and\n\ndived into the river like wild things?\n\nhad he cared enough\n\nto explain the whereabouts of crickets' ears, or\n\nsteal books and paper and pens for her? was he\n\nthe sort of brother\n\nwho used hammers and chisels as tools\n\nof tenderness to carve private promises\n\nin public places?\n\nwas mrs. cassidy's mouth a thin straight line because she had lost a boy like mine? or was it because she was afraid of never being loved by perfect tilda? did she worry that tilda might love a boy whose sister had crazy wiring? maybe hattie fox had filled her ears with gossip about my papa, charles patrick garfield nightingale. or the things that happen to girls who don't keep their knees together. i never had to think about these things when joey loved me best.\n\nbear rumbled. i opened my eyes. she rumbled again. a shadow fell on my face. and the stranger was there. tall and dark with french-knotted hair, looking between the cracks. looking at me.\n\nAlice climbed out from under the porch, holding the dog by its collar. It was the closest I had ever been to her. There were cobwebs and leaves in her hair. I stood still and let the dog smell me. When it was satisfied, Alice beckoned me to come and I followed her. We sat in the sand near a swing made from a truck tire. Our feet were bare. Our shoes hung around our necks on laces and ribbons. The sun was hot on our heads and her hair was like fire.\n\n\"I am Manny James,\" I said, and she nodded and smoothed the white sand with the palm of her hand. She wrote slowly and carefully with a stick:\n\ni am not a bird\n\ni am not a mermaid\n\ni am alice.\n\nI reached into my pocket and pulled out the poems. I did not expect to hear what came from Alice when she saw them. It was the strangest sound, thick as porridge and shapeless, like the speech of someone who had never heard a human voice. That is what it was like. Or something far worse. She looked away and I hoped that my surprise had not shown on my face. I held the poems in front of her.\n\n\"Did you write these?\" I said.\n\nHer eyes flicked over them and she reached for the writing stick.\n\n\"Tell me,\" I said.\n\nI wanted her to speak. I did not care what she sounded like. I wanted to see inside her mouth. I needed to know she had a tongue. That is when I made a very big mistake. I put my hand on her arm. It was not a smart thing to do. I heard a warning rattle in the dog's throat and then it bared its teeth. Alice touched its flank and it sank quietly to the ground beside her. Their eyes never left me.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said. \"I did not mean to scare you. I know that you wrote these poems but I just wanted you to tell me.\"\n\nAlice frowned as though she were confused.\n\n\"I want to hear you say the words,\" I said in case she misunderstood. The seconds ticked slowly by and lines of her poem ran through my head.\n\nmy soul is filled\n\nwith songbirds\n\nbut when i open myself to\n\nset them free\n\nthey shit\n\non my lips\n\nI remembered the nightingales and the silence they left behind them when war came. I remembered the brave silence of my sister, the sounds of the soldier's lies, my mother's screams, and my baby brother's cries. I saw my sister's open mouth and the pool of blood as she lay at the soldier's feet, forever silenced.\n\nNow this girl was in front of me. Alice, with my fingers still wrapped around her arm. The tendons in her throat pulled tight. I saw her lips, her teeth and tongue, and I knew what was happening. Alice Nightingale was opening the cage to set her birds free. Trusting me to understand, that is what she was doing.\n\n\"I am Anon,\" she said, and still she watched me. Her eyes were green like new rice. She was waiting for me to look away, expecting me to. But I did not. I could not look away from this girl. Then she smiled at me.\n\non the pages of alice's book of flying it is written:\n\n_once upon a time, a boy with no yesterdays asked a girl with no tomorrows for something no one else wanted. the sun was high and bright and the almonds had burst their mouse-colored vests when the boy came._\n\n_there was nothing at all to remind the girl of long ago when she was twelve years old. this boy did not come like a thief in the night to steal what was not his to take. he stood before her but did not touch the hidden parts of her, the little hills of cream beneath the folds of her clothes, the things that made her girl. all that his hands held, on that shining day, were her words._\n\n_then he told her what he wanted, not knowing it was the hardest thing of all to give. he wanted the sound of her._\n\ni did not write what happened next. did not spoil the pages of my book of flying with the dark things joey said to me and manny james when he and perfect tilda came running and running with bear's early warning rumbling in their heads. alarm drumming too loud in joey's ears to hear my heart's calm, blinding him to bear relaxing at my feet, misunderstanding manny's hand around my arm, not knowing he held me soft as a velvet cuff.\n\ni am glad now that i did not write about my brother, fierce as he was, that day. trying to allow me to be fifteen, but not being able to break the habit of protection. remembering the night we never spoke of. and me so slow to make words to tell him it was all right to leave me and manny alone. angry he wouldn't give me time to find out if i could be fifteen. afraid i'd never discover if a boy like manny james could want to know a girl like me.\n\nwhen joey was at last out of words, manny introduced himself and said, \"i am sorry if i have offended you. i am still learning the customs of your country. i only wanted to speak to alice.\"\n\nhe spoke clear and plain and when he'd finished, reached out his hand to joey. it seemed to take until forever till my brother unclenched his fists. three times their palms met. three soft smacks. i counted each one in my head then let my breath loose.\n\nbefore their hands cooled, i heard other voices. voices that reminded me of the smell and sound of a football team up close. i remembered the panic, the falling, and worst of all, the memory of manny being there, watching my body jerking out of control on the grass outside the hall.\n\nsuddenly afraid i couldn't explain my crazy electrics, even to a boy who didn't turn away when i spoke. i called bear and ran away as fast as i could.\n\nwhen i was in danger of coming unstuck, it sometimes helped to think about old charlie's table. i read somewhere that when a cyclone or an earthquake or some other act of god is about to happen, it's safer to get underneath something. i didn't know if you could call a person an act of god. gram said god made us. joey said bullshit, only sex makes people. i did not know or care who made manny. he came with no warning. stepped stealthy as a cat on the powdery dust of the long dry summer. bear and me, curled as peach leaves on the ground under the scout hall steps, had no chance to run, to hide. home is where i ran when the bombers came. home to papa's table. that is where i went and where i held myself in my arms. i didn't know what else to do.\n\nmy grandfather built his table square so no one would ever be too far from the others around it. it was his gift for his children, he said. but no child of his would ever claim it. the timber was sawed from a river red gum tree that washed loose from its moorings one spring, when the sky let go and the river rose up and seeped through the timbers of our living room floor.\n\nthe floodwater found its way to the sea. the mud crusted over and old charlie called in a favor from hattie fox's brother, who trucked logs for a living. he towed old charlie's tree to the sawmill. years went by till the wood was good and dry. then they milled two slabs for the tabletop, squared four posts for its legs. dave williams rounded their corners off with his lathe. old charlie carved lion's paws on one end of the legs. dovetailed the joints, fastened them together with dowels instead of screws. when his table was built, my papa carved his name and the names of his family on its surface: charles patrick garfield nightingale, gloria nightingale, lola nightingale, and sunny james nightingale, and the dates of their birth. he rubbed it smooth as glass with a wad of steel wool and polished it with beeswax and turpentine.\n\nmy name and joey's were added when we were born. and when his face was all gullied with sorrows, old charlie carved the dates of the deaths of his children. lola's five months to the day after she was born. my daddy, sunny jim's, when he was thirty-two.\n\ngram said the table looked like a tombstone. took to slicing bread on it; sawing away hard and fast as though the bread were a month old. pretended not to notice when the knife's serrated blade chewed into the wood underneath. she screwed the mincer onto the table's edge, gritted her teeth, and turned the wing nut till the metal plate bit savagely into the timber.\n\nwhen she wasn't using it, gram covered the table with an old curtain. by the time i came home from the hospital, the curtain was gone. replaced by linoleum glued to the tabletop, fastened tight with tiny tacks that old charlie used to mend the soles of his boots. the linoleum was brown, patterned with red and orange leaves. leftover bathroom linoleum. joey begged gram not to do it. said it would break old charlie's heart. i was lying on the couch they'd dragged into the kitchen. my words all taken away.\n\n\"and what about _my_ heart?\" gram said. \"i don't need no words scratched on a table to remind me my babies are lying in the ground.\"\n\nthat's what she did, our gram, covered things over.\n\ndidn't talk about them\n\npretended they weren't there\n\nlinoleumed the table\n\npainted over\n\nthe penciled\n\nmarkings that measured\n\nmy father's height\n\non the doorjamb.\n\nbut outside\n\nunder the rainwater tank\n\ntwo pairs of handprints pressed\n\ninto the concrete slab\n\nold charlie's doing\n\nminding kids\n\nmixing concrete\n\nhe pressed baby lola's\n\npink and perfect hands\n\nthen sunny's into\n\nthe soupy, half-set concrete,\n\nprecious reminders like\n\nfossils from another time,\n\na time when\n\nthe nightingales sang.\n\nold charlie's table was too big for three, gram said. she had joey push it hard up against the wall. as if the linoleum were not enough, she began to cover it with other things. piles of old newspapers, skeins of yarn, empty cereal boxes, odd socks, and canned food. she took her meals on her lap in the rocking chair by the stove. joey and me sat on the veranda steps when the weather was fine, or at the kitchen bench by the window, where we could see the glint of the river between the teepees of climbing beans and corn rows.\n\nwhile i was under the table, i tried to remember if i ever ate a meal in someone else's home. ever sat at a table that wasn't old charlie's. and i wondered if manny's people had built a table. did his daddy make it big enough for family and friends? and small enough so people never felt too far away from each other? did manny watch patient hands smooth and carve and polish? did his little boy fingers trace letters on its surface, learn how they looked, how they sounded, what they meant? did he feel safe between the lion's paws planted firm on the floor of his grandfather's house?\n\nas i lay wondering, a thought came unexpected. an idea, sweet and sudden as a blackbird's song. i crawled out from between the lion's feet. went to the kitchen window. rows of empty jars were lined up on the sink. through the window i saw gram in the garden picking milky-green tomatoes, last of the season. gram picked them slowly, tumbled them gently, by the apronful, into polystyrene boxes. later i would help her make pickles. should have gone to help her harvest, but didn't. wanted to start on my idea before anyone could stop me.\n\nquiet as a thief i worked. took everything off the table. levered tacks loose, opened the door to the stove, and stuck the blade of the carving knife into the firebox. summer and winter gram kept the fire burning. without it we had no hot water, nothing to cook on. i waited till the knife glowed red hot, then slid it under the awful bathroom linoleum. the glue stank and melted. again and again i heated the knife. bit by bit i uncovered the top of old charlie's table. piece by piece i stuffed chunks of linoleum in the stove and watched them burn through the window in the firebox door.\n\nwhile i worked, i planned what would happen when i'd finished. after i'd polished the table with beeswax, i'd run my fingers around the curves of my father's name. feel his days. we would sit together around my grandfather's gift: manny and me, joey and gram. elbows touching. no one would be too far away. ever again. we'd share our table and our food. and fill the silence with names: old charlie, sunny jim, and auntie lola. i don't know why i thought manny might be able to help me do all that.\n\ngram saw the smoke from the garden, stinking black clouds of it.\n\n\"what do you think you're doing?\" she hollered from the washhouse door.\n\n\"fixing papa's table,\" i hollered back.\n\nshe shuffled into the kitchen and leaned on the door, catching her breath. looked at the table. shook her head and said nothing and i did not care. it was too late. the linoleum was gone and i was fixing things.\n\nIn poor villages, like mine, there were no books. The only stories that we knew were the ones our fathers told us. These stories were the ones that our grandfathers had told our fathers when they were boys. Their stories were not written on paper. They were memories; that is what they were. When the war came, it took everything that was good from my country. The only things that I brought with me to the house of Bull and kind Louisa James were the stories that my father told me and memories of my own.\n\nSometimes Louisa James invited me to tell my stories.\n\n\"Tell me about your country, Manny.\"\n\nThat is what she would say. For a long time I could not. I would ask myself, what would a fine lady who lives in a house of glass make of my stories? What would she think of the house where my family lived? What would she think of the sleeping mats and the fire pit, the windows with no glass, and the table that my father made?\n\nMy father made his table from pieces of driftwood that washed onto our beach after a storm. The wind and waves had worn it as smooth as sharkskin. The salt and sun had bleached it silver-gray and pieces of sea glass had lodged themselves in cracks and bolt holes. The sea glass looked like tiny tide pools. That is what it looked like. The timber came from a shipwreck, my father said. I remember how hard he worked dragging it from the beach to our village. He built his table outside under the branches of the cotton tree and that is where it stayed. My father's table was very big. It was long enough for twenty people and wide enough for many bowls of food to share. That is how big it was.\n\nWe lived in a small coastal village, not so far from Freetown, the capital city of my country. My father was a fisherman. My mother worked for a rice farmer. She planted and picked and threshed and cooked rice, then served it with my father's catch to me and my brother and sister. When war came to our part of the country, there were others who sat with us at the table. They did not have to be asked. Cousins and neighbors, strangers and travelers \u2014 they all came. Some were searching for their families or safe passage to another country and they needed a place to sleep. Other people came because they were hungry. Some of these people brought mangoes or pineapples to share. Others had nothing to give. They came with empty hands and tales of burned villages and stolen children. My mother fed them all. Some nights, after they had gone, my father would sit alone at his table and weep. My grandmother said that her son sat with the ghosts of the lost and cried for the living. All grandmothers have sad stories to tell.\n\nBull and Louisa James shared their table with me and would have shared it with others, too.\n\n\"Why don't you ask some friends home, Manny? Invite them for dinner.\" These are the kinds of things they said to me. And when I told them that I did not have any friends yet, Louisa James said, \"What about the boys you play football with?\"\n\n\"I do not think those boys are my friends,\" I said. That was a fact. That was what I thought and that was what I told Louisa James.\n\n\"Maybe if you ask them over you'll get to know them better.\"\n\nBut I was not listening. I was thinking about a table for twenty. I was thinking of how long it took to build and how quickly it burned when the soldiers set fire to it.\n\n\"Well, just think about it. When you're ready.\" The voice of Louisa James was gentle and her eyes were the color of the sea, and I hoped that someday I could tell her about my father's table.\n\njoey stopped asking me whether i wanted to go dancing. i guess it seemed like i was getting harder than ever to understand. not the sound of me, but the things i did or didn't do. running away from manny, the boy i clearly wanted to be near. the only boy who'd ever asked to hear my voice. joey wasn't the only one who was confused.\n\ni didn't miss ballet lessons but i missed joey urging me to come. i missed wrapping my arms around him, feeling his body move as he pedaled, and the laughter that followed us. i wondered if i would ever hold someone like joey again. someone who knew everything about me and loved me just the same. or rather, if someone like that would hold me.\n\ni never saw joey in tights again after that first day. but he still left at the same time on wednesdays. still said he was going to ballet. but he never said anything about tilda. or manny. it felt like another silence was growing. i wanted to stop it by telling him my idea about the table.\n\n_\"_ you could bring tilda.\" i'd say it like inviting people to eat with us was something we did all the time. \"we could have real spaghetti. the kind that doesn't come in cans. and you could make your famous bolognese sauce,\" i'd tell him, although he'd never made it for anyone but me. there'd be billy-button flowers on the table and unchipped plates. i never thought about my own silence or what would happen if i did speak when tilda's perfect elbows were almost touching mine. thoughts of seizures didn't trouble me. i'd be home, safe; bear beside, lion's paws beneath.\n\n\"maybe gram'll make apple pie,\" i'd say. blanking out the shortness of her breath, the slowness of her walking.\n\none wednesday, when it was time for joey to leave, i watched from the veranda.\n\n\"what's up?\" he said, throwing his leg over the bike. for a second i wanted to climb on behind him. sit on the back rack like nothing had changed. wondered if fifteen was hard for everyone, or just for people like me.\n\n\"you can come with me if you want,\" he said. i shook my head and went inside. filled a thermos with tea and made cheese sandwiches.\n\n\"c'mon, gram,\" i said. \"come with me while i bait the shrimp nets.\"\n\n\"long way down there.\"\n\n\"no, it's not. c'mon, i made tea and sandwiches.\"\n\ngram was slow. it took us much longer than i thought. we sat on the rocks in the sun, gram and bear and me. when gram's breathing steadied, she cut chunks of soap from a yellow laundry bar. i wrapped them in gum leaves, put them in the nets, and dropped them into the river. when they were all done, i poured the tea and we shared the sandwiches. the food and drink loosened gram's tongue.\n\n\"good job you done of the table,\" she said. \"shame ol' charlie's not here to see it.\"\n\n\"it'll still be there when he comes home,\" i said. i'd given up asking when we could go and see him again.\n\n\"that's if he gets outta there alive.\"\n\n\"he'll come home,\" i said. inside i wasn't so sure. \"maybe we should use it,\" i said.\n\ngram blew small brown ripples across her tea. sucked in a few slow sips. i didn't expect her to answer.\n\n\"it's too big for three. 'minds me of all the others who should be there.\"\n\n\"we could ask other people. to fill the gaps.\"\n\n\"no one would come,\" she said.\n\n\"why not?\"\n\n\"because we're not like them. we're different.\"\n\n\"you mean they're not like me, crazy in the head. is that why you won't let me ask anyone \u2014 because i talk funny? because of the fits?\"\n\n\"of course not. it's nothing to do with that.\"\n\n\"what, then?\"\n\n\"people talk about us.\"\n\n\"tell me one thing they say that matters. one thing.\"\n\ngram didn't answer.\n\n\"so, if i ask someone and they say they'll come, that's okay?\"\n\ngram looked at me, kind of desperate, then she said, \"there's my chest.\"\n\nof all the excuses she could have made: my weirdness, her drinking, old charlie, the falling-down house \u2014 she'd chosen her chest. her chest! if she'd said, \"because i'm sick, because my lungs are ruined\" or \"because i've got emphysema,\" i would have replied, \"we'll do all the work. joey will cook; i'll clean.\" but gram said, \"there's my chest,\" and i surprised myself. as smart-mouthed as any teenaged girl, i said, \"what about your chest? is it too small, too big, too saggy?\"\n\nlaughter bubbled out. i couldn't help it. i laughed and laughed and it felt good. even better when gram joined in. we lay on our backs on the lumpy rocks and wobbled and hollered. sweet, salty tears streamed from our eyes, down our cheeks, and vanished behind the lobes of our ears. when we were done, when we both got our breathing under control, i said, \"what the hell, gram! i met a boy and i'm going to ask him to come and sit at old charlie's table and he's not going to take any notice of your chest!\"\n\ni never thought to mention color.\n\nwhen bear and gram and me got back to the house i made iced tea with lavender, lemons, and honey. i told gram it was a potion for her chest. and we smiled at one another. but the laughter was gone. i went upstairs and put on a blue dress. i never wore blue. hated the dress. one of the country women's ladies gave it to gram for me. it was a hand-me-down of her daughter's.\n\n\"tell her blue goes well with red hair, gloria,\" the woman said, as though i weren't there, as though she couldn't see me standing beside gram. \"those bright pinks and reds she wears aren't really suitable for a redhead.\" then she looked at me. \"i see she has green eyes,\" she said, \"but i shouldn't worry about that. no one else will notice.\"\n\nthe day i got that dress, i took old charlie's shaving mirror to my bedroom and held the blue dress under my chin. it looked like i was pretending to be someone else. should i have known the rules of color? were they something else i had forgotten? i stuffed the dress in a drawer and took out my book of flying. then i climbed on the roof and took a bird's-eye view of the world before i wrote down my questions on color.\n\nwho can tell me if\n\nthe tail of a peacock\n\nis incorrect or\n\nwho messed with grapefruit?\n\nruby flesh?\n\norange rind?\n\nand anyway\n\nwhose idea was it\n\nto make grass\n\ngreen and sky\n\nblue?\n\nfurthermore is evil\n\nalways black?\n\nor does it come in blood\n\nred?\n\non the other hand if black is\n\nonly wicked\n\nshouldn't someone change the color\n\nof midnight or\n\nis that what\n\nstars are for?\n\nand just one final thing, is that girl\n\nwith crazy wiring the only one\n\nto think\n\nautumn is beautiful and that\n\nthe rainbow is a work\n\nof genius?\n\ni had always wanted to use the word \"furthermore.\"\n\ni remembered that poem and the reason i'd written it as bear and me walked toward charlotte's pass, the long dry grass catching at the hem of the hated blue dress. i'd left gram in the living room, snoring invisible clouds of lavender-scented breath. at teddy's grave i put a piece of garden china and a feather in the angel's broken fingers. then i tucked the hand-me-down dress into my underpants and crawled up the cutting. bear made a dog nest in the grass and i, in my dress of invisibility, fit into the couch like the last blue piece of a jigsaw puzzle.\n\njoey and me had talked about how the couch got to where it was. sitting near the top of the cutting, hidden from the road by the safety barrier. he said it might have fallen off the back of a truck. maybe the driver didn't know. or maybe he did and couldn't be bothered dragging it back to the top. or maybe someone just dumped it there, joey said. it had been there for as long as i could remember. the midnight blue faded to the color of forget-me-nots. the soft pile, the difference between ordinary cloth and velvet, wore off. sunlight and rain bleached the wooden armrest white as horn. but still you could see it wasn't an ordinary couch. at one end was a curved, cushioned back. it held you like an arm around your shoulder. the other end had no back at all. it was a couch properly made for putting your feet up. an elegant couch.\n\nin spring, thistles covered the walls of the cutting with purple heads the size of teacups. woolly gray leaves folded over like rabbit's ears. the thistle had a proper name, recorded in the book of significant weeds. it is onopordum. the elegant couch also has a proper name. it is chaise longue. if heaven exists and if there are couches there, i think they will be chaise longues.\n\nsometimes when planes fly by\n\ni imagine the pilot and\n\nhis passengers among them\n\na truck driver jetting\n\nhis way\n\nto the forty-ninth\n\nparallel or to london where\n\nthe weather is mostly\n\ngray\n\nhis drowsy holiday\n\neyes turning toward\n\na window catching\n\na fleeting glance of his\n\nlong-lost\n\ncouch caught like\n\na scrap of sky in\n\nan amethyst sea\n\nof significant weeds.\n\none long-ago morning, when mist made the rabbit-ear leaves almost invisible, i flew over the amethyst field. over the forget-me-not couch. over teddy's angel. a helicopter rotor chop-chop-chopped urgently at the clotted-cream clouds. and i, inside, heard nothing, saw nothing. i was on my way to a hospital in the city. no one in bridgewater knew how to help a girl like me.\n\ni came home by train in the summer. stopping all stations. the steeps of charlotte's pass rising up outside our window. sun-dried thistles strewn like the rib cages of dead animals at the feet of the elegant couch.\n\nbut almost four years have passed since then. on this day, i lay on the couch watching what was present and waiting for what was to come. i wished for manny to come. to sit beside me at old charlie's table. lie next to me on the couch, our hearts held close by its one curved arm, our legs twined together down its blue narrows.\n\nbut wanting manny to sit with his elbows touching mine would not make it happen overnight. i remembered how long the god of flying things had made me wait till manny came that first time, and tried not to think of how i ran away from him.\n\ni might have mentioned before, how gram had a saying or a song for every occasion. one of her favorites went something like this: \"god sometimes likes you to take the initiative.\"\n\njoey said that was hedging your bets. he said gram invented it because she wouldn't admit there was no one up there to answer her prayers.\n\nthat day, in the hand-me-down dress that clashed with my eyes, i gave gram the benefit of the doubt and god three weeks. the furniture and i were ready. i was shouting on the inside. a fist raised to the sky.\n\na flock of cockatoos rose like rags in a dust devil. i heard the bridgewater bombers before i saw them running toward the tar pit. i felt invisible on the forget-me-not couch. its faded arm was around my blue shoulders. the footballers far away, ran circuits up around the barbecue and down again carrying bricks. one in each hand. in small towns like bridgewater, people make do. manny ran with them. even from my distant perch on the couch i could tell it was him. i wished he ran alone. boys in bunches sometimes dare. sometimes call down ravens like sorcerers call down spirits. maybe manny was more like other boys than i'd thought. i imagined a wall made of forty-four bricks. wondered if it would be big enough to keep me safe.\n\nthere is courage and there is caution, gram says. when you are twelve until forever, it's hard to know which is which. so i waited while the bombers trained, scared to leave, scared to stay. not sure if i was brave or stupid coming here in the first place, hoping to speak to manny. gram said we should learn from our mistakes. i was twelve years old when i made my biggest mistake. it happened the night i went shrimping, when i stayed on the hill to watch the stars above oktober bend instead of following papa and joey to the river.\n\nat last the bombers threw their bricks in a heap and the coach left. i willed the others to go with him. wished manny would look up. but the sun was low and i couldn't wait. i had to be home before dark. when i stood up, someone shouted. one of the footballers stabbed his finger in my direction. others turned, shouted some things i couldn't hear and some i could.\n\n\"moron! slut!\" they yelled, and laughed.\n\ni wanted bracken tunnels to swallow me up in their darkness. wanted to disappear myself down a wombat hole. but the bridgewater bombers stood between me and those secret places that only me and joey knew. i dragged myself the short distance to the top of the pass. found my feet and ran along the horizon, close to the burning crack between heaven and earth, near to the light. bear ran with me, her breath warm and loud on my heels.\n\nfear swelled inside me. fear i'd be followed. the railway station lights winked on. the train pulled in. bear and me rounded the waiting-room door. people were everywhere. i slid down the wall. hunched in a corner. alone in the crowd. bear and me. the grass-stained skirt of my dress had ripped away from the bodice. i wiped my eyes and nose with it. pulled it down over my knees. joey wasn't there to keep them together. bear barked. the birds were coming. sometimes she heard their flapping wings before i did. i opened my mouth. a raven's voice scraped at my throat.\n\n\"fetch joey!\" it said. \"fetch!\" and bear ran.\n\nlight stroked the lids\n\nof my eyes and i\n\nwondered if i\n\nhad fallen\n\ninto the crack between\n\nheaven and earth that place\n\nwhere the sun is\n\nswallowed up between\n\nthe violet lips\n\nof dusk.\n\ni know a song about cracks. i heard it when i was in the rehab hospital. most people there were old, but the lady in the bed next to me was about my mother's age. she was like me . . . her electrics were shot. they said she'd had a stroke. with me it was words. i knew them but found it hard to say them. with her it was arms and legs and smiles. the messages from her brain didn't get through. her smiles were stuck on the inside, and one side of her worked and the other side didn't. with the fingers that worked she pressed a button. played the same songs over and over.\n\nthe song about cracks was my favorite. it's called anthem. i wasn't sure what the words meant. but the song is a poem and poems mean whatever you want them to. in rehab i told myself that the message was about how things aren't always perfect but they can still be beautiful. even broken things.\n\nanthem was playing in my head. someone was stroking my arm. the frosted ticket window was shut. the waiting room was empty. no one was waiting for trains to come or go. but manny was waiting. he was waiting for me. i wanted to ask him if he knew the song about cracks.\n\njoey came, fetched by bear. frightened, i imagine, to see bear's loneness at our door. he confronted us at the orchard gate. glance as sharp as glass, took in my face, torn blue dress, filthy knees.\n\n\"where have you been? what have you done?\" his hasty words accused.\n\nweariness swayed me. i could find no voice to explain the tear tracks, the ripping, and the filth. looked to manny. dusk all around him like a hero's cloak. venus, the evening star, bright as a medal over his shoulder. boys did not rescue girls like me. till then old charlie and joey had been my only heroes.\n\nmanny explained about my falling down in the railway waiting room. he did not speak of the couch on the cutting. i was grateful that he kept the secret of my stupidity. wondered if he had guessed that i had done it for a glimpse of him, for a chance to speak to him again. now we were in league, manny and me and wise bear, who sat in a comfortable heap at my feet. i trusted joey would see reason; villains did not take their victims home. they prowled like wild dogs, taking what they wanted, leaving the rest lying under the stars.\n\ninto the house manny came, with joey holding the door. my grandmother sat in her chair by the stove. closed her hand around manny's. while she looked him up and down and in his eyes, i scrubbed my knees in the washhouse. ripped off my torn clothes. dressed again in watermelon pink and tied up my tangled hair. when i came back, manny was on the veranda, talking on a cell phone. telling someone called louisa james that he'd be late. the door to the stove was open. the coals were red as hell. gram was toasting thick slabs of bread with a wire-handled fork, and joey was frying green tomatoes and poaching eggs. i set the table. no cloth, just feathers in a jar and paper place mats; sheets of music from my book of flying. birdsongs in case there were silences to be filled. wanted manny to see papa's engravings, wanted him to know that we nightingales were once like other people.\n\nthere were fewer silences than there might have been during that first shared meal. hope pried open the tiny doors of my caged heart. twice now manny had seen me fitting. twice he had not turned his back. he had listened to fragments of my stumbling speech and begged me to speak again. his wanting to listen made no difference to my speech. it was no clearer, quicker, or more fluent. my words did not sound like birdsong or poetry. but manny watched me and waited while i spoke. asked me when he didn't understand. laughed with us when we laughed at my mumblings and his misunderstandings. that night we had everything we needed \u2014 food for our hunger and conversation for our souls.\n\nwhen our meal was ended and when manny was swallowed up by the night, joey helped gram upstairs to her bed. i laid myself across my grandfather's table, held up by the lion's paws. put my cheek to the timber. smelled the beeswax. my tears became rivers and streams shaped by the names of my family. i cried because manny had come, had given me hope. because of him i tried to forgive those absent for leaving. those present for having so little faith in me.\n\nLouisa James wanted to know where I had been. I did not tell her that I saw Alice on the couch or how worried I had been about what might happen if the others saw her. There are some words that you do not say in front of a lady like Louisa James. I could not repeat what I heard those boys call Alice. Most of all I was ashamed that I had not tried to stop them. I could not tell her that.\n\n\"I have to catch up with the coach\" \u2014 that is what I told those other boys before I sped off down the river trail. I guessed that Alice would have to go through the railway waiting room, and that if I ran fast enough, I would meet her before she got home. I wanted to know if she was all right.\n\nI cannot forget how Alice looked when I found her. Her bright hair was ragged, her dress was torn, and her face was white as rice. But I did not speak of these things to Louisa James.\n\n\"Her arms and legs jerked and I could only see the white part of her eyes. It was an awful thing to see, Louisa James. There were many people in that waiting room. Some of them stared, but most of them pretended they did not see. Not one of them offered to help. That is a fact.\"\n\n\"Perhaps they were afraid, Manny. Some people are, you know. You could have phoned me. I might not be working now, but once a nurse, always a nurse. You can count on me, Manny. Anytime.\"\n\n\"I know that, but there was no time.\"\n\n\"How did you know what to do?\"\n\n\"I am not sure if I did. I remembered what I saw her brother do and copied him. Then I waited with her until it was over.\"\n\n\"You've seen it happen before, then? You know these people?\"\n\n\"I did not know them that first time. It happened at football practice. The girl used to go to ballet lessons. I was waiting to go into the hall when she . . . when it happened.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm pleased you stopped to help, Manny. Proud of you. Her parents must have been very grateful when you took her home.\"\n\n\"I . . . they were not there. Only her brother and the old lady.\"\n\n\"Her grandmother?\"\n\n\"Yes, her grandmother.\"\n\n\"So they live near the station?\"\n\nLouisa James wanted to know more than I was ready to tell her.\n\n\"Does it matter where they live?\" I said, and straightaway I knew I sounded rude.\n\n\"Of course not. I thought you knew me better than that, Manny.\"\n\nI loaded the dishwasher. Then I opened my homework but it was very hard to concentrate. I had disappointed myself, twice over. I was a weak person. I had promised myself I would protect Alice, but I had not tried to stop those boys calling her names. And now I had spoken rudely to Louisa James. Kind Louisa James who would not hurt anyone. That is one thing I knew for sure. But I wanted to keep Alice to myself for a while longer.\n\nCocoa repairs many problems. This is one of the beliefs of Louisa James. Sharing cocoa with another person repairs even more problems. That is another one of her beliefs. While I was trying to do my homework, Louisa James made two mugs of cocoa. Then she switched on the television and patted the red leather couch beside her. There are many things to learn in a new land. Some of those things have no words at all. I do not think a word exists that describes the meaning of two mugs of cocoa, the television speaking softly in the background, and the hand of Louisa James patting the red couch beside her. This was a new language. I learned it with my eyes and with my heart. All of these things together meant _Come, sit beside me. I have forgiven you. Now forgive yourself._\n\nForgiving myself always was the hardest thing. I watched the news with Louisa James. I saw the pictures but I did not hear the words. I was thinking about that old couch at Charlotte's Pass, and I was wishing I had been sitting on it with Alice, so I could have protected her. I did not know how. Perhaps we would have been invisible to everyone else. When I was with her, I felt as though we were the only two people in Bridgewater. Then a thought came to me. Why had Alice been sitting on the sofa? This was something I had not thought about before. The news finished before I could reach a conclusion. Louisa James pointed the remote control at the television and commanded it to be quiet.\n\n\"Your friends are always welcome here, Manny,\" she said.\n\n\"Yes, I know,\" I answered.\n\n\"Your new friends too, the girl . . . what did you say her name was?\"\n\nIf Louisa James had not been a nurse, she would have made an excellent detective. That is because she was good at asking questions. A good memory is also an important thing for a detective to have. Louisa James could remember almost all the names of the Bridgewater babies she had helped to deliver. But that is something I did not know when we were sitting on the red couch repairing ourselves with cocoa and Louisa was asking me the names of my friends.\n\n\"Alice,\" I answered, and it felt good to say her name aloud. \"Her name is Alice and her brother is called Joey. But they are not really my friends, just people I have met.\"\n\n\"Well, if ever . . .\"\n\n\"I know, Louisa James,\" I said. \"Thank you.\"\n\nLouisa James is a very smart person. Instead of always asking questions, she sometimes told me things instead. She made them into stories, like my father did, so that I would remember them.\n\n\"We didn't always live in this house, you know,\" she told me when our cocoa was almost gone. \"Michael's parents divorced when he was thirteen years old. He was the oldest of seven; the youngest was still in diapers. His mother worked two jobs and Michael took care of everything else. I think that's where he got the name Bull. He just went at everything head-on. He was only eighteen when he started his earthmoving business. All he had was a crowbar, a pick and shovel, and a hired trailer. His motto, 'Bull James Moves Mountains,' was like a prediction of the man he'd become. There's no shame in being poor, Manny,\" said Louisa James, \"none at all.\"\n\nShe always left the most important thing until the end of her story. That was the thing she wanted me to remember. Sometimes it took a long time for me to understand what her stories were really about. I understood that this story was not just about Bull. Louisa James was telling me that I did not have to feel bad because my family was poor. That is what I thought, and I wondered if I should tell her that I did not know my family was poor until I came to the house of windows.\n\nBut if I had known, then, about Louisa James's very good memory of the names of the babies, I might have guessed that she was also talking about Alice and Joey.\n\n\"that boy is troubled,\" gram said on the morning after manny had sat at old charlie's table.\n\n\"i thought you liked him,\" i said.\n\n\"it's got nothing to do with whether i like him or not. we just don't need no more trouble in this house.\"\n\nher breath rasped and she huddled close to the stove. i was angry but i bit my tongue. if i wanted manny to come again, i'd have to be careful not to upset my grandmother. besides, she had ways of knowing that other people didn't have.\n\ni remembered the look i'd seen in manny's eyes that first time. the day i lay on the small grassy hill near the bicycle rack outside the scout hall, when he gave joey his handkerchief to wipe my face. i thought he was afraid. frightened of me the way other people were when i had seizures. last night proved he wasn't.\n\ni hoped gram wasn't right. i should have warned manny not to let glorious nightingale hold his hand. should have told him to do his looking anywhere but at her. but i was not properly back from where i'd been. my thoughts were foggy. unwisely i left the room, and manny with his hand held in my grandmother's, while i went to tear off my rags and tatters and clean my knees.\n\nwhile i was worrying about what gram said, joey came into the kitchen wrapped in a towel. he spread honey on his toast and licked the knife and said, \"he was probably just nervous,\" and i loved him all over again. not for daring to disagree with gram but for defending manny. i stepped outside and into my boots and ran, full of glee and anger, down to the woodpile where i could not hear what my grandmother said.\n\ntroubled. _what is troubled?_ i asked myself as i picked up the ax. i swung it above my shoulder and drove its blade down. down into the gray box and into the yellow box. and down again into the stringy bark.\n\ntroubled is the faulty functioning of a mechanism of the mind or body. i'd memorized this explanation from the dictionary. alliteration can work like a remembering tool for people with damaged electrics. and even for people whose electrics work perfectly fine most of the time. faulty functioning, mechanism of the mind \u2014 simple.\n\nin my own words: when the equipment that makes your body or mind work is damaged, people often describe you as being troubled. it was plain to see that manny's body worked just fine, so what kind of \"troubled\" had gram seen in his eyes? what other sort was there, except mine? if i had read further in the dictionary, i would have found troubled described this way: _to be disturbed or worried._\n\nperhaps then i would have turned to page 231, where i would have discovered that to be disturbed is to be: _emotionally or mentally unstable or abnormal._\n\na dictionary is like a map made of words. who knows where these might have led me? maybe to gram, who trusted no one and tried to even out life's ups and downs with cheap wine.\n\nsome of my body machinery worked perfectly. i smelled sap and felt rhythm in my shoulders. the ax head buried itself in the sweet, dry timber. the thud of metal and the splintering of wood sailed up my arms in rivers of quick-running blood. anger oozed with sweat from my pores. i pushed a barrow-load uphill and stored it under the house. wheeled another onto the veranda. stacked it outside the washhouse door. i was good and tired and emptied out when i carried the last armful inside.\n\ngram had dozed off by the fire. she slept less and less often in her bed. preferred to sit by the fire, sipping endless mugs of scalding water poured from the swan's-neck spout of the kettle. i reminded myself to talk to joey about moving her bed into the kitchen before autumn was ended. i shoved the wood deep into the belly of the stove. kissed the top of my grandmother's head and wondered if love and hate were twins.\n\nwhile gram slept, i took the dictionary down. turned to the page where _troubled_ was also described as: _to be disturbed, worried, or upset by something unpleasant_. i wondered if it was normal for a fifteen-year-old girl to ask a boy if some unpleasant thing was disturbing, worrying, or upsetting him.\n\nwhen joey left for school, i walked with him. his small gesture of siding with manny had made a difference. together we strolled through the orchard. our feet shuffled the scarlet leaves and the orange. the early air iced the backs of our throats. we were almost to the fence when joey said, \"when are you going to bring manny home again?\"\n\nmy heart slammed against the cage of my bones.\n\njoey looked at my bright cheeks and laughed and said, \"i might ask tilda, too!\"\n\nhis smile was gorgeous, generous, and rare. he was gone through the hole in the fence before i could speak.\n\ni walked proud that may morning. proud i'd brought manny home, maybe not with words, but he _had_ come \u2014 and it was for me he came. i didn't let myself think he might have done the same for any fallen-down person. joey, with all his words and charm and learning, had brought no one home. he spent more and more time away from our place. sometimes, when i looked at his lettering on the bridge, i felt forsaken. joey was with tilda, i was almost sure. but the way he looked at me that morning, and the things he said, made me feel as though i truly was fifteen. truly his older sister. and our separateness did not hurt quite so much.\n\nall the way home, i planned what we would do, me and manny. all the things i would show him, the places i would take him, the secrets we would share. i imagined gram falling under manny's spell the way i had. she'd say, \"tell that boy of yours to get himself down here. i'll make beef stew with suet dumplings tonight.\"\n\ni never considered my grandmother shutting manny out. out of our conversations. out of her heart. i never thought we might have to wait until she was asleep by the fire. that we would creep upstairs like thieves in the night and sit on the roof under the stars. or lie in the boat under the house with the other hidden things: the book of kells, the cadbury's roses tin, and the double-barreled shotgun. i never wanted to hide. hiding is what people do when they are afraid or ashamed. i was neither.\n\nthe air cooled. leaves crisped and curled. i chopped barrow-loads of firewood. frustration greased my joints. made the ax swing smoother. blistered my palms. but i could not decide how to invite manny to our home again. i blamed the bridgewater bombers. after what happened at charlotte's pass, i never wanted to be near them again. would not go to the scout hall or sit on the lost couch in the field of significant weeds. this was caution, i told myself. i was no coward. letting manny hear me speak was proof of that.\n\neven joey made me mad. twice in the past few weeks he'd brought tilda home. they'd sat at papa's table. made manny's empty place stand out. gram talked to tilda while she was there and kept her mouth shut when she was gone. said nothing to joey about tilda bringing trouble.\n\n\"what about family business?\" i said to joey after tilda left the second time. \"i thought we were supposed to keep quiet about family.\"\n\n\"you brought manny,\" he pointed out.\n\n\"i didn't ask. he just came. brought me home because you weren't there!\" anger hissed out of me.\n\n\"i can't be with you all the time, alice. anyway, i know you wanted him here.\"\n\nhis voice turned to caramel. \"why don't you ask him?\" he urged me again.\n\n\"too many people at dancing,\" i answered. my voice had lost its fire and i couldn't mention charlotte's pass.\n\n\"write to him. you're always writing. go on, write and i'll give it to him.\"\n\n\"what about family business?\"\n\n\"manny's only interested in you, and tilda won't say anything.\" my cheeks grew warm again and my tongue felt too big for my mouth. i wished manny and me could be like joey and tilda \u2014 nothing seemed to worry them, stopped them from doing what they wanted to.\n\n\"how do you know she won't talk?\" i said.\n\njoey upped his shoulders and turned away.\n\n\"i just know.\"\n\n\"but what if she does tell?\"\n\n\"tells what? tells who?\"\n\n\"maybe her father . . . you said he's a policeman. what if she tells him i don't go to school? what about gram? how old she is. her breathing.\"\n\ni didn't want to think about what would happen next. or speak of it. but winter was on its way. we'd made up the bed beside the fire for gram to sleep on. her breathing seemed worse every day. and joey and me were nowhere near eighteen. my brother's face looked gray and hard as teddy's angel.\n\n\"tilda won't say anything. she doesn't tell her family she's with me. she says she's with a girlfriend.\"\n\n\"why?\"\n\n\"because we're not like the cassidys and their friends! shit, alice, haven't you noticed?\"\n\njoey's words flung into the air, then fell into place, rearranged like scrabble tiles. i saw a list in my head:\n\ndaddy's dead\n\nmother's missing\n\nsister's crazy\n\ngrandma's sick\n\ngrandpa's jailed.\n\n_so what?_ i wanted to scream at the top of my broken voice. _that's who we are and if other people are like the bombers and mrs. cassidy and swindling jack faulkner, i'm glad we're not like them!_\n\ninstead i looked at joey's face before he turned his back on me. and i sorrowed for us all. but mostly for my brother who was not twelve until forever, who was older, much older, than fourteen. who'd gone to get a good education and learned it would be easier if we were like everyone else.\n\nat seven thirty that evening joey still wasn't home. i thought he might never come back. mist blanketed our bend of the river. gram's breathing was bad. i tried not to let her catch me looking at the clock. pretended i was going out for more firewood when i was straining my eyes, looking for a pinprick of light moving toward me along the river trail. a beam from my brother's bike.\n\n\"he'll be home soon,\" i said, praying i was right, when gram asked me where joey was. \"and when he comes, i'll ask him to ride to the post office and get hattie fox to phone the doctor.\"\n\n\"no, you won't,\" she wheezed. \"they'll cart me off to the hospital and that'll be the end of me.\"\n\n_and the end of us?_ i wondered.\n\n\"here, put some of this on me,\" gram said.\n\nshe handed me a small blue jar and held up her undershirt while i rubbed eucalyptus ointment on her back.\n\ni stoked the fire and got into bed with her, my chest against her back, arms around her shoulders. bear lay on our feet. sometimes i wished i had the sort of grandmother who went out like other women did. to country women's meetings, or the supermarket, or to have a cup of coffee with friends. sometimes i could hardly stand to be in the same room as gram, listening to her trying to suck oxygen into her stuffed-up lungs. but i couldn't picture the house on stilts without her.\n\nafter a while her breathing grew quieter and i thought she'd gone to sleep. i eased away, ready to step out, go to my own bed. bed was the warmest place in the house on nights like that. then gram spoke; her voice was drowsy, dreamlike. a voice from the past. like the one she'd used to tell me stories when i was little.\n\n\"there's things i never talked about before, birdie,\" she said. she used joey's pet name for me. she never did that. i was frightened. maybe gram was dying. right now. damn joey. where was he?\n\n\"i never knew when was the proper time or if i was the right one to tell you. but i haven't got forever,\" gram went on.\n\n\"don't talk now, gram,\" i said. \"go to sleep.\"\n\n\"it's gotta be said.\" gram gripped my arm. \"i've been wrong about a lot of things. maybe i was wrong not sending you to school. you don't talk so good, but that's not your fault. doesn't mean you're not smart,\" she said, and i relaxed a little, pleased with gram's praise. what she said wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.\n\ngram began to cough then, as though something were caught in her throat. perhaps it was the cold, star-spangled air or the words she'd kept from me for so long. i pulled the blanket over our heads, pressed myself closer, willed her lungs to keep working. lay in the tartan dark wishing joey would come.\n\nwhen at last gram's breathing steadied, i slid off the bed, fed the fire, and tucked the blanket in. gram rolled over on her back and reached for my hand. i could not leave. i waited, hungry for more words of praise, hopeful gram would tell me other things. tell me how my mother loved me. how she held me, words she used to comfort me, songs she sang, looks she gave me, gifts that only a mother can give her child. i was wrong to wait.\n\n\"those boys done you wrong, alice,\" gram said. \"hurt you bad and took what wasn't theirs to take. but they never took all of you. you're more than what people can see and feel and hear.\"\n\ni should have stepped away. should have snatched my hand from hers and covered my ears before her words opened my tight-locked door of forgetting.\n\n\"you're more than what's between your legs. a lot more, girl.\"\n\ntruth, suffocating as a river of tar, flowed from my grandmother's mouth. i knew what had happened to me in words. the reality had been locked away. when gram spoke of it, i lived the nightmare again.\n\njelly-legs stumbled me to the sink for a dishcloth. i tried to stuff it, gray and sopping, into the pit that was my grandmother's deep and horrible mouth. she clawed at my hands, and ravens dashed their wicked beaks against the panes and flew down the chimney. soot devils. bear would not be quieted or consoled. she leaped at their battering wings and i swung the broom. around and around i whirled, scarecrowing the demon birds, scrubbing my grandmother's words off the walls. walls that eddied and fell and me with them. the ravens pick-picked at my herringbone stitches until muck oozed between my thighs and i crawled between the lion's paws and cradled my crazied head in my hands.\n\njoey's arms were around me when i came back. the tartan blanket gathered us in the bed by the fire. gram in her chair, rock-rocking. her shut eyes, blind as teddy's angel, turned toward the red glow of the stove. no sodden rag in her mouth. just slow breath. rasping in, rasping out. joey stroked my mad red hair. smooth were his strokes, smooth as butter, and wet were the shadowed planes and angles of his face. deep in the valley of his nightingale throat he crooned a lullaby. never forsaking. never forsaking his troubled sister. never. my let-me-go brother. my let-me-go watch-me-fall brother. watch me fall he did that night. then cradled me. golden boy. brother.\n\n\"why did she?\" said i to him. \"why did she think i would want to remember?\"\n\nwhat french-knotted boy would come now to my door? would sit at my grandfather's table, warm elbows nudging? who would lay his back in the everlasting arm and twine his legs with mine on the narrows of the heavenly couch? what boy now would smooth my skirt, would fetch me back from where i'd gone with soft talk and stroked arms? what boy would walk me to my door if he knew the reasons for my strangeness? would carry my poems against his velvet skin like love letters from my soul to his?\n\ni stepped out. out of my self. out of my window onto the balcony, into the night. looked down to the place where no boy would ever stand and wait. for me. bear beside me. i climbed where she could not follow. onto the roof i went. up the steep of it where it jutted black against the cheese-wheel moon. joey followed. never forsaking. quiet he stayed beside me. i kept my silence beneath the stars. asked for nothing and was given nothing in return. no rooftop poems came to me. i was noah in his ark. floating in a sea of dark. no land in sight. no island of refuge. no tree, no branch, nor twig; no place for wrens to perch to sing their songs. time was no more. when i turned, joey breathed a column of pure white smoke and his hand reached out to me. frost had cast a crystal cloak on the rippled tin. we slipped and slid. on bellies, thighs, and palms we came down, but i felt nothing. joey led me to my room and i lay down and he beside me with bear at our feet. nearest and dearest both. and gram downstairs as unpicked as me by what she had done and undone. hemmed in by love i was. unforsaken, although i did not feel it then.\n\nmornings later, while all the world still slept, i stole the canvas bag down from its peg behind the washhouse door. i checked for the tobacco tin full of hooks. bright, sharp hooks. made sure my grandfather's fine-pointed scissors, his heavy-pointed scissors, his clippers, and dubbing needle were all inside the soft leather pouch. i put the strap of the bag over my head, crossed my heart with it. then i walked toward oktober bend. river songs in my head. hooks in the bag on my hip. constant companion left behind closed doors.\n\nthe sky was bruised, dirty yellow and gray. i stopped at the elephant rocks where my grandmother and i had laughed about her chest. i lay down, spread me thin and close to the ancient gray beast to feel if an imprint of our laughter was pressed into its skin. a curling, rippling fossil of sound, captured forever for anyone who cared to stop and listen. perhaps seekers of that elusive thing called joy, recorded in days past by scribes and scholars, lovers and poets. but the river drowned its secrets and the stone remained silent. i cushioned my head on my grandfather's bag. thoughts came to me of the book and the two glued pages. i remembered fish with rainbows on their skins, bloody red gills and gaping mouths. i saw the pure white coat of the man holding them and his face; his eyes closed as though he couldn't stand to look at what he'd done. i saw the coat of the surgeon who sewed me up with his needle and his thread; his mouth was covered, so i could not read his lips, but the spell of twelveness was in his eyes. then i remembered my grandmother's face after she spoke the words that called down ravens. her eyes, red-lidded, tight shut.\n\ni raised my cheek from its canvas pillow and unscrewed the lid of the tobacco tin. opened its mouth full of bright sharp hooks. careful, my fingers unfastened the leather bag and laid bare the scissors and the needle. i laid them side by side; the hooks, the scissors, and the needle. forgotten were the silks, the linen threads, silver tinsel, peacock plumes, the furs and fleeces. forgotten were the muddler minnow, the priest, the demon, the damselfly nymph, and the micky finn. before me were instruments to cut and slash, to probe like doctors' tools. cold and steely.\n\nin the morning mist, under the cold new sky, i took off my clothes. peeled off my watermelon sweater, with pips and rind and soft pink flesh all knitted by lumpy grandmother hands. red pants next. do-not-go-with-hair-like-that pants. underpants last. made to keep privates private. off i took them. the river whispered siren songs and i stepped quickly into its icy embrace. greedy, it lapped at my thighs, circled my waist, fingered my breasts, and raised them up. weedy fingers touched me. gentled me. cleansed me. took me under. held me down with the silent stones and the darkling fishes. and i, at that moment wishing, wishing to be unborn.\n\nthe last of my breath was a string of pearls. my face an underwater moon. there was no angel in the dirty morning. no jesus walker on the water, no brother waiting on the bank to haul me in. no dog to remind me with tongue and tail what it is like to be loved, dirty or clean, whole or broken. no everlasting arms to carry me home. no anthem. only me. alice.\n\nand in me a seed of hope. enough to draw me up toward the crack. toward the light.\n\ni dragged my clothes on. took my pen and inks from old charlie's bag. set them all upon the elephant rocks beside the silver hooks and the scissors. then i took out my book of flying and turned its pages until i found one that was empty. on it wrote.\n\ni am alice\n\nstill i am\n\nalice\n\nno less\n\nno more\n\njust different\n\nalice\n\ni left the book unshut, beneath the pale sky for all to see. or no one. or for me alone. alice. alice with the seed of want. wintery sun fell on my watermelon shoulders and on my moss-green words. while they dried, i took old charlie's fine-pointed scissors, his dubbing needle, a reel of silk, and a peacock quill and prepared to tie a lure.\n\nI had promised to help Tilda Cassidy find Joey and I had not. But they found each other without my help. I saw them often at the scout hall. I had been afraid for nothing. It was clear that Joey trusted Tilda. But no matter how I looked for Alice, I could not find her. And I could not speak to Joey about Alice, not while Tilda was with him.\n\nCould I go to the house? Was that permitted? I was fed and clothed. I had shelter. I was in need of nothing. What were the customs of need and want in this country? Could I visit uninvited? Could a person knock and ask for his heart's desire? Was that an acceptable reason to knock? These were the things I wondered while I searched for signs of Alice.\n\nWhen I ran at night, I stopped on the bridge to watch the windows of the house where Alice lived. I hoped that she would step through her window and climb onto the roof the way she did that first night. I wanted to see her again, sailing through the stars, that is what I wanted. And in the early mornings I looked for her. I thought that I might see her disappearing through the hole in the fence behind the railway waiting room with that very large dog beside her.\n\nMy thoughts were more often of Alice and less often of the places and people of my childhood. When I ran, I told myself that I was running toward the future. Toward Alice. That is where I wanted to be.\n\nIt was morning when I found her. She came out of the river, so pale that I thought I might have dreamed her. I was afraid to turn away in case she vanished. I saw her twist her hair into a rope and squeeze the water out, onto the smooth gray rocks. Then she dressed herself in bright clothes and I knew then that she was real and not a dream. That is when I thought that I might be able to stop running forever.\n\nan elephant is\n\na creature large\n\nenough on which to rest\n\nan open book\n\na girl\n\na boy\n\nmaterials for making\n\nfishing lures and fire\n\nmade of sticks and stalks.\n\ndown to the river came manny james. through the wilderness where we nightingales hid ourselves away from the rest of the world, he came. he lit a fire for me. quiet he did it, without asking or telling. without any saying at all, he gathered twigs as thin as wren's legs, grass stalks, and leaf litter. like a bowerbird, he built a tiny teepee of his gatherings on the rocks where gram and me had laughed.\n\ni was surprised to learn that manny knew how to build a fire. one night joey and me had walked past the big houses on the other side of town. joey showed me where tilda lived, and manny. he told me there were no fires inside houses like theirs. people had only to press a switch to make warmth come up through the floor. manny took a cigarette lighter from his pocket. warmth came into my body even before his fire was built on the rock. his being there was better than the sun.\n\nwhen the fire was well alight, we went in search of bigger sticks to feed it. under the bridge of never-forsaking we went. manny's eyes lifted up to joey's lettering and i saw questions in them that he did not speak. we dragged little logs back to the fire. my legs perfectly happy in their red pants. even in winter, watermelon warms the heart.\n\njoey and bear were waiting when we got back. bear wrapped herself around my legs. inhaled my happiness and licked my hands. joey kept his surprise inside. i never saw anyone else do it so well.\n\n\"just checking the shrimp nets,\" he said, like it was normal to see me with manny at the river in the early morning dragging little logs to our fire, me first, him following. my brother walked to the river's edge and hauled in a net. it was too cold to expect a good catch.\n\n\"there's enough for two,\" he said. \"i've gotta get home to gram. i'll leave bear here.\" i was too busy feeling the miracle of manny's nearness to remind joey that bear answered only to me.\n\nwe threaded shrimps on sticks. cooked them over the coals till their shells turned orange. peeled them and ate the sweet white tail meat. licked our fingers and wiped them on our clothes. then manny turned his eyes toward the unshut pages of my book of flying, curved like scrolls in the warmth of the fire. he saw my moss-green words and after i had nodded my yes to him, he read what i had written. many times he read it, and the morning was quiet. fishes sipped gently at the damp gray air and water spilled like silk over ancient rocks. manny looked at me and asked, \"what made you different, alice?\"\n\nthe sound of his question was like longing on his tongue.\n\non my grandmother's dressing table was a photograph in a small oval frame. the frame was silver as a fish's skin with a border like barley sugar twists. two small feet at the bottom kept it from toppling over. it was the sort of frame a person would hold dear, not one to leave behind if they were journeying to the forty-ninth parallel never to return. in the background of the photograph was a water tank on its side filled with firewood. in front of it was a child wearing blue denim overalls and a striped T-shirt. the little girl had bare feet. her right hand was on the handle of a small wicker doll's baby carriage with wheels the size of cookies. she looked away. away from the carriage. away from the person who held the camera. perhaps her eyes followed someone who was leaving. perhaps even then she knew her mother would not stay.\n\ni have looked many times\n\nat the photograph in\n\nthe barley-sugar frame at\n\nthe side of the turned-away face\n\nthe small right hand\n\non the handle of the wicker carriage\n\nat the denim overalls\n\nthe striped T-shirt\n\nand the bare brown feet\n\nand i have tried\n\nto remember what it felt like\n\nto be me\n\nbefore\n\ni was different.\n\nit isn't easy to tell someone why you are different when you are not sure exactly how different you are. a girl cursed with twelveness has no measure of herself because she cannot remember being three. doesn't know what anyone else feels like when they are twelve or fifteen.\n\ni looked at manny across the flames. i did not want to speak of what was past and done. but i had other things to tell. my frayed and fractured voice joined other sounds of morning. the small, near songs of frogs and bellbirds. more distant screams: cattle in the slaughter yards, the foundry whistle. the sounds of all of us mixed and stirred. the ordinary orchestra of life.\n\n\"the words are in me. but harder to say than write,\" i told manny james.\n\n\"you are much better at writing than me,\" he said.\n\n\"i'm slow . . . need time to get the words out.\"\n\nhe nodded. answered, \"i do not mind waiting. i will learn to listen like your brother does.\"\n\nso far, so good, but i wasn't sure how much more i wanted to tell him.\n\n\"you do not go to school?\"\n\n\"i used to. before my head injury. joey brings me books now. teaches me new things. looks after me.\"\n\n\"yes, i know. i saw him at the scout hall. that is when i saw him first.\"\n\n\"sometimes i don't fall down for a long time.\"\n\n\"the falling down, is that because of the accident?\"\n\n\"no accident.\"\n\n\"i thought that you said . . .\"\n\ni shook my head.\n\n\"they meant it.\"\n\n\"i do not understand. what happened?\"\n\ni could not meet manny's eyes. he had seen me come out of the water. that i did not mind. my body made me something like other girls, but i had things to tell that would let him see into the darkest places of me. i fixed my eyes on the flames. made a list in my head.\n\n\"i was waiting for\n\njoey and old charlie we\n\ncame every night i\n\nsat on the hill with\n\nthe lamp and\n\ncounted stars while they\n\nchecked shrimp nets\n\nno one ever\n\ncame before just this\n\none time.\"\n\nbear pressed herself close to me, put her chin on my lap. and i went on. spewed the words like dark ravens into the flames, crimson, marigold, and rose. each one took more effort than the last.\n\n\"two of them came crept\n\nlike robbers put\n\ntheir hands over\n\nmy mouth\n\nto keep my screams\n\ninside while they did\n\nwhat they did\n\nto me and afterward\n\nthe tall one afraid\n\ni would tell\n\nheaved a rock\n\noverhead then\n\nsmashed it down and\n\ndown and\n\ndown while the other\n\none tried to stop him they\n\nargued shouted wrestled and\n\nthe lamp fell\n\nglass shattered and set\n\nthe grass alight\n\nflames for danger for\n\nwarning for old charlie and joey\n\nto come\n\nrunning.\"\n\nquiet then. all my dark sayings burned to ash and bone and blown away. me emptied, aching, raw as if i had swallowed swords. manny's arms gathered me, and in their strange new circle, i thought a dazzling thing. the one who most needed to know that being alice was a good and decent thing to be was not manny james. it was me.\n\n\"i am alice,\" i whispered, and my words fell new-made against manny's shoulder.\n\n\"still i am\n\nalice\n\nno less\n\nno more\n\njust different\n\nalice\n\nstill.\"\n\nmy voice had not changed but my words were a song.\n\nmanny stayed until late afternoon. when he said he must leave, we went with him. bear and me. took him along our secret route to the railway station. i led, manny followed, and bear came last, our feet quiet on the earth. only crickets in their trumpety holes could have heard us. my magic hands unlocked hidden tunnels through the towering grass. ours was a quiet kingdom of plants and earth and air. too soon we came to where the fence was a wall of weedy creepers. i peeled back the corner. manny took my hand. stepped through. would have taken me with him. but i shook my head. guilty for leaving gram for so long. anxious joey would be angry.\n\ni watched manny pick his way across the rail yards. haul himself up on the platform, disappear through a doorway marked \"travelers' rest.\" saw him again, smaller, on kennedy street. two boys approached him. their faces far away, unknowable. but it seemed clear they knew manny. they jogged beside him toward the scout hall. bombers, i thought. over there is manny's world. a world of friends, football, school, and big houses. i pushed the wire back into position and ran home.\n\n\"where've you been?\" asked gram. sour as green apples. \"a woman could be dead, for all you care.\"\n\n\"the river,\" i said, jamming logs into the fire. wishing i was jamming them down her throat. wishing i'd gone with manny. wishing for someone to share my happiness. i made a pot of tea. spoon-fed gram with buttery sops in thin chicken soup.\n\n\"where's joey?\" i asked, guessing he was somewhere with tilda. mad he hadn't stayed with gram.\n\ngram shrugged.\n\n\"you all right?\" she said. better now, with some food inside her.\n\ni nodded. felt strong. _still alice,_ i told myself. _no less, no more, just different alice._ different from what i was yesterday. different because manny had searched for and found me.\n\nafter i'd fed gram, i emptied the bucket she peed in, filled a basin with warm soapy water, washed her face, hands and feet, rubbed ointment onto her chest and back, and helped her into a clean undershirt and nightgown. i brushed her silvery hair and braided it, and when i tucked her into her fireside bed, she took my face in her hands and my heart by surprise.\n\n\"you're a good girl, alice.\" she said. and even after what she'd done to me, what she'd said last time, her unexpected words left me wanting to climb in beside her. under the tartan rug with nearest. with kin. tell her all i knew. ask her what i didn't. say i love you.\n\ninstead i went outside. stood beside the rainwater tank under a tree hung with oranges. tiny planets between glossy leaves and sprigs of blossom. i picked one, peeled it, and separated it into segments. twelve small sticky smiles. i took them inside and ate them at old charlie's table with my back toward my grandmother.\n\nlater, i spread the tools of my trade on old charlie's table. the inks glowed like jewels. the empty paper awaiting the touch of a nib. i wet my pen and marked the page. i wrote in claret and finished with gold. a recipe i wrote, for a lure yet unmade.\n\n_name:_ river sonnet\n\n_type:_ dry streamer\n\n_hook:_ #3\n\n_thread:_ pearsall's gossamer silk\n\n_body:_ purple silk ribbed with silver tinsel\n\n_hackle:_ sacred ibis \u2014 dyed kingfisher blue\n\n_wing:_ peacock\n\nfaulkner would never set eyes on this lure. but i made a note at the bottom of my page. imagined it as it would appear in one of his advertisements.\n\nnote: _this unique lure was conceived by bridgewater flymaker alice nightingale as her response to a pact made with the god of flying things. and although its design is practical, the river sonnet is not intended for use as a fisherman's lure, but rather as a collector's piece. a fine example of the craft of fly tying._\n\ni smiled to myself when i read it. then i heard a soft thud as joey's boots fell by the door. heard his muffled footsteps cross the floor toward gram. i laid down my pen, twisted caps onto ink bottles while my recipe was drying. when joey saw me, he came and sat at the table. read what I'd written.\n\n\"have i seen this one?\" he said.\n\ni shook my head. \"i haven't made it yet.\"\n\n\"i like the label. sounds like something faulkner would write. it's good. really good. professional.\"\n\n\"thanks.\"\n\n\"let me know when you've got enough ready for faulkner.\"\n\n\"this one's not for him,\" i said.\n\n\"oh?\"\n\n\"it's for manny.\"\n\ngram snorted in her sleep. turned over in bed. joey looked across at her.\n\n\"about the other night,\" he said, \"gram probably thought she was doing the right thing. you know, when she said \u2014\"\n\n\"it's okay,\" i said. my grandmother's words, short-circuiting electricals, and the things they made me do were not something i wanted to go over.\n\n\"d'you think she's going to die soon?\" i whispered. \"is that why she said it?\"\n\n\"i dunno, alice.\"\n\n\"but you're not eighteen yet.\"\n\n\"don't worry about it. want some soup?\"\n\nhe filled two bowls from the saucepan on the stove.\n\n\"i went down to the river again, before i left. you looked like you were okay . . . you and manny,\" joey said. i didn't answer. too busy thinking about me and manny. his making fire for me. me leaning against his shoulder. telling him things i'd never told anyone before.\n\n\"tilda says he's a good bloke,\" joey said, and his words took my air away.\n\n\"you talk about me and manny? to other people?\" i said.\n\n\"only to tilda and only once. i asked her what she knew about manny, that's all. he's in the same year as her brother . . . they play football . . .\"\n\n\"but you said my name and manny's together?\"\n\n\"i don't know \u2014 i might have. geez, alice, you're my sister. can't i mention you?\"\n\n_it's okay. \"mention\" is different from \"talk about,\" alice nightingale,_ i reminded myself. _that is what other people do._\n\njoey finished his soup. wiped the bowl with bread.\n\n\"i'm going to bed now,\" he said. but he didn't. he watched as i began to draw a cover for my label. i blocked in the \"n\" for nightingale. the pencil strokes on the page calmed me.\n\n\"i don't want anyone to hurt you. that's all,\" joey said.\n\n\"i'm almost sixteen. i can look after myself.\"\n\n\"sixteen,\" he said, \"so you are!\" he messed my hair and i let it be. this time i did not hear the sound of his feet on the stairs. or my grandmother's breathing.\n\ni sketched\n\nflowers and feathers and\n\nfish that i modeled on the beautiful\n\nbook of kells\n\namong the other\n\ncreatures, damselflies and liliums,\n\nin the place\n\nwhere joey's face had always been, i drew\n\na dark boy with troubled\n\neyes french\n\nknots on\n\nhis head and flames\n\nin his hands.\n\nit was cold when bear and me at last climbed the stairs. i pushed my bed across to the wall where the kitchen chimney came up through my bedroom floor and out through the ceiling. pulled the blankets over my head. lay on my side, back to the chimney bricks, bear at my feet. heat seeped from the bricks into our bodies. i was asleep in moments. but not before i wondered if manny james had asked anyone what they knew. about me.\n\nmanny came often over school vacation. sometimes we worked in the paradise garden with joey, pruning fruit trees and grapevines. lopping willows by the river. binding the cuttings into sheaves to dry under the house. saving them till the winter solstice of the following year.\n\nbefore papa went away, we celebrated the solstice every year with a bonfire. when my skull was split open like a pademelon, not all memories of before were lost.\n\nfragments\n\nbecame tangled in the rosy spikes of bottlebrush\n\nwoven into wattle-and-daub nests of river swallows\n\nand drowned in the sticky throats of correas\n\neven our sandy river flats sparkled\n\nas much with memories as with mica\n\nand i, despite my fishbone stitches and crazy wiring, still remember the excitement leading up to those smoky, black-velvet nights. in the weeks before, joey and me spent days loading anything that would burn on our soapbox derby car. nights we spent under the house. a bare bulb burned like a caught sun in a wire cage while we two fashioned twiggy arms and legs. papa fastened them with a bag needle and string to a straw-stuffed potato sack. i can't remember gram ever being there. it was always papa. papa with no religion, no faith except in me and joey, who tried to teach us what little he knew about traditions in sweden, the place where our mother was born. where snow fell like mae petals at christmastime.\n\nin the land of our mother's people, the longest night was celebrated in december, with bonfires and candles. it was called saint lucia's day, after a girl who was good and kind.\n\n\"what's a saint, papa? is it like an angel? does it have wings?\"\n\nold charlie wasn't sure. \"a halo, maybe. dunno about wings,\" he said.\n\npapa said that the longest night at oktober bend fell in june. said we could build a bonfire then. we small nightingales liked the idea of angels and saints, wings and fire. even joey did. so began a new tradition on the longest night of the year. the paradise garden was decked with hurricane lamps. an orchard angel floated above the bonfire. joey and me sat on the rocks. papa stuffed a kerosene-soaked rag under the sticks. stood back, and tossed a match. we watched in awe as our higgledy-piggledy tower of sticks exploded into flames. orange, yellow, and scarlet licked at the angel's potato-sack skirt and brown-paper wings.\n\ni remember the first year we burned the angel, how old charlie looked behind us into the dark. i looked too, to see what it was that caught his attention. lamps winked in the apple boughs. beyond them and above, our kitchen window hung in the sky like a painting. a picture of gram, standing at the sink watching the fire. watching us burn the angel. papa turned back to us.\n\n\"i might have got this part wrong, kids,\" he said. \"i'm not sure if the saint's supposed to burn.\" but happiness was ours then. we worshipped life. danced on the elephant's back and drew pictures across the face of dark with red-tipped sticks.\n\nwe never celebrated the solstice after papa went away. gram said she was scared a stray spark might set fire to our old house. joey and me knew different. it was because she couldn't think of anything worth celebrating.\n\nsometimes, still, i see her staring out from inside the kitchen; i think about the bonfire and the angel. about the window hanging in the dark. gram in the kitchen. i wonder what she was thinking then. wonder what she was thinking when she watched manny work with me and joey. hauling prunings under the house on the soapbox car. mixing whitewash. painting the trunks of the fruit trees to stop the bark splitting. was it the trouble she'd seen in manny's eyes that made her watch him? or was it because she liked him? was it both? another person to love, another to lose. was that what she thought? was that the reason she never invited him in?\n\nbut i did\n\ni let him in\n\nthrough a crack\n\nin my heart i let him come\n\nthe day he found me lying\n\non the little hill of green\n\nmy broken mind whirling\n\ngiddily\n\ninto my waking\n\nand sleeping\n\nhe came and now\n\ninto my home and up\n\nthe stairs i let him\n\nin.\n\non the floor of my bedroom i spread my lures. manny, on his knees beside me. wanting to know why i had made them and of what. wanting to know everything about them. about me.\n\n\"papa taught me when i was ten. small fingers tie tiny knots. i didn't forget.\"\n\n\"does he still make them?\"\n\n\"he didn't take his tools,\" i said. not saying where papa was gone. not yet. that was his story. i thought it might be a betrayal to tell manny.\n\n\"could you send them to him?\"\n\n\"he doesn't need them. i make all the flies now.\"\n\ni showed manny my collection of\n\nhair and hide\n\nfleece and fur and feathers found\n\non fences in\n\nfields and forests.\n\nhe looked at my dye pots. i told him the ingredients i used to make them. when he saw my labels, he sat back on his heels and shook his head.\n\n\"you made these? you really made them?\"\n\ni nodded and wondered if manny would say words like the ones faulkner did. instead he said, \"these are gold!\"\n\n\"joey bought the gold out of the fly money,\" i said, mistaking his meaning.\n\n\"no, alice, i do not mean the ink. in this country, if something is very excellent, it is the custom to call it gold. your labels are gold!\"\n\nwe laughed at my mistake, like gram and i had laughed on the elephant rocks. then i asked manny if he knew what \"comeuppance\" meant and he didn't. so i told him about jack faulkner and how joey found out he was underpaying me. i explained how then i'd made labels for the lures and sold them to faulkner for fifteen dollars apiece.\n\n\"joey said that was faulkner's comeuppance for cheating me on the lures,\" i said.\n\n\"so comeuppance is when a person gets the punishment they deserve? is that what it means?\"\n\n\"something like that,\" i said.\n\n\"do you think faulkner deserved to be punished?\"\n\n\"he thinks i have no brains because of how i talk. i wanted to see his face when he saw my labels. that was best, not the money.\"\n\nmy voice was tired from the many words i had already said. i wanted to go out on the roof. wanted to show manny my special place. i fetched my book of pages, undid the latch on the window, and pushed it open.\n\n\"come,\" i said to manny.\n\n\"will you be okay?\" he asked.\n\n\"i am safe here. never fall. not once,\" i said. we stepped out onto the balcony. i showed manny the best way to climb up to the ridge. showed him how to grip the iron. where to put his hands.\n\n\"like this,\" i said. \"with hands and knees. if you slip, you'll slide, not fall. the chimney will stop you.\"\n\nwe perched like birds on\n\nthe nightingale nest\n\nour knees scabbed\n\nwith roof moss\n\nthe house hemmed in\n\nby the rain-fattened river and\n\nthe railway\n\nwe watched the ebb and flow of\n\nday and night\n\nover our frail winter\n\ngarden of sticks\n\nand stalks scratching\n\nthe swollen stomach\n\nof the low sky\n\nsaw the far and away\n\nspires and steeples and ordered streets\n\nthe many-windowed\n\nhomes and all\n\nthe other glories of\n\nmen glowing small\n\nas worms in the mouth\n\nof infinity.\n\na freight train broke the spell. trundled past the silos. hooted a husky warning at the foundry boom gates. i opened my book to put words to the things i'd seen and smelled, heard and felt. a loose page from an exercise book fell out. manny slammed his hand on it. stopped it slipping off the roof's edge into space. he turned it over.\n\n\"may i read the writing on this paper, alice nightingale? would you mind?\" he asked, hesitating to give it back to me.\n\nit was a story. one of my first tries when i was relearning to write. some of it was true, some imagined, because no one was willing or able to tell me all that happened. heat swarmed through me. i mumbled an excuse for the spidery red letters that crawled across the page in crooked sentences. but i nodded to manny, hoping he would understand.\n\nfor all its many faults, i had given my story a title. wrote bold across the page, _the stars at oktober bend._ i held gram's flashlight while manny read.\n\nonce there was a greatmother and a greatfarther that took care of the boy called joey and the girl called alice because the other farther was dead and the other mother flew away. the greatmother and greatfarther and joey and alice all lived together up in the sky where the stars and other shiny things were very close and on the ground under the sky was the garden that the greatmother made by putting magic pills in the dirt and the greatfarther played music and sang songs. when alice was number twelve she was sitting on the very small mountain near the garden and she was numbering the stars at oktober bend when the robbers came along and set the world on fire then joey pointed and the greatfarther went fast to the very small mountain and he saw what the robbers had did. the robbers ran to there car and the greatfarther ran home very fast and got his snake gun and went under the bridge. the greatmother lu-la-layed alice in her everlasting arms until she went to hospital because her head and other parts of her were bleeding. then policemen came and said the greatfarther did a very wicked sin and they wanted to take his snake gun away and he said it was with the fishes. and they said he would not be able to live near the shining stars anymore but they did not say anything about the very wicked sin the robbers did to the girl called alice. the greatfarther was allowed to stay home until the judgment day but he was not allowed to run away. they told him that after the judgment day he would have to live in another place that was not called hell but there were no windows and no stars. while he was waiting to go to that place the greatfarther made a hole in the roof of the room where alice sleeped when she was not in the hospital he hammered sticks and nails and maid a window and outside the window he hammered more sticks and nails to make a balkeny. and the greatmother of alice said the girl will fall down from the balkeny and be dead because she carnt fly far away like her mother did. and the greatfarther said i will hammer much more sticks so she carnt fall. and he did it and when the girl called alice came home she loved her window to the stars and she was never afraid of falling.\n\nwhen manny finished reading the small red story, he said, \"you are gold, alice nightingale. you are truly gold.\" and i laughed because now i knew that gold was excellent and also because i had learned to write much better than i did then. manny laughed too. it is hard not to laugh with someone when their laughter is made out of pure happiness. our voices became part of the deep-humming universe. when we came down again we lay on my bed and twined our legs together the way i had once imagined we would on the narrows of the blue couch. and manny looked so beautiful that i told him the legend of lucifer and asked him if that was his real name.\n\n\"my mother called me emmanuel,\" he said. \"it means god is with us.\"\n\nthen he leaned close and pressed his lips to mine. i was not sure if he was telling the truth about his name and its meaning, but i was almost certainly fifteen.\n\nI went many times to Alice's house over school vacation. But one night when I was going home, there were two boys leaning against the wall inside the railway waiting room. It was very late and there were no more trains coming or going and no passengers waiting. Only those two boys were there. It was Tilda's stepbrother, Lucas Stewart, and Hamish O'Leary \u2014 that is who it was. They stopped leaning against the wall when I came in, and I could see that it was me they were waiting for. They stood very close to me. So close that I had to stop.\n\n\"Where have you been?\" That is what Lucas said to me.\n\nI did not think it was a good idea to tell him where I had been, so I said that I had just been out running. O'Leary laughed. It was not a happy laugh.\n\n\"As if!\" he said.\n\n\"Next time you see Joey Nightingale, tell him to keep away from Tilda,\" said Lucas.\n\n\"But Tilda likes Joey,\" I answered.\n\n\"Tilda _thinks_ she likes Joey,\" O'Leary said. \"Her old man's a copper, and he wouldn't want his daughter getting mixed up with scum like the Nightingales.\"\n\n\"Why don't _you_ tell Joey, Lucas?\"\n\nIt was only a question. I thought that it was a polite question, but Hamish O'Leary did not like what I had asked his friend. He stepped closer to me and grabbed a handful of my shirt. I remembered the dagger and the drops of blood. If it had been a real knife, I could have reached around and severed his spinal cord in seconds. I had seen it done. I had been made to watch. His lips curled back like a snarling dog's.\n\n\"Listen, smart-ass,\" he said, \"just tell him, right? And tell him that if he doesn't, it's payback time.\"\n\nI had still not grown used to asking people for advice. But on this night I knew that I should speak to kind Louisa James. Perhaps if I told her a little more about Alice, I would find it easier to ask her whether or not I should be worried about Hamish O'Leary's warning.\n\n\"What is it?\" Louisa James asked me before I had spoken a word. She was truly gold.\n\n\"I am not certain,\" I said.\n\n\"Then perhaps we can work it out together. Shall I make cocoa?\"\n\nMy heart felt lighter then, the way it used to when I was a small boy and my mother would hold my hand and say, _\"Two heads, one heart, Emmanuel.\"_ So I told Louisa James.\n\n\"There is a girl, the one I told you about a few weeks ago. Do you remember? The one I took home.\"\n\n\"You mean the one who had a seizure in the railway waiting room?\"\n\nI should have said, _Yes, but she is much more than that, Louisa James._ Instead I nodded.\n\n\"Her name is Alice.\"\n\n\"Yes, I remember. And you've met her again since then?\"\n\n\"I went for a run near the river and she was there,\" I said. \"Now I have met her many times.\"\n\n\"So Alice is a friend now. Good, good.\"\n\n\"Yes, Alice is my friend,\" I said, and in my heart I knew that I was right to tell Louisa James.\n\n\"But there's more?\"\n\n\"Yes, there is more. There are boys from school who say very bad things about her.\"\n\n\"What sort of things?\"\n\n\"They use words I cannot say in front of a lady, Louisa James.\"\n\n\"Do you believe they're true, Manny?\"\n\n\"I know they are not.\"\n\n\"Do you know these boys?\"\n\n\"Yes, I know them. They play on my football team.\"\n\n\"Are they your friends?\"\n\n\"I do not want to be friends with them.\"\n\n\"Because of what they say about Alice?\"\n\n\"Because of that and other things.\"\n\n\"What other things, Manny?\"\n\n\"One of the boys has a stepsister. They want me to tell Alice's brother to keep away from her.\"\n\n\"Did they say why?\"\n\nI could not tell Louisa James what Hamish O'Leary really said, and although I had seen the way he looked at Tilda Cassidy and heard the things he said to her, I would only have been guessing if I said he was jealous of Joey.\n\n\"I asked them why and they said her father would not like it.\" That is what I told Louisa James.\n\n\"Then the father should speak to his daughter. This has nothing to do with you, or those boys. Do you hear me, Manny?\"\n\n\"Yes, I hear you, Louisa James, but should I tell Joey?\"\n\n\"Joey?\"\n\n\"The brother of Alice.\"\n\n\"It's nothing to do with you. Don't get mixed up in it.\"\n\nI did not want to be mixed up in it, but that did not stop me from wondering. What revenge was Hamish O'Leary planning to take if I did not do what he said? And who would he take it out on?\n\nshort days\n\nschool vacations and sky\n\nthe color of a gun\n\njoey and the dancing girl\n\nin the house\n\ngram dozing\n\nby the fire wheezing\n\nher way through winter\n\nnot looking for trouble\n\nin tilda's eyes\n\nmanny and me\n\nunder them all under\n\nold charlie's table under\n\nthe house under\n\nthe floorboards under\n\ndusty chandeliers of\n\nspider silk under\n\na quilt of patches\n\nin the blue painted noah boat\n\nour salvation\n\nin times of flood\n\ntwo of every creature\n\nfemale and male\n\nhis french knots upon\n\nmy pillow\n\nholy pages in my hands\n\nand manny unaware\n\nof the killer in the corner\n\nthe color of july.\n\nin july, manny and me went on a voyage of our own while bear was in the bath. it was joey's turn to wash and brush her. we took manny's music player in the boat. one bud in my ear. one in his. buds that blossomed into songs, not flowers. powerful music that drummed in our ears like breakers crashing. drove us through the storm. we drifted where the four strong winds and currents took us. light fell like god-rays through the cracks in the kitchen floor above us. at the forty-ninth parallel we dropped anchor and listened to a piece of music that my mother played. an exquisite, melancholy melody. i wondered if she had played it to me while i was in her belly. if she knew even then we would be parted. wondered, too, if manny's mother had sung sad songs to him.\n\ni should have waited. but i had told manny secrets, our legs had tangled in the hills and valleys of my bedding, and many times now his lips had touched mine. i imagined that gave me the right to answers to my questions. he sometimes mentioned the people he lived with in the house of windows. kind louisa and bull james. talked about school and football. but i wanted to know more. wanted to hear about things that had touched him and left their mark.\n\n\"did your mother leave you?\" i asked, still under the spell of the music.\n\n\"yes,\" he answered, staring over the bow of our boat like he was searching for distant lands.\n\ni should have sensed how close to the rocks we were. should have seen the darkening sky. felt the waves dash themselves against the flimsy sides of our boat. but i did not. i was like post-office hattie with her cold eyes and sharp questions. i wanted to know why other people's mothers left them.\n\n\"was she young and talented? did they tell you not to stand in her way?\"\n\n\"my mother is dead,\" said manny.\n\nwords abandoned me. i was ashamed.\n\ni should have known that death was another reason for forsaking. i slid my right hand between the boat's curved ribs and manny's shoulders. held it with my left to make a never-ending circle of arms around him. tried to draw him close but he stayed frozen. stayed where he was, still as teddy's angel.\n\n\"i cannot touch you, alice,\" he said, \"not the way i want to.\"\n\n\"you said that i was gold, manny.\"\n\n\"i did and i meant it.\"\n\n\"it was those boys, wasn't it? you heard the things they called me. but i am not what they say.\"\n\n\"i do not listen to what they say.\"\n\n\"then what is it?\"\n\nrain sheeted down beyond the stumps of the house. the river gathered speed. manny said nothing for the longest time and i waited, afraid he would tell me he was mistaken; that i was not shining and precious at all. i was dirty and worthless. at last he spoke but not in a voice i recognized.\n\n\"my mother was murdered. they all were. my whole family,\" he said in an elsewhere voice that seemed saved for telling unsayable truths. there was no forgetting in manny james, no short-circuiting electrics, no learning again to speak and write. every awful second of what had happened was stamped clear in his mind.\n\n\"in my country, the soldiers did terrible things to girls and women. that is what they did to my mother and sister. i was there. they made me watch. i cannot forget. and now when i close my eyes, i see you too, alice. i see you when you were twelve, what those men did to you.\"\n\nmanny's tears fell, and i howled with rage, \"may they all rot in hell!\"\n\nwhen my throat was raw and our tears had dried to salt, i whispered, \"don't let them hurt you, too, manny. let us not look back. let us see only what is here and now.\"\n\nat last manny's arms went around me. we lay in the belly of the boat, seeking refuge from ourselves and for ourselves in each other. our bodies fit together, soft and hard, giving, taking. and i shed twelveness like a skin.\n\nthat night i opened my book of flying and began to write a story: the true story of a boy called emmanuel james and a girl called alice nightingale.\n\n\"the peaches were pink as angel's cheeks,\" i wrote, \"when manny james began to love alice.\"\n\nall i had written there before was mostly longings, wonderings, or imaginings; shining things to keep the dark at bay. these new words hungered me for things i had never dared want. _what might become of us?_ i wondered. would love and peaches be enough to satisfy our hunger and make us whole again?\n\nspring was the usual time for big rains in bridgewater, but july rained steady for a fortnight. on the last saturday of school vacation ribbons of sun, pale as old straw, leaked through the morning clouds, lit my window, and seemed like a foretelling of better things. bear pulled her feather-boa tail close. stayed where she was at my feet. i pulled the blankets to my chin, pressed my back to the chimney. downstairs, joey made morning sounds: filled the kettle, dumped wood on the hearth, stoked the stove.\n\nwhen the chimney heated up, i went down, kissed gram, and cooked a tower of pancakes. we gobbled them like a celebration of the sun, sprinkled with sugar and squeezed lemon juice. afterward we carted barrow-loads of firewood from under the house to the veranda. joey stopped when tilda appeared, bright as a robin. red-coated, black-booted.\n\n\"we're going to the footy,\" joey said.\n\n\"football?\" i couldn't remember joey ever going to a match before.\n\n\"i only go to make dad happy,\" tilda said. \"why don't you come with us, alice? you should see manny \u2014 he's a star. heaps better than anyone else on the team.\"\n\ngold, manny was gold, of course he was! he and i had only ever been together in my world. i wanted to see him in his. did i dare? the bombers would be on the field. i would be only one in a crowd of many spectators. no one would know i was there, i told myself.\n\n\"how long does it take to play a game?\" i asked.\n\n\"not too long,\" answered joey.\n\n\"what about gram?\" i asked, but perfect tilda had thought of everything.\n\n\"i brought this,\" she said, opening the flaps of a cardboard box. \"it's a vaporizer.\" she showed us how to fill the reservoir with water. where to put the drops of eucalyptus oil. \"then you plug it into an electricity outlet and it makes steam. it might help your grandma breathe.\" then she looked at me like she could tell i was worrying about something. \"don't worry: no one will know it's missing,\" she said. \"i used to get croup when i was a kid, but we haven't used it in years.\"\n\nwe set the steamer going, stoked the stove. i put my arms into my raincoat and my feet into two pairs of socks, and wondered exactly how much nightingale business tilda knew. then i thought about manny and the things i had told him, and for a breath i thought it would be easier if it were just me and joey again. when our love for each other was enough.\n\n_we can never go back to that, alice nightingale, because now we have secrets from each other._ i did not know how to name the feeling inside me. i could not tell if it was fear or sadness or excitement, or a mixture of all three.\n\nby the time we left, the sun had gone again. joey rode his bike through the drizzle with tilda on the handlebars and me on the back rack thinking about manny.\n\ntilda had free passes for her and joey. bear and me got in under the fence behind the visitors' locker room. i hurried to where the others stood near a fire drum just around from the goal at the foundry end of the field. we waited for the teams to run on. the home team jogged onto the field first. striped with black and red, like tilda. they kicked the ball to one another and passed it with their hands. high and low, quick and slow. practicing.\n\n\"i can't see manny,\" joey said.\n\n\"maybe he's starting on the bench,\" said tilda.\n\n\"why would they start their best player on the bench \u2014 unless he's not fit?\"\n\na man was standing near us, warming his hands at the fire. he heard joey and tilda talking.\n\n\"manny james is on loan to the opposition today. they're three men down.\"\n\n\"why would the bombers let manny go?\" asked joey.\n\nthe man shrugged. \"they reckon it was captain's choice.\"\n\n\"which captain?\" asked tilda.\n\n\"bombers, of course. they don't have to do it, but the cheetahs are struggling this season \u2014 can't field a team most weeks and haven't won a game since the second round. nice gesture by the bombers, but i dunno why young stewart would give away his best player.\"\n\n\"he's up to something,\" tilda said after the man had walked off toward the bar.\n\n\"what do you mean?\" joey asked.\n\n\"lucas wouldn't do anything to help another team, i know he wouldn't. he was awarded best and fairest three seasons in a row. but then manny came and he's so much better than everyone else. i think lucas is jealous of him.\"\n\n\"even if he is, it doesn't explain why he'd loan manny to the cheetahs.\"\n\ni heard but didn't understand. football was a mystery to me. then tilda said something that caught my attention. it wasn't her words but the way she said them.\n\n\"unless . . .\" she said, then she shook her head and looked at joey. \"oh, god, i hope they don't do anything stupid.\"\n\n\"they?\"\n\n\"lucas and hamish.\"\n\n\"it's a football game, tilda. there's refs out there \u2014 and rules. they can't just do whatever they like.\"\n\n\"what are you talking about?\" i said. my chest tight.\n\n\"it's not important,\" joey said. \"look, they're tossing the coin. the game will start in a minute. i s'pose you'll be cheering for the yellow and blacks!\"\n\n\"for manny,\" i said.\n\ni didn't care who won or lost. it was only manny that i watched. his limbs seemed unhinged like a cat's. he moved with grace and strength and speed. at times he soared above the others to catch the red ball in the wide gray sky. though he was dressed in yellow and black, even the bridgewater supporters gasped at the sight of him.\n\nhalfway through the game, the players left the ground. tilda, joey, and me went to the canteen and bought hot sausages and onions wrapped in bread. we ate them with our backs to the fire drum and licked sauce off our fingers.\n\nthe players came outside again and the referee in his long socks and shorts. the ball was tucked under his arm. a silver whistle dangled from a cord around his neck. i remembered what joey said. there are rules and there are referees. players cannot do whatever they please. i told myself this meant that nothing bad could happen to manny.\n\nthe game was almost at its end. the referee bounced the ball. i watched it rise and fall. saw it spill out between the cheetahs' legs. hands reached in, passed the ball to other hands. fast as lightning it fell, and i looked from it to manny, who leaped above them all. sky was in his hair and on his shoulders as he grasped the flying prize. his hands closed around it. kept it safe and pulled it down with him. down through the cheers until his feet touched the green. his arms held up the trophy for all to see. from the corner of my eye i saw a movement. an arm raised high and late. too late.\n\no'leary's arm. down he brought it like a sledgehammer on the back of manny's head. the siren sounded. manny slumped and fell forward onto the field. could not stand up to take his kick. two men in white jackets raced across the ground, looked into manny's eyes, slid a stretcher underneath him and carried him to the locker room. i didn't see the referee give the ball to another cheetah player. didn't see the ball slew sideways from his cleat, bounce across the sodden grass, over the boundary line far from the goal. didn't see the referee turn o'leary around, write down the black number, stitched to his back, on a pad that he took from his pocket. didn't care that the bombers had won by the smallest of margins.\n\ni turned my back on it all. ran to the gate to meet the stretcher-bearers. joey and tilda behind me. i made myself look at manny's head to see if it was split open. there was no blood on him, only mud and blades of grass stuck to the bottoms of his cleats where his feet, so fast and graceful, had touched the ground. manny james looked perfect, but his eyes were closed and i wanted him to open them, to look at me and say in his proper way, _alice nightingale, i am so glad that you are here today._ and I wanted to answer, _you were gold, manny james. pure gold._\n\nbut manny didn't open his eyes or speak and i wanted to cry out, _is there anyone here who knows about acquired brain injury?_ fear fastened my tongue and we could only watch as they rushed him by.\n\nfamily could go inside, they said. and we were not, so we waited at the door in the mud and the drizzle while other people went in and out. the bombers were still in the center of the ground with their arms around each other's shoulders, singing a song about themselves as though they were gold. but when they reached the gate in the fence, tilda was waiting for the captain.\n\n\"you planned this, lucas!\" she hissed at him. \"i know you're jealous of manny but you're too gutless to do anything yourself, so you got your stupid mate o'leary to do it for you.\"\n\n\"i dunno why you're all worked up,\" her stepbrother said. \"it's only a game of football.\"\n\n\"you're right about that. it is only a game and there's no place in it for thugs.\"\n\n\"careful, tilda,\" her father said as he waited outside the locker room door for his players to file through.\n\no'leary swaggered close. \"listen to your daddy, sweetheart, and by the way, what's a lady like you doing, hangin' around with trash?\" he turned toward joey and me. cleared his throat and spat on the ground in front of us. then he laughed.\n\nperfect tilda was even more perfect than i thought. quick as a heartbeat, she landed a right hook. o'leary's nose went sideways and blood sprayed everywhere. i could have hugged her.\n\n\"You have a concussion, Manny.\" It was the worried face of Louisa James that I saw first when I opened my eyes. Bull was beside her. They came to every game. On fine days, Bull reversed the bed of his pickup truck in close to the fence and they sat on deck chairs in the back and ate sandwiches and drank tea at halftime. Bull boasted that his pickup truck was a grandstand on wheels.\n\n\"You should have seen Lou run onto the ground when she saw you go down, son,\" Bull said.\n\nI opened my eyes again and saw the honor board that hung on the wall above Bull's head. His name was there, painted in golden letters.\n\n\"She ran so fast, I think the Bombers should recruit her,\" he said.\n\nThe smile on Louisa's mouth did not match her eyes. I wanted to ask her what had happened, but my lips would not move. The golden letters floated away and I felt myself falling again. Floating and falling, that is what it felt like when I was lying on the stretcher with all those people looking at me.\n\nWhen I opened my eyes again, I was in bed in the house of windows and there was only Louisa James looking at me. She was sitting in a chair beside me. It was dark outside. Clouds passed in front of the moon, and small branches scraped at the glass walls of the house.\n\n\"Go back to sleep,\" whispered Louisa James. When my alarm rang at 6:30, she was still there.\n\n\"No running and no school. At least for a couple of days,\" she said. \"Stay there and I'll make you a drink.\"\n\nIt was raining again and I thought about the boat under the house at Oktober Bend and about Alice. Any other Sunday I would have gone to see her. Would she wonder why I had not come? I hoped she believed me when I told her that I took no notice of the things that Lucas Stewart and Hamish O'Leary said about her.\n\nI had not told her how they had stopped me in the railway station waiting room and told me to warn Joey away from Tilda. That was something she did not need to know. Louise James said it was none of my business either and I believed her then. But things were different now. I knew that something was very wrong but I could not remember what it was. I sat up and put my feet on the floor. That is when the walls seemed to move. I began to shiver and sweat dripped off my face. I knew I had been hit in the head and I remembered falling down. Then I remembered what Hamish O'Leary said to me before his fist connected with my skull. That is when I vomited on Louisa James's shining floor.\n\nIn the afternoon, I could sit and stand without feeling dizzy, so I went down to the living room. I did not want to stay upstairs by myself, trying to decide what I should do about Hamish O'Leary and about Alice. It was not a good thing to think about by myself. I sat down at the table and Louisa James sat opposite me. That is where she sat when she wanted to look at me properly.\n\n\"How are you feeling?\" she said.\n\n\"My head is not spinning now,\" I said. Louisa James was very good at knowing when I lied.\n\n\"That O'Leary boy won't get away with what he did to you,\" she said.\n\nA few weeks not playing football, I thought, but what about the other thing he threatened to do?\n\n\"Bull's very proud of you, Manny, but it wouldn't break his heart if you didn't want to keep playing.\"\n\nI remembered the honor board in the locker room. Five times Bull's name was painted on it, for the five times he was the Best and Fairest player of all the Bridgewater Bombers. The three true sons of Bull James were not golden boys of football. They were best and fairest at other things: banking and business and medicine.\n\nI played the game because it made Bull happy.\n\nLouisa James's voice was gentle, but I did not want to talk about football. I did not want to think about Hamish O'Leary or what he had said. I wanted to talk about Alice. The sound of her name in the bright warm room would make everything right. That is what I was thinking when Louisa James put aside the peas she had been shelling. She reached across the table and put her hand over mine and that is when I thought I was in trouble.\n\n\"Manny,\" she said, \"at the game yesterday, there were some young people waiting at the gate when you were carried off the field. They seemed very upset. I thought they might have known you.\"\n\n\"Was there a dog, a very big dog?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" she said. \"I was so worried about you that I didn't notice much else. All I can remember now is that one of those people was a girl with beautiful hair. Reddish and curly. Very long.\"\n\n\"Alice,\" I said, \"it must have been. Red is the color of Alice's hair.\"\n\n\"I wondered if it might be her. Perhaps you should call and tell her you're okay.\"\n\n\"There is no phone at Alice's house,\" I said. I wanted to hear her voice more than anything else.\n\n\"Oh, well, I guess you'll see her at school in a couple of days.\"\n\n\"Alice is not a student,\" I said. \"Not at Saint Simeon's.\" I said that part quickly and then I kept talking because I had made a mistake. \"She is very clever, Louisa James. She is called the Flymaker of Bridgewater and she makes trout lures that are so beautiful that some people collect them the way other people collect paintings or other valuable objects.\"\n\nI had read those words in a fishing magazine that Joey showed me and I learned them by heart. Once I started telling Louisa James about Alice, I could not stop.\n\n\"Even the labels that Alice makes for her lures are very beautiful. Alice herself made the paper and she draws all the lettering and pictures with a pen dipped in ink. That is what she does.\" I wished I could have shown Louisa James the things that Alice made. Then I remembered the poems. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the two I carried with me.\n\n\"She also writes poetry,\" I said, and I pushed them across the table. Louisa James read the first one.\n\n\"I don't know much about poetry,\" she said, \"but this is lovely.\" Then she picked up the seed packet and I watched her face as she read.\n\n\"They're very good,\" she said, \"but this one seems so . . . sad for a girl so young. How old is she?\"\n\n\"Almost sixteen.\"\n\nLouisa James read the poem again. Her face was serious.\n\n\"What did you say her name was?\"\n\n\"Alice.\"\n\n\"No, I mean her other name.\"\n\nLouisa James knew many of the people who lived in Bridgewater. Some she had helped into the world; others she had nursed back to health when they were ill. _If I tell you that Alice is a Nightingale, you might remember holding the hand of a young man as he lay dying, and you might know the name of the old man who caused his death._\n\nThat is what I was thinking while Louisa James was looking at Alice's poems. I should have trusted her. She had given a new home and a new life to a boy who had done many wrong things. I should have known that a person who does such things does not judge other people. But before I could speak, my phone began to ring. I took it from my pocket and stared at it, wondering who might be calling me. It was not the coach and it was not Bull James, _mover of mountains,_ and Louisa James was sitting in the same room as me.\n\n\"Aren't you going to answer that?\"\n\n\"Hello?\" I said, and I thought I heard the sound of coins falling.\n\n\"Hello? Manny? It's me . . . Joey. Hold on a minute . . .\"\n\n\"Manny?\"\n\n\"Alice?\"\n\n\"Are you okay?\"\n\nJoey had taken Alice to the phone booth outside the post office. When their coins ran out, I switched my phone off and put it in my pocket. My heart was beating very fast.\n\n\"It was Alice,\" I told Louisa James. \"It _was_ her you saw at the game.\"\n\n\"What's wrong, Manny?\"\n\n\"She just called to see if I was all right.\"\n\n\"What is it you're not telling me?\"\n\n\"It is nothing,\" I said, but Louisa James knew that it was not nothing.\n\n\"At the game yesterday, they stopped play while the stretcher was being brought out and I ran onto the ground. The O'Leary boy said something to you and I'm sure he wasn't apologizing. Did you hear him? Do you remember what it was, Manny? Is what he said worrying you?\"\n\nI shook my head. That is when the table began to slide into the floor. I gripped it tight and closed my eyes.\n\n\"Never mind,\" said Louisa James. \"It might come back to you later.\"\n\nI could not tell her that it had never gone away. I could not tell her that I could hardly think of words to speak to Alice on the phone because of what O'Leary said.\n\n\"That was a reminder,\" he had hissed in my ear. \"Tell Nightingale to keep away from Tilda, soldier boy, or somethin' nasty will happen to his sister.\" That is what he said.\n\ntuesday morning. undressed birches tapped their bony fingers on my stick-and-nail balcony. it rained all night and still it rained. even with my window closed i heard the low growl of the river swelled wide. scraping its belly over rocks, surging through sedge, bulrush, and willow, gobbling wrens' nests from drowning melaleucas. the chimney bricks had lost their heat. the windowpanes were pearly with breath that escaped me in my dreams. i drew a crooked heart on the misted glass, speared it with cupid's dart. wrote manny's name and mine inside. cleaned another pane with the sleeve of my pajamas. looked down on the yard all runnied and silvered with slip. a door slammed; the house shook. joey's feet flew fast up the shuddery stairs and there he suddenly was, his blue-fingered hand on the brass knob of the far flung door, dripping all over my floor.\n\n\"the river's over the elephant rocks,\" he said, his hasty breath hot in the shivery room. \"c'mon, we gotta get the boat out, just in case.\"\n\nbear watched through the screen door while joey pulled the winch cable out as far as it would reach into the yard. we picked our way, careful as tomcats, across the slippery ground till we reached the river end of the house, where the boat was kept. i fetched the book of kells and the cadbury's roses tin.\n\njoey filled a plastic garbage bin with water\n\nlowered the propellor of the outboard\n\nmotor into the bin\n\nopened the choke\n\nprimed it\n\npulled the cord and swore\n\nwhen it didn't start\n\ndid it all\n\nover again exactly\n\nlike old charlie did\n\nincluding the swearing.\n\njoey left the motor idling. fetched the snake gun. wrapped it in rags and plastic. tucked it in the boat, careful as you would a baby. killed the motor, lifted it in beside the gun, pulled a tarp over everything. fastened it tight, knotted a rope with a truckie's hitch. wedged two steel pipes under the bow and rolled the boat forward till the pipes were at the stern. shifted the pipes from back to front till the boat was close enough to attach the cable hook. we took turns to wind the slippery winch handle. hauled the boat across the wet clay yard, up the steps, and onto the veranda. padlocked it to a post with a length of chain.\n\ni kicked off my mud-caked boots at the washhouse door. hung my sopping coat to drip-dry. joey sat on the step, toweling his hair.\n\n\"you can have first shower,\" he said. \"i'll get the fire going.\"\n\ni stayed. sat beside him.\n\n\"what are we going to do about gram?\" i said. \"what if the rain keeps up? she can't even walk up the stairs. how will we get her out?\"\n\njoey stared into the drizzle. quiet. i thought he was going to be mad at me for nagging about gram. finally he opened his mouth.\n\n\"ever felt like you were right on the edge of something big, alice? like you're clinging to the side of a cliff, you've done all the hard work, your fingernails are busted, your guts are red raw, your knees are bleeding, but you're so close that all you have to do is throw your leg over the top. then you hear a voice and you look up and someone's beaten you to it. you meet their eyes and you think they're gonna give you a hand, but instead they stomp all over your fingers and turn their back as you fall, and you know that no matter how many times you pick yourself up and climb that rock face, the same thing's gonna happen.\"\n\ni had never heard joey talk that way before. never heard him say that many words together. my little brother was always the one who made me feel good. made me feel like i could do anything. i didn't know what to say. writing was easier for me than talking. it gave me time to find the proper words. put down the things i felt. made me understandable. i felt twelve all over again, squatting beside joey, squeezing the wet brown hems of my pajama pants, trying to find the right words.\n\n\"what about tilda?\" i said. \"tilda is a very good thing.\"\n\n\"she won't come no more,\" joey said.\n\nthen i understood his black mood.\n\n\"why not?\"\n\n\"i went to see her, yesterday, after school. her brother and o'leary cornered me, said her old man warned her to keep away from me. she won't come back, alice. she can't, even if she wants to.\"\n\nwas this forsaking? would other people forsake us too? not just family? i thought of tilda in her red coat, bright as poppies in our winter garden. kind tilda with an invitation for me and a vaporizer for gram. brave tilda with her true words and perfect right hook.\n\n\"she will come, joey,\" i said, and i believed. but joey shook his head.\n\n\"there's always someone who thinks we're not good enough.\"\n\ni took a shower as hot as i could stand it. lightning fanged; the sky rattled. i sat on the broken orange tiles. wrapped my arms around myself, and cried for joey. i had found ledges of safety. small pockets of happiness had blossomed on my rock face: a kiss, a kindness, a rare comeuppance. with these i was content. each step was a triumph. i'd never imagined arriving at the top. never wondered if someone waited there. to help me up. or tread my fingers into the dirt. now i wondered if manny's people waited there.\n\ni remembered the strangeness in manny's voice on sunday. but for joey, i would never have gone to the phone booth. i hated telephones. the person on the other end could not see me. ears were all they had and ears could not hear the movements of my mouth or the straining tendons in my neck. ears had no way of knowing of my fight to break the silence. joey fed coins into a slot and dialed the numbers. then manny spoke and all the shining queens and kangaroos tumbled in the darkness. the phone was in my hand, waiting, empty, and i had to find words for manny. and he for me. when he spoke, he did not sound like the boy who had listened to my secrets and told me his.\n\nat the end of our awkward conversation, i knew a little more and a lot less. and now, because of that, i wondered if someone had seen me at the match.\n\nwatching manny fly\n\nwatching him fall\n\nand me\n\nrunning and running to\n\nthe low latched gate to\n\nthe stretcher where he lay with\n\nmy arms not around him and\n\nhis eyes not looking\n\ndid they hear my broken voice cry out,\n\n\"does anyone know . . . ?\"\n\ndid they?\n\ndid they tell manny james to keep away from me? or was he more broken than he told me on the phone? because now it was tuesday and still he had not come.\n\njoey was in the kitchen when i came to get dressed in front of the fire. gram was as gray as the clay in the yard and felt the same \u2014 cold and damp. there was just us three again and we did what we had to do.\n\njoey said, \"you gotta walk, gram, else your lungs will drown.\"\n\n\"so you think you're a doctor now?\" she wheezed.\n\n\"i looked it up at school,\" he said. \"c'mon.\"\n\nwe upped her from her cot, together again, the way we were before tilda and manny. me under one shoulder, joey under the other. this was our rock face, our nightingale business.\n\n\"river's up,\" joey said.\n\n\"think i can't hear it?\" said gram, sliding her knitted slippers along the floor like she was skiing across the forty-ninth parallel.\n\n\"we got the boat ready, gram,\" i said.\n\n\"me and charlie used to go fishin' in that boat.\"\n\n\"maybe when you're better we can go again. you, me, and joey.\"\n\n\"that's enough,\" she said, and stopped. \"i'm all out of breath.\"\n\n\"once more,\" joey said, and we lumped her around the kitchen again, slow as a month of wet sundays.\n\ngram leaned herself against the sink to catch her breath. i brushed her hair slow and smooth while we stared out. behind the orchard where our bonfires once burned, the river spread her creamy petticoats. i wondered if gram was remembering old charlie pulling me and joey in the soapbox car, wheeling our homemade angel to her fiery death. wondered if her superstitious mind believed that burning the angel had led to all our troubles, to cliffs that none of us could climb.\n\nmy fingers parted her hair into tributaries and streams. wove them under and over and under again. tied the ends with a scrap of wool and wound the finished braid around her head like a crown. fastened it with bobby pins.\n\n\"you look like a queen, gram,\" i said. it was ten o'clock and the smell of frying eggs was in the air. i held a mirror to her face, but she pushed it away.\n\n\"who's that i see comin' through the orchard?\" she said.\n\njoey left the eggs and me and gram. and he, not yet showered, barefoot and still in pajama shorts, magicked himself across the muck without a slip to unlatch the orchard gate. inside, me and gram laughed to see him, nearly naked in the pouring rain, holding the pickets so gentlemanly for the girl he thought would never come.\n\nonly the tips of the garden gate's pointed pickets were visible on wednesday morning. looked like a dinosaur's back zigzagging through the muddy water. half a dozen red hens roosted on the kitchen windowsill. we could almost have dived off the veranda at the river end of the house. the other end was built on bedrock. we could have climbed out the window and stepped onto the ground there.\n\n\"we'll be fine,\" joey said. \"the distance between the floor and the water's gotta be at least two meters, and anyway, it's stopped raining now.\"\n\ni didn't feel fine. \"what if it starts again?\"\n\n\"i'll come home. promise. the boat's ready now. all we gotta do is get gram on board. don't worry.\"\n\njoey went to school and i fed the hens leftover porridge that i couldn't eat because now it was wednesday and still manny had not come. i built a newspaper hen's nest in the bottom of the boat, washed the dishes, and stoked the fire. after i bathed gram and helped her change her clothes, i went upstairs. put all my papers, labels, and the book of flying in plastic bags.\n\ngram went to sleep after lunch and i opened the dresser drawer and searched among the shoelaces and string, the blackout candles, the deck of cards, the matches, flashlight, and rubber bands. found papa's metal tape measure and four new batteries. stuck the end of the tape through a knothole in the kitchen floor and measured the distance between the floor and the water. it was still more than two meters and it wasn't raining. maybe joey was right. maybe we'd be fine. i took the radio off the mantelpiece. searched for spiders in the sleeves of my raincoat and filled its pockets with everything i needed. then bear and me went walking.\n\nthe river trail was underwater, so we took our secret route to the railway station. the way i had showed manny. when we passed the place where i had held back the fence, i remembered how manny held my hand and would have taken me with him. but his world was not mine. not then and not now. maybe not ever. we followed the fence along the road until we came to the place where the couch fell from the back of a truck, tumbled to the edge of charlotte's pass, and buried its silver casters in the weeds.\n\nthe soupy river swelled out below me. it had guzzled the rope above the tar pit and the limb from which it hung. but the barbecue, the concrete picnic table, and teddy's memorial were still well above the water. i slid down the slippery sheep trails. bear followed, nimble as a mountain goat. i wrenched out tufts of grass and dead thistles from beside the angel's feet. scraped and scrabbled with my hands, burrowed like a rabbit in the dirt, down among the living things, roots and worms and memories. my nails were torn.\n\nmy fingers stung where thistle spines pierced them. but there was nothing to be found. nothing left. there couldn't be. i knew that.\n\ni turned the radio on. took the chisel from my raincoat pocket and the tack hammer that old charlie used when he banged new heels on our worn-out boots. began to chip carefully at the soft sandstone under the angel's feet. three o'clock came quickly. news headlines then the weather report. i did not need to be told more rain was coming. gunmetal clouds parachuted onto the hills. i stood back to look at my finished work and suddenly there came manny, rushing downhill like the wind.\n\n\"alice!\" he said. \"i've been everywhere looking for you. i was worried. what are you doing down here?\"\n\ni stared at him. at his face, his head, wanted to make sure he was okay after what o'leary did. wanted him to smile at me. he did not. manny saw the tools in my hand. then his eyes went to the letters i'd marked on the stone. he looked for a long time. then knelt and traced the letters with his fingers.\n\n\"precious nightingale,\" he said softly. \"was there a baby, alice?\"\n\n\"i don't know,\" i said. \"no one can tell me. gram said little girls don't have babies. but what if she's wrong? what if there was? if it existed at all, for a day or an hour, it shouldn't be forgotten, should it?\"\n\nlightning split the southern sky. gram's radio spat and crackled. i put it inside my coat. manny grabbed my tools.\n\n\"home, bear, home!\" i yelled above a thunderclap. she stayed close as we ran. constant companion, never forsaking, not even in a storm.\n\nclouds gutted themselves on the radio tower behind the fire station. the first fat drops spat at our heels as we reached our hole in the fence. i ran faster, heart thumping, feeling guilty, needing to be home. to measure by eye the distance between river and floor. stopped when i saw the house was safe, a peninsula of land still surrounding it.\n\nmanny grabbed my hand, held me back.\n\n\"before you go inside, is there somewhere private we can talk? just you and me?\"\n\n\"i should go in to gram . . .\"\n\n\"joey and tilda are with your grandmother. i came here first when i was looking for you. please, alice, there is something important i must tell you.\"\n\nthe rain was pouring now. we needed to find shelter quickly. \"under the house?\" i said, hoping it was still dry up the high end. manny nodded.\n\ni spread my raincoat on the ground. manny's eyes lit on me for a moment, as if to measure whether i could bear the weight of what he had to tell me. then we huddled together, shivering. heads almost touching the wooden beams above us. bear shook her coat, flung water everywhere, then curled up close to me.\n\ni heard joey's muffled footsteps and faint voices in the kitchen at the other end of the house. when manny spoke, his voice was almost a whisper. \"there are things i should have told you before,\" he said, and my stomach coiled like clock springs. \"in my country, i watched soldiers burn villages and murder and torture people. i saw my mother and sister bleeding on the ground and i did nothing to help them. when everything i had was gone, the soldiers kept me safe. when i did as i was told, they gave me food and cigarettes. then they gave me a gun. if they had ordered me to kill a man, i think i would have. i was ten years old and i was like them, a soldier.\"\n\nanger exploded inside me. i wanted to shout. not because manny had told me things i didn't want to know, but because they had happened. did he think holding a gun made a boy a soldier? did he think being raped made a girl a whore?\n\n\"do you think this will change the way i feel about you?\" i whispered. _do you think it will stop the skip of my heart when i see you? do you know why papa is in jail? do you think what he did made me love him any less?_\n\n\"i was wrong not to tell you,\" he said. \"you deserve to hear it from me, not from someone else.\"\n\n_people do not speak to me, emmanuel. only_ you _tell me things you do not want to say. only_ you _listen._ \"who else knows?\" i said. \"louisa james?\"\n\n\"louisa james knows almost everything about me, that is true. but she would never tell anyone else. that is not the kind of person she is.\"\n\n\"who, then? please, not joey.\"\n\n\"no, it is not joey.\" manny shook his head. \"but i must also speak to him about this.\"\n\n\"you have told me. that is enough. you are not a soldier. and my brother doesn't need to know everything about his sister,\" i said, suddenly glad manny shared his past with me before others changed his history into something it was not.\n\n\"i must tell him,\" manny said again, and i saw his troubled eyes. was this what gram had seen?\n\n\"what's wrong, manny?\" i said.\n\n\"the person who found out about the things i did says i must tell joey not to see tilda anymore, and if i do not, someone will get hurt.\"\n\n\"you mean mr. cassidy? tilda says her father said nothing. she says o'leary's a liar for telling joey that.\" manny's expression did not change.\n\n\"now that i have told you,\" he said, \"it doesn't really matter who else knows what i did before i came to bridgewater. but it is not the coach who found out. and even if it were, it is not me that i am worried about, or joey. and that is the truth, alice.\"\n\n\"i don't understand.\"\n\ni crept an arm around his shoulder and leaned my head against his chest. the knitted stitches of his damp sweater pressed plain and purl patterns on my cheek. beneath them beat the steady rhythm of manny's heart.\n\n\"tell me everything, manny.\" his arms closed me in.\n\n\"alice, there is someone who might hurt you.\"\n\n\"hurt me? who might hurt me?\"\n\n\"it is hamish o'leary. he said that something would happen to you if joey did not stop seeing tilda. that is why i have to talk to joey. that is what i have to tell him. that is why hamish punched me at the game. so that i would know that he was serious.\"\n\ni had seen the way hamish o'leary looked at tilda. it was clear why he wanted joey to stop seeing her. but i didn't understand why he had threatened to harm me, not joey.\n\n\"when did he tell you this?\"\n\n\"at the football game.\"\n\n\"when he hit you. i saw him say something to you.\"\n\nmanny nodded. \"so you see, i must tell joey.\"\n\n\"you can't, manny.\"\n\n\"but he loves you, alice, and . . .\"\n\n\"that's why you can't tell him. he's already done enough for me. i'm going inside now. you can come with me but you can't say anything to joey.\"\n\njoey saw us coming. met us on the veranda, furious. i'd been away too long. gram had pissed in her bed and cried because she'd done it. i cried when joey told me. cried for gram because she was old and now her waterworks were buggered as well as her lungs, and because i hadn't been there to help her out of bed onto the bucket and wipe her bum and tuck her in. i cried because i could tell the river was higher without sticking papa's tape measure down the hole, and because i knew joey was worried. and maybe just a little bit because of what hamish o'leary said to manny.\n\n\"i am sorry,\" manny said. \"it was my fault. there was something important i had to tell alice.\"\n\n\"it's just possible that our house might float down the river sometime in the next forty-eight hours \u2014 what's more important than that?\"\n\n\"i am sorry, joey. i really am,\" manny said.\n\ni wiped my face on my sleeve. glared at manny, afraid he was going to tell joey about o'leary. tilda saved me.\n\n\"let them come inside, joey. you must be freezing,\" she said, linking her arm through mine. joey breathed out. calmed down.\n\ngram called out, \"what are you all doing, standing around out there? come inside. what's a woman have to do around here to get a cup of tea?\"\n\n\"i've told her we might have to leave,\" joey said. \"she won't hear of it. see what you can do, alice.\"\n\n\"we'll put the kettle on,\" said tilda. \"come on, manny.\"\n\n\"how bad is it really, joey?\" i asked.\n\n\"emergency services says it should peak around midnight. they're predicting we'll be safe here at bridgewater. but i think we should all be ready to go, just in case. it's just after six thirty now, so we should have plenty of time.\"\n\ntilda was sitting at the table doing something with her phone. manny was pouring tea.\n\n\"manny and i have invited ourselves to stay here tonight,\" tilda announced. \"because we've got phones and you might need them. i just let dad know i'm staying at a friend's house,\" she said.\n\njoey and i made scrambled eggs on toast for everyone. when gram finished, i said, \"i'll put some warmer clothes on you.\" i rubbed her back with vicks, zippered old charlie's fleecy fishing sweater over her nightie, pulled on two pairs of socks and tracksuit pants over the top.\n\n\"that's enough,\" she grumbled. \"i'll get too hot.\"\n\n\"we might have to leave the house later on and go somewhere safer, gram. they say there's a lot of water coming down.\"\n\n\"they don't know what they're talking about. i've never seen the river flood in july.\"\n\n\"best to be ready, just in case,\" i said. tucked her in tight.\n\nwhile gram dozed, we packed our precious things\n\nin plastic bags\n\nphotographs of daddy and us\n\non his knees\n\nand in the air above\n\nhis strong brown\n\narms and\n\nsmiling face.\n\nthe dictionary full\n\nof words and\n\ngram's bible\n\nlures and labels\n\npens and nibs and inks and pages\n\nempty and full and the tea\n\ncaddy bank.\n\nupstairs we went. arms laden with small treasures. bear and me stayed behind, a moment longer than the others. i opened my window out into the dripping, moonless dark. saw the river run by, fat and black as molasses. slammed the panes together hard and ran down. ran everywhere. flicking switches, turning lights on, making our small world brighter, safer. safe with gram snoring and the fire burning and the radio playing weather reports, emergency bulletins, and the 8:30 news of places near and far away.\n\n\"let's play truth or dare,\" i said when news of the world was finished and we knew the temperature in rome and in paris and madrid. i didn't want to think about how close the river was to the floor of the house for the next five hours or however long it took before we knew if we were going to be safe or not.\n\n\"yeah, let's do it,\" tilda said.\n\n\"want to have a look outside first?\" joey asked.\n\n\"not me,\" i said.\n\n\"me either,\" said tilda.\n\n\"i'll come,\" manny said.\n\njoey lit a hurricane lantern and he and manny went outside onto the veranda. tilda, bear, and me watched from inside. light flickered across the endless ocean. bear whined and put her head in my lap. manny took his phone from his pocket.\n\n\"this is manny,\" we heard him say. \"is bull there?\" bull james was the man who built the house of windows. bull james moved mountains. i'd seen it written on all his tipping trucks and on his yellow caterpillar machines that pushed the rocks of bridgewater around as though they were popcorn. manny talked for a while, then passed his phone to joey. when the conversation was ended, the boys came inside.\n\n\"all the reports say that we're in no immediate danger, but bull says he'd like to get us out as soon as possible,\" joey explained. \"he says they'll use sandbags to build a breakwater in the rail yards, so the current's not so strong. then they'll set up a floodlight. once that's been done, he'll call manny, and the emergency services rescue boat will come across to get us all.\"\n\n\"why can't we just go now \u2014 in our own boat?\" i asked.\n\n\"bull's worried the motor's too small. and besides, we'd have to make two trips.\"\n\nwe began the waiting game. and our game of truth or dare. but no one was very interested because of the creeping water circling us and because we were waiting for manny's phone to ring. when it was my turn to ask joey a question, he chose truth. i couldn't think of anything interesting to ask, so i said, \"what are the names of the boys who got killed on the bridge?\"\n\njoey didn't answer straightaway. everyone went quiet, waiting for him to say something.\n\n\"what difference does it make who they were?\" he said.\n\n\"nobody ever told me who they were. i just want to know.\"\n\n\"this is supposed to be a game, alice, not a bloody interrogation!\" he laughed awkwardly. looked embarrassed.\n\n\"tell me, joey.\"\n\n\"geez, alice, this is family business. ask me about it later. not here, not now.\"\n\n\"i need to know now. it might be important.\"\n\n\"what do you mean?\"\n\n\"just tell me.\"\n\n\"what's it matter who the bastards were? what difference does it make now?\"\n\n\"i have a right to know.\"\n\njoey kicked his chair back. it clattered to the floor. bear sprang to her feet. came to heel beside me. joey ignored her. strode across to the sink and stared out the window into the blackness. silent seconds ticked by before my brother spoke to his reflection in the window.\n\n\"it was joel ellis,\" he said.\n\n\"and the other one?\"\n\n\"liam. his name was liam.\"\n\n\"liam who?\"\n\ni was ready this time. no ravens, no cross-wired electricals. just me wanting to make sense of my past, my present, and my future. joey spun around to face me.\n\n\"shit, alice, what are you trying to do?\" bear's ears lifted.\n\n\"i'm not the guilty one.\"\n\nmanny watched me. didn't try to stop me. joey sat down beside tilda and put his head in his hands.\n\n\"o'leary. it was liam o'leary, hamish's older brother. he was twenty when he and the other bloke . . . attacked you. old charlie tried to stop them from getting away. he fired at the pickup truck. it flipped and went over the bridge. ellis was killed instantly. o'leary's neck was broken and he died in the hospital. the car was stolen, they were both over .05, and o'leary never even had a license. if you're looking for the reason why hamish o'leary threatened to hurt you, it's probably because, in some weird twisted way, he thinks it's your fault his brother's dead.\"\n\n\"you knew?\" i said. \"you knew hamish threatened me?\"\n\njoey groaned. \"yes, i knew.\"\n\n\"who told you?'\n\n\"he did. he said if i didn't stop seeing tilda, he'd get you.\"\n\nmy mind spun. joey knew and didn't tell me. knew and yet he still kept seeing tilda. this was too much for me to understand at once.\n\n\"look, alice . . . maybe we can talk more about this later. right now there's more urgent things to deal with.\"\n\n\"no!\" said tilda. \"you need to settle this thing now. don't blame joey, alice. you need to hear my side of the story. after manny got hurt, joey thought he should take o'leary's threat seriously. he told me he couldn't see me anymore. said my father warned him off. i didn't believe him because my dad's not like that. you're lucky. joey's the best brother and the best friend anyone could have. it's me you should be mad at, alice. i couldn't keep away from joey even after he confessed that he'd lied to me. and to you. i understand why he did it. but i just want you to know this, alice. joey told me what happened to you when you were twelve. those blokes were cowards and so is hamish o'leary. my dad says that if we let people like them stop us from living the way we want to, we let them win. but i think you already know that, don't you, alice?\"\n\njoey disappeared outside and tilda, perfect tilda, went after him. manny and i stared at each other. gobsmacked, dumbstruck. she took my breath away. if we weren't about to be washed away, i think i would have gotten up on papa's table and danced. in that moment, i felt like i could do almost anything.\n\nthen manny's phone rang.\n\nit was 10:50 on thursday night and bull james was on the phone. the emergency services boat had been dispatched. but not to us, bull told manny. to a small town ten kilometers upstream where a car carrying three passengers had been washed off a bridge. we'd have to wait until the boat and crew returned, bull said. he didn't know how long it would take. i shook gram awake. helped her across to her chair by the fire. made coffee.\n\nforty-five minutes later, the rescue boat still hadn't arrived. joey stuck his finger through the knothole in the floor and touched the river.\n\n\"shit, where are they?\" he said.\n\nbear leaned against my legs and whined. i stroked her ears while manny rang bull and told him about joey's finger in the knothole and the river underneath.\n\n\"we can't wait any longer. we're coming in joey's boat,\" manny said.\n\n\"what's going on?\" said gram.\n\n\"we're leaving,\" i told her. \"the river's nearly up to the floor.\"\n\n\"not on your nelly,\" said gram. \"i'm not going anywhere.\"\n\n\"you can't stay here, gram. put this on. quick!\" i tried to stuff her arms into the sleeves of a waterproof jacket. her arms hung limp and heavy. dressing her was almost impossible.\n\n\"i been through floods before. lord jesus will look after me. take me upstairs, nearer my god to thee.\"\n\n\"you'd never make it upstairs! if you stay here, you'll drown.\"\n\ntilda came to help. finally, we got the jacket on. gram lay back down on her bed.\n\n\"the night air won't do my chest any good,\" she said, wheezing. stubborn. maybe scared.\n\ni smelled engine oil and heard the outboard motor kick in, then die. heard joey swear and try again. looked out the window at the boys up to their knees in water. wished it was possible to tow the whole house to high ground.\n\nwe all knew there'd have to be two trips. the plan was to take gram first. joey knew the river better than anyone, so he would steer. he needed a crew: someone to hold the lantern and watch for hazards that might upend the boat. the other to mind gram. to help keep her calm. make sure she didn't try to stand up or jump out.\n\n\"come on, gram. you and papa used to love the boat, remember?\" i tried to coax her. \"we're not going far. it won't take long.\"\n\ngram refused to walk. they had to carry her. manny at her shoulders, joey at her feet. her eyes stubbornly shut. tears dribbling down the gullies of her face like a flood of her own was leaking out. i held the door ajar while they took her through.\n\nthe motor and the rain both steady now, joey walked down the steps as far as he could without gram's back touching the water. tilda and i held the boat against a veranda post. tried to keep it still while the boys lifted gram over the side. she lay there with her eyes shut, bum and back on the bottom of the boat. knees bent up and over the seat. i pulled off my jacket to cushion her head. tried not to cry on her rained-on face.\n\n\"take alice and tilda with you,\" manny said.\n\n\"the girls aren't strong enough to stop gram if she struggles . . . if she tries to get out,\" joey said.\n\n\"you go first, tilda,\" i said. \"there'd be no room for bear, and i can't leave without her.\"\n\njoey didn't argue. handed me the gun.\n\n\"keep it here,\" my brother said. maybe because it was nightingale business that he didn't want to have to explain to someone at the other side. maybe not. maybe it was to keep me safe. i didn't ask.\n\n\"go upstairs when we leave, and stay there till i come back,\" joey said.\n\ntilda pressed her phone into my hand. showed me where manny's number was and emergency. how to make it work.\n\n\"i didn't bring my charger, but the phone's been turned off, so here's hoping it will last for a little while.\"\n\nshe hugged me. then stepped into the boat. cradled gram's head on her knees. gentled the hair away from her forehead maps, carved deep by sickness and sorrow. part of me wished it was me sitting there with joey. bear at my feet, gram's head in my lap. but part of me was glad because manny and tilda felt almost like kin.\n\nmanny lifted the lantern down, passed it to tilda. then in front of them all he gathered me close and kissed my lips. joey opened the throttle a little and closed it again, like a polite \"ahem.\"\n\nmanny whispered, \"my sister was called precious.\" then he turned away. stepped into the boat.\n\nhe sat on the middle seat beside gram's knees. he was the arms to hold her tight in case she tried to climb out. tilda was the light to show the way and joey was the tillerman to steer them all to the other side. he opened the throttle. the motor turned the tiny propeller. it was like watching an eggbeater in an ocean. i shivered. bear barked into the night. then we ran upstairs.\n\ni stood the gun in the corner of my room. dragged pillows and a blanket to my rain-spattered window. made a nest for me and bear. burrowed into her softness and warmth while we watched tilda's light bob. wondered when i would see it come back again. unpicked the moments before the others left; the looks on their faces, the things they had done, the words they had said. asked myself why manny had chosen that moment to tell me his sister's name. why he hadn't waited until we were safe. all safe. was this another good-bye? was that what manny thought? i slid my thumb inside the blanket's worn satin binding. rubbed my cheek with it, the way i did on the day of my daddy's leaving. the way i had for months of nighttimes after. tried not to close my eyes. when i did, i thought i felt the house move.\n\nthe man on the radio said it was 5:45 a.m. and city traffic was light on eastlink and on tullamarine freeway, and all lanes were open on the westgate bridge. after that i listened to the news from far away. the announcer didn't mention a town called bridgewater or a flood at oktober bend. he had probably never heard of it. so i took my finger out of the blue blanket satin, turned the radio off, and listened to the rain on the roof for a while. when i looked outside again, the rain had stopped. the sky behind the slaughter yards was the color of a bruise and our house was an island.\n\n\"rain before seven, fine by eleven,\" i told bear to jolly her. she smiled and we wandered downstairs like we had all day to do it. then up again we sped as fast as lightning strikes. me fumbling for tilda's phone. trying to remember which numbers to press. wishing for a voice in my ear saying, _yes, it's manny here_. and him listening while i tell him all the awful things that bear and me have seen.\n\n_i cannot poke my finger in the knothole,_ i would say, _because the lion's feet are off the floor and old charlie's table and gram's bed are almost knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door. traffic is light on eastlink and on tullamarine freeway and all lanes are open on the westgate bridge but where is our little boat, emmanuel? and when is it coming to oktober bend to fetch bear and me?_\n\nbut tilda's phone had gone to sleep in the night. the little window stayed black. there were no numbers to press, no voice in my ear, no one to talk to. i took my calm pills and sat on the bed with my arms around bear.\n\n_Precious is a very good name to give a child, even one you have not held. Especially one you have not held._ That is what I should have said to Alice.That is what I was thinking when I was in that tiny boat on the very wide river.\n\nMy sister was brave and beautiful. She would not tell the soldiers where our mother was. They raped her and still she would not tell them. That is how brave she was. Then they took her tongue. They laughed and said she would not need it. I left Precious lying on the ground. I left Alice at the drowning house. It was not a proper way to say good-bye. I am the one who left them both. That is who I am.\n\nThat is what I was thinking when the light that Bull James promised failed us. There were many clouds that night and we could not see the moon. All that we had was one small lantern. It was not enough to show the way. We could not even see where the river ended and the land began. No one saw what hit our boat. We could not tell what hidden thing had spun us around. It dipped the stern and raised the bow. The metal toolbox slid out from under Joey's seat. The lamp was torn from Tilda's hand and dashed against the seat, and Mrs. Nightingale cried out. I shone the light from my phone onto Alice's grandmother, who lay very still in the bottom of the boat. There was a gash on her forehead.\n\n\"It looks like she might have hit her head on the toolbox,\" Tilda said. \"Is there a first-aid kit on board? Joey?\"\n\nI held my phone up high. And that is when we saw that only half of Joey was in the boat. His head and shoulders were below the water. I pulled him back into the boat. He coughed many times and then he sucked air into his lungs.\n\n\"Get the oars! Quick!\" he said. \"The motor's gone. I couldn't hold it. Whatever we hit has ripped it off. We'll have to row.\"\n\n\"Joey . . .\" said Tilda.\n\n\"Help me find the oars.\"\n\nTilda was very stern.\n\n\"Shut up and listen, Joey!\" she said. \"Your gram's been hurt.\"\n\nI phoned Bull James. It was the only thing to do. The current was too strong to row against.\n\nBull said it was the wind that brought the light down and smashed it on the railway line. \"Give us five minutes and we should have another one up and running.\" That is what he said. I told him that we did not have five minutes. Our motor was gone, oars were useless against the current, an injured lady was lying in the bottom of the boat, and Alice and Alice and Alice . . .\n\nWe drifted in the darkness. We could not tell how fast or slow, only that we were moving. I opened my phone again. Ten minutes had passed since I last spoke to Bull. I shone the light on Grandmother Nightingale's face. There was a cut, high up on her forehead. Joey had pinched it shut with his fingers to stop the bleeding. He knelt in the bottom of the boat, talking to his grandmother. She was very pale and was not moving.\n\n\"It's all right, Gram. We'll have you home soon.\" Joey whispered small lies into his grandmother's ear to comfort her. Then Bull's light came on. It shone a pathway across the water and we could see the thing that hit us. It was a large shed. A hay shed. The walls and the roof and all that was inside it. Sheets of iron, wooden poles, and hay. Hundreds of large round bales of hay. Our boat was surrounded by them. My phone rang. This time it was Louisa James.\n\n\"This is Manny. I have put you on loudspeaker, Louisa James.\"\n\n\"We can see you. We've given the emergency crew your position and the boat's on its way. Can you hear me, Manny?\"\n\n\"Yes, we can hear you. Please tell them to come quickly.\"\n\n\"Listen carefully. You've drifted past the breakwater, but that debris you're caught in has really slowed you down. Bull says as long as the mass of bales doesn't disperse, you'll be fine. He's waiting on the bridge with a sling on a crane. If the emergency crew doesn't make it before you reach him, he'll lower two men in harnesses and they'll put a sling around your boat and try to take the whole thing up. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"Yes. Please tell them to hurry. Tell them Mrs. Nightingale is injured and \u2014\"\n\n\"We know, Manny. An ambulance will be waiting. I have to go now. Bull's on the radio.\"\n\n\"Wait, Louisa! Alice is not with us.\"\n\n\"Where is she? What's happened?\"\n\n\"We could not all fit in the boat. Alice stayed at her house. You must get someone to go there.\"\n\n\"They'll never stop us if we get past the bridge,\" Joey said, and I wished I had stayed with Alice. We might have been safer there. And if we were not, at least we would have been together.\n\nour house was the only one in bridgewater built on the floodplain. gram said there once were others. some had been demolished. some got washed away by other floods. soon there would be none. our place was listing now. leaning to the west. i felt like our house. cast adrift in an unfamiliar landscape.\n\nbear and me went outside. sat together on the balcony that papa made with love and sticks. our tank slid sideways off its stand and floated past the washhouse like a stubby submarine. i thought about the handprints on the concrete, underneath the water. our daddy's and his baby sister's. it was all we had of them, except for a few photographs. who would tell papa when everything was gone? where would we go? where would papa go when it was time for him to come home? i put my arms around bear's neck. tried not to think sad thoughts while we waited for our rescuers to come, or not.\n\nthe foundry whistle blew for break. startled us. reminded me that life went on as usual for people whose homes weren't on the floodplain.\n\n\"oh, where, oh, where has our little boat gone, dear bear?\" i sang to constant companion to comfort her. to cure her of her fear of sirens and submarines. to pass the time.\n\na tree floated by with a cow, a small cupboard, and a clothesline caught in its branches. lodged itself on the roof of the washhouse. the drowned cow stared at me over the clothesline. i looked away from her sad brown eyes. down i looked and saw the river, already licking at the sticks and nails put there to keep me safe.\n\nand i\n\nbecause bear could not climb onto the roof and\n\nbecause i would not leave her alone and\n\nbecause i could not think of prayers\n\nor poems\n\nor proper words to say\n\ncried out into the large and empty air\n\nsend the bloody boat, god,\n\nplease, send the bloody boat!\n\nit drifted, small as a pea pod, on the misty gray horizon. vanished behind vast tree canopies made to look as small as bouquets by the floodwater, and i wondered if the boat i'd seen was only a mirage, a cruel trick, or the memory of a ghostly boat . . .\n\nfilled with joy and us\n\ngram and me and little joey\n\nwith fishing rods and\n\nred water wings around\n\nour spindly arms and\n\nour daddy's safe brown hand\n\nsteady on the tiller\n\npapa up the pointy end watching\n\nfor submerged snags.\n\ni almost cried for joy when it reappeared. then with disappointment as it came closer. it was a toy, puffed up with air. a rubber boat to use on long, hot summer days when the river was clear and quiet. wondered what fool had sent that small and orange boat. clearly no match for a river that eddied and swirled, fat with cows, cupboards, and clotheslines and whatever else had taken its fancy. despite its eggbeater motor, papa's boat would have been a better choice by far. this plaything might not even hold us all: its captain, bear, and me.\n\nbut i told myself that any boat was better than none. even this one that sat low in the water and went wherever the river took it instead of charting a course direct to us. i took off my yellow raincoat. waved it madly. the captain raised both his arms in response. crossed and uncrossed them above his head. marked the cold gray sky with giant kisses again and again, until i understood. he had no means of steering. no oars, no motor. he was as helpless as i.\n\nreckless, the boat approached our house. fast, too fast. sucked in by rips and currents that licked and swirled around walls, through smashed windows and flapping doors. bear whined and i held her collar tight, afraid she might leap into the water and swim to meet the boat.\n\n\"watch out!\" i yelled. but there was nothing the boatman could do. the river spun his craft around, swept it into the washhouse tree. branches pierced the rubber and the dead cow's horns tore it to ribbons. the young man clung to the drowned tree, draped limply as wet washing over limbs and twigs. i saw a tattoo where his neck burst from his shoulders. a dagger and drops. black drops, drip, dripping down his back with the floodwater. then he turned and looked at me.\n\ninto his shipwrecked eyes i stared. he was not a captain, just a boy. a boy who blamed me for the death of his brother. that young man who'd almost killed me.\n\n\"why have you come?\" i said. brave and stupid. as if he would tell me that. \"i know what you told my brother and manny. that's why you're here, isn't it? to pay me back.\"\n\nhe looked away. didn't answer. hand over hand, on the leafless white limbs, he moved toward the house, toward me.\n\n\"talk!\" i yelled. angry he had come now. now when i was alone. now when there was no ground to put my feet on. nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. \"what do you want?\" but he said nothing. saved all the fight that was in him to bend his cold blue fingers around the branches and hold tight. the water curled around him, sucking and pulling.\n\ni shortened bear's leash. took her with me through my window. away from the water and o'leary. backed into the room. nudged something in the corner with my elbow. turned and saw the gun. was this why joey had given it to me? in case hamish came? surely my brother wouldn't have left me if he'd thought this might happen. surely he never meant for me to fire the gun.\n\ni backed away from it. my heart thumped, my blood raced, and my head spun. then the house moved. the ceiling tilted and my bed began to slide slowly toward the back of the room. i sank to the floor, clung to bear. afraid the birds were coming, that my wires were crossed. she whimpered, nuzzled my neck with her nose. i opened my eyes, saw water seeping beneath the bedroom door. it was real. the house had come undone from its foundations. water was rising inside.\n\nwe ran toward the window. flung ourselves through. slammed it shut behind us and huddled together outside. every tiny movement was magnified. i prayed the house would not turn again. would not roll over on its back with its belly in the air and sink. when i dared open my eyes, my window no longer faced along the valley toward the footbridge and charlotte's pass. it jutted up obliquely to the sky like a small observatory. below my little balcony, the wall of the house sloped away into the water. i was afraid to look inside the house. afraid it would be like looking through the side of an aquarium. kept my eyes fixed on the washhouse, on the cow, and on the clothesline sailing downstream. felt bear's sides move. felt her belly swell with rage. when i looked down, her ears were flattened to her skull, her lips drawn back, waiting for a word from me. her eyes and mine locked on the shipwrecked boy. clinging to the bottom of the balcony.\n\n\"why do you hate me?\" i said, hardly knowing i'd spoken out loud. needing to hear it from him. not that it mattered. not if we were both going to drown.\n\nit might have been minutes or hours that we stared at one another. it might have been seconds.\n\n\"because i miss him,\" groaned hamish, like the words were a confession. his face was pinched; his skin was ash.\n\ngrief was in him and in me. it was the price we paid for what others had done.\n\nyears after our daddy died, gram said, \"death sets you free. it takes you to a place where there is no pain. no suffering. no grief.\"\n\ni heard the timber slat crack. saw it give way in o'leary's hand.\n\n\"help me?\" he asked like he knew the answer would be no. i was cold, tired, and wet. i felt forsaken. hamish's words could have meant anything right then. help me die, help me live, help me forgive or forget. put an end to my grief.\n\ni could have helped him put an end to his grief. there was a loaded gun inside my door. a dog at my side, constant companion, awaiting my command. i could have stomped on his tired hands and watched him float away. no one would ever know what happened. i leaned closer to o'leary so he could hear what tilda's father said.\n\n\"if we let cowards stop us living the way we want to, we let them win. i won't let you win, hamish,\" i said.\n\n_there's courage and there's caution._ gram's voice was in my head. i took bear's leash off. knotted it around the window latch, leaned my back against the wall, braced my feet against the balcony, and dropped the looped end to o'leary.\n\n\"now pull!\" i yelled.\n\nhis freezing fingers gripped. the leather strap pulled tight and o'leary dragged himself up the side of the house. collapsed on his stomach and lay there, shivering, shaking.\n\n\"you _are_ crazy,\" he said when he had breath to speak. \"really crazy. i mean, i could push you overboard. you couldn't stop me.\"\n\nit might have been because i was cold, wet, tired, and forsaken, but it almost sounded like o'leary meant crazy in a good way.\n\ni nodded at bear. she snarled and bared her teeth.\n\n\"i don't think so,\" i said. \"and anyway, the boat's coming.\"\n\nthe rescue crew wrapped us all in shining cloth to make us warm. bright as the stars at oktober bend we were, bear and me and hamish o'leary.\n\namong the little crowd of faces i saw them: brother joey and my truest friends. emmanuel and perfect tilda. smiled to greet me. reached out to hold me.\n\nan ambulance was waiting. paramedics slid me and hamish in on beds with wheels. a voice i didn't know said \"medical assistance dog,\" and bear leaped up beside me.\n\n\"we'll meet you at the hospital,\" yelled joey before they closed the doors. and only then i saw the empty space.\n\n\"where's gram?\" i said. \"where's gram?\"\n\n\"the old lady in the boat,\" hamish told them.\n\n\"mrs. nightingale \u2014 she's at the hospital. it's standard procedure after a rescue. once they've checked you over, you can ask to see your grandma.\"\n\nin the emergency room, they checked our vital signs. blood and breath and pulse and heart. talked among themselves about shock and hypothermia. said that we should stay for observation. hamish in the men's ward. me and bear in with the kids. i was too tired to point out their mistake. to tell them i was twelve no longer.\n\ntwo nurses took away my yellow raincoat. peeled my sopping pants off and my sweater. tucked me in between the sharp-edged sheets and primrose blanket. plumped the pillows. spooned something sweet onto my tongue to help me sleep. then swished the curtains back, as though they were unveiling something special. better than a work of art, a mona lisa, a marble bust. something rescued from the flood. a girl alive!\n\nwhen they told me gram was safe, i closed my eyes. i cannot say how long i slept, how long they stayed. but every time i woke, i saw someone there who loved me. manny, tilda, joey, bear.\n\nthen someone else crept in. into my dreams he came, stood beside me. stroked my hand. i kept my eyes squeezed shut because i knew he wasn't real. couldn't be. then he whispered in my ear, \"it's okay, birdie, papa's here.\"\n\ni sat up. flung myself into his arms.\n\n\"papa! papa! oh, papa!\" and all the cold dammed up inside, all my freezing floodwaters, flowed out and out and out.\n\nand afterward, it took us only minutes to reach gram's room. but already she was far away. angel nectar falling from on high, drip, dripping in her arm. far-off summer breezing gently through her mask. it wasn't just her lungs. the cut the toolbox left was small. but blood had blossomed like a rose inside her head. gently papa told me there was no cure for gram.\n\nwe learned that we were not forsaken, me and joey. nightingale business suddenly became the business of others. but that was okay. tilda's dad knew what to do to get an old man out of jail. compassionate leave to visit his wife in the hospital. ten days was all they granted papa. i did not ask, why ten? is that how long it takes, to get to where gram's going? neither papa nor the nurses would have known. the best that we could hope for was the journey would be short.\n\nmr. cassidy was not the only one to help us. manny's kind louisa james and bull had offered us a place to stay. papa and joey, me, and bear. an apartment that they owned. just down the street from them. with a garden out the back and a bus stop in the front.\n\nlouisa cooked for us. sent manny down with soups and sweets and casseroles. so that papa, me, and joey could spend as much time as we liked with gram. sometimes we went together. sometimes we visited alone. i tried to keep my feelings separate. the joy of papa's presence. the sadness of gram's absence. the fear that when ten days had passed, i would lose them both.\n\nthere was nothing at the hospital for me to do. someone else brushed gram's hair, changed her undies and her nightie. smoothed ointment on her lips. while i watched gram sleep, i talked to her. reminded her of little things and happy days i thought she might enjoy. like the time we'd laughed about her chest. there were other things i couldn't speak of. these i wrote in letters and left them folded on gram's bed. hoping she might wake and find them when i'd gone.\n\non the second day, i took inks and pens and pages with me. sketched gram while she was sleeping. drew her world all around her: papa and the garden. plum trees. beans and birds and butterflies and bees. clipped it to her charts when i was leaving. looked back from the door and read what i had written underneath.\n\nthis is my gram\n\nshe is glorious\n\nplease be kind to her while i'm not here.\n\non the fourth day i went alone again and wrote:\n\ncan't talk about the \"d\" word, gram. tried to write about it once or twice. then crossed it out again. wish i could do that in real life. cross out the \"d\" word. love, alice.\n\ni folded the paper into an origami heart. left it on her tea tray.\n\nday six.\n\ni'm worried about papa, gram. not that he's said anything, but i think he blames himself for a lot of stuff that's happened. like how you've had to look after me and joey by yourself. how there was no one to look after you when you got sick. it would be good if you could bring yourself to tell him it's okay. i know you probably can't talk much, even if you were awake. the nurse told papa that there's water in your lungs. they didn't say how it got there. maybe from the flood or from all the times you wanted to cry but couldn't because you had to look after us. anyhow, if you could just squeeze papa's hand sometime. even once, i think he'd know exactly what you meant. love, alice.\n\non the seventh day i wrote:\n\njust wanted to tell you that i'm sorry for all the times that i was mean to you. i love you, gram. alice\n\nday eight.\n\nyou did a great job, gram. i'm going to be fine. but i'll miss you. love, alice.\n\ni didn't want to wake up on the ninth day. i stayed in bed with bear till joey came. he knocked on the door. pushed it open, smiling. hands behind his back, hiding something.\n\n\"ta-da!\" he magicked a flourish of tulips. yellow as a duck's bill.\n\n\"for gram?\" i asked. he shook his head.\n\n\"for you!\" he said, and put them in my arms.\n\n\"from you?\"\n\n\"nope!\"\n\n\"manny?\"\n\n\"if they were from manny, he would have brought them himself!\" he teased.\n\n\"who, then?\"\n\n\"you'll never guess. it was hamish o'leary's mother. she came to the door. i didn't know if you'd want to see her, so i said you were still asleep.\"\n\njoey sat down on my bed. suddenly serious. took his time to speak.\n\n\"she told me what happened at the house, birdie. i can't believe how brave you were. how brave you've always been.\"\n\nhe put his arms around me. but not before i'd seen his eyes fill up.\n\n\"i just wish gram knew what you did. she'd be so proud of you,\" he said.\n\ni lifted up the blankets and we cuddled up in bed till joey needed cheese and pickle sandwiches and bear needed to pee.\n\n\"where's papa?\" i asked.\n\n\"he left early. wants to spend as much time with gram as he can today.\"\n\nwhen the sandwiches were eaten, joey said, \"how about you and me go to the hospital together? and afterward i'll take you to see manny. he misses you.\"\n\nand i missed manny. but i couldn't figure out how to be happy and sad at the same time. how to be \u2014 at all. i looked at the pointed yellow buds. fiddled with the thank-you card, the thin green ribbon around the stems.\n\n\"it's the ninth day,\" i said. in case he hadn't noticed.\n\n\"i know,\" he said. \"but we never had a chance to say good-bye before. not when our father died, not when our mother left. this time it's different, birdie. it's hard . . . and i'm scared, but you're the bravest person that i know. please come with me.\"\n\nwhen we arrived, gram was holding papa's hand.\n\ngram's journey ended on the eleventh day.\n\ntwo weeks later, papa was granted parole. he spends most of his days down on oktober bend. on the river flats where our old home used to be. on tuesdays and on thursdays he teaches boys who've been in trouble with the police how to grow things. together they're making a garden out of mud and sun and seeds.\n\ni wrote to my mother. thought she should know about gram and the flood. about papa and the garden. so far i have received no reply.\n\nmanny has made me a website where people can look at my lures and labels and order them. hattie fox at the post office is busy sending them all over the world. \"you must take after your mother, alice nightingale. so talented,\" she says. \"you mustn't let anyone stop you.\" and i look into her ice-blue eyes and think of gram. of all she gave up for me and joey.\n\nbull says i have already moved mountains, but next summer i'll face another challenge. i am leaving oktober bend. manny and louisa helped me collect a folio of my drawings. sent them to an art school in the city. the people there offered me a scholarship. granted bear permission to come with me.\n\npapa is a little nervous about my leaving. but i tell him, it's okay, the school is not as far as the forty-ninth parallel. just a train ride away. and i'll be home on weekends. and anyway, no matter what happens, i am the girl who loves the stars at oktober bend. always will be.\n\nThe idea that started me on _The Stars at Oktober Bend_ was gleaned from a newspaper article about a homeless girl who sang and, in doing so, earned a scholarship to study music at a prestigious conservatorium. I began writing with the intention of telling the story of a girl who sang as a means of escaping a tragic past. But as usually happens, the story became more complex once the character began to evolve and other information came to hand. My daughter was studying for her master's in speech pathology at the time, and I became aware of language disorders, their causes and effects, and this information affected my story.\n\nInitially I wrote in the third person, but I felt like an observer. So I rewrote it all in first person. Giving Alice a voice empowered me to use a means of expression unique to her. And although her syntax was somewhat unfamiliar, especially in the early stages of the novel, that was when my writing began to flow. Alice thinks of her writing as a means to freedom beyond her circumstances \u2014 to flying. \"Words . . . caught me by surprise,\" she says, \"raised me in their rushing updraft, took me from the page into the clear midair.\" That is what recording Alice's thoughts felt like to me \u2014 a breathless leave-taking of all that was known and familiar.\n\nThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2016 by Glenda Millard  \nCover photographs copyright \u00a9 2018 by Gautham  \nVijayakumar\/EyeEm\/Getty Images (feather);  \nNimit Nigam\/EyeEm\/Getty Images (stars)\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.\n\nFirst U.S. electronic edition 2018\n\nLibrary of Congress Catalog Card Number pending\n\nCandlewick Press  \n99 Dover Street  \nSomerville, Massachusetts 02144\n\nvisit us at www.candlewick.com\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\n\n\nProduced by Thiers Halliwell, Bryan Ness and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http:\/\/www.pgdp.net (This\nfile was produced from images generously made available\nby The Internet Archive\/American Libraries.)\n\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's notes:\n\nIn this plain text transcription, paired underscores denote _italicised text_ and\npaired asterisks denote *bold text*.\n\nA short table of contents has been inserted to assist readers.\n\nThe following spelling errors have been corrected silently:\n\n  pathognomic \u2014> pathognomonic\n  accidently \u2014> accidentally\n  coalesence \u2014> coalescence\n  hematomesis \u2014> hematemesis\n  hemorraghic \u2014> hemorrhagic\n  uniformily \u2014> uniformly\n\n\n\n\n                                   A\n\n                          PRACTICAL TREATISE\n\n                                  ON\n\n                               SMALLPOX\n\n\n\n                  _ILLUSTRATED BY COLORED PHOTOGRAPHS\n                              FROM LIFE_\n\n\n\n                                  BY\n\n                     GEORGE HENRY FOX, A.M., M.D.\n\n  CONSULTING DERMATOLOGIST TO THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT OF NEW YORK CITY\n\n                       WITH THE COLLABORATION OF\n\n  S.\u00a0D. HUBBARD, M.D., S. POLLITZER, M.D., AND J.\u00a0H. HUDDLESTON, M.D.\n\n\n\n\n                          Technical Book Co.\n\n                   Domestic and Foreign Directories,\n                   Telegraphic Codes, Maps, Foreign\n                       and Domestic Periodicals,\n                            Technical Books\n\n                   MILLS BUILDING      SAN FRANCISCO\n\n                         Telephone Garfield 19\n\n\n\n\n                            Copyright, 1902\n                          By GEORGE HENRY FOX\n\n\n      PRINTED BY J.\u00a0B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, U.\u00a0S.\u00a0A.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n  Chapter                     Page\n    I Symptoms and course        1\n   II Diagnosis                  9\n  III Treatment                 15\n   IV Vaccination               26\n\n\n\n\nLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.\n\n\n    NOTE.--The names of the colored plates are in capitals. The\n    letters H., P., and F. in brackets indicate that the cases were\n    photographed by Hubbard, Pollitzer, or Fox.\n\nPLATE\n\nI. VARIOLA ERYTHEMATOSA. (First Day.)\n\n    This shows the earliest eruption upon back and buttocks. The\n    photograph was taken about seven hours after its first appearance.\n    The patient was sent to Riverside Hospital, where she developed\n    hemorrhagic smallpox, and died on the fourth day. [H.]\n\nII. VARIOLA PAPULOSA. (Second Day.)\n\n    Showing numerous incipient papules upon the face. Those upon the\n    forehead were the first to appear and are most prominent. The\n    cheeks present a characteristic leathery appearance. [H.]\n\nIII. Variola Hemorrhagica.\n\n    Showing upon the face and cheeks a form of the disease commonly\n    known as \"black smallpox.\" Figs. 1 and 2 were photographed on the\n    second day and show a profuse and dark eruption. The swelling and\n    disfigurement of the face present a most striking appearance. Figs.\n    3 and 4 were photographed on the fourth day, when the patient was\n    in a moribund condition. [H.]\n\nIV. VARIOLA VESICULOSA. (Fourth Day.)\n\n    A case of moderate severity, with well-developed vesicles and\n    characteristic grouping of lesions upon the face. [P.]\n\nV. Variola Vesiculosa.\n\n    Fig. 1 shows a mixed eruption of papules and vesicles upon the\n    right thigh. (Third day.) This condition is exceptional in Variola,\n    though quite common in Varicella. [F.] Fig.\u00a02 shows well developed\n    umbilicated vesicles upon the forearm. (Fifth day.) [H.] Fig.\u00a03\n    shows a hemorrhagic effusion into the vesicles on the thigh and\n    leg, a condition far less serious than the purpuric eruption of\n    malignant variola. [P.]\n\nVI. VARIOLA SEMI-CONFLUENS. (Fifth Day, Sixth Day.)\n\n    These illustrations show a partly confluent character which the\n    eruption frequently presents, even in mild cases, and especially\n    upon the legs. The influence of pressure in developing a more\n    profuse eruption may be noted above the ankles, where shoes were\n    laced, and below the knees, where garters were worn. [F.]\n\nVII. VARIOLA CONFLUENS. (Seventh Day, Eighth Day.)\n\n    Fig. 1 shows umbilicated pustules with an intense \u0153dema of the\n    foot, considerably increasing its size and causing much pain.\n    Fig.\u00a02 shows the epidermis raised in a large, irregular patch by\n    the confluence of pustules. [F.]\n\nVIII. Variola Pustulosa. (Ninth Day.)\n\n    Fig. 1 shows an eruption discrete upon the trunk and even upon the\n    hand, while confluent upon the forearm. [H.] Fig.\u00a02 shows a vaccine\n    pustule coexisting with variolous pustules. The vaccination took\n    place before the disease began, but too late to exert a decided\n    prophylactic effect. [P.] Fig.\u00a03 shows an eruption of large,\n    flaccid pustules with swelling of the foot. [P.] Fig.\u00a04 shows an\n    eruption of discrete, tense, hemispherical pustules. [F.]\n\nIX. VARIOLA DISCRETA. (Ninth Day.)\n\n    A typical case of mild smallpox occurring after vaccination and\n    sometimes called Variola modificata or Varioloid. [P.]\n\nX. VARIOLA PUSTULOSA. (Tenth Day.)\n\n    A severe case, showing the characteristic aggregation of lesions on\n    the face and extremities. [P.]\n\nXI. VARIOLA PUSTULOSA. (Ninth Day, Tenth Day, Eleventh Day.)\n\n    These illustrations show the pustular lesions in the stages of\n    complete distention, when they present a rounded appearance, and\n    of incipient desiccation, when they appear flattened and with a\n    central depression or \"secondary umbilication.\" [P., F., F.]\n\nXII. Variola Pustulosa et Crustosa. (Tenth Day, Twelfth Day.)\n\n    In Fig. 1 an occlusion of the nasal passages is indicated by the\n    lips parted in respiration. [P.] Fig.\u00a02. shows a palmar condition\n    which, in the adult, is found only in smallpox. [P.] Fig.\u00a03 shows\n    the desiccation of the facial eruption in advance of other regions.\n    [P.] Fig.\u00a04 shows a mild discrete case in which a diagnosis of\n    acne had been made. [F.] Fig.\u00a05 shows the eruption in the stage of\n    desiccation. [F.]\n\nXIII. VARIOLA CRUSTOSA. (Eighteenth Day.)\n\n    Showing a few thick crusts remaining upon the face with numerous\n    dull red spots from which the crusts have fallen. [F.]\n\nXIV. VARIOLA DESICCATA ET SQUAMOSA. (Twentieth Day.)\n\n    Figs. 1 and 3 show the dried pustules remaining in the thickened\n    skin of palm and sole after the crusts have fallen elsewhere.\n    [F., P.] Fig. 2 shows the superficial desquamation which follows\n    the falling of the crusts, producing rings of partly detached\n    epidermis. [F.]\n\nXV.\n\n    Fig. 1 shows a peculiar pigmentation sometimes left after\n    the eruption. The central portion, being darker, produces a\n    \"bull's-eye\" appearance. [F.] Fig.\u00a02 shows the hypertrophic\n    condition of the scars which occurs in certain cases in place of\n    the usual pitting, and which tends to disappear in time. [H.]\n    Fig.\u00a03 shows severe pitting, a partial loss of hair and eyebrows,\n    and destruction of one eye. [H.]\n\nXVI.\n\n    Fig. 1 shows the typical appearance of a successful revaccination.\n    (Fourth day.) [F.] Fig.\u00a04 shows a small, well-formed vaccination\n    pustule at its height. (Eighth day.) [F.] Fig.\u00a02 shows a large,\n    irregular pustule resulting from scarification of an area of\n    unnecessary extent. (Eighth day.) [F.] Fig.\u00a05 shows an ulcer\n    resulting from infection of the vaccination lesion. [F.] Fig.\u00a03\n    shows a primary vaccination at its height (eighth day) with a\n    characteristic areola. [F.] Fig.\u00a06, a case of Varicella on the\n    third day. [F.]\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nWhenever a physician is called to a case of suspected smallpox,\nhe confronts a grave responsibility. If young or without special\nexperience, he is apt to feel a sore need of assistance, and, although\na book can never take the place of an experienced consultant, it is\nthe object of the present work to render him as much aid as possible.\nThe text aims to be practical rather than elaborate. The plates are\nreproductions of photographs from life, some of which have been\nobtained under great difficulty.\n\nWhile many articles on variola have been illustrated by a few\nphotographs of cases, mostly of the pustular type, this work is\nbelieved to be the first which has presented illustrations of the\nsmallpox eruption in each of its successive stages. It is sincerely\nhoped that the reader will find it of service in familiarizing him with\nthe peculiar features of the disease.\n\n                                                     GEORGE HENRY FOX.\n\n\n\n\nSMALLPOX.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nSYMPTOMS AND COURSE.\n\n\nVariola, or smallpox, is an acute, contagious disease, characterized by\nan eruption upon both the skin and mucous membrane, with constitutional\nsymptoms of greater or less severity. The eruption presents\nsuccessively a macular, papular, vesicular, and pustular stage, the\npustules finally drying into crusts, which fall and leave the skin\ntemporarily discolored. Where ulceration has occurred it is permanently\nscarred or pitted. The lesions of the mucous membrane appear upon\nthose parts more or less exposed to the air,--the mouth and eyes, for\nexample,--but in exceptional cases they may be found throughout the\nentire intestinal tract, and in the uterus and bladder. These lesions\ndo not run a course similar to those observed upon the skin, but\nappear as red macules, which rapidly change into ulcerations, covered\nwith a whitish pellicle. The ulcers are imbedded in the substance of\nthe mucous membrane and are not as superficial as in cancrum oris.\nThe constitutional symptoms are most prominent during the periods of\ninvasion and pustulation.\n\nThere are various clinical forms of smallpox, which may be conveniently\ndescribed as (1) discrete, (2) confluent, and (3) hemorrhagic, or\nmalignant; and then, according to intensity, as (_a_) very mild, (_b_)\nmild, and (_c_) severe. The few purpuric spots seen in the severe\ndiscrete and the confluent forms are not of great significance, as they\nare generally due to a peculiar diathesis, and as a rule the patient\nrecovers. The malignant form is almost invariably fatal.\n\nThe term discrete implies that the lesions are separate and distinct,\nnot coalescent. If the lesions coalesce and form patches of various\nshapes and sizes, the eruption is called confluent. For the purpose of\ndifferentiating the various forms above mentioned, it is convenient\nto first trace a normal, unmodified case of smallpox from the initial\nsymptoms to recovery, and then to consider the severe forms, and\nfinally the rare and obscure forms of the disease.\n\n*Period of Incubation.*--This extends from the date of exposure to the\noccurrence of clinical symptoms, a period usually lasting from twelve\nto fourteen days.\n\n*Period of Invasion.*--The disease is usually ushered in by fever,\nwith a distinct chill or chilly sensations, headache, neuralgia, and\na general malaise. Frequently the first symptom is a distressing\nbackache. This is located in the lumbar region, but it may be as\nhigh up as the lower angle of the scapula, or it may be sacral and\nextend down into the thighs. The backache is an important symptom when\npresent, but it is not always on hand to help one out in the diagnosis.\nThe backache of smallpox is not peculiar or distinctive, but it is its\nseverity which attracts attention.\n\nThe headache is usually frontal and is an ache that is constant in\ncharacter. The neuralgia is about the orbits, but may be facial, and is\nof a lancinating character.\n\nThe fever may precede the backache or it may follow. It may be at first\na rise of only a degree or two, or it may jump to 104\u00b0\u00a0F., or as high\nas 106\u00b0\u00a0F. The latter is most frequently seen in neurasthenic subjects\nand in children. The pulse rises in frequency and in tension.\n\nIn children a convulsion not infrequently ushers in the disease. At\nthis time convulsions are of little significance, but late in the\ndisease they are of serious import. There are other constitutional\nsymptoms, such as loss of appetite, vomiting, muscular pains, a dry,\ncoated tongue, and at times an active delirium.\n\nThe face is congested and swollen. The eyes are injected and present a\nbleared appearance, but the watery or weeping condition seen in measles\nis usually absent. The nose is dry, and a sore throat is not uncommon.\nEpistaxis is frequent.\n\nA very important symptom which sometimes occurs in this stage is a\ncutaneous efflorescence, which may resemble urticaria, scarlet fever,\nor measles. This latter resemblance is very close and often leads to\ndiagnostic error. The efflorescence occurs most frequently in the\nyoung, and also in vaccinated adults. In some epidemics it is not at\nall uncommon, but as a rule it is rare.\n\nThe duration of the stage of invasion varies from two to four days.\nUsually it is about three days.\n\n*Period of Eruption.*--Late on the third day or early on the fourth the\neruption makes its appearance, and the constitutional symptoms subside\nto a certain extent.\n\nThe rash appears first on the confined and moist portions of the skin\nor in irritated parts,--under a blister, for instance, which may have\nbeen applied for the backache. Normally, it is first seen upon the\nforehead at the hair-line, then behind the ears and down the tender\npart of the neck. It gradually extends down the trunk and arms, the\nhands and lower extremities being affected last. The eruption generally\ntakes from twenty-four to thirty-six hours to cover the entire body.\nThe best location to observe the rash for diagnostic purposes is on the\nback, where it cannot be obscured by scratching and where the warmth\nof the body causes the mildest congestion to appear at its best. The\nexposed parts are usually ill adapted for study of the rash, being\nobscured by the swelling and congestion of the face and by more or less\ndirt or staining of the hands.\n\nThe rash consists first of small round or oval, rose-colored macules,\nwhich seem to be in the skin, coming up from beneath it, as it were.\nThey disappear readily on pressure or on tension of the skin. When\ncoalescence occurs, the lesions may resemble the blotches of measles.\nThe macule at this stage is about from one-eighth to one-fourth of an\ninch in diameter, and its color is of an intense red which shows well\nat night, even by the light of a match. In less than twenty-four hours\nthe centre of the macule becomes hard; and as this hardness increases,\nthe lesion gradually rises above the skin. It is now changing into\nthe papular stage. The macular stage lasts usually from eight to\ntwenty-four hours.\n\nThe papules continue to increase slowly in size, the apex becoming\nflattened or indented in some lesions. While this change is going on\nthe redness of the macule forms an areola about the hard portion or\ncentral papule. This areola tends to get smaller as the papule gets\nlarger, and at last is completely lost.\n\nIf the pulp of the finger is passed over the papule, especially in its\nearly stage, the latter seems to roll beneath it, giving the sensation\nof a small shot buried in the skin. When the papule is fully developed,\nthe surrounding skin is put on the stretch, and the rolling sensation\nis lost, but the papule is so dense and hard that it is frequently\ndescribed as \"shotty.\" The papule of varicella and of acne is not so\ndense and resisting as the papule of variola. The fully-developed\npapule in smallpox is rarely surrounded by a halo of congestion as\nit is in varicella, but in the modified form of smallpox this is not\ninfrequently the case. The papule always arises from the centre of its\nhalo like a bull's eye, whereas in chicken-pox it arises from within\nthe circumference, but not always in the centre. The halo of congestion\nin chicken-pox is always very broad and extensive, and is best seen\nupon the back. When a halo is present in smallpox it is very narrow and\ninsignificant. The papule is usually fully developed in twenty-four\nhours.\n\nAt the end of another twenty-four or thirty-six hours the apex of\nthe papule shows a further change. It appears to be transformed from\na solid to a fluid. The color also changes as the fluid increases,\nand the lesion appears bluish or purplish. The fluid continues to\nincrease in amount until the papule is converted into a little blister\nor vesicle. As the change is going on, the height of the papule grows\nless and less, and when vesiculation is complete we have a broad,\nflat, umbilicated vesicle with a firm, dense base. To the touch these\nvesicles are firm and resisting, and the membranous covering is not\neasily broken, unless macerated by the perspiration due to heavy\nflannels.\n\nThe vesicle is divided irregularly by little bands, or septa, which\npermit only a portion of the fluid to escape when one is punctured.\nVesiculation is usually complete about the third day, and the stage\ngenerally lasts three days. It may be stated here that the reckoning\nin smallpox is usually from the appearance of the rash. The period\nof incubation and invasion are considered in reckoning the length of\nillness, but in descriptions of smallpox it is considered best to state\nthe day of the eruption, and not of the disease.\n\nThere is an old and oft-repeated statement that a uniform rash is a\ncharacteristic of smallpox and that a mixed rash indicates chicken-pox.\nThis deserves to be promptly refuted. It is most unusual to find a\ncase of smallpox with its eruption all in one stage. While it is\na well known fact that chicken-pox runs a hasty course,--so that\nin from one to two days we may have macules, papules, vesicles,\nand even crusts,--in smallpox this is not likely to occur, as the\ndisease never runs such a rapid course. In the early stage we may see\nmacules changing into papules on the head and the neck, while there\nare simply macules on the trunk. Later in the disease the eruption\nmay be vesicular on the head while still papular on the body. When\nvesiculation is complete, we have the distinct umbilicated appearance\nthat has long been recognized as a characteristic of smallpox. The\nvesicles are broad, firm, flat, and hard, and are invariably indented\nor umbilicated.\n\nIt is not until the stage of vesiculation that the constitutional\nsymptoms diminish to a marked degree. In fact it is considered one of\nthe landmarks of the disease for the fever curve to show a decline at\nthis time.\n\nLate in the fifth or early in the sixth day the vesicle begins to\nassume a cloudy or yellowish hue, which denotes the commencement of\npustulation. The fluid continues to grow more yellow, and about the\ntime that it has assumed a dense straw color the umbilication begins\nto disappear, so that in from one to three days the pustule loses its\nindented appearance and becomes globular in form. To the touch it\nappears to involve as much of the skin below the surface as it is high\nabove it. It is during the stage of pustulation that the surrounding\nskin becomes swollen and \u0153dematous, with an area of redness about the\npustules giving the appearance of a bull's eye. It is also during the\npustular stage that the constitutional symptoms become more intense\nand the fever rises in proportion to the severity of the attack. The\npustules are fully matured about the eighth day of the eruption.\n\nDuring the pustular stage the affection of the mucous membranes reaches\nits height. The eyelids, lips, and nose are often tremendously swollen.\nThe tongue swells and deglutition becomes impossible. The voice is\nhusky, and is sometimes lost, owing to the swelling of the glottis.\n\nAbout the ninth or tenth day of the rash another change appears in\nthe pustule. In mild cases this change sometimes takes place several\ndays earlier. In the centre of the pustule is observed a small, darker\nspot, which gradually grows larger. The membrane of the pustule becomes\nshriveled, and the little, dark spot continues to get larger and darker\nuntil it involves the entire area of the pustule. This is the drying\nstage, during which the fluid part of the pustule is absorbed, leaving\nthe solid part behind to be exfoliated in the form of a crust. It\nis during this stage that, owing to the softening of its membranous\ncovering, the pustule is broken by the movements of the patient or the\ncontact of rough bed-linen. The pustules of the face are usually the\nfirst ones broken, and an ulceration frequently occurs which destroys\nthe true skin and results in a pit or scar. Pustules do not rupture\nspontaneously and discharge their contents. Dessication lasts usually\nfrom five to twenty days, the exposed parts being the first to dry and\nshed their crusts. On the palms and soles the dessicated d\u00e9bris is left\ndeeply buried in the skin, and often has to be removed by the aid of\na lancet or other instrument. Sometimes there is a pustule under the\nnail, and the removal of the kernel or seed is quite painful, though\nnecessary.\n\nThe crust is usually thin, of a light yellowish-brown tint, but\nslightly adherent, and is shed or picked off without discomfort. The\nspot where the crust has been is of a deep purplish hue, and the many\nlittle stains here and there give the patient a peculiar spotted\nappearance, which in time disappears, except where the ulceration has\nleft a pit or cicatrix. The pit soon loses its color and becomes of a\nwhitish hue.\n\nAs dessication proceeds the constitutional symptoms decline, the\nappetite returns, and the patient gains strength.\n\n*Complications.*--Sepsis is the one generally to be expected, and this\nmay assume any form from a local affection, such as a furuncle, to a\ngeneral septic\u00e6mia. Furunculosis is frequent and is often annoying,\nand no sooner is one boil healed than others follow. Bed-sores are\nalso frequent if proper care is not used to prevent them. Bronchitis\nfrom the affection of the mucous membranes may occur. When simple,\nthis can be handled easily; but when general pneumonia results, death\nis inevitable in the weakened condition of the patient. Ulcers and\nopacities of the cornea, laryngitis and croup (the latter generally\nfatal), zoster, sciatica, nephritis and gastritis, are all frequent\ncomplications, especially in severe cases.\n\n*Confluent Smallpox.*--In this form the vesicles coalesce or run\ntogether, forming variously shaped and sized blisters, which as\npustulation proceeds are usually ruptured in some manner and become\ninfected, forming large, thick scabs with extensive ulceration\nunderneath. The inability to properly cleanse such cases causes a\nvery fetid odor to be given off and makes the patient an exceedingly\ndifficult one to treat.\n\nIn the mild confluent form the disease is similar to the discrete form\nonly that several lesions coalesce. In the severe confluent form the\ncoalescence is extensive and large blisters are formed. The swelling\nabout them is intense, and with the extensive sepsis the patient\nrarely survives. The swelling of the face and extremities is sometimes\nenormous, and the suffering is so severe as to make death a welcome\nvisitor.\n\nConfluent smallpox runs a course similar to that of the other forms,\nexcept that it is not as rapid as the third and is usually more severe\nthan the first.\n\n*Hemorrhagic Smallpox.*--This is recognized as the malignant form\nof variola, and is rapidly fatal in most cases. It runs its course\nprecipitately, and at times most unexpectedly,--sometimes killing the\npatient in a few hours and in other cases not completing its career\nuntil the fourth or fifth day. Hemorrhages may come on suddenly and the\npatient expire before any rash appears. In one case an efflorescence\nappeared and so closely resembled scarlet fever that it was mistaken\nfor it. Suddenly hemorrhages set in, and within six hours the patient\nwas dead. There was a question at the time as to whether the case was\nmalignant scarlet fever or malignant smallpox. Later a room-mate came\ndown with a typical case of smallpox and helped to clear the doubt. The\nhemorrhage usually occurs as the disease changes from vesiculation into\npustulation.\n\nThe severity of the hemorrhagic form of the disease is shown by the\nrapidity with which it passes through the various stages. Macules\nappear, and within a few hours rapidly change into papules, which\nalmost as rapidly change into pustules; and before pustulation is\ncomplete hemorrhage occurs, and death quickly follows. It is not\nunusual in these cases for the disease to run its course in from\ntwenty-four to thirty-six hours. In many, severe constitutional\nsymptoms mark the onset, hemorrhages occur immediately, and death\nresults before the rash appears. The hemorrhages are from the mucous\nmembrane of the eyes, nose, and mouth, and from the anal, vaginal,\nand urethral orifices, the membrane swelling enormously. Hemorrhage\noccurring in the skin causes it to become raised and of a livid purple\nor bluish tint. The eyes seem to bulge as if about to drop from the\norbital cavity. On the abdomen the hemorrhage is beneath the skin,\ncausing raised lesions with a sharp border and a flattened top,\nfeeling dense and firm to the touch. In the peritoneum the hemorrhages\nare extensive.\n\nThe constitutional symptoms in this severe form are typhoidal in\ncharacter. The mind appears at ease, quietly passing into a comatose\nstate. The countenance is pinched and sunken, and the skin is dusky\nand purplish. The eyes appear bloodshot and listless. The breathing is\nrapid and superficial. The delirium is of a quiet character, and death\ncomes as a most welcome termination.\n\n    CASE I.--McD. Admitted to the hospital with a high fever\n    (106.4\u00b0\u00a0F.) and complaining of sore throat. One hour after\n    admission there was noticed a very intense red rash, eyes\n    bloodshot, and patient stupid. Patient isolated for scarlet fever.\n    Hemorrhages came from eyes, nose, and mouth. Vomited blood in large\n    quantities. Purplish spots appeared on the skin and spread rapidly\n    over the whole cutaneous surface. Three hours after admission the\n    patient died.\n\n    CASE II.--The patient, J.\u00a0H., attended the funeral of a relative in\n    New Jersey. Ten days afterwards he received a letter stating that\n    the person had died of smallpox, but that they desired the matter\n    to be kept secret. Feeling nervous, he got vaccinated. Three days\n    from the receipt of the letter he did not return to work after\n    his lunch, and complained of feeling weary. Went to bed, telling\n    his wife to call him at four o'clock, as he had an important\n    engagement. At half-past three his wife went to call him, and\n    found him bleeding profusely. She called a neighboring doctor, who\n    notified the Board of Health. The health inspector called at five\n    P.M. Patient unconscious; face dark and dusky; eyeballs bulging and\n    blood oozing from them. Hemorrhage from nose and mouth. Vomited\n    a large quantity of dark, coagulated material. Pulseless at both\n    wrists. Temperature 108\u00b0 F., by rectum. Diagnosis, hemorrhagic\n    variola. Ordered patient removed. Ambulance arrived at 7.15, just\n    after the patient had died. No autopsy.\n\nThrough the courtesy of Dr. A.\u00a0H. Doty, the following cases may be\nquoted. They were reported to the Health Department of New York City\nwith a diagnosis of malignant hemorrhagic smallpox.\n\n    CASE I.--Mr. J.\u00a0F., aged forty-four years. Removed to Reception\n    Hospital on suspicion of typhus fever, December 8, 1893, when\n    the following history was obtained: Patient was taken ill on\n    December 3. On the following day, December 4, great weakness was\n    experienced. Gradually became worse. Epistaxis, etc. On December\n    7 an eruption appeared. On December 8 the patient presented the\n    following appearance: Face uniformly red, or of a dusky hue, and\n    swollen; on close examination a faintly papular condition was\n    apparent. Over chest, abdomen, and extremities was found a profuse\n    papular eruption, of a very dusky or violet-colored hue. On the\n    abdomen some of the papules had coalesced. Papules were noticeable\n    on the hands and feet, particularly on the palms. On the inner\n    surface of the thighs the entire skin presented the appearance of\n    a scarlatinous eruption, although darker in color. Pressure on the\n    surface did not leave a white streak or spot typical of scarlet\n    fever. In some parts of the body papules were found which were\n    almost black. At this time, December 8, there was no evidence\n    of vesication. On December 9, the third day of the eruption,\n    the latter presented no particular change in its appearance or\n    progress. It still remained papular. Intense depression and\n    delirium were present. At 3 P.M., December 9, the patient was\n    removed to North Brothers Island. On December 10, the fourth day\n    of the eruption, a few vesicles appeared for the first time. These\n    formed slowly about the lower part of the abdomen and thighs. At\n    these sites were four or five typical umbilications. On December\n    11, the fifth day of the eruption, many more umbilications were\n    found. The patient became rapidly worse, and died on the following\n    day, December 12.\n\n    CASE II.--Mr. F.\u00a0S., aged twenty-four years. Removed to Reception\n    Hospital on suspicion of typhus fever. On December 8 the appearance\n    of this case was similar to Case I., inasmuch as the face was\n    swollen and presented an erysipelatous appearance, although\n    the color was more of a dusky hue. Large erythematous patches,\n    suggestive of scarlet fever, were found covering different parts\n    of the body. The same condition was present in this case as was\n    noticed in Case I.,--_i.e._, the color of the patches was darker\n    than in scarlet fever, and when the finger was drawn over the patch\n    it did not leave a white line. No patches were found on the arms;\n    but at these sites were dark, almost black, papules, which slowly\n    became vesicular and umbilicated. The eruption was confluent on\n    the upper part of the thighs and the face, and the patient died on\n    December 8.\n\n    CASE III.--Mr. P.\u00a0B., aged twenty-six years. Removed to Reception\n    Hospital, December 16, 1893, on suspicion of typhus fever. On\n    December 17 he presented the following appearance: The face and\n    the entire trunk and upper portions of the thighs and shoulders\n    presented an eruption which could easily have been mistaken for\n    scarlet fever. The eruption was dotted with dark or black papules;\n    some vesicles were noticed on the trunk. The eruption on the thighs\n    was shotty and umbilicated and quite characteristic of variola. The\n    face presented the same appearance as in Cases I. and II. On the\n    legs and forearms, where the general redness was not present, the\n    eruption had hardly gone beyond the macular stage, but was very\n    dark,--almost black. As in the other cases, the finger drawn across\n    left no white mark. It was stated that epistaxis had occurred. The\n    patient became rapidly worse, without much change in the eruption,\n    and died on December 17.\n\n    CASE IV.--Mr. L.\u00a0R., lawyer, aged forty-three years. Removed from\n    boarding-house, December 24, 1893, to Reception Hospital. Seen\n    at home previous to removal, December 24. Patient felt badly on\n    December 17. On December 20 was quite ill; pains in different parts\n    of the body; nausea and vomiting. This condition continued until\n    December 23, when an eruption appeared. Diagnosis, scarlet fever.\n    On December 24, with the exception of the legs and forearms, the\n    entire body and face was involved in a general eruption resembling\n    scarlet fever. However, as in the preceding cases, it was of a\n    darker hue than that found in scarlet fever, and pressure upon the\n    skin made no impression so far as changing its color. Over the legs\n    and forearm was distributed a profuse papular eruption, very dark\n    in color. On other parts of the body were scattered some dark or\n    almost black papules, with a few vesicles; typical umbilication\n    was also present in some. A few small vesicles were noticed on the\n    nose. These had the appearance of inflamed follicles, and were\n    not as dark colored as the rest. The conjunctiv\u00e6 were very much\n    congested, and the membrane of the mouth was so much swollen that\n    it was impossible to examine the throat. Hematemesis was present,\n    also great prostration from the outset. The patient died on\n    December 25.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nDIAGNOSIS.\n\n\nThere are few diseases the prompt recognition of which is of greater\nimportance to the physician than variola. On the one hand, failure\nto recognize the disease may subject the family of the patient and\nthe community at large to the danger of contagion, and thus even be\nthe starting-point of a widespread epidemic; on the other hand, to\npronounce a case smallpox when it is not, entails so much needless pain\nand anxiety that the physician guilty of so grave an error merits the\nsevere condemnation which will certainly be visited upon him.\n\nThe recognition of a case of smallpox may be simple, difficult, or even\nimpossible, depending on the case and on the stage of the disease. In\ngeneral the disease is readily recognized when the case is typical and\nthe eruption has reached the vesicular or pustular stage. The diagnosis\nis difficult in atypical and complicated cases. It is impossible\nwith any degree of positiveness in most cases in the pre-eruption\nperiod,--the stage of invasion.\n\nThe initial symptoms of smallpox resemble the first symptoms of so\nmany infectious fevers that it is only through a consideration of the\nprevalence of an epidemic and the opportunities for infection in a\ngiven case that the physician may be put on his guard. It is important\nin this connection to notice whether the patient has been successfully\nvaccinated within a recent period. The physician who during the\nprevalence of an epidemic finds an unvaccinated subject suffering\nfrom a febrile disease of acute onset, with severe lumbar and dorsal\npains, may, in the absence of definite symptoms pointing to some other\ndisease, suspect smallpox; but a positive diagnosis at this stage is,\nof course, impossible.\n\n*Prodromal Rashes.*--The occurrence of the prodromal rashes, the\nroseola variolosa,--a more or less diffuse scarlatiniform, morbillic,\nor urticarial rash which may appear on the second day of the\nfever,--has a certain diagnostic value; but this roseola occurs in\nonly a small percentage of the cases, and, unfortunately, sometimes\nappears in other acute tox\u00e6mic conditions,--typhoid, for instance. The\nscarlatiniform rash may lead to a diagnosis of scarlet fever and the\nmorbillic roseola be mistaken for measles; but these diseases would\nbe excluded by the absence of the angina and the strawberry tongue of\nscarlatina in the one case and of the catarrhal symptoms of measles\nin the other, aside from other considerations. The appearance of the\neruption on the second day of scarlatina is followed by a marked\ndefervescence, while the scarlet rash of smallpox is not accompanied\nby any change in the temperature curve. The eruption in measles occurs\non the fourth day of the illness, a circumstance which alone suffices\nto differentiate it from the morbilliform roseola of smallpox. The\ncharacteristic and pathognomonic \"Koplik spots\" on the buccal mucous\nmembrane in measles are, of course, absent in smallpox. Furthermore,\nthese prodromal eruptions of variola are of extremely evanescent\ncharacter and usually disappear within eight or ten hours.\n\nOf somewhat greater diagnostic value in this stage is the appearance\nof small hemorrhages, or petechi\u00e6, varying in size from a pin's head\nto a pea, in the brachial and crural triangles of Simon. This form of\nprodromal eruption, however, is extremely rare, and, it may be added,\nis of grave prognostic significance, as it is usually the precursor of\nhemorrhagic smallpox.\n\n*Meningitis.*--The intense headache, vertigo, delirium, and coma of\nmeningitis, especially meningitis of the convexity without localizing\nsymptoms, may be mistaken for severe prodromal symptoms of smallpox. As\na rule, pulse and respiration are slow in meningitis, while in smallpox\nrespiration and pulse are both markedly rapid.\n\n*Cerebro-spinal Meningitis.*--In cerebro-spinal meningitis, in which an\nerythematous or purpuric rash appears, the difficulties of diagnosis\nare often such as tax the skill of the most expert clinician. It is\nimportant to remember that the rash of cerebro-spinal meningitis\nusually develops gradually or in successive crops, and that its\ndistribution over the cutaneous surface is irregular, while the\neruption of smallpox makes its complete appearance within the space of\na few hours and is localized chiefly on the face and extremities. The\nstiffness at the back of the neck and the retraction of the head are\nsymptoms that do not belong to smallpox.\n\n*Septic\u00e6mia and Py\u00e6mia.*--Acute septic\u00e6mic and py\u00e6mic conditions in\nwhich there are hemorrhagic and bullous lesions in the skin sometimes\npresent grave difficulties in making a differential diagnosis from\nsmallpox. In general, however, a careful elucidation of the history of\nthe case will bring out some points that serve for differentiation.\n\nIt must be admitted, however, that the diagnosis between cryptogenetic\nseptic\u00e6mia and hemorrhagic smallpox is sometimes impossible _intra\nvitam_. A case of this kind may be cited which occurred in New York\nduring the epidemic last year. A woman of thirty, not vaccinated\nsince childhood, living in a house adjoining one from which a case\nof smallpox had been removed, was reported to the authorities as a\npossible case of smallpox. It was the sixth day of her illness, which\nhad begun abruptly with headache, backache, vomiting, and fever. On\nthe third day of the illness there was a profuse hemorrhage from the\nuterus, and thereafter metrorrhagia was almost constant. On the fourth\nday a scarlatiniform eruption was noticed on the legs and abdomen.\nThe rash rapidly extended and was soon interspersed with hemorrhagic\npoints. When seen on the evening of the sixth day the patient was\nsemi-comatose. The skin was literally covered with a dusky scarlet rash\nin which were noted countless hemorrhagic macules, from a pin-point\nto a bean in size. The conjunctiv\u00e6 bulbi were chemotic, the tongue\nwas swollen, and the fauces were deeply congested. The post-mortem\nexamination made the following morning, six hours after death, revealed\na septic endometritis, and streptococci were cultivated from the blood\nand the peritoneal serum.\n\n*Grippe.*--An attack of grippe may simulate the early symptoms of\nsmallpox very closely. The onset may be sudden, the muscular pains\nsevere, the pyrexia decided, the general prostration as marked as\nin smallpox. In grippe, however, the muscular pains are, as a rule,\nmore general than in smallpox, there is rarely profuse sweating, and\nsymptoms referable to the respiratory tract soon develop, if indeed\nthey are not present from the beginning.\n\n*Rheumatism.*--The severe lumbar and sacral pains of smallpox have\nbeen mistaken for rheumatism, but such an error can be made only where\nthe use of the clinical thermometer is unknown. A febrile movement\nin lumbago is absent or but slight, while in smallpox the pyrexia is\nusually pronounced.\n\n*Typhoid and Typhus.*--Typhoid and typhus fevers have at times been\nconfounded with smallpox. But errors of this kind can be made only\nwhere the history of the case is completely ignored. In typhus, it is\ntrue, the eruption, petechial and almost papular in character, may\nsuggest hemorrhagic smallpox; but the eruption of typhus rarely appears\nbefore the fourth or fifth day of the illness and is located chiefly on\nthe trunk, sparing the face. The rash of malignant smallpox develops\nusually on the third or even the second day of the illness and is not\nlimited to the trunk.\n\nUpon the appearance of the rash in a typical case of smallpox the\nfebrile diseases with which it is most frequently confounded are\nmeasles and varicella. It is interesting to note that until the time of\nSydenham, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, measles and\nsmallpox were regarded as manifestations of the same disease, and that\nthe Vienna school of dermatologists, even to this day, insists on the\netiological unity of variola and varicella.\n\n*Measles.*--As a matter of fact the early papular eruption of measles\nbears a considerable resemblance to the first stage of the eruption of\nsmallpox. In both the eruption is noted first in the face. In smallpox,\nhowever, the papules have a firm, \"shotty\" feeling on palpation, while\nin measles they are smooth and velvety to the touch. In measles the\neruption, viewed at a little distance, seems to present a distinctly\ncorymbose or crescentic grouping, an arrangement which is absent in\nsmallpox. The eruption of smallpox appears at the end of the third\nday, that of measles on the fourth day. The temperature in smallpox\nundergoes a rapid defervescence upon the appearance of the rash,\nwhile in measles it continues to rise after the eruption appears.\nThe pronounced pain in the back is absent in measles, while the very\nmarked catarrhal symptoms, coryza, conjunctivitis, etc., are lacking in\nsmallpox. The subsequent course of the eruption will leave no room for\ndoubt, since within twenty-four hours the papules of smallpox will have\ndeveloped into characteristic vesicles.\n\n*Varicella.*--In varicella the stage of invasion is usually much\nshorter than in smallpox, the prostration less marked, and the lumbar\npains of the latter disease are absent. The eruption in varicella comes\nout in successive crops and runs a shorter course, so that lesions in\nvarious stages of development may be seen side by side. The temperature\ndoes not necessarily fall on the appearance of the eruption, and there\nmay be a more or less marked rise with each fresh crop of vesicles, the\ntemperature curve presenting thus a remittent character. The eruption\nitself presents marked differences in the character and the course of\nthe individual lesions, as well as in their distribution. The clear\nvesicles shoot up from the surface, as it were, without warning; or\nthere may be for a brief period only a circumscribed erythema like\nthat which usually precedes the appearance of an urticarial wheal.\nThe vesicles of varicella have usually a somewhat obtusely conical\nshape, while those of smallpox are distinctly hemispherical. The\ncharacteristic umbilication of the smallpox vesicle is wanting in\nvaricella. It is true the varicella vesicle often shows a depression\nat its apex; but this false umbilication, as it is called, is due to\nthe rupture of the vesicle and the escape of some of its fluid or to\na partial drying of its watery contents, and occurs only after the\nvesicle has existed for some time. The vesicle of varicella appears\nmuch more superficial in its seat, and its roof is much thinner, so\nthat it ruptures readily. Very moderate pressure with the finger\nsuffices to break it. When ruptured in this way the vesicle usually\ncollapses completely, contrasting in this respect with the smallpox\nvesicle, from which, owing to the multilocular character of the lesion,\nall the fluid does not escape.\n\nIn varicella the distribution of the lesions over the surface is far\nmore erratic than in smallpox. The very decided tendency to grouping\nof lesions upon the face and about the wrists so characteristic of\nsmallpox does not occur in varicella, in which the vesicles may appear\neven more extensively on the trunk than upon the face. In varicella\nthe palms and the soles, except in infants, are almost never affected;\nwhile in smallpox these regions are practically never exempt. It is\ntrue that in the extraordinarily mild cases of smallpox, such as have\nconstituted the majority of cases during the past two years throughout\nthe West, lesions may or may not be present on the palms and soles; but\nin the severe and moderately severe cases, such as have characterized\nthe recent epidemic in New York, the soles and especially the palms\nhave practically without exception shown the lesions. The localization\nof smallpox lesions on the palms and soles deserves far more emphasis\nthan is generally accorded it in the textbooks, many of which even\nfail to mention it all. It may be put down as a safe rule that a\ncase showing an extensive eruption of vesicles or pustules, however\nsuspicious in other respects, is not smallpox if the palms and soles\nare free.\n\n*Acne.*--Among the skin diseases proper there are a few whose\nappearance upon hasty examination may occasion some confusion with\nsmallpox. Acne pustulosa presents only a superficial resemblance to\nvariola, but in cases where it is accidentally associated with an acute\nfebrile disease, like grippe, for instance, it may give rise to some\ndiagnostic difficulty. In these cases, however, inquiry will develop\nthe fact that the acne lesions have been present before the inception\nof the febrile disease; and the presence of comedos, the limitation of\nthe lesions to the face, chest, and back, together with the absence of\nany lesions on the palms and soles, will serve to exclude smallpox.\n\n*Impetigo Contagiosa.*--In impetigo contagiosa there might under\nsimilar circumstances be a momentary doubt as to the nature of the\nillness. Impetigo lesions have no typical distribution on the surface,\nthe mucous membranes are always exempt; the vesicle itself is extremely\nsuperficial, ruptures very readily, and is at once replaced by a crust,\nso that lesions in various stages, vesicles, pustules, and crusts may\nalways be seen at the same time.\n\n*Zoster.*--Zoster is, as a rule, readily distinguished by the definite\ngrouping of the lesions in the tract supplied by one or more nerves,\nits asymmetrical distribution, and the more or less severe neuralgic\npain that precedes or accompanies the eruption. It must be remembered,\nhowever, that in zoster, in addition to the typical grouped lesions,\nthere are occasionally seen a few isolated vesico-pustules scattered\npromiscuously over the entire surface; and the difficulty of diagnosis\nmay be increased by the occurrence of a moderate temperature movement.\nIn these cases, to which attention was first called by Teneson, the\nhistory of the case, the presence of characteristic herpetic groups,\nand the evolution and course of the individual lesions will suffice to\nclear the diagnosis.\n\n*Drug Eruptions.*--The ingestion of bromides, iodides, and quinine\nis sometimes followed by an eruption which may create some confusion\nin diagnosis. In general the drug eruptions may be distinguished by\nthe absence of fever and of the subjective symptoms of smallpox. The\nbromide and the iodide acne never occur on the palms and soles, where\nthere are no sebaceous glands, and the lesions lack the evolution\nand course of the variolous eruption. The erythematous and purpuric\neruption of quinine may be confused with the hemorrhagic form of\nsmallpox; but here, too, the history of the course of the illness and\nthe absence of fever will obviate the difficulty.\n\n*Syphilis.*--Of all the diseases of the skin it is the pustular\nsyphilide which most resembles the lesions of smallpox. Dermatologists\nand experts in variola are agreed that the pustular syphilide may be\nabsolutely indistinguishable from smallpox so far as the appearance and\ndistribution of the lesions is concerned. Furthermore, the pustular\nsyphilide is frequently accompanied by a decided febrile movement. The\ndifferential diagnosis can be made in these cases only by the closest\ninquiry into the history of the case and by careful observation of\nthe course of the disease. The characteristic history of an acute\nillness of short duration followed by a remission on the appearance\nof the eruption will of course be wanting in syphilis. The syphilitic\neruption is more sluggish in its evolution as well as in the course of\nits subsequent changes; and though there may be lesions of syphilis on\nthe mucous membrane of the mouth, they will lack the characteristic\nappearance of the vesicles and pustules of smallpox in this region.\nThe palms and soles are not apt to show any lesions in this form of\nsyphilis; and finally some other forms of syphilitic manifestation are\nvery often present in this polymorphic disease to give the clue to the\nreal nature of the eruption.\n\nIn conclusion, the fact should be emphasized that there are cases of\nsmallpox of so mild a character, with general symptoms so slight and\neruption so sparse and ill-defined, as to make a positive diagnosis\nextremely difficult. It is a good plan to employ vaccination in such\ncases as a test. Within three or four days the experienced observer\nwill be able to determine whether the vaccination is successful or\nnot; a negative result will of course have but a moderate value, but\na positive result will serve to definitely exclude the diagnosis of\nsmallpox. In all cases of doubt, whether before or after the eruption\nhas appeared, the physician owes it to himself not less than to the\npatient and the community to frankly explain to the patient or his\nfamily the difficulty in arriving at a diagnosis, and to express his\nsuspicions that the case may be one of smallpox. It need hardly be said\nthat such a case should be as strictly isolated as if the diagnosis of\nsmallpox were already established.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nTREATMENT.\n\n\nIn the treatment of smallpox the therapeutic measures employed must\nnecessarily vary with the severity of the disease and the condition of\nthe patient in its successive stages. No remedy or plan of treatment\nwill apply to all cases and at all times. As in the other exanthemata,\nthere are cases of variola in which the disease runs so mild a course\nthat a little nursing or simple attention to the personal comfort of\nthe patient is all that is absolutely necessary. Such cases occur\nin those who have already had the disease,--for a second attack of\nsmallpox must always be considered as a possibility, although it is a\nmore rare occurrence than some writers would lead us to believe. Such\ncases also occur and with the greatest frequency in those who have been\nrendered more or less immune by a previous vaccination. But mild cases\nof smallpox may also occur among the unvaccinated; and in the present\nepidemic I have noted a few cases where, in spite of the lack of any\nprotection from vaccination, the eruption and other symptoms of the\ndisease were quite as mild as in some cases of so-called varioloid, or\nsmallpox modified by previous vaccination.\n\nIn contrast with these cases which require no special medical\ntreatment, there are others of marked severity with unexpected\ncomplications which tax the physician's skill to its utmost capacity.\nStill another class of cases, fortunately rare in most epidemics, are\nthose to which the name of variola maligna has been given, and in which\nmedical treatment seems to be almost as unnecessary as in the mild\ncases, since all attempts to avert a fatal termination have so far\nproved utterly futile.\n\nIn the successive stages of a typical case of variola a marked\nchange in the character of the treatment is demanded both by the\npeculiarities of the eruption and the accompanying general symptoms.\nInstead of considering the various types of variola from a therapeutic\nstand-point, therefore, it would seem more practical to discuss in\ntheir natural order those measures which are adapted to the successive\nstages of the disease, beginning with the\n\n*Period of Incubation.*--During this period, which extends from the\ndate of infection to the appearance of the earliest symptoms of the\ndisease, treatment is rarely demanded, since in the great majority of\ncases the outbreak of the disease is a surprise, and in no case can\nit be positively known that a patient has smallpox until the initial\nsymptoms appear, and often not until the characteristic eruption has\ndeveloped. In many instances, however, it is quite certain that an\nindividual has been exposed to the contagion of variola; and when\nsuch a one happens to be unvaccinated, or has not been vaccinated in\nrecent years, the assumption is strong that the disease may have been\ncontracted and will manifest itself in due time.\n\nThe question as to whether vaccination can have any notable effect\nin modifying the course of variola when performed after a person has\nbeen exposed to and has contracted the disease is one concerning which\na considerable difference of opinion is expressed by modern writers.\nWhile some contend that even if vaccination fails to prevent the\ndevelopment of variola it is quite certain to modify its severity,\nothers claim that it can be of no more advantage than locking the barn\nafter a horse has been stolen.\n\nThe precise effect which vaccination during the stage of incubation\nmay exert upon the subsequent course of the disease is very difficult\nto determine in one or even a small number of cases, since it is\nalmost impossible to predict in any given case what the severity of\nthe disease will be. In the opinion of Curschmann it is very doubtful\nwhether vaccination can even render the course of smallpox milder. He\nstates that in many instances where vaccination has been performed\nafter exposure to smallpox infection the pustules of vaccinia and\nvariola have been seen developing side by side, the former having\napparently no effect upon the latter. In the opinion of Welsh, on the\nother hand, vaccination after infection often modifies the disease,\nand not infrequently prevents it altogether. He believes that when\nvaccinia has advanced to the stage of the formation of an areola around\nthe vesicle, about the eighth day, it begins to exert its prophylactic\npower against smallpox; and as the period of incubation in variola\nis usually twelve days or more, an early vaccination may exert its\nprotective influence in advance of the time when the variolous eruption\nshould appear.\n\nWelsh reports one hundred and ninety-four cases of vaccination\nperformed during the stage of incubation, in which thirty-eight\nwere perfectly protected against smallpox, sixteen almost perfectly\nprotected, thirty-one protected to a well-marked degree, thirty\npartially protected, and seventy-nine were unprotected.\n\nOf these one hundred and ninety-four cases the death-rate was 12.90\namong those vaccinated early in the stage of incubation; it was 40.98\namong those vaccinated from one to seven days before the eruption of\nsmallpox appeared; while among the unvaccinated cases the death-rate\namounted to fifty-eight per cent.\n\nAs it is well known that a secondary vaccination runs its course more\nrapidly than a primary one, it is evident that if an exposed patient\nhas been already vaccinated a secondary vaccination is more apt to\nexert a protective influence. Since vaccination with humanized virus\nis more speedy in its effect than when bovine lymph is used, it is\nadvisable to employ the former when readily obtainable and to make\nseveral insertions in order to increase the probability of success.\nEven a late vaccination in the stage of incubation may be of value,\nas it sometimes happens that this period lasts fourteen days or more.\nEarly in the nineteenth century Waterhouse claimed that two days after\ninfection vaccination would save the patient.\n\nGood results from the subcutaneous injection of vaccine lymph have also\nbeen claimed by Farley and others, but the efficacy of this method of\ntreatment appears to have been assumed rather than proven.\n\nThe speedy vaccination of all those who have been accidentally exposed\nto smallpox infection will do no harm, even if it fails to modify the\ndisease when contracted. Indeed, it is always advisable, since the\npersons exposed, even if not already infected, are liable to contract\nthe disease through possible subsequent exposure; and in the case of a\nthreatening epidemic no precaution should be neglected which might tend\nto lessen the number of possible cases.\n\nSince no drug nor specific remedy exists which administered during the\nperiod of incubation will abort or modify the subsequent eruption, the\nonly thing to be done is to prepare the patient by means of a rigid\nregimen and all possible hygienic measures to withstand the impending\nattack. When the fact of exposure is certain, forewarned should be\nforearmed.\n\n*Period of Invasion (Initial Stage).*--At the outbreak of the initial\nsymptoms of smallpox a correct diagnosis is rarely made, owing to the\nfact that headache, lumbar pain, chills, fever, and nausea are not\nsufficiently pathognomonic to always suggest the true nature of the\ndisease. In those cases, however, where it is known that the patient\nhas been exposed to infection and an attack of variola is consequently\nanticipated, the diagnosis is comparatively easy. In such a case the\npatient should be put to bed, or at least confined in a large, airy\nroom, from which all draperies and superfluous articles, capable of\nabsorbing infectious germs, should be at once removed. The temperature\nof the room should be kept as low as possible in summer and should\nnot exceed 60\u00b0 to 65\u00b0\u00a0F. in winter. An extra bed or couch should be\nprovided, to which the patient can make a convenient and agreeable\nchange later in the course of the disease, especially if it proves to\nbe of a severe type.\n\nAt the outset the bowels should be freely opened by a dose of calomel\nand soda, followed in the morning by a saline purgative; and since\nconstipation is apt to persist in most cases throughout the course of\nthe disease, it is advisable to administer a little cold citrate of\nmagnesia or some other agreeable laxative from day to day.\n\nA warm bath should be taken and the skin from head to foot thoroughly\ncleansed by vigorous soap friction and the application of an antiseptic\nlotion. If the disease proves mild, a daily bath can be taken; or when\nthis does not seem advisable, the daily sponging of the whole body with\ncool water will usually lessen the fever and add greatly to the comfort\nof the sufferer. If the patient happens to belong to the class of the\nunvaccinated, or has not been vaccinated for many years, and there\nexists consequently the prospect of a severe attack, the hair and beard\nshould be closely clipped. In most cases, however, this procedure can\nbe left until the eruption has appeared, and if this is moderate in\namount, the cutting of the hair, especially in the case of young girls\nand women, may not be necessary.\n\nThe diet, which throughout the course of smallpox is a matter of the\ngreatest importance, should be light and nutritious during this stage,\nconsisting mainly of milk, broth, or gruel.\n\nThe medicinal treatment of smallpox in this stage and throughout\nthe course of the disease must be mainly symptomatic. Upon careful\nnursing and the prompt treatment of the various symptoms as they\npresent themselves we must depend in great measure for the fortunate\ntermination in any case. The remedies and special methods which have\nbeen vaunted by some as tending to abort or modify the eruption and\nto lessen the severity of the disease, have been tested by others and\nfound wanting. A specific for variola comparable in its action to\nthat of mercury in syphilis or quinine in malaria is at the present\ntime unknown, although, in view of the recent advances in antitoxic\nmedication, the discovery of such is a hope that may possibly be\nrealized in the near future.\n\nA high degree of fever in the initial stage of smallpox with intense\nheadache and backache are symptoms which call loudly for relief,\nalthough they may not betoken a corresponding severity of the disease\nin its subsequent stages. Aconite, quinine, phenacetine, and other\nantipyretics are remedies which may now be advantageously given, and\nthe daily cool bath, although it may not have the notable effect\nso often observed in typhoid fever, will assist in lowering the\ntemperature.\n\nIf the fever is combined with extreme nervousness, the old and reliable\nDover's powder will be found of service. In some cases delirium is\npresent during the initial stage, and occasionally a suicidal tendency\nis manifested, which makes it necessary to have a watchful nurse in\nconstant attendance upon the patient. Potassium bromide in full doses,\nchloral, or sulphonal may be advantageously employed as a sedative, but\nthe most effective remedy is probably the hypodermic injection of the\nsulphate of morphine (gr. 1\/4).\n\nIf the headache, which is almost invariably present, is very severe, an\nice-bag or cold cloth applied to the scalp will afford relief. The fear\nwhich has been entertained by some that such a procedure might tend to\nsuppress the eruption is utterly groundless. For the lumbar pain, of\nwhich the patient often complains, a hot application will usually feel\nmore grateful. The custom of applying mustard-plasters to the lower\npart of the back is not to be recommended, since the irritation of the\nskin which is caused thereby is liable to increase the eruption in\nthat region and add to the subsequent discomfort of the patient. The\ntheory that the eruption can be lessened upon the face by increasing\nthe number of lesions upon some other part of the body has never proved\nsuccessful in practice.\n\nThe sensation of thirst which is always present, and is often\nintolerable, can be alleviated by frequent sips of cold milk or by weak\nlemonade, either hot or cold. If there is extreme nausea and vomiting,\nas is usually the case with children, small pieces of ice dissolved in\nthe mouth will relieve it together with the excessive thirst.\n\n*Period of Eruption.*--With the outbreak of the papular eruption of\nsmallpox, which usually appears upon the face on the third day of\nthe disease, a notable decrease of the fever occurs with a decided\nimprovement in the general condition of the patient. In a mild case,\nwhen a diagnosis of variola is not promptly made, the patient often\nreturns to his business or pursues his or her customary duties with no\nthought of the danger to which others are exposed through contact or\nassociation. But the rapid development of the eruption soon leads to\nthe discovery of its true nature and a realization of the importance of\ncontinued isolation.\n\nDuring the papular and vesicular stage little or no internal medication\nis required, Gayton, an English writer on smallpox, who evidently\nshares the popular belief that the main duty of a physician is to give\nmedicine, remarks that \"we may also prescribe a little effervescing\nsaline, for unless something is given in the form of medicine, the\nimpression on the sick man's mind is that you are doing nothing to\nassist him.\" An intelligent public, in this country at least, is\ngradually awakening to the fact that skilful medical treatment cannot\nlonger be measured by the number and size of the apothecaries' bottles.\n\nAlthough the appetite may now return, a restriction of the diet to\nsimple and nutritious articles of food, such as milk-toast, eggs,\noysters, and jellies, should be enforced.\n\nThe daily bath should be continued, and there is no objection to its\nbeing made antiseptic by the addition of carbolic acid or bichloride of\nmercury. It is simpler and safer, however, to employ a plain bath and\nto disinfect the skin later by sponging with some antiseptic lotion,\nsuch as peroxide of hydrogen or permanganate of potassium. It has been\nclaimed by some enthusiast, though never demonstrated, that carbolic\nsoap will abort the disease.\n\nThe local treatment of the eruption during the papular and vesicular\nstage has been a subject of experimentation for centuries, and the\nprevailing opinion at the present time is that little or nothing can\nbe done to arrest its development. Most of the local applications,\nlike the mercurial and other plasters of former days, though doubtless\nof some value, have proved generally to be more uncomfortable than\nbeneficial to the patient. Tincture of iodine, pure or diluted, with\nan equal part of alcohol, nitrate of silver solution, collodion,\npicric acid, and more recently ichthyol, have been advocated by some\nand rejected by others after a careful test of their merits. Gayton\nrecommends the use of the old itch lotion of sulphur and quicklime when\ncases present themselves before eruption or during the papular stage.\nHe claims that if the lotion is rubbed over the whole body every four\nor six hours it will prevent the papules from reaching the pustular\nstage and thus avert the severe secondary fever. This surprising\nstatement he bases on the observation of hundreds of cases.\n\nThe effect of light upon the development of the smallpox eruption is\na subject of considerable interest, and in recent years it has become\none of therapeutic importance. As long ago as the fourteenth century\nJohn of Gaddesden and other physicians of his time were in the habit\nof excluding both light and fresh air from smallpox patients. The\nwalls and furniture of the sick-room were painted red, on account of a\npeculiar virtue supposed to reside in this color, and the unfortunate\noccupant was nearly smothered by red curtains hung around his bed.\nEver since that time it has been a common custom to darken the room\nof a smallpox patient, partly on account of the photophobia present\nduring the course of the disease and partly on account of the idea that\nsunlight would aggravate the eruption. The fact that the face and hands\nare most intensely affected would seem to substantiate this idea, but\nthe argument fails when we consider that the feet are usually the seat\nof an eruption scarcely less profuse.\n\nIt was claimed by Black, in 1867, that the complete exclusion\nof light from the eruption of smallpox, even when occurring in\nunvaccinated persons, effectually prevented pitting of the face.\nBarlow, Gallivardin, and others, have expressed a similar belief.\nExperimentation by Finsen, Unna, and others having demonstrated that\nit was not the heat of the sun but the ultra-violet or chemical rays\nwhich cause solar eczema and pigmentation of the skin, it was suggested\nby Finsen that in place of the complete exclusion of light in the\ntreatment of variola, it was only necessary to eliminate the chemical\nrays of sunlight by means of red glass windows or red curtains.\n\nActing upon this suggestion Lindholm, Svensen, Day, and others, treated\nsmallpox by this new method, and made most favorable reports of their\nresults. The red light proved agreeable and soothing to the eyes of\nthe patients, frequently caused the vesicles to dry without becoming\npurulent, and lessened the suppurative fever. The patients, it is\nclaimed, passed directly from the vesicular stage into convalescence,\nand neither pitting nor pigmentation of the skin was observed.\n\nSome less enthusiastic experimenters with the red-light treatment of\nvariola have been more moderate in their praises, and in some smallpox\nhospitals it has been tried and given up.\n\nMy own experience with this method is limited to the observation of\na few cases treated at the Riverside Hospital in 1893. Under the\ndirection of Dr. Cyrus Edson, health commissioner, one ward was fitted\nwith red glass windows. The cases treated were of a mild type, and\nalthough no deaths occurred, the disease appeared to run its usual\ncourse and the experiment was negative as to results. In reply to a\nletter of inquiry, Dr. Edson writes me that \"if the results had not\nbeen negative a very careful report would have been made.\" For the\nadvancement of therapeutic knowledge it is indeed unfortunate that\nwhile the enthusiast is always so ready to write, the sceptic or\nunsuccessful experimenter is usually inclined to remain silent.\n\n*Period of Suppuration.*--With the transformation of the smallpox\nvesicles into pustules a rise of temperature occurs which is commonly\nknown as the \"secondary fever,\" and in severe cases the swelling of the\nface, hands, and feet usually occasions the most intense suffering.\nThe chief dangers of this stage arise from the possibility of septic\npoisoning and the probability of a greater or less degree of exhaustion.\n\nA nutritious diet is now of the utmost importance, and in severe cases\nbouillon, malted milk, or other prepared foods which can be readily\nswallowed should be given every two or three hours. If the patient\nis in a stupor, he may be awakened in order to receive the necessary\nnourishment, but the calm, refreshing sleep which sometimes follows a\nperiod of wakefulness and complete exhaustion should not be disturbed.\nAlcoholic stimulants are usually of great service in this stage and may\nbe given freely, especially at night and in the early morning hours\nwhen the patient's vitality is at its lowest ebb. In case of delirium,\nrectal alimentation will often be found necessary as a substitute for\nor a supplement to oral feeding. The rectum should first be thoroughly\ncleansed by an enema of soap and water and then from four to six ounces\nof milk and brandy or eggnog may be injected.\n\nAs the eruption of smallpox attacks the mucous membrane of the mouth,\nnose, and throat, as well as the skin, difficulty in swallowing and\nconsiderable discomfort in breathing is often present, especially\nduring the suppurative stage. If the patient is able to sit up and\ngargle, peroxide of hydrogen or some other antiseptic solution\nshould be used at regular and frequent intervals. In case of extreme\nprostration, when any effort by the patient or the mere raising of the\nhead might lead to syncope or symptoms of collapse, it is advisable\nto wash out the patient's throat and nostrils with a large swab of\nabsorbent cotton, dipped in a saturated solution of boric acid.\nPyrozone, borolyptol, listerine, and other liquids may be conveniently\nused for this purpose diluted with one or two parts of water. Small\npieces of ice or ice-cream given at frequent intervals with a small\ncoffeespoon will usually be found extremely grateful to the suffering\npatient.\n\nFor a purulent conjunctivitis which may sometimes result from the\npresence of pustules on the lids, the saturated solution of boric acid\nshould be frequently used in the form of a spray.\n\nWhen delirium occurs in this stage the patient must be closely watched,\nand, if necessary, the limbs may be kept quiet by linen sheets folded\nand carried across the bed and fastened at either end. Since chloral\ngiven by the mouth is liable to cause \u0153dema of the glottis, it may be\nadvantageously administered by the rectum, or in its place the bromides\nor a hypodermic injection of sulphate of morphine may be substituted,\nalthough when the patient is suffering at the same time from severe\nbronchitis the use of opium is objectionable.\n\nThe treatment of the eruption in the suppurative stage is of the\ngreatest importance so far as the comfort of the patient is concerned.\nA host of applications and peculiar methods of treatment have been\nrecommended and tested in successive epidemics. Many of these have\nbeen found to have no effect save to intensify the patient's horrible\nappearance and to aggravate his discomfort. From time immemorial\nattempts have been made to prevent the pitting of the face after the\ndisease by treatment of the individual lesions. The cauterization of\nthe pustules with nitrate of silver after evacuation of the pus--the\nso-called ectrotic method--has been practised by many in the past,\nbut the consensus of opinion at the present day seems to be that the\nprocedure is as useless as it is painful. The ointments, plasters,\npastes, and varnishes which have also been advocated are usually\nunpleasant or troublesome to use, and in the pustular stage are not\nlikely to accomplish any desirable end. At this period it is too\nlate to consider the possibility of preventing pitting, although the\nresulting injury to the skin may be reduced to a minimum by the use of\nall local measures which tend to reduce the grade of inflammation.\n\nFor the highly inflamed condition of the skin which characterizes\nthe suppurative stage of smallpox, especially in its confluent form,\ncold water is, beyond all doubt, the best antiphlogistic. The cold\ncompresses advocated years ago by Hebra constitute the simplest method\nof local treatment and one which is most grateful and beneficial to\nthe patient. They exclude the air, macerate and soften the lesions,\nand lessen the local inflammation. Although it cannot be claimed that\nthey modify in any degree the development and course of the eruption,\nit is doubtful whether anything better in the way of local treatment\nhas ever been suggested. Pieces of lint should be dipped in cold water\nand applied smoothly to the face and other portions of the body where\nthe eruption is abundant and the skin inflamed. To prevent their drying\ntoo rapidly a little glycerine may be added to the water and the lint\ncovered with gutta-percha tissue or oiled silk. Moore recommends\ncovering the face with a light mask of lint and oiled silk, having\nholes for the eyes, nose, and mouth. The lint is wet with a mixture\nof glycerin and iced water (f\u0292i-f\u2125i). If preferred, a cold solution\nof boric acid may be used in place of plain water, and when there is\nan excessive and unpleasant odor present, thymol may be added to the\nsolution. Immermann states that he used for a time sublimate dressings\nto the face (1-1000), but found that plain water did quite as much good\nand was safer to use.\n\nNext to the face, the hands and feet suffer most from the eruption of\nsmallpox, and, owing to the fact that the skin is not as lax in the\nlatter region, particularly upon the fingers and toes, the inflammatory\nswelling of these parts is always attended with extreme pain when\npustules are numerous. Under such conditions it may be found advisable,\nin place of merely wrapping the hands and feet in lint and oiled silk,\nto immerse them in pans or pails of water, or to supply the patient\nwith mittens and stockings made of vulcanized rubber cloth. Indeed, if\nthe patient is not in too critical a condition, he may be immersed for\nhours in a bath, as recommended by Hebra for the treatment of extensive\nburns, pemphigus, and various ulcerating affections involving a large\nportion of the body.\n\n*Period of Dessication.*--When the distended, semi-globular pustules\nbegin to dry, they tend to flatten, and often undergo a secondary\numbilication from the shriveling of the central portion of the pock. In\nfavorable cases the general condition of the patient improves as the\nfever subsides, and a more substantial diet may now be allowed.\n\nThe symptom which usually causes most local discomfort at this stage is\nthe itching which invariably accompanies the drying of the pustules.\nThis is often intolerable, and much of the pitting left after an attack\nof smallpox may be due to the tearing of the crusts from the face and\nother parts.\n\nThe best application which can now be made to the skin for the double\npurpose of softening the crusts and allaying the pruritus is a solution\nof carbolic acid in olive oil (five or ten per cent.). When the itching\nsensation of the face and hands is intense, it can be greatly relieved\nif the nurse will frequently spray these parts with pure chloroform,\nor, if the crusts have an unpleasant odor, with a mixture of chloroform\nand some antiseptic solution.\n\nIn the case of restless or unmanageable children the elbows may be put\nin splints so that the finger-nails cannot come in contact with the\nface.\n\n*Period of Convalescence.*--When the crusts have dried and fallen\nfrom the face and body and no unpleasant complications still exist,\nthe patient may be considered as a convalescent. No treatment is\nnow required except a liberal diet, the daily bath, and a continued\napplication of carbolized vaseline or some antiseptic oil. When the\ndiscolored cicatrices left after the falling of the crusts appear\nelevated and hard, as is frequently the case upon the face and hands\n(variola verrucosa), it is customary with some to paint them with\ntincture of iodine. A pleasanter and more effective application is a\ntwenty per cent. solution of resorcin in rose-water.\n\nWhen the skin has assumed its normal smoothness, and no indication of\nthe disease remains except the dull purplish-red spots where the crusts\nhave fallen, the patient may be regarded as well, and, after a careful\ndisinfection of his body, he may be furnished with fresh or thoroughly\ndisinfected clothing and discharged from the hospital or sick-room.\n\nIn disinfecting a patient prior to his discharge, not only should a\nprolonged bath be taken, but the head should be thoroughly shampooed\nwith carbolic soap, the nails cut and scrubbed with the same, and the\nmucous orifices of the body cleansed with peroxide of hydrogen.\n\n*Prophylactic Treatment.*--The prophylactic treatment of smallpox\nis of vastly more importance than any therapeutic measure, since it\nconcerns a community and not merely an individual. In dealing with\nsmallpox cases many physicians discover only too late that an ounce of\nprevention is worth many pounds of cure. When a case of smallpox is\nfirst recognized, or even suspected, the patient should be isolated in\na room from which all unnecessary articles of furniture, especially of\nsoft texture, have been removed. A sheet moistened with some volatile\ndisinfectant should be hung before the door, and no one allowed to\nenter the room save the nurse and doctor. A change of clothing should\nbe made outside by the former whenever leaving the room, and a gown\nshould be ready for the latter to wear at each visit. Upon leaving\nthe sick-room the physician should carefully disinfect his hands and\nremain for some time in the fresh air before making another call. When\nthe diagnosis is positively made, all who have come in contact with\nthe patient, unless manifestly immune, should be found and vaccinated\nwithout delay.\n\nDuring the course of the disease all discharges, such as f\u00e6ces,\nurine, sputa, or vomited matter, should be received in glass or\nearthen vessels containing a five per cent. solution of carbolic\nacid. Handkerchiefs and soiled rags should be burned or with towels\nand soiled sheets placed in a carbolic solution and allowed to remain\nfor twelve hours. The plates, knives, forks, and spoons used by the\npatient should be kept in the sick-room and washed in a disinfectant\nsolution by the nurse, while any uneaten food should be treated in the\nsame manner as the patient's discharges. When the patient has fully\nrecovered, and, after personal disinfection, has left the sick-room,\nthis should be thoroughly fumigated. The mattress and bed-coverings\nshould be burned or, in large cities, sent to the Board of Health for\ndisinfection. In case of death the corpse should be washed with a\nstrong bichloride solution or painted with carbolized oil (twenty per\ncent.), and buried or cremated as quickly as possible. The clothing\nworn by the patient at the beginning of the disease should be destroyed\nor disinfected by baking for an hour in an oven at a temperature of\n220\u00b0\u00a0F., or steamed for five minutes at a temperature of 212\u00b0\u00a0F.\n\nIn disinfecting the sick-room, the furniture, woodwork, and floor\nshould first be scrubbed with carbolic soap and hot water or a\nsolution of bichloride of mercury (1-500). The windows, ventilators,\nand fireplace should then be tightly closed and the fumes of burning\nsulphur or formaldehyde gas used to complete the disinfection. Sublimed\nsulphur burned in a moist atmosphere (one pound to every thousand cubic\nfeet of space) is effective, but is at the same time objectionable on\naccount of its tendency to bleach or discolor all textile fabrics.\nIn well-furnished rooms, containing articles liable to be injured by\nsulphur or steam, such as wall-paper, paintings, books, etc., it is\nadvisable to use, whenever possible, a formaldehyde gas-generator,\nwhich can usually be obtained from the local Board of Health.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nVACCINATION.\n\n\nVaccination consists in the inoculation of virus taken from the pock\nproduced by vaccinia.\n\n*Vaccine Virus.*--Virus has been taken from vaccine vesicles on almost\nall animals susceptible to vaccinia, but throughout the greater part of\nthe last century the material used in the vaccination of human subjects\nwas taken generally from a vaccine vesicle on the arm of a previously\nunvaccinated healthy child. Such virus when collected at the proper\ntime was found to take with great regularity, and vesicles resulting\nfrom its use were uniformly well developed and typical. Humanized\nvirus was, however, open to the objection that it could communicate\ndisease if the child were not perfectly healthy, and as a matter of\nfact it did communicate syphilis in a certain number of instances.\nThe possibility of this infection was so serious an objection to the\nuse of virus from this source that in the last quarter of the century\ncalf virus, recommended and used in Italy many years before, was\ngradually substituted for human virus, and at the present time the\nuse of animal virus is general in Europe and in the United States. In\nthe production of virus, calves are for commercial reasons generally\npreferred to other animals. Calves take typically, and a large amount\nof virus can be collected from them, whereas all other animals either\nare comparatively expensive, or take poorly, or are able to furnish but\nlittle virus. Cows also are more expensive, are less easily handled,\nand develop vaccine vesicles less typically.\n\nIn the practical production of vaccine virus calves are vaccinated\nmuch as human beings are vaccinated, but over a larger area. Usually\nthe posterior abdomen and the insides of the thighs are covered with\nsuperficial linear incisions, and into these incisions the seed virus\nis rubbed. In the laboratory of the New York City Health Department\nall operations relating to the vaccination of the animals and to the\ncollection of the virus are carried on in an operating-room provided\nwith a cement floor, glazed brick walls, and equipped with enamelled\nmetal operating furniture, such as would be used in a hospital. The\nattendants wear sterile gowns and the technique of the operations is\naseptic. The seed virus is either humanized virus collected by touching\nsterile pieces of bone to the serum exuding from ruptured vesicles\non the arms of children, or in the great majority of cases bovine\nglycerinated virus which has been preserved two months or longer.\n\nIt is found that the crust of the vesicle, the serum issuing from the\nvesicle after the crust is removed, the pulp which forms the semi-solid\ncontents and base of the vesicle, and the serum which exudes from the\nbase of the vesicle after the pulp has been removed by a curette,\nall convey material capable of producing the vaccine vesicle in a\nsusceptible person, and are therefore all different forms of vaccine\nvirus. It has been shown, however, that if any of this material is\nfiltered, so that all the solid particles are removed, the filtrate is\ninefficient. In other words, the serum is efficient as vaccine virus\nsimply by virtue of the solid particles which it contains. It is also\nfound that the pulp is so rich in the active principle of vaccine virus\nthat it may be mixed with several times its weight of glycerin or other\ndiluent and still maintain its efficiency.\n\nThe different sorts of vaccine virus on the market are simply different\nways of supplying this material coming from the vesicle. Most material\nis in one of three forms,--\n\n(_a_) The pulp diluted with some excipient, such as glycerin, vaseline,\nor lanolin. The emulsion, made by mixture with glycerin, may be\ncontained in a vial or in a capillary tube, or may rest on some holder,\nsuch as an ivory or bone point. In the latter case the point is usually\nprotected by some form of cap. Mixture with vaseline or lanolin makes\na paste, which is usually issued in a box. This is in use in parts of\nItaly and in India.\n\n(_b_) The serum dried on a holder, as an ivory or bone point or a quill.\n\n(_c_) The serum mixed with some excipient, usually solid or semi-solid,\nuntil it becomes a paste, and furnished like dried serum on a holder.\n\nFor a physician the choice among these three forms is governed by\nconsiderations of efficiency, safety, and ease of use. All the forms\nare under certain conditions efficient, but comparative tests show that\nthe emulsion of the pulp issued by different laboratories is much more\ncertainly efficient than the other forms, and the glycerinated emulsion\nis at present in most general use both abroad and in this country.\n\nIt is also true that all forms may be perfectly safe. All forms\ncontain bacteria when prepared, and the majority of these bacteria\ndie within a few weeks or months after preparation. On account of the\nmildly antiseptic quality of glycerin the bacteria in the glycerinated\nemulsion usually die sooner than those in the other forms of virus,\nand so far as bacteria are objectionable in the virus the glycerinated\nform may therefore be said to be somewhat preferable. It should be\nadded, however, both that glycerinated virus is usually put in the\nmarket before the bacteria have disappeared and that the bacteria\npresent in virus issued by well-conducted laboratories are not found\nto be pathogenic to persons when inoculated by the customary method of\nvaccination.\n\nThe ease of use of any form of virus depends largely upon the custom of\nthe physician. In vaccinating a large number at one time there can be\nno question that the use of a liquid virus supplied in vials is more\nrapid than the use of a dried virus, as the latter has to be thoroughly\nmoistened before it can be applied effectively.\n\n*Methods of Vaccination.*--The usual method of vaccination is to\nscarify a spot on the skin and to rub the virus on that spot. The\nchoice of place depends partly on \u00e6sthetic reasons and partly on\nconvenience. To avoid the formation of an unsightly scar on the arm,\nthe leg may be used instead. If the arm is chosen, the insertion of\nthe deltoid is the place of election on account of the small number of\nlymphatics there. If the leg is chosen, the area just below the head of\nthe fibula presents the same anatomical advantage; but a spot a short\ndistance above the knee on the outside of the thigh is often thought\nto offer less opportunity for injury and infection. Choice between the\nsides depends in an adult on the use to which the vaccinated limb is to\nbe put, and in a baby on the advantage of vaccinating the side which is\ncarried away from the nurse.\n\nThe size of the scarification is important. The vesicle is always\nsomewhat larger than the scarification, and the larger the vesicle the\ngreater danger that the surface may be broken, and the more opportunity\nthere is for the introduction of extraneous infection. A spot as\nlarge as the head of a medium pin is about as small as can be easily\nscarified, and vesicles formed on such scarifications are least liable\nto have inflammatory complications. If, as certain evidence tends to\nshow, a larger area of scar guarantees greater protection, and if a\nlarger area is therefore desired, it is better to vaccinate in two or\nthree small spots than in one large one. It is somewhat difficult to\nrub the virus from a bone point on a spot of the minute size described,\nand as this form of virus is usually more dilute than glycerinated\nvirus, a larger area may safely be employed.\n\nThe scarification may be made with any sharp instrument, or with the\npoint itself. The only precaution necessary is that the instrument\nshould be free from infection. As a scarifier the ordinary cambric\nneedle presents the advantages that it is usually clean, is easily\nsterilized, and is so inexpensive that a fresh one can be used for\nevery operation.\n\nIt is not necessary that the scarification should draw blood, although\nblood is not objectionable unless it flows so freely as to wash away\nthe virus, or unless the subject has h\u00e6mophilia.\n\nAlthough with a notably susceptible subject or with especially active\nvirus it may be sufficient simply to smear the virus on the scarified\narea, it is usually necessary and always advisable to rub in the virus\nwith a wooden slip or with the point firmly and thoroughly.\n\nOther methods of introducing vaccine virus are by puncture, by deep\ninjection, and by the mouth.\n\nIn the method by puncture either a grooved lancet or a hollow needle\nmay be used. A shallow puncture is made and the virus is deposited in\nit. The resulting vesicle is usually small and nearly circular, and\ngenerally remains free from infection; but as the hole in which the\nvirus is placed is small, it is possible that the issuing blood may\nwash it away completely, and the percentage of success with this method\nof inoculation is not quite so large, even in careful hands, as by\nthe process of scarification with the same virus. Animal experiments\nwith deep injection of virus through a hypodermic syringe and with\nadministration of virus by the mouth show that there is no certainty of\nsuccessful vaccination by these means, and that when success results\nthere is no proof of it without a subsequent vaccination on the skin to\ntest or to demonstrate the immunity.\n\n*Care after Vaccination.*--As vaccination is a surgical procedure, it\nshould be conducted aseptically with a sterile instrument on clean\nskin, and the wound should be guarded against extraneous infection.\nIt is well therefore to put either a sterile gauze cover or a clean\nshield over the wound as soon as the virus has been sufficiently\nabsorbed, and to leave the protection on until the natural crust has\nbeen formed,--_i.e._, for a few hours. If the guard could be kept\nin position without motion and also without injurious pressure, it\nmight remain until the process ended with the formation of a scar and\nthe exfoliation of the crust; but practically it is so certain that\nthe guard will be moved that it is wise to remove it and to trust\nto the protection of a clean muslin or linen cloth attached to the\nloose sleeve or other undergarment. For a day or two at the time when\nthe inflammation is at its height it may be well again to guard by\na shield against injury from a blow or push, but the shield should\nalways be regarded as itself a danger. If by any accident the vaccine\npustule becomes infected, it should be treated like any other infected\nwound,--the crust removed, the ulcer cleansed with antiseptics and\ndressed surgically. The immunity given by the pock is not at all\nlessened by this treatment.\n\n*Normal Clinical Course.*--After primary vaccination in man there is a\nstage of incubation lasting for from forty-eight to seventy-two hours;\na papule then develops, and by the end of the third or fourth day\nthis has begun to show umbilication and a vesicular structure. When\nfully developed, about the sixth day after vaccination, the vesicle is\ndistended and pearly in color. On the seventh or eighth day the areola\ndevelops,--_i.e._, the skin about the vesicle becomes hard, sensitive,\nand red, the redness extending a variable distance, not usually more\nthan two inches from the edge of the vesicle. In the course of the next\nday or two the vesicle loses its pearly appearance and becomes opaque\nand often slightly yellow. With the development of the areola and of\nthe pustule the adjacent lymph glands may swell and become somewhat\npainful; there may also be constitutional derangement,--some fever,\npain, anorexia, restlessness, and more or less prostration; there is\nusually a moderate leucocytosis. About the eleventh or twelfth day the\nareola begins to fade, the constitutional symptoms to subside, and\nthe pustule to dry up. A dark crust is formed which drops off usually\nbetween the eighteenth and twenty-fifth days, leaving a rosy depressed\nscar on which not infrequently a secondary scab is formed, to be shed a\nfew days later.\n\n*Variations in the Clinical Course.*--The vesicles may appear on the\nsecond day, but it is more frequently delayed until the fourth, fifth,\nsixth, seventh, or even the eighth day, and cases have been observed in\nwhich the delay was even longer.\n\nThe areola, which should be bright red, may be purple, and may extend a\nlong distance from the vesicle.\n\nThe pustule may be hemorrhagic or may be filled with greenish pus; in\nthis case there is probably a mixed infection.\n\nSometimes instead of a vesicle there appears a hard elevated nodule, in\ncolor like a red raspberry. With this there is usually no areola, and\nno constitutional symptoms develop. The growth is usually an evidence\nof poor virus. It may persist for some time before absorption.\n\nThe course may be abortive,--_i.e._, the vesicle does not develop\ncompletely; pustulation comes early and the crust is shed and the scar\nformed before the end of the second week. This course is normal though\nnot invariable in revaccinations.\n\nThe scar may be poorly marked, even when the vaccination has run a\ntypical course.\n\n*Complications.*--The most frequent complications are infections and\neruptions. An infection may be, of course, of many sorts. It may be,\nfor example, the streptococcus of erysipelas, or the bacillus of\ntetanus, but it is oftenest a skin coccus. These infections may be\nintroduced with the virus, with the instrument, or later through wounds\nin the vesicle or pustule. Erysipelas and tetanus following vaccination\nare exceedingly rare, and it has never been shown that in a case of\ntetanus the germ was inoculated at the time of vaccination.\n\nEruptions are probably usually due to a chemical irritation produced by\nthe development of the vaccinia; they are analogous to the eruptions\nfollowing the injection of antitoxine and the ingestion of various\ndrugs. They vary in appearance, sometimes resemble the eruption of\nmeasles or of scarlet fever, and again are urticarial; they are\nmacular, papular, and vesicular.\n\nWhen a moist eczema is present there may be auto-inoculation of the\npock on the affected area and a general confluent vaccine eruption\nappear.\n\n*Immunity.*--The immunity against smallpox, or vaccinia, produced\nby vaccination is of gradual growth, and is not complete until the\nperiod of suppuration, about the beginning of the second week. Natural\nimmunity is said to exist, and is probable, but it is exceedingly rare.\nVaccination of a pregnant woman rarely, if ever, confers immunity on\nthe f\u0153tus.\n\n*Duration of Immunity.*--Sometimes a single vaccination gives immunity\nfor life. Usually, however, susceptibility returns at latest seven\nto ten years after vaccination, and the second vaccination may give\nimmunity for the rest of the lifetime, or susceptibility may return\nagain and again. Failure of active, properly inserted virus shows only\nthat the person so vaccinated is at that time immune, but conveys\nabsolutely no information about the condition a few months later. The\nappearance of the scar is not a trustworthy guide as to immunity.\nSusceptibility to vaccination returns frequently within one year, and\nhas returned in three months from the time of a successful vaccination.\nSusceptibility to smallpox probably returns, as a rule, later than\nsusceptibility to vaccinia. It is rare that a case even of varioloid\noccurs within five years of a successful vaccination.\n\n*Conclusions.*--Every child should be vaccinated at the time of\nelection during the first year of life, and should be revaccinated\nbefore beginning school-life with its possibility of exposure.\nEvery person, no matter at what age, should be vaccinated at a time\nof possible exposure to smallpox unless he has been successfully\nvaccinated within three months.\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G.\u00a0H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA ERYTHEMATOSA.\n\n(First day of eruption).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G.\u00a0H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA PAPULOSA.\n\n(Second day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G.\u00a0H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA HEMORRHAGICA.\n\n(Second day--Fourth day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G.\u00a0H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA VESICULOSA.\n\n(Fourth day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G.\u00a0H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA VESICULOSA.\n\n(Third day--Fifth day--Sixth day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G.\u00a0H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA SEMI-CONFLUENS.\n\n(Fifth day--Sixth day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G. H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA CONFLUENS.\n\n(Seventh day--Eighth day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G. H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA PUSTULOSA.\n\n(Ninth day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G. H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA DISCRETA.\n\n(Ninth day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G. H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA PUSTULOSA.\n\n(Tenth day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G. H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA PUSTULOSA.\n\n(Ninth day--Tenth day--Eleventh day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G. H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA PUSTULOSA ET CRUSTOSA.\n\n(Tenth day--Twelfth day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G. H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA CRUSTOSA.\n\n(Eighteenth day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G. H. Fox.\n\nVARIOLA DESICCATA ET SQUAMOSA.\n\n(Twentieth day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G. H. Fox.\n\n1. PIGMENTATION AFTER VARIOLA. (30th day).\n\n2. VERRUCOUS SCARS. (25th day).\n\n3. CONFLUENT PITTING. (35th day).]\n\n\n[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by G. H. Fox.\n\n1. VACCINIA. (4th day).\n\n2. VACCINIA. (8th day).\n\n3. PRIMARY VACCINATION. (8th day).\n\n4. VACCINIA. (8th day).\n\n5. VACCINATION ULCER.\n\n6. VARICELLA. (3d day).]\n\n\n\n\n\nEnd of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Practical Treatise on Smallpox, by \nGeorge Henry Fox\n\n*** ","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nPolitical Philosophy and Public Purpose\n\nSeries Editor\n\nMichael J. Thompson\n\nWilliam Paterson University, New York, NY, USA\n\nThis series offers books that seek to explore new perspectives in social and political criticism. Seeing contemporary academic political theory and philosophy as largely dominated by hyper-academic and overly-technical debates, the books in this series seek to connect the politically engaged traditions of philosophical thought with contemporary social and political life. The idea of philosophy emphasized here is not as an aloof enterprise, but rather a publicly-oriented activity that emphasizes rational reflection as well as informed praxis.\n\nMore information about this series at http:\/\/\u200bwww.\u200bpalgrave.\u200bcom\/\u200bgp\/\u200bseries\/\u200b14542\n\nDick Howard\n\nThe Marxian LegacyThe Search for the New Left3rd ed. 2019\n\nDick Howard\n\nDepartment of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA\n\nISSN 2524-714Xe-ISSN 2524-7158\n\nPolitical Philosophy and Public Purpose\n\nISBN 978-3-030-04410-7e-ISBN 978-3-030-04411-4\n\n<https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-030-04411-4>\n\nLibrary of Congress Control Number: 2018964090\n\n\u00a9 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019\n\nThis work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.\n\nThe use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.\n\nThe publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.\n\nCover design by Laura de Grasse\n\nThis Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.\n\nThe registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland\n\nIn Memory of\n\nCornelius Castoriadis (1922\u20131997)\n\nAnd\n\nClaude Lefort (1924\u20132010)\n\nSeries Editor's Foreword\n\nAs a new era of populism dawns, there  is  a kind of nostalgia that sets in when thinking about how the  New  Left of the late 1960s and 1970s unfolded. It is all too easy to forget the seriousness of the ways that this generation was rethinking society, culture, politics, the family, and the self. It is all too easy for its intellectual and  political  impulses to be obscured by the way it has been framed in popular memory and  consciousness  mediated by the conservative 1980s: as a movement bloated by hyper-idealism, reckless social  criticism  , evincing what Samuel Huntington referred to in the 1970s as an 'excess of  democracy'  . What all of this hides from view, however, is the ways that many of this generation\u2014both in the West and the Soviet East\u2014were rethinking  democracy  and, more centrally, the ideas of Marx. In this sense, Dick Howard's seminal book, _The Marxian Legacy_ , is at once both a document of that period's attempt to rethink and recreate Marxian  critique  and a document marking a crucial evolutionary stage in Marxian theory itself.\n\nI first encountered the first edition of this book in the 1990s when, as a graduate  student  , I was engaged in my own project of reconstructing the shattered pieces of Western Marxism into a more coherent, critical form of theory. Amid the debris left in the wake of postmodern political theory and  philosophy  , it was a tonic\u2014for it framed  Marxism  as a reservoir of ideas and principles that could help shape a new critical  consciousness  . Howard's exploration of the ideas of  Ernst Bloch  ,  Rosa Luxemburg  , Max Horkheimer, and Jean-Paul  Sartre  , among others, retains its ability to reward those who see the need for a form of  critique  that can retain both its power to give insight into the realist-materialist  structures  of power and the humanistic-democratic ideas that must serve to displace and transform them. For this reason, Howard sees Marx's ideas as currently in evolution and development by successive generations of radical thinkers. Just as the writings of the Young Marx were once used to  critique  the  orthodox  scientism of rigid orthodoxy, so today can we see in the Marxian  legacy  a capacity of a renewal of more robust democratic and humanist principles that underwrite the Marxian project  of  critique.\n\nSuch a project is in need now just as urgently as in the past. New forms of authoritarianism are gaining legitimacy, populism has taken a decidedly right-wing turn, democratic movements and associations have withered. We are in the midst also of a long counter-revolution against the cultural and  institutional  progress made during the middle of the twentieth century. A more rapacious form of capitalism has been untethered from social-democratic  institutional  constraints, the legitimacy of the business  community  and its culture of consumption and entrepreneurship has colonized the culture, oligarchic inequality reigns supreme, and the degradation of society and the natural environment both threaten to undermine society. The early decades of this century have therefore shown that Marx's relevance persists even as a new generation now seems less aware of the deeper political and  philosophical  debates that formed the ideas of earlier radical thinkers. As populist _ressentiment_ has increased and democratic aspirations and values have ebbed, Howard's book can help us focus once again on the kind of political ideas we must keep in view. To imagine a more compelling form of  democracy  , to elicit a radical imagination for troubled times, we can indeed look to Howard's important study of the Marxian  legacy  to plumb the depths of a new political sensibility.\n\nMichael J. Thompson\n\nFall 2018\n\nPreface to the Third Edition\n\n##  Why Return to _The Marxian Legacy_ Today?\n\n_The Marxian Legacy_ is a book about theory and  theorists  ; and it is more than that. These thinkers were engaged with their times, facing their present with an eye toward a future whose advent for many had long been symbolized by the name of Marx. This confrontation of the present with the future is the axis of radical critical thought. Critics look to a horizon of potential that sometimes advances brightly before receding as former visionaries find themselves alone with their melancholy. The first two editions of this book were the product of moments when a promised future seemed near. The author was convinced\u2014as were the thinkers whom he chose to study as witnesses to the Marxian  legacy  \u2014that theory is even more necessary in such times when the rising tide seems to bear effortlessly the future with it. The critical spirit hesitated, recalling the watchword: 'No practice without theory'.  Social  conditions in the present cannot alone give birth on their own to a new future; critical and political thought are also necessary. Without it, the tide will ebb, the horizon drifts and fades, while those who have ridden the waves of  social  discontent that they hoped would make possible overcoming the miseries of the present run aground on granite rocks of resistance or drift exhausted onto the sands of conformity. 'No social change without political vision' is the corollary.\n\nThis third edition is published at a time when the frustrating rise in the forms of inequality has led increasing numbers of young people to protest the injustice of a system of which they feel themselves to be victims. It is one thing to challenge the legitimacy of a socio-economic system; it is another to imagine the possibility of a shared political future. The idea of '  socialism'  has recovered an unexpected popularity, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world where it never had much of a foothold. The term remains undefined; those who adopt it are more certain of what they oppose than of the future they envision. One example, among many, is found in a July 2016 survey: 51% of those between ages 18 and 29 were opposed to 'capitalism', and 33% of them favored '  socialism'  . The poll was a reflection of the popularity of the self-declared socialist, Bernie Sanders, among  Democratic  Party primary voters that year. After their  party's  electoral loss, these numbers have increased; but the representation of the goal has not become clearer. Sanders' definition of  socialism  (to which he adds the qualification 'democratic') appeals to Franklin D. Roosevelt's electoral promise of 1944 to create a 'Second Bill of Rights' adding socio-economic  freedoms  to those of  liberal-capitalism  . This promise of a better social present comes at the cost of imagining a _new_ political future.\n\nMore than a quarter century after the demise of the former  Soviet Union  put a final nail in the coffin of communism, Marx, Marxism, and the Marxian  legacy  are an unknown continent for the new generation. The youth of the 1960s who sought to create what they called a  New Left  suffered from the same chronological forgetting. Some sought to rediscover Marx as a critical  theorist  ; others found their  identities  in existing variants of Marxism; a few tried to build a vision of the future on the basis of the Marxian  legacy  . The appearance of analogous forms of the same process of self-discovery today, nearly 50 years later, is the primary reason for this new edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ . The  structure  of the book and the story of its earlier existence are presented briefly in this Preface. An account of the birth of an international New Left  is  found in the Introduction. The attempt a decade later to actualize that movement, which led to publication of a second edition of the book, is presented in the revised Afterword that reflects on the emergence of new  social  movements in the West and the struggle of  civil society  against the state in the East. The author's own evolution in the quarter century that led to the present third edition is sketched at the end of this brief Preface.\n\n* * *\n\nThe first edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ was published in 1977; versions of its chapters had been published in the early 1970s in journals identified with the  New Left  . By the time they were reworked for the book, the promise of that early movement had faded; what remained was tarnished beyond recognition, consigned to a career in the academy or\u2014in Irving Howe's famous retort to a radical  student  from Columbia University\u2014had 'become a dentist in Westchester County'. The  New  Left called itself a 'movement'; it was a spontaneous, unmediated coalescence of minds and bodies, instinct and desire, intuition and reason. Critics from what it denounced as the old left fastened on this self-identification to criticize traits that reminded them the  fascist  insistence that its leaders were the reflection of such a popular movement. The members of the new movement knew little about history; for most of the participants, their self-identification as leftists meant simply that they were opposed to a status quo that had been described by Paul Goodman, one of their elder supporters, as 'Growing Up Absurd'. Their movement was 'new' and alone; the remnants of the radical organizations that had grown up during the Great Depression and the anti-fascist war had been absorbed into that same status quo. This was only somewhat less true in Western Europe than the United States.\n\nThe positive unity of the  New Left  was defined  symbolically  by the figure of Marx. The fact that his work was little known only added to its attractiveness. Marxism had been excluded from organized political life by the anti-communist forces of the times; for inversely identical reasons, it had no presence in the universities because it had been confiscated by the  Soviet Union  under the name of 'Marxism-Leninism'. That caricatural orthodoxy maintained itself by imposing its rigid interpretations on the work of Marx (which was not innocent of the reproaches addressed to the rigid logic of 'dialectical materialism'). At the time that the more radical  philosophical  works of the young Marx began to be published in German in the 1930s, the anti-fascist struggle did not offer propitious conditions for critical reflection; the unity of the Leninist  party  maintained by its Stalinist offspring was maintained during the anti-fascist war. It is understandable that among New Leftists it was assumed that there must exist an 'unknown dimension' of critical Marx _ian_ thought that could provide at once and immediately insights, methods for criticizing, and means for realizing their criticism of their post-war  capitalist  system. This quest for what I call the 'Marxian legacy' is described in the Introduction to this edition on the basis of my own  experiences  at the time in the United States, France, and West Germany. A half century after those experiences, it seems to me that one reason for the  political  failure of the  New Left  was that they did not realize that it _itself_ was an important part of the  legacy  of Marx. That self-misunderstanding helps to explain why it was caught between hyper-radicalism and dogmatic doctrines that reduced novelty to stale formulas.\n\n_The Marxian Legacy_ tells the story of a critical journey through the work of significant figures who attempted to inherit that  legacy  . The first two chapters\u2014on  Rosa Luxemburg  and  Ernst Bloch  \u2014illustrate the difficulty that radical political thinkers faced when they sought to find a place _within_ the corpus of Marx _ism_ . The constraints imposed by this choice led their successors to try to develop a  critique  of Marxism that used the  philosophical  young Marx to criticize the rigidity of  Marxist  political orthodoxy. In this way, they rediscovered the concept of immanent  critique  that can be found in Marx's youthful writings and be deciphered beneath the apparently mechanical  economic  analysis  of  _Capital_ and  contemporary  capitalism  . This second group of thinkers recognized that Marxism can be _used_ to develop a broader critical perspective than the mechanical materialist version of  dialectics  . Georg Luk\u00e1cs was the transitional figure between these two moments; after his 1923 breakthrough study  of  _History and Class Consciousness_ was condemned by the  Bolshevik  -dominated  Communist  International, he spent much of his long life trying to remain _within_ Marx _ism_ even while _using_ it as a critical and  dialectical  method. As a result, his work is discussed in two different sections of _The Marxian Legacy_ rather than serve as the basis of an independent chapter.\n\nThe attempts to _use_ Marxism are at once fruitful and frustrating; the roots of the difficulties encountered by the project lay in the antinomic formulation of the project. The idea that one can use Marxism separates the  philosophical  bases of Marx's theory from its use as social and political criticism. This neglects the process by which the young Marx criticized the  idealism  of  Hegel  while proposing a materialist theory through which 'philosophy becomes worldly' and engages the task of 'making  the world  philosophical'  . Max Horkheimer, the founder of the Frankfurt School of  critical theory  ,  recognized  this difficulty in his early formulation of the tasks of a critical theory of _society_ . As his exile grew longer, Horkheimer's theoretical  pessimism  intensified; when he returned to post-war Germany, he denounced the radicalism of his  students  who he felt had misunderstood what the moderate virtues of  democracy  are. For many years, he refused permission to republish his early writings. Curiously, his slightly younger colleague, Herbert Marcuse, who in the same journal with Horkheimer had insisted more strongly on  the  _philosophical_ aspect of Marxism, would become a guiding spirit of the early  New Left  . Its project could be interpreted as the attempt to unify Horkheimer's critical  social theory  with Marcuse's  philosophical  insights. It was not an accident that the German New Leftists published pirate editions of the Frankfurt School's early work and that young Americans joined them.\n\nJ\u00fcrgen Habermas  , an early ally of the  New Left  and the successor to Horkheimer's chair in Frankfurt, later became critical of what he considered its radical excesses, which could be said to have resulted from the failure to understand the necessary transition from a  critical theory  of society to a multi-dimensional political theory. Habermas' attempt to replace  Marxist  economic  theory of  capitalist  crises with the study of the kinds of crisis typical of late-  capitalist  forms of  legitimation  was richer than the earlier  critical theory  ; but it met a similar fate to the other _users_ . As Habermas came to see in his later work, the antinomical combination of political philosophy and social criticism failed to provide a satisfactory  philosophical  basis for uniting these two distinct tasks. Habermas proposed that basis in his theory of  communicative  action (addressed in Chap.  , this volume).\n\nAn inverse form of this antinomic dilemma appears in a third attempt to _use_ Marxism found in Jean-Paul  Sartre's  attempt to reformulate the  philosophical  bases of Marx's materialist dialectics. Whereas Habermas began his project from the side of social and political analysis before turning to  philosophical  foundations, the French  existentialist's  reconstruction of Marx _ism_ proved to be unable to escape from Marx's categorical construction buttressed by historical examples to find the social world; his promised practical second volume was never completed. The fact that  Sartre's  original insights were brought to political fruition in the 1980s by his disciple, Andr\u00e9 Gorz, points to the need to overcome the antinomies of using Marxism. Gorz's reformulation of the critical project comes to recognize the need to _criticize_ Marxism, as he declares decisively in titling his 1980 breakthrough book, _Adieux au prol\u00e9tariat_ (which is discussed in Chap.  , this volume).\n\nThe symmetrical failures of the project _using_ Marx _ism_ are not accidental; it becomes necessary finally to _criticize Marxism_ in order to save the  legacy  . The first appearance of this new relation to the Marxian  legacy  was found in the political essays of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the 1940s and 1950s. Because the debates of the times were quickly dated and the work of the philosophy professor attracted increasing attention prior to his premature death in 1961, the implications of Merleau-Ponty's political thought were neglected; his properly political writings were translated too late to influence the  New Left  . It remained for his  student  and friend,  Claude Lefort  , the editor of his posthumous work, to draw out the political potential of Merleau-Ponty's critical thought. Lefort was more than a disciple; he had been the co-founder with Cornelius Castoriadis of the radical journal  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ (whose title refers to the choice posed by  Rosa Luxemburg  that New Leftists found attractive 50 years after her death). The reason that these two critics of Marxism _from the left_ , to whom this new edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ is dedicated, need to be read and understood can be illustrated here by a brief autobiographical excursus that describes my evolution in the decade between the first edition of this book and the decision to publish an expanded second edition a decade later. Their critical work is fundamental for understanding how _the critique of Marxism is necessary in order to preserve Marx's legacy_ .\n\n* * *\n\nAfter the fallow years when radical politics seemed to move from the left to the  right  as the  symbolic  figures of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan appeared, social conditions similar to those that had nourished the earlier  New Left  began to appear as what observers called '  new social movements'  made their presence felt in the west at the same time that the first stirrings of the ideas that would become the basis of the movement of  civil society  against the state that appeared in some Eastern European countries. Although their animating vision was often global, as in the case of the ecological Green movements, the occasion for their mobilization was local, reflecting the demand for participation in decisions concerning one's own life, as the Port Huron statement defining the goals of American student movement (SDS) had put it in the 1960s. This grass roots orientation expressed the rejection of social-democratic and Keynesian forms of politics as  bureaucratic  and paternalist measures proposed by those-who-know for the benefit of those-who-need-our-help. Whatever momentary material improvement they could bring, such politics resulted in increased dependency rather than greater social autonomy. A further aspect of these  new social movements  can be seen in the way they sought to draw out the universal implications of their particular claims by formulating demands that were at some times material, at others  symbolic  , and often identitary. Their protests and proposals originated from local conditions, while their resolution demanded global change. The salient point about these movements was their difference from the Marx _ist_ vision of politics proposing universal remedies without consideration of their application to particular conditions. As opposed to the Marx _ist_ theory based on a lawfulness according to which the inherently self-contradictory  nature  of capitalism is illustrated (but not proven) by particular examples, the new movements followed the inverse path that leads from the struggle against specific forms of injustice to the recognition of the more general, systemic conditions that need to be transformed in order to insure social autonomy.\n\nThese new forms of social action seemed to confirm some of the  philosophical  implications that I had drawn from the project of _criticizing_ Marxism developed in the chapters on Lefort and Castoriadis during the period of latency between the fading, splintered  New Left  of the 1970s and the emergence of the  new social movements  . I reread closely the work of  Kant  ,  Hegel  , and Marx from the perspective of their potential contribution to an understanding of  democracy  that would permit a new type of  critical theory  . The result, published under the title _From Marx to Kant_ (1985), was intended to provoke potential  New Left  readers who continued to treat Marxism as sacred text beyond criticism 'in the last instance'. My interpretation was textual; knowing that none of the three had been concerned with  democracy  , I made few attempts to sound out the scholarship of political scientists in secondary sources. Bearing in mind the relation of the  critique  of  totalitarianism  to the affirmation of a modern political  democracy  , I tried to show  Kant's  distinction between a determinative form of judgment that begins from a pre-given, scientific, or universal lawfulness under which it seeks to subsume particular facts and a reflexive judgment of the type found in affirmations of aesthetic taste in which a particular instance or object is judged to have universal validity insofar as it can win the assent of the participants in public debate. It seemed to me that the  experience  of the new  social  movements confirmed the democratic potential of  Kant's  insight as it was developed in his _Critique of Judgment_ . I tested these  philosophical  claims in two other collections of my essays written in the succeeding years under the titles of _The Politics of Critique_ (1988) and _Defining the Political_ (1989).\n\nA third factor that led to the decision to publish a second edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ was the way that the  critique  of  totalitarianism  challenged the generally accepted leftist vision of politics based on the story of the  French Revolution  presented as progressing toward increasing richness as it passed from the overthrow of absolutism in 1789 to the declaration of a republic in 1791, before culminating in a vision of a wholly _social_ republic in 1793. That vision supposedly had been consecrated by the  Bolshevik  seizure of power in 1917, whose totalitarian potential I now recognized. Looking for an alternative to the canonical model of a progressive path to social  revolution  , I spent a number of years during the 1980s studying the American Revolution, whose reactionary or '  bourgeois'  character had been a matter of faith for an early New Leftist. My concern to compare and contrast these two modern revolutions attracted me to the debate among American historians supporting a 'republican interpretation' of the political goals of the revolutionaries as opposed to the standard liberal interpretation that appeals to a natural law theory of individualism that is supposed to be inherently democratic as well as allergic to the state and politically isolationist. Based on Roman history known intimately by the American leaders and pamphleteers, the republican interpretation permitted me to move beyond a vision of a politics dependent on social conditions. This step was crucial to overcoming the antinomies that had plagued the _users_ of Marx _ism_ . The republican interpretation also satisfied the anti-establishmentarian penchant of the New Leftist; it could be seen as well as a  critique  of  capitalist  , individualistic, and alienated forms of social life. It confirmed the importance of maintaining the distinction drawn by the critics of Marxism between the political and the social.\n\nThis political and intellectual context led me to think that a new edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ , which was published in 1988, would be useful. I omitted the two chapters from the first edition that had addressed the specific conditions of the  New Left  during the earlier period; in its place I added a lengthy Afterword that reflected on the new political possibilities that were implicit in the  new social movements  , East and West. This lengthy Afterword, which appears here as Chap.  , tries to take stock of the further new works by Habermas, Lefort, and Castoriadis (as well as critical reinterpretation of development of the Sartrian approach in the work of Andr\u00e9 Gorz). Most important, it confirmed my understanding that the  critique  of  totalitarianism  led necessarily to recognition  that  _democracy_ is fundamental to the realization of the Marx _ian_ legacy. It is worth noting that, writing in late 1986, I did not see that the type of  new social movements  emerging in Eastern Europe developing the positive and democratic role of  civil society  \u2014a crucial concept that the young Marx had adapted from  Hegel  \u2014would become capable in 1989 of beginning the overthrow of  communist  domination. What was clear at the time was that '  democracy'  is not simply the inverse opposite of  totalitarianism  and that its relation to capitalism needed to be examined more critically. It would turn out that  democracy  is not the solution to the problem of totalitarian domination; it is also a problem for those who seek to realize it.\n\n* * *\n\nThe need for a more critical understanding of  democracy  became clear in the years that followed immediately the collapse of  communist  rule. I had experienced with Czech friends the conditions that gave birth to the reform efforts of the Prague Spring in 1968; but I did not speak the language or travel in the countryside, and the Soviet invasion that put an end to that short-lived hope only convinced me of the totalitarian  nature  of communism. Two decades later, before and especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I spent a good bit of time in the former German Democratic Republic, whose language I did speak. One  experience  was crucial to my understanding of the relation of the Marxian  legacy  to  democracy  . After I had given a lecture on the model of the American Revolution at the University of Greifswald, I noticed that my listeners were hardly as enthusiastic as I was about my theories of American  democracy  . After later discussions, it became clear that they were bothered by my praise for the virtues of what I had called, unwittingly, while speaking informally in German, a 'democratic republic'. They reacted negatively because they had just freed themselves from a regime that called itself by the name of the German Democratic Republic. On further reflection, the importance of the distinction between a democratic republic and a republican  democracy  became increasingly clear. A democratic republic is built according to the progressive model of  communist  story-telling describing the way the successive phases of the  French Revolution  became ever more radical and egalitarian until the political state and the society over which it had ruled become identical. Leftist supporters of a democratic republican model forget that the 'withering away of the state' that is said to go together with the realization of its egalitarian goals entails also the absorption of the political  freedoms  insured by the republican political sphere. As opposed to that first model, a republican  democracy  of the type developed in the American Revolution recognizes the distinction between the political sphere that is insured by the constitution and the democratic society whose active and autonomous individualism it preserves. Still a leftist, I also realized that the  economic  manifestation of the individualism insured by a republican  democracy  can put into question the republican  institutional  framework, producing results that are antipolitical.\n\nFor the next decade, I worked within the twin frameworks of the Marxian  legacy  and the danger of what I came to call 'antipolitics'. The results were collected in _The Specter of Democracy_ (2002), a title that alluded to Marx's claim that 'a specter is haunting Europe, the specter of communism'. The first section of the book, called 'Marxism and the Intellectuals', concluded with a discussion of the passage from the  critique  of  totalitarianism  to the politics of  democracy  . Along the way, the reader of this new edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ will find three chapters that are a continuation of the earlier discussion. The first explains how Habermas' recent work moves toward a reorientation of  critical theory  toward an interpretation of democratic theory that is consonant with the idea of a republican  democracy  ; the second re-examines the way in which Lefort was led from  revolutionary  theory  to concentrate more sharply on  political  theory; the third shows how Castoriadis'  critique  of Marx bears on actual political considerations facing the left while ignoring the false track opened by his interpretation of the USSR as a stratocracy. The second section of _The Specter of Democracy_ was then given over to comparisons of the French and American models as they were worked out in practice. Finally, the reader who thinks that once the decision to criticize Marxism has been made Marx's thought can be forgotten will find another attempt to understand the power of Marx's own  critical theory  based on a short book published in French (2001).\n\nOnce again, the concerns indicated by my titles indicate the need to recognize that the demise of the totalitarian vision of politics does not induce an automatic democratic reflex. The ideal of  democracy  needs greater thickness if it is to avoid rhetorical simplifications;  democracy  can itself become a source of antipolitics, for example, when its republican constitution loses its legitimacy and, as in imperial Rome, corruption destroys the individual virtue on which the republic depends. This concern became pressing in the wake of the American reaction to the events of September 11, 2001, which were perceived as threatening the self-understanding of republican  democracy  . Trying to find the proper angle for reflection, I published two new books in French. _Aux origines de la r\u00e9volution am\u00e9ricaine_ (2004) reprises my interpretation of the American Revolution as a tightly interwoven series of events and debates that began in 1763 and reached a conclusion in 1803 when the election of Jefferson as the candidate of the opposition was accepted at the same time that the priority of the constitution over any temporary political majority was affirmed. When I then accepted my editor's challenge to write a weekly series of essays on the state of American  democracy  during a one-year period, published as _La d\u00e9mocratie \u00e0 l'\u00e9preuve_ (2006), I was not only testing my own theoretical arguments in real time; I was also trying to show the need for attention to be given to what Merleau-Ponty  called  'the flesh' of republican  democracy  , insuring that it does not remain an abstraction whose significance is forgotten in the unwitting tendency to speak of a democratic republic.\n\nI adopt a somewhat different framework in the more recent essays collected in _Between Politics and Antipolitics: Thinking About Politics After 9\/11_ (2016). The claim that 'thinking' occurs in a space and time situated 'between' politics and antipolitics points to the fact that there can no more exist a purely political republican  democracy  than a strictly social democratic republic. The concept of thinking, borrowed from  Hannah  Arendt, suggests that political thought that cannot be restricted to the Marxist framework, remaining unaware of its paradoxical and antinomic goal aims at the overcoming of politics. I had already tried to illustrate the way that antipolitics has functioned throughout the history of political theory in _The Primacy of the Political: A History of Political Thought from the Greeks to the French and American Revolutions_ (2010). The more contemporary essays that try to make sense of the political world after the rupture that followed the shock of 9\/11 test the theoretical claim of that book. Among them are an essay on reading  Arendt  after the fall of the Berlin wall and a speech delivered in that city at the request of my East German friends on the 20th anniversary of that epochal event in which I question more broadly the meaning of a political revolution. Another chapter returns to the Marxist question\u2014how to do 'philosophy by other means'\u2014on the basis of a reconstruction of the paths of the two fathers of sociology, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. Habermas, Gorz, and Lefort return as well in this volume. In this context, the shattering  experience  of the First World War provided a backdrop against which to think about the aftershocks of 9\/11, and the meaning of a  New Left  is examined in a separate essay to which is added an interview with the author that retraces the experience of searching for a New Left.\n\nI need to add a final consideration here before completing this new edition. At the outset of this preface, I expressed the optimistic hope that perhaps the social environment today might lend itself to a reappearance of a political  New Left  . I have to conclude it by admitting that the election of Donald Trump and his first 18 months in office are not signs of hope. Commenting on that election live on French radio, I expressed the compensatory hope that the republican democratic framework would be strained but maintained. Seeking a proper angle of reflection, I once again opted for a French perspective and tried to take a long-term view of American political life. The story I tell in _Les ombres de l'Am\u00e9rique. De Kennedy \u00e0 Trump_ (2018) finds me once again standing 'between' politics and antipolitics, unable to tell only the progressive story of an American republican  democracy  had progressed 'from King to Obama'. The 'shadows' of America in my narrative are cast by the constant temptation of antipolitics. The story of the  New Left  is not free of its own shadows; indeed the  New Left  no more exists in reality than does the political or the social; it stands today at the same  symbolic  level as did the name of Marx; it is in effect  his  legacy.\n\nDick Howard\n\nParis, France\n\nSeptember 28, 2018\n\nA Note to the Reader\n\nThis new edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ has been entirely revised. Although the chapter titles from the first edition of 1977 remain the same, the arguments are clarified, modified as necessary and rewritten with an eye to the present. The first section of the book begins \"within Marxism\" understood as a radical theory that describes a self-sufficient totality that claims to be the negation of the capitalist system. The second section analyzes three different ways of \"using Marxism\" as it became clear that the increasing complexity of modern society cannot be understood only on the basis of its economic foundation. The third section then tries to understand why \"criticizing Marxism\" became necessary for those who wanted to inherit the Marxian legacy. That is only the beginning of the story.\n\nA fourth section of this new edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ turns to the task of \"realizing the legacy\" once the need for an _immanent_ critique of Marx _ism_ that concluded the first edition had been understood. This fourth section, which was first presented as an \"Afterword\" to the second edition in 1988, returns to the earlier attempts to inherit the legacy from the perspective of the search for a New Left as they were reflected in the emergence of \"New Social Movements in the West and Civil Society against the State in the East\" (Chap.  1 ). These new movements made clear that the realization of the Marx _ian_ legacy is not identical with the \"revolution\" that was promised by nineteenth century Marx _ism_ let alone with its prewar dogmatic successors or their post-war or post-modernist ultra-left critics. This recognition is not a sign of resignation; in no way does it entail the abandonment of the challenge posed by the legacy.\n\nFrom this perspective, the outlines of a fifth section, pointing to possibilities for the renewal of the search for the legacy are implicit in the Preface written for this volume. The twin focus on the New Left and on the critical debates and their practical consequences of the past century is not an exercise in leftist melancholy or my own fond remembrance of times past. The Preface explains why this new edition is needed. The chapters that composed the first edition were a product of the early New Left, whose energies had been exhausted by the time of their first publication as a single volume in 1977. The challenge did not disappear; the emergence of new political movements and the challenge of understanding them critically led me to publish a second edition of 1988 accompanied by an afterword that constituted an independent essay. But, as with the first and then with the second editions, history moved more quickly than theory; the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the critical theory needed to understand a New Left for a moment appeared without an anchor. 2\n\nThis new edition tries to put the social and political developments that make it actual into historical perspective; the Preface also presents very briefly my own attempts to understand the rapidly changing times I was living during the quarter century between the second edition and this new one. I have continued to try to inherit what I called the \"Marxian legacy,\" underlining the political dimension that Marx underplayed and unraveling the paradoxical dialectical relation between the falsely naive options of (reformist) politics and of what I call (revolutionary) antipolitics. I have aimed for clarity in rewriting the manuscript while preserving without melancholy the excitement of discovery that I felt when I began to discover the Marxian legacy nearly half a century ago!\n\nThis book is scholarly but it is not the result of academic scholarship. It offers elements of an intellectual history of the Marxian legacy but it is not a work of intellectual history. It is based on personal experience but it is not autobiographical. It tells a political story that should also be read as philosophical. It tries to keep alive the spirit of what I continue to call a New Left.\n\n### Contents\n\n1 The New Left and the Marxian Legacy:\u200b Early Encounters in the United States, France, and Germany 1\n\n1.\u200b1 Innocent Beginnings 2\n\n1.\u200b2 The French Connection 6\n\n1.\u200b3 The German Path:\u200b From Phenomenology to Critical Theory 10\n\nPart I Within Marxism21\n\n2 Theory, the Theorist, and Revolutionary Practice:\u200b Rosa Luxemburg 23\n\n2.\u200b1 Revolutionary Practice and Its Theory 26\n\n2.\u200b2 The Theorist and Her Practice 36\n\n2.\u200b3 Revolutionary Theory 43\n\n3 Marxism and Concrete Philosophy:\u200b Ernst Bloch 49\n\n3.\u200b1 Bases of Bloch's Dialectics:\u200b Actuality and Utopia 52\n\n3.\u200b2 Confrontation with Fascism and Development of the Dialectic 56\n\n3.\u200b3 Bloch Versus Frankfurt:\u200b Dialectics of Labor and the Principle of Hope 61\n\n3.\u200b4 The Problem of Our Heritage 66\n\nPart II Using Marxism73\n\n4 Toward a Critical Theory:\u200b Max Horkheimer 75\n\n4.\u200b1 The Agenda 77\n\n4.\u200b2 A New Type of Theory 82\n\n4.\u200b3 Excursus:\u200b Herbert Marcuse on the Philosophical Genesis of Critical Theory 87\n\n4.\u200b4 Political Implications 90\n\n4.\u200b5 The Independence of Critical Theory 95\n\n5 From Critical Theory Toward Political Theory:\u200b J\u00fcrgen Habermas 101\n\n5.\u200b1 What Is Late Capitalism?\u200b 103\n\n5.\u200b2 Critical Theory and Marxism 109\n\n5.\u200b3 Historical Materialism and Theory of Evolution 116\n\n5.\u200b4 The Tasks of Philosophy and the Question of the Political 121\n\n5.\u200b5 The Political:\u200b Action or Institution?\u200b 125\n\n6 The Rationality of the Dialectic:\u200b Jean-Paul Sartre 135\n\n 6.1 The Necessity of a _Critique of Dialectical Reason_  139\n\n6.\u200b2 The Foundations of the Dialectic 143\n\n6.\u200b3 The Dialectic of the Social World 148\n\n6.\u200b4 The Problem of Revolution 155\n\n6.\u200b5 Concretization and Critique 157\n\nPart III Criticizing Marxism169\n\n7 From Marxism to Ontology:\u200b Maurice Merleau-Ponty 171\n\n7.\u200b1 Why Reread Merleau-Ponty?\u200b 172\n\n7.\u200b2 Marxism and Its Politics 176\n\n7.\u200b3 Toward a Reformulation 183\n\n7.\u200b4 The New Left, Marx, and Philosophy 187\n\n7.\u200b5 And Now?\u200b 197\n\n8 Bureaucratic Society and Traditional Rationality:\u200b Claude Lefort 201\n\n8.\u200b1 Developing Theory and Developing Society 207\n\n8.\u200b1.\u200b1 Politics and the Social 207\n\n8.\u200b1.\u200b2 The Origin of the Social 208\n\n8.\u200b1.\u200b3 Societies Without History and the Origin of History 211\n\n8.\u200b1.\u200b4 Alienation, Ideology, and the Real:\u200b The Structure of Capitalism 215\n\n8.\u200b2 The Political and the Philosophical 219\n\n8.\u200b2.\u200b1 The Proletariat and the Problem of the Real and the True 219\n\n8.\u200b2.\u200b2 Political Realism as Interrogation 224\n\n8.\u200b2.\u200b3 The Logic of the Political 228\n\n8.\u200b2.\u200b4 Politics and Ideology 232\n\n8.\u200b3 Philosophy Again 236\n\n9 Ontology and the Political Project:\u200b Cornelius Castoriadis 243\n\n9.\u200b1 The Political Critique of the Economic and the Economic Critique of the Political 246\n\n9.\u200b2 Organization:\u200b The False but Necessary Debate 250\n\n9.\u200b3 Marxism:\u200b The Problem of Metaphysics 255\n\n9.\u200b4 Ontology:\u200b The Status of Theory and the Political Project 263\n\n9.\u200b5 What Is Revolution?\u200b 275\n\n10 Actualizing the Legacy\u2014New Social Movements in the West and Civil Society against the State in the East 285\n\n10.\u200b1 The Politics of Theory 287\n\n10.\u200b2 The Theory of Politics 291\n\n10.\u200b3 Why the Legacy?\u200b 298\n\n10.\u200b4 Why Question Marx?\u200b 302\n\n10.\u200b4.\u200b1 The Frankfurt School:\u200b Inclusions and Exclusions 305\n\n10.\u200b4.\u200b2 J\u00fcrgen Habermas:\u200b Philosophical Foundations, Political Questions 308\n\n10.\u200b4.\u200b3 Sartre to Gorz:\u200b Political Questions, Philosophical Proposals 319\n\n10.\u200b5 Criticism and the Question of History 325\n\n10.\u200b5.\u200b1 Claude Lefort:\u200b History as Political 328\n\n10.\u200b5.\u200b2 Cornelius Castoriadis:\u200b Ontology as Political 342\n\n10.\u200b6 The Legacy as Present History 356\n\nIndex 395\n\nFootnotes\n\n1\n\nChapter  , which was first published simply as an \"Afterword,\" should be read as an independent essay that tries to understand attempts to \"realize the legacy\".\n\n2\n\nFor this reason, although we remained friends and correspondents, I did not return to the later work of Cornelius Castoriadis (1922\u20131997), Andr\u00e9 Gorz (1923\u20132007), Claude Lefort (1924\u20132010), or J\u00fcrgen Habermas (1929\u2013). As mentioned in the Preface, I have written about them elsewhere. C.f., for example, _Political Judgments_ (1997), _The Specter of Democracy_ (2002), and _Between Politics and Antipolitics. Thinking about Politics after 9\/11_ (2016). \n\u00a9 The Author(s) 2019\n\nDick HowardThe Marxian LegacyPolitical Philosophy and Public Purpose<https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-030-04411-4_1>\n\n# 1. The New Left and the Marxian Legacy: Early Encounters in the United States, France, and Germany\n\nDick Howard1\n\n(1)\n\nDepartment of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA\n\nDick Howard\n\nIn the mid-1960s, as the Cold War seemed frozen into place after the Soviet repression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, and the stalemate that defused the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the spirit of a 'New Left' began to emerge in the West. Although encouraged by events in the Third World, its common denominator was the idea that the misunderstood (or misused) work of Karl Marx must have offered a theory that both explained the discontent with the present among a new generation of youth and could also offer them guidelines for future action. At once personal and social, critical and political, this expectation was encouraged by publications of the writings of the young Marx as well as the discovery of non-orthodox theorists and political activists whose critical work had been ignored or suppressed by Soviet-dominated communist parties. These theories represented an 'unknown dimension'1 that became the object of vigorous debate in the 1960s and early 1970s. The searching candle burned bright for a decade before it flamed out.\n\nMeanwhile, the revolutionary spirit that Marx liked to call the 'old mole' had grubbed its way underneath the Iron Curtain; the multi-faceted movement of civil society against the repressive states anchored to the Soviet bloc brought finally the fall of communism. But the critical spirit was too weak, economic need weighed too heavy, and the spirit of utopia waxed. It seemed as if there was nothing to inherit from the past. As in the 1960s, the critical spirit of the young Marx, the critical philosopher searching for his path, can suggest a reason to persevere. In a 'Preliminary Note' to his doctoral dissertation, Marx justified his refusal to compromise with existing conditions by invoking the example of Themistocles who, 'when Athens was threatened with devastation, convinced the Athenians to take to the sea in order to found a new Athens on another element'.2 This was not yet an anticipation of Marx's turn away from philosophy to political economy. Like the New Left, Marx was trying to articulate the grounds of a critique of a present that he considered 'beneath contempt' in order to hold open the political future.\n\nI will use this idea of a New Left to conceptualize the underlying unity of diverse political experiences during the past half century. Although Marx is not the direct object of my reconstruction, his specter is a recurring presence at those 'nodal points' where the imperative to move to 'another element' becomes apparent. These are moments when the spirit that has animated a movement can advance no further; it is faced with new obstacles, which may be self-created. I will analyze from a participant's perspective the development of the New Left in the United States, France, and West Germany as it tried to articulate what I call the 'unknown dimension' of Marx's theoretical project.\n\n## 1.1 Innocent Beginnings\n\nAs the Civil Rights movement spread, and more rapidly as it merged with protests against the Vietnam War, it was necessary to propose a political theory to explain both the conditions against which protest was raised, and the future projects and goals of the movement. This two-sided imperative, analyzing critically the present while opening a future horizon, could not be realized by a single academic discipline such as sociology or economics; critical analysis of the present coupled with a normative reflection on the positive possibilities latent within it has always been the domain of political philosophy. The dominant mode of analytic philosophy in most major Anglo-Saxon philosophy departments dismissed concern with history or politics as speculative.3 It was (barely) legitimate to appeal to the existentialist voluntarism of Jean-Paul Sartre; but the French philosopher's demonstration that Marxism is 'the unsurpassable horizon of our times', elaborated in the 800-plus pages of his _Critique of Dialectical Reason_ (1960), was not translated until 1976. It was (barely) more acceptable to turn to Husserl's or Heidegger's phenomenological concept of the life-world (and the recognition of lived-experience as a 'horizon'), although the latter had been discredited politically and only the first volume of Husserl's _Ideas_ had been translated. However interested, most Americans did not have the linguistic competence to pursue this path.\n\nMarxism in the adulterated forms of dialectical materialism was not a serious philosophical or political alternative. After the ravages of McCarthyism, there was no political (or commercial editorial) market for it. I bought my first copies of _Capital_ in the summer of 1965 from an old communist who would drive from San Antonio to the University of Texas in Austin with a trunk full of literature from Progress Publishers in Moscow. Party control of Marx's writings was maintained so far as possible by its American affiliate, International Publishers. I experience their desire for control when they interviewed me on Christmas Eve of 1970 about a possible translation of the young Marx. The meeting came to a rapid end when I suggested that I would of course add explanatory notes to explain difficult passages.4 The only option seemed to be to create a new mode of publication. The first step in that direction was taken when the New Left recognized that it was not the first New Left and that America had not always been a status quo society. This insight gave rise to the development of 'history from below', which was pursued in the mimeographed pages of the student-run journal, _Radical America_. Although the initiative came from historians (led by Paul Buhle), the pages of this journal were open to philosophical and critical theory as well. The young Marx found a place here, as did contemporary French theory, as did I.5\n\nOf the politically engaged theoretical journals that emerged in the late 1960s, _Telos_ was the most provocative. After two issues as the 'official bi-yearly publication of the Graduate Philosophy Association' at Buffalo, the journal defined itself as ' _definitely outside_ the mainstream' in issues 3 to 5 (Spring 1969\u2013Spring 1970); a year later, it called itself more modestly an 'international interdisciplinary quarterly', but its radical editors defined themselves as 'revolutionary' rather than simply 'radical' in numbers 10 and 12 (Winter 1971 and Summer 1972). The labels are unimportant; the fact that the journal remained resolutely international influenced more strongly its future. Its history was marked by disagreement, dissent, and ruptures, each justified by appeal to the practical implications of theoretical choices.6 Intellectual, political, and personal issues both bound together and separated the editors.\n\nSpeaking for myself, I joined the editorial board in the Fall of 1970 with issue 6 (a 360-page _summum_ that contained among contributions by the editors, as well as essays and translations by Tran Duc Thao on the 'Hegelian dialectic', Maurice Merleau-Ponty on 'Western Marxism', Georg Luk\u00e1cs on the 'Dialectics of Labor', and Agnes Heller on 'The Marxist Theory of Revolution'7). The editors of _Telos_ were fully embarked on a voyage of initiation that continued with two issues consecrated to the repressed works of Georg Luk\u00e1cs (numbers 10 and 11, 1971\u20131972). Looking back today at the old volumes, I am a bit astonished by the breadth and depth of their themes. They present a juxtaposition of the stages of rediscovery of critical Marxism with a concern for French political debate (Andr\u00e9 Gorz and Serge Mallet, as well as the challenge of structuralism to the Hegel-inspired critical theories), as well as critical readings of Eastern European attempts to save what was critical in classical Marxism (in the theories of the Budapest School or the work of the Czech philosopher Karel Kosik, as well as the banned Yugoslav _Praxis_ philosophers). Hard-to-place figures like Karl Korsch, Ernst Bloch, or the Dutch astronomer and founding spirit of the Council Communists, Anton Pannekoek, found themselves alive again in the pages of _Telos_. The diversity of the contributions reflects the avid curiosity of the authors. But this eager openness and free-floating critical spirit did not last.\n\nI left _Telos_ officially with issue 36 (Summer, 1978), after a series of critical exchanges among the editors that began already in 1974. The intellectual climate had changed with the political normalization. During the first years of _Telos_ , the Vietnam War continued, as did opposition to its senseless pursuit. The rapid self-initiation into the varieties of Marxist theory and the nuances of its practice seemed all the more urgent; working with texts in French and German, providing translations and commentaries on them, the editors had remained, as they promised, ' _definitely outside_ the mainstream'. In the uncertain political conditions created by imperial war, colonial adventure, and the fight against racial discrimination at home, the serious work of theory was felt to be a kind of _praxis_. But a problem arose from the identification of Marx's theory as the banner of resistance and the key needed to open the door to a revolution that seemed ever more imperative as repression at home increased. Repression had to be met with resistance, on all fronts, including that of theory.8 But resistance could become stubborn and dogmatic, pledging allegiance to the flag of Marxism at the cost of creating a climate that discouraged critical thinking.\n\nAn expression of this uncritical Marxist dogmatism led me to finally leave _Telos_. The editors were unwilling to publish the essays by Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis that I had proposed for translation. It was apparent that their explicit critiques of Marx were too much to accept in a journal that felt the pressured to hold high the partisan banner; to criticize Marx could seem to provide ammunition to the enemy (as if we critical theorists were perceived at all by that enemy). I prevailed ultimately, writing introductions to their essays published in successive issues in the winter 1974 and spring 1975 issues (numbers 22 and 23).9 The experience left a bitter residue; my concern was not to defend the Marxist faith but to recover the spirit of the New Left. From this perspective _Telos_ had become what I called a 'meta' forum, publishing analyses or revised interpretations of second-generation representatives of that 'unknown dimension' whose aura had drawn the original editors to the project. Commentary on commentaries gave me the feeling that the journal was no longer ' _definitively outside_ ' of the establishment. I managed to arrange publication of some contributions, mainly on French themes, but the editorial trains were on different tracks; careers could be made, although it would be unfair to confuse fidelity to dogma with opportunism. In spite of the journal's cosmopolitanism and the diversity of its contributions\u2014some resuscitating forgotten Marxian radicals such as Karl Korsch (e.g., issue 26, Winter 1975), others joining theoretical analysis with contemporary politics (e.g., issue 16 which brought together Marcuse's 1930 essay on the concept of labor with Andr\u00e9 Gorz's analysis of the division of labor in the modern factory)\u2014the reheated dinner no longer satisfied my imagination.10\n\nMy story had not ended. The motivation that had brought me to _Telos_ led me to return to the journal as 'Notes' editor with issue 58 (1983). I wanted to take account of new phenomena that were appearing, particularly but not only in East-Central Europe. It seemed necessary to stress their novelty, rather than to insert them into an already valid theoretical framework. The journal had begun to publish original essays and translations from Eastern Europe where the challenge of Polish _Solidarno\u015b\u0107_ trade union to the totalitarian state was relayed by oppositional intellectuals in Hungary and elsewhere. _Telos_ benefitted from the presence in New York of two Hungarian students of Luk\u00e1cs, Agnes Heller and Ferenc Feher, as well as the editorial input of Andrew Arato, a native Hungarian educated in the United States. There was excitement in the West as well, as the idea of the autonomy of civil society began to take hold. This seemed to confirm much of what Lefort and Castoriadis had asserted in their essays published earlier, as well as in their articles reprinted by _Telos_ on the 20th anniversary of the Hungarian revolution (issue 29, Fall 1976). I took responsibility for the 'Notes' section of the journal because the times did not seem right for a new grand theory. A politics based on the autonomy of civil society had to remain alert to signs of the new truths rather than rely on old truths.11\n\nAs it happened, I soon found myself in the modest minority of editors; the proponents of grand theory came increasingly to the fore. I left the journal once again with issue 71, in 1987. I was not surprised to find that issue 72 was devoted to the work of Carl Schmitt; I should have seen it coming. My misperception resulted in part from the fact that I, along with Lefort and Castoriadis, distinguish between 'the political' which defines the framework within which the legitimate struggle for power can take place and political action itself. Already in 1974 I had titled an article on Habermas 'A Politics in Search of the Political', and a decade later, in the context of the East European emergence of civil society, I analyzed what I saw as 'The Return of the Political' which I suggested could make possible 'A Political Theory for Marxism'.12 My conception of the 'political' differed radically from Schmitt's conservative-decisionist theory, which came to dominate the journal. _Telos_ has continued to publish, apparently remaining on the conservative path accompanied by traditionalist overtones that I am unable to understand.\n\n## 1.2 The French Connection\n\nAnother option open to a would-be New Leftist in the 1960s could be found in France. As a country where the Communist Party had won a quarter of the vote in the post-war years, France seemed to prove the cultural legitimacy of Marxist theory. What is more, it was also the home of critics of Marx who considered themselves to be leftists, many of whom were philosophers. The most famous was the 'existentialist', Jean-Paul Sartre (whose gesture in refusing the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964 because it implied acceptance of 'bourgeois' values pleased many a young iconoclast).13 An American had a further reason to choose France: its revolutionary tradition appealed to equality, whereas the American tradition of 1776 stressed individual liberty. Indeed, the Civil Rights Movement was demanding protection above all for individual rights rather than seek a cross-racial class struggle. That choice was not a tactical error; but it had to be understood as only the first stage toward revolutionary change.\n\nFrance between 1966 and 1968 provided both an initiation to Marx and a critique of Marxism. At the Communist Party's annual _F\u00eate de l'Humanit\u00e9_ , I was refused free entry although I explained that I was a comrade getting by on scholarship. Later, at a demonstration against the Vietnam War, a speaker from the Party demonstrated the justice of the anti-war cause while showing its place in a long historical chain; at the end of his discourse, as the public applauded, he joined them, suggesting that he was not expressing his opinion but spoke the truth of historical necessity. A similar Marxist conviction animated the Trotskyist opponents of the communists. Those who attended their (smaller, semi-public) meetings had to sign-in under a pseudonym, increasing the thrill and sense of the exclusivity of participation.14 The theoretical justification of this practice was that the revolution could come at any time and that without an organized and knowledgeable leadership to give direction to the working class could fail or be stolen and deformed (as was said to have been the case in the Soviet Union). The point seemed well taken; theory was necessary. I moved into the dormitory at Nanterre where I spent a good part of the day reading Marx's _Capital_ while watching a nasty yellow smoke rise from the tin shacks of the neighboring _bidonville_.\n\nThere are experiences offering lessons that could not be drawn from books. The principal theoretical challenge that occupied me was to identify the working class that was assumed to be the agent of revolution.15 Had the capitalist economy brought into being a 'new working class', as several theorists whom I came to identify with the New Left claimed? Among them were Serge Mallet, whose analysis of _La nouvelle classe ouvri\u00e8re_ appeared in 1963; Andr\u00e9 Gorz published _Strat\u00e9gie ouvri\u00e8re et n\u00e9o-capitalism_ in 1964; and Daniel Moth\u00e9 published _Militant chez Renault_ in 1965.16 All three would become friends. Mallet had been a functionary of the Communist Party; after he quit the party when it proved incapable of understanding or resisting the new Gaullist regime that came to power in 1958, his research was funded in part by a grant from Jean-Paul Sartre. At the time, Gorz was a journalist at the weekly magazine, _Le Nouvel Observateur_ , author of the existentialist analysis of alienation in _Le Tra\u00eetre_ , and a member of the editorial committee of Sartre's journal, _Les Temps Modernes_.17 Moth\u00e9, whom I came to know at the journal _Esprit_ , had been a line-worker at the huge Renault automobile plant at Billancourt while a member of the group  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ , insisted on the capacity for self-organization on the part of workers without the need for a political party to show them the way. What the three political thinkers shared was a welcoming eye for the new. Needless to say, all three were eager participants in the 'events' of May 1968.\n\nI followed here the French usage in talking about May 1968 as 'events'. What crystallized in the 'March 22nd Movement' at Nanterre before spreading and spiraling across France (and abroad) had little to do with Marx. In retrospect, the losers on the left were what I call the Marx _ists_ : the Maoists, who insisted that real revolution could not be led by students; logically consistent, their followers ignored the campuses and went instead to the working-class suburbs, where they found no echo; and the Communist Party (and its trade unions) who did their best to restrain the unexpected movement that they could not master. For my part, at Nanterre, I had the feeling during the pre-May meetings on campus that I was back at a New Left gathering in the States. It was as if the over-politicized students who, in earlier meetings I had attended, had harangued one another about the need to support the 'peasants and workers of X' rather than the 'workers and peasants of X' were now speaking English.18 The price I paid for this comfort was in a way paradoxical; I had come to France to find a theory that could make political sense of my New Left experience not to confirm it, now in a new language.\n\nA first reflection after the experience of May 1968 led me back to Marx. What was the relation between the philosophical explorations of the young Hegelian whose analysis of capitalism explored the diverse ramifications of alienation (as both _Entfremdung_ and as _Ent\u00e4usserung_ ) and the author of _Capital_ whose three thick tomes demonstrating the internal contradictions and necessary breakdown of capitalism I had been studying in that dormitory at Nanterre? The ebbing of the spirit of May seemed to lend weight to the structuralist arguments of Louis Althusser, who drew a sharp line between Marx's 'scientific' work and his youthful philosophical explorations. The simultaneous publication in 1965 of his _Pour Marx_ and the two collaborative volumes of _Lire le Capital_ seemed to offer a material foundation for the New Left experience that I had come to France to find. The political price to be paid, however, was not realized by most at the time.19 The all-encompassing denunciation of ideology in the name of 'science' left no room for subjectivity characteristic of the new left or the May movement; the result eliminated the pole of negativity characteristic of the dialectic. I tried to avoid this dead end in my revised doctoral dissertation that proposed an analysis of _The Development of the Marxian Dialectic._20 The qualifier 'Marxian' (rather than the substantive 'Marxist') was meant to show that his turn to political economy was based on the dialectical elaboration of Marx's youthful philosophical insights.\n\nOther questions raised by the experience of May 1968 led me back to the existential Marxism of Sartre. At the 'First International Telos Conference' in October 1970, I proposed an analysis of 'Existentialism and Marxism'.21 I was led to this theme by a slim volume titled _Ces id\u00e9es qui ont \u00e9branl\u00e9 la France, Nanterre Novembre 1967-juin 1968._22 The author uses categories developed in Sartre's _Critique of Dialectical Reason_ to reconstruct the tumultuous emergence on one campus of a revolt that 'shook the French nation'. The author concludes on a note of what can be called pessimistic optimism. Sartre had tried to explain the transformation what he called serial and external relations among alienated individuals through a movement that transforms them into a 'group-in-fusion' through which passive participants become for a moment fused as active members of a collective subject. Sartre recognizes that by its very existential nature the fused group is unstable; it has to seek means to conserve its unity. The only possible solution to this political problem seems to demand that the existentialist cedes his subjectivity to objective knowledge of the Party. Sartre is more subtle in the _Critique_ than he had been earlier; appealing to the history of the French revolution, he introduces first the idea of an 'oath' by which the fused group binds itself. The words appear to be powerless in the face of the hard, existential reality of 'scarcity' that Sartre calls the 'practico-inert'. The oath must then be enforced, ultimately by Terror, itself enforced by a leader who functions as an external 'totalizing Third' whose description at times recalls Stalin, or the Communist Party. This troubling political implication of this attempt to join existentialism and Marxism may be one reason that Sartre never completed the promised second volume of his _Critique_.\n\nOne last French encounter deserves mention here. As is well-known, French intellectuals of a leftist bent often express their allegiances, or their protests, by signing petitions that are reproduced in journals read by a wider public. In the late winter of 1968, I attended the presentation of a petition against the war in Vietnam by a group that included among others, Sartre. Afterward, I wrote a short paper for the journal _Esprit_ reflecting on 'Les intellectuels fran\u00e7ais et nous'.23 My point was that words are cheap; there are actions to be undertaken. I didn't mention the fact that I had been working with a network formerly active against the French war in Algeria that was now involved in helping American deserters. One of the other participants at the press conference was Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who contacted his friends at _Esprit_ to find out who I was. We met; I arranged for him to meet with some of the Americans; we became friends. A few years later, when I wanted to have a chapter on  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ for _The Unknown Dimension_ , Vidal-Naquet, an engaged intellectual who never joined a political party, arranged for me to meet Lefort, which in turn led to my meeting Castoriadis. Reflecting on the experience, I have concluded that my activist resentment of the intellectual who signs was based on a misunderstanding of the solidarity of critical individuals who think for themselves.\n\n## 1.3 The German Path: From Phenomenology to Critical Theory\n\nThe _Contributions to a New Marxism_ published by _Telos_ included Paul Piccone's proposal for the elaboration of a 'Phenomenological Marxism'. The editor in chief was summarizing his vision of the path followed by the early _Telos_. Enzo Paci, the radical Italian phenomenologist, had developed a critique of the pretension to scientific objectivity on Husserl's posthumously published _The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology_.24 Paci tries to demonstrate that the foundation of this vision is an alienation from the lived-world whose effect is the further reproduction of alienated relations that make the human quest for meaningful experience impossible. It took only a short step for Piccone and the early editors to recognize that the implacable logic of capitalism is a manifestation of a similar alienation. This interrelation became clear when _Telos_ published in the same issue translations of Herbert Marcuse's 1928 'Contributions to a Phenomenology of Historical Materialism' along with Husserl's account of 'Universal Teleology'.25 Capping that issue was Piccone's essay on 'Luk\u00e1cs' _History and_ _Class Consciousness_ Half a Century Later' which made the integration of phenomenology and Marxism explicit. Despite its sad political fate, Piccone was certain that Luk\u00e1cs' book had still the potential to reclaim its explosive impact.\n\nAlthough I was not yet involved with _Telos_ , two brief 'Notes' that appeared in the same issue dealt with events in which I had participated, making me more receptive to the journal. One note affirmed _Telos_ ' outsider perspective through a biting report on the American Philosophical Association's winter meeting (at New York's Waldorf Astoria hotel!). Intellectually irrelevant, the big name figures of the academic world were denounced for having mobilized their fellows against a condemnation of the Vietnam War, while their job-seeking graduate students were consigned to a Kafkaesque maze on the 18th floor where they competed for interviews. The other Note, also critical, commented on an international phenomenological colloquium in Schw\u00e4bisch Hall, West Germany, which was said to have placed insufficient emphasis on the importance of the life-world. The exception was said to be the synthetic conclusion presented by Paul Ricoeur.26\n\nThe political difference between a phenomenological foundation for radical politics and Althusser's 'Marxist' structuralism is striking. The French Marxist was criticizing a bourgeois subjectivism that supposedly led to a philosophical idealism that separated theory from its practical implications. The task of structural logic, as Althusser thought he had found it in _Capital_ , was to demonstrate the material condition of possibility of radical change by overcoming the separation of theory and praxis. The difficulty is that structuralism (like dogmatic materialism) leaves no place for the intersubjectivity that constitutes meaning in the life-world. By contrast, the phenomenological insistence on the primacy of the life-world led to the recognition that lived-experience is inseparably the foundation of the world of the subject and the condition of its possible objectification in positive science. Neither can exist nor be understood apart from the other. Phenomenology avoids the either\/or of materialism and idealism; in this way it overcomes what Luk\u00e1cs called 'reification' and the young Marx denounced as 'alienation'. While this reading of phenomenology can veer toward a Hegelian-Marxist theory, the ideas of a life-world and the lived-experience within it were in fact fundamental for the emerging New Left.27\n\nThe similar political reflexes among New Leftists did not obviate the differences in their cultural and historical background. The German New Left experience was at first affected by the fact that the Social Democratic Party (SPD)\u2014the lineal heir of the party of Marx and Engels!\u2014had decided at its Bad Godesberg Conference in 1959 to abandon its self-understanding as a class-based party of revolution. Because it had opted to become a reformist 'peoples' party', the SPD no longer referred to Marxism as its guiding philosophy. In the following years, as its youth organization, the Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund (SDS), began to radicalize in ways that resembled the experience of their American counterparts in the other SDS,28 its leaders were tempted to return to the Marxism and class theory that the reformists had rejected. One important difference between the two movements was that the Germans had access to the original texts of Marx.29 This was a temptation that could lead to scholastic debates about text interpretation or to dogmatic claims to know better than the simple participants. In both cases, it turned attention away from the creativity of practical interventions by the young militants that were rapidly changing the inherited mandarin culture.\n\nThe German New Left was generally more bookish than most of its American cousins. Its members were also more concerned with the past, which the reconstructed Western nation did its best to forget. In the case of the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer and Adorno no longer identified themselves with Marxism as Critical Theory; Horkheimer refused to republish the yearly volumes of the  _Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Sozialforschung_ that were published from exile between 1932 and 1941. Horkheimer played an administrative academic role while still teaching at Frankfurt, while Adorno was widely known for his cultural interventions on the radio. But their reputations had preceded them. Radical students began to publish pirate editions photocopied from the original texts, glued together on cheap paper, bound with thin red cover pages, as a sort of _Samizdat_! Among those that I purchased at the Karl Marx Buchhandlung in Frankfurt between 1968 and 1970 are the complete edition of the _Zeitschrift_ and three volumes of Horkheimer's essays titled _Kritische Theorie der Gesellschaft_ , _Dialektik der Aufkl\u00e4rung_ , and _Authorit\u00e4t und Familie_. Two other small volumes by Horkheimer also remain on my shelves: the _Anf\u00e4nge der b\u00fcrgerlichen Geschichtsphilosophie_ and three essays from his most radical period, 1939\u20131941, published under the title _Autorit\u00e4rer Staat_.30\n\nWhether their books concerned Marx or the Frankfurt School, the German New Left was a generation of readers. In a way, that was true of all of the New Lefts. One cultural trait that marked the Germans was the idea of a life-world that must be protected against instrumentalization. The refusal to treat what should be an end in itself as a means to something else, be it capitalist domination or a science acquired at the cost of one's humanity, is a tradition that goes back to the German Enlightenment and to Kant. At their most pessimistic moments, Adorno and Horkheimer constructed a historical-ontological 'dialectic of enlightenment' that arises when reason turns on itself leaving the way clear for domination by unreason, as it had after 1933. Horkheimer had allowed himself a somewhat less fatalistic, more political interpretation of the historical moment in the _Eclipse of Reason_ (1947). Significantly, its German edition 20 years later, published as _Zur kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft_ , was more than twice its size. Its final essay, which dates from 1965, reaffirms the goals of Critical Theory\u2014the critique of the existing order\u2014with the _caveat_ that the 'threats to freedom' that _were_ the subject of his original essay have changed.\n\nThe new German radicals wanted not only to criticize the existing world; they wanted to change it. Seeking their way, they tried to return to the origins of critical theory. They read Horkheimer's path-breaking essay 'Traditional and Critical Theory' and\u2014having read Marcuse's _One-Dimensional Man\u2014_ they eagerly read the exchange between Horkheimer and Marcuse titled 'Philosophy and Critical Theory'.31 Then they went back still further, to Marx, especially the young Marx. What they found gave them a deeper sense to critical theory.\n\nThose who did their reading of the young Marx could not fail to be struck in particular by two passages. The first, in the 'Exchange of Letters' (among Marx, Ruge, and Feuerbach) that introduced the _Deutsch-Franz\u00f6sischen Jahrb\u00fccher_ , insists that 'We do not face the world in doctrinaire fashion, declaring \"Here is the truth, kneel here!\"...We do not tell the world, \"Cease your struggles, they are stupid; we want to give you the true watchword of the struggle.\" We merely show the world why it actually struggles; and consciousness is something that the world must acquire even if it does not want to'. This is a straightforward formulation of the idea of _immanent critique_. It did not, however, suffice on its own. As they read on, they saw that Marx went on to apply this critical theory in his 'Introduction to a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right'. 'Man', he begins there, 'is not an abstract essence existing outside the world. Man is the _world of men,_ state, society'. The task of the immanent critique is 'to make these reified relations dance by singing to them their own melody'. As his analysis becomes more concrete, step by immanent step, the 'man' from whom Marx began becomes the 'proletariat'. In this incarnation, the 'world of men' is an object that is produced by a certain type of self-reflective society; yet it remains always a subject capable of praxis and understanding\u2014of making a revolution!\n\nThe problem for the New Left was that this proletariat conceptualized by Marx no longer existed. That seemed to leave two options for a revolutionary theory of immanent critique. The first would pursue the project on the terrain of culture that had been staked out by Adorno and by the increasingly popular Walter Benjamin. Elements of this option have been described recently by Philipp Felsch's study, _Der lange Sommer der Theorie. Geschichte einer Revolte, 1960\u20131990_ , which reconstructs the integration of French deconstruction theory into Germany by the efforts of the publishers of the Merve Verlag.32 Most of the story that Felsch recounts takes place outside of the framework of the present account. However, one factoid that he cites at the outset points toward the second option for a radical left.\n\nAt the time of his death while in prison, the founder of the terrorist Red Brigades, Andreas Baader, had become a voracious consumer of the works of Marx, Marcuse, and Reich; nearly 400 volumes were found in his cell. Baader represented an extreme version of the other option for the New Left: an actionism, which claimed to be a praxis that did in its way what Marx had advocated for critical theory. Although the activists have thought they could 'make the reified relations dance by singing before them their own melody', the song that they sung opposed their _own_ violence to that of an unjust society. It is true 1968 was a year that had seen the French May events, followed by the police violence at the Democratic Party convention in Chicago, the pursuit of the war in Vietnam, and the crushing of Prague Spring by Soviet and allied tanks. The 'praxis faction' argued that by provoking state-violence their actions would force the ruling class to reveal the iron fist within its velvet glove. This superficial and _antipolitical_ option was rightly denounced as 'left wing fascism' by the heir to the Frankfurt School, J\u00fcrgen Habermas, assembly of 2000 activists on June 2, 1968. Although he later admitted that this was no doubt a bad choice of words, Habermas' point was telling.33\n\nWith the turn to violence, what I called at the outset of this discussion the New Left's age of innocence came to an end. The search for an 'unknown dimension' continued, although Marx was no longer considered to be its origin. In France in the mid-1970s, as if to atone for past orthodoxies, anti-totalitarianism became an inspiration for a number of former New Left intellectuals. In Eastern Europe, anti-totalitarianism became a practical reality; in 1989 the Berlin Wall came down, and in 1991 the Soviet Union disappeared. As was the case for many participants in _Telos_ during the 1980s, it seemed to many that a _new_ New Left could take shape within the spaces of a 'civil society' that conserved its autonomy. This conceptual hope expressed a familiar concept for the heirs to the earlier New Left who had read the young Marx. Those who adopted it unfortunately did not pay sufficient attention to the origin of the concept with Hegel, who saw civil society as only a particular mediation between the immediacy of family life and the universality of the political state. An autonomous civil society cannot stand alone. The political renewal of the mediations that Hegel called the family and the state stands today as the 'unknown dimension' that could animate a _new_ New Left. Marx may well continue to offer his help in the search for what he had called at the beginning of his own quest to found a 'new Athens on another element'.\n\nFootnotes\n\n1\n\nC.f., the collection of essays that Karl E. Klare and I co-edited, _The Unknown Dimension: European Marxism since Lenin_ (New York: Basic Books, 1972). The subtitle makes clear our political intention.\n\n2\n\nMy translation from the note in the 'Vorarbeiten' titled by its editors 'Nodal Points in the Development of Philosophy' as published in _Karl Marx. Fr\u00fche Schriften_ , H-J Lieber and Peter Furth, editors (Stuttgart: Cotta Verlag, 1962), p. 104.\n\n3\n\nJohn Rawls' _A Theory of Justice_ , published only in 1971, plays no role in the story I am telling. As for the British, the existence of a still vibrant trade union tradition helps to explain the persistence of a more-or-less orthodox Marxist orientation among leftists.\n\n4\n\nThe climate changed rapidly; commercial publishers saw a market. Not known for critical perspicacity, one of the commercial editors, Doubleday, pushed their luck with the publication of a 450-page compilation of _The Essential Stalin: Major Theoretical Writings, 1905\u20131952_ , edited by Stanford University professor, Bruce Franklin. C.f., the ironic critical review by Paul Breines in _Telos_ No. 15 (Spring 1973).\n\n5\n\nC.f., 'French New Working Class Theory' (Vol. III, No. 2, May 1969) and 'Genetic Economics vs. Dialectical Materialism' (Vol. III, No. 4, August 1969). My edition of the _Selected Political Writings of Rosa Luxemburg_ (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971) was designated 'A _Radical America Book_ '.\n\n6\n\nRobert Zwarg has recently published a lucid, richly detailed, and critically argued study of _Die Kritische Theorie in Amerika. Das Nachleben einer Tradition_ (G\u00f6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017). Zwarg uses the development of _Telos_ and _New German Critique_ to trace the afterlife of the Frankfurt tradition of critical theory. In the course of his presentation, he also offers a generous account of _Radical America_ as well.\n\n7\n\nThe issue also included my essay 'On Marx's Critical Theory' which used the recently discovered manuscript of Marx's _Resultate des unmittelbaren Produktionsprozesses_ to demonstrate a continuity between the social analysis of the young Marx and the work of the mature political economist. As Rosa Luxemburg (whose work I was editing at the time) intuited, capitalism and its contradictions can only be understood as a system of social _re_ production.\n\n8\n\nI had an early experience of the weight of Marxist orthodoxy at a conference on Rosa Luxemburg in Italy in 1973. My presentation asked how Rosa Luxemburg could beat once the most innovative of Marxist activists and yet the most dogmatic defender of Marx's texts (e.g., against Bernstein's revisionism). As it happens, the following day saw the coup d'\u00e9tat in Chile against the Socialist government of Salvador Allende. I instantly became persona non grata! A revised version of that paper was published in _Telos_ , issue 18, 'Rethinking Rosa Luxemburg' (and reprinted in the first edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ ). Another example of this kind of pressure is seen in Trent Schroyer's article in issue 12 of _Telos_ , 'The Dialectical Foundations of Critical Theory', the author feels compelled to begin his discussion of Habermas with an apology: 'Despite the vilification of the left, and to the dismay of the academy, J\u00fcrgen Habermas remains a Marxist'.\n\n9\n\nMy introductory essays situated historically the two co-founders of the journal  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ in the context of French leftist politics and political theory. They became the basis of the chapters on Lefort and Castoriadis published in _The Marxian Legacy_.\n\n10\n\nThe last article that I published, 'Enlightened Despotism and Democracy' (in issue 33, Fall 1977), built from a historical reconstruction to pose a question that led me to turn from the model of the French Revolution to reconsider the history of the American Revolution. The article touched as well on themes that became basic to the critique of totalitarianism.\n\n11\n\nA far-reaching synthesis that I found convincing was published in 1992 by two editors whose contribution to _Telos_ had been significant; c.f., Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, in  _Civil Society_ _and Political Theory_ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992). Both Cohen and Arato, as well as Heller and Feher, finally left _Telos_ by the early 1990s, when they were unable to overcome the influence of the right-wing Schmittian grand theorists.\n\n12\n\nC.f., 'A Politics in Search of the Political', _Theory and Society_ , 1, 1974, pp. 271\u2013306; 'The Return of the Political', _Thesis Eleven_ , Nr. 8, 1984, pp. 77\u201391; and 'A Political Theory for Marxism', _New Political Science_ , Nr. 13, Winter 1984, pp. 5\u201326.\n\n13\n\nC.f., his declaration of refusal, reprinted in http:\/\/\u200bwww.\u200bnybooks.\u200bcom\/\u200barticles\/\u200b1964\/\u200b12\/\u200b17\/\u200bsartre-on-the-nobel-prize\/\u200b\n\n14\n\nI later used my pseudonym when I published an article on Czech student dissidents that relied on information that could have harmed friends there. C.f., 'Czech-Mating Stalinism' in _Commonweal_ , May 17, 1968. I refer below to my debt to the dissidents whom I knew in the 1960s. It should be noted that although both Communists and Trotskyists claimed the legacy of Marx, they both were far more justified when they presented themselves as heirs to Lenin!\n\n15\n\nI knew already from reading one of the few books on Marx that was widely available in the United States, C. Wright Mills' _The Marxists_ (New York: Penguin Books, 1962), that the crucial problem for a contemporary Marxist would be to define what the 'working class' could mean in contemporary societies.\n\n16\n\nAll three of these books were published by the \u00c9ditions du Seuil. I discuss the theories of Mallet and Gorz in _The Unknown Dimension, op. cit._ I return to Gorz's later work in the 'Afterword' to the second edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ , reprinted in this edition, and reconsider his philosophical path in Chap.  of _Between Politics and Antipolitics_.\n\n17\n\nGorz's idea of a 'New Left' differed from my own vague understanding; his was strongly influenced by the Italian trade union theorists around the CGIL. After we had become friends, he once told me that he was the editor who had refused to publish my essay on the American New Left in _Les Temps Modernes_ , even though it had been accepted in an official letter to me by his colleague, Claude Lanzmann. I have been unable to find a copy of my manuscript.\n\n18\n\nThe former, I came to learn, identified with Maoism, the latter with one of the two Trotskyist factions. At the time, neither my knowledge of French nor my understanding of Marxist scholastics was sufficient to grasp the distinction. I did write, in early June, an account of the May events on the basis of my experience. A copy was sent by courier (the post office was closed) to the journal _Viet Report_. I do not know whether it arrived. Meanwhile, a friend in London who borrowed by carbon copy never returned it!\n\n19\n\nI was part of the overflow crowd at Althusser's lecture, 'L\u00e9nine et la philosophie', at the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Fran\u00e7aise de Philosophie on February 24, 1968. Althusser, who remained a party member, could appeal to the science of structures to criticize forms of 'ideology' that didn't fit the prevailing party views.\n\n20\n\n(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972).\n\n21\n\nPublished in _Towards a New Marxism_ (St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973). This publication was no doubt a sign of _Telos_ ' self-confidence rather than of the result of its rejection by commercial publishers. I would similarly publish my first work with small leftist publications 'outside the mainstream'. Another reason for these publications was the intense desire to communicate, immediately, with others caught up in the same 'movement'. C.f., the chapter on Sartre in _The Marxian Legacy_.\n\n22\n\nThe volume was published under the pseudonym of Epist\u00e9mon (Paris: Fayard, 1968). Its author was Didier Anzieu, a psychoanalyst and professor of psychology at Nanterre; and his title is of course a wordplay on John Reed's well-known account of the Russian Revolution as 'Seven Days That Shook the World'.\n\n23\n\nC.f., _Esprit_ , mars 1968, pp. 506\u2013508.\n\n24\n\nThe German edition was first published in 1936. The English translation by David Carr appeared in 1970. _Telos_ published some fragments of Husserl's text without authorization (in Number 4, Fall 1969). Affirming its political principles, the editorial page insisted that 'Since ideas should neither be sold nor bought, none of the included material is copyrighted and can be used for any purpose whatsoever by anyone'. It did the same with chapters from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's as yet untranslated _Adventures of the Dialectic_ in Numbers 6 and 7. The English translation by Joseph Bien appeared only in 1973.\n\n25\n\nC.f., volume 4, Fall 1969.\n\n26\n\nI had been there and agreed. It had been Ricoeur's support that brought me to Paris, in part on the basis of an exchange of letters in which I tried to show how I thought phenomenology could provide the basis for rethinking New Left and anti-war politics. See Ricoeur's letters of May 15, 1965, and November 5, 1965, and my letter of February 6, 1966, in DH Archive at Stony Brook University.\n\nI should add, however, that David Carr, the English translator of Husserl's _Krisis_ , who was also at the conference, pointed out to me that his impression was that there was perhaps too much, but too vague, a discussion of the life-world. He himself had presented a paper on that theme. C.f., his 'Diskussionsbeitrag', to the publication of the papers presented: V\u00e9rit\u00e9 et v\u00e9rification\/Wahrheit und Verifikation (Actes du 4\u00e8me Collques internationale de Ph\u00e9nom\u00e9nologie), ed. H. L. Van Breda (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1974), pp. 95\u201396.\n\n27\n\nI leave aside the very different interpretation of the life-world and lived-experience by Heidegger. It did not play a significant role among readers of _Telos_ , although most did read the (difficult if not unreadable) translation into English and some were fascinated by its still influential French variant.\n\n28\n\nStudents for a Democratic Society (SDS) had been the youth organization of the Social Democratic League for Industrial Democracy. It declared its autonomy from its parent in 1960.\n\n29\n\nIn fact, the generally available and inexpensive East German edition (the _Marx Engels Werke_ , familiarly called 'die blauen B\u00e4nder') did not include many of the early philosophical works of the young Marx. These could be found in the more expensive edition of the _Fr\u00fche Schriften_ published by the Cotta Verlag only in 1962, which I took care to cite in my writings about the young Marx.\n\n30\n\nPerhaps in the Enlightenment tradition, when Amsterdam was a center of pirate editions, the last-named book had a publisher (Amsterdam: Verlag de Munter, 1967), the others were usually done by anonymous collectives and were undated. There were other pirate editions, for example, of Karl Korsch and of Wilhelm Reich's 1934 journal called _Sex-Pol_ (as well as a pocket-sized, illustrated version of _Der sexuelle Kampf der Jugend_ ). One found also editions of authors who had abandoned their former political theories, such as Karl August Wittfogel, Franz Borkenau, and Richard L\u00f6wenthal (under the pseudonym Paul Sering). Another large volume, retyped by anonymous collaborators (like the _Samizdat_ publications that helped bring down the Soviet Union), previously published texts from academic journals under the title _Kritik und Interpretation der Kritischen Theorie: \u00fcber Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Benjamin, Habermas_.\n\n31\n\nAll three essays appeared in volume 6 of the _Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Sozialforschung_ (1937), which was copyrighted in Paris by the Librairie F\u00e9lix Alcan in 1938.\n\n32\n\n(M\u00fcnchen: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2015).\n\n33\n\nC.f., the reconstruction of Habermas' philosophical development in the first edition of _The Marxian Legacy_. I keep this theoretical development separate from his political writings in Chap.  of this edition, which are the subject of that chapter, 'Citizen Habermas', republished in _Between Politics and Antipolitics: Thinking About Politics After 9\/11_ (New York & London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). At the time, international connections were strong, as reflected in, for example, Alfred Schmidt's contribution to _The Unknown Dimension_. I knew many of the SDS leaders from Frankfurt criticized by Habermas, including the charismatic Hans-J\u00fcrgen Krahl, whose necrology, as noted above, was published in _Telos_. Others, such as Rainer Zoll, a life-long friend, who had left the university to work for the IG Metall (but returned to a post in Bremen somewhat later), helped put the excesses in perspective.\n\n# Part IWithin Marxism\n\u00a9 The Author(s) 2019\n\nDick HowardThe Marxian LegacyPolitical Philosophy and Public Purpose<https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-030-04411-4_2>\n\n# 2. Theory, the Theorist, and Revolutionary Practice: Rosa Luxemburg\n\nDick Howard1\n\n(1)\n\nDepartment of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA\n\nDick Howard\n\n> No coarser insult, no baser defamation, can be thrown against the workers than the remark 'Theoretical controversies are only for intellectuals. ( _Social Reform or Revolution_?)\n\nThe question to be addressed here is not that of the adequacy of this or that particular theory in accounting for, or acting on, a given context of social relations. I am not concerned whether, for example, the theory expressed in _The Accumulation of Capital_ is adequate to account either for the conditions of the period in which it was formulated or for our present conditions; nor, _a fortiori_ , am I concerned with whether that theory conforms to the edifice of Marx's _Capital_. To judge a theory in terms of its adequacy to supposedly real conditions implies a latent conservatism and positivism; theory is then treated as an analysis of 'facts' about a world that itself is taken as pre-given and fixed. Such an approach implies a dualism\u2014on the one side, the theory; on the other side, the 'facts' which it is to reflect\u2014that makes it fundamentally undialectical. Moreover, the point, after all, is not to understand a given positive world, but to change it! And this intention implies a very different notion of theory.\n\nMoreover, my question goes beyond the person and activity of Rosa Luxemburg. Through her person and activity, I want to look at a problem that affects our understanding of Marxism, and our own self-perception as theorists who are also revolutionaries: namely, _the relation of theory and practice_. For Rosa Luxemburg this was no problem even in the darkest hour: 'Marxist theory gave to the working class of the whole world a compass by which to fix its tactics from hour to hour in its journey toward the one unchanging goal' (p. 325, _The Junius Pamphlet_ ).1 Today, after the (however temporary) setbacks of the working class in the West, after the excesses, stupidities, and crimes committed in the name of Marxism, after the so-called successes of revolution where Marxism least expected them, we can no longer be so sanguine as Rosa Luxemburg. And as theorists, we know too that Marxism itself contains profound ambiguities: we know that there is a latent positivism in the thought of Marx himself; we know how Engels tended to 'naturalize' the dialectic, how the Second International assimilated an evolutionary Darwinian element into its doctrine, how the Third International was able to continually change its line to fit national need and convenience while always justifying itself in terms of Marx citations, and so on. We have seen Marxism lose its critical thrust and become what Oskar Negt calls a 'science of legitimation'. And, on the other hand, we have seen those who have attempted to maintain the razor-edge of dialectical criticism fall victim to bourgeois pop-culture, practical despair, or insular theorizing.\n\nWe are living after a crisis of Marxism, and a crisis of Marxists! The effects of this crisis on our theory and our practice have been disastrous\u2014whether in the form of an exacerbated Third Worldism culminating in phenomena like the Weatherpeople and Baader-Meinhof terrorists, or in the neo-populist return to the factories in search of a somehow redeeming contact with the 'real' working class, or in the form of theoretical doubt, sterility, and\/or eclecticism. With the bonds of theory and practice burst asunder, theory becomes dogma and practice becomes blind activism.\n\nIn this context it is opportune to re-examine the legacy of Rosa Luxemburg. Not as a precious heirloom, placed on the mantelpiece to be admired but not touched; not as a political, or theoretical, 'third way' between alternatives that, for whatever reasons, we don't like\u2014for Rosa Luxemburg is neither a spectacle to be observed nor the mouthpiece of a new dogma that will give us that dull certitude of which we feel in need. It is not a question of Luxemburg or Lenin, spontaneity or organization, mass or party; nor is it a question of 'competing' theories of imperialism, the national question, the peasantry, or the role of formal democracy; and it is certainly not our task to judge the 'authenticity' of her\u2014or any other\u2014'Marxism'. We cannot approach the question in terms of 'if only her advice on this or that had been taken', for such an attitude is of interest at most for parlor discussion and bad novels. Our concern is with our present and the tasks it poses; we turn to history not to salvage some 'pure' thinker or some unblemished 'truth' ignored or misunderstood by its contemporaries, but rather with the understanding that, in however distorted a form, it too is part of our present, that we must reflect on it in order to understand better what is to be done.\n\nThe appeal today of Rosa Luxemburg to a heteroclite group of left-inclined activists and theorists in opposition to the dominant tendencies within the official international Communist movement is understandable, and yet there is something quite paradoxical about it. There is of course her critique of revisionism and opportunism in theory and in practice, her stress on spontaneity and self-formation of consciousness, her early recognition of Kautskyian dogmatism and of the increasing bureaucratization of the SPD, her shrill outcry against the Social Chauvinism of the national parties, and her recognition of the role of imperialist capitalism as forcing an internationalist and anti-war strategy on the world proletariat, her avid defense of the councils form as the crucial element in the coming revolution; and, to be sure, there is her critique of Lenin's views on the party. All of these, interpreted in one or another manner, give more than enough grounds for adopting the name of Rosa Luxemburg. And yet, there is another side which should be less pleasant for those who latch on to a label in their rush to be more radical than Thou. Luxemburg was a dogmatist (in a sense to which we shall return). For example, she is satisfied that she has refuted Bernstein when she 'shows that, in its essence, in its bases, opportunist practice is irreconcilable with Marxism' (p. 130, _Social Reform or Revolution?_ ). She accepts Marxism as 'the specific mode of thought of the rising class conscious proletariat' (p. 127, _Social Reform or Revolution?_ ) and never doubts its truth despite the series of defeats which she, and the proletariat, suffered. Or, to give another example, she was a 'legalist' when it came to construing Party or International decisions, advocating expulsions, justifying her position on the mass strike in terms of 'the true essence of the Jena resolution', and, on the International scene, proposing the reconstruction of an International which would have a control over the national parties not essentially different from what came to pass with the construction of the Third International. Or, concerning her position with regard to Leninism, one must recall not only the 'non-democratic' manner in which she functioned in the Polish Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) but also, within her critique of Lenin, her defense of a control from the top within the _German_ party, to whom the Lenin-critique was actually addressed.\n\nIn Sects. 2.1 and 2.2 of the following, I want to look at the two sides of Luxemburg's activity in order to delineate and explicate their logic. In Sect. 2.1, 'Revolutionary Practice and Its Theory', my concern is to bring out Luxemburg's attitude, as theorist, to the ongoing struggles of the class and the different forms that they took. To make her position clear, it will be necessary to make reference to the theoretical work of Marx. In Sect. 2.2, 'The Theorist and Her Practice', I will look at the implications of Luxemburg's practice as theoretician and revolutionary, in order to show the problems and paradoxes which the theoretician-as-revolutionary must confront. In Sect. 2.3, 'Revolutionary Theory', the attempt will be made to draw some conclusions with reference to theory itself. What is it about a theory that makes it revolutionary?\n\n## 2.1 Revolutionary Practice and Its Theory\n\n> Only the working class, through its own activity, can make _the word flesh._ (Was will der Spartakusbund?)\n\nMarxian theory has always had a somewhat ambiguous (or, charitably interpreted, a dialectical) relation to revolutionary practice. Marxism claims to be the theory of the working class. This notion, however, can be interpreted in two senses, whose consequences are radically different. On the one hand, it can mean that Marxism is the working class' theory; that it is the theory which the working class adopts, accepts, and uses as a guide to its action. On the other hand, it can mean that Marxism is the theoretical expression of the actual practice of the working class, which means that its practice implicitly contains its own theory, which is expressed in Marxism in such a way that the class can recognize itself in the theory, understand what it in fact is doing _as a class_ , and draw the implications of that activity. The distinction, in other words, is that between a theory _for_ practice and a theory _of_ practice.\n\nThe distinction between the two interpretations is often blurred. Gramsci, who tends to be a representative of the latter tendency, nonetheless speaks of the need for Marxism as an ideology to help the proletariat maintain its faith in the struggle at those times when the revolutionary tide is out. Lenin, who tends to be a representative of the former tendency, achieves his greatest moments precisely when he breaks with the received doctrine and opens new paths based on his empathetic understanding of the masses and their capacities at a given moment. Indeed, there is an ambiguity in the work of Marx himself. _Capital_ is an attempt to integrate a rigorously scientific or deductive economic model with a theory of the class struggle as the basis of the various forms taken by the capitalist production process. We see the first of these moments, for example, in Marx's discussion of the move from cooperation, division of labor, and manufacturing to machinery and modern industry, or in the 'law' of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. But in both cases, the second moment immediately intervenes, in the first case, when Marx's discussion points to the role of capitalist reaction to working-class struggle as leading to the introduction of new methods for the production of relative surplus-value and, in the second, when the chapter on countervailing tendencies points to the level of the class struggle as a central variable of the rate of profit. The same ambiguity runs through many of Marx's conjunctural political analyses. For example, the Paris Commune is first condemned on theoretical grounds by Marx, then enthusiastically accepted and integrated into the theoretical conception of the nature of proletarian revolution, and then, on further reflection, once again brutally criticized, on theoretical grounds, in some of Marx's later letters.\n\nThis Marxian ambiguity appears in Rosa Luxemburg's practice as a revolutionary theoretician. Mention has already been made of her belief that revisionism could be refuted once its incompatibility with Marxian theory had been shown. She could of course claim efficacity for this approach insofar as, within the dualistic confines of the Erfurt Program, her opponents insisted that their position was compatible with Marxism. But the notion of a theory _for_ practice enters at a second, theoretically more interesting, level in her discussion of the dialectic leading to the 'final goal'. This needs to be looked at in some detail, before going on to see how the element of the theory _of_ practice figures in her work.\n\nIn _Social Reform or Revolution?_ , we read statements like these: 'It is the final goal alone that constitutes the spirit arid content of our socialist struggle which turns it into a class struggle' (p. 39). 'The final goal of socialism is the only decisive factor distinguishing the Social Democratic movement from bourgeois democracy and bourgeois radicalism, the only factor transforming the entire labor movement from a vain attempt to repair the capitalist order into a class struggle _against_ this order' (p. 53). On a first level, these are of course replies to Eduard Bernstein's revisionist assertion that 'the movement is everything, the final goal is nothing'. A further, somewhat lengthy, assertion in the same text goes further, however:\n\n> The secret of Marx's theory of value, of his analysis of money, his theory of capital, his theory of the rate of profit, and consequently of the whole existing economic system is\u2014the transitory nature of the capitalist economy, its collapse, thus\u2014and this is only another aspect of the same phenomenon\u2014the final goal, socialism. And precisely because, _a priori_ , Marx looked at capitalism from the socialist's viewpoint... he was enabled to decipher the hieroglyphics of capitalist economy. (p. 101)\n\nWhat worries Rosa Luxemburg, as _revolutionary_ theorist, in Bernstein's revisionist politics\u2014and still more in its translation in the pragmatic horse-trading of the opportunist politicians, for example, in Schippel's military policy\u2014is its _empiricism_. In effect, for the empiricist the facts are precisely what is out there, before my eyes, in all its gross ugly reality. The empiricist with a heart\u2014that is, the humanist\u2014confronted with this reality desires to smooth the rough edges, efface the ugliness, make peace. The empiricist standpoint is that of the 'vulgar economist', the Benthamite continually attacked by Marx as having the mentality of the small shopkeeper who can only see things from the individual point of view, never the totalizing view of the working class. The essential connectedness of the spheres of life is lost to the empiricist, for whom all relatedness is accidental or external. The political result of empiricism is that workers' strikes, electoral action, demonstrations, and other actions are not in themselves revolutionary; they are either a moral reaction to evil or a defensive reaction to oppression, which the 'socialist' politician can use as means or pawns in the political game. But if there is no essential connection among the various activities undertaken by the working class, then a fundamental insight of Marx is lost\u2014namely, that capital and labor form a conflictual pair such that each affects and depends on the other. Luxemburg's point here, as Luk\u00e1cs correctly perceived, is that there is no such thing as a 'fact'. The 'facts' only make sense in their interrelatedness, in their totality\u2014in this case, in the context of the inherently contradictory and doomed capitalist system\u2014hence, in the context of the ongoing revolution.\n\nWhile agreeing with Luxemburg's political and epistemological critique of empiricism and its consequences, we should note a problem here. One is somewhat taken aback by her use of the term a priori when referring to Marx's theoretical standpoint in _Capital_. Is it really an a priori? If so, the argument takes on an ideological character, posing the technological question: 'What signification must I give to the \"facts\" in order that they fit into the theoretical and practical structures that I want to develop?' The theory becomes a theory _for_ practice, no longer a theory _of_ it. If, as Luxemburg suggests, what differentiates socialism from bourgeois democracy and bourgeois radicalism is nothing but this a priori belief in the final goal, then one is at a loss to explain the patient and detailed research of Marx writing _Capital_ ; _Capital_ becomes a construction! If Marxism starts from the assumption of the necessity of revolution, then it is a viciously circular theory, not totally unlike Christian doctrines of 'original sin'.\n\nRosa Luxemburg has unintentionally pointed to an ambiguity in Marx himself. In the Marxian philosophy of history, there often appears a latent neo-enlightenment or Hegelian belief in the progressive logic of history as it moves toward a final reconciliation. Whether latent or actual, this tendency was theorized\u2014ideologized is a better term\u2014by the Second International. To a degree, this argument makes sense. If we recognize the vanity of a hyper-empiricism, we ask ourselves how we are to make sense of the present. Certainly, the present is historical; but that simply implies variation. Something more is necessary: a directionality, a positive goal, an end to (pre-)history. If, then, history has a direction, all those stages which have not yet reached the 'end' are imbued with a kind of negative valence; a dialectic ensues between the present-as-not-yet-future and the future-toward-which-the-present-tends. In a present pregnant with the future, we can avoid the symmetrical errors of opportunism-revisionism and ethical utopianism.\n\nIt can be argued that this tendency\u2014which reifies history into a mechanistic process unrolling with predetermined necessity\u2014is in fact overcome in the works of Marx and Luxemburg. For the present purpose, it suffices to note its presence, even if only latent. Without the qualifications to which I will refer below, it would be a mystification of the actual process of revolution, and would have as a logical consequence a kind of technology of revolution, a means-ends doctrine deducing from the putative inevitability of the revolution a series of techniques to hasten the 'birth-pains'. Its upshot would be the equation of socialism with nationalization and planning, and the neglect of the human relations that are central to socialism's content.\n\nLuxemburg's practical experience of the day-to-day political struggles served to insulate her against the abstractions of theory. Luxemburg refers to 'two reefs' between which the proletariat must chart its course: 'abandonment of the mass character or abandonment of the final goal; the fall back to sectarianism or the fall into bourgeois reformism; anarchism or opportunism' (p. 142, _Militia and Militarism_ ; c.f., also p. 304, _Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy_ ). The same approach occurs repeatedly in her work; the theorist as revolutionary seems to have the task, as theorist, of maintaining at all times the tension between the present and the possible future, avoiding the temptations of the immediate as well as the dreams of a Beyond, leaning now to one side then to the other in order to maintain that _difference_ which is the space within which the movement can develop. Here, one only need to refer to the brilliant critiques of the Blanquist temptation\u2014in _In Memory of the Proletariat Party_ , in the _Mass Strike_ essay, or in _Our Program and the Political Situation\u2014_ and her concomitant stress on the nature and role of the _transitional program_ to see how she avoids the temptation of reifying the historical process. In her analysis of the Polish _Proletariat_ Party\u2014a model of Marxian historical analysis\u2014she writes that what 'separates the Social Democratic position from those of other movements is... its conception of the relationship between the immediate tasks of socialism and its final goals' (p. 179). She then presents a detailed analysis of the programmatic statements of the Party, comparing them with the Blanquist attitude of the _Narodnaya Volya_ and with the programmatic sections of the _Communist Manifesto_. Her conclusion is that 'The ABC's of socialism teach that the socialist order is not some sort of poetic ideal society, thought out in advance, which may be reached by various paths in various more or less imaginative ways. Rather, socialism is simply the historical tendency of the class struggle of the proletariat in the capitalist society against the class rule of the bourgeoisie' (p. 201).2 It is the developing struggle and the tension created by the opposition of classes, not a poetic, ethical, or technological necessity, that makes socialism appear as the _sense_ of the actual class activity of the proletariat.\n\nHistory is the history of the class struggle; and certainly before August 4, 1914, Luxemburg never doubted that that class struggle would end as Marx had predicted. But the immediate tasks of practical politics had to be dealt with, and Luxemburg's manner of dealing with them is innovative and rich with lessons. Faithful to Marx, she asserts:\n\n> Man does not make history of his own volition. But he makes it nonetheless. In its action the proletariat is dependent upon the given degree of ripeness of social development. But social development does not take place apart from the proletariat. The proletariat is its driving force and its cause as well as its product and its effect. The action of the proletariat is itself a co-determining part of history. (p. 333, _The Junius Pamphlet_ )\n\nThe upshot of this is fundamental not only for the theory of history\u2014which must lose any character of predetermined necessity, lose its external and mechanistic character, and become that _experience_ of choice and creation that we live daily\u2014but also for political practice. It means that _class consciousness_ becomes the central focus and locus of revolutionary activity.\n\nLuxemburg notes a fundamental paradox constitutive of the class struggle. She sees that 'the proletarian army is first recruited in the struggle itself', yet that 'only in the struggle does it become aware of the objectives of the struggle' (p. 289, _Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy_ ). This 'dialectical contradiction' (ibid.) cannot be resolved via the Leninist-Kautskyian understanding of class consciousness as the immediate result of the outside influence of the party and its ideology. That is a _technology_ ; it supposes a knowledge of a predetermined historical necessity to be taught by the knowledgeable to the unknowing and preserves the relations of subordination. Luxemburg insists that 'the masses can only form this [revolutionary] will in a constant struggle against the existing order, only within its framework' (p. 131, _Social Reform or Revolution_?). Concretely, this means that\n\n> the solution to this apparent paradox lies in the dialectical process of the class struggle of the proletariat fighting for democratic conditions in the state and at the same time organizing itself and gaining class consciousness. Because it gains this class consciousness and organizes itself in the course of the struggle, it achieves a democratization of the bourgeois state and, in the measure that it itself ripens, makes the bourgeois state ripe for a socialist revolution. (pp. 180\u20131, _In Memory of the Proletariat Party_ )\n\nIt must be stressed that this is not simply a psychological process, a kind of additive learning by the accumulation of bits of experience; Luxemburg's argument only makes sense when we recognize that the conditions in which the proletariat begins the struggle are conditions of which it is the co-creator, and each new phase of the struggle forces new conditions which modify the proletariat objectively as well as subjectively. Thus, despite all her work in economics and her rigid insistence on the centrality of Marx's structural breakdown theory, when it comes to practical politics and its theory, Luxemburg insists\u2014vehemently in her _Antikritik_ , for example3\u2014that economics alone will not bring socialism. History is richer, more complex, and more human than that.\n\nAs a theorist _of_ the class struggle, for whom the development of revolutionary class consciousness becomes the central variable, Luxemburg implicitly throws into question any dogmatism of the 'final goal' and with it any linear view of the evolution from capitalism to socialism. This could be richly illustrated from any of her works, particularly the _Mass Strike_.\n\n> Each new rising and new victory of the political struggle simultaneously changes itself into a powerful impetus for the economic struggle by expanding the external possibilities of the latter, increasing the inner drive of the workers to better their situation and increasing their desire to struggle. After every foaming wave of political action a fructifying deposit remains behind from which a thousand stalks of economic struggle shoot forth. And vice versa. The ceaseless state of economic war of the workers with capital keeps alive the fighting energy at every political pause. It forms, so to speak, the ever fresh reservoir of the strength of the proletarian class, out of which the political struggle continually renews its strength. And, at the same time, it at all times leads the untiring economic boring action of the proletariat, now here, now there, to individual sharp conflicts out of which, unexpectedly, political conflicts on a large scale explode.\n> \n> In a word: the economic struggle is that which leads the political struggle from one nodal point to another; the political struggle is that which periodically fertilizes the soil for the economic struggle. Cause and effect here continually change places... And their unity is precisely the mass strike. (p. 241, _Mass Strike, Party and Trade Unions_ )\n\nThe mass strike, which is a collective class action taking place over time, alters the very conditions which engendered it, at the same time that the new conditions which it creates bring it forth again, now in a different form. The economic continues and develops the political, the political does the same for the economic; and both affect and are affected by the drives _and desires_ of the proletariat. It is interesting that nowhere in the _Mass Strike_ essay does Rosa Luxemburg present an 'economic' analysis in the strict sense of the term; nowhere does she talk, for example, of the role of French capital, of the unequal regional development, or of the class composition of the Russian state. In effect, she shows the inner connection of a series of economic and political struggles over a period of nearly a decade; yet she gives no 'cause' and shows no external 'necessity' for this development and repeatedly insists that 'the mass strike cannot be propagated'. Indeed, _if_ 'Marxism' is taken to be a theory which explains capitalist society on the basis of its contradictory economic infrastructure which necessarily engenders crisis and revolution\u2014and this is, at least in part, the interpretation Luxemburg gives in _Social Reform or Revolution?\u2014_ _then_ it is questionable how 'Marxist' Luxemburg's mass strike theory is.\n\nThe mass strike theory is the theorization _of_ proletarian practice. The interplay of the economic and political struggles that Luxemburg theorizes makes sense only when we realize that both aspects of the struggle are the _results_ of proletarian practice. In effect, the proletariat has seized the role of social subjectivity; and the Other that it confronts is not some eternally fixed form\u2014'capital', the 'bourgeoisie', or the 'state', for example\u2014but rather it is nothing but the result and realization of its own previous action. Luxemburg's insistence that the mass strike represents the 'unity' of the political and economic struggles is based on her dynamic understanding of capitalism as produced in and by the practice of the active class subject. The mass strike is the _sense_ of the movement of differentiation between the political and the economic spheres of action. Capitalism will not break down for economic reasons; its overcoming depends on the action of the proletariat.\n\nLuxemburg's activity during the 1918\u20131919 revolution in Germany reinforces this interpretation while pointing to the question that will be addressed in the next phase of our interpretation, namely, the role of the theorist within the revolutionary process. Her position\u2014which was outvoted at the founding Congress of the KPD (Spartakus)\u2014was based on the recognition that abstract theorization based on normative models of what ought to be is useless and that the theorist must confront the actual practice of the movement, theorizing it in order to show its strengths and weaknesses, possibilities and limits. The positions of the ultra-left, which carried the Congress, made her nuanced analysis of the next tasks of the revolution appear moderate and unappreciative of the tempo inaugurated by 1917; indeed, her speech was greeted, as the stenographic minutes report, by 'weak applause'.\n\nThe opposition to Luxemburg's analysis was based partly on the impact of the Russian success and the lessons that the German revolutionaries thought they could draw from what they knew of Leninism. Luxemburg had already replied to this sort of criticism, pointing out that the Leninist view of the party will not bring socialism because 'it is not based on the immediate class consciousness of the working masses' (p. 288, _Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy_ ). Rather, it transforms even the members of the revolutionary group 'into pure implements of a predetermined will lying outside their own field of activity\u2014into tools of a central committee' (p. 289, ibid.). It makes the 'mass of comrades' into 'a mass incapable of judging, whose essential virtue becomes \"discipline,\" that is obedience to duty' (p. 264, ibid.). While these criticisms of Leninism are certainly valid in the abstract, it is important to recognize that Luxemburg's argument is based in her specific conception of socialism as a process whose nuances were traced above and that each specific situation demands a concrete analysis whose task is to reveal its possibilities and its limits.\n\nIn ' _Our Program and the Political Situation_ ', Luxemburg stresses the difference between bourgeois and socialist revolutions: in the former, 'it sufficed to overthrow that official power at the center and to replace a dozen or so persons in authority', whereas in the latter, 'we have to work from beneath, and this corresponds to the mass character of our revolution' (p. 407, _Our Program and the Political Situation_ ). What had taken place in Germany on November 9 was, in this sense, a bourgeois revolution, despite its formal incarnation in the workers' and soldiers' Councils.\n\n> It was characteristic of the first period of the revolution... that the revolution remained exclusively political. We must be fully conscious of this. This explains the uncertain character, the inadequacy, the half-heartedness, the aimlessness of this revolution. The struggle for socialism has to be fought out by the masses, by the masses alone, breast to breast against capitalism, in every factory, by every proletarian against his employer. Only then will it be a socialist revolution. (396, ibid.)\n\nThe limits of the situation were clearly the unripeness of the masses; the possibilities were those created by the very action of the masses, action which had changed the meaning and reality of their situation, and changed them as well. The dialectic of praxis and its sedimentations that she had pointed to in analyzing the mass strike would have to play its role here. She proposed participation in the vote for a National Assembly, agreeing with Paul Levi's speech which asserted this as a prime task while admitting that of course it would not itself 'make' the revolution. Against the activism of the ultra-left\u2014typified by Gelwitzki's 'Ten men on the street are worth more than a thousand votes'\u2014she spoke of a 'long revolution', of the proletariat's maturation process through a series of struggles, and she criticized the gross alternative of 'guns or parliament', demanding a 'more refined, dialectical choice'.\n\nLuxemburg's position did not carry the Congress; and two weeks later, she and Liebknecht were dead, in the ruins of the revolution. Her last article, 'Order Reigns in Berlin', proposes again a theorization _of_ the struggle; it offers no recipes for future success, but describes only the possibilities and limits of the moment. The limits were partly conjunctural\u2014the need to combat the Ebert-Scheidemann-Noske Social-Democratic regime\u2014but mainly concerned the limited development of proletarian class consciousness. The possibilities were shown by the spontaneous creativity of the Berlin masses, 'the people's instinctive recognition that... the counter-revolution would not rest with the defeat it had suffered, but rather would be bent on a general test of strength' (p. 412, _Order Reigns in Berlin_ ). She insists on the fact 'that from the very beginning the moral victory was on the side of the \"street\"' (ibid.). The stress on the moral character of the struggle, on the _possibility_ that the people recognize that they themselves must take charge of their own liberation, and on the historical character of that struggle as creating meaning and opening possibilities in the present is a strain that runs throughout Luxemburg's life. Socialism remained for her an objective necessity; yet in the crucial theoretical moments, in the theorization _of_ revolutionary practice, it was the conscious, subjective, moral element that came to the fore. Reflecting on the defeat of 1919, she wrote:\n\n> The leadership failed. But the leadership can and must be created anew by the masses and out of the masses. The masses are the crucial factor; they are the rock on which the ultimate victory of the revolution will be built. The masses were up to the task. They fashioned this 'defeat' into a part of those historical defeats which constitute the pride and power of international socialism. And that is why this 'defeat' is the seed of the future triumph. (p. 415, ibid.)\n\nHere, as throughout, the theorist gives no recipes and offers no tactics; she strives to understand, to express, and to crystallize the sense of the actual struggles. Yet she is the same theorist who taught economics at the Party School, and who wrote _The Accumulation of Capital_ , the same person who on countless occasions analyzed the international politico-economic conjuncture in a variety of widely read party newspapers and journals; and she is the self-professed orthodox Marxist, defender of Theory against internal critiques as well as against bourgeois attempts to weaken it through expropriation. How do both sides of this picture hold together?\n\nWe began this part of the discussion with the motto 'only the working class, through its own activity, can make the word flesh'. That formulation is typical. On the one hand, there is the ethical phraseology coupled with the stress on autonomous self-activity of the proletariat. On the other hand, there is that enigmatic 'word', which seems to be pre-given and foreordained. If the Word is already immanent and awaiting only History for its realization, there is present here the danger of the theory _for_ practice and the seeds of a dogmatism. If, however, we understand with Luxemburg the revolution as a process, as the totality and sense of the struggle signified by the mass strike and based ultimately on the dialectic of class consciousness and its objective sedimentations, then the Word takes on the sense of an open self-creation. Then we can avoid the danger of technological recipes for revolution and describe our task with Rosa Luxemburg:\n\n> The essence of socialist society consists in the fact that the great laboring mass ceases to be a dominated mass, but rather, makes the entire political and economic life its own life and gives that life a conscious, free and autonomous direction. (p. 368, _What Does the Spartakus League Want?_ )\n\nThe Word is not that of the theorist, but that of practice. What then is the role and task of the theorist?\n\n## 2.2 The Theorist and Her Practice\n\n> The element of spontaneity plays such a prominent role in the mass strikes in Russia not because the Russian proletariat is 'unschooled' but because revolutions allow no one to play school-master to them. (p. 245, _Mass Strike, Party and Trade Unions_ )\n\nRosa Luxemburg was a party-person. Her loyalty can be seen, for example, in her angry letter to Henriette Roland-Holst concerning the decision of the left-wing of the Dutch Social Democracy to split from the turgidly opportunistic Center and form a new, truly left, party. Even if they were theoretically correct, she argued, separation from the 'party of the working class', however corrupted it may be, is suicide. A split would entail a separation from the life-blood of socialism; it would privilege purity at the cost of participation in the inevitable revolution. A morally Beautiful Soul, entrenched in its purity at the cost of being unable to put that purity into practice, is not Marxist in her eyes. More important than any question of efficacity\u2014though the fate of the Dutch Left, and countless other such pure doctrines, is certainly instructive\u2014is the basic notion of revolutionary theory as a theory _of_ practice, which implies that if one separates oneself from the masses, then theory will become an ideology, sterile, and unable to evolve with the development of the mass struggle itself. In however corrupted a form, the Party represents that focus in which the forms of struggle find their expression, their reflection, and from which they are reflected back to the masses who can thus become conscious of the wealth of possibilities implied in their own actions.\n\nThere is an ambiguity in this view of the party which, as we shall see, corresponds to an ambiguity in the role of theory itself as well as to an ambiguity in the theorist's own social insertion. On a factual level, we know that Rosa Luxemburg's activity within the Polish SDKPiL did not correspond to her view of the function of the German Party; and we know that, after serious doubts and hesitations, she left the SPD to join the newly formed Communist Party of Germany (Spartakus). We can offer conjunctural explanations for both of these choices, and that is sufficient for the present purposes. What is more striking is that she insists that the Party is necessary, but _not_ as a tactical tool for the seizure of power! This is clear in her critique of the Leninist technology of revolution and in her analysis of the German revolution of 1918\u20131919. In the latter, she points to the political onset of the revolution, shows its insufficiency, and insists that the next stage must be the economic combat in which, 'breast to breast', each proletarian becomes aware of his task, becomes conscious of the situation and its demands. Decrees, the seizure of central power, programmatic statements are not enough. 'The masses must learn to use power by using power' (p. 406, _Our Program and the Political Situation_ ). It seems, in effect, that the Party's task is precisely _to avoid the temptation of seizing power_ , the political temptation; it must, as she puts it in the _Mass Strike_ essay,\n\n> give the slogans, the direction of the struggle;... organize the _tactics_ of the political struggle in such a way that in every phase and in every moment of the struggle the whole sum of the available and already released active power of the proletariat will be realized and find expression in the battle-stance of the party;... see that the resoluteness and acuteness of the tactics of Social Democracy never fall below the level of the actual relation of forces but rather rise above it. (p. 247, _Mass Strike, Party and Trade Unions_ )\n\nThe Party, in other words, depends on the level of struggle of the masses for the formulation of tactics; _and_ at the same time, the Party must 'rise above' the actual level of struggle. How can it do both? This is the question of Theory and the challenge for the radical theorist.\n\nThe same problem is posed somewhat differently in the final section of the _Mass Strike_ essay. Discussing the relation Party-Trade Unions, Luxemburg insists that it is the Party which is responsible for the growth of the Unions insofar as the Party, by spreading the 'ideology' of Social Democracy, sensibilizes the masses to their situation. She rejects the Trade Unionists' argument that their numerical strength indicates that they and their policy of compromise should dominate the movement. The movement is more than its organizational forms, and the Party, as the 'spirit' of the movement, transcends its organized mass, and is more than just its organized kernel centered in offices and official functions. But, if this is the case, one has to ask why Rosa Luxemburg put so much stress on the 'legislative' function of the Party Congress, as if she expected this yearly 'assembly of Buddhists and bonzes' to create correct tactics that all must follow. The only explanation seems to be that she saw the Party and its decisions as not simply representing (i.e., theorizing) ongoing practice but also as guiding it, as pushing it forward, giving it a sense of mission and totality. This, however, is an ideological function and supposes a certain\u2014linear\u2014theory _of_ History.\n\nThis ambiguous attitude is present throughout the activity of Rosa Luxemburg. One sees it in her apparently contradictory arguments on nearly every major issue: on the one hand, she insists that parliamentary and trade union struggles are not the way to socialist revolution, showing that their one-sided defensive character is rooted within the game-rules of the capitalist system; on the other hand, she argues that without parliamentary democracy and without free trade unions and their struggles, a socialist revolution would not be possible because there would be no political room for the proletariat to develop its consciousness and no economic space to free itself from the immediate pressure of the struggle for existence within a society based on wage slavery. She argues that bourgeois democracy is an empty hull, a formality which veils the class domination of the bourgeoisie, but she insists that without this formality there would be no possibility for the proletariat to organize and recognize itself as a class; and moreover, she attempts to demonstrate that in the age of imperialism the only party which for objective reasons must support democracy is the party of the proletariat. She insists repeatedly and vigorously that without the economic necessity of the breakdown of capitalism there are no objective grounds for the socialist revolution, but she argues just as emphatically that it is only the class conscious proletariat which, by its own efforts and through its own self-educative experience, can make the system tumble. In her last political struggle, she opposed a hyper-activist politics in favor of a 'long revolution' based on electoral as well as economic struggles; yet she supported the majority decision for armed rebellion, laying down her life in the abortive actions that followed, and justifying this not as a 'mistake' but as a necessary step in the historical development of the proletariat.\n\nIn each of these decisions\u2014and one should point to others, for this theorist of proletarian spontaneity was also probably the only Marxist of her time to understand the importance of a transitional program, to whose necessity she returned time and again; this convinced internationalist did not hesitate to oppose 'Marx' on the national question; this 'bloody Rosa' did not hesitate to criticize what she saw as excesses in the Russian Revolution\u2014the first pole of the opposition seems to represent a theoretical position based on the ideology of Marxism and valid for capitalism in general, while the counter-position, which she actually adopted in the fire of action, is a modification of that theory based on what is in fact its basis: the action of the proletariat as inflecting the social-political configuration of capitalism. The orthodox Marxist that she was is responsible for both poles: the ideology itself must be defended against the opportunistic incursions of those too short-sighted to see the basic necessities to which the fundamental contradiction capital\/labor points; and at the same time, the revolutionary kernel of the theory\u2014that class consciousness, achieved in the struggle within the existing order, is the sine qua non of its elimination\u2014must be kept open. The revolutionary Marxist theorist, in other words, is _both a conservative and a visionary_. Both must be maintained, for the theory without vision becomes a dead weight on the practice of which it was once the expression\u2014that is, becomes an ideology; and vision without analytic content becomes a utopian and baseless wish, a groundless existential activism\u2014that is, also an ideology.\n\nThe practice of Rosa Luxemburg as theorist is a remarkable attempt to maintain both poles of this dialectic of revolutionary theory. For example, in the debate with Bernstein, her defense of economic orthodoxy suddenly gives way when confronted with Bernstein's challenge: what if, suddenly, the power fell into the hands of the proletariat? Her reply is that 'the idea of a \"premature\" conquest of political power... [is] a political absurdity, derived from a mechanical conception of social development, and positing for the victory of the class struggle a _time_ fixed _outside_ and _independent of_ the class struggle' (p. 123, _Social Reform or Revolution?_ ). Bernstein's question is based on an ideological view of a History unrolling independently of precisely the forces that constitute it; it supposes that the theorist is in a position external to the class struggle, and is able to see the totality of history and its necessities _from outside_.\n\nYet, immediately following this defense of a theoretical position situated within and partaking of the class struggle, she returns to the defense of economic orthodoxy, maintaining the necessity of the breakdown theory in purely economic (i.e., external) terms. The implication is that the two go together, that neither alone is sufficient and that each influences the other. One could demonstrate in detail\u2014in her Polish work, in her analyses of the situation in France, or her practical and theoretical attempts to prove the necessity and to prevent the onset of the World War\u2014this two-sidedness of Luxemburg's practical and her theoretical work. If one looks at her speech, _Our Program and the Political Situation_ , one is first of all struck by the fact that she felt the need to introduce a resolution against the counter-revolutionary activities of the SPD government with regard to the Russian situation, and the care with which she documents these interventions. This care for socialist legalism is transferred to the plane of actual considerations with the return to the old Erfurt Program of the SPD, which she attempts to interpret in the spirit of the ongoing revolutionary activity with the manifest aim of linking the activities of the new Spartakus Party to the tradition of Marxism. At the same time, however, one sees the visionary side in her stress on, and recognition of, the creative form taken on by the mass activity: the workers' and soldiers' councils. Both poles are there, as always.\n\nYet, what is striking in the practical activity of this revolutionary theorist is that _she was a failure_. On _every_ central issue\u2014from the revisionist-opportunist debates, through the mass strike, the question of militarism and imperialism, the attitude to adopt toward the war, the tactics to be followed by the KPD in 1918\u20131919\u2014she was refuted. She was refuted on other issues as well\u2014the parliamentary tactic to be followed, the nature and function of the Party, the role of the trade unions, the status of the International. What is important in these refutations is that she was never beaten by other theoretical arguments, but rather she was refuted by the facts, the events\u2014 _refuted by History_. For a Marxist, this is of course the most damning refutation of all!\n\nThere is a further peculiarity in Rosa Luxemburg's practice as a theorist. _She was a dogmatist_ , in the sense already alluded to. She never put Marxism into question, never doubted its teachings for a moment. We know that hers was a creative Marxism, following the spirit and not the letter, open to new developments, as a theory _of_ practice must be. Yet the result of this was _only_ that she was _a dogmatist eternally in opposition_. This is paradoxical; for if I am correct in asserting that she captured the spirit of the movement in her theorization, then the practice of the revolutionary theorist, and the revolutionary theory itself, is cast into doubt by Luxemburg's fate.\n\nSeveral explanations of this paradoxical politics could be advanced. We might say, as with Fidel Castro's famous 1953 speech, that 'history will absolve her'. That, however, implies a linear view of history, seen from a divine or transcendental viewpoint, where progress takes place continually until such time as it eventually reaches its\u2014that is, our\u2014imputed goal. But to say that a Marxist is 'ahead of her time' is to say implicitly that she was in fact incorrect in her analyses; for what distinguishes Marxism from the run-of-the-mill utopians is that it claims to discover the future _within_ the present. The linear view of history, on the other hand, separates History from the class struggle which constitutes it; it is ideological.\n\nWe might say that her analyses, her perceptions of the ongoing and innovative reality, were incorrect either because of a too dogmatic adherence to the Theory or because of an overly optimistic interpretation of the reality. We might say that she chose the wrong points of intervention, that, for example, she should have broken with the SPD as early as 1907\u20131908, or that she should have tried to build a stronger oppositional base within the party, instead of confining herself to journalism, the Party School, and agitational speech-making. We might say that she gave too great credence to the spontaneity of the masses and consequently did not take care to prevent them from falling victim to the illusions of the leadership, that she should have followed Lenin's tactics and used organizational measures to maintain the purity of the Party. We might advance a variant of Michels' oligarchy thesis to explain why a theory that is the reflection of the practice _of_ a vanguard cannot become the reigning position within a mass democratic Party. We could heap up details concerning the manipulation by the party leadership, with which Michels' analyses of the SPD is rich. (Indeed, Luxemburg seems to see something similar to Michels' analysis in the sociological remarks in the last section of her _Mass Strike_ essay.) We might go further to suggest, with Artur Rosenberg, that she ought to have known, as did Lenin in July 1917, when to beat a tactical retreat in order then to choose the right moment for a comeback; or we could refer to Hannah Arendt's interpretation that she was ultimately a romantic and a moralist, not a Marxist at all.\n\nThere are many possible explanations of Luxemburg's practice as a theorist, and its destiny. None is in itself convincing, for each is obliged to introduce external and contingent factors. At best, one says that if Luxemburg was defeated, and if there were contradictions in her position, the source of this lies in the historical terrain on which she stood. The contradictions in her work would thus be due to the immaturity of capitalism and the consequent immaturity of the proletarian movement; her 'defeats' would be seen as only temporary, and the advance of the capitalist contradictions will show the long-term fruitfulness of her position. In other words, one asserts that Luxemburg had the correct theory, but that when she _applied_ this theory to the reality of her times, a distortion emerged because of an inadequacy in the reality itself. But this interpretation fails too. It assumes that if one had a proper understanding of the world, it would be possible to find a proper method to change it. This suggestion neglects a fundamental point, common to the dialectics of Marx and Hegel: that dialectical theory (or method) cannot be separated from its content. Their separation leads to an external, linear view of History, dividing what Marxism sought to unite: theory and practice. We have, therefore, to ask, why a true Marxist\u2014and the above arguments have implied that Luxemburg was faithful to the best elements in Marx himself\u2014was powerless to relate as a revolutionary to the actual practice of her time? And, if the Marxist theory, as theorization of proletarian practice, is unable to command the allegiance of the masses and to effect social change, then perhaps there is something wrong with the theory itself?\n\nIt might be suggested that the assertion of Luxemburg's 'failure' is a kind of pragmatic judgment itself situated outside of the history in which her work was forged. It would seem that the verdict 'failure' was arrived at by superimposing her theory and her practice on an ever-flowing History which was the material base on which her work functioned. This would give her theory and her practice a closed, positive, and ultimately ideological character, instead of presenting it as an open, interrogative theory _of_ practice. Indeed, the motto with which we began this section\u2014that no one can play school-master to the revolutionary proletariat\u2014suggests that our criticism has violated one of her own central precepts. In order to clarify this problem, we will have to look at the ambiguities of revolutionary theory itself by returning to a question that was posed but not yet answered: how is it possible for the theory to be a theory _of_ the actual practice of the proletariat and at the same time to _rise above_ that practice?\n\n## 2.3 Revolutionary Theory\n\n> Far more important, however, than what is written in a program is the way in which it is interpreted in action. ( _Our Program and the Political Situation_ )\n\nThe essential variable in the theoretical and practical work of Rosa Luxemburg is class consciousness. It is no doubt for this reason that at a time when capitalism has revealed itself as a total system seemingly capable of absorbing its economic, social, and political contradictions, we can find her work a congenial source of reflection on our own problems. In a way, this is ironic, for she was too orthodox, too dogmatic, and too much an optimist to have sensed the problems posed by the advent of a scientized, bureaucratic capitalism. She is not concerned with the mechanisms of individual or mass psychology, with problems like reification, alienation, or false consciousness. Yet she has been, and is, a source of fruitful reflection on just these problems.\n\nIn asserting that class consciousness is the essential component, the sine qua non of any revolutionary movement, Luxemburg is certainly no different from many other Marxists. What is distinctive is her analysis of it\u2014or better, the fact that she never makes it into the _object_ of her theorizing, but rather shows its actual appearance as the reflection _and_ critical self-reflection of the open possibilities that proletarian action has created. This central 'ingredient' is never thematized, is always present on the margins, emerging and taking form only to be carried onward and to reappear in a different guise; it is not a thing but the _sense_ and _meaning_ , the _unity_ and _totality_ of the class struggle. It is not external, the product of a theory or the property of the Party; it is both the condition of the possibility of the struggle and the product of that same struggle. We can fix the elements that play a role in determining the present status of class consciousness, talking about the material conditions which determine the forms of consciousness. But this cannot be understood as a cause-and-effect relation, empirically determined. We know, for example, that the same conditions can give rise to very different forms of consciousness and activity; we know, for example, that the economic conditions in which we actually live are given a different human, lived-significance from what appears in the cold official statistics. What is crucial is that the material conditions can only affect the class precisely insofar as the class itself is willing to be affected, that is, _attributes a significance to these conditions_.\n\nAs we read Luxemburg's analyses of the events of her time, and as we vicariously follow her courses on political economy at the Party School, what gives her work a character that is more than just good analysis and 'correct' interpretation is her ability continually to put her finger on the dynamic, the _possibilities_ , the sense and radical _signification_ , the _openness_ of the situation she is describing. Of course, much of what she 'predicted' did not come to pass. But once again this 'failure' cannot be judged from the transcendent standpoint of a History that has now closed off the possibilities and shown in retrospect her judgment to have erred. Her task was not to present ' _the_ ' necessary path to follow, to ' _prove_ ' the correctness of her view inductively and\/or deductively; it was rather to reveal the _sense_ of a situation, to point to its central feature: the fact of its openness. When we judge her a 'failure', we treat her practical political work as a closed thing with only one possible signification; and therewith we fall back into a view of a linear and mechanically unrolling history. _History as lived_ is precisely the openness of interrogation; and Luxemburg's task as practical theoretician was to focus on this openness, on the possible class consciousness with which the situation is rich.\n\nIt would be an oversimplification to assert that since class consciousness is the central variable of the revolutionary process, the task of the theorist is to act always in such a way as to raise the level of that consciousness. For that supposes that we know what class consciousness _is_ ; it implies that class consciousness is a thing and that it grows, somehow, by the addition of little bits of information received from outside itself; and it makes theory into a kind of tool or weapon, preparing the ground for the famous practice of 'substitutionism' whereby the Party as the possessor of the theory substitutes itself for the masses, whose 'correct' consciousness it claims to be. Of course, class consciousness is not indeterminate either. But Luxemburg also avoids the trap of presupposing an external, linear conception of history, which would contain a fixed view of the nature of socialist consciousness. Thus, we find her speaking with confidence and sanguinity of the need for the proletariat to accede to power several times, each time losing it, before it finally learns to establish its new society (p. 123, _Social Reform or Revolution?_ ). And we are struck by her continual return to the historical 'failures' of the movement\u2014lost strikes and revolts, 1848, 1891, the history of May Day, and so on\u2014as being a necessary component in the growth of class consciousness. She does not present a pseudo-materialist explanation of these 'failures', but rather, _refusing to explain them away,_ she gives them a positive significance precisely because of the new dimensions that they open.\n\nYet, we are still confronted with the problem of theory's being at once a theory _of_ the actual movement and at the same time ' _rising above_ ' it. In effect, this turns out to be a false problem once we escape from the external, linear view of History and recognize that our theory is part and parcel of history itself. Theory cannot be simply a static reflection of the present nor an external construct that serves as guide. The reason for this is that the central variable determining the historical process is not fixed but indeterminant, open, changing and creating new significations. _Theory is not and cannot be a system\u2014_ at least not if it is revolutionary theory. And indeed, in what sense can we say that Rosa Luxemburg 'had' a theory? Certainly, she accepted Marxism and even attempted to present a theoretical correction of it in _The Accumulation of Capital_ , and more strongly still in her _Antikritik._ But in her practice, and in the relation of her theory to practice, she never attempted to elaborate a series of positive and determined formulae that could be followed. For example, is the  _Mass Strike_ essay the presentation of a theory? Certainly not in the traditional sense; yet as engaged Marxists we talk about it as such. Why?\n\nIf we look again at the theory of the mass strike, what is central is the shifting forms taken by class consciousness, expressing itself now politically, now economically, now in minor movements or even in quiescence, now in major flare-ups whose cause seems minor in comparison with the enormity of the class' oppression. Moreover, the Mass Strike movement that culminated in the Russian Revolution of 1905 is seen to have its roots in activity in different geographical regions over a period of nearly a decade. The 'Mass Strike' itself, Luxemburg explicitly notes, is a _concept_ , a totalization, the unity of a variety of actions. The historical actors did not consciously sense themselves to be a part of this movement whose unity the theorist presents; they did not follow directives in moving their struggle from one plane to another, one region or issue to another. _Yet the Mass Strike is there._ It is the historical _sense_ of proletarian struggle of the moment, not consciously appended to the individual actions but their latent signification and _meaning_. The theory gives an empirical accounting _of_ the events and thus is a theory _of_ the activity; and at the same time, it ' _rises above_ ' insofar as it unifies and designates the _possibility_ that has been opened.\n\nWhat is the process of revolution, and on what does it depend? Ultimately, it needs a free space, a sort of vacuum that is created and felt in the power relations that have hitherto held the proletariat in bonds. The opening of this space is not the result of theory or the product of class consciousness in the sense that they would function like a kind of Archimedean point from which to move the world. Obviously, there are real events and material conditions which play a role. But when we begin to analyze these events and material conditions, we find that they could play their role only because of their lived, human _significance_. And it is through this notion of _significance_ that theory finds its role as _rising above_. It rises above insofar as it is the integrated _sense and possibility_ of the present whose theory it is. It is this not simply as theory, but as lived experience, insists Rosa Luxemburg, noting that 'in the storm of the revolutionary period, the proletarian is transformed from a provident family man demanding support into a \"revolutionary romantic\" for whom the highest good, namely life\u2014not to speak of material well-being\u2014has little value in comparison with the ideals of the struggle' (pp. 246\u20137, _Mass Strike_ ). The sense and possibility, inherent in the movement and theorized by the revolutionary, are the _difference_ which makes all the difference in revolutionary action.\n\nThe notion of the 'two reefs' between which revolutionary practice must continually navigate can be extended to the paradoxes of revolutionary theory. As a theory of practice within capitalist society, it must remain affixed to its material base; yet at the same time, it must 'rise above' and dwell in the realm of sense, of the difference, of the possible. It must hold together the poles: alone, the first makes history into a mythology, and itself becomes either a shameless empiricism or a technology which treats humans as objects, while the second alone runs the danger of falling into moral utopias, vague hopes, or empty ethical demands. The implication of the motto with which we began this Section is that the stress should _not_ be placed on the mystifying adjectives 'proletarian' or 'revolutionary', but rather, when we are concerned with theory, these concepts should be applied to specify the particular kind of theory for which we aim\u2014binding rigor with openness, critique with self-critique, and necessity which points to possibility. The duality to which I have pointed in the theoretical and practical activity of Rosa Luxemburg is not something that the famous dialectical _Aufhebung_ can take care of in some magical manner. Rather, it is constitutive of the project itself. It must be understood, and it cannot be changed by simplification of whatever sort.\n\nFootnotes\n\n1\n\nPages in parenthesis, followed by the title of an article or pamphlet, refer to the English translation of _Selected Political Writings of Rosa Luxemburg_ , edited by Dick Howard (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971). Although the following analysis refers explicitly to some of her central theoretical essays, my selections for this first English language anthology of her work tried to let her present herself and her political vision in a way that would seem familiar to a young New Leftist.\n\n2\n\nComparison with Hegel, and with Marx, is interesting here. Hegel insists that 'the subject matter is not exhausted in its _goal_ , but in its _being carried out_ ; nor is the _result_ the _actual_ whole, but rather the result along with its becoming' (Preface to _Ph\u00e4nomenologie des Geistes_ , Felix Meiner Verlag, 1952, p. 11). Marx's political translation of this, in the _Communist Manifesto_ , is that 'in the various phases of evolution through which the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie passes', the communists must 'always advocate the interests of the movement as a whole'. This 'translation' by Marx is more 'idealist' than the Hegelian position, for it implies that the Party can know the whole even before the carrying out brings it to fruition.\n\n3\n\nSee especially pp. 36\u20137 and 117 of the original edition of the _Antikritik_.\n\u00a9 The Author(s) 2019\n\nDick HowardThe Marxian LegacyPolitical Philosophy and Public Purpose<https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-030-04411-4_3>\n\n# 3. Marxism and Concrete Philosophy: Ernst Bloch\n\nDick Howard1\n\n(1)\n\nDepartment of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA\n\nDick Howard\n\n_Banality too is counter-revolution against Marxism itself._\n\n( _Das Prinzip Hoffnung_ , p. 322)\n\nIn order to situate Bloch and his  Marxism , it is necessary to move beyond the history of ideas to enter into the concerns and choices of a real movement aiming at changing the  world. This orientation presents a double difficulty that arises from trying to understand a thinker who has been an actor in this movement for the past 70 years and at the same time trying to cast some light on this movement itself. The difficulty is multiplied by the fact that Bloch considers himself not simply a _philosopher_ but a Marxist philosopher for whom Marx's _Aufhebung_ of philosophy proposes the elimination of the _bad_ , contemplative philosophy of the past, but not the destruction of philosophy itself. As a result, the facts of history and the choices made by Bloch cannot explain the movement of his action or thought; it is necessary to philosophize with the philosopher-Marxist in order to illuminate his contribution as it was at the time and as it remains.\n\nBloch's thought is both too orthodox  and too heterodox to enter into standard categories: too engaged in the struggles and the intellectual life of his time and too much a systematic and rigorous philosopher . Faithful supporter, even champion, of the communism of the Third International , he nonetheless remained critical in his theoretical writing when it seemed necessary to him. This earned him criticism from the right  as well as from the left.1 Particularly grating in retrospect are his defense of and deference to Stalin, his unabashed defense of the Moscow Trials, as well as his na\u00efvet\u00e9 toward East Germany (which he left after the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. In spite of the difference between his radically critical theory  and his conformist orthodox  practice, the rhythm of what he called his 'experimental' thought pursued doggedly (if sometimes dogmatically) through his reconstruction of the manifestations of humanity, from the smallest and nearly banal events to the most monumental of the classics, cannot fail to attract critical readers.\n\nBloch was one of those young intellectuals seeking their rebellious way during the _fin de si\u00e8cle_ during which the preparations of the World War were becoming painfully evident. Friend of the Expressionists, participant in the Salon of Max Weber, admirer of the polyvalent philosopher-sociologist Georg Simmel (at whose home he first met a young Hungarian, Georg Luk\u00e1cs, whose  inseparable collaborator he was to remain for more than a decade), Bloch was a pacifist who chose exile in Switzerland rather than resistance in a Germany at war. Like so many others, he was thrown into a turmoil by the Revolution of 1917\u2014the 'Novum', as he would call it in his later systematic language. Returning to Germany after the abdication of the Emperor, his theoretical work reflected the revolutionary struggles that continued until 1923. During this agitated period, he wrote the _Spirit of Utopia_ (1918, revised edition, 1923) and _Thomas M\u00fcnzer as Theologian of the Revolution_ (1921) and published a collection of essays, _Through the Desert_ (1923). That year marked the end of an intellectual epoch: Soviet Russia lived, but in isolation; the revolutionary wave had been stopped before the gates of Warsaw and its counterpart in Germany was soon to be replaced by the Brown Plague, as the Weimar Republic became the symbol of a new order cursed by the sins of its birth.\n\nThe question of the role of the communist  intellectual was posed most immediately and acutely in that same year, 1923, which saw the publication\u2014and the condemnation\u2014of Luk\u00e1cs'  _History and Class Consciousness_ and Korsch's  _Marxism and Philosophy_. The irony of this double condemnation was redoubled by the fact the anathema came from both the right-wing Social Democrats and their communist critics  in Moscow. The parallel but opposed choices of these two great innovators in the tradition of Hegelian-Marxism expressed a dilemma for the politically  engaged intellectual such as Bloch: to conform to the party in  hopes of maintaining some influence on its future or to remain faithful to critical theory  from the hope that reason will finally have its way. Luk\u00e1cs  renounced certain of his key ideas in order to remain faithful to the party  and 'thus' to the Revolution, whereas Korsch  remained faithful to his position, becoming rapidly isolated and without influence on his times.\n\nThe third great 'Hegelian-Marxist' of the post-war period was Ernst Bloch, who never joined the Party  and whose less directly political style and concerns at least partially spared him the attacks and polemics of the new orthodoxy. While I am not convinced that Bloch's choices offer an adequate model, I have come to think that the question itself is ill-posed. What Bloch does offer, and what becomes a central category in his work, is the notion of an _active inheritance_. The critical intellectual would do well to assume  that heritage.\n\nThe first step is to try to understand the spectrum of thought associated with Marxism. That was the challenge of the Hegelian-Marxists in 1923. Bloch's review of _History and Class Consciousness_ illuminates the specificity of his own position. He sees that Luk\u00e1cs'  theory of the proletariat  as the subject\/object of history\u2014a product of capitalism that has the potential to become the agent of its transformation\u2014lends itself to a Leninist vision of the party  as acting in the name and ultimately in the place of the proletariat. Bloch has to show that a different path is possible. Its necessity  became clear to him already in 1924 with the appearance of popular fascism. Bloch recognized that the threat could not be analyzed by appeal to traditional economic  categories or a simplified notion of class consciousness . The old philosophical  categories, and the contemplative stance outside the fray, were not sufficient. In exile, when fascism came to power, Bloch wrote his three-volume _The Principle of Hope_ , a master-work that could never be expected to find a direct party-political translation. He himself became more obedient politically to the Moscow orientation during the war; at its end, he assumed a professorship\u2014his first\u2014in Leipzig, East Germany. He remained a loyal, although critical, citizen after the 1953 workers' uprising, and after suppression of the 1956 revolution in Hungry, moving to the West only in 1961, after the erection of the Wall. Before criticizing these political choices, it will be useful at the end of these reflections to consider the path chosen by another critical Hegelian-Marxist, the founder of the Frankfurt Institute  for Social Research, Max Horkheimer, who chose the West after his return from American exile (whose work will be considered in more detail in the next chapter).\n\n## 3.1 Bases of Bloch's Dialectics: Actuality and Utopia\n\nBloch's long, lyrical review of Luk\u00e1cs'  _History and Class Consciousness_ carried  the telling title 'Actuality and Utopia', as if to underline both his agreement and his criticism of similarities to his close friend. After criticizing Luk\u00e1cs'  thesis, Bloch writes, in italics, that ' _The foundational metaphysical theme of History_ is discovered in another manner, but substantially in agreement, as in [Bloch's] _Spirit of_ Utopia'.2 In the pre-war atmosphere charged with despair, passion, and revolt, where the German Social Democratic Party  was incapable of imagining the future while a revolt of the imagination raged in the various forms of expressionism and irrationalism, Bloch and Luk\u00e1cs  shared the culture of German Idealism  enriched by the desire to _do something_ to change the world . Their shared values appear in the at once enthusiastic but sober introductory pages of Bloch's review, which evoke a world unable to understand itself caught up in a frenetic activism. Bloch then reconstructs the essential contributions of Luk\u00e1cs' book: its use of the concepts of reification  and 'second nature' to analyze the crisis, the absence of a conception of the totality  that could unite the strands of revolt, and Luk\u00e1cs'  attempt to conceptualize the material crisis by returning to the (Kantian) problem of the Thing-in-itself by means of a reinterpretation of Marx's theory of capitalism. In effect, Bloch joins Luk\u00e1cs  in showing how the quantification and reification of social  relations that results from economic  specialization and the division  of  labor hides the qualitative sense of experience that binds together the spheres of life. The lack of a vision of totality  explains the radical nature  contemporary forms of art and morality; to regain the lost unity, the Bloch agrees with Luk\u00e1cs,  a return to Hegel and  Marx is necessary in order to understand the potential creativity of history as the mediation of individual self-consciousness and everyday  experience.\n\nBloch reproduces the path of _History and Class Consciousness_ in his own manner, his own language, and articulated around his own preoccupations. Luk\u00e1cs'  _theory_ of the primacy of the Party  does not seem to bother him, although obedience to its dictates would soon lead Luk\u00e1cs  to abandon much of what Bloch found important in his work. Bloch was not blind to political reality, predicting difficulties with the 'Russians for example, who act philosophically  but think like uncultured dogs'.3 Although they 'are infinitely different from the Revisionists,... they are nonetheless in nearly the same manner separated from the philosophical  heritage , and many of them will say that Marx did not stand Hegel  on his feet in order that Luk\u00e1cs  once again stand Marx on his head'.4 The bourgeoisie  too will misunderstand the reasons Luk\u00e1cs  insists on returning to the fundamental problem of German Idealism \u2014the subject\/object problem\u2014just as they have always done with their own best thinkers.\n\nIn Bloch's reading, the key to Luk\u00e1cs'  theory is that '[t]he instant [Augenblick], which for all others is a conceptual embarrassment, is here raised to the moment of decision, the penetration [Durchblick] into the totality '.5 Bloch reinterprets Luk\u00e1cs'  analysis of the fetishism  of commodities and its relation to the idea that, as a commodity for sale in the marketplace, the proletariat is an object whose self-knowledge would constitute a critique  of bourgeois society  in its totality . In Bloch's reading, this self-knowledge arises from a dialectically open conception of the Now [ _Jetzt_ ] which permits the actor to be 'finally capable of grasping the Now in which we stand'.6 This Now is not identical to what Hegel  called a 'moment' [ _Moment_ ] that stands impoverished and abstract before the consciousness  of the individual who is about to undertake the educational journey into the Absolute. For Bloch, the Now is intersubjective and actively mediated by a we-subject. Read  in this light, Luk\u00e1cs'  analyses of the structure  of capitalism as well as of the paradoxes of German Idealism  open toward a concrete task: revolution as the repossession of man and nature  through the elimination of alienation . Theory implies praxis: 'As soon as the accompanying concept, itself dialectical , is capable of grasping the present, recognizing in it those tendencies from whose opposition it can _create_ the future, then the present is _its_ present, the moment of deepest and most amplified mediation, the moment of decision, the birth of the new'.7 Bloch's argument can be understood as a theory of _constitution_ ; the Now is mediated or constituted by the we-subject  which can only seize itself precisely _in_ its act of constitution and _as_ its act of constitution. The fixed, reified static presence is exploded; the Now is the new, the utopia which is actual to which Bloch's title referred.\n\nAlthough Bloch does not deal directly with Luk\u00e1cs'  politics, the political implications of his critique  are weighty. He draws attention to the author's 'sociological homogenization' which reduces history to a single dimension and a linear structure . But no more than the Now, history is not reducible to a total social  formation closed on to itself, having a singular meaning that is waiting to be seized by the perceiving consciousness . History is a 'polyrhythmic formation'8 which includes the artistic , the religious, the metaphysical , and the social-economic. Luk\u00e1cs'  reduction loses the dianoetic element that is essential to thought. The implications of this reduction appear especially in Luk\u00e1cs'  treatment of nature . Bloch's insistence that a 'subject that could create the surpassing of Nature  as its own reality, has not yet come... is not yet discovered' is an implicit criticism of Luk\u00e1cs'  theory of the proletariat  as revolutionary subject.9 His claim is that 'a social adequation [of subject and object] can be achieved more easily economically than legally or morally, whereas the spiritual [ _das Geistige_ ] can follow another, more devious force, or can take its path more slowly'.10 Luk\u00e1cs'  social reduction was motivated by his desire to avoid both bourgeois positivism  and the moralistic dualism that is its presupposition. But his solution carries the drawback that the leap, the constitution of the actuality of utopia in the present, is replaced by a conceptual mythology based on the subject\/object identical incarnated  in the Party.\n\nThe further implications of the corrective proposed by Bloch appear in his later analysis of fascism. Luk\u00e1cs  moves to closure too quickly; the quest for solutions masks problems demanding analysis, choice, and action. Bloch suggests the need for ' _the weighing down of the totality through the concept of the sphere_ '.11 This vision opens room for the mediated and multi-leveled conception of the Now. 'The sphere', he writes, is 'the expression of different subject\/object levels posited in the process itself,... which expresses and disseminates itself temporally... and also spatially in the positing of the sphere'.12 This conceptual shift could have made it possible for Luk\u00e1cs  not only to seize the Now as a process but also to avoid the reduction which impedes the leap into the new. 'Only one level higher in the Now', exhorts Bloch, 'and beside, above the proletariat appears the obscure mystery of the lived instant [ _Dunkel des gelebten Augenblick_ ], the actuality hidden in it that is victorious against the abstraction which is removed from the subject'.13 Had he carried through such an analysis, Luk\u00e1cs  would have been led to the ' _unconstructible question_ [ _unkonstruierbare Frage_ ]... Respect for the secret of the We which in reality is undiscovered not only for us but thus also for itself; the secret which is the secret of  the world'.14 Posed in this manner, actuality  and utopia would appear finally together; they would be co-constitutive of each other. This, perhaps, is what Marx meant when he suggested that until now the world  has merely possessed in a dream what it needs to consciously demand in reality.\n\nBloch's _interpretation_ of Luk\u00e1cs  suggests the two senses or tendencies contained in _History and Class Consciousness_ ; his _criticism_ points to the chasm between the conception of theory by the two self-proclaimed Marxists which would become most clearly evident in the Hegel  interpretations they each published after the Second World War. In _Der junge Hegel_ (1948), Luk\u00e1cs attempts to paint a nearly Marxist thinker, limited only by the socio-economic and political conditions of the Germany of his time, whereas Bloch's goal in _Subjekt-Objekt_ (1951) is to illuminate the heritage  of Hegel  through a sustained reflection on the tensions which are uneasily maintained within the system of the German Idealist . Where Luk\u00e1cs  attempts to justify Hegel's  theory from within a doctrine he anticipated but could not realize, Bloch could never accept the idea of a complete and finished doctrine which would unlock the meaning of positive reality by applying a proper method. That is why Bloch demonstrates the wealth of the Hegelian reflection through an analysis of the systematic and mature works, while Luk\u00e1cs  concentrates on Hegel's  early critique  of the positivity of institutions , concentrating on his study of political economy that is said to culminate in _Phenomenology of Spirit_. Where Luk\u00e1cs'  analysis is continuous, systematic, and well-rounded, Bloch's disconcerts, leaps, doubles back on itself only to stride forward toward that Now, the spheric totality  opening onto a we-subject . Luk\u00e1cs'  analysis is useful to the reader wanting to know why Hegel  could have been so important to Marx; Bloch's intention is to situate Hegel  in the world , guided by what he calls that 'one-sidedness... which makes one point sharply at the goal'.15 Teaching in the newly communist German Democratic Republic, Bloch appears to identify this goal with Marxism. He specifies however the need for 'attention to instances in the sense that no detail is a priori  designated as inessential is unavoidable for concrete philosophizing'.16 For Bloch, '[a]ctuality is _nominalism_ , _not conceptual realism_ ; but a nominalism all of whose moments and details are held together by the _unity of the objective real-intention_ , founded by the _utopian unity of the goal_ '.17 The contrast with Luk\u00e1cs  appears again in a short essay in which Bloch stresses Walter Benjamin's  'sense for the incidental' as 'that which so unbelievably lacked in  Luk\u00e1cs'.18\n\nThe contrast of Bloch and Luk\u00e1cs  points to the ambiguity of the legacy  of Hegelian-Marxism. In contrast to Korsch , Bloch and Luk\u00e1cs  remained true to the  party of the proletariat, refusing what they saw as the isolated purity and abstract moralism of a truth with no objective referent. Both also justified their fidelity with reference to the threat of fascism. Although he claimed that much of his work was 'Aesopian', Luk\u00e1cs  strained to recover the latent utopian passion that Bloch discovered in _History and Class Consciousness_. For his part, Bloch remained faithful to his utopian vision of the Now, the spherical totality , and the unconstructible question; but he could not ignore historical challenge of rising fascism. His analysis published in _Heritage of Our Times_ (1935) attempts, not always successfully to avoid the temptation\u2014to which Luk\u00e1cs  succumbed\u2014to conflate the theoretical analysis with the concrete reality. That is the trap for Hegelian-Marxists who pursue theory as if it were itself a form of praxis and fall victim to the apparent practical necessity  imposed by political realism.\n\n## 3.2 Confrontation with Fascism and Development of the Dialectic\n\nThe 1923 was not only the date  of the appearance of Hegelian-Marxism in the books of Luk\u00e1cs  and Korsch ; it was also the year of the final failure of Marxist revolution in Germany, and it was also the year of Hitler's  failed putsch in Munich. Never accepted by the radical Left and Right , the republic established at Weimar appeared to be a merely formal democracy  which was daily contradicted by the social conditions. Bloch despised the timid republican bourgeoisie , be it Centrist or Social Democratic; and he supported the Communists , but without joining them. He would say ironically, after Hitler's  ascension, that everything they did was correct\u2014simply that they neglected the essential. With a small group of friends\u2014among them Benjamin , Adorno , Kracauer, Weill, and Brecht \u2014he attempted to illuminate that polyrhythmic and spherical Now where the totality  in its futurity opened itself. While chapters in the  _Heritage_ concern the arts, culture, philosophy, and quotidian life, the philosophical-political thesis of the book is drawn in a short essay, 'Noncontemporaneity and the Obligation to its Dialectics'.\n\nBloch's analysis begins from apparently orthodox  economic  premises:\n\n> As opposed to the proletariat, the middle class does not in general participate directly in production but enters it only with intermediary activities, with such a distance from social causality that the formation of an alogical space can occur without obstacles, a space in which wishes and romanticisms, primal drives and mythicisms come onto the stage.19\n\nWhat holds for these middle classes holds, mutatis mutandis, for the peasantry. That 'alogical space' is not nothing; its contents must be analyzed. The concrete articulations of that 'polyrhythmic formation' which is the present face of lived-history must be studied. The economic  analysis is only a beginning; it creates only the possibility for the emergence of novelty beyond the sphere of material  necessity.\n\nBloch begins from a political fact. 'Were misery to affect only contemporaneous men, even if they were from different social positions, backgrounds and consciousnesses , it could not drive them to march in such different directions, especially not so far backwards'.20 Proletarianization, impoverishment, and the heavy cloud of uncertainty for their future might be expected to drive the middle strata and even the peasantry to the Communists  or at least to the Social Democrats. If this did not occur, argues Bloch, it is a sign that although they tend to become commodities like everything else in the reified world of capital, there remain _real remnants of a past which is still present_ to which they can actively relate their situation. What drives these people is not simply a false consciousness  or the effects of capitalist  or fascist  propaganda. Particularly in Germany, where the bourgeois revolution  remained unrealized until 1918, and where therefore capitalism was overdetermined by modes of production and consciousness  that never underwent the leveling effects of the world  of commodity capitalism, these remnants could play a role. Driven, hounded, threatened, these remnants can be mobilized to seek anchorage at the port closest to what they perceive as home.\n\nIn Marx's analysis of the contradictions of capitalism, the antagonism between the forces and the relations of production is the key to revolutionary upheaval. The revolutionary project of the proletariat is inscribed in the conditions of capitalism. Its activity is determined by its everyday experience  of the limits, artificiality, and irrationality imposed on its free activity. What it seeks is a future already present but yet dependent for its actualization on its own conscious  revolutionary activity. The contradiction described in this (Hegelian-Marxist) manner is what Bloch calls a _contemporary contradiction_. Bloch  contrasts this Marxist vision to other contradictions which make themselves felt within the social totality ; these are _non-contemporary contradictions_. They  are part of the polyrhythmic Now, structures  of the sphere which presents the actuality of utopias , not all of which are progressive. Marx himself recognized the existence of such non-contemporary  contradictions, for example, in the Introduction to Marx's study of _The German Ideology_ when  he stresses the existence of other modes of production alongside the dominant one; similarly in the _Eighteenth Brumaire_ Marx subtly analyzes the behavior of the peasantry in terms of their remembrance of the French  Revolution and their role in the Napoleonic empire. Bloch's task is to thematize these contradictions in terms of the Now, as mediated by a we -subject.\n\nStrata such as the peasantry, the petite-bourgeoisie, or their petty-bureaucrat descendants live their present in the mode of the past and envision their future through the distorting mirror of capitalism with its exploitation and rationalization of human  relations. They feel that something is wrong but they don't know what it is; their lives seem to go on with no exit or future. Their ideals\u2014duty, honor, _Bildung_ \u2014are no longer accepted; their idols\u2014the house, land, the people, or nation\u2014have been crushed under the leaden foot of capitalism or dissipated in senseless consumerism. They live a diffuse _ressentiment_ which is unable to give itself a name, to crystallize a sense of self, or to understand its place in the world . Bloch calls this _ressentiment_ a 'dammed-up rage' [ _gestaute Wut_ ]; it is a _subjectively non-contemporary contradiction_. This  frustrated energy is not a form of 'false consciousness' whose basis is economic ; it reflects 'the _objective_ non-contemporary  contradiction which results from the continued effectiveness of older relations and forms of production, no matter how thwarted, as well as older superstructures. The _objective_ non-contemporary  reality is far from and foreign to the present; it includes the _declining remnants_ as well as, above all, the _unutilized past_ which has not yet been \" _aufgehoben_ \" into the realities of commodity capitalism'.21 Such objectively non-contemporary contradictions  are not solely due to the specific circumstances of German capitalism; they point to an incompleteness inherent in the structure  of capitalism itself. In Bloch's political ontology , their existence plays a crucial structural role permitting the possibility of a critical-utopian philosophy.\n\nThe two forms of non-contemporary  contradictions can be used by capital to turn the rebellion, _ressentiment_ , and discontent of the concerned strata toward other goals and activities. This must be taken into consideration by the strategy and tactics of the revolutionary proletariat. Bloch suggests the need to take seriously and articulates the futurity contained in _every_ form of contradiction . In the case of the contemporary contradiction , a future is already present but repressed by the capitalist  relations. This present-future is the mediation that makes necessary the politics of revolution. In the case of the non-contemporary  contradictions, the 'unutilized past' that was not eliminated becomes crucial precisely because it was never realized in its own time.\n\n> They are thus _ab ovo_ contradictions of unfulfilled intentions, divisions within the past itself: not simply in the present, as the divisions of the contemporary  contradictions, but equally running throughout the entirety of history; so that here hidden contradictions, namely the still unutilized contents of intention, can in this case themselves join in the rebellion.22\n\nThe Now is thus full with a utopian present-future _and_ with a future that is always-already present. Their unification in a revolutionary movement would be the justification of Marx's well-known assertion that the proletarian revolution will be the final revolution, the repossession in reality of what humanity has until now possessed only in a dream.\n\nThis philosophical  analysis implies choices for practical politics. Bloch insists that it is only the contemporary  contradiction, the proletarian struggle against the domination of capital, which can animate the non-contemporary  contradictions. In other words, the struggle of the proletariat with capital remains primary.\n\n> Even the possible full ripening of the specifically unutilized elements of the past can never on its own leap forward to a quality which we do not already know from the past. The most useful help for such a leap will be an alliance that frees the still _possible future_ from the _past_ by positing the co-existence of both in the present.23\n\nThe proletarian struggle in turn animates the non-contemporary  contradictions positively and negatively; it awakens _ressentiment_ among some, and at the same time it has the potential to join with the proletariat in a common struggle. In order to correctly understand the multiple antagonisms tearing at the social fiber, Bloch insists that even the contemporary contradictions  are, at least in part, driven and activated by the same content as the non-contemporary ones. What is lacking from the point of view of non-contemporaneity is, at least in part, the same relations that the proletariat has been seeking in the present. The positive desire in the struggle of the proletariat that points to the future is precisely what has never yet been realized in the past: full human  being , non-alienated labor \u2014in utopian parlance: paradise on earth. 'In the revolt of the reified negativity of the proletariat there exists, in the last analysis, the _always non-contemporary_ material presence of a contradiction which rebels against the wholly non-released \"productive forces\"'.24 The principal contradiction in the present of course remains the (Marxist vision of the) clash between the forces and relations of production, the opposition of the proletariat and the capitalist . That is why Bloch assumes without further ado that the struggle must be conducted under the hegemony of the proletariat. But at the same time, in that Now where the we-subject  breaks into a spherical, polyrhythmic history, the dialectic of the struggle must include all of the contradictions which comprehend and compose the totality . To have neglected this was the root of the Communist  Party's  inability to mount a coherent counter-movement to Hitler's  fascist  brown-shirts.\n\nThe analysis of the contemporary and non-contemporary  forms of contradiction is found in a collection of essays, _Heritage of This Time_ , published in 1935. The reader is struck by the fact that it is not only from the past and in the ideological  sphere that Bloch  finds his inheritance . Bloch also attempts to reap this harvest through the appropriation of the modern\u2014in the forms of Kracauer's analysis of the newly developing stratum of employees in offices, the philosophy of Bergson , in modern physics, or in Brecht's  theater. He once again separates his philosophical  outlook from that of Luk\u00e1cs , for whom the heritage  would only be the attempt to take over the conquests of the radical bourgeoisie  in order to put them, _immediately_ , at the service of the proletariat.25 Bloch's utopian counter-suggestion is that '[t]he foundation of the non-contemporary contradiction  is the unfulfilled fairy tale of the good old times, the unresolved myth of the mysterious old being or  of nature ; one finds here and there not simply a past which, from the standpoint of the class, still lives, but also a past which has not been materially realized'.26 This suggests that, for Bloch, to inherit is not to receive from the past; it is rather to _pay the debts_ of the past in order to receive the present. As long as the past remains as a debt, the present will never be free.\n\nThe question how to inherit a legacy  faces those who claim to be the heirs of Marx. Bloch is perhaps more chary than he need be. When the expressionist poet Gottfried Benn expressed his allegiance to the Nazi regime, the modernist sensibility with which he had been associated came under attack. From his Moscow exile, Luk\u00e1cs replied  with a defense of classical bourgeois realism, setting off the _Expressionismusdebatte_ in which Bloch took part. His contribution was a scintillating refutation of the platitudes of narrow, insensitive Marxist orthodoxy. While he criticized mordantly the 'all too great progress from utopia  to science' and suggests the need to add to what he calls Marxism's 'Critique of Pure Reason' a 'Critique of Practical Reason', he does not, however, take the further step that would ask for a 'Critique of Judgment'. That would have demanded reflection on what, in his own terms, would be a sort of subjective non-contemporaneity that would reveal a 'negative' legacy  of Marx.\n\nAlthough it is the task of specialists to evaluate Bloch's influence during his years in Leipzig, his teaching in T\u00fcbingen, where he continued to lecture in his 80s, arriving at his lectures in an old Citroen 'deux-chevaux' driven by one of his students , brought him to the attention of the New Left. Representing what he called the 'warm stream' within Marxism, Bloch's influence rivaled with the 'critical theorists'  of the Frankfurt School. Positioned as heirs of Marx who refused a self-imposed tutelage to orthodoxy (which Bloch called the 'cold stream'), Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno  had returned soberly to West Germany after completing their _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ whose pessimistic conclusions led Horkheimer to integrate his work in the establishment of the new order while turning to Schopenhauer's philosophical  pessimism  in the place of his previous critical stance. As with Bloch, so for Horkheimer, circumstances played a role in his choices (which were not those of his partner, Adorno ). As philosophers , both had set out to develop a critical theory in the tradition inaugurated by Marx. Their own legacies  bear contrast.\n\n## 3.3 Bloch Versus Frankfurt: Dialectics of Labor and the Principle of Hope\n\nAs the continual use of  the term 'critique'  in his titles or subtitles indicates, Marx's theory was above all critical. It was neither contemplative philosophy nor positive presentation of the world  as it is. What then was its relation to science, whose progress during the second half of the nineteenth century seemed to promise a new and better world? Engels and many of the Social Democratic followers of Marx felt the temptation; so too did Marx, who was flattered by a Russian review of _Capital_ , which  treated Marx's _opus_ as a shining illustration of the scientific method. Engels' _Anti-D\u00fchring_ , written at Marx's request, became canonical, particularly when its chapter titled 'Socialism: Utopian and Scientific' was published as a separate pamphlet in 1880. The science emphasized by the founders was said to be critical because it was 'materialist' as well as 'historical'. The difficulty with this vision became evident in the years leading to the outbreak of world war; as Rosa Luxemburg  had seen, there was no place for political action in a world of material necessity ! The praxis-oriented critical dialectics gives way to a theory of science which reintroduces a dualism that separates the subject from its object; theory is the recognition of necessity  rather than its  critique.\n\nThe early Frankfurt School revolted against this materialist devolution of Marxist dialectics. Although he was the close friend of some of the most original collaborators among the participants, Bloch never shared the style or the goals of the School's director, Max Horkheimer. It is tempting to hone in on shared themes, such as Theodor W. Adorno's  idea of 'exact phantasy', 'non-intentional truth', or his use of 'historical images' such as the 'bourgeois interior' as a key to understanding the radical implication of Kierkegaard. Such themes could be underlined in Walter Benjamin's  use of 'dialectical  images' in his unfinished study of the Paris of the nineteenth century, but these incursions into the intellectual history of ideas distract from the concern to read Bloch in the light of the need to understand the political potential of Marx's vision of theory  as critique. The early work of Max Horkheimer provides a more useful point for contrast and comparison.\n\nThe challenge is to restore to Marxism its nature  as a critical theory  capable of analyzing the present as at once a part of a multivalent material world and as an actor always already in the process of changing it. What Horkheimer calls 'traditional theory' is produced by the theorist  separated from the object who either contemplates the world  passively or attempts to manipulate it to realize goals that are external to the object itself. For its part, a 'critical theory'  overcomes that separation by finding in its object itself an intentionality that opens to a future, and in that way offers a meaningfulness to the alienated world. This is what Marx aimed to produce in _Capital_ : an analysis  of capitalism  which points beyond its object to the socialist future. The critical  theorist  accounts for the direction and the structure  of theory on the basis of a study of its material object. The traditional philosophical  goal of realizing the autonomy of thought is replaced by the recognition of thought as imbricated in its object.\n\nThe elaboration of the mediations between the material world and the historical  subject was the project to which the Frankfurt School devoted many of the pages of its journal, the  _Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Sozialforschung_ , which are rich with theoretical-cultural analyses of such phenomena as the family, mass culture, bourgeois culture, literature, and the arts  with their implications and tensions, as well as with reconsiderations of the critical potential of 'traditional theory'. While often fascinating as cultural and intellectual history, revealing the tensions between a thinker and his epoch as well as strains within an individual biography, these analyses are disappointing in one fundamental aspect: it is never clear _who_ is doing the analysis, how the author came to pose _these_ questions, and how the subject is practically implicated in the object analyzed. Horkheimer shows himself often to be aware of this problem. Yet the best he can offer are vague references to the 'imagination' of the critical theorist , an animating  'phantasy', or even an 'engagement'. He insists that the truth of the analyses can only be demonstrated after the revolution  which they call for and seek. While this is consistent with his program, it is no more satisfying than the historical-materialist  position that argued that the growth of capitalism which socializes the world  of production permits the theorist  to comprehend the direction of history even though that process is realized by the objective logic of capitalism which works behind the back of the active subjects.\n\nBloch's approach to the dialectical  relation of subject and object is most clearly presented in his interpretation of Marx's 'Theses on Feuerbach' in _The Principle of Hope_. He insists that Marx surpasses traditional contemplative philosophy by demonstrating that concrete _labor_ is the basis for understanding of the world . He points out that the ruling class in capitalism seeks to legitimate its domination by emphasizing the role of labor, producing not only an ethical vision of labor but also _logos_ of practical labor as central to the self-understanding of the human  species. Of course, the entrepreneur and his ideology  portray labor in a form which is ideological , passive, and contemplative. Nonetheless, a rupture is introduced, from which the tensions and progress of German Idealism  emerged. This is what makes Marxian materialism radically different from that of Democritus whose contemplative approach is closer to a Plato . For Marx practical labor is conceived as a _real_ relation between subject and object. As a result, the idea that the empirical world exists independently of the subject is impossible; the material world is always mediated by, and results from, human  labor. The priority of being  over consciousness  can only be understood insofar as working on an object does not in any way eliminate that object, but rather marks it, opens it, mediates it. This explains the ontological  source of what Bloch had called the always present non-contemporary  contradictions.\n\nThis kind of understanding of labor is lacking in Horkheimer. Horkheimer does insist that Nature  is independent and irreducible to thought. But his theory of 'mimesis' does not pose the mediations, even the psychological  ones, that would be needed for concretization.27 Lacking a theory of labor, Horkheimer's philosophical  anthropology\u2014like that of Feuerbach before him\u2014is incapable of understanding and working out its relation to the philosophical  heritage . In the case of Feuerbach, a 'true humanism' is elaborated through the critique  of that heritage  which permits the emergence of the 'true' by denouncing the 'false'. For his part Horkheimer presents at first a brilliant series of antinomical analyses of past and present tendencies in theory before lapsing into a pessimism  which gives way to a reactionary politics and a skeptical theory. Thus, in the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ (written with Adorno ) as well as his study of the _Eclipse of Reason_ , Horkheimer develops his critical analysis with reference to the concept of Reason which, for traditional philosophy\u2014for example, in Kant's  philosophy of history\u2014, constituted the hope for the humanization of the world  before it went astray and become a rationalization used in the service of domination. The problem is not that Horkheimer neglects the socio-economic base of this degeneration, nor that his analyses are superficial or uninteresting; the root of his difficulties lies in his critical program in which the engagement and the praxis of theory are replaced first by an apocalyptic vision of history (expressed in his 1942 essay on the 'Authoritarian State')  and then by a flat and cold rational pessimism . The active heritage  to whose need Bloch pointed is neglected. At best, Horkheimer draws from his pessimism  a lingering regret for the conquests of bourgeois individualism  which, he suggests but doesn't adequately explain, was capable of saving itself from the reification  of both Reason and social relations.\n\nIn order to inherit from the tradition, including those aspects of it that have been suppressed for socio-political reasons,28 thought must be conceptualized according to the model of the mediation of the subject\/object by labor within precisely that polyrhythmic formation which is history. Horkheimer's attempt to inherit from the 'critical theory'  of Marx tries to take seriously the degeneration of Marxism at the hands of its epigones; that is its virtue. Horkheimer's attempt at critique  from within the Marxian movement falls flat and ultimately inverts itself because his conception of reason is either based on the traditional Enlightenment  view or appeals only to the engagement of the imagination and phantasy of the critical theorist . He  has missed the fundamental point: correlative to the sociological leveling that Bloch criticized in Luk\u00e1cs , Horkheimer can be said to engage a leveling either in terms of a flattened-out Reason or a flight from those implications toward a phantasy which, ungrounded in concrete activity, tires after a while and seeks a secure niche from which criticism (but not action) can be undertaken. Because he never gets to what Bloch presents as the core of Marxism\u2014the theory of labor\u2014Horkheimer's account of the degeneration of the heritage  is external and flawed.\n\nComparison of Bloch's sketches from the history of philosophy with those of Horkheimer shows that Bloch's theory is activated by different concerns. Both consider the role of the social-historical conditions in the formation of thought, and both characterize that thought in terms of its internal contradictions and tensions. Bloch's presentation is structured  in terms of a futurity which is activated by the non-contemporaneity of thought. This is not a vision of the future for which the theorist  wishes or fantasizes about. Bloch's point is that it is internal to the chain of thought under consideration. There has been too much change in the world , he argues, from the conquest of Rome to Genghis Kahn to the modern fascist  barbarians. 'But _salutary_ change, not to speak of achieving the _Kingdom of Freedom_ , comes about only through salutary knowledge, accompanied by ever more precisely controlled necessity '.29 This knowledge is no more a technical theory for practice than it is a contemplative philosophy. Bloch's interpretation of the famous 11th 'Thesis on Feuerbach' insists on the _task_ which it poses to philosophy: 'The final perspective of changing the world  which Marx sought to formulate is illuminated here. Its idea\u2014the knowledge-conscience of every praxis in which is reflected the Totum which is still afar\u2014doubtless demands just as much innovation in philosophy as it creates the resurrection of nature'.30 This 'innovation' and 'resurrection' are both structured by  the arguments that have been developed here: through the polyrhythmic Now, manifesting the remnants of a not-yet resolved  task, and mediated by the concrete labor of the plurality of social  beings. Although they are present, these elements are only active insofar as subjects are capable of taking them into their possession.\n\nHorkheimer's phantasy remains external to its object, unmediated by it, and at best grounded by that search for individual autonomy which was the goal of the classical German idealists . Bloch, on the other hand, insists on taking a position. In his major work, _The Principle of Hope_ , he does not spare the reader, citing various polemics of Marx against the so-called true socialists whose self-satisfaction given by a vague sentiment of love for humanity is pilloried as impractical, useless, and even harmful. For Bloch, their modern equivalents cannot even refer to this kind of sentimentalism: their 'love' is seen as only a mask for an anti-communism which dares not reveal its true face. Bloch insists on his position. 'Without choosing a party  in love, without a very concrete pole of hatred, there can be no true love; without the _party standpoint_ in the revolutionary  class struggle, there is only an idealism  turned backwards instead of praxis aiming forward'.31 This affirmation is shocking to a reader who has engaged with Bloch's thought while being  himself engaged politically. His position repeats the arguments he used at the time of the Moscow Trials. One such reader rooted in the New Left  was Oskar  Negt32 who favored Bloch's engagement over the purity of the Frankfurt School  which condemned both the communists  and the fascists  only to find themselves isolated, adopting an apolitical politics coupled with an often uncritical acceptance of the methods of American social science. This reality is not of itself a justification of Bloch. It simply points out that it is not sufficient to criticize his politics as if his choices could be understood in isolation from their time. It is not sufficient to suggest that a theory that justifies bad politics is not worth examining in greater depth.\n\n## 3.4 The Problem of Our Heritage\n\nWhat can be said today about  the concrete philosopher  who was so aware of the nuances of the Now who finds himself opting for a political practice which fails to recognize what seem today patent injustices. Bloch's goal is the unification of reason and hope, the human  and the natural, the dream and reality. His project is complicated by the fact that each pole is itself double and incomplete. Reason, humanity, and the dream are each determined by what they have been, but each has been what it was only by virtue of a 'not-yet' ( _Noch-Nicht_ ) which drags it, pulls it, works on it. And, by the mediation of concrete phantasy whose model is labor , the same is true of hope, nature , and reality, which are also doubly dynamic and incomplete. To seek their unification is not to return to the quest for that philosophy of identity  which was the summit of German Idealism . The point is that it is only through this unification that each element can become fully what it potentially is already. Bloch's interpretation of the 11th Feuerbach Thesis spoke of the 'resurrection of nature'. The point is not that nature  will become identical with humanity, nor that humanity will explain itself and its destiny when it understands nature . There is an 'intentionality' which is specific to the object itself (which was recognized, before Benjamin  and Adorno , by those philosophers  who are treated by Bloch as the 'Left Aristoteleans'). The violation of this objective intentionality is precisely the foundation of all  alienation.\n\nFrom this point of view, Bloch's theory is related to a long mystical tradition whose influence on Hegel  and German Idealism  was considerable. This point is argued in J\u00fcrgen  Habermas' essay, 'A Marxist Schelling', in which Bloch's 'Philosophy of Nature' serves as the fulcrum for the exposition and critique . Nature  for Bloch is not something which has always been; its essence is not something in the past ( _ein Gewesenes_ ) to which one could return, but is rather out there, on the horizon, as a Not -Yet. The utopian dimension is anchored in  nature itself which, mediated by thought in the form of labor , gives a presentiment of the new that has not yet been. To bring out the specificity of Bloch's approach, Habermas compares utopian thought with speculative thought in order to suggest that Bloch opens a third alternative. Utopian thought considers its analyses as refutable, but does not expect that reality will offer their definitive proof because praxis always goes further than the theory that anticipates it. Speculation, on the other hand, wants to continue its philosophical  quest, looking to reality only for its proof, never for its refutation. Bloch's position would be the unification of the two attitudes: 'The guarantee of salvation falls away, but the anticipation of salvation preserves certainty for itself, saying: it will work thusly or not at all, all or nothing will be achieved, the finally fulfilled hope according to the anticipated images of fulfilment\u2014or chaos'.33 This is the teleology of the Not-Yet.  It depends for its validity ultimately on an ontology , but one which is consistent with Marx's project (although not necessarily that of the Marxists).\n\nHabermas' approach to nature  and its potentialities, which is central to the Blochian position, leads to a critique  of technology  as we know it. Whereas Marx tended to view technology  as a neutral factor, Bloch sees clearly\u2014as does the Frankfurt School, although from a different theoretical base\u2014that modern civilization is based on a domination of nature  which cannot help but turn back against it, deflecting its aims, needs, and hopes. The 'resurrection of nature' for which Bloch calls and which would be achieved by socialism  would permit a 'co-productivity' of man and nature . Similarly, in the sphere of art, as opposed to Adorno , for example, who saw the truth of art revealing itself in its intrinsic contradiction which illuminates the real itself, Bloch insists on the utopian dimension which must be actively inherited. This leads him neither to despair nor to expect the return to a paradise once possessed but somehow lost. Bloch's concern is with the completion of what throughout human and natural  history has been seeking its expression and realization without having the power or mediations that would permit such a completion. This realization is the New; it is always active as a force, even though it has never existed as such. The critical philosopher  permits it to name itself, to recognize itself for what it is; he is the Socratic midwife that traditional philosophers  invoked but could not conceive because their attention was turned backward, to what was rather than toward what has not yet been. Bloch's message is that the philosophical  concern with essences, _das Gewesene_ , 'what has become', must be transformed from within.\n\nDespite the often brilliant results to which this standpoint leads, its political translation poses problems. Habermas suggests that '[a] utopia  which understands the dialectic  of its own realisation in a utopian manner is in fact not so concrete as it pretends to be'.34 He adds elsewhere that it is striking that Bloch concentrates on deciphering theories of law rather than actual legal structures , theories of the state rather than the state itself.35 His point is that a theory concentrating on the Not -Yet, the utopian in the present, remains still a prisoner of that reality which it seeks to surpass. The problem was posed already by Hegel . Bloch's attempt to protect Marxism against vulgar utilitarianism or pragmatism  goes too far in its insistence on the need for philosophy; it neglects the other, objective side of the critical intention that guided Marx. Based on the idea that the transition to socialism  is not the result of a linear material progress but rather of a qualitative leap, and stressing the importance of the historical, 'spherical' Now at the same time that he seeks to ground philosophically  its understanding, Bloch loses the historical-empirical side of Marxism. In seeking to inherit the New actively, in the here and now, Bloch's theory has the paradoxical result of losing the everyday in which it is to be based. Thus, concludes Habermas, however concrete it may seem, Bloch's theory remains in the last analysis abstract and speculative.\n\nHabermas' critique neglects  a fundamental point which underlies the entire Blochian edifice. Bloch offers a double account of the origins of that critical phantasy which inhabits not only the few who are its theorists , but which is in fact possible and often actual in the many. The analysis of the temporality of contradiction which is the manifest source of radical phantasy is itself grounded in the temporality of the Now; and this latter is ontologically structured  by the concept of the Not-Yet. Bloch's  stress on the 'obscure mystery of the lived instant', on the 'sphericality' of the Now, and on what he calls the 'unconstructible question' is not poetry or speculative mysticism. It is a claim about what theory can do; it tries to understand the tasks and insertion of theory in the world. His paradoxical task is the formulation of an _open system_ , an _Experimentum Mundi_ , as the title of his 1975 systematic summation calls it. This apparently contradictory task is the only one possible in a world that is not clear and translucent and whose significance is not available to the casual glance. What can be resurrected is not what was but rather only that which existed in the form of a Not- Yet. Critique  is not negation but anticipation.\n\nWhat can be inherited from Bloch is no more than what he too sought to inherit. Reading him helps learn to see the tradition through his eyes, and watching him function in his own present opens again the desire to inherit, to pay the debt of the past, and redeem it. Bloch's work and his legacy  suggest the reason that critical thinkers are driven from politics to philosophy and then back again. That oscillation will go on; neither pole can be abandoned, for in a sense neither is possible without the other. Bloch's utopia  is not abstract, nor is it the project of the political thinker separated from or guiding the proletariat. In a sense, Bloch's political choices are an accidental result of his political thought. The paradox is only apparent for, in the last analysis, Bloch's philosophy is his politics; the philosophy of the Not -Yet, of the polyrhythmic and spherical Now, itself designates a politics, demands the practice of inheritance , and offers guidelines for practical analysis. Bloch's heirs can recognize the very motives which drive them to praxis and to theory in this conception of the unity of philosophy and politics. As in the many unforgettable vignettes in his own work, Bloch too is brought into present by those who continue to read him.\n\nFootnotes\n\n1\n\nSee, for example, Hellmuth G. B\u00fctow, _Philosophie und Gesellschaft im Denken Ernst Blochs_ (Berlin: Ost-Europa Institut, 1963), which offers an unsympathetic account written from the standpoint of the Communist Party orthodoxy shortly after Bloch had chosen to remain in the West after the construction of the Berlin Wall. From a standpoint reflective of the New Left, see Festschrift published for Bloch's 90th birthday, _Ernst Blochs Wirkung_ , which contains a useful historical documentation as well as helpful commentaries. An earlier version of the present chapter appeared in that volume.\n\n2\n\n'Aktualitaet und Utopie. Zu Luk\u00e4cs' \"Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein\"', in Ernst Bloch, _Philosophische Aufs\u00e4tze_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969), p. 619. Bloch told me in conversation that his _Spirit of Utopia_ was as indebted to Luk\u00e1cs'  collaboration as was _History and Class Consciousness_ to his own thought. He also mentioned that Luk\u00e1cs'  heirs had recently discovered over a hundred letters which Bloch wrote to him during that period (but added that he did not have his side of the correspondence). A collection of Luk\u00e1cs'  pre-war correspondence was published some years after that conversation in G. Luk\u00e1cs, _Briefwechsel, 1902\u20131917_ (Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag, 1979).\n\n3\n\nIbid., p. 601.\n\n4\n\nIbid.\n\n5\n\nIbid., p. 600.\n\n6\n\nIbid., p. 614.\n\n7\n\nIbid.\n\n8\n\nIbid., p. 618.\n\n9\n\nIbid., p. 619.\n\n10\n\nIbid., p. 618. Luk\u00e1cs'  interpretation of nature entails a rejection of Engels' theory of the 'dialectics of nature' which was adopted by Marxist orthodoxy. This was one of the grounds for the condemnation of _History and Class Consciousness_. When the book was finally republished (in 1968), it included both Luk\u00e1cs'  early political writings and his more apologetic later texts, beginning with his 1924 study  of _Lenin_. The new introduction, written in 1967, tries to explain away his rejection of Engels' theory. When I visited him in the summer of that year, he explained that he was working on his 'ontology' whose foundation was an understanding of the constitutive primacy  of labor.\n\n11\n\nIbid., p. 619 (Bloch's stress).\n\n12\n\nIbid.\n\n13\n\nIbid., p. 620.\n\n14\n\nIbid., p. 621.\n\n15\n\nErnst Bloch, _Subjekt-Objekt. Erlaeuterungen zu Hegel_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, erweiterte Edition, 1962), p. 503.\n\n16\n\nIbid., p. 502. Bloch does not recall here his earlier suggestion to Luk\u00e1cs  that he understand the actuality of the moment as spherical.\n\n17\n\nIbid., p. 508.\n\n18\n\nErnst Bloch, 'Erinnerungen', in _Ueber Walter Benjamin_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968), p. 17. Bloch tells the story that once when he and Benjamin  joined Luk\u00e1cs  in Capri at the beginning of the 1930s, they began to discuss the impression that a fairy tale makes on the young listener. After a long conversation during which Luk\u00e1cs  remained silent, Bloch asked for his thoughts, only to receive a stereotypical reply: it depends on the social conditions of the hearer, the author, and so on. The old friends did not meet again!\n\n19\n\nErnst Bloch, _Erbschaft dieser Zeit_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1973), p. 110. I have kept the title of the English translation, although the term 'Erbschaft' could be rendered  as 'legacy'.\n\n20\n\nIbid., p. 112.\n\n21\n\nIbid., pp. 116\u201317. One might overhear in these analyses an echo of Rosa Luxemburg's theory of imperialism in _The Accumulation of Capital_ and especially in the _Antikritik_. To my knowledge, Bloch does not cite her work (although Luk\u00e1cs does).\n\n22\n\nIbid., p. 117.\n\n23\n\nIbid., p. 119.\n\n24\n\nIbid., p. 121.\n\n25\n\nErnst Bloch, 'Bemerkungen zur \"Erbschaft dieser Zeit\"', in _Vom Hasard zur Katastrophe. Politische Aufs\u00e4tze aus den Jahren 1934\u20131939_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972), p. 49. (The article dates from June 1936.)\n\n26\n\n_Erbschaft dieser Zeit_ , op. cit., p. 122.\n\n27\n\nBloch analyzes this problem in _Subjekt-Objekt_ under the title 'Hegel  und die Anamnesis. Contra Bann des Anamnesis'. He first stresses the two senses of temporality in Hegel as well as the role of formation ( _Gestaltung_ ) and re-membrance ( _Er-innerung_ ) in order to conclude that without this basis the future becomes an abstraction with no foundation. For this reason an anamnesis of a very specific type is necessary: 'Precisely without an anamnesis of an archaic or historically stationary type; for in their essence the work-formations ( _Werk-Gestalten_ **)** of the process border not on the return but rather a utopia  of the Not-Yet' (Op. cit., p. 488).\n\n28\n\nThroughout Bloch's works one finds beautifully articulated and important studies of nearly forgotten thinkers from every field of endeavor. This aspect of his work is more than simply an exercise or a demonstration, as should be clear from the above.\n\n29\n\nErnst Bloch, _Das Prinzip Hoffnung_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1959), p. 326. (This book was written between 1938 and 1947 in the United States, and was revised in 1953 when it was first published, and again in 1959. The first edition appeared in the GDR in three volumes in 1954, 1955, and 1956.)\n\n30\n\nIbid., p. 327.\n\n31\n\nIbid., p. 318.\n\n32\n\nOskar Negt, 'Ernst Bloch\u2014der deutsche Philosoph der Oktoberrevolution', published as the Postface to _Vom Hasard zur Katastrophe_ , op. cit.\n\n33\n\nJ\u00fcrgen Habermas, _Theorie und Praxis_ (Neuwied: Luchterhand Verlag, 1963), p. 350.\n\n34\n\nJ\u00fcrgen Habermas, _Theorie und Praxis_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971, fourth revised edition), p. 349.\n\n35\n\nIbid., p. 268.\n\n# Part IIUsing Marxism\n\u00a9 The Author(s) 2019\n\nDick HowardThe Marxian LegacyPolitical Philosophy and Public Purpose<https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-030-04411-4_4>\n\n# 4. Toward a Critical Theory: Max Horkheimer\n\nDick Howard1\n\n(1)\n\nDepartment of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA\n\nDick Howard\n\nIn the previous chapter I contrasted briefly Ernst Bloch's concrete philosophical attempt to appropriate Marx creatively through the notions of concrete phantasy, labor, and the futurity of the present with the Critical Theory of Max Horkheimer. Since my concern there was with Bloch, for purposes of exposition I did not treat the nuances in Horkheimer's text. I now want to show that Horkheimer's writings as well as the influence exercised through his self-declared 'dictatorship of the director' of the Frankfurt School are more probing than they first appeared; the result is a concept of Critical Theory that is a research program with practical implications.1 Looking first at Horkheimer's own explicit program, I will make clear that he fits clearly into the search for the Marxian legacy. However, as his project deepened philosophically, its socio-political concerns widened in the dark days of exile and war; the reflections that Horkheimer published in 1942 under the laconic title 'Authoritarian State' mark a turning point in his debate attempt to appropriate Marx for Critical Theory. The path toward pessimism opened; the vision of revolutionary politics dimmed before it disappeared.2\n\nI was tempted to begin this discussion with a laconic question: 'Marxism as Critical Theory and\/or Critical Theory as Marxism?' In Horkheimer's early writing, it often becomes apparent that 'Critical Theory' is used simply as a code word for Marxism. This may have resulted from his desire to legitimate his discourse within the academic establishment. Whatever his motivation, it gave him a double freedom: the liberty to redefine and go beyond the narrow, 'economistic' reading of Marxism that neglected the social relations at the root of the economy, and the political freedom to stand against the orthodoxy of the Communist party. The adoption of Critical Theory as a trademark carried the further advantage that it replaced the familiar doctrines and practice of Marxism with a still-to-be-elaborated theory; as a result the intellectual acquired a autonomy permitting independent analysis and decision while also demanding that new domains and methods of research be opened. In a word, without Marx's contribution, Critical Theory would not have been possible; but Horkheimer's hope seems to have been that the child becomes the father of the man. In this light, his Critical Theory remains contemporary.\n\nIn another mood, the chapter might have been entitled 'Leaving Critical Theory'. The goal would be to understand how Horkheimer was led not simply to reject Marxism but to the adoption of positions which, however formally consistent with Critical Theory, had practical implications that were reactionary. The crucial text would be his 1970 lecture, 'Critical Theory Yesterday and Today'. After criticizing Marx for erroneous economic predictions, Horkheimer suggests that Marxists do not understand the connection between equality and justice and that while the former may be achieved, its acquisition comes at the cost of justice and freedom. As a result, the task of his 'new' Critical Theory is not to make revolution but to oppose the 'new terrorism' that has emerged on the left, while its positive function is to support those elements of Western liberalism which protect the autonomy of the individual and human culture. This 'new' Critical Theory goes on to stress two lessons from theology: first, the doctrine of original sin, which implies the impossibility of complete happiness in the present while still recognizing that today's culture is itself the result of a miserable and cruel past, and second, the Old Testament prohibition on the portrayal of God, which Horkheimer translates as the fact that humans cannot know the True and the Good, leaving only Stalin and Hitler vainglorious enough to make such a claim. The pessimistic former 'dictator' knows that existing evil must still be combatted; but he insists that 'Hunger is not in the least the worst [evil]; worse is the fear of force. And it is certainly one of the tasks of Critical Theory to speak this out'.3 Coming finally to actual politics, Horkheimer attacks the German students' demonstration against the visit of the Shah of Iran to Berlin in 1867, arguing that Germans can do nothing about Iranian conditions and should instead direct their attention against, for example, what goes on in German prisons. Yet it was precisely this demonstration, and the police violence against it, which contributed to the birth of a New Left which, to Horkheimer's regret, took many of its critical tools from the 'old' Critical Theory.\n\nIn the end, this chapter is called 'Toward a Critical Theory' because the New Left students criticized by Horkheimer had built their movement on a set of ideas that drew on theories that had been advanced by the Critical Theory of the 1930s. They sought to unveil the hidden force and subtle violence that quietly glues together bureaucratic society. The New Leftists denounced the 'affirmative culture' that left no place for critique while justifying (as 'individual freedom') the atomization of society and the resulting privatized passivity imposed by bureaucratic society. Their critique of domination, their refusal to repress the life of the senses, and their dismantling of the authoritarian familial socialization process must have seemed eerily familiar to Horkheimer\u2014all the more since the rebellious students adopted his former associate, Herbert Marcuse, the author of the best-selling _One-Dimensional Man (1964)_ , as one of them! Horkheimer's path from Marx to Critical Theory needs to be examined as another attempt to inherit the Marxian legacy.\n\n## 4.1 The Agenda\n\nAlthough Horkheimer did not shy away from stating the revolutionary goals of Critical Theory, the immediate tasks he assigned it were defined by the double crisis of Marxian and bourgeois theory. While he appeared more concerned with the crisis of bourgeois science, in practice the work undertaken by the Institute and the perspectives from which it emerged were Marx _ist_. Science was defined and limited by its role in the capitalist division of labor which restricts it to empirical fact gathering and prevents it from putting itself in the service of human needs. This is not the result of individual choices; it emerged when the once progressive function empirical science changed. Concentration on the empirical had served the rising bourgeoisie well; but it tended to be both a-historical and unconcerned with the totality of its effects, such that the empirical researcher is unable to distinguish the essential from the merely accidental.\n\n> A method oriented towards being and rather than towards becoming corresponds to the view of the given social form as a mechanism of self-repeating processes which, of course, can be disturbed for a shorter or longer period, but which in no way demands any other scientific attitude than, for example, the explanation of a complicated machine.4\n\nThe result of this attitude and of its social insertion is that scientists and even philosophers are aware of the crisis, but are unable to discover its causes. They are blinded because, as part of society, science is involved in a double contradiction: in theory, each step of research has epistemological grounds, but yet the way the problem is posed cannot account for itself; moreover, even if it recognizes its social insertion and dependence, this science is unable to develop a theory of society in its contradictions and therefore its becoming. Thus, concludes Horkheimer, the crisis of science and the crisis of society are part of one problem. A theory of present-day society is necessary if science to advance beyond the limits expressed in its form and content, its methods and materials, and even the individual details of its work.\n\nHorkheimer's revolutionary goals are stated quite explicitly in his early essay 'On the Problem of Prediction in the Social Sciences' (1933). Science needs to be able to predict; the element of futurity is essential to it. But for the social sciences, prediction clearly depends on the social conditions about which the prediction is offered, and not on the cleverness or subtlety of the theorist. Horkheimer refers to Duprat's distinction between _pr\u00e9vision_ and _pr\u00e9diction_ , according to which prevision is expressed as an abstract law or tendency which is different from the prediction of actual facts or events. He objects that a law is expressed in the form 'if _x_ then _y_ ', which means that if it can be shown, for example, that market economies necessarily develop both monopolistic and crisis-inducing results, and if it can be established that we live in a market society, then we can predict the impossibility of bettering these conditions. This, however, is still not sufficient; historical prediction is a risky business precisely because, despite Vico's famous aphorism, men still do not make their own history, or at least they do not make it as they would choose consciously. Such uncertain conditions need not last; planning is indeed possible, and the more planning is introduced, the more accurate will be prediction. Thus, concludes Horkheimer, prediction will become fully possible only in a free society: 'For the true human freedom is neither that of being unconditioned nor that of mere caprice, but it is identical with the mastery of nature within and without us through rational decisions'.5 Therefore, the task of science and that of politics come together: 'the effort of the sociologists to come to accurate prediction is translated into the political effort towards the realization of a rational society'.6 The next step is to formulate this coincidence of politics and knowledge into a research program that has political results.\n\nHorkheimer's Inaugural lecture, delivered on his assuming the directorship of the Institute, sets out the perspectives in which he intends to direct his research group under the title 'The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research'. The project of a social philosophy emerged first in the development of German Idealism from Kant to Hegel. The Kantian project grounded the forms of social existence\u2014state, law, religion, economy\u2014in the individual as constitutive agent. Even though Kant did not confuse the constitutive individual consciousness with the empirical individual, he was unable to move beyond an analysis based on the still abstract opposition of autonomy and heteronomy. Fichte then developed the analysis of the split between the individual and the social, but the full resolution of the problem had to await Hegel's attention to the 'labor of history' for an answer.\n\n> With Hegel idealism thus becomes social philosophy in its essential parts: the philosophical understanding of the collective whole in which we live and which gives the basis for the creations of absolute culture is at the same time now knowledge of the sense of our own being in its true value and content.7\n\nHorkheimer stresses that while Hegel's idealism argues in terms of a logic of Spirit, it also takes account of the role of individual interests, drives, and passions. This is most clear in the _Philosophy of Right_ with its detailed economic analyses and account of the role of civil society and in the Introduction to the _Philosophy of History_ with its telling image of history as the 'slaughter bench'. Yet Spirit triumphs, transfiguring the individual and its particularity while achieving reconciliation. The death of this Hegelian reconciliation was, however, not long in coming; the progress of science, technology, and industry made it clear that the _need for philosophical mediation_ such as Hegel had offered _was no longer felt_8; the effects of social action now appeared directly, achieving the desired results immediately.\n\nOnce again, history moved on. The earlier success began to appear as naked exploitation; Hegel's archenemy Schopenhauer celebrated the triumph of his pessimism as the senselessness of society became too evident. With this, however, the need for social philosophy was born anew as the contradiction between the individual and the social totality could not be bridged. Passing through the efforts of Cohen, Scheler, Hartmann, Reinach, and Heidegger, Horkheimer's conclusion is that\n\n> [i]f speaking in slogans is permitted, one could assert that today social philosophy encounters the longing for a new sense ( _Sinngebung_ ) of a life which is restricted in its individual search for happiness. Social philosophy appears as a part of the philosophical and religious efforts to reinsert the hopeless individual existence into the womb or, to speak with Sombart, into the 'golden ground' of meaningful totalities.9\n\nThis 'new sense' cannot be given, nor can the conditions which engender the longing be analyzed, by irrationalist approaches which leave the empirical world entirely in seeking unities like the Soul or the _Volk_. Nor can the Kantian individualism be renewed. Theory has thus come full circle; but in its travails, it has acquired criteria of validity and methods of research; and it knows that even at its most empirical, the Hegelian project is not adequate to the task posed today.\n\nHorkheimer stresses the need for empirical research but insists that the lesson of the critique of positivism is not that science must be freed from philosophy; rather it must learn consciously to integrate an adequate conception of philosophy into its research. He proposes for the Institute that\n\n> on the basis of actually present philosophical questions, investigations are to be organized in which philosophers, sociologists, economists, historians and psychologists come together in a lasting work community and do together what in other regions of study is done by a single person in a laboratory, what all true researchers have always done: namely, following through their philosophical questions which aim at the greatest knowledge with the most precise scientific methods; reformulating and making more precise their questions in the course of the work; inventing new methods; and yet not losing sight of the universal. No yes-or-no answers to the philosophical questions emerge in this manner, but rather these questions themselves are dialectically brought into the empirical scientific process; that is, their answer lies in the progress of factual knowledge which affects their form itself.10\n\nHorkheimer insists once again that philosophy cannot be separated from concrete research, as if philosophy took care of the big problems, giving meaning to the empirical materials and integrating them into a totality. That would leave research caught in the chaos of specialization where the projects chosen and the methods applied are arbitrary (or socially pre-formed); and the materials delivered by such fragmented research would be unsatisfactory because, after all, the research itself forms the facts and implicitly gives them a meaning, whether it is aware of this or not. At the same time, were the separation instituted, philosophy itself would lose its relevance, remaining apart from the world and caught up in its own 'universal' problems, unable to deal with the specificity of the particular.\n\nHorkheimer gives an example of the type of problem with which he wants the Institute to deal, and the methods he proposes to apply.\n\n> [T]he question of the interrelations between the economic life of society, the psychological development of the individual and the changes in the cultural sphere in the narrower sense, to which not only the so-called spiritual contents of science, art and religion belong, but also law, customs, modes, public opinion, sport, forms of leisure and life style, etc. The intention of investigating the relations among these three processes is nothing but a formulation in a manner adequate to the methods at our disposal and the status of our understanding of the old question of the interrelation of particular existence and universal reason, of reality and idea, life and spirit, now posed in terms of the new constellation of the problem.11\n\nThe research is to be centered at first around a study of the qualified or professional workers and employees in Germany; it is then to be expanded to other countries as well. Horkheimer lists seven methodological tools that are to be applied. Published statistics, reports of organizations, and political groups are to be evaluated. This is to be done in the context of a continual examination of the total economic situation. A psychological and sociological study of the press and belletristic literature is to be undertaken, evaluating not only the contents but their effects on the members of the group. Questionnaire techniques are to be used, not as an end in themselves, but to keep close contact with the life situations of those studied and also to check assertions and ideas developed through the use of other tools. Critical reports by experts ( _Sachverst\u00e4ndigengutachten_ ), especially from persons with practical knowledge of the group or situation, are to be used. Non-book documents are to be gathered and evaluated, especially through the Institute's branch office in Geneva where the Archives of the International Labour Bureau are located. All of this is to be the subject of continual evaluation, comparison with new and old publications on the subject, and further revision.\n\nHorkheimer does not deal explicitly with Marxism in the Inaugural Lecture; in fact, in the praise of his predecessor, Carl Gr\u00fcnberg, he suggests that whereas in the latter's Inaugural statement stress had been laid on the fact that no research is unaccompanied by a _Weltanschauung_ (in Gr\u00fcnberg's case, by Marxism), the new direction is to follow 'the unchangeable will to serve truth without any hesitation'.12 Yet, the definition of this first research project was clearly based on perceived inadequacies in the Marxist theory. In the Foreword to the first volume of the Institute's new journal, the  _Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Sozialforschung_ , Horkheimer makes this motivation even more clear. He proposes that a crucial problem for social research and theory is the development of a social psychology which would be adequate to the needs of history. This task, which Erich Fromm was to assume in the Institute's first years, and which found an empirical and theoretical expression in the _Studies on Authority and the Family_ (1936), was one which circumstances forced upon Marxism. The practical concern of this theoretical project was that it be adequate to the needs of the present historical moment. This concern with the present-as-history means, continues Horkheimer, that the studies presented in the journal will often have a 'hypothetical character'. He admits that '[m]uch will show itself to have been false, but the expectation of future correction cannot prevent the research from applying the means of the different sciences to the problems of present society and its contradictions in order to conceptualize those processes which are important for both the functioning and the transformation of social life in a way that is adequate to present knowledge'.13 Horkheimer speaks out explicitly for social change. Yet, he insists that '[t]he obligations to scientific criteria divide social research methodologically from politics'.14 He admits that science is historically conditioned, that knowledge is not free from the existing attitudes of the knower, and that it is not an end in itself or without practical consequences. Nonetheless, Horkheimer insists on the theoretical criteria. This insistence suggests that he intends to elaborate a specific kind of theory, one which will have a precise social function. It was only in 1937, in the article 'Traditional and Critical Theory', and in its Afterword\u2014as well as in Herbert Marcuse's 'Philosophy and Critical Theory' which appeared in the same issue with Horkheimer's Afterword\u2014that this new theory was spelled out.\n\n## 4.2 A New Type of Theory\n\nHorkheimer suggested a further goal of the integration of empirical research into a social philosophy in the Foreword to the _Zeitschrift_ , invoking 'the presupposition that under the chaotic surface of events a structure of active forces can be recognized which is accessible to concepts'.15 This presupposition, to whose rationale Horkheimer frequently returns, protects against the disciplinary fragmentation that results from the capitalist division of labor, which affects the sciences as well. His suggestion is that social theory must be concerned with the totality of society. It tries to articulate the way that this totality structures the 'chaotic' world of appearances. But the totality can never be fully rational in the world of appearances. The task of the theorist is to make explicit the incomplete or latent rationality of the existing social relations. That means that theory cannot be simply receptive, cataloging and ordering the 'facts'; theory must be active, intervening in the determination of the nature of a rational society. By focusing on the totality of social relations, Horkheimer's critical theory goes beyond the traditional philosophical distinction of appearance and its rational essence to seek to overcome it.\n\nThe critical project implies that the traditional separation between the knowing subject and the object of investigation cannot be maintained. The idea that science formulates hypotheses which it seeks to confirm by testing whether the particular facts can be subsumed under the hypothetical lawfulness is challenged by the recognition that the 'facts' are part of an active, but not completely realized totality. The contribution of the theorist who looks beyond the immediate givenness transforms the concept of necessity and theory of causality used by traditional science. The incomplete realization of the 'structure of active forces' that constitutes the totality means that the objects with which theory deals are not only incomplete; it implies also that they are changing and hence historical.16 The overcoming of the traditional dualisms of subject\/object, knowledge\/known, universal\/particular eliminates the hypostatization of theory and that of the 'fact'; it is also a rejection of the dream of a complete and self-contained theory. This historical opening of the domain of theory entails the need to examine more closely the contribution of the theorist.\n\nHorkheimer's account builds from Luk\u00e1cs' reconstruction of the history of German Idealism from Kant to Hegel and Marx in _History and Class Consciousness_. In the era of the rising bourgeoisie, the task of the theorist could be accomplished by empirical and positive theorizing. Social reality at the time was in advance of its own theory, which functioned as a regressive ideology; the theorist had merely to call things by their name and to argue for an adequation of institutions to reality. But as the negative social consequences of capitalist reality began to show themselves, the function of theory changed; it became necessary for theory to articulate the perspective of the totality of social relations by overcoming the traditional dualist presupposition. Although Kant recognized the dilemma, his conception of the individual subject as constitutive of the world of appearances limited his vision. He could realize the synthesis of subject and object only by recourse to the transcendental schematism, defined in the first _Critique_ as an 'art hidden in the depths of the human soul', or by appealing in the third _Critique_ to the intuition of the artistic 'genius'. Fichte's development of the Kant's idea of practical reason in the second _Critique_ and Schelling's attempt to construct a philosophy of nature building on the third _Critique_ culminated in Hegel's philosophy of Spirit, which Marx's materialism claimed to realize.\n\nThe first conclusion drawn by Horkheimer from this historical reconstruction of German Idealism is reflected in his critical social theory. The Hegelian resolution of Kant's dualism, and its Marxian translation, suggests the idea of a _double preformation_ of the subject by the object and of the object by the active intervention of the subject. The activity of the knowing subject in the social world leads to the acquisition of a set of categories that permit understanding that world. Reciprocally, the active participation of the subject contributes to the historical formation and transformation of that world. This action of the subject on the object and the effect that the object produces in the experience of the subject are reflected in both the history of philosophy and in the history of the formation of capitalism. Horkheimer avoids the temptation (to which Luk\u00e1cs seemed to succumb) of a harmonistic vision of the unity of the two processes in a wholly rational world.\n\nA critical theory needs to adopt a standpoint that transcends the empirical world without separating itself from it in order to understand the totality of social relations that underlies their 'chaotic' appearance. Horkheimer reinterprets the Marxist insistence on the priority of the economic in this context. No doubt recalling the aphorism of the young Marx who claimed that '[r]eason has always existed, but not always in a rational form', he claims that production always contains a planned component, a social reason, and a rational method, however limited and narrow historical limits make it. The 'double preformation' of both the social world and the active subject explains why production can never be completely rational, and why it cannot always satisfy all human needs. The most that can be achieved is a critical understanding that takes into account these limits while remaining open to future progress. As compared to a traditional theory determined by the imperatives of the division of labor, a critical theory can use its results in its interpretation of present needs. As opposed to the traditional theory that seeks to make the machine run more smoothly, critical theory recognizes that because the machine is always incompletely rational, it needs instead to be repaired and replaced. This is the point at which Critical Theory encounters politics.\n\nOn the basis of his assumption that human beings are 'the producers of their entire historical form of life',17 Horkheimer proposes to analyze the significance of the transformation of entrepreneurial capitalism in his own times as it is reflected in the juridical, political, and ideological spheres. Juridical owners no longer direct their factories, even though the laws of property have not changed; their hired managers begin to extend their control beyond the firm to the political sphere. The entrepreneurial capitalists lose also their dominant cultural role and with it their moral authority in society. Ideological faith in 'great men' is accompanied by the distinction between parasitical and productive capitalists. This now makes possible a challenge to the laws of property, since the productive actors ought to be rewarded. With the elimination of the material substance of the legal forms of property as economic concentration is completed by the authoritarian state, the old ideology disappears. The result of this historical analysis of the economy explains what Horkheimer designates as the _possibility of fascism_. In the old liberal capitalism, positive mediations existed to lessen the power of the capitalist class. Good character, critical individual judgment, and a general cultivation were economic necessities; but they also became part of individual behavior, preserving independence. This relative independence has disappeared in the new conditions; mass belief patterns are directly inculcated, people are atomized and are thus more dependent on the economic than ever before because the previous _mediating agencies_ are absent. Thus, while the economic analysis retains its validity, the political task of Critical Theory changes, for _it is now the only mediator on the scene_.\n\nHorkheimer recognizes that 'it would be mechanical, not dialectical to judge also the forms of the future only in economic terms'.18 Critical Theory has to articulate the implicit but unrealized reason at work in the historical process of social reproduction. It appeals to a specific kind of judgment that arises historically. In feudal conditions, judgments were 'categorical'; they claimed that 'this is the case, it cannot be changed'. In the day of the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, judgments were 'hypothetical' or 'disjunctive'; they asserted 'if _x_ then _y_ ' or 'either this or that'. At present, Critical Theory has to appeal to 'judgments' whose validity can be established only when the future is made present by praxis that is based on them.19 This appeal to an existentially based praxis can be understood in terms of the 'double preformation' of the economic totality. Critical Theory is co-constitutive of the change which its existential judgments claim to be necessary. Horkheimer generalizes his argument beyond the sphere of production to speak of an 'interest in freedom' that is co-constitutive of its object insofar as it co-determines the 'facts' of social experience which the theory integrates.20 The 'double preformation' implies further that the theorist is involved in and affected by the work of theory; as Horkheimer reformulates his thesis, the difference between traditional and critical theory is 'not so much a difference of objects as a difference of subjects'.21 The existential interest is not the discovery of an ultimate transcendental position from which the social world can be judged; it is the necessary starting point, which is modified by the act of choice itself. That is why Critical Theory is essentially _historical_.\n\nIt is clear that Critical Theory is not a set of affirmations or hypotheses; it is a form of _praxis_. If it is separated from the world from which it emerges, becoming a doctrine, it falls back into the traditional philosophical attitude. That is why Horkheimer is consistent when he refuses to allow Critical Theory to be put directly into the service of the proletariat. He points out that if that class were in immediate possession of the truth, theory would be useless; it would become the empirical registering of facts floundering in chaos.\n\n> The intellectual who only announces with open-mouthed awe the creativity of the proletariat, and finds his satisfaction in adapting to it while transfiguring it, does not see that any deviation of theoretical effort which he allows through the passivity of his own thought, as well as any avoidance of the temporary opposition to which his own thought could bring him, only makes these masses blinder and weaker than they need be.22\n\nOnce again, the 'double preformation' makes it clear for the intellectual that 'his own thought belongs in this development as a critical, forward-driving element'.23 Any excessive optimism only prevents a critical understanding of temporary defeats in the long struggle. Horkheimer insists that even the massive and needy existence of the proletariat is no guarantee of the eventual success of Critical Theory's goals:\n\n> There are no universal criteria for Critical Theory as a whole... Just as little does there exist a social class on whose support one could base oneself... Critical Theory... has no specific instance standing for it save the interest which is connected with it in the elimination of social injustice.24\n\nCuriously, in the 'Afterword' to 'Traditional and Critical Theory' that he published in the next issue of the _Zeitschrift_ , this sober vision does seem to give rise to a certain defiant optimism:\n\n> But if its concepts which emerge from the social movement ring futile because not much more stands behind them than their persecutors, the truth will nonetheless come forth; for the goal of a rational society which, granted, today appears present only in phantasy, is truly inherent in every man.25\n\nThis faith in the necessary emergence of truth does not mean that struggle is unnecessary, nor that its result will be victory, wiping away the tears and sweat of the past. The passage cited above that denies the centrality of the proletariat continues: 'Bringing this negative formulation to an abstract expression: it is but the material content of the idealistic concept of Reason'. This slight change of accent in the new essay could have been influenced by the treatment of the idea of Critical Theory by Herbert Marcuse which was published alongside of Horkheimer's 'Afterword'.26\n\n## 4.3 Excursus: Herbert Marcuse on the Philosophical Genesis of Critical Theory\n\nAnnounced under the joint authorship of Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, 'Philosophy and Critical Theory' was published in the next issue of the _Zeitschrift._ In the text itself, the two contributions were distinguished by the name of their author. Horkheimer's 'Afterword' developed his arguments for Critical Theory by stressing the tasks of the social sciences, using Marx without explicit reference to his work. For his part, Marcuse articulated his critical perspective from within the history of philosophy, trying to show how and why the theories of Marx as well as the new project called Critical Theory are properly understood from within that history. Marcuse, who had studied with Husserl, and written his _Habilitation_ thesis (under the supervision of Heidegger) on _Hegel's Ontology_ adds philosophical nuance to Horkheimer's exposition of the tasks of critical social theory.\n\nMarxism emerged from the historical conditions of Germany in the 1830s when the claims of philosophy were more progressive than the contemporary social conditions which, in Marx's phrase, were 'beneath the level of history'. When his philosophical critique discovered the economic foundation of these social conditions, philosophy lost its explanatory power; humanity's ultimate questions and the nature of its pressing needs had to be reformulated in economic terms. 'Economic' did not imply simply concern with production, any more than materialism meant simply the primacy of matter. In Marcuse's analysis, materialism implies first of all that the concern for human happiness motivates the analysis and, second, that this happiness can only be achieved through a change of the existing social conditions. In this way, the materialist vision correlates the philosophical analysis with the economic concepts which are articulated with reference to the social totality structured by the still unfulfilled demand for happiness. Economic materialism thus took over the traditional claims of philosophy which, 'to the extent that it is more than a specialty within the given division of labour, has always lived from this: that reason was not yet reality'.27 Marcuse explains what he means by 'reason' with reference to the task of classical philosophy.\n\n> Philosophy wanted to investigate the ultimate and most universal grounds of Being. Under the name Reason it understood the idea of a specific being in which all the decisive oppositions (between subject and object, essence and appearance, thought and Being) are unified. Coupled with this idea was the conviction that beings are not immediately rational, but must first be brought to reason. Reason must present the highest possibility of man and of beings. Both belong together.28\n\nFrom this perspective, classical philosophy is always idealist, subsuming being under thought; but at the same time, insists Marcuse, philosophy is _also_ critical of the gap between appearance and its rational essence. Whatever does not satisfy the demands of Reason must be criticized. This critical task was internalized by bourgeois philosophy and, to a degree, by bourgeois society, insofar as they both identified reason with freedom. The problem with this bourgeois standpoint is that critical reason became identified with mere subjective freedom, most explicitly in Kant's ethics, where only the intention motivating action, not its practical effect grounds its moral validity. Marcuse does not denounce this orientation as merely ideological. He insists that although its idealism had no practical effect in the world, it nonetheless preserved a space for freedom, opposition, and protest.29 Marcuse's argument now takes a different tack from the historical materialist perspective of Marxism. Philosophical idealism came to an end with this internalization of reason by the bourgeois subject whose freedom began to be manifested in its social relations. At this point, it becomes apparent that external social conditions limit the free exercise of reason; bourgeois philosophy must turn to social theory in order to act in a manner consistent with its own rational freedom.\n\nThis philosophical reconstruction explains the emergence of nineteenth-century social movements, including the recently discovered _Economical and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844_ , to which Marcuse had consecrated a detailed philosophical analysis in 1932, before joining the Frankfurt Institute. Critical Theory emerges when the failures of these movements lead to a return to the traditional concerns of philosophy, which it seeks now to reformulate critically. Critical Theory maintains the philosophical goals of freedom and reason which it seeks to reconstruct outside of the narrow framework of economics. It is supported in this project by the fact that real struggles for freedom continually take place, treating the demand for the happiness and reason as a concrete political mediation rather than simply an abstract utopia.\n\nIn this process, philosophy is part of the struggle precisely insofar as it remains philosophical, preserving its rigor and maintaining its rational demands. This is where Marcuse sees the importance of the contributions to the _Zeitschrift_ which had dealt with topics like truth and verification; rationalism and irrationalism; the role of logic, metaphysics, and positivism; and the concept of essence. From his point of view, more than social science is needed in the formulation of Critical Theory. The task is to find in philosophical reflection a content that goes beyond the social limitations that led to its formation by uncovering the tensions and limits that are constitutive of the problem being studied. Marcuse restates his philosophical perspective concisely in 'The Concept of Essence', insisting that since so much of 'men's real struggles and desires went into the metaphysical quest for an ultimate unity, truth and universality of Being', the critical theoretical analysis will have social implications.30 Putting the point somewhat paradoxically, he asserts that philosophical truth 'is only truth insofar as it is not the truth about the actual society. Precisely because it is not this truth, because it transcends this actuality, it can become a concern of critical theory'.31 A sociological analysis that would only criticize philosophy from the perspective of social science would neglect the truth inherent in past struggles and constitutive of past philosophies.\n\nAs with Horkheimer, Marcuse attributes to the critical theorist a 'phantasy' which is necessary for the critical project. However, he insists that this phantasy had always already been present in philosophy, for example, in Aristotle or Kant. Marcuse does not explain its origins, but he insists that it is related to reason rather than the product of caprice insofar as it is part of a social process whose limits it continually challenges. More important, what the presence of phantasy shows is more central than any collection of facts insofar as selection of the facts makes sense only in terms of the meaningful goal which structures them. By holding out this philosophical goal, Marcuse's analysis permits and demands a continual process of self-criticism. The implications that he draws from this position in his writings of this period (and later) have to be left aside in the present context.\n\nMarcuse concludes his essay with the claim that present-day conditions seem to return to the dilemmas confronted by Marx in the 1830s: theoretical reason has developed far beyond the social conditions of the time, which are 'beneath the level of history'. Critical Theory must bring to consciousness the possibilities contained in the philosophical acquisitions of struggle; it must show the presence of the unfulfilled tasks. Marcuse makes no proposal for Critical Theory analogous to Marx's move to the economic as a new foundation and formulation of those unfinished works which it preserves. His project also differs silently from Horkheimer's Critical Theory, which implied the need for a new stance for philosophy as a critique within experience itself. The difficulty faced by both of these early Critical Theorists may stem from the fact that they seem to take for granted the continued validity of Marxian economics, working at its interstices, correcting its excesses, and filling in its incompleteness. Before asking whether Marx's economic theory provides an adequate framework for defining the tasks of a Critical Theory, Horkheimer's 'Authoritarian State' (1942) needs to be examined.\n\n## 4.4 Political Implications\n\nWriting from his American exile, after the _Zeitschrift_ had finally begun to publish in English before closing shop altogether, Horkheimer drew together the political strands of Critical Theory in a passionate essay first published in a privately printed volume dedicated to the memory of his friend and colleague, Walter Benjamin, who had chosen suicide when he found himself unable to find refuge from the fascist plague. Familiar motifs return, rendered more acute by the political framework into which they are thrown: fascism in power and the outbreak of Hitler's world war. Horkheimer poses the painful problem of Critical Theory's political place, role, and justification and contribution; he asks also the theoretical question of the source of its existential judgments, interest in the future, and critical phantasy.\n\n'Authoritarian State' is one of those peaks to which a thinker sometimes ascends, combining anger and hope with sober lucidity in an essay whose tensile strength is fascinating. After such a peak, the tension cannot be maintained, the fragile structure splinters, and for the remainder of his life the theorist picks up the pieces with a greater or lesser constancy and creativity. The optimism based on reason, truth, and freedom which marked the initial formulations of Critical Theory is combined in Horkheimer's essay with a pessimism so total and unremitting that hope can be clothed only in an apocalyptic vision. In this unification of opposites whose tension pervades every paragraph, Critical Theory as a radical political theory with practical intent reaches its culmination. Horkheimer's work from this point onward would be increasingly dominated by his pessimistic meliorism; the initial tension weakens at each successive formulation, until the writings of the last years which are but a pale shadow, a formalized Critical Theory establishing itself as a tradition.\n\n'Authoritarian State' begins ironically: Marxist predictions have come true insofar as machines have made work superfluous, but the worker remains necessary. Meanwhile the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie is decimated and dependent. 'The Eldorado of bourgeois existence, the sphere of circulation, is liquidated', while the state has become the Total Capitalist reinforcing socio-economic exploitation.32 In the Marxist theory, the result of such transformation would produce conditions for the breakdown and revolution of capitalism. In reality, the authoritarian state has eliminated the market, which gave the capitalists breathing space; in its place, the planned economy wins loyalty by nourishing the masses better than did the free market. As a result, the revolutionary workers' organizations have been integrated into the state.\n\nWhen he looks to the Soviet Union for hope, Horkheimer finds instead further reasons for pessimism. 'The most fully developed kind of authoritarian state, which has freed itself from any dependence on private capital, is integral \u00e9tatism or state socialism'.33 He admits grudgingly that the Soviet system is preferable to the 'mixed form' of authoritarianism in fascism. 'But the producers, to whom capital legally belongs, remain wage laborers, proletarians no matter how much is done for them'.34 Stepping back to take historical distance, Horkheimer asserts that the roots of this authoritarianism are found at the beginning of the bourgeois era: Robespierre's France initiated what became welfare state centralism in which parliament was maintained simply to register laws decreed by the Jacobins while the spirits of the masses were heated by 'brotherhood and denunciation'.35 Jacobin limitations on the power of the Church were not imposed for their own sake but because the state wanted to control the Church: 'The \"sans-culotte Jesus\", concludes Horkheimer, announces the Nordic Christ'.36 Thermidor brought only a temporary halt to centralizing authoritarianism.\n\nThe most disturbing aspect of the present situation is not only the decline of the revolutionary workers' movement but its own contribution to the erection of the authoritarian state. Horkheimer offers two accounts of this absence of revolutionary opposition. He explains the bureaucratization of the social-democratic party by pointing to the pressures on the movement as it became a mass organization; the need to maintain its unity leads to caution, the quest for rewards such as increased wages that do not threaten the system, and the increased expertise of the leaders makes them necessary while decreasing the need for individual participation. These pressures create conditions for the collusion between the capital and trade union leaders, while the pervasive influence of capitalist productivist rationality spreads among the passive working class. If opposition to the leaders' betrayal were to succeed, continues the pessimistic critical theorist, it will be forced to maintain itself by the same means. Although Horkheimer's instinctive Marxism leads him to assert that these conditions are the result37 of a change in the mode of capitalist production, he knows full well that the Soviet model of socialism offers no real hope. Even critical recourse to phantasy is of no avail. 'If phantasy freed itself at all from the soil of factuality, it put in the place of the present state apparatus the bureaucracy of the party and unions and replaced the profit principle with the planning by bureaucrats. Even utopia was filled with disciplinary rules'.38 People here are treated as objects; in the best of cases, their own objects. 'So far as the proletarian opposition in the Weimar Republic did not die as a sect, it fell to the spirit of administration'.39 Although it matters to the individual whether Bolshevism, Reformism, or Fascism is in power, they are species of a common genus whose bureaucratic domination, must be overthrown.\n\nHorkheimer does not give up easily his Marxist presuppositions. He asserts that '[t]he revolutionary movement was the negative reflection of the conditions that it attacked'.40 But the authoritarian state has changed those conditions, with the result that because 'the rationality of domination [was] already weakening when the authoritarian state takes over',41 revolution may still be possible. The new state is inefficient; the legitimacy of bureaucratic domination becomes weaker. After all, 'obedience... is not productive',42 bureaucracy encourages petty struggles among the bureaucrats, and the anarchy of the world markets complicates their planning. The authoritarian state is forced to resort to police methods, permanent mobilization, use of racial prejudice, and to the generalization of propaganda. Internationally, the competition of the two authoritarians states will produce '[t]wo friend-enemy blocs of states with changing composition [which] will dominate the world, offering along with the fascist symbols better rations to their followers on the backs of the half-colonial and colonial masses, and finding new grounds for an arms race in their reciprocal threat to each other'.43 Each regime remains in power now only because the masses fear the results of a victory by the others. Horkheimer recalls the way that forms of workers' self-organization emerged spontaneously in France in 1871 and Russia in 1905, without stressing that both experiences took place in a context marked by war and defeat. The workers' councils ( _R\u00e4te_ ) are an example of the innovation of which the masses are capable _when they will it_. 'The possibility today is no less than the doubt'.44 This is an example of what Horkheimer had earlier called an 'existential judgment'. It is not based on structural or rational guarantees; it is a concrete utopia that can only be willed.\n\nThe affirmation of revolutionary possibility presupposes a critique of Marxism, which is now seen to be one source of the bureaucratic mentality that was realized in the authoritarian state. Marxism plays now the role of a _traditional theory_. 'Truth which is experienced as property changes into its opposite; it opens itself to the relativism whose critical thrust is based on the same ideal of security as the absolute philosophy'.45 For Critical Theory truth has a different status.46 Horkheimer illustrates his argument with a telling historical example. 'Although the later course of history has confirmed political position of the Girondins against the Montagnards, Luther against M\u00fcnzer, humanity was not betrayed by the premature undertakings of the revolutionaries, but through the mature wisdom of the realists'.47 On the contrary, Horkheimer insists, 'for the revolutionary, the world has always been ripe enough'.48 Those leaders of the workers' organizations whose realism had made them complicit in the creation of the authoritarian state had, like Marx, imagined progress as a logical sequence of historical stages. As a result, 'revolution is brought down to the level of mere progress'49 in which realism and relativism have identical political effects insofar as the decisions of the actors depend on the supposed objective conditions external to them.\n\nReturning to the critique of domination in the authoritarian state, its leaders asked themselves the practical question how to exercise the power won by the revolution. They did not see that the question itself assumes that domination will continue, whereas the goal of revolution is precisely to overcome all forms of domination. 'The forms of free association do not close themselves off into a system'.50 The desire for closure is a mark of traditional theory; it is an expression of a need for security in the face of an undeterminable future freedom. 'Without the feeling of being part of a large party, an all-honored leader, world history, or at least an unerring theory, their socialism doesn't function'.51 If 'dialectic is not identical with development', it can only depend on a ' _leap_ ' that can never be rationally deduced any more than security can ever really be won. 'It is for this reason that the Marxian science consists in the critique of bourgeois economics and not the projection of a socialist one: Marx left that to [the German Social-Democrat, August] Bebel'.52 The socialist heirs of Marx could only guarantee the economic necessity of revolution at the price of losing the _will_ whose action is constitutive of the conditions it attacks. Revolution has no material or logical necessity; nor can it avenge the wrong that has been done by establishing itself as a new ruling class.\n\nHorkheimer recognizes that a Marxist could say that his vision of Critical Theory is utopian, but he insists that in the changed conditions he has described, this is the only choice. The atomization of society means that each atom is like all the others, and the destruction of the traditional mediations means that _the Word_ carries more weight; it becomes a _utopian mediation_. What the word speaks is 'what everyone knows and yet forbids himself from knowing'.53 The Word speaks through thought; the task of Critical Theory is to restore the sense of the past struggles and hopes for those who turn toward the future. The atomization of society and the demystification of tradition have banished even the thought of freedom and with it the hope carried by utopia; that is the way in which all forms of authoritarianism ensure their continued domination. Yet precisely this abuse renders the Word more powerful. 'The powerless expression in a totalitarian state is more threatening than the most impressive demonstration by a party under [the government of] Wilhelm II'.54 It is not for nothing that the authoritarian state bans its philosophers; nor was it for nothing that Horkheimer insisted that the _Zeitschrift_ continue to publish from its American exile in German.\n\nHuman phantasy, and the desire for freedom, must be rekindled through Critical Theory. 'Thought itself is already a sign of resistance, the effort not to let oneself be deceived. Thought is not simply against orders and obedience, but rather puts them in relation to the actualization of freedom. This relation is endangered. Sociological and psychological concepts are too superficial to express what has happened to the revolutionaries in the last decades; the goal ( _Intention_ ) of freedom is damaged, and without it neither knowledge nor solidarity, nor a correct relation between group and leaders is possible'.55 Horkheimer at this time still expected that the rekindling of the spirit of freedom and the desire for utopia would be coupled, finally, with the rebirth of a revolutionary movement that would find the 'correct relation between group and leaders'. He rejects the option to work within the system, but says no more than that. His final word in this brilliant and despairing essay is that '[a]s long as world history goes in its logical path, it does not fulfil its human calling ( _Bestimmung_ )'.56\n\n## 4.5 The Independence of Critical Theory\n\nThe path traced by Critical Theory moves away from an empirical research program aimed at filling the gaps left in Marxian theory toward the elaboration of a radically new type of theory. But the path was not traveled to the end; the traces of Marxism remained present both in the theoretical assumptions and in the political consequences. The inability ultimately to articulate and maintain a specific stance for Critical Theory was responsible for the deception and ultimately the pessimism which marked the next three decades of Horkheimer's life.57 Recalling comparison with Ernst Bloch in the preceding chapter, Bloch's claim that Horkheimer was unable to ground his critical categories because he never took seriously Marx's theory of labor as the ground of that phantasy and choice which found and direct the interest in freedom in its concrete manifestations can be maintained only with qualifications. Horkheimer does indeed stress the planned, rational element in the produced human world which makes it accessible to, and demands the use of, reason. He does not, however, develop this theory further; and from the stance of 'Authoritarian State', he would certainly have to say that the 'reason' and 'planning' manifest in the productive system are still forms of rationality as domination. The hope for scientific prediction expressed in 1932 appears retrospectively to be the expression of a traditional attitude toward theory. That is why the excursus on Herbert Marcuse's effort to ground Critical Theory in the history of philosophy was significant. But despite the essential theoretical difference between Horkheimer and the Marcusian position,58 beneath their later political stances lies a common conception of the nature, tasks, and possibilities of theory.\n\nRadicalizing Marx's project and criticizing those elements in it that result from Marx's rationalist presuppositions, Horkheimer elaborates a Critical Theory which is in constant contact with the social structures that it seeks not only to understand but to change. Critical Theory is set apart from its traditional counterpart specifically by its historical nature which means that because it _is_ its own object, it can never fixate itself, never become a theory standing apart from, flying above or contemplating its object. It is this character\u2014and not, as so often claimed, the assertion that Nature will always remain Other\u2014which is responsible for the Frankfurt School's rejection of the identity theory of philosophical rationalism. This understanding of history and the limits of rationalism are the grounds for the 'critical' nature of the Critical Theory, as well as the source of its politics. Its phantasy, futurity, and existential judgment are grounded in this structure of the theory itself. Because Horkheimer never drew these conclusions, he found himself appealing to an always-inherent sense of freedom which he supposed present in all individuals. This idea of 'freedom' is loaded with metaphysical overtones that must be deciphered. It would be better to elaborate the notion of freedom from the structure of Critical Theory insofar as its practice is in the last resort the elaboration of the notion of human _praxis_.59\n\nBecause Critical Theory _is_ a praxis, it always threatens to be transformed against its will into traditional theory, becoming a hypothesis, a slogan, or even a political program. This is not the betrayal by the theorist. Critical Theory is conscious of this threat because it is always critical of itself precisely because it is its own object. Praxis has the same structure, although not always the same degree of reflexivity as Critical Theory. Individual action becomes immediately an object, affecting the world as production and also taken up by the praxis of others in the social world which transform the original intention of the actor. More precisely, action or praxis is not a discrete intervention, undertaken with a clearly delimited intention (although the actor may think that to be the case). Praxis emerges within the world, and it comes to understand itself only in 'the thick' of the world where it has continually to be begun anew. When Horkheimer's essays are read from this point of view, the apparent meanderings, doubling back on and reformulating the nature of the problem and its political implications,60 take on their full sense. In the world of bureaucratic domination described in 'Authoritarian State', a Critical Theory must be a _mediator_ of a specific type. It incites to the empirical research that was so important to the Institute for Social Research, but it can never assume the role that was played by traditional theory. For that reason, Critical Theory cannot be taught or formulated; it can only be done!\n\nFootnotes\n\n1\n\nThe literature examining the legacy of the Institute for Social Research has expanded greatly since Martin Jay's early, well-documented book, _The Dialectical Imagination_ (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1973). In the present context, I want to add to the list the recent study by Robert Zwarg, _Die Kritische Theorie in Amerika. Das Nachleben einer Tradition_ (G\u00f6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017). Zwarg focuses on the appropriation of the Frankfurt School particularly by participants in the New Left who wrote extensively in the journals _Telos_ and _New German Critique_. I was one of them; and I have learned a great deal from reading Zwarg's work.\n\n2\n\nI will concentrate on Horkheimer's earlier writings, putting them in the context of a programmatic statement by Herbert Marcuse written during the time when he was the most creative exponent of Horkheimer's views. Although the Institute for Social Research was not a one-man show, focus on Horkheimer to the exclusion of Adorno, who also returned to Frankfurt after the war, is justified by my concern here with the legacy of Marx (in contrast to Robert Zwarg's stress on the American 'afterlife' of Critical Theory).\n\n3\n\n'Kritische Theorie gestern und heute', in _Gesellschaft im Uebergang_ (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1972). p. 168.\n\n4\n\n'Bemerkungen \u00fcber Wissenschaft und Krise', in _Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Sozialforschung_ , Band 1, 1932, p. 3. (Future references to this journal will be indicated with the sign _ZfS_.)\n\n5\n\n'Zum Problem der Voraussage in den Sozialwissenschaften', in _ZfS_ , Band 2, 1933, p. 412.\n\n6\n\nIbid.\n\n7\n\n'Die gegenwaertige Lage der Sozialphilosophie und die Aufgaben eines Instituts f\u00fcr Sozialforschung', originally in _Frankfurter Uniuersi-taetsreden_ , Heft xxxvii, 1931, pages 3\u201316; reprinted in Max Horkheimer, _Sozialphilosophische Studien_ (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1972), p. 34.\n\n8\n\nSee the discussion below of the role of mediation in Critical Theory's own self-understanding.\n\n9\n\n'Die gegenwaertige Lage', op. cit., p. 38.\n\n10\n\nIbid., p. 41.\n\n11\n\nIbid., p. 43.\n\n12\n\nIbid., p. 46.\n\n13\n\n'Vorwort', in _ZfS_ , Band 1, 1932, pp. 2\u20133.\n\n14\n\nIbid., p. 3.\n\n15\n\nIbid., p. 1.\n\n16\n\nIt should be parenthetically noted that Horkheimer is aware that this assertion does not hold for nature, which will always exist and will always demand a traditional approach, though modified still, as the results of quantum mechanics indicate. I cannot deal here with Horkheimer's notion of inner and outer nature and his theory of mimesis, which are fully developed only in the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_.\n\n17\n\n _ZfS_ , Band 6, 1937, p. 625.\n\n18\n\nIbid., p. 629.\n\n19\n\nIbid., p. 279.\n\n20\n\nThis notion of an _interest_ in emancipation guiding Critical Theory is not mentioned explicitly in J\u00fcrgen Habermas' _Knowledge and Human Interests_ , which will be discussed in Chap. . The influence of Horkheimer and of the distinction between traditional and critical theory certainly affected Habermas' work.\n\n21\n\n _ZfS_ , Band 6, 1937, p. 263.\n\n22\n\nIbid., p. 268.\n\n23\n\nIbid.\n\n24\n\nIbid., pp. 291\u20132.\n\n25\n\nIbid., p. 630.\n\n26\n\nIbid., p. 292.\n\n27\n\nMarcuse, Ibid., p. 632.\n\n28\n\nIbid.\n\n29\n\nMarcuse developed this argument critically in the same issue of the _Zeitschrift_ in his essay 'On the Affirmative Character of Culture'.\n\n30\n\nHerbert Marcuse, 'Zum Begriff des Wesens', in _ZfS_ , Band 5, 1936, p. \u00ee.\n\n31\n\n _ZfS_ , Band 6, 1937, p. 643.\n\n32\n\n'Authorit\u00e4rer Staat', in Max Horkheimer, _Gesellschaft im \u00dcbergang_ , op. cit., 13.\n\n33\n\nIbid., p. 19.\n\n34\n\nIbid.\n\n35\n\nIbid., p. 18.\n\n36\n\nIbid.\n\n37\n\nNot the cause! Horkheimer is still working with traditional Marxian categories here, despite the critique of Marxism developed later in his essay. This fidelity to the Marxian theory as describing of the essential laws of capital regardless of its changed structure has already been noted. It is one of the reasons that, by the end of the War, Horkheimer would give up entirely on Marxism and the possibility of revolution. I will discuss this fidelity to Marxian economics which also affects earliest reformulations of Critical Theory by the 'second generation' of Critical Theory in the early work of J\u00fcrgen Habermas in the next chapter.\n\n38\n\n'Authorit\u00e4rer Staat', op. cit., p. 15.\n\n39\n\nIbid.\n\n40\n\nIbid., p. 17.\n\n41\n\nIbid., p. 20.\n\n42\n\nIbid., p. 27.\n\n43\n\nIbid., p. 22.\n\n44\n\nIbid., p. 28.\n\n45\n\nThis is argued in detail in Horkheimer's critique of Mannheim, 'Ein neuer Ideologiebegriff', reprinted in _Sozialphilosophische Studien_ , op. cit.\n\n46\n\n'Authoritaerer Staat', op. cit., p. 23.\n\n47\n\nIbid., p. 23.\n\n48\n\nIbid.\n\n49\n\nIbid., p. 24.\n\n50\n\nIbid., p. 22.\n\n51\n\nIbid., p. 20.\n\n52\n\nIbid., p. 25.\n\n53\n\nIbid., p. 30.\n\n54\n\nIbid.\n\n55\n\nIbid., p. 34.\n\n56\n\nIbid.\n\n57\n\nThis theoretical argument needs to be stressed against those who would date the decline of the Critical Theory from their stay in America, the adoption of 'American' empirical research methods, or even from Horkheimer's own 'bourgeois' character which showed itself to be susceptible to the rewards and honors heaped upon him on his return to Germany after the war.\n\n58\n\nMarcuse's case is somewhat more complex if one recalls, for example, his early, Heidegger-influenced essay on 'The Philosophical Foundations of the Concept of Labor in Economics' (1933), as well as the previously mentioned essay on Marx's _Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts_ which appeared in _Die Gesellschaft_ in 1931.\n\n59\n\nSee the discussion of Sartre in Chap.  below and especially the critical analysis of _The Adventures of the Dialectic_ by Merleau-Ponty that is presented in Chap. .\n\n60\n\nI have of course 'linearized' Horkheimer's exposition here. Much of his work, because of his self-critical rigor, can appear uncertain of its political implications, although this chapter has hopefully better defined the kind of practical theory Horkheimer was seeking.\n\u00a9 The Author(s) 2019\n\nDick HowardThe Marxian LegacyPolitical Philosophy and Public Purpose<https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-030-04411-4_5>\n\n# 5. From Critical Theory Toward Political Theory: J\u00fcrgen Habermas\n\nDick Howard1\n\n(1)\n\nDepartment of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA\n\nDick Howard\n\nThe goals Max Horkheimer had set out for the Institute for Social Research were passed on to J\u00fcrgen Habermas in the 1960s when he was named professor of philosophy and sociology at the University of Frankfurt. Faithful to the _attitude_ of Critical Theory, Habermas' evolving work has been driven between two seemingly opposed, but in fact mutually dependent, poles: the concretization of Critical Theory as a research program and the political concerns bound up with the Marxian heritage of Critical Theory. By actively inheriting the tension between these two poles, Habermas has been able to rethink many of the questions that blocked the development of Marxism. He has also been attacked politically by others who also claim to be heirs of Marx. This is not the place to adjudicate that case. At the end of the 1970s, Habermas was still in his 40s; his philosophical thought began to develop the idea of a 'communicative reason' that could overcome reified rationality. While waiting for the promised new study, a reflection on the path traveled by Critical Theory under his leadership offers a useful pause.\n\nHabermas had been a supporter of the early student movement, but he became critical of its actionist tendencies which were based on a curious combination of anti-intellectualism justified by a political dogmatism vaguely based on Marxism. His theoretical work during this period built on the insights of his Frankfurt predecessors concerning the changed role of science in contemporary capitalism as well as the pessimistic analysis of reason in Adorno and Horkheimer's _Dialectic of Enlightenment_. His first results, published in 1967, studied the irrational ways that the 'logic of the social sciences' was applied in making social and political policy; during the same period, he analyzed the philosophical presuppositions which made possible this travesty of reason in the service of social domination. The synthesis of these social-philosophical reflections in _Knowledge and Human Interests, published_ in 1968, included a re-examination of the theoretical foundations of Marxism. Crucial to reclaiming the Marxian project was the distinction between the logic of labor (understood as the purposively rational action of the individual subject) and interaction (understood as the process of dialogical interaction of humans who make claims about the truth of their choice of action). On this basis, Habermas seemed to avoid the difficulties confronted earlier critical Marxists such as Bloch and Horkheimer. This _philosophical_ advance had _political_ implications which Habermas addressed in his first major publication after leaving Frankfurt to become co-director of the Max Planck Institute for the Life Sciences in Starnberg.1 _Legitimation Crises of Late Capitalism_ , published in 1973, an analytic study that can be read as a synthesis of the first stages of Habermas' attempt to inherit actively from his predecessors.\n\n _Legitimation Crises_ is composed of three parts. The notion of a crisis is elaborated descriptively using a methodology appropriated from systems theory. Habermas notes the difference between an organism, which can be immediately distinguished from its environment and whose crisis is one of physical life or death, and a society whose crisis is based on a reflexive self-understanding. Without such a distinction, it is not possible to know whether social change is simply a form of system adaptation to a changing environment rather than the result of a cognitive learning process. To clarify this distinction, Habermas outlines the principles of a theory of social evolution based on the differentiation of forms of human sociality. This theory of social evolution is based ultimately on the idea of the political as the process by which a given social formation asserts its own identity.2 The second part of the book then confronts and clarifies the implications of different plausible analyses of late capitalist crisis. Its goal is to make plausible Habermas' contention that the need for legitimation is the central systematic problem that late capitalism can only overcome by changing its class structure or by a radical transformation of its traditional cultural needs and motivations. The third section of the book goes on to question whether capitalism can in fact effectuate this latter sort of change (since, by definition, it cannot change from a class to a classless society while remaining capitalist). Habermas applies what he calls a 'praxeology' or 'universal pragmatics' to try to show why this change has not taken place. The only remaining option is to develop a radical 'politics of Enlightenment'.\n\n## 5.1 What Is Late Capitalism?\n\nHabermas recognized and began to analyze aspects of modern society that clash the predictions of Marxist analysis as early as 1957; he developed his interpretation in 1960 under the title 'Between Philosophy and Science: Marxism as Critique'. Both of these texts were published in _Theorie und Praxis_ in 1963. Habermas had previously published more political analyses of changing modern society in a co-authored volume, _Student und Politik_ in 1961, as well as in his social-historical analysis _Strukturwandel der \u00d6ffentlichkeit_ , which appeared in 1962. Together with the essays published in _Theorie und Praxis_ , these earliest studies by Habermas propose the notion of a radical politics whose success is not dependent on objective economic crisis. The next stage of his work confronted positivist theory and the ideology on which it is founded. This brought his attention back to problems of social structure and the need for a methodology capable of articulating the kind of critical theory sought by Marx.\n\nHabermas is always thorough. He first analyzed the question of method with regard to the social sciences, publishing in 1967 _Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften_ ; he then turned in 1968 to its philosophical foundations in _Knowledge and Human Interests_ ; a temporary synthesis that stressed the role of science policy and state intervention in contemporary capitalism was published in 1968 under the title _Technology and Science as 'Ideology'_. As he indicated by the title selected for his 1971 volume of debates with the systems theoretical sociology of Niklas Luhmann, _Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie_ , Habermas' concern throughout was the formulation of a specifically _social_ theory. His Introduction to new edition of _Theorie und Praxis, also_ in 1971, makes this clear in the claim that '[a]ll of these studies of the empirical relation of science, politics and public opinion in late capitalist societies must remain unsatisfactory as long as the serious starting points for a theory of late capitalism are hardly worked out'.3 The concern with 'late capitalism' in _Legitimation Crises_ is thus the culmination of 15 years of experience and reflection.\n\nThe term 'late capitalism' can be misleading.4 Descriptively, it points to the increased degree of organization in social relations that results from growing intervention of the state in all spheres of life. This in turn results from the higher degree of capitalist concentration, multinational corporate activity, and an ever more controlled and manipulated market. The increasingly restricted sphere of private autonomy and the minimization of the market in determining social distribution reflect a change in class stratification which creates a variety of new forms of social behavior. The increased application of science and technology changes the work process and affects the profit and investment choices of the larger corporations, as well as the options for government spending. Mechanized farming and greater urbanization create new social problems whose political expression takes place outside of the traditional framework of party democracy . From their side, mass media and the theoretically equal chance of all for education affect the socialization process and role conceptions of larger sections of the population. At least in the developed capitalist countries, scarcity is no longer immediately physical; the new forms of scarcity concern nature itself, as well as the very meaning of social existence. Habermas recognizes the need to find a theoretical framework beyond the empirical description of these changes in order to differentiate and to make sense of these complex phenomena.\n\nRecalling that a 'crisis' can either endanger the sick body or mark the moment at which the fever breaks before health is restored, Habermas proposes a systems theoretical interpretation the types of crisis of late capitalism. He distinguishes three potential areas for its outbreak: the economic, the political, and the socio-cultural. Crises can become manifest in four forms: as _system_ crises of the economic or of administrative _rationality_ and as _identity_ or _social_ crises that result in the failure of social legitimation or individual motivation. These abstract generalizations are applicable to _any_ social system. To differentiate among systems, it is necessary to discover a principle of 'social organization' whose function is analogous to the Marxist concept of a 'social formation' (p. 18)5 that defines the principles that assure the system's _identity_. Such principles 'determine the learning capacity and thus the level of development of a society first with regard to the forces of production and then their system of interpretation which insures identity, and thus also limits the possible growth of steering capacity' (p. 30). This will make possible the formulation of an empirically based evolutionary theory that will do away with contingency in the choice of a theoretical standpoint.\n\nSystems theory is too general to provide the basis for such a theory. In Habermas' formulation, '[w]ithout a theory of social evolution on which I could base myself, the organizational principles cannot even be grasped abstractly; their definition will be at best indicatively illustrated and explained with reference to the institutional domain which has functional primacy for each level of development (system of kinship, political system, economic system)' (pp. 31\u201332). Although a fully developed theory of evolution would give more precise indications than those presented by Habermas in this small volume, what Habermas has offered here suffices to indicate how the choice of standpoint from which the analyst determines the kind of crisis that is life-threatening escapes from contingency; it explains why _crises of identity_ are the ones that shed light on the central components of a _social_ system. Correlatively, this means that the _systems_ crises in the economic and administrative spheres cannot be seen as the motivating force for the collapse of a society, _unless_ that society's form of self-identity is assured by these systems, as was the case, respectively, for the periods of liberal market capitalism and feudalism.\n\nHabermas' analysis of late capitalism develops sequentially four possible forms of crisis. He assumes the validity of Marx's conception that the fundamental economic contradiction is constituted by the 'law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall'.6 Once this 'law' is given, the problems that emerge from the economic sphere can only be solved by administrative interventions of the state. Historically, such state activity seems to have been successful at least temporarily. The relative infrequency of economic crises can be explained by the state's adoption of political measures compensating for limits imposed by laws of the economic marketplace. Alternatively, the state can be still more interventionist, acting as the planning agent for 'united monopoly capital'. Habermas argues that neither strategy is empirically satisfactory because the state has only limited functional freedom. Insofar as its intervention changes the rules of the economic game, it cannot apply the same remedies a second time since the economic actors' expectations were changed by the first intervention. Under these conditions, what Habermas calls a _rationality_ crisis emerges either because of the conflict between opposed capitalist interests that limits the state's freedom or because the performance of its economic function forces the state to create autonomous sub-systems\u2014such as transportation, housing, education, business subventions of various sorts\u2014that are not functional for the system as a whole. In either case, a new type of demand is imposed on the state, which must now _legitimate_ its activity. It can deal with this obligation either by attempting to buy off potential protest (building hospitals, schools, and the like) or by creating its own ideology to insure popular support. In the former instance, problems of a fiscal nature emerge; the result is the politicization in areas of social life previously understood as a-political. In the latter case, problems of _motivation_ emerge, posing the question of the degree to which the state can create an ideology that compensates for the transformation of traditional forms of social-political life.\n\nThe definition of late capitalism that emerges from this systems theoretical description has two central features. The adjective 'late' can be used insofar as the system has used each of the four types of crisis-prevention available to it. Habermas' position here is taken from Claus Offe, who explains that '[t]here is no recognizable dimension in which _new_ mechanisms for the self-perpetuation of the capitalist system (which are at the same time compatible with its continued existence...) can be found and applied. What remains is the variation and refinement of the triad of usual self-adaptive mechanisms which at least to some degree have been applied in all developed capitalist systems; and on the other hand, in the case that they are not sufficient, either the historically unproductive or the productive-revolutionary breakdown of the basic structure of capitalism'.7 The second justification for this usage is the demonstration of the inability of the system to function alone insofar as its self-regulation depends on the resolution of the legitimation and motivational crises that threaten the identity of capitalism.8\n\nGenerally speaking, all social systems have had crises of legitimation, which they have resolved in different ways. Primitive societies are organized either by a system of kinship or of religion whose permanence preserves the social order and provides a truth-referent for practical questions. Pre-capitalist Western societies gradually developed a politico-religious legitimation process in which the forms of social and personal interactions were infused with a sense that was meaningful to the participants. In turn, liberal market capitalism found its principle of legitimacy in the equal opportunity offered by the marketplace and in some cases also by political democracy. Habermas suggests that these forms of legitimation have lost their attractiveness. Perhaps this is only an appearance, but it may be also the result of systemic failure. To clarify the problem, Habermas proposes to examine the notion of legitimation as it is manifested in the socio-political functions of the contemporary social _system_ and in its socio-cultural function in the creation of individual _identity_.\n\nThe necessity of state intervention in late capitalism gives rise to political crisis of legitimation. The state has two resources to confront them: value and sense (p. 104). Insofar as the state intervenes in the market, its legitimacy depends on the economic _value_ it produces; the democratic form of its action assures the _sense_ of its action for the members of society. In this way, even those who do not benefit from the economic intervention feel that they have a voice in their destiny. 'Because the activity of the state follows the declared goal of directing the system by avoiding crises, and thus the class relation has lost its apolitical form, the class structure _must_ be affirmed in struggles for the administratively mediated division of the social productive growth' (p. 76). For example, although the state can buy allegiance through fiscal generosity, when a crisis appears, as unemployment and inflation begin to rise, state action needs the support of the citizens to increase taxes or impose wage-and-price controls. The impending crisis will lead to decreased confidence in the state, reducing its ability to act. What it can no longer buy with value, it must purchase with sense.\n\nThe difficulty that now arises stems from the fact that the legitimation of the previous state interventions was economic; its concern was the maintenance of the capitalist system. At first, it intervenes as a market-substitute in order to keep demand and profit high. Its reach grows; it sees the need for infrastructural improvements; it becomes involved in the educational system, begins to fund scientific research and its translation into new technologies; it is mobilized to compensate for the ecological reformist trade unions. All of these functions are ultimately oriented to the production of _use-value_ ; they produce winners and losers. State intervention cannot be hidden in a cloak of systemic neutrality. In order to insure the legitimacy of its action in a class-based society, the state must develop means to insure the allegiance of society. To be legitimate from the perspective of members of society, its action must be perceived not only as efficacious but as meaningful\u2014ultimately, as democratic.\n\nThe problems of political legitimation that cannot be produced by economic intervention depend ultimately on the ability of the state to provide a meaningful basis for the activities of the individual. What Habermas calls a 'motivational crisis' appears 'when the socio-cultural system changes so that its output is dysfunctional for the state and for the system of social labor' (p. 106). It is at times unclear whether the motivation crisis arises because of a change in this socio-cultural system, as in the above passage, or whether it occurs when change in the economic and political systems makes the inherited motivational structure dysfunctional. Motivation is not the same as legitimation; it is based on a logic of normative structures and images of the world which, Habermas insists, have their own logic whose meaningfulness is independent of the political and the economic systems.9 The empirical questions are whether they have changed, or become dysfunctional, and what that means.\n\nHabermas analyzes four elements of motivational structure: (1) the impossibility of regenerating a tradition, (2) the way social structures have undermined the principle of individual effort, (3) the fact that normative structures present in post-autonomous art and articulated by communicative morality destroy the motivational patterns of private life, and (4) the fact that, in spite of these difficulties, tradition is nonetheless necessary. The results of Habermas' analysis appear to present an antinomy that will have to be unraveled step by step.\n\nThe analysis of the first and third problems shows that motivations are mutable; they are affected by social change. As work becomes increasingly rationalized and service industries transform previously interpersonal services into marketable commodities, culture becomes commercialized, child-rearing appeals to psychological expertise, and citizens expect their problems to be solved by state administration. The enlarged role of rationalized science destroys the traditional images of life as a meaningful totality, replacing them with scientific and religious fads based rumor or partial evidence. For its part, modern art no longer holds out the promise of happiness; its value is that of just another commodity whose apparent independence is protected by its obscurity in the eyes of the broader public. From this perspective, it appears that traditional norms not only are surpassed but have become useless in the new social system.\n\nContrary to the previous account, the second and fourth questions point to the non-manipulability of norms. Their articulation will depend on Habermas' development of the theory of social evolution by appeal to what he calls a 'universal pragmatics'. It appears now that the modern replacement of the traditional idea that effort will be rewarded by gratification through the mediation of the equality of market-chances has been replaced by an educational system producing over-qualified individuals prepared to do unrewarding work at meaningless jobs while they have no idea what to do with the increased free time produced by the new system of social relations. The traditional normative quest for meaning is retained but repressed and unrealized. Habermas leans on the work of his Starnberg colleagues. He points to the analysis of adolescent crisis by D\u00f6bert and Nunner-Winkler as illustrating the difficulty of assimilating new norms of late capitalism.10 The classic analyses of young radicals and alienated youth by Kenneth Keniston are also said to illustrate the results of a social system that does not permit the normal communicative assimilation of social roles. The inherited normative needs that find their expression in cultural tradition make themselves felt only by their absence.\n\nThe motivation crises are neither the final cause nor basis for the other types of crisis; that assumption would make the analyses of the other three forms irrelevant by basing them all on psychology. The logic proper to motivation must be studied on the basis of a theory of social evolution which is concerned with norms that are universal. Their universality is manifested in the fact that they are not the product of individual action but, rather, generate the possible types of action available to the individual. The particular individuality of a social subject is only acquired within a pre-given system of institutions and norms. A social system seeking to reproduce itself must produce individuals whose motivations generate actions that are functional. This explains why the crucial problem to be addressed by a crisis theory of late capitalism concerns legitimation. Legitimation is determined _both_ by the need to analyze the way that the economic and the political contribute to the empirical integration of the system _and_ by the institutional structure that institutes normative forms of motivation. This dual structure explains in turn why legitimation crises become the object of a _critical theory of society_.\n\n## 5.2 Critical Theory and Marxism\n\nCrises in late capitalism differ fundamentally from those of the liberal capitalism described by Marx; the same is true for their critical analyses.11 Habermas proposes a reformulation of 'historical materialism' whose validity would not be limited to liberal capitalist market society whose singularity is seen in the fact that crises in its economic system were also crises of social identity. In that social formation, the free market was not only the foundation of economic production; its free market for labor and the dual nature of commodities governed also the social and institutional distribution of power. That is why Marx's _Capital_ was a critical theory of capitalist society whose political implication was revolutionary. Building on this model, Habermas proposes that '[h]istorical materialism seeks a comprehensive explanation of social evolution that explains not only the process by which the theory itself develops but also the context in which it is applied. The theory presents the conditions under which a self-reflection of the history of the species has become objectively possible; and at the same time it names the addressee who, with the help of the theory, can bring it to awareness of itself and its potentially emancipatory role in the process of history'.12 As long as the liberal capitalist economy functioned smoothly, it legitimated the social inequality which resulted from free exchange on the capitalist market. Crises are its 'practical ideology critique' (p. 47) insofar as they affect not only the integration of the system but put into question social integration as well. The interdependence of system and social integration means that economic analysis is immediately translatable into social terms; that is why Marx 'is the author of the _18th Brumaire_ as well as _Capital_ ' (p. 49).\n\nThe central role of legitimation as an _independent_ manifestation of crisis in Habermas' analysis of late capitalism can be understood as a further development of his earlier critical theory.13 Habermas began his confrontation with Marxism in the wake of the Frankfurt School's recognition that the modern form of a Marxist critique of political economy had to be based on a critique of instrumental reason . As Habermas' colleague Albrecht Wellmer pointed out,14 the Frankfurters' critique still depended on the basic logic of Marx in one crucial sense. The historical pessimism expressed in the culminating theoretical work of Horkheimer and Adorno's most radical stage, _The Dialectic of the Enlightenment_ , was based on a paradoxical and ultimately self-defeating concept of human labor. As the productive conquest of outer nature increases, it increases the dependence of laboring humanity on an artificial world that it has itself produced. The natural world is reified as the human world is alienated. The result must be either economic catastrophe (as Luk\u00e1cs theorized) or an uncertain apocalypse which could as well be barbarism as socialism (as Luxemburg feared). Habermas at first tried to circumvent the difficulty by reconsidering Marx's concept of productive labor.\n\nHabermas rejects Marx's claim in the _1844 Manuscripts_ that what is positive in Hegel's _Phenomenology_ is that Hegel 'grasps the nature of labor, and conceives objective man (true, because real man) as the result of his own labor'. Not only does he criticize the idealist implications of this assertion drawn by Hegel15; Habermas insists that Marx's interpretation conflates two distinct conceptual phenomena which express different forms of rationality. The forces of production depend on labor, whereas the relations of production express forms of social interaction. The rationality of productive labor is monological; it is purposive, goal-oriented activity that is indifferent to its content. The logic of production can never transcend itself to formulate goals that are liberating. The rationality of social interaction is dialogical; it expresses symbolically mediated human relations between subjects who retain their own subjectivity. The dialogical rationality at work in social relations is communicative and capable of becoming emancipatory.16 In present context, the former is responsible for the maintenance of the productive system, the latter takes charge of assuring social integration.\n\nThe difference between the rationality of labor as instrumental and that of communicative institutional action provides a guiding thread for Habermas. Communicative institutional activity institutes the normative social structures in which men live with and speak to others. Habermas tries to explain how these norms come into being in his debate with the proponent of a strictly objective systems theory, Niklas Luhmann.17 For Luhmann norms are directly empirical, even arbitrary; they are based on reciprocal expectations of persons occupying pre-given social roles; as such they have no cognitive basis claim to truth. Habermas proposes instead that norms are presupposed in the structure of speech itself; the participants in any speech situation must make the counter-factual assumption that the other participants are capable of understanding and communicating. In this way, speech supposes a universality concerning both _what_ is spoken about and the social conditions of the _speaker_ himself. Although this universal is norm that is 'counterfactual', it is activated by the first speech act exchanged with another because without presupposing it, there would be no possibility of communication, however distorted.18\n\nThis only apparently abstract philosophical argument permits Habermas to propose a redefinition of Critical Theory. The critical theorist makes a counter-factual assumption about the ideal speech situation and then asks: what would each member of a society think _if_ they were completely aware of their situation, fully free and able to express the occluded aspects of social life, and could ask whether their empirical interests were universalizable to all members of society or whether they are suffering from one or another form of exclusion, discrimination, or exploitation? From this counter-factual question, it becomes possible to show both the functional necessity for the system to legitimate itself ideologically and, at the same time, to indicate the possible forms of critique of that ideology.19\n\nHabermas does not explicitly claim that this reformulation of _a_ philosophical theory of critique is compatible with Marxism. Its basic structure is consistent with the Marxist theory of proletarian revolution, whose logical premise is that the particular interests of the proletarian _class_ coincide with the universal _interest_ of a classless society. It differs insofar as the communicative theory seeks speech to explain how modern _individuals_ can act together _rationally_ ; that was the reason that Habermas' crisis theory was based on rational social legitimation rather than the particular psychological motivations of individual subjects. Rational normative universality cannot be achieved by isolated, monological subjects; the validity of any form of binding social unity depends on the implicit existence of a concept of contractual obligation. This premise is put into question in a later chapter of _Legitimation Crises_ which suggests that the bourgeois individual and with him the notion of social obligation have disappeared from late capitalism.20 This challenges the idea that there could still exist a universal _social class_. It implies that in late capitalist society particular individual interests co-exist with an abstract, undifferentiated universality. Insofar as Habermas' communicative theory is such an abstract undifferentiated universal claim, his argument needs to be concretized.21\n\nIt is not surprising to find that a similar difficulty faced the young Marx, whose path to a solution should be recalled in a brief excursus. In his 1843 'Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of the State', Marx attempted to resolve it by insisting on the need for universal democratic voting rights. Each individual citizen, he asserts, would participate 'individually-as-all'; the legislator would be my representative in the same way that the shoemaker represents my needs. Marx quickly rejected this solution as 'merely political', recognizing the primacy of civil society in his 'On the Jewish Question' and citing Rousseau's insistence that a new political state can be built only if the nature of its citizens is transformed. The failure of the French Revolution, insists Marx, was due to the fact that it changed the political superstructure while leaving intact the egoistic and competitive civil society at its base. This insight led Marx from philosophy to political economy. He came to see that the correct relation of the state to civil society\u2014of the universal and the particular\u2014can be established only when the particular self-interest of economic subjects is replaced by social relations whose legitimacy comes from their universality. When that transformation is achieved, the state can, in Engels' pithy phrase, 'wither away'.\n\nMarx's philosophical theory is abstract; its political implications are dangerous. He asserts that increasingly rational relations of production based on the evermore developed capitalist division of labor create a system of socio-economic interdependence whose universal potential is concealed from the working class by the self-interested behavior that is the foundation of the system of capitalist domination. When the working class becomes conscious of the great potential of developed capitalism, production that had been appropriated by a particular ruling class will become production for universal needs according to a plan established by all for the good of all. Marx's claim assumes that someone\u2014the philosopher, or the planner\u2014can somehow stand _outside_ of the constantly changing historical process in order to bring it to self-awareness. That is a form of the same abstract idealism that the young Marx had criticized in Hegel. The political consequence of this idealism is that the social universality concealed by the capitalist division of labor becomes incarnate in a particular body, the philosopher-king or the master-planners... or the Leninist party. While it is abstractly true that the state _can_ wither away in such conditions, there is no necessity that it _must_ do so.\n\nThe dictatorship of the proletariat may become the rule over the working class by a self-selected party who claim to speak in its name (as Horkheimer recognized in his 'Authoritarian State'). Ironically, the two possible ways to avoid this consequence are both implicit in Lenin's _The State and Revolution_ , which was written in August 1917 with the explicit aim of justifying the coming Bolshevik _seizure_ of power rather than wait for the supposed 'withering' to take place on its own. The first potential means to avoid party rule is found in the idea of self-governing workers' councils, the soviets. Discussing the lessons of the Paris Commune, Lenin argues\u2014without mentioning Rousseau\u2014that the _process_ of revolution will effect a change in human nature of the sort that no amount of theoretical study or participation under conditions of capitalist domination could effect. The famous aphorism that is attributed (wrongly) to Lenin\u2014that 'every cook will be able to govern'\u2014is based on the assertion that the _praxis_ of the revolution will have taught the 'cooks' the need to transcend their narrow particular interests in order to act for the universal good of all. Lenin's rhetorical support for workers' councils (or soviets) was taken over and developed by the left-wing opposition, which could also appeal to the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg. Although Habermas does not make the direct connect, his distinction between learning as adaptation to systemic necessity and an evolutionary leap to a new stage of social evolution suggests that the expectation of a revolutionary leap from particular existential experience to universal social norms is, if not romantic, certainly problematic.\n\nThe apparently objective means to avoid party domination over the working class is also found in the analysis of the Paris Commune in _The State and Revolution_. Lenin points to the way that 'large scale production, factories, railways, the postal service' provide models of the way that complex tasks can be reduced to 'simple operations of registration, filing, and checking... that can be easily performed by every literate person'. The socialist state can adopt freely the same processes; state administrators will be paid a worker's wage while being stripped of 'every shadow of privilege, of every semblance of \"official grandeur\"'. Building on this model, Lenin recalls Engels' argument that the withering of the state takes place when 'the government over men is replaced by the administration of things'. The reduction of political rule to administrative mechanisms produces a depoliticized public which is fit only to be ruled. Politics is left to the party, whose ideology claims to express objective scientific truth and a vision of the future freed from the illusions of the past. The result is in fact the triumph of the logic of capitalism rather than an evolution toward the new socialist society promised by the party.\n\nThe point of this excursus is that Habermas correctly sees the _constitutive_ and _unavoidable_ nature of the problem of the relation of critical philosophy and Marxist critique. Marxists cannot ignore the philosophical foundations of the political, presupposing that civil society and interpersonal relations is its 'real' base. Habermas' stress on the role of the universal\u2014in the form of the norms without which individuation would not occur, and in the form of the truth-claims without which practical activity would be a sort of meaningless, anomic activity\u2014addresses the central _political_ problem. He thus helps his reader avoid the _reductionism_ that follows from an overly simplified and instrumental reading of Marx. He does so by restoring the integral role of the political in Marxian and in revolutionary theory. The adequacy of his solution is another question, to which I will return.\n\nHabermas' theory of the political does leave room for politics. He understands that not all interests are universalizable and proposes a model for justifiable compromise, which is said to be legitimate when (a) the two sides are equal _and_ (b) the interest in question is itself not universalizable (p. 154). But this suggestion is quickly abandoned; the general demand for universalization dominates the theoretical argument. Indeed, in an essay written after _Legitimation Crises_ ,22 Habermas writes that '[c]ompromises are the results of clever acting and negotiation, not of discourses'. But how then can the demand for universalization be maintained? Habermas analyzes a variety of ultimately unsatisfactory possibilities.23 Anthropological assumptions about the nature of the species are unconvincing because no one knows what human needs in fact are. A universal, objectivist philosophy of history like that of Marx presupposes a teleology and makes assumptions about the class divisions in order to clinch its argument. Reference to the immanent norms of the system supposes knowledge of what distinguishes accidental from systemic claims. The same difficulty faces the assumption of the existence of a difference between the normative claims and the systemic reality: the difference only accidental. Examination of the legal codes to show who is excluded from social participation forgets no system organizes itself totally by written laws. Habermas proposes that the critical political thinker adopt an 'advocatory model' (p. 161). 'The advocatory role of critical social theory would rather consist in a substitute [ _stellvertretende_ ] simulated discourse between the groups that are divided by an articulated or at least virtual opposition of interests in order to find universalizable and at the same time repressed interests' (p. 161). These interests would then be the object of empirical research.24\n\nHabermas develops the basis for his advocatory model in the final two chapters of _Legitimation Crises_. He continues his debate with Luhmann, whose replacement of the individual subject by the imperatives of the system implies that democratic decision-making uselessly increases the complexity of the system whose concern should be simply its own self-regulation and preservation. Habermas proposes a quasi-empirical critique of Luhmann's position, showing that democratic planning is at least as good as the administrative non-participative alternative while contributing at the same time to the development of practical social rationality that is superior to the purposive-rational form of administrative planning (p. 189). Habermas admits that the advocacy model of critical theory _can_ fail in a society that has altered the role of the individual and the function of rationality to such a degree that only self-regulating systems and sub-systems exist. Ultimately, he insists, the possibility of critical failure is better than prejudging reality (as does Luhmann when he replaces the democratic individual by the administrative system).\n\nThe defense of the advocatory model is passionate, but its individualist foundation of social theory leaves indeterminate the emergence of universal norms. Habermas vacillates, before returning to the problem in his concluding chapter, which announces his 'Partiality for Reason' ( _Parteilichkeit f\u00fcr Vernunft_ ). The title is paradoxical: it is logically impossible to ask people to 'be reasonable'; reason must already exist if it is possible to make a rational argument for being reasonable. If there is a choice as to _who_ is to be reasonable, the state (Luhmann ) or the people (Habermas), the question presupposes that rationality is the property of one particular group; but that denies the universality of reason. Habermas sees only the possibility of returning to the 'old European idea of human worth', which can provide a basis for social action even in a social system that is increasingly taking its own autonomous course. That legacy of the Enlightenment, affirms Habermas proudly, remains the only possibility for political modernity.\n\nIn spite of his critique of Luhmann, Habermas does not simply reject the contribution of systems theory. His claim is that it is wrong to treat society as constituted by a non-social, external subject. Society (as system) is constituted by _social_ action (by individuals); individuals are always already social beings who cannot ignore systemic constraints. This paradoxical interdependence permits a reformulation of the problem of the relation of the universal and the particular as that of the relation of the social and the individual.25 However, as Ulrich R\u00f6del points out, the point of view of the system corresponds politically to that of the capitalist. It neglects the fact that the function of intervention by the state is not arbitrary; it is the result of class struggle.26 The result for Marxists, as expressed by Claus Offe, is that systems theoretical analysis is useful for analyzing the problems of the capitalist state, but _from its point of view_. This leads to a practical dilemma insofar as '[r]evolutionary theory can thus always be constructed only as the self-explanation of a practical movement that is already in process'.27 Habermas rejects this conclusion from his close collaborators, insisting that if praxis can only be justified after the fact, nothing differentiates one praxis from any other, including that of the fascists. For this reason, Habermas goes beyond the issues posed by the legitimation crises to develop further his theory of social evolution.\n\n## 5.3 Historical Materialism and Theory of Evolution\n\nHabermas claims that Luhmann's systems theoretical strategy provides a 'paradigm'28 for the analysis of _one_ dimension of the problem of social evolution, while the two other dimensions of the self-reproduction of the species need to be treated independently. The organizational principles of human society are articulated in three dimensions. The productive forces continually extend the boundaries of the available world through science and technology; organizational forms of human societal interaction govern the self-maintenance of the given society; and emancipatory learning is developed through the critique of ideologies and the demand for rational legitimation. Habermas claims that the systems theoretical approach gives priority to the second dimension, organization. It claims that a system maintains itself by increasing its internal complexity\u2014its 'steering capacity'\u2014while decreasing the complexity of its environment. The most efficient form of increased internal complexity is the differentiation of sub-systems which can take over burdens on society. Social evolution is seen in the degree to which the administrative system is differentiated from, and able to control, the society. Systems theory, as a method of administration, is thus a theory which is also a practice! This claim is one reason for Habermas intense debate with Luhmann. Aside from the theoretical problems proper to systems theory,29 Habermas' major criticism of Luhmann is that his idea of 'legitimation through procedure' (as he titles one of his books) is ultimately based on a decisionism whose only possible legitimation is its success, which can never be guaranteed over time.\n\nAs opposed to Luhmann's systemic functionalism which reduces social relations to one level, the differentiated model of Historical Materialism presents three distinct types of activity\u2014instrumental, social, and emancipatory\u2014each of which makes specific truth claims. If they are reduced to one type of action, the possibility of human individuation and praxis are lost as the social cement cracks. In his earlier work, Habermas saw History as the horizon which constitutes the boundary within which praxis moves. In Baier's summary,\n\n> History is not a theme for dialectical sociology for its own sake, but as a condition of praxis, to be understood as a hermeneutic philosophy of History from a practical standpoint... in order to formulate a theory of how praxis is made possible by the mediation of History.30\n\nAlready in his 1968 _Knowledge and Human Interests_ , Habermas had connected the three forms of truth-oriented activity to three cognitive interests and attempted to show epistemologically the need for and limits of each. The thrust of that book was to show that because these cognitive interests are socially embedded, social theory provides the ultimate foundation for epistemology. This insight was then concretized by the mediation of History (whose capitalization indicates its indefinite conceptual referent) and rendered critical by the suggestion that the grounds of theory must be at once its truth-reference _and_ a social theory. The result points to the need for a theory of social evolution which will enable the theory to avoid the contingency of brute factuality. To avoid the relativism and dependence on accidental social conditions (which could change at any time), and in order to avoid the temptation to appeal to an ahistorical notion of truth outside the sphere of human relations, Habermas had to move beyond the position of _Knowledge and Human Interests_ to justify the status of social norms.31\n\nThe development of a theory of evolution is not a substitute for a theory of History, let alone for a concrete historical analysis. A first reading of Habermas' preliminary sketch of social evolution in _Legitimation Crises_32 can give rise to the impression that Habermas has left the terrain of history for that of ontology. Looked at more closely, he sees the need for a theory of social evolution in order _to make possible_ a human social praxis which is _not contingent_ but remains truth-oriented and open to discursive critical questioning. If there were no such theory, human history could not be written or _theorized_ ; it would only be random events with no claim to truth or normativity and no place for the actors to recognize themselves and to criticize their traditions in a dialogue that demands reasoned responses. That explains the fact that a critical theory of social evolution oriented toward the questions of normativity and truth has to be itself understood as a conquest of human evolution. 'Indeed!', exclaims Habermas; it would be the theoretical equivalent of Engels' revolutionary 'leap from necessity to freedom'. At the same time, he warns, it would be wrong to confuse particular knowledge achieved at a given moment with the conditions of its universalization, to conflate individual freedom with its social realization, or to think that the liberating process of psychoanalytic analysis can be transferred directly to the social plane.33 The problem of the relation of universal and the particular remains.\n\nAlbrecht Wellmer's suggests that the theory Habermas needs would be 'the phantastic demand to develop a materialist version of [Hegel's ] \"Phenomenology of Mind\"'.34 This claim is potentially misleading. Hegel's _Phenomenology_ deals with _appearing_ knowledge and is to the last contingent. What is demanded would be more like the _Logic_ , which the author's Foreword to the Second Edition describes concisely. 'In that it deals with the thought determinations which overall penetrate our mind in an instinctive and unconscious manner, and themselves remain unattended because they enter into language as well, the science of logic will be the reconstruction of those determinations which are separated out by reflection and fixed by it as subjective external forms in their matter and content'.35 Hegel is reacting here to a position which is limited because it is concerned 'only with the correctness of knowledge, not with its truth'36\u2014which is a good description of his own _Phenomenology_ , which was written well-before the _Logic_. This distinction is essential to understanding why Habermas insists on truth as fundamental to, and erroneously neglected by, social theory.\n\nIn recent re-evaluations of _Theorie und Praxis_ and _Knowledge and Human Interests_ , Habermas has attempted to indicate the place of the theory of evolution. He establishes a categorial distinction between several closely related conceptual pairs: constitution and validity, categorial meaning and discursive verification, life-related communication and discourse, and praxis and theory. In each pair of categories, the first refers to the tasks of a critical theory, while the second belongs to the domain of a theory of social evolution. The first refers to the constitution of a life-world; it makes up the categorial meanings which provide the content of a statement. The second refers to the truth claim constituted by the intersubjective element in the performative aspect of the speech act. That something is the case and that something is true are two different types of claim. The first can be immediately verified once an objective frame of reference or measurement (the cognitive interests which constitute the domain of something given) is established; the second demands an intersubjective and mediated verification achieved through the discourse of all potential participants\u2014that is, it must be universalizable in the sense previously discussed. The first claim, that such-and-such is the case, is not. The first type of claim is particular and is bound to a monological context of action; the second concerns the reconstruction of universal and anonymous systems of rules within the context of a discourse removed from immediate practical imperatives. Each of these represents a form of self-reflection, but the first is modeled on the (a-symmetrical) relation of analyst\/patient, which is particular, whereas the second is the reconstruction of the 'know how', the intuitive rules that all must follow. The self-reflection achieved by the former will therefore have practical consequences, whereas the universality of the latter promises only the transcendental foundation of species-activity. This reconstruction will become the basis of a theory of evolution that is grounded on Habermas' communication theoretical theory of a 'Universal Pragmatics'.\n\nThis new stage of his theoretical work leads Habermas to redefine his notion of cognitive interests. Critical theory is concerned with the particular, whereas reconstructive (evolution theory or universal pragmatics) accounts for the universal. The notion of interest is described as their 'latent nexus'.37 The cognitive interests are neither ideology-critical nor based in psychology or the sociology of knowledge: 'they are invariant'.38 If they could be deduced directly from the imperatives of life-praxis, they would only be contingent.39 Instead, they must be 'deeply rooted anthropological' forms, although Habermas insists that this does not imply a turn to naturalism as some critics have argued.40 Habermas does admit that he is unclear as to whether these interests are 'transcendental' in a strict sense or 'empirical' although not contingent insofar as they refer to properties shared by the species as a whole (as in the claims of ethology).41 Returning to the issue two years later, in the Postscript to _Erkenntnis und Interesse_ , Habermas concludes that '[a]s long as cognitive interests can be identified and analyzed by reflection on the logic of inquiry in the natural and cultural sciences, they can legitimately claim a transcendental status. They assume an \"empirical\" status as soon as they are analyzed as the result of natural history\u2014analyzed, that is, in terms of a cognitive anthropology. I put \"empirical\" in quotation marks, because a theory of evolution which is expected to explain historically the emergent characteristics of a socio-cultural form of life (in other words, the constituent elements of social systems) cannot itself be developed within the transcendental framework of objectivizing science'.42\n\nThe ability to analyze the 'empirical' is crucial to Habermas' reconstruction of Historical Materialism. The theory of evolution will be able to do so only if its reconstruction of the universal and anonymous rule systems can articulate that 'latent nexus' that binds it to an action-oriented critical theory. Habermas sees the key element in this process in the fact that the roots of the cognitive interests 'result from the imperatives of the sociocultural life form bound up with work and language'.43 This assertion does not contradict his insistence that the interests are not derived from the imperatives of life praxis; his claim coincides with the 'anthropological' and 'species' character that he is stressing insofar as _homo sapiens_ is _at once_ a working _and_ a speaking animal. The reformulated Historical Materialism is thus based on cognitive interests which are _at the same time_ what is to be reconstructed in its evolutionary universality _and_ what in its particularity makes possible the situated critical theory that is ultimately grounded in them. The theory is thus doubly reflexive in the sense demanded; the open problem at this point is the identification of the 'addressees' capable of realizing this theory.\n\nThe parallel of Habermas' project with Hegel's _Logic_ does not mean that both have the same conception of truth. Habermas' discursive theory is rooted in the consensus concerning validity that arises in a situation of undistorted and equal speaking, making the paradoxical claim that the truth _both_ exists as a universal (hence, it is not constituted but constitutive) and yet that it depends on the particular individual subjects for its factual validity. For this claim to be valid, Habermas' theory of evolution must be _projective_ or historical in a way that includes an 'empirical' referent. His claims are often unclear. Stressing the importance of reflexive theory as reconstructive, he asserts that 'therefore the claim to be acting dialectically with insight is senseless. It rests on a category mistake'.44 But in the very next paragraph, he suggests that it is possible to act in terms of a counter-factual assumption, as was the claim of critical theory in _Legitimation Crises_. On the other hand, for the reconstructive theory of evolution, it appears that '[t]he entirety of past history is the history of distorted communication'.45 In this case, as Albrecht Wellmer points out 'it would follow that undistorted communication in each of the evolutionary spheres is the universal which founds the evolution of the species, _and_ that it is the task of the particulars to achieve what they must always already posit in the forms of their practical life'. Or, as Habermas puts it in the new Introduction to _Theorie und Praxis_ , 'in a process of enlightenment there are only participants'.46\n\n## 5.4 The Tasks of Philosophy and the Question of the Political\n\nThe philosophical ground of Habermas' theory is the notion of truth or validity whose translation into a critical theory fills the twin functions of social legitimation. Both truth and validity depend on language, whose articulation presupposes a counter-factually assumed situation of undistorted communication. To avoid misunderstanding, it must be stressed that language here will be analyzed in the context of the 'empirical' theory of evolution. As opposed to Luhmann's systems theoretical account, which made the political steering system the primary causal factor, Habermas insists on the importance of the demand for truth in all three evolutionary domains. In the domain of the productive forces, truth results in the reduction of the complexity of external nature; in the domain of social interaction, the increasing differentiation of specific sub-systems guarantees greater individual freedom and a larger palette of social possibilities; in the domain of emancipatory learning, the idea of truth leads to a critique of ideology that makes possible a continual learning process which maintains flexibility in the other two domains. Insofar as Habermas' notion of truth is articulated as the form of social discourse, emancipatory learning cannot be defined (as does Luhmann) by increased systemic complexity; it is better understood as a function of ideology-critique and self-reflexive activity.47 In this way, it defines the goal of present political tasks and locates the actual weaknesses of the system of late. This final step to the argument justifies the structure of the entire theory, making clear the _non-contingent_ grounds that Habermas needed in order to escape the problems posed to empirical research into the structures of late capitalism.\n\nHabermas needs to justify his claim to inherit the philosophical-anthropological notion of truth that he modernizes in his model of undistorted communication. At the same time, he has to face the 'Marxist' question of the validity of the heritage of the 'bourgeois' Enlightenment. The first elements of a response are found in a presentation in August 1973 at the annual meetings of the Yugoslav journal _Praxis_ titled 'The Role of Philosophy in Marxism'. Habermas presents his arguments in an easily outlined logical progression. First, there are three modern societal transformations that affect philosophy: (1) the changed nature and role of bourgeois culture in late capitalism, (2) the domination of scientistic assumptions and the reactions to this cultural hegemony, and (3) the positive tasks of philosophy in the new context. The first transformation affects the motivational kernel of culture, which becomes dysfunctional, producing revolts particularly by youth. Those who do not join the revolt adopt the cynicism of scientism, perhaps mitigated by forms of 'analytic philosophy'. The paths open to philosophy that refuses the two polar opposites can then take three forms. The first is a relativism that accepts the domination of science but insists that there are domains of life that remain outside of it. Habermas calls this a _Komplement\u00e4rphilosophie_ which, from Jaspers to Ko\u0142akowski, reduces philosophy to a _Weltanschauung_ , denying its philosophy's vital claim to truth and universality. The opposite pole is a renewal of a Heideggerian ontology that ignores the dead-end to which its critique of modern technology leads. Between the two poles is found the renewal _diamat_ in the Russian sense, claiming to know society as a totality and to orient action to this truth. Its fatal\u2014idealistic\u2014assumption that it _has_ this truth is in fact the signal that for it philosophy has come to an end.\n\nRejecting these alternatives, Habermas poses three tasks for a Marxist philosophy. It must develop a theory that uses the advances of the social and natural sciences without falling into their positivist tendency. It must defend reason as the demand for truth both in science and in the practical questions of life. And it must demystify the appearance of objectivity claimed by the institutions of late capitalism by showing their connectedness with the human project of seeking and creating the truth of the good life. Habermas admits that this project does not announce a revolutionary break with the past. 'Whoever would eliminate philosophy sets aside an element of the bourgeois world whose heritage we cannot ignore without harming science itself'. He then turns once again, in his concluding remarks, to the problem of the universal and the particular. As the unity of theoretical and practical reason, philosophy must be the medium or universal in terms of which the identity of society and of its members are formed without at the same time the risk of falling into particularistic identities. Philosophy, in a word, must be adequate to the tasks of reconstructive as well as critical social theory.\n\nSocial theory based on (discursive) truth standards proposes first of all a reconstruction, a self-reflection which has no practical consequences other than enlightenment or clarity concerning what individuals already are and do. This can in turn become the foundation of a critical self-reflection on the _particular_ forms of life and action. Mediated by the cognitive interests, it becomes the basis of a critical theory. In its most immediate form, the universal character of its claims serves as a critique of all particular structures.48 A more differentiated formulation can be derived from a communicative reconstruction of psychoanalysis in which the metapsychological theory of Freud is used to set in motion an asymmetrical communication between the theorist-as-already-knowing and the individuals whose communicative capacities are blocked by the existing social system. As with psychoanalysis, the acknowledgment of the validity of the theory by the participants would take place in the context of open discussion by those whose life situation it attempts to explain.49 Habermas suggests that a richer critical theory can in this way develop what the young Marx called the task of 'all as individuals' by means of the reconstruction of the evolutionary history of the species that demonstrates its dependence on the individual members of that species for its realization.\n\nThe reader cannot fail to be struck by the triadic logic of Habermas' theoretical arguments and the constant reappearance of the problem of the universal and the particular. His solution to the question of 'universalizable' interests seems at times return to a Humean concept of the universal that is not compatible with the cognitive interests that ground the theory insofar it is a philosophical reconstruction separated from the lived experience of the members. It is no surprise that Habermas came under criticism from the Marxist left. His reply to his former assistant, Oskar Negt, recognizes the premise of the criticism but argues by a sort of via _negativa_ that his position is the only possible way forward.50\n\nHabermas subsumes the Marxist criticisms of his position within his enfolding theoretical reconstruction. Claiming the heritage of the Enlightenment, which he reformulates in communicative categories, he asserts that the first challenge to political practice is to create an organization that can unite individuals in a continual process of critical self- and social-reflection. In a second step, he argues that the development of the Communist party type of organization marks a new step in the 'history of the species' insofar it brings naturally emerging discursive methods of problem-solving methods to a self-reflective formulation. 'With this type of organization something very remarkable is institutionalized: outwards, against the class enemy, strategic activity and political struggle; inwards, in relation to the mass of wage laborers, organization of enlightenment, discursive initiation of processes of self-reflection. The vanguard of the proletariat must master both: the critique of the weapons and the weapon of the critique'.51 When the Party has come to power, it is supposed to function as the mediator between the self-reflection of the proletariat and the practical political struggle. Habermas does not explain this third moment by recourse to the structure of the proletariat that makes it capable of such self-reflection. To the contrary, he asserts that those who have seized power in fact try to keep it by acting strategically rather than discursively; they are guided by their own particular interests rather than universalizable claims. The result is distorted communication which makes criticism illicit and blinds the capacity for self-understanding.\n\nHabermas' reconstruction offers grounds for his critique. Another triad points out that in principle the revolutionary organization has three _distinct_ tasks: the development of theories, the organization of enlightenment in which the theories are tested for their ability to spark a process of reflection in particular groups, and the choice of strategy and tactics in the political struggle. By attributing these distinct roles to a single institution, the Party has blurred the necessary distinctions among them. The usual justification of this choice is that the Party has to act as the consciousness of a proletariat 'in itself' that is unaware of its radical potential to become conscious 'for itself'. Habermas maintains instead his communicative interpretation. 'The only advantage of which Marx could legitimately have assured a proletariat acting in solidarity would have been this: that only a class which constitutes itself as such with the aid of a true critique is in a position to clarify in practical discourses how one should act rationally in the political sphere'.52 Only on this basis, he suggests, can the subordination of both the proletariat and critical theory to the Party be justified while, avoiding a politics in which the Party, as the independent bearer of truth, initiates actions for the masses who are supposed to learn post hoc that their interests coincide with those of the enlightened elite. A strategy 'freed' from the need for self-reflection on the part of the participants culminates in a Stalinism for which theory becomes, in Negt's apt phrase cited earlier, a 'science of legitimation'.53\n\nThe critique of the Leninist theory of the revolutionary political organization has a curious echo in Habermas' criticisms of the 'actionism' of the German student movement at the time to which I referred at the outset of this reconstruction of Habermas' development. Its idea that radical provocations, of 'exemplary action' and even violence that would serve to reveal the hidden repression beneath the smooth surface of the status quo, shared, no doubt unintentionally, the idea that the actions of those who know are necessary for the repressed masses to break their chains. Habermas criticized this politics for using people without giving them the chance to build a discursive opinion about their situation.54 He recognized the need to institutionalize forms of discursive confrontation because he did 'not want to hold that a sufficient realization of the demands that we must place on discourse is a priori impossible . The limitations which we have considered can either be compensated through institutional arrangements or at least neutralized in their effects on the declared goal through an equal division of the chance of exercising speech acts.55 Despite his earlier criticism of the New Left, he now admits as well that there are situations in which we _must_ act. The challenge is to define what counts as _political_ activity for his type of _social_ theory.\n\n## 5.5 The Political: Action or Institution?\n\nThe expanded role of the state in late capitalism politicizes areas of life which liberal capitalism had left to the private sphere. State action eliminates the appearance of naturalness from decisions concerning wages, child-rearing, health care, and urban policy. This can encourage demands for participation by those affected by these policies. Habermas builds on Claus Offe's combination of Marxist political intentions with a systems theoretical analysis of the state. Offe defines his goal as the demonstration of the class nature of the contemporary state. His analysis moves through three stages. First, he will 'conceptualize the domination organized by the state as a selective, event-producing system of rules, as a \"process of sorting out\"'. Second, he proposes to 'deduce the kind of selectivity that would demonstrate the class character of the domination by the state: which _specific_ selections must a state apparatus perform in order to function as a capitalist state?' The final step is to analyze 'the methodological problems that appear in the _empirical determination_ of selectivity' that can show 'a structural complementarity between state activity and the dominant class interests'.56 The state functions in this theory as a 'sub-system' _of society_ , performing specific functions that reduce social complexity. For that reason, Offe insists that it must be called the 'state apparatus' in order to avoid the implication that it could function as an independent subject.57 This is consistent with the idea of a state _in_ capitalist society stressed by the British socialist Ralph Miliband. On this view the political becomes whatever 'is made into an object of administrative activity'.58\n\nWhile Offe's version of systems theory seeks to present a political analysis, like all systems theories it tends to _reduce_ all phenomena to manifestations of the social. A different systemic theory, Hegel's _Philosophy of Right_ , suggests a differentiated categorical structure that underlines the autonomy of the political. Hegel devotes a long explanation of the functions to what he calls 'The Police and the Corporations' in his reconstruction of the logic of 'civil society'.59 Neither term should be understood in its contemporary meaning; conceived as institutions of _civil society_ , they provide the functional equivalent of the contemporary welfare state. In Hegel's account, they serve as the mediation that prepares the overcoming of social relations based on atomistic particularity which leads to the _political_ state. Although Marx criticized Hegel's hypostatization of the state as a 'concrete universal' that reconciles particularity and universality, in his historical analyses such as the _Eighteenth Brumaire_ he found it necessary to recognize the existence of a political sphere that was not identical to the 'state apparatus'. Similarly, Marx's analysis of the Paris Commune in _The Civil War in France_ makes clear that it is the administrative function state apparatus (rather than 'the political' unity of society) that is destined to disappear after the revolution. Marx's _political_ analysis recognizes that politics is based on _something more and other_ than economics or the systemic control of state administration. Marx does not, however, develop the theoretical foundations of his historical insight. Habermas' notion of universalizable interests can be interpreted as a reformulation of the Hegelian notion of the political as a concrete universal that is capable of expressing conceptually Marx's insight. In Hegel's case, the political state reconciles the sphere of individuality with that of social particularity. Habermas' focus on legitimation as the axial point for his analysis of late capitalism reformulates this insight in modern terms. The structure of this argument rests on the possibility of establishing a theory of evolution that can fulfill the logical function needed for Habermas to complete his reconstructive theory. That theory would have to find a place for both individual action and for its institutionalization in political forms that avoid reification.60 Habermas had offered historical sketches that suggest the kind of argument that he wanted to develop. It would have to show how action can acquire a paradoxical kind of institutionalization that is at the same time self-critical. For example, in _Theorie und Praxis_ , he offers what he calls some 'very rough examples that are only illustrations' of this process, referring first to 'the institutionalization of discourses whose validity claim is based on mythological or religious interpretations of the world', which are 'systematically put into question and validated: we understand this as the beginning of philosophy in classical Athens'. A second example points to 'the institutionalization of discourses whose validity claims on the basis of professionally inherited, technically useful secular knowledge' that are 'systematically put into question and validated: we understand this as the beginning of the modern empirical sciences'. A final illustration is the institutionalization of discourses whose 'validity claims depend on practical and political decisions that _should_ be continually put into question and checked: this takes place in eighteenth-century England, then on the continent and in the USA'. These developments led to the birth of a bourgeois public and the demand for representative forms of government, culminating in 'bourgeois democracy'.61\n\nHabermas' interpretation of bourgeois democracy as the institutionalization of self-critical individual action may surprise the Marxist. The young Marx had criticized this political form as a 'democracy of unfreedom'; in his eyes, it only universalized the particular opinions and needs of a single class. The analysis of the 'End of the Individual' in _Legitimation Crises_ suggested the need to go beyond that one-sided understanding of the bourgeoisie as participating in a process of universalization. Although critics have noticed that the discourse theory of truth apparently imitates the market principle at the foundation of bourgeois society, Habermas is always careful to insist that its foundation is universal. The problem is to distinguish the empirical social relations from their normative legitimation. The paradigm of language is perhaps too universal, or not sufficiently differentiated, to concretize the universality of the positive institution of the political. The specific difference that constitutes the political is lost in a process of enlightenment that has no end. This is perhaps also a reason that Habermas lays so much stress on the need for an empirically demonstrable theory.62\n\nHabermas' theory is ultimately unsatisfactory for the paradoxical reason that he does not consistently develop those theoretical insights that first impelled him to elaborate his theory. He has seen the crucial problem of the universal and the particular as central to a political theory and articulated it theoretically and empirically in his demonstration of the centrality of the legitimation problem. He recognized the need for a politics that goes beyond middle-class monotony as well as self-proclaimed left-wing monological practice. Most importantly, he has demonstrated that questions of truth and validity cannot be excluded from social and political theory. This theorizing of political praxis as enlightenment is a necessary component, but only a component, of the response to the _structures_ of late capitalism. Unless the undifferentiated universal of an ideal speech situation can be concretized through the application of a theory of evolution, Habermas' work will remain only as a challenge. That theory of evolution would have to incorporate a reconsideration of the ontological premises inherited from Critical Theory if it is to account for the concrete relations of individual and institution. That would demand a reconsideration of Hegel, rather than the turn back to Kant in order to formulate a 'universal pragmatics' in the stead of the promised reconstructive theory of evolution.\n\nFootnotes\n\n1\n\nI make use of insights from manuscripts or published papers from other members of the Institute (where I was a Humboldt Fellow in 1982). I refer also (n. 14) to an essay by a former member, Albrecht Wellmer, first presented at Stony Brook University.\n\n2\n\nHabermas does not use the specific concept of 'the political', which I have adopted from Claude Lefort. His theory is particularly indebted to three younger colleagues at Starnberg: Rainer D\u00f6bert, Klaus Eder, and Gertrud Nunner-Winkler. References to their work are found in the earlier editions of this volume. In a sense, _Legitimation Crises_ can be seen as a report summing up and drawing temporary conclusions from the first phase of the work of the Starnberg institute.\n\n3\n\nJ\u00fcrgen Habermas, _Theorie und Praxis_ , 'Einleitung zur Neuausgabe' (Suhrkamp Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1971), p. 14. (Note that all references to _Theorie und Praxis_ , unless otherwise specified, refer to the Introduction to this 1971 edition.)\n\n4\n\nThe most influential use of the term at this time was Ernest Mandel's in _Der Sp\u00e4tkapitalismus_. That Trotskyist theorist insists that the concept does not claim to reveal a 'new essence' of capitalism that transcends Marx's _Capital_ and Lenin's _Imperialism._ Just as Lenin built on Marx, today's capitalism is merely the enrichment of yesterday's. As a result, Mandel's concept is chronological rather than synthetic; he prefers it to neo-capitalism in order to stress that there is no discontinuity between the two. Habermas' interpretation is discussed in part II. I had criticized Mandel's theoretical premises already in 'Genetic Economics vs. Dialectical Materialism', _Radical America_ , Vol. III, No. 4, August 1969, pp. 21\u201331.\n\n5\n\nPages in parenthesis refer to the original German, _Legitimationsprobleme im Sp\u00e4tkapitalismus_ (Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1973). The English translation by Jeremy J. Shapiro is titled _Legitimation Crises_ (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975).\n\n6\n\nHabermas' appeal to this 'law' is curious. He had criticized its formulation in _Theory und Praxis_ , pointing to historical factors such as the way science leads to the increase of surplus-value, contradicting the Marxist theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. (Cf., the original 1963 German edition, pp. 192\u20134.) A further problem is seen in _Legitimation Crises_ where the role of the state, the increasing size of monopolies, and the end of the free market are said to lead to the _political_ determination of wages. C.f., also the Starnberg working paper by Ulrich R\u00f6del, 'Zusammenfassung kritischer Argumente zum Status der Werttheorie und zur M\u00f6glichkeit einer werttheoretisch formulierten Krisentheorie' (1973).\n\nThe problem of an economically imposed crisis theory is present throughout the Marxian legacy, creating both theoretical and practical antinomies. It is faced frontally by Cornelius Castoriadis, as will be seen in Chap. .\n\n7\n\nClaus Offe, _Strukturprobleme des kapitalistischen Staates_ (Suhrkamp Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1972), particularly the discussion of 'Sp\u00e4tkapital _ismus\u2014_ Versuch einer Begriffsbestimmung', p. 24.\n\n8\n\nFaithful to the ethos of the Institute for Social Research, Habermas presents empirical analyses of each type of crisis and describes the difficulties faced by attempted solutions. It is not necessary to follow these detailed accounts in the present context.\n\n9\n\nCf. _Legitimationsprobleme_ , pp. 19, 99, 117, 123, and so on. Recourse to an autonomous permits Habermas to avoid reducing the legitimation crisis to contingent factors, as will be seen.\n\n10\n\nCf. D\u00f6bert-Nunner, 'Konflikt und Riickzugspotential im sp\u00e4tkapitalistischen Gesellschaften', working paper of Max Planck Institute, Starnberg.\n\n11\n\nCf. J. Habermas, _Technik und Wissenschaft als 'Ideologic_ ' (Suhrkamp Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1968), esp. pp. 75ff.\n\n12\n\n _Theorie und Praxis_ , op. cit., p. 9.\n\n13\n\nHabermas redefines the Marxist concept of an economically determined 'social formation' by the systems theoretical idea of a 'social organizational principle'. Under late capitalist conditions, this leads him reinterpret Max Weber's sociological interpretation of the historically distinct forms of social organization in terms of their different forms of legitimation. He goes further than Weber insofar as the sociologist interpreted 'legitimation' as produced either by empirical psychological reasons or as the result of 'value choices' that are ultimately inexplicable or irrational. That is why Habermas seeks to formulate a _philosophical_ theory of social evolution.\n\n14\n\nCf., Albrecht Wellmer, 'Communication and Emancipation. Reflections on the Linguistic Turn in Critical Theory', in _Stony Brook Studies in Philosophy_ , ed. P. Byrne, C. Evans and D. Howard (Stony Brook, New York, 1974), 1.\n\n15\n\nCf. Habermas' essay 'Arbeit und Interaktion. Bemerkungen zu Hegels Jenenser \"Philosophic des Geistes\"', in _Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologic_ , op. cit.\n\n16\n\nThere has been much debate about this distinction. In the Appendix to the English translation of _Knowledge and Human Interests_ (which was not published in German originally), Habermas explains that 'I do not mind at all _calling_ both phenomena praxis. Nor do I deny that normally instrumental action is embedded in communicative action (productive activity is socially organized, in general). But I see no reason why we should not adequately _analyze_ a complex, i.e., dissect it into its parts'.\n\n17\n\nCf. J\u00fcrgen Habermas\/Niklas Luhmann, _Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie_ (Suhrkamp Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1971), especially pp. 114\u201322 and 202\u201320. (Hereafter referred to as 'Habermas\/Luhmann'.)\n\n18\n\nCf. J\u00fcrgen Habermas, 'Wahrheitstheorien', published in _Festschrift f\u00fcr Walter Schultz_ (Neske Verlag, 1973), cited here, and later reprinted in _Vorstudien und Erg\u00e4nzungen zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns_ , Habermas explains that 'The ideal speech situation is neither an empirical phenomenon nor a mere construct but rather an unavoidable assumption that is reciprocally presupposed in all discourses. Though this assumption can be counterfactual it need not be; but even when it is made counterfactually it is an operatively effective function in the communication procedure. I thus speak preferably of an anticipation, a premise for an ideal speech situation' (p. 258). Always careful, Habermas adds that the ideal speech situation is not a regulative principle in Kant's sense; it is a factual anticipation necessary for the very act of speaking; nor is it a concrete concept in Hegel's sense since there is no historical social form which perfectly corresponds to it (p. 259).\n\n19\n\nOn this, cf. _Legitimationsprobleme_ , op. cit., pp. 155\u20138, and Habermas\/Luhmann, op. cit., p. 281.\n\n20\n\nC.f., Habermas' analysis of 'The End of the Individual' in _Legitimationsprobleme,_ op. cit., pp. 162\u201378.\n\n21\n\nThe difficulty is apparent in _Legitimationsprobleme_ when Habermas explains that in late capitalism, 'God becomes the name for a communicative structure which forces men under the penalty of the loss of their humanity to go beyond their accidental empirical nature by encountering one another _mediately_ , namely through the mediation of an Objective Thing which they themselves are not' (op. cit., p. 167).\n\n22\n\n'Wahrheitstheorien', op. cit., p. 251.\n\n23\n\nC.f., Offe, _Strukturprobleme_ , op. cit., pp. 85ff.\n\n24\n\nThe question whether _interests_ , by definition, are particular returns below in the discussion of Habermas' theory of 'cognitive interests'.\n\n25\n\nCf., for example, _Theorie und Praxis_ , op. cit., p. 25, for a clear illustration.\n\n26\n\nR\u00f6del, 'Zusammenfassung', op. cit., p. 10.\n\n27\n\nOffe, _Strukturprobleme_ , op. cit., p. 90.\n\n28\n\nHabermas\/Luhmann, op. cit., p. 281.\n\n29\n\nOn this, besides the Habermas\/Luhmann debate, and the book by R. D\u00f6bert already mentioned, cf. the two _Theorie-Diskussion_ volumes published by Suhrkamp after the Habermas\/Luhmann debate. See also R. Bubner, 'Wissenschaftstheorie und Systembegriff', in R. Bubner, _Dialektik und Wissenschaft_ , and the provocative, Hegelian-inspired essay by Klaus Hartmann, 'Systemtheoretische Soziologie und kategoriale Sozialphilosophie', in _Philosophische Perspektiven_ , Band 5, 1973.\n\n30\n\nCf. H. Baier, 'Soziologie und Geschichte', in _Archiv, f\u00fcr Rechtsund Sozialphilosophie_ , 1966, LII, 1, pp. 67\u201389; reprinted in _Kritik und Interpretation der kritischen Theorie_ (The Hague, 1971). The citation is from p. 377 of the latter, whose political bias toward a more orthodox Marxism should be noted.\n\n31\n\nThis does not mean, as M. Theunissen suggests, that Habermas must give up the principle that epistemology is based on social theory; it means only that he recognizes the need to provide grounds for that assertion. C.f., 'Die Gef\u00e4hrdung des Staates durch die Kultur', a review of _Legitimationsprobleme_ , in the _Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung_ , October 9, 1973.\n\n32\n\nSimilarly, c.f., D\u00f6bert, op. cit., as well as D\u00f6bert-Nunner-Winkler on child development. See also Habermas' 'Moral Development and Ego Identity' and my note on its presentation in _Telos_ , No. 27, 1976.\n\n33\n\n _Theorie und Praxis_ , op. cit., pp. 22\u20133. The point is made again below in the discussion of the difference between a critical and a reconstructive theory.\n\n34\n\nWellmer, op. cit., p. 97.\n\n35\n\nHegel, _Wissenschaft der Logik_ (Meiner: Hamburg, 1963), p. 19.\n\n36\n\nIbid., p. 18.\n\n37\n\n'Postscript', op. cit., p. 175.\n\n38\n\n _Theorie und Praxis_ , op. cit., p. 16.\n\n39\n\nIbid., p. 26.\n\n40\n\nIbid., p. 27.\n\n41\n\nIbid., note 31.\n\n42\n\n'Postscript', op. cit., p. 181.\n\n43\n\n _Theorie und Praxis_ , op. cit., p. 16. C.f., also his 'Postscript', op. cit., p. 177, where Habermas writes: 'The _universality_ of cognitive interests implies that the constitution of object domains is determined by conditions governing the reproduction of the species, i.e., by the socio-cultural form of life _as such_ '.\n\n44\n\nIbid., p. 44.\n\n45\n\nWellmer, op. cit., p. 92.\n\n46\n\n _Theorie und Praxis_ , op. cit., p. 45.\n\n47\n\nCf. _Legitimationsprobleme_ , pp. 27\u201330, especially p. 28 on the role of learning mechanisms.\n\n48\n\nThis logical claim can become the first step on a slippery slope, as is the case for some elements of the Frankfurt School. Of course, a theory of 'the social' or the idea that institutions form individuals and social relations can be accused of reification insofar as it denies the particular and\/or hypostatizes the social. The stress on particularity can come at the cost of an inability to say anything meaningful about them or even to distinguish them one from another. The challenge for social and political theory is to formulate conditions of _mediation_ permitting the articulation of the universal in the particular and the affirmative relations of the particular to the universal.\n\n49\n\nHabermas recognizes that the strict analogy does not hold; it at best makes sense in the case of the traditional view of the relation of the party to the masses. Cf. _Theorie und Praxis_ , op. cit., pp. 35\u20137, and 'Der Universalit\u00e4tsanspruch der Hermeneutik', in _Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik_ (Suhrkamp Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1971), as well as the critiques of Geigel and Gadamer in that volume.\n\n50\n\nNegt's work has taken a less orthodox turn. Cf. his collaboration with the cineaste Alexander Kluge, _\u00d6ffentlichkeit und Erfahrung. Zur Organisationsanalyse von b\u00fcrgerlicher und proletarischer \u00d6ffentlichkeit_ (Suhrkamp Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1972).\n\n51\n\n _Theorie und Praxis_ , op. cit., p. 33. On the problem of institutions, see the discussion below, as well as the chapters on Merleau-Ponty, Lefort, and Castoriadis.\n\n52\n\nIbid., p. 39.\n\n53\n\nCf. the excellent Introduction by Oskar Negt to N. Bukharin, A. Deborin, _Kontroversen \u00fcber dialektischen und mechanistischen Materialismus_ (Suhrkamp Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1969), where this term is defined in detail.\n\n54\n\nHabermas adds here the peculiar argument that 'Such attempts are precisely also tests; they test the limits of the changeability of human nature, above all of the historically variable structure of motivations or drives. ( _Antriebsstruktur_ )\u2014limits about which we do not have, and in my opinion for fundamental reasons of principle cannot have theoretical knowledge' ( _Theorie und Praxis_ , op. cit., p. 42). This is perhaps an anticipation of what would become his theory of evolutionary stages. I take the liberty here of adding a reference to my essay 'Citizen Habermas', reprinted in _Between Politics and Antipolitics_ , which discusses in more detail Habermas' uneasy relations with the New Left.\n\n55\n\n'Wahrheitstheorien', op. cit., p. 257.\n\n56\n\nOffe, _Strukturprobleme_ , op. cit., p. 74.\n\n57\n\nIbid., p. 173.\n\n58\n\nIbid., p. 130. C.f., Ralph Miliband, _The State in Capitalist Society_ (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1969).\n\n59\n\nParagraphs 230\u201356.\n\n60\n\nC.f., the criticisms by the conservative political theorist, Bernard Willms, _Kritik und Politik. J\u00fcrgen Habermas oder das politische Defizit der 'Kritischen Theorie'_ (Suhrkamp Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1973).\n\n61\n\n _Theorie und Praxis_ , op. cit., pp. 31\u20132.\n\n62\n\nHabermas' failure to develop a theory of the political offers a partial explanation for the absence of a theory of revolution in even his Marx-inspired early writings. For example, in _Theorie und Praxis_ (p. 37), he asserts that 'Against many sectarian efforts, it should be pointed out today that in late capitalism the change of the structures of the general educational system is possibly more important for the organization of enlightenment that fruitless cadre schooling or the building of powerless parties. I mean by this only that: these are empirical questions which should not be prejudged'.\n\u00a9 The Author(s) 2019\n\nDick HowardThe Marxian LegacyPolitical Philosophy and Public Purpose<https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-030-04411-4_6>\n\n# 6. The Rationality of the Dialectic: Jean-Paul Sartre\n\nDick Howard1\n\n(1)\n\nDepartment of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA\n\nDick Howard\n\nThe sharp rupture that appeared in May 1968 threw into question not only the functional machine of modernizing French capitalism; the spontaneous creativity it revealed was also so much sand in the smoothly oiled machinery of orthodox Communist practice and Marxist theory. Neither the Gaullist victory at the polls in June nor the promise of the electoral Common Program of the socialist and communist parties deceived anyone: the specter of May had replaced the 'specter of communism' announced in _The Communist Manifesto_. The New Left specter has not achieved an institutional identity, and this makes it all the more dangerous to the established order while at the same time preserving its explosive force. The discovery and self-discovery symbolized by May was in fact a rediscovery of that unfinished work and elemental hope that Ernst Bloch showed to be not just the driving force but as well the _arch\u00e9_ and _logos_ of revolution. More prosaically, it could be suggested that the nineteenth-century bourgeois revolutions, followed by bitter proletarian struggles, achieved only one of the three emblems that adorned the banners of 1789\u2014equality\u2014and that May 1968 represented the forms of liberty and fraternity that remain to be realized. This was expressed most emphatically in Cohn-Bendit's iconoclastic insistence that 'Tu fais la r\u00e9volution pour toi'; the insistence on the role of pleasure and desire in the festive atmosphere of fraternization and communality turned the revolt into a positive affirmation. Underground, surfacing only in occasional and punctual actions, the specter of May, like that 'old mole' whose image captured the imagination of poets and philosophers alike, is digging away and undermining the structure of bureaucratized capitalist daily life.\n\nThe relation of the new specter and the inherited model remains to be established. Jean-Paul Sartre's attempt to articulate the relation of his existentialism to Marxist theory and Communist practice provides a starting point. On the one hand, the pseudonymous Epistemon's _Ces id\u00e9es qui ont \u00e9branl\u00e9 la France_ is certainly correct in pointing out that Sartre's _Critique de la raison dialectique_ provides an abstract, but accurate, account of the pattern of action that emerged during May. On the other hand, Sartre himself has insisted that it was only after May that he was able to see clearly how those ideas of freedom and morality expressed in his early work could find their political articulation.1 Despite the eclipse of Sartre's influence in France (where, e.g., the _Critique_ is hardly discussed, and the three large volumes on Flaubert, _L'Idiot de la famille_ , seem to have found few readers), his existential phenomenology and his gifted pen make him the representative of a temptation that demands analysis. His quixotic personality adds to his appeal. He knows that his name, not his person, is an institution which can be used; and he lends it (perhaps too) freely\u2014signing appeals, writing prefaces, presiding over the Russell Tribunal, taking the official direction of the then forbidden Maoist newspaper ( _Lib\u00e9ration_ ) or demanding to visit the Red Brigades leader, Andreas Baader, in his West German prison.\n\nThe Sartrean example offers a particular kind of temptation for the intellectual. There is a certain self-deprecation and even anti-intellectualism in Sartre's highly conceptual analyses which reflect the frustrations of the thinker who ardently desires to see his ideas translated into action. At first, Sartre's unstinting support for the Good Cause seems admirable.\n\n> But if I consider the entirety of the conditions that are necessary for man to exist, I tell myself that the only thing to do is to underline, to show the value of and to support with all my power that which, in particular social and political situations, can bring about a society of free men. If one does not do that, one accepts that man is nothing but shit.2\n\nBut this depreciation of the task of the intellectual contradicts what Sartre claims to have learned from May: the need to replace the 'old intellectual' style, which consisted in opposing the universal claims of Man to the injustice of particular situations. The 'new intellectual' in whom Sartre says he recognizes the demands of his earlier philosophy is part and parcel of the ongoing political movement; engagement in the movement fulfills what Sartre proposed in _Being and Nothingness_ : 'there is only the point of view of _engaged_ knowledge. That is to say that knowledge and action are only two abstract moments of an original and concrete relation'.3 No more than the earlier existentialist, the 'new intellectual' should not be limited to following the ongoing movement, ratifying the projects already begun. The pathos of Sartre's self-understanding, and the reality of his political practice\u2014not simply his facile lending of his name, but his political support for the Communist Party in the 1950s\u2014put into question the foundations of his philosophy.\n\nAlthough the moral theory that he promised as the complement to the existential ontology of _Being and Nothingness_ was never published, the emergence of a New Left encouraged him to return to that project in a more militant mode. He argues that the revolt expressed, for example, when a worker refuses to accept the racist remarks of his foreman\u2014is the expression of freedom because 'there is no particular situation which by itself would suffice to determine a revolt'.4 The revolt breaks the chain of everyday passivity (the worker has surely been treated in a racist manner before); it expresses a freedom that makes possible the invention of true values; it is a moral affirmation of human dignity. Pointing to other revolts\u2014students against authority, workers against bureaucracy\u2014Sartre concludes that\n\n> [t]he philosopher who would express in words the nature of that freedom would permit them to become more profoundly conscious of their situation. From such a position, the Maoists [who, for Sartre at this time, represented his New Left] have come to pose anew the question of morality; or rather, no, they haven't posed it, they undertake practical actions which always have a relation to morality. It will be the task of the philosopher of the Maoist society to define morality in terms of freedom.5\n\nThis assertion refers to two different subjects, the philosopher who expresses in words what people are doing and the activists whose practice creates the situation in which the philosopher can recognize the free, moral task. Sartre's interlocutor, the Maoist leader known as Pierre Victor (a.k.a. Benny L\u00e9vi), sees the implication of this dualism. 'What still bothers me in your position, Sartre, is that freedom is the same at the beginning and at the end'.6 Sartre's weak reply is left lying, only to be picked up again later when Victor insists that, in practice, there must be a development and articulation of the forms of freedom. Yet, Sartre's reply only confirms the earlier objection: 'one is free or one is not free'.7 Sartre's freedom ultimately has no depth, is rooted in no tradition, and is unable to reflect on itself and to learn from experience.\n\nThe appeal of Sartre's theory is that it seems to give each individual a responsibility that can be realized immediately by that individual, whose action is said to further the revolution. He interprets revolution 'not as a movement for the overthrow of one power by another' but rather as 'a long movement of liberation from power'.8 He has realized that the Communist Party is an institution that stifles revolution.\n\n> An institution is a demand addressed to abstract and atomized individuals whereas a true _praxis_ can only exist in concrete assemblies. If a revolutionary party must exist today, it should have the least possible resemblance to an institution, and it should contest all institutionalism \u2013 outside itself, but above all within itself. What must be developed in people is not the respect for a supposed revolutionary _order_ , but rather the spirit of revolt against all order.9\n\nThe result would be a society consisting only of fully human and open encounters. But whereas the ontology presented in _Being and Nothingness_ in 1943 could only imagine such a society as based on 'authenticity', he now thinks in the wake of 1968 that he sees the path to its concrete realization.\n\n> In order that a true social concord be established, a man must exist entirely for his neighbor, who must exist entirely for him. This is not realizable today, but I think that it will be realizable when the change in economic, cultural and affective relations between men will have been accomplished, first of all by the suppression of material scarcity which is, in my opinion \u2013 as I showed in the _Critique de la raison dialectique_ \u2013 the basis of all the past and present antagonisms between men.10\n\nThe reference to 'scarcity' introduces a different type of problem. Its existence entails a limitation on the pristine freedom from which Sartre's argument began. Freedom is now 'situated'; it is limited and hence dependent. The political exercise of freedom can consist only in supporting the Good Cause that is supposed to overcome scarcity and thereby realize absolute freedom. The definition of that project appears to depend on an understanding of the origin of the alienation of freedom that accounts for the passive reproduction of conditions of scarcity.11 In that way, the moral theory of freedom could be combined with a social theory that can give direction to political action.\n\n## 6.1 The Necessity of a _Critique of Dialectical Reason_\n\nThe title of Sartre's systematic social theory suggests its multiple goals and points to the kind of theory he proposes. He begins from a determined criticism of the 'Marxist-Leninist' tradition. The negative ground for criticism concerns the over-extension the domain of validity of dialectical Reason. Its positive formulation depends on the demonstration of the ontological conditions of the possibility of dialectical Reason itself. The parallel of Sartre's proposal with Kant's definition of the critical task,12 as Sartre suggests by referring to his theory as a 'Prolegomenon to any future Anthropology' (p. 153) is evident.13 It leads Sartre to return to the 'existentialist' problematic of _Being and Nothingness_ , recognizing its limits as only an 'ideology' within Marxism, which he affirms boldly is 'the philosophy of our time' (p. 29). As long as capitalism remains, he insists, without pausing to explain how his philosophy of freedom is compatible with an economic determinism according to which thought depends on being, Marxism cannot be surpassed.\n\nSartre's previous encounters with Marxism were marked by skirmishes, friendly reunions, misunderstandings, and verbal violence. Some markers on his path deserve mention. He moved from his 1946 polemic, 'Materialism and Revolution', to the co-founding of a political movement (the RDR) as a Third Force in post-war politics, going on to an amicable reunion during the Korean War and moving on to the series of articles on 'The Communists and the Peace' (which cost him the friendship of his philosophical comrade, Maurice Merleau-Ponty), then breaking with these erstwhile allies over the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution and the evaluation of Polish liberalization in 1956, and then finding himself finally in support of violent opposition to France's colonial war in Algeria. It is easy to understand why the philosopher wanted to settle accounts with the Marxist theory that was supposed to explain what is to be done in such conditions of choice.\n\nFor all his political inconsistencies, Sartre was nonetheless remarkably persistent in the philosophical pursuit that led him to the _Critique_. Three problems from _Being and Nothingness_ plagued him:\n\n  1. (1)\n\nthe problem of the 'we-subject'. In the 1943 book, Sartre can deal with the 'we-object'\u2014that is, several discrete individuals who are recognized by an Other as a unity even though they are not acting in concert consciously; but he could not explain the harmonious coexistence of a plurality of social _subjects_ because each _pour-soi_ (subject) can only objectify (and thereby negate) the being of every other _pour-soi_ ; each remains caught in a world of its own reifications.\n\n  2. (2)\n\nThe problem of matter. The unforgettable literary descriptions of _Nausea_ as well as the vivid analyses in _Being and Nothingness_ describe matter as something 'opaque' or 'massive' that interferes with the self-transparency of the _pour-soi_. Matter is sheer facticity to be manipulated and used by the negating activity of the _pour-soi_. It plays no positive role as a mediator between the subjectivities which inhabit the social world. As a result, Sartre risks falling back to a kind of Cartesian dualism of 'thinking' and 'extended' substances.\n\n  3. (3)\n\nCorrelative to these two problems is Sartre's inability to cope with the concrete historical experience central to the Marxist problematic. The philosopher could stress the historicity of the projects of existential subjects, but _Being and Nothingness_ was unable to articulate the mediation between this general level and its particular manifestations.\n\nSartre's confrontation with Marxism was enriched from the outset by his recognition of the theoretical flaws of the orthodox version of the doctrine which were flayed mercilessly in the 1946 'Materialism and Revolution', and analyzed more sympathetically in the 1957 essay on 'Questions of Method', which is printed as the first part of the _Critique_.14 His criticism of the so-called dialectics of nature and his attack on the analytical and reductionist epistemology of crude materialism were particularly important for the development of his theory.\n\nSartre's concern in the _Critique_ is ontology. As a result, his reaction to the pretensions of 'scientific' Marxism is to criticize its epistemological foundations. Insofar as his ontology is anthropological, Sartre wants to analyze the human project and the human responsibility that underlie the structure of the social world. To deal with a phenomenon like colonialism, for example, it is necessary to do more than identify and label a certain sociological process. Labeling not only reveals but above all conceals the specificity of the _experience_ that is conceptualized by the understanding. The 'thing' is not just out there; it is a result, the product of a specific _praxis_15 of specific individuals.\n\n> The lifeless movement of appearances that economic Reason can study is only intelligible in relation to the anti-dialectical system of super-exploitation. But this latter in its turn is not intelligible if one does not first see in it the product of human labor which forged it and does not cease to control it. (p. 683)\n\nThe objectivist fallacy which separates the subject from the observed object, purging radically the latter of any trace of human subjectivity and human projects, must be avoided.\n\nEpistemological materialism sacrifices its own intelligibility at the quantitative altar of positive science. For its part, dialectical intelligibility is based on the homogeneity that arises from the self-recognition of the interaction of subject and object. When positive science eliminates the human factor from its analyses, it finds itself incapable of understanding the intelligibility of its world. At best, quantitative science permits the exterior presentation of a totalization frozen into a lifeless totality. Sartre rejects such a materialist reductionism.\n\n> if one had to reduce the relations of practical multiplicities to simple contradictory determinations that are produced, simultaneously or not, by the development of a process; if one had, for example, to consider that the proletariat is the future destroyer of the bourgeoisie by virtue of the simple fact that the progressive decrease of variable capital and the increase of fixed capital, by increasing the productivity of the worker and reducing the buying power of the working class as a whole, will produce, passing from crisis to crisis, the economic catastrophe from which the bourgeoisie will not escape, then one ultimately reduces man to the pure anti-dialectical moment of the practico-inert. (p. 731)\n\nThe material and cultural world that Sartre calls the 'practico-inert' is not sheer inert facticity having no depth and only one meaning. For dialectical thought, it 'is only intelligible because we produce it ourselves.... In a word, if in human history the mode of production is the infrastructure of every society, this is the case because work is the infrastructure of the practico-inert (and of the mode of production)' (p. 671).\n\nThe problem posed here by Sartre is illustrated in the attempt by the young Marx and Engels to account for the origins of alienation in _The German_ _Ideology_. Their account begins with the primitive division of labor and proceeds to explain the succeeding developments as permutations and combinations of this original 'historical' circumstance. Their choice of this genetic and materialist account followed Marx's failure to deduce the emergence of private property from alienated labor and of alienated labor from private property in the _1844 Manuscripts_. Sartre criticizes the genetic materialism of _The German Ideology_ as a pseudo-history that makes the fate of humanity depend on a natural and mechanical necessity. The reduction of _praxis_ to a mechanical reaction poses also a theoretical problem. If the division of labor is natural, and if its extension will extend its negative effects to the point where the negation will be negated, then the _origin of negativity_ must be explained.16 The dialectic needs negativity, without which there is no movement, no project, not even a human world. The genetic account has no place for the human actor, reducing socialism to an inert reorganization of the relation among things, as the mature Engels put it in his 1880 pamphlet, 'Socialism: Utopian or Scientific'.\n\nEngels' theory of the 'dialectics of nature' makes an analogous mistake, occluding and naturalizing the source of negativity. As a result, he reintroduces a dualism of subject and object: the scientific investigator is represented as a neutral observer contemplating the activity of a world of objects to which he does not belong. The supposedly neutral observations are then tested in experiments whose chief epistemological characteristic is that isolating the elements to be studied recreates the atomistic world presupposed by the subject-object dichotomy. All subjectivity is stripped from the supposedly self-moving dialectical nature, which is fitted to a pre-formed mold defined by what Engels calls the trinity of 'dialectical laws'. 'But', objects Sartre, 'in the historical and social world... there is _truly_ a dialectical reason; by transporting this law into the 'natural' world, engraving it there by force, Engels takes its rationality from it; it is no longer a question of a dialectic that man makes in making himself, and which, reciprocally, makes man; it has become a contingent law whose only justification is: _this is how it is,_ and not otherwise' (p. 126). Sartre concludes that the 'dialectics of nature' is irrational because it cannot justify itself and must borrow a schema from another domain.\n\nSartre's own theory is resolutely dialectical; the orthodoxies criticized as irrational are not simply abandoned as if they were forgettable misperceptions. They themselves must be understood, dialectically, as the product of a certain kind of human activity. The reasoning of the positivist addicted to numbers, the economistic Marxist who wants to reduce all thought to things, or the bourgeois sociologist who studies the positive functions of institutions are not simply the wrongheaded; their understandings of the world are partial (in both senses of the term); their claims must be integrated into the totality of experience which is, Sartre insists, a totalization that can never be reduced to a totality in which all elements are fixed and finished, people are dead objects isolated from one another as well as separated from the observer contemplating them.\n\n## 6.2 The Foundations of the Dialectic\n\nDialectical rationality is not simply reflective or contemplative; it is _reflexive_. It depends on the homogeneity and reciprocity of Self and Other, Subject and Object\u2014although strictly speaking this polarity is based on the premises of analytical thought. Sartre describes his dialectical project in an active voice.\n\n> In a certain sense... man undergoes the dialectic as though it were a foreign power; in another sense, he _makes_ it. And if dialectical Reason is to be the Reason of History, then that contradiction must itself be lived dialectically. This means that man undergoes the dialectic in as much as he makes it, and that he makes it in as much as he undergoes it. Moreover, it is necessary to understand that Man does not exist: there are only persons, who define themselves entirely by the society to which they belong and the historical movement which carries them. If we do not want the dialectic to again become a divine law, a metaphysical fate, then the dialectic must come _from individuals_ and not from who-knows-which super-individual ensembles. In other words, we encounter this new contradiction: the dialectic is a law of totalization which makes for the existence of collectives, societies, history \u2013 that is, realities which impose themselves on individuals; but at the same time the dialectic must be the product of millions of individual acts. Thus, we will have to show how it can be at once a _result_ (without being a passive means) and a _totalizing force_ (without being a transcendent fate); how it can at each instant realize the unity of the dispersive pulsing movement and that of integration. (p. 131)\n\nThe dialectic is intelligible only insofar as the individuals who constitute it are themselves dialectically constituted; conversely, individuals in their social and historical milieu are dialectically constituted only insofar as this milieu is itself dialectical. Neither pole can be taken alone; each is the condition of the intelligibility of the other: this is the structure of reflexivity.\n\nThe shared structures of a historical society cannot be understood without reference to the constitutive acts of the many individuals which, in turn, cannot be understood outside of their societal context. In order for this dialectical circularity to avoid relativism, the formal, a priori, structures that govern the relationship between the individual constitutive acts and the plural social structures they constitute and which in turn reconstitute them must be discovered. This leads Sartre to formulate what he calls a 'dialectical _nominalism_ ' which asserts that 'if it exists, the dialectic can only be the totalization of the concrete totalizations produced by a multiplicity of totalizing singularities' (p. 132). He neglects to add that the 'totalizing singularities' are themselves totalized for reasons that are not specified. He explains that the first volume of the _Critique_ will move from the most simple and abstract17 structures through the stages of totalization and re-totalization, explaining finally the historically given society in all its complexity and richness as the _result_ of a continual ascent of intelligibility in which each later, more complex structure is comprehended as grounded by previously established principles. Once this formal, a priori task is completed, the second volume18 would have to show that these structures permit an intelligible understanding of history.\n\nIn this way, Sartre's project is to present a _transcendental social philosophy_ ; it can also be seen as an attempt to found and complete Marx's 1843 _Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of the State_. Marx's critique, it will be recalled, attacked the inversion of subject and object which permits Hegel to treat social categories as subjects of which the actual individuals are the determined predicates. For Marx this is a mystification which is unintelligible because the dialectical circularity is broken and Spirit (not active individuals) determines the social categories. Sartre's task is to reconstruct, beginning from the individual, the increasingly concrete determinations of human society and its history.\n\nSartre's project is _transcendental_ in that it attempts to articulate a categorial structure based on a principle of which each successive development can be seen as a _principiatum_ ; each moment must have its intelligibility in a ground of which it is the grounded realization. The dialectical circularity, with its comprehension of the interpenetration of the terms as totalizations rather than fixed totalities, permits the ascent to ever-more complex structures without falling back into an 'atomism of the second degree' (p. 152) insofar as the principle itself is modified and enriched at each stage of development because of the reciprocal mediation of principle and _principiatum_.19 As a result, from a methodological point of view, Sartre's transcendental edifice is a philosophical departure; his insistence on the presence of the human being as a _real ground_ that interacts with and is modified by experience while remaining ontologically what it always in principle was avoids the static analysis of traditional philosophy while at the same time modifying the (analytic) notion of a fixed and unchanging Truth known by a contemplative neutral subject in favor of a dialectical philosophy of intelligibility. This permits the formulation of a theory that is (in Habermas' sense of the terms) both reconstructive and critical.\n\nSartre's transcendental-yet-real ground is the immediate, 'abstract' human individual and its _praxis_ :\n\n> The critical experiment will begin from the immediate, that is, from the individual in his abstract _praxis_ , in order to rediscover through more and more profound conditionings the totality of his practical relations with others, and by the same means, the structures of the diverse practical multiplicities, and, through the contradictions and struggles of these multiplicities, to come to the absolutely concrete: historical man. (p. 143)\n\nFor the dialectical movement to begin, this individual and the still undifferentiated and inhuman world in which the individual finds itself must interact. This interaction, as ontological, defines the starting point. Because it does not pretend to be a 'natural history' of humankind but rather a self-consciously ontological ground, and because his nominalism is in fact a _relation_ , Sartre's position avoids the problem that vitiates _The German Ideology_ . The initial position is an ontological relation in which _praxis_ and the world, as yet undifferentiated, give each other meaning via a totalizing interaction in which each mediates the other.\n\nThe first totalizing structure is based on _need_ , which 'is the negation of the negation in so far as it reveals itself as a _lack_ in the interior of the organism; it is positivity in so far as by means of it the organic totality tends to conserve itself _as it is_ ' (p. 166). That is, the organic being, man, depends on the inorganic world which is external to it and which it must internalize in order to survive. In this process of internalization, the organic must externalize itself in order to appropriate inorganic nature. The organic thus gives unity and sense to the brute factuality of the inorganic world, which becomes a thing-to-be-consumed. Simultaneously, the organic being opens itself to the world and its risks: 'The organism makes itself inert (man _weighs_ on the lever, etc.) in order to transform the surrounding inertia' (p. 174). The process is at once circular and dialectical: 'Man is \"mediated\" by things in exactly the same measure as things are \"mediated\" by man' (p. 165). Man externalizes his internal relation to the external world and in so doing negates its exteriority; man becomes a being-in-the-world, and the world becomes a being-for-man.\n\nThere is, however, a 'contingent and ineluctable' fact about the external world, which is crucial to the development of the theory: _scarcity_ (p. 168). The internal relation to the world in terms of need works on the world by externalizing itself in order to act on the world. This action cannot alter the brute fact of scarcity (or, at least, it has not yet done so; with the end of scarcity would come the end of what Marx called 'pre-history', and at that stage the dialectical theory would no longer be applicable).20 Due to the dialectical reciprocity, the factual existence of scarcity is internalized (as scarcity of food or raw materials; at a higher level, scarcity of time, clients, or even fresh air: scarcity itself is dialectical, modified by the complexity of the societal totalization process). The internalization of scarcity introduces negativity ( _le n\u00e9ant_ ) into the notion of the human subject in a dialectically intelligible manner, as opposed to the more phenomenological-descriptive approach adopted in _Being and Nothingness_ ; it permits Sartre to develop the notion of praxis-as-project and to explain how the future acts as a negativity which affects the present as a facticity-to-be-totalized.\n\nThe dialectic of material scarcity appears to permit Sartre to go beyond the negative understanding of matter as brute Otherness (the _en-soi_ as portrayed in _Being and Nothingness_ ) to a positive appreciation of its role in the development of historical society. Matter becomes the condition or mediation which creates the possibility of social relations. 'In effect, scarcity, as the univocal relation of each and of all to matter, finally becomes the objective and social structure of the material environment, and thus, in return, designates with its inert finger each individual as a factor and victim of scarcity' (p. 207). The social relations thus established are antagonistic. 'In pure reciprocity, the Other-than-me _is also the same as me._ In reciprocity _modified by scarcity,_ the same appears to us as the anti-man inasmuch as _this same man_ appears as radically Other (that is, as carrying the threat of death for us)' (pp. 207\u20138). This threatening Other\u2014which I may become at any time for any Other\u2014is the 'Excess Third'. In that each can become the Excess Third, negativity and conflict enter human affairs not, as in _The German Ideology_ , because of the division of labor, class divisions, and the like; Sartre's account has ontological precedence over sociological descriptions caught up in an infinite and non-dialectical (historical) regress.\n\nIn the social world, each individual as individual works on the material world attempts to appropriate it (to negate it and form it) in terms of an individual project which gives sense to the world. Though their projects may be different or similar, they are inscribed in one and the same material world, which accepts them as the wax does the seal: passively. But though the material world is the 'inert memory of all' (p. 200), containing the inscription of a shared history, it also mediates individual projects in precisely the measure that these projects mediate it. Consequently, the material world is not passive but _actively passive_. Every 'material' advance of civilization has its effect on the daily lives of people. The TV, the private automobile, the paperback book, the McDonald's hamburger affect them in ways unintended by their personal projects because of this active passivity.\n\nThe active passivity of the material world is paradoxical; its actions seem to be the result of the _praxis_ of everyone and no one. Each of the individual projects is absorbed into its materiality and then reflected back as through a kaleidoscope. Matter becomes a 'counter-finality', an 'anti-praxis', a ' _praxis_ without an author' (p. 235). Sartre gives two examples (the first borrowed from Engels, the second from Adam Smith and Marx). Chinese farmers eking out a bare living on a small plot of land each decide individually that they can grow more food if they cut down the trees on their plots in order to have a greater arable surface. The result of this _praxis_ , however, turns against them _all_ , though it was willed by _no one_ , in the form of giant floods which occur on the treeless land. Or, if we look at the influx of gold into seventeenth-century Spain, we see each individual forming the project of personal enrichment, importing gold from the colonies, with the result: inflation, lowered domestic productivity, outflow of gold to foreign middlemen, and finally the decline and impoverishment of the entire nation\u2014willed by no one, yet produced by all.\n\nSartre defines the material world as the _practico-inert_ in order to underline its paradoxical nature and lack of univocal signification. It is the product of plural individual _praxis_ that no longer possesses the transparency characteristic of free _praxis_. The active passivity of the practico-inert is at the root of _alienation_. Insofar as the productions of individuals escape from the project for which they were intended, they dominate their makers, who are caught in a machinery they did not will but cannot escape. Each of becomes Other: each is determined by the project of the Other, just as each determines unintentionally the project of the Other. 'In a word', writes Sartre, 'otherness comes to things from men and returns from things to men in the form of atomization' (p. 246). This means that the practico-inert is not just a thing: it is a frozen _praxis_ -as-Other produced by the particular project of each individual (as Other of each Other) while reinforcing the otherness of each as an Other individual. The practico-inert is not an 'object' for positivist science; it should be understood as a materialist form of what Hegel called 'objective Spirit'.\n\nThe dual structure of the practico-inert is a dialectical translation of the ontological principle of man-as _-praxis_. Its intelligibility has its source in the interaction of men and matter in a world of scarcity. Sartre counts among the manifold forms of the practico-inert, which include not only tools and machinery as well as other products of collective individual _praxis_ (including cultural artifacts whose prototype may be language), _men themselves_. Insofar as human being is defined, at least partially, by the non-human, individuals are not identical with the free _praxis_ which was the ontological principle on which dialectical intelligibility was built. The weight of the inhuman Other on the definition of the human does not entail the loss of the project of the self-reclamation of free _praxis_. On the contrary, it marks an important progress.21 The analysis will become more complex as it now becomes more concrete; and the task remains the one stressed at the end of 'Search for a Method': 'Anthropology will not merit its name unless it substitutes for the study of human objects the study of the different processes of becoming an object' (p. 107).\n\n## 6.3 The Dialectic of the Social World\n\nIn the world of the practico-inert, the social collectivity exists in a condition that Sartre defines as ' _seriality_ '. Parallel to the active passivity of the practico-inert, the serial individual experiences life as a _passive activity_ , determined by the object (the Other) which totalizes the series by defining the ends that unite the series. In an elevator, for example, or waiting for a bus, a plurality of persons is (passively) defined as a kind of unity by its object (riding-the-elevator, waiting-for-the-bus). Each is there as the result of an individual project (going to work, seeing a client or friend); yet their unity comes not from their individual projects but from the external object. From the point of view of each, each Other (on the elevator, in the bus) is interchangeable; no internal, interpersonal community is established among them; each recognizes itself as defined by Otherness (the coming-of-the-bus, the riding-in-the-elevator) which totalizes their experience. The result is a situation of _powerlessness_ : the object which defines the members of the series is absolutely Other; the persons forming a serial unity are interchangeable, faceless Others; each individual feels depersonalized and dehumanized by the knowledge that for each of the other Others he is just another Other, replaceable by any other of them: 'each is identical to the Other inasmuch as he is made, by the Others, an Other acting on the Others. The formal and universal structure of otherness ( _alterit\u00e9_ ) is the _rationality of the series_ ' (p. 314).\n\nSartre adopts the descriptive, first person voice of phenomenology. In the serial relation, I can affect the Other only insofar as I treat myself as Other (just as, in order to affect the material world, individual _praxis_ must externalize itself and thereby expose itself). Since each of us is replaceable by the Other, I act as I would want the Other to act, I do what I think the ideal Other would do. I fear becoming the 'Excess Third' and refuse to take risks, keep my own counsel, fear the Others, and fear myself as Other. Sartre illustrates the functioning of serial rationality with the example of the marketplace (pp. 328ff.), public opinion (pp. 338ff.), and racism (pp. 345ff.). He could have added to his list the failures of political practice that couches itself in radical rhetoric but ultimately acts 'rationally' by thinking what the serial Others have been thought to think. Serial rationality cannot transcend the existent serial relations. As serial, I size up the 'objective situation' (i.e., the practico-inert that determines the unity of the serial collective), and I gauge my actions in terms of its demands. My projects become its projects; they become projects of the Other, of the Thing, and therewith all are determined by the Otherness of that thing called the System.22 Our mutual Otherness determines us as belonging to the serial unity determined by an external Thing; but the totality that we form is a collectivity that is always Other, a dead totality and not a living totalization.\n\nSartre's conceptual argument can be illustrated by the example of a classroom. All enter at the appointed time, sit in identical seats riveted to the floor to prevent any but a linear arrangement with all heads facing the teacher. Students take this class because 'one' should take it: it is either interesting, or useful, or required. We pay attention, take detailed notes (alongside our doodles), and look alert: to the teacher we are all Other, mutually interchangeable; and we compete for high grades, which are scarce goods (controlled by the teacher). When one of us is questioned in class, or when we have to produce written work, rather than join together to help one another, we compete: each is afraid of becoming an Excess Third (receiving a low grade); and we know that this is how students are supposed to behave. We ask few questions, hazard few original ideas, since 'one' is supposed to fit in, to receive rather than give ideas, to acquire an Education, like everyone else.\n\nThe serial unity among members of the class is a _lateral_ relation of Other to Other. It is important to understand that each individual is acting freely when, for example, exteriority is internalized in the (successful) attempt to make good grades. Although the result of that choice is a reaffirmation of the alienated system, it remains a free choice even when its results work against the possibility of societal liberation. The task of Sartre's dialectical critique is not to compare what is with what ought to be\u2014that is the idealist or utopian stance\u2014but rather to explain consistently the structures of what is the case in the here-and-now. If a person who obeyed the dictates of the Thing were irrevocably alienated, the possibilities of human liberation would be eliminated. By showing the dialectical rationality of such alienated serial behavior, Sartre at the same time preserves the conditions of possibility of social liberation.\n\nThe transition from the all-pervasive, lateral seriality to the self-defined _group_ has the same dialectical intelligibility as the previous moments. The group is unified by its project and by the constant movement of integration that attempts to purify its _praxis_ by eliminating the forms of inertia it contains. The group differs from the series, which was defined by relations of Otherness, whereas the group is founded on Sameness. The group is the active attempt to escape from determination by the Other (thing or person) and to create a self-determining social plurality that Sartre calls a _we-subject._ Sartre calls it a 'group-in-fusion' because it is an _active_ self-foundation, a totalization-in-progress that will replace the serial 'we-object' by a collective 'we-subject'. Although he does not insist on it, Sartre is proposing a solution to what I called one of the unresolved problems of _Being and_ _Nothingness_.\n\nSartre proposes a phenomenological account of events of the French Revolution in order to illustrate the transition from seriality to the group. The Paris population prior to the symbolic event of the seizure of the Bastille was a m\u00e9lange united by geographical location and the facts of poverty and discontent. As conditions worsened, rumors flew (transmitted from Other to Other, reflecting a fear of the power of the state as Other); demonstrations took place and people armed themselves (still in a serial context: each reacting to the menace of the Other, each seeing in the neighbor's actions the determination of what one should do). These serial actions had an unintended consequence; they created the _possibility_ of the unification of a self-determining active group. That fusion depended first on the perception of a threat that affected each individual precisely because in their serial relations each was identical to the other and any or all of them could become an 'excess Third'; and second, a 'totalizing Third' had to set the process in motion.23 The external menace was symbolized by the Bastille, which was not only a prison but a military fortress threatening the population. As Sartre puts it metaphorically, the temperature in the crowd rose as it fed on itself. At some point, suddenly, someone\u2014 _anyone!\u2014_ galvanizes the population, crying out: 'A _la Bastille!_ ' The heterogeneous crowd _fuses_ into a group, acting together for a common cause. Its organization is still determined by the perceived need to overcome the threat posed by this external force (the-Bastille-as-a-menace-to-each-and-all). Action has now replaced passivity; 'It is not that I am myself in the Other... in _praxis_ there is no _Other,_ there are only _me_ 's' (p. 420). Social otherness is replaced by a fusion of the Same; now anyone can become the totalizing Third, while each action in turn mediates the group and the individual as Third.24 Because belonging to the group defines all as the Same and frees them from determination by external heterogeneity, action within the group is no longer the 'active passivity' of the serial individuals. The Bastille is taken!\n\nThis is only the first episode. The group was defined as a _means_ toward an external goal, the negation of the threat that weighed over the group-in-fusion. The mode of existence of the group changes once the menace is overcome, the activity consummated and the group fused. The action is no longer a fusion; it has passed, has become a past, and as passive it threatens to recreate relations of seriality. To maintain the group, a new fear, an external threat, and a new totalizing Third are needed. This may take place if, for example, a rumor25 that the royalists are coming from Versailles spreads, and the group decides that the threat to all is a threat to each (as the Same), taking measures to maintain its organization and awareness. But the mobilization will only last so long: fear becomes a habit, pain is dulled, and seriality again threatens. To maintain itself the group needs a 'practical invention': the Oath (pp. 439\u201340). Each individual as the Same swears on his life and person that the group and the we-subject it constitutes take precedence over all else. The Oath represents a form of negation or 'alienation' of freedom, but it is a freely and consciously willed self-alienation insofar as the individual chooses to become a _group-object_. I define my true existence as the being the Same; I limit my freedom to the freedom of the group so that, because we all act this way, each can count on the Other, and all can be certain that this 'practical invention' has (artificially) created the fear-reaction needed for the preservation of the group. The group now takes itself not simply as a means toward the negation (destruction) of an external threat to each Other-as-the-Same; the group now takes itself _reflexively_ as an end in itself, worthy of preservation for its own sake ( _pour-soi_ ). Written in the blood of each, the Oath permits the preservation of the group _and_ the further differentiation of functions within it (so that, e.g., bound by the discipline of the oath, the group can send spies and infiltrators, form a fifth column, or deploy its reserves in such a way that the enemy will not become aware of its strength).\n\nThe Oath institutes what Sartre calls the 'Fraternity-Terror', which becomes the basis for his understanding of social institutions that apparently violate the imperatives of his existential nominalism. He recognizes that an oath is only a spiritual force which by itself cannot maintain the coherence and unity of the group. 'The oath is a free attempt to substitute the fear of all for the fear of oneself and of the Other in and by each inasmuch as it suddenly again actualizes violence as an intelligible way to overcome individual alienation by shared liberty' (p. 450). If, after swearing the Oath, you let the Other (the Enemy) appeal to you as Other-than-us, the group to whom you swore to remain the Same\u2014and for whatever reasons you do so: fear for the ultimate victory of our group, a desire to gain material wealth and comfort, or fear for your family\u2014then it is our duty, to you and to ourselves as a group, to eliminate you. And this violence that we do to you is 'a practical relation of _love_ among the executioners' (p. 455). The oath affirms to you that, to the very last, we still consider you as one of us; and at the same time it proves to us, reflexively, that we still exist as a coherent group. In a word, purges are necessary to maintain the group.26\n\nThis paradoxical institutionalization of the group is a necessity whose structure results from the ontological foundation of the group. The action of the group is the action of a _constituted dialectic_ whose foundation is the nominalist _constitutive dialectic_ of individual _praxis_. The constituted dialectic is not, Sartre insists again and again, some kind of hyper organism or the expression of a collective unconscious which would function like the _praxis_ of a super-individual.27 As a result, the group is a functional but inherently instable unity that is\n\n> born to dissolve the series in the living synthesis of a community, [but] it is blocked in its spatio-temporal development by the unsurpassable status of the organic individual, and finds its being outside itself in the passive determinations of the inorganic exteriority that it tried to suppress in itself. It formed against alienation, which substitutes the field of the practico-inert for the free practical field of the individual. But no more than does the individual, it does not escape from the practico-inert, and through it, falls back into serial passivity. (pp. 635\u20136)\n\nThe group, 'the practical organism[,] is the unifying unity of the unification' operated by the constitutive individuals (p. 431). The constitutive individuals are the rock-bottom foundation of Sartre's 'dialectical nominalism' and their existential freedom can never be totalized from without.\n\nThe group does not exist in the world like an object ( _an sich_ ); it _is_ not, but is constituted as a perpetual _becoming_ or fusion by the multiplicity of individual totalizations, each of which seeks a goal common to each and freely chosen by all. As a constituted dialectic, however, the group produces an action and tends to internalize this external effect as its definition. Returning to his illustration, Sartre notes that the inhabitants of the Bastille area did not originally exist and act as a group; it was the product of their action that presented itself to each individual as the product of a common _praxis_ , and conversely, it appears as the definition of that same common or group _praxis_. Internalizing this result, each member regards himself as a group-individual. But the problem that arises as a result\n\n> is precisely the fact that the group does not and cannot have the ontological status that it claims in its _praxis_ ; and it is, inversely, the fact that each and everyone produces himself and defines himself in terms of that non-existent totality. There is a kind of interior void, an impassable and undetermined distance, a malaise in each community, large and small. This malaise incites a reinforcement of integrative practices, and grows in the measure that the group is more integrated. (p. 568)\n\nThe group that destroyed the Bastille was produced by a fusion in the historical heat of the moment; it defined itself in and by its action. When the moment has passed, only the result of the group-praxis remains. Each individual as individual identifies with the result, which has become something shared that constitutes the individuals as the Same. The group thus depends on a dead totality, rather than the living totalization that it formerly was. This is the foundation of the Fraternity-Terror which is, for Sartre, the archetype of the general process of group-socialization and the internalization of norms. Because the fusion cannot be maintained naturally over a long historical time, the group must either institutionalize itself or disappear.\n\nThe institutionalized group represents 'a beginning of circular massification whose origin is the _non-substantial existence_ of the community. The _being of the institution_... is the _non-being_ of the group producing itself as the relation between its members' (p. 583). In Sartre's example, after the seizure of the Bastille, the group tends to disperse, returning to the everyday. A new danger, the revenge of the Royalists, may come today, tomorrow, or next week. The group must prepare to defend itself: it sends out patrols to stand watch, it begins to think about organizing the defense of the neighborhood, it assigns responsibilities\u2014in short, it begins to differentiate itself into sub-groups, each of which is determined by its belonging to the larger group. Each of these differentiated groups is defined by a task that the group assigns it. As long as each individual has internalized the demands of the group, there is no danger of betrayal. Indeed, with the institution of the Oath and the Fraternity-Terror, a first defensive means has been defined by the group to prevent a betrayal that is always possible because once the fusing group cools down and the institution begins to emerge, the relation of each individual to the group again becomes serial, determined by Otherness. When the individual is determined by belonging rather than by doing, belonging has become passive, dependent on the Other. To avoid this fall back to seriality, the institution has the paradoxical task of preserving the being of a non-being (the group).\n\nThis paradoxical situation explains the origin of bureaucracy for Sartre. With the increasing differentiation of sub-groups, the group must 'consume a part of its strength... in order to maintain itself in a state of relative fluidity' (p. 539).\n\n> What constitutes the specificity of organized _praxis_ is the pyramid of inertias that constitutes organized _praxis_... and the fact that for any apparatus its object (its subgroups which must be united) appears as an internal-external inertia which as such must be maneuvered, whereas the same apparatus, in its relations with other organs of the group, is itself manipulated as an inertia by the apparatus above it. (p. 537)\n\nWhen the group, which originally constituted itself through a fusion that was a means to an end, takes itself as an end-in-itself and devotes its energies to its own self-preservation, each member acquires a dual status in the eyes of each other member: each is the Same, since each has internalized the same end-goal; yet each is an Other whose loyalty and efforts must be coordinated and structured. When the group becomes an end, its members become means; and, as the immediate goal for which the group was formed recedes in time, it becomes necessary to rule either by bureaucratic means or continually to invent new external dangers (e.g., world imperialism, traitors in our midst, and communists)\u2014or both. In a word, the group-subject now takes itself as group-object, treats itself as a thing, with the result that its _praxis_ becomes a ' _praxis_ -process' (p. 549). Yet, though bureaucratized, the group retains a totalizing function which it acquires through the constitutive actions of individual _praxis_ ; hence, it would be wrong to study it from the outside, as _only_ an object. The notion of the group as praxis-process points to the necessity of maintaining both functions, and their interaction, continually present in the analysis because, even as bureaucratized, the group is constituted by the constitutive dialectic of totalizing individuals.\n\n## 6.4 The Problem of Revolution\n\nAs political, Sartre's theory is marked by an ambiguity resulting from the difference between the ontological analysis of the forms of (social) _praxis_ and the historical analogies used to illustrate these structures. Although the analogies are rich and the descriptions provocative, the reader knows\u2014as Sartre must know but does not say\u2014that history does not simply reflect the philosopher's ontological categories. It is possible to _illustrate_ the categories by historical analogy; it is quite another matter to _explain_ the deeply complex interweaving of actual history. None of Sartre's categorial moments exist for itself in its isolated purity. None can be translated immediately into political practice. Sartre's use of historical analogies plays the same illustrative role as the Remarks and Additions in Hegel's _Philosophy of Right_ , which were added to the posthumous publication on the basis of student lecture notes. In his critique of Hegel's theory, the young Marx treated the categorial theory and the historical illustrations as belonging to a unique theory, whereas their function for Hegel was to stimulate philosophical thought rather than to explain history itself.28 The resulting ambiguity gave rise to a problem for _Marxism_ whose philosophical status as the 'unsurpassable horizon of our time' was supposed to be justified by the ontological theory of the _Critique of Dialectical Reason_.\n\nThe Marxist theory of the proletariat as redefined by Sartre falls within the sphere of the practico-inert; it is a collective of serialities interspersed with particularistic groups, which it may form or, reciprocally, which form it. Periodically, and under given conditions, the temperature rises and a fusion occurs. In the fusion, leaders arise, first as regulative Thirds. 'Thus, the _leader_ is produced at the same time as the group itself, while he, in turn, produces the self-consciousness of the group that produced him. A problem can arise already in this elementary moment of the experience insofar as the leader is \" _anyone_ \", (p. 586). As the group begins to disintegrate back into seriality, the leader becomes the 'authority' whose function is to integrate 'the multiplicity of institutional relations and to give them the synthetic unity of a real _praxis_ ' (p. 587). The position of the leader shifts as a result of Sartre's nominalism; the group-as-institutionalized has no fixed structure that defines its end. Whereas at first the leader was simply the expression of the group-as-all-of-us, the members of the group now become the expression of the leader. As a result, the leader has become something more, a 'sovereign'. It is of course possible that the sovereign-leader may seek to preserve the collective identity of the subjects as a group who continue to define their collective end as freely chosen; but it is equally possible that the sovereign-leader seeks to insure his own self-preservation as sovereign, as the end that unifies the group. It is not difficult to imagine that original 'leader' occupies the historical role played by the Leninist party that\u2014after some conflict within the party once it has become 'sovereign'\u2014ultimately became the Stalinist dictatorial ruler of the Soviet Union. Sartre himself defines Stalin ontologically as the constituted dialectic that must direct the constitutive dialectic of the masses in order to unify it around a common goal (p. 630).\n\nThe existence of the Party-State is a reflection of the serially structured working class; like its role any group in relation to the series whose members are other-directed, the Party is one of Others, competing for attention.29 Under these circumstances, the Party may even win votes, compete in elections, and share in the formation of public opinion. It may recruit new members who choose to recognize themselves in it and its goals, justifying their self-subordination by the way that members are no longer simply Others-in-sympathy-with-the-cause; they have made themselves the Same as the other militants. Each militant identifies with the Party; in discussions with non-Party people (Others), each member will identify the Party as the Truth and goal of the class. This active adhesion to the Party is paradoxical; it is based on the social seriality that the Revolution claims to eliminate. Under such these conditions, support for the Party is obedience to the Other, regardless of whether that Other is or is not truly representative of the group. Consistency with his own theory leads Sartre to admit that the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat 'is itself absurd' (p. 630).\n\nIt is not surprising that Sartre criticizes party dictatorships in his political essays by appeal to the concepts developed in the _Critique_. In his Preface to the writings of Patrice Lumumba, he writes that:\n\n> The government atomizes the colonialized people and unifies them _from the exterior_ as subjects of the King. Independence will be only a word if for that _cohesion from the outside_ a totalization from the interior is not replaced.30\n\nSimilarly, his influential Preface to Fanon's _The Wretched of the Earth_ is based on the argument that revolt is necessary in order to substitute internal cohesion for the colonial yoke that dehumanizes the colonized by treating them as Other. In the _Critique_ itself, Sartre recognizes that in any historical conditions of fusion, the Party's directives will be followed _only_ if they are in fact the expression of the activity of the fusing group. He suggests that when an actual fusion does occur, the old cadre group will find itself outside the process and will be forced to dissolve and reconstitute itself out of the movement. This argument developed in the _Critique_ was confirmed, Sartre came to think, in the events of the 'Prague Spring' of 1968.\n\nSartre finds himself in a paradoxical political situation because of his insistence on ontological categories. The group is not a hyper-organism; in order to preserve itself, it must institutionalize and bureaucratize itself. As a result, Sartre admits that 'the transformation of the [working ] class into an actualized group has never occurred anywhere, even in revolutionary periods' (p. 644). This empirical historical admission is philosophically intelligible as a result of the rules of ontological necessity that govern the formation of groups. Yet that same ontology defines revolution as the _praxis_ which creates a we-subject. Does this paradox rule out revolution, empirically or ontologically? Does it mean that revolution is a misnomer for a series of material reforms (nationalizations, income redistribution, etc.) that are achieved by a temporary social fusion and consolidated in the following phase of institutionalization? That empirical claim flies in the phase face of Sartre's repeated ontological justifications of the role of the party, asserting, for example, that there is 'no doubt that the entire class is present in the organized group [i.e., the party] which has constituted itself within it' (p. 644).\n\n## 6.5 Concretization and Critique\n\nIn his Preface to _Les Maos en France_ ,31 Sartre recalibrates his social ontology to elaborate the three themes that he sees as fundamental to French Maoism: violence, spontaneity, and morality. He illustrates his theses with the recent example of a factory in northeastern France (Contrex\u00e9ville) where, although working conditions were so bad that the workers called the factory 'Buchenwald', there had been no strikes during the 12 years of its operation.\n\n> The atomizing forces acted constantly on the workers, serializing them. An ensemble is said to be serial when each of its members, even though the neighbor of all the others, remains alone and defines himself in accord with the opinion of his neighbor insofar as that neighbor thinks _like the others._ That is, each is other than himself and behaves like an other who, himself, is other than himself. The workers spoke and affirmed the serial thought as if it were their own thought, but it was in fact the opinion of the ruling class imposed from outside.\n\nThese conditions pose a problem for an activist who goes to work in that factory with the intent of organizing resistance. What in fact occurred in this case, Sartre continues, was that 'once an external change in the process of production showed, in one specific point, what actual conditions were, and drew from the workers a particular, concrete and temporally specific refusal, the series will give way to the group whose behavior expresses \u2013 even though often without formulating it \u2013 the radical refusal of exploitation'. Once this _external_ change had intervened, the militant could make himself heard. In fact, continues Sartre, the fused workers on their own gave up the racism, misogyny, and passivity that had divided them. The implication of this example seems to be that the fused group no longer needs the militant, who is necessary only in serialized conditions. In that case, Sartre goes on, the militant has the double task of supporting the most 'left' tendency however modest its actions. The militant may propose specific tasks; if these are accepted, then he must know how to listen to the masses, accompanying but not guiding them. Further, replying to the implicit question, why a party? Sartre suggests that its necessity is explained precisely by the inevitable return to seriality: the party is 'in a certain manner, first of all the memory of the masses. It must shorten the gap between the periods of fusion'.\n\nAs I have suggested, Sartre's political application of his ontology poses several problems. The militant in fact finds himself in the position of the traditional intellectual, supporting ongoing actions once they have taken place. The theory of seriality explains the impossibility of actually intervening until the fusion has begun; and the fusion itself is said to depend on an _external_ event. Moreover, not every external event catalyzes the alienated freedom present amidst the atomized seriality. Sartre offers the suggestion that the militant may intervene through violent actions (such as sequestration of managers, or use of force against bullying foremen) whose symbolic effect is to unveil the realities of exploitation and alienation, as well as showing the possibility to fight back. These actions will not always work; they are like the external events, which may or may not activate the workers' freedom. In effect, while the virtue of Sartre's politics is its insistence on self-development, it cannot offer a certain way for the militant to act politically to insure the rupture of seriality and the beginning of the self-developmental process. The militant, like the philosopher, either intervenes after the fact or acts according to an abstract universal demand.\n\nSartre presents this general problem at one point in _On a raison de se r\u00e9volter_ , when he asks his Maoist interlocutor what the working class in fact _is_ during those periods when it is not acting. His reply is that the class is never completely passive. He suggests that Sartre's distinction between the seriality and the group is too abstractly pure to be applicable; it presupposes the possibility of an absolute rupture which in fact cannot exist.32 Sartre had seen this danger in the _Critique_. At one point, he takes up the dispute between those who hold that the proletariat can only be organized as a class through the external action of the Party and those who argue in favor of mass spontaneity (p. 518). He concludes that the problem is 'political', since both solutions have the same ontological structure. If the group is truly a group, it is based on the Sameness of all, which implies that the Party will succeed in effecting the fusion of the group only if it is the Same as the group, not external or Other in relation to it. The fusion of a group is not the same as the agreement which might exist between a worker and her boss, for example, that the laws of physics are true. Agreement about a scientific principle is an accord about an Other; it does not affect the existence of either the worker or the boss, whose relation to the world of nature as Other is unchanged. When a group forms, and when its tactical or strategic unity is felt, the debate engaged is a life-or-death matter, not only for the existence of the group but also for each individual who composes its Sameness. Within the group, the implication is that the imposition of a solution would entail the death of the group as such. This ontological argument implies that an individual or faction that imposes its views on the group has won a pyrrhic victory by destroying the structure of the group. At this theoretical level, Sartre is consistent. Once he enters the thickets of actual history, the neat theoretical structures manifest their ambiguity.\n\nWhile Sartre is aware of the political dangers, he is unable to avoid conclusions which contradict the New Left goals that he desires. The ontological foundation of his system prohibits a priori the stabilization of the group-in-fusion, condemning it to dispersion or to institutional petrification. The historical group must relate to other groups and series; that relation will itself be serial, producing structures of domination of which the bourgeois state is the illustration. These relations demand that the group-as-institutionalized take severe measures to preserve itself against the threats of inertia or dissolution. As a common member of a historical group, each must restrain himself, mold himself to the will of the institutionalized group. Since this group is threatened from the outside world in which it nonetheless operates, each must take care that despite their subjective goals, words and actions are not deflected by the dialectic of seriality, turning back against the group. 'The model of the institutional-group', says Sartre, 'will be the _forged tool_ ' (p. 585). In the same context, he speaks of the 'systematic self-domestication of man by man' (ibid.). Thus, political purges are justified by the paradoxical task of maintaining the being of a non-being, the group.\n\nSartre's ontology leads him to conclusions that appear to violate his existentialist premises. He explains, in _On a raison de se r\u00e9volter_ ,33 that he is a revolutionary because the thought of the group is more true than that of the series, because each member of the group knows the truth and takes it as his own, whereas the atomized series is a structure of separation and impotence. Pressed on this point, Sartre finally replies that he prefers such group-thought because 'That's how I am'. He continues by affirming that 'I think that an individual in the group, even if he is a little bit terrorized, is still better than an individual alone and thinking separation. I don't think that an individual alone can do anything'. The existentialist now affirms that full freedom and individuality exist in the group, even if membership implies a certain constraint, a 'little bit' of terror. The ontological philosopher presumably justifies this subordination the continued existence of scarcity. As was already the case in _Being and Nothingness_ , existential subjectivity gives way to the precise delimitation of the structures of the objective world. Sartre presents magnificent phenomenological descriptions of its 'threatening and sumptuous opacity'34 where, '[w]ith a certain distance, novels become completely similar to natural phenomena: one forgets that they have an author, one accepts them like stones or trees'. The paradox that becomes clear in the _Critique_ is that the concept of the practico-inert overreacts: material necessity overwhelms and delimits the projects of _praxis_. That is why Sartre's existentialism can only support or criticize; it is incapable of initiating action.\n\nSartre's transcendental social theory attempts to show how each social formation must be understood as instituted by a more basic principle of which it is the concretion. This guarantees its dialectical intelligibility. The principle of the system is individual _praxis_ , which is the constitutive ground of the constituted dialectic. Sartre recognizes that if the social world 'is _praxis_ through and through, the entire human universe disappears in an idealism of the Hegelian type' (p. 688). A new paradox arises: theory must explain the opacity of the material world. That is why Sartre introduces the concept of the practico-inert as well as the correlative notions of active passivity and passive activity. He wants to account for the weight of the world, explaining the forms of alienation without violating the primacy of freedom. He criticizes Marxism for failing to recognize the ultimate implications of the rejection of idealism.\n\n> Marxism presents historical development as if, since father Adam, the same individuals made History, whereas in reality it is different individuals born from one another. In each generation, the young appear in a society which has its ruling class, its exploited, its institutions, its conflicts; but since they are not responsible for these, they must deal with them in an other manner. Consequently, in fact, History is not at all like the Marxists see it.35\n\nThis implies that Sartre's ontology corrects the inability of Marxism to understand the formation of class consciousness by demonstrating at once the integration of the subject in the objective world and that of the objective world in the formation of subjectivity. This is what Sartre's variant of dialectical materialism understands by the concept of _praxis_.\n\nOne of Sartre's definitions of _praxis_ is particularly telling insofar as it identifies the role of the free subject in the transformation of the objective world.\n\n> In effect, _praxis_ is a passing from the objective to the objective by means of an interiorization. The project, as a subjective move from objectivity to objectivity stretched between the objective conditions of the milieu and the objective structures of the field of possibilities, represents _in itself_ the moving unity of subjectivity and objectivity.... The subjective thus appears as a necessary moment of the objective process. (p. 66)\n\nThe motivation of this subjective intervention is unclear. At one point in _On a raison_ , Sartre asserts that morality 'exists at the level of production itself'.36 That would make moral action depend on conditions external to it. At another moment in the dialogue, another participant suggests that _pleasure_ and freedom determine the decision to act. Sartre is unable to give a convincing reply, asserting that only commonly defined projects against a class enemy, not pleasure, can be a motive force.37 _Praxis_ is now defined by its subjectivity; it is a project. This was the difficulty that the author of _Being and Nothingness_ had sought to overcome in his _Critique of Dialectical Reason_! After nearly 700 pages, the earlier distinction between the pure freedom of the _pour-soi_ and the hard objectivity of the _en-soi_ has been modified by the notion of the practico-inert, which can itself be found at times more on the side of the material necessities of social life, at other times oriented more toward the possibilities of _praxis_.\n\nThe _Critique_ does mark an advance over the earlier formulation of Sartre's existential theory. Book One analyzes the possible social forms available to individual _praxis_ ; these basic ontological principles articulate conditions of the intelligibility of increasingly concrete social relations among individuals in a world where the fact of scarcity shapes the practico-inert. Book Two promises to proceed 'from the group to history' by building on the ontological principles to elaborate a 'concrete dialectic' that 'is revealed through the common _praxis_ of a group'. It might be assumed that Sartre intended to conclude with a synthetic analysis that would bring together the two parts in an analysis of actual historical developments, as promised in the title of Book Two. Such an approach might have been similar to Habermas' idea of a theory that is at once reconstructive and critical. But the free use that Sartre makes throughout of historical examples puts that possibility into question. He admits the limits of his project that result from the fact that 'the fundamental condition of historical rationality is the impossibility of going beyond... action as the strictly individual model; that is, the constituted dialectical Reason... must be related to its always present but always masked foundation, the constitutive rationality [of the individual]' (p. 643). Theory and practice take place in the real world; yet their principle and _telos_ is sought in the philosophical sphere of ontology, where individual praxis remains (like 'old Adam') always equal to itself, becoming actual only in those 'privileged moments' when it transcends the material conditions of scarcity in an inexplicable act of revolt.\n\nThese limits of the Sartrean theory are not only imposed by his existential nominalism; they result also from his acceptance of Marxism. The 'concrete dialectic' analyzed in the second part of the _Critique_ can be understood as the expression of _civil society_. Hegel had defined civil society as the sphere of 'social atomism' whose principle is the particularized individual engaged in an economic war of all against all that produces social tensions that must be surpassed at the level of the political state. For his part, Marx argued that the necessary overcoming of social conflict could only occur from within civil society as the result of a proletarian revolution. Although he was able to describe the material conditions that made this revolution possible, Marx was reduced to metaphors in describing the way material conditions were internalized by the subjects of revolution. In the essay in which he first defined the revolutionary proletariat, he spoke of the 'lightning of thought' that must strike 'the na\u00efve soil of the people' before liberation could occur. The metaphorical appeal to 'thought' and the image of a 'na\u00efve soil' suggest that Marx was trying to formulate an idea of revolution that was more than just a spontaneous revolt.\n\nThe canonical interpretation of the path toward revolution among Marx's followers became identified with the Leninist political party whose role is to bring class consciousness _from the outside_ ; a radical minority continued to appeal to the spontaneity of revolutionary politics. Sartre seems at times to accept the Leninist view, for example, when he analyzes the constraints that lead the group to maintain its unity within civil society. At other times, he insists that social relations in civil society form a sort of impure 'soil' in which free subjectivity is embedded and alienated, waiting for 'lightning' to liberate its potential spontaneously. In his dialogue with the Maoists, he asserts that 'It is absurd to think that one can define man uniquely according to his class. There is something more; the various alienations point directly to freedom, for only a freedom can be alienated; one cannot alienate a man who is not free'.38 But a moment later, he joins the French communist party's criticism of Solzhenitsyn asserting that the Soviet dissident's ideas are harmful, archaic, and unfit for contemporary society!\n\nSartre's political vacillation places his work squarely within the tradition of the western Left, unable to criticize the inherited vision of revolutionary politics. As if he recognized the dilemma, toward the end of the _Critique_ , Sartre asserts that 'at a certain level of abstraction, the class struggle is expressed as a _conflict of rationalities_ ' (p. 742). Although he is referring to the distinction between analytical and dialectical reason as he has presented it, his own 'dialectics' is hobbled by the persistence of an analytical dualism that is expressed repeatedly in his basic operational social-historical category: the _practico-inert_. As a result, there is no place for politics in Sartre's critical theory; if it were put into practice, it would produce an _antipolitics_. As if he were aware of this precipice, he left the second volume of the _Critique_ unfinished, turning his attention to the completion of his _Flaubert_ where, he hoped, the superiority of dialectical reason over its analytical rival would be finally demonstrated. It would remain for other French thinkers, who had been his contemporaries, to complete the task of formulating the critique of the claims of dialectical reason, overcoming the dualism of its presuppositions (Merleau-Ponty) and putting in question its Marxist-Leninist and finally its dependence on its Marxist heritage (Lefort and Castoriadis).\n\nFootnotes\n\n1\n\nJean-Paul Sartre, Pierre Victor, Philippe Gavi, _On a raison de se r\u00e9volter_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), p. 17. C.f., also Epistemon [Didier Anzieu], _Ces id\u00e9es qui ont \u00e9branl\u00e9 la France_ (Paris: Fayard, 1968).\n\n2\n\nJean-Paul Sartre, _Situations X_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). Citation from the interview with Michel Contat, 'Autoportrait \u00e0 soixante-dix ans', p. 217 (hereafter, 'Interview').\n\n3\n\nJean-Paul Sartre, _L'Etre et le N\u00e9ant_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), p. 370.\n\n4\n\n _On a raison_ , p. 139.\n\n5\n\nIbid., p. 101.\n\n6\n\nIbid., p. 142.\n\n7\n\nIbid., p. 344.\n\n8\n\n'Interview', p. 216.\n\n9\n\n _On a raison_ , pp. 47\u20138.\n\n10\n\n'Interview', p. 144.\n\n11\n\nReplying to Michel Contat's question whether his theory of freedom is too abstract, Sartre admits: 'I think that in effect a theory of freedom that does not explain at the same time what are alienations, to what degree freedom can let itself be manipulated, deviated, turned against itself, can very cruelly disappoint someone who doesn't understand what it implies, and who thinks that freedom is everywhere' ('Interview', p. 223).\n\n12\n\nThe ontological reading of Kant as opposed to treating his epistemology as central to his project is open to disagreement. This is not the place to argue about Kant. Suffice it that, for the Sartrean project, ontology is the condition of the possibility of epistemology.\n\n13\n\nAll citations, unless otherwise noted, are from Jean-Paul Sartre, _Critique de la raison dialectique_ (Gallimard, 1960). This volume includes a preliminary essay, 'Question de m\u00e9thode', which is translated into English as 'Search for a Method'. As throughout this book, all translations are my own.\n\n14\n\n'Question de m\u00e9thode' is _not_ integral to the ontological theory of the _Critique._ It was in fact drafted in 1957 in reaction to the liberalization of Polish communism. It is not the methodological 'key' to Sartre's theory, as George Lichtheim argues in his typically urbane, and chatty manner (in 'Sartre, Marxism and History', in _The Concept of Ideology_ , p. 294). The _Critique_ stands quite well as an ambitious attempt to understand the ontological foundation to Marxism.\n\n15\n\nI will follow Sartre's usage throughout, italicizing the term _praxis_ to emphasize its ontological usage in the _Critique._\n\n16\n\nCf. _Critique_ , pp. 214\u201324. The problem of the origin of negativity is present in Marx's _Capital_ as well. The final section of Volume I, the 'So-Called Primitive Accumulation', was tacked on in order to meet this problem by rounding out the first volume. Marx's previously unpublished manuscript explaining the philosophical grounds for this transition was published in 1969 as the _Resultate des unmittelbaren Produktionsprozesses_ (Frankfurt, Neue Kritik Verlag, 1969). Marx intended to explain the transition from production to consumption in his analysis of the difficulties of the circulation of commodities. As I have tried to show elsewhere, this 120-page manuscript demonstrates that Marx did not need the historical account of Primitive Accumulation to round out his theory.\n\n17\n\n'Abstract' is used in the sense of Hegel, meaning the least complex, most immediate moments which are false in isolation but constitutive as moments of the totality. 'Abstract' here means the same thing as 'immediate', as opposed to mediated structures which are, for Sartre and Hegel, the most concrete.\n\n18\n\nIn interview with M. Contat and M. Rybalka ( _Le Monde_ , May 14, 1971), Sartre indicates that the promised second volume will not appear. This is not, he insists, for theoretical reasons but simply because he 'will not have time... before [his] death'. Contat and Rybalka's monumental _Les \u00e9crits de Sartre_ (Gallimard, 1970) notes that Sartre had written two chapters for volume II, one on boxing, the other on Stalin (p. 340).\n\n19\n\nIn fact, Sartre does not follow through on this claim, as will be seen. As opposed to the Hegelian dialectic of Spirit, which is present only in an incomplete form in each category, and whose incompleteness motivates the ascent to higher concretions, Sartre's nominalism insists that the individual is fully present at every stage.\n\n20\n\nSelf-proclaimed Marxists have not always seen this important notion, as witnesses the East German Introduction to Rosa Luxemburg's _Ausgew\u00e4hlte Schriften_ (1953) whose catalogue of her errors, denounces this as one of them. Sartre's theory makes this point clearly but does not give a satisfactory definition of scarcity. He cannot explain the overcoming of scarcity because its elimination would imply that human _praxis_ has come to an end. That is surely one reason that, in the late 1960s, under the influence of Andr\u00e9 Gorz, Sartre recognized _new_ forms of scarcity, such as unpolluted air, free time, and the like.\n\n21\n\nThis interpretation of 'alienation' as the product of free _praxis_ implies that what some call 'false consciousness' that prevents people from acting in their own (collective) best interests is an aberration that can be overcome. It can be understood as Sartre's way of formulating the Marxist idea of 'immanent critique'.\n\n22\n\nC.f. Sartre's Preface to Antonin Liehm's _Trois G\u00e9n\u00e9rations_ (Gallimard, 1969) which analyzes the frozen culture of Czechoslovak communism through the application of this categorial framework. This essay is no doubt Sartre's best political analysis, perhaps because its object is a culture whose yearning for freedom betrayed itself.\n\n23\n\nThe role of the Third was prepared in Sartre's earlier account of individual _praxis_. He explained that\n\n> [i]t is not possible to conceive of a temporal process which would begin with the dyad and conclude with the triad. The binary formation as an immediate relation of man to man is the necessary foundation for any ternary relation; but inversely, the ternary relation as the mediation of man between men is the foundation on whose basis reciprocity recognizes itself as reciprocal bonding. If the idealistic dialectic made an abusive usage of the triad, it is first of all because the _real_ relation of men among themselves is necessarily ternary. But that trinity is not an ideal signification or characteristic of human relations: it is inscribed _in being_ , that is, in the materiality of individuals. In this sense, reciprocity is not the thesis, nor is the trinity the synthesis (or inversely); it is a question of lived relations whose content is determined in an already existing society, which are conditioned by the materiality, and which one can only modify by action. (p. 189)\n\nThe parallel between the two levels of categorial analysis again illustrates the way that the basis of dialectical intelligibility is reflexive. The role of the Third will return in a moment.\n\n24\n\nWhereas for the individual _praxis_ the Third was a menace threatening to make it an Excess Third, in the group-in-fusion each is made Other (hence, by analogy, excess) by the menace of an Other outside the group; and hence each is the Same.\n\n25\n\nThe rumor need not be true. This is the technique used by states, for example, which maintain their ideological cohesion by installing a permanent fear of an outside threat and (eventually) an internal menace.\n\n26\n\nI will return to the implications of this crucial implication in due course.\n\n27\n\nCf. pp. 417, 431, 507, 667, and so on.\n\n28\n\nI am indebted to my former teacher, Klaus Hartmann, for this point (among others), although the implications I draw from it are my own. C.f., _Sartre's Sozialphilosophie_ (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1966). Not surprisingly, Hartmann finds the same problem in Marx's _Capital_ ; cf. _Die Marxsche Theorie_ , De Gruyter, Berlin, 1970. (I add here that I tried to reconcile my views with Hartmann's shortly before his early death in my contribution to a _Festschrift_ for Hartmann, 'Revolution as the Foundation of Political Philosophy', in _Hegel Reconsidered. Beyond Metaphysics and the Authoritarian State_ , edited by H. T. Engelhardt Jr. and Terry Pinkard [Dordrecht: Kluwer Verlag, 1994], pp. 187\u2013209.)\n\n29\n\nSartre seems to be aware that his theoretical framework has led him to political positions that he disapproves. As a result, he moves, in mid-paragraph, from the historical illustration of Stalinism to a demonstration of the way in which the 'Hearst press' manipulates public opinion (pp. 605\u20136).\n\n30\n\nIn _Situations V_ (Gallimard, 1964), p. 213.\n\n31\n\nReprinted in _Situations X_ , op. cit.; the following citations are from pp. 42f.\n\n32\n\n _On a raison_ , op. cit., p. 166.\n\n33\n\nIbid., p. 171.\n\n34\n\nC.f., Jean-Paul Sartre, in _Situations_ II, p. 254 and p. 7, cited by Simone de Beauvoir in 'Merleau-Ponty et le pseudo-Sartrisme' ( _Les Temps Modernes_ , 10, II, 1955), pp. 2075, 2082. Beauvoir's reply to Merleau-Ponty's critique of Sartre in _Les aventures de la dialectique_ is based on her misunderstanding of the point of Merleau-Ponty's essay, as will be apparent in the following chapter.\n\n35\n\n _On a raison_ , op. cit., p. 126.\n\n36\n\nIbid., p. 45.\n\n37\n\nIbid., pp. 144\u20135. Merleau-Ponty emphasizes a similar point ( _AD_ , p. 275) when he insists that intersubjective action is impossible for Sartre because his transcendental freedom has no history, springing forth a new and full blown in every moment.\n\n38\n\nIbid., p. 342.\n\n# Part IIICriticizing Marxism\n\u00a9 The Author(s) 2019\n\nDick HowardThe Marxian LegacyPolitical Philosophy and Public Purpose<https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-030-04411-4_7>\n\n# 7. From Marxism to Ontology: Maurice Merleau-Ponty\n\nDick Howard1\n\n(1)\n\nDepartment of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA\n\nDick Howard\n\nThe name of Maurice Merleau-Ponty conjures a multitude of images, refracting against one another in ways that continually surprise. There is first of all the phenomenologist. Under his pen, phenomenology becomes less than a method to be applied and more than an attitude: the phenomenological analyses emerge on their own from the materials in which they were embedded, those of science, of culture, and of the everyday. His studies of expression in art and literature are of a piece with the sure hand that guides his interpretations of the so-called hard sciences. The philosopher was part of a generation that lived through war, occupation, and the unanswered challenges of creating a post-war. The same manner of cleaving to the world is present in his political choices and critical analyses. He seemed to accept the reality of Cold War political dualism (in _Humanism and Terror_ ) before challenging its apparent common sense in a denunciation of what he called 'Sartre's Ultra-Bolshevism' in his study of the _Adventures of the Dialectic_. The speculative moment of his phenomenology reappears in the unfinished ontology in _The Visible and the Invisible_ where the reader has a sense that a poetic layer of mystery overlain with Heideggerian echoes weighs down the articulation of his philosophical lucidity. Each rereading, particularly in light of the fact that his work was cut short prematurely, offers new possibilities of interpretation, poses new questions, even at times suggests new practical political-historical understandings.1\n\n## 7.1 Why Reread Merleau-Ponty?\n\nI return to Merleau-Ponty for two, seemingly incidental reasons, whose importance will become clear in due course. The first stemmed from the way that French theorists in the decades after his disappearance seemed to have forgotten him, treating his work as if it were a stepping stone that is no longer necessary now that the journey has advanced to firmer grounds. Although Sartre titled his tribute to his former friend and colleague 'Merleau-Ponty vivant', what came to be called 'French Theory' spared him little time.2 It seemed that the diverse theorists regrouped under the headings of structuralism and deconstruction wanted to forget the nearby origins of their interrogations and to imagine the eternal validity of their thoughts and methods; it seemed as if they wanted to the possibility of a history, of change, and of the new without realizing, as a result, their thought tended to become obsessive, repetitive, even delusional. The second incitation to reread Merleau-Ponty came from the claim by the editor responsible for many of the English translations of the philosopher, James Edie, who decided that _Humanism and Terror_ and _The Adventures of the Dialectic_ are 'two works of political polemic which, because of their dated and topical character, will probably never be published in English in their entirety'.3 This assertion, since disproven, expresses not only a lack of political sensitivity but also a philosophical blindness that afflicted Anglo-Saxon 'good sense'. What could be learned from a philosopher who took seriously the work of Hegel, the philosopher 'who started the attempt to explore the irrational and integrate it into an expanded reason' ( _SNS_ , p. 109)? What could it mean 'to restore the world as the sense of Being, Being as absolutely different from what is \"represented\", that is, as vertical Being which none of the \"representations\" exhausts but which they all attain: savage Being' ( _VI_ , p. 306)? It seems as if the American reading and the French forgetting had a common result: a purification of philosophy that wants to separate it from the texture of history.\n\nI return to Merleau-Ponty after a decade of political experience as part of the political movement of the New Left which seemed to satisfy the criterion described by the philosopher in 1945, at the beginning of the post-war years. Drawing together the threads of _The Phenomenology of Perception_ , he asserted that '[i]f a revolution is truly in the sense of history, it can be thought at the same time that it is experienced' ( _PhP_ , p. 416). While still a participant in the movement, I wrote an essay4 that tried to use his philosophical analyses of the lived world, the body, perception, and language to found a politics based on the reshaping of civil society and ultimately of everyday life. It appears now that I had 'solved' the problems of revolutionary thought by a reduction of the political to daily life, of philosophy to praxis, of the thickness and multivocity of the 'flesh' of history to the transparency of what is immediately real. That reduction robbed each of its specificity and thus prohibited an understanding of their relation. A theory of embodiment or idea of the lived world can become a disguised positivism that eliminates conceptual thought in favor of the observable givens, however sinuous, ambiguous, or polyvalent their linguistic description by the observing subject. Such an interpretation maintains unintentionally the notion of a constitutive subject for whom the world exists as ultimately understandable, potentially transparent, ready to be freely manipulated, forgetting the injunction in the Preface to the _Phenomenology of Perception_ that 'true philosophy is relearning to see the world' ( _PhP_ , p. xvi).\n\nI am rereading Merleau-Ponty here not only as a philosopher but above all in order to further my own reflections on how and why it seemed that the New Left was carried along on a wave on which novelty led to success and success to novelty, as if it was touching at the grain and the tensions of history armed with no preordained schema defining the target or choosing the weapon. In words borrowed from Merleau-Ponty, 'the revolutionary movement, like the work of the artist, is an intention which itself creates its instruments and its means of expression' ( _PhP_ , p. 508). A decade later, taking stock, it does no good to place the responsibility for its results on external factors; what blocked the development of the new movement was not only material necessity nor simply the result of bad political choices. We encountered the indeterminacy of historical life; attempts to 'explain' the failures of the movement can only negate the 'existential' conditions that made possible the New Left decade, making less likely its reappearance in new clothing.\n\nIt would be of course also be wrong to ignore the external conditions that encouraged the rise of the New Left, among them the American war in Vietnam. Merleau-Ponty, for his part, had condemned the tortures and moral bankruptcy of the French colonial war in Algeria; but he insisted that such criticism is ' _only_ moral: no politics follows [necessarily] from it' ( _S_ , p. 408f.). But he had learned also from the post-war debates about Marxism that '[one] does not become a revolutionary through theory but through indignation' ( _HT_ , p. 13). He had learned from Marxism, as we tried later to learn, that indignation must be theorized if it is to refresh itself. It cannot rest on either philosophy or morality alone, but must open out toward politics. Because the philosopher alone cannot create a politics, H _umanism and Terror_ came to accept the need to ally with the Communist party after recognizing that '[t]he problems of communism are our problems' ( _HT_ , p. 159). The fact that the alliance was based on shared _problems_ explains why this alliance did _not_ imply the subordination of the philosopher to the Party. Merleau-Ponty's 'Note sur Machiavel' presented the next year in Rome insists on the independence of _both_ politics and philosophy.\n\n> If by humanism one means a philosophy of the essential man in isolation, who in principle finds no difficulty in his relations with others, no opacity in the social functioning, and replaces political culture by moral exhortation, then Machiavelli is not a humanist. But if by humanism one means a philosophy that confronts the relation of man with man, and the constitution between men of a situation and a history which are common to them as a problem, then one must say that Machiavelli formulated some of the conditions of any serious humanism. ( _Eloge_ , pp. 375\u20136)\n\nAlready in 1945, the 'serious humanism' that attracted the philosopher attraction to Marxism depended on its claim to be more than simply a philosophy; he called for a 'Marxism without illusions, completely experimental and voluntary'. This was to be a Marxism that showed that '[t]he weakness of democratic thinking is that it is less political than moral, since it poses no social structural problems and considers the conditions for the exercise of justice to be given with humanity' ('Concerning Marxism', _SNS_ , pp. 219, 180). At that time, the demonstration of the 'weakness of democratic thinking' seemed to incline the philosopher to one side of the Cold War. But he was aware that this was at best a moral choice. That is why he criticized the existential-Marxism of Sartre, his co-editor at _Les Temps modernes_ , pointing out that when his political morality is applied to reality it can only approve or condemn, but never propose or create. Marxism, with its theory of the proletariat as the creator of history, offered richer, more promising horizons for political thought.\n\nMerleau-Ponty's political leanings were clearly to the left side of the spectrum, but he recognized that these were moral choices. He condemned the tortures by the army, and denounced the bankruptcy of the colonial project, but he admitted that he had no political solution to offer ( _S_ , p. 408f). Already in 1951, during the French colonial war in Vietnam, he had asserted '[w]hat is serious is that _all_ of the western doctrines are too narrow to confront the problem of the valorization of Asia' ( _S,_ p. 302). When one of the most creative critical French social critics, Serge Mallet, tried to explain the conditions that had led to war by the notion of a 'structural imperialism', Merleau-Ponty appreciated the idea but questioned its validity _as a politics_ in the absence of an ongoing oppositional movement ( _S_ , pp. 19\u201320). The political promise of Marxism remained an unrealized horizon, perhaps an illusory one.\n\nDuring these years when he searched for a politics that could articulate a 'serious humanism', Merleau-Ponty was led also to question the possibility of a philosophy that could do justice to his appreciation of the richness of what he increasingly referred to as pre-reflexive experience, an ontological foundation that is never exhausted in the intentional consciousness of the individual will. That distinction was suggested by the title of the manuscript left incomplete on his desk: _The Visible and the Invisible_. His former student and friend, Claude Lefort, who edited the text for publication pointed to the relation of this ontological vision of philosophy and the Marxism that had engaged him for so long. 'In a certain way', writes Lefort, 'Marxism taught him what he was seeking, what his work on the body and perception had already led him to ponder: a relation with being which attests to our participation in being, in this case a philosophy of history which reveals our historicity'.5 In Merleau-Ponty's own words, 'if consciousness were ever absolutely cut off from the true\u2014no thought, not even Marxism, would be able to lay a claim to truth.... Marxism needs a theory of consciousness that accounts for its mystification without denying its participation in the truth' ( _AD_ , pp. 57\u20138). The attempt to do philosophy had to go together with the translation of speculation into demands that are not only subjective nor merely objective. Beyond and yet also beneath the visible lies the historical. That was a dimension of daily life that the New Left had been unable to understand; it came back to haunt us.\n\nMerleau-Ponty offered historical examples to illustrate and enrich his thinking. His interpretation of Max Weber's demonstration of the elective affinities of Calvinism and capitalism makes the significant suggestion that the interpreter is led astray if either of these emerging expressions of social relations are seen as providing answers to pre-existing questions (either within church doctrine or in the secular economic conditions). The doctrinal questions emerge only after the actions are under way and while the actors are engaged in their web; they constitute a history that is made by the self-interrogation of acting individuals. As a result, Merleau-Ponty suggests that the movement of history 'is of the same type as that of the Word or of Thought, and finally of the explosion of the sensible world between us: there is sense or meaning all over, dimensions and figures beyond what each \"consciousness\" could have produced; and yet nonetheless it is men who speak, think and see. We find ourselves in the field of history as we do in the field of language or of being' ( _S_ , p. 28). It is best to try to understand the novelty of the new questions rather than to formulate too hasty answers to old, outgrown heritages with no legacy from the future.\n\n## 7.2 Marxism and Its Politics\n\nMerleau-Ponty's preoccupation with Marxism, as a philosophical theory and as a politics, develops across three central axes: during the period of _Humanism and Terror_ , he recognizes that the problems of organized communism are 'our own' ( _HT_ , p. 159) and he is concerned with Marxism as a manner or method of elucidating praxis within a historical context; in the period marked by the publication of _The Adventures of the Dialectic_ and its political option for an 'a-communism' ( _AD_ , p. 248), he stresses the incoherence of Cold War Manichaeism and puts into question the centrality of the proletariat and the theory that the party is its representative; finally, after the 1956 Hungarian revolution and as decolonization showed the inadequacy of established thought, he returns to the project of Marx itself as a kind of philosophy that would be the 'realization' of philosophy as a 'non-philosophy' adequate to the problems of political choice within the ontological 'flesh' ( _chair_ ) of history, recognizing the need for a new ontology and with it a new conception of the political. Each of these moments articulates the sinuous dialectic between the philosophical and the political, each demanding the other as its completion as well as offering its sense, yet each inevitably betraying the other. Deceived hopes each time renew the quest: in the end, the object of the quest will appear to be nothing but the question itself, sure of itself and continually reposed.\n\nThe first return and rethinking of Marx sought to transform a theory that had become an ideology and a mask. This appeared all the easier insofar as Marxism, even in its most distorted form, retained the elements of a humanist goal, the creation of a society where humans would relate to one another as persons and not as objects. The orthodox might ridicule as an abstraction Merleau-Ponty's assertion that '[p]olitical problems have their source in the fact that we are all subjects and that, nonetheless, we see and treat the other as object' ( _HT_ , p. 115). Whatever critics of communist practice may say, Merleau-Ponty insists that Marxism's criticism of the hypocrisy of liberal society remains valid.6 The transformation of Marxism by returning to its theoretical base would seem to be facilitated by the fact that Marxism considers itself to be based on a philosophy. For that reason, uncovering the truth of Marxian theory should have impact on the practice of the Marxists.\n\nThe critical discovery process begins with critique of Marxism as an 'ideology', as illustrated by the fact that the 'frequently celebrated relationship between ideology and economics remains mystical, prelogical and unthinkable as long as ideology remains \"subjective\" while the economy is conceived as an objective process, and the two are not made to communicate in the total historical existence and in the human objects which express it' ( _SNS_ , pp. 232\u20133). The interdependence of the two domains could be established through an 'existential' notion of praxis; but that demands that praxis be situated within a history whose structuration Marxism must begin to define. 'Marxism', asserts Merleau-Ponty, 'is not a philosophy of the subject, but it is just as far from a philosophy of the object: it is a philosophy of history' ( _SNS_ , p. 231). Lefort's observation is confirmed here; the elucidation of Marxism rejoins Merleau-Ponty's own study of perception, where he had already written that '[o]ne would be tempted to say that it [Marxism] does not base history and the modes of thinking on production and the modes of working, but more generally on the mode of existence and co-existence, on interhuman relations' ( _PhP_ , p. 200). Similarly, in his political arguments a few years later, Merleau-Ponty asserts that Marx 'wanted to provide a _perception of history_ which at each moment would make the lines of force and the vectors of the present appear' ( _HT_ , p. 105). Similarly, in a later formulation, he asserts that\n\n> There is history if there is a logic _in_ contingency, a reason _in_ unreason; if there is an historical perception which, like perception in general, leaves in the background what cannot enter the foreground, seizes the lines of force at their birth and actively leads their traces to a conclusion.... all symbolic systems \u2013 perception, language, history \u2013 only become what they were, though in order to do so they must be taken up in a human initiative. ( _R\u00e9sum\u00e9s_ , p. 46)\n\nThe implication of these claims is that '[h]istory is not an external god, a hidden reason whose conclusions we would only have to record' ( _AD_ , p. 32). Human history is 'contingent and the date of the revolution is written on no wall, nor in any metaphysical heaven' ( _SNS_ , p. 141). History perhaps provides a bridge or describes the context from which a text emerges. But the definitions offered still call for further theoretical and practical definition.\n\nPolitical practice is situated in a historical milieu which forces it to action and to choice. As a theory of history, Marxism attempts to trace its logic in order to open the historical to conscious human initiative. 'Essentially, Marxism is the idea that history has a sense... that it is moving towards the power of the proletariat which is capable, as an essential factor of production, of surpassing the contractions of capitalism and organizing the human appropriation of nature; and, as a 'universal class', of surpassing the social and national antagonisms as well as the conflict of man with man' ( _HT_ , p. 139). But with this assertion of a sense of history, Marxism runs into a practical problem. The description of the Stalinist purge trials of 1937 in _Humanism and Terror_ implies that Bukharin and his co-accused were led to confess precisely for 'Marxist' reasons. 'To be a revolutionary', writes Merleau-Ponty, 'is to judge what is in the name of what is not yet, taking it for more real than the real', because 'revolutionary justice takes the future as its standard' ( _HT_ , p. 30). What has happened in this interpretation is that, in political action, the _sense_ of history has been transformed, praxis has become practice, and revolution a technique; history as 'perceptual' has become a metaphysical object, stripped of its contingency. Practice forces the issue, fixes its object in order to get a better hold on it and aim at it.\n\nIn this paradoxical structure, history calls for praxis, yet praxis transforms history; by negating the openness that called it forth, praxis seems to inevitably lead to its own elimination and to its reformulation as (technological) practice. Merleau-Ponty had reinterpreted Marx's notion of praxis as\n\n> that sense which takes form spontaneously at the junction of the actions by which man organizes his relations with nature and with others. It is not directed from the beginning by an idea of universal or total history. We recall that Marx insists on the impossibility of thinking the future. ( _Eloge_ , p. 59)\n\nThe exigencies of political practice put this philosophical formulation into question. Conscious action seems to demand that the acting subject know fully the nature of the objective milieu into which the actions will be inscribed. The relativization of subject and object thus falls by the wayside; history becomes an object which can be known. Bukharin and his judges agree that at any moment there exists only one correct political choice which must be enacted; Bukharin's 'crime' is to have been wrong. But, notes Merleau-Ponty:\n\n> [w]hen one asks for a solution, one supposes that the world and human co-existence are comparable to some problem in geometry where there is certainly an unknown but not indetermination; what one seeks is a regulated relation with what is given and with the ensemble of the givens which are equally possible. But the question of our times is precisely to know whether humanity is only a problem of that type. ( _HT_ , p. 203)7\n\nThe political practice of Communist parties demonstrates the result of the transformation of history from a question to an answer. In a 1948 discussion, Merleau-Ponty illustrates the results of this transformation already by his title, 'Paranoiac Politics'. He stresses the irony that '[t]he thought which wanted to be the most historical and the most objective, leaving aside in the last analysis all the felt and lived differences in the experience of the actors in the drama, finds itself delivered over to phantasies; it is at the height of subjectivity' ( _S_ , p. 316). Marked by a 'neurosis of the future' ( _S_ , p. 89; also _Prose_ , p. 118), party Marxism becomes a 'voluntarism based on absolute knowledge' ( _AD_ , p. 117).8 After all, if one knows the course of History, one's choice of actions will always appear to correspond to that sense, while those of one's opponents fall into the realm of mere appearance, the invitation to error.\n\nThe Marxist theory of history which seemed so convincing and rational is transformed by the concrete demands of practice into what Marx called a _point d'honneur_. The unification of philosophy and politics has forced philosophy to separate itself from the real; as separate, philosophy becomes subjective, devolves into an ideology. Merleau-Ponty had been willing to work with, although independently from, the communists in 1948. After reworking the bases of the Marxist theory, the practical question that arises is whether it is the theory or the practice that has led to the deformations found in communism. _The Adventures of the Dialectic_ takes up this challenge, beginning with a renewed investigation of the actual history whose practical transformation from sense to 'reality' was responsible for the failed marriage.\n\nIf the exigencies of practice have transformed philosophy, a renewed investigation of the specificity of the philosophical task is necessary. Merleau-Ponty began this rethinking in the incomplete manuscript posthumously published as the _Prose of the World_ , as well as in his courses at the Coll\u00e8ge de France. His inaugural lecture at the Coll\u00e8ge, _In Praise of Philosophy_ , implicitly takes up the roots of the deviation undergone by Marxism. 'History has no sense if its sense is understood as that of a river which flows under the action of all-powerful causes towards an ocean where it disappears. All recourse to universal history cuts out the sense of the event, renders insignificant actual history, and is a masque for nihilism' ( _Eloge_ , p. 61). Moving to a different key, but sounding the same theme, he criticizes the image adopted by Andr\u00e9 Malraux to portray a _mus\u00e9e imaginaire_ in which the history of painting is unrolled as a linear progress accompanied along its path by a sort of Super Painter or Spirit. There is no need for the philosopher to mention politics in his lectures; it is present in filigree throughout. 'There is no history if the path of things is a series of episodes without relation, or if it is a combat already won in the heaven of ideas', he insists in summarizing one series of lectures ( _R\u00e9sum\u00e9s_ , p. 46). In the transitional manuscript between the earlier phenomenological studies and the later ontology, the _Prose of the World_ makes the apparently paradoxical assertion that\n\n> [h]istory is judge. Not History as the Power of a moment or a century. History as that place where, beyond the limits of the centuries and the countries all that we have said and done which is most true and most valid, given the situations in which we had to say it, is reunited, inscribed and accumulated. ( _Prose_ , p. 121)\n\nHistorical logic affirms rather than denies the contingency of the history in which the philosophical subject is always already a participant.\n\nMerleau-Ponty finds himself looking for new grounds. Part of his reconstruction of the tasks of philosophy passes through his version of the 'linguistic turn' (although, as a very French philosopher he seems to have had next to no connection to the Anglo-Saxon philosophical milieu). He reads closely Saussure's _General Theory of Linguistics_ , as well as the work of \u00c9mile Benveniste, asserting in his Inaugural Lecture that\n\n> [t]he theory of the sign as linguistics elaborates it implies perhaps an historical theory of meaning which goes beyond the alternative of _things_ and _consciousness._ Living language is that concretion of spirit and of the thing which poses the problem.... The presence of the individual to the institution and of the institution to the individual is clear in the case of linguistic change... and Saussure may well have sketched a new philosophy of history. ( _Eloge_ , pp. 63, 64)\n\nThe significant advance suggested in this passage takes Merleau-Ponty beyond the dualism of subject and object toward the sphere constituted by their interdependence and interaction. Continuing his investigation in his courses, he summarizes his tentative conclusion that 'History realizes an exchange of all orders of activity, none of which can be given the dignity of exclusive cause; and the question is, rather, to know whether that solidarity of the problems announces their simultaneous resolution or whether there is only concordance and reciprocal implication in the interrogation' ( _Resum\u00e9s_ , p. 44). To untangle this integument will be the task of the promised ontology.\n\nAt this stage of Merleau-Ponty's reflections, Marxism is caught in the tenuous and tense position that maintains that it is a part of the very history of which it claims to express the sense. Everywhere and nowhere, it accepts the dual challenge of philosophy and of politics. Merleau-Ponty had already studied the historical-sociology of Max Weber in his attempt to free himself from the presupposed questions of Marxist history. He turns next to Georg Luk\u00e1cs, who tried to combine the lessons of Marx and Weber by means of 'the recognition without restriction of history as the single milieu of our errors and our verifications [will] lead us to recover an absolute in the relative' ( _AD_ , p. 44). But the immersion in this flux demands the establishment of a vantage-point from which to judge.\n\n> This immanent sense of inter-human events: where indeed can we place it? It is not, or not always, in men, in consciousness. But, outside of them, it appears that there are only blind events since we have renounced the idea of situating an absolute knowledge behind the things. _Where_ then is the historical process, and what mode of existence can we accept for historical forms such as feudalism, capitalism, the proletariat, of which we speak as if they were persons who know and who wish, who are hidden behind the multiplicity of events. We do not see clearly what such a prosopopoeia represent. ( _Eloge_ , p. 62)\n\nThe search for a vantage-point or standpoint corresponds exactly to the shift that transformed the Marxist theory of history by treating the sense of history in practice as the reality of history. Luk\u00e1cs' theory of the proletariat as the subject-object of history whose self-knowledge is identical to the transformation of the capitalist totality points to the centrality of the proletariat, but it entails also a theory of the party whose 'absolute authority... is [identical with] the purity of the transcendental subject incorporated by force into the world' ( _AD_ , p. 192). Luk\u00e1cs' justification of Leninism and his subsequent political choices appear to be inscribed in the exigencies of a theory which accepts its historical insertion and strives to become praxis.\n\nInserted into the tissue of history, revolution becomes what traditional philosophy always sought. What Merleau-Ponty calls 'Western Marxism' treats revolution as 'that _sublime point_ at which the real and values, the subject and the object, judgment and discipline, the individual and the totality, the present and the future, instead of entering into collision gradually entered into complicity' ( _AD_ , p. 12). The class consciousness that is essential to this transformative process 'is a praxis, that is less than a subject and more than an object, a pulverized existence, a possibility that appears in the situation of the proletarian, at the joints of the things and its life, in a word \u2013 Luk\u00e1cs takes over Weber's term here \u2013 an \"objective possibility\"' ( _AD_ , p. 66). The paradoxical existence of a possibility that is nonetheless 'objective' provides a framework for the philosophical interpretation of praxis as the creation of 'an order which is not that of knowledge but that of communication, exchange, frequentation. There is a proletarian praxis which operates in a way that unifies the class before it knows itself as such' ( _AD_ , p. 70). The brute objective existence of the working class must be raised to the level of consciousness; this is where the party enters. 'In philosophical terms: the party goes beyond the revolt of the proletariat; it realizes the revolt by destroying it as an immediate revolt [based on 'indignation', DH]; it is the negation of that negation, or in other words it is the mediation; its action has the effect that the class which refuses becomes the class that initiates and, finally, a society without classes' ( _S_ , p. 350). The theory of the party fits into this philosophical framework.\n\n> The party doesn't know everything, doesn't see everything; and yet its authority is absolute because, if spontaneous history has a chance to become manifest history, it can only be in it.... In the absence of any metaphysics of history, the dialectic of the proletariat and the party unites in itself and carries with it all the others: Marxist philosophy has as its final condition not what the proletarians think, nor what the party thinks that they should think, but the recognition by the proletariat of its own action in the politics that the party present to it.... The party is at once everything and nothing: it is nothing but the mirror in which the forces of the proletariat, dispersed throughout the world, concentrate themselves; it is everything because without it the truth 'in itself' would never become manifest, would never complete itself as truth. ( _AD_ , pp. 106\u20137)\n\n'Everything and nothing': Merleau-Ponty had insisted in a lengthy introduction to history of ' _Les philosophes c\u00e9l\u00e8bres_ ' reprinted in _Signes_ that the place of philosophy was 'everywhere and nowhere'. The crucial difference in the case of Marxism is that this place is now situated in a real history. 'The party is thus like a mystery of reason: it is that place in history where the _sense that exists_ understands itself, where the concept becomes life' ( _AD_ , p. 71).\n\nHistory does not come to an end; the story continues to be told and new versions invented. An ironic reversal assures that the union of philosophy and history in the party does not achieve the final reconciliation. The Party is transformed into precisely an impotent, self-deluding philosopher whose only hold on reality appeals only to force. The result is a paranoiac politics by which the party, pretending to be armed with the authority of Reason, substitutes itself for a proletariat whose 'objective possibility' is now incarnate in the Party itself. Should the Party seek to avoid this ironic reversal by taking as its guide the actual struggles of the exploited and alienated, this is not only a violation of the logic of Leninism; it also manifests the other side of the ironic paradox of history, suggesting that there is no need for philosophy because the idea of its unity with reality no longer is necessary. Those who had read the young Marx would recognize in Merleau-Ponty's formulation the dead-end confrontation of what he called the 'practical' and 'philosophical' parties.\n\n## 7.3 Toward a Reformulation\n\nThat goal of Marxism that Merleau-Ponty had made his own\u2014the unification but not the conflation of philosophy and politics\u2014failed. In the Preface to _Signes_ , he returns to the dilemma facing the ex-communists trying to understand their new political coordinates. He repeats again that politics is a 'modern tragedy' insofar as all participants expected it to find _the_ solution ( _S_ , p. 11). Marxism's contribution had been to make history, like Hegel's morning newspaper, a metaphysically charged experience. Even outside the party, the tendency of many was to maintain this attitude, to expect that, in some future, the proletariat (in some new clothing) will reappear on the stage of history. But, granting Marxism 'its pretension not to be a philosophy, to be the expression of a single grand historical fact', nonetheless 'since one also admits that there is not at present a proletarian movement on a world scale, one puts Marxism into a position of inactivity and one defines oneself as an honorary Marxist' ( _S_ , p. 14). A rethinking of the fundamental philosophical options of Marxism is clearly necessary.\n\nRather than debate the truth or falsity of Marxism, Merleau-Ponty asks whether the category of a 'truth that missed its chance ( _v\u00e9rit\u00e9 manqu\u00e9e_ )' is not more conducive to understanding ( _S_ , p. 16).\n\n> There is an internal relation of the positive and the negative, and this is what Marx envisioned, even if he was wrong to restrain it to the dichotomy of subject\/object. This internal relation operates in entire sections of his work, and it opens new dimensions to his historical analysis and changes the status of these analyses in a way that they can cease to be conclusive in the sense that Marx intended without ceasing to be the sources of sense and reinterpretable. The theses of Marx can remain true in the way that the Pythagorean theorem is true, no longer in the sense that it was for the inventor \u2013 as an identical truth and property of space itself \u2013 but as the property of a certain model of space among other possible spaces. (ibid.)\n\nFrom this perspective, those who have broken with the Party are affirming that there are other possibilities, other 'spaces' and theaters of history which refract differently the sense that Marx first brought to light. 'They have rejected a certain idea of Being as object, as well as of identity and difference. They have adopted the idea of a Being which is coherent in many foci or many dimensions. And, [adds Merleau-Ponty ironically], they say that they are not philosophers?' (S, p. 18). Marxism, he continues, wanted to be the expression of the operation of history itself. 'But that was precisely the height of philosophical arrogance' (ibid.). In this way, the critique of Marxism leads to the reformulation of the philosophical task itself.\n\nWhat emerges from this second go-around with Marxism is a conception of history that, in its surface contours, appears to return to his original insight. For example, in the Preface to _Signes_ , he asks\n\n> what good is it to ask whether history is made by men or by things, since evidence shows that human initiatives do not annul the weight of things, and the 'force des choses' always operates through men? It is precisely this failure, when the analysis seeks to interpret everything in terms of a single dimension, that reveals the true milieu of history. There is no analysis that is final because there is a flesh of history; in it, as in our body, everything carries weight, everything counts \u2013 both the infrastructure and the idea which we have of it, and especially the perceptual exchanges between the one and the other where the weight of things becomes also a sign, things become forces, the accounting becomes an event. ( _S_ , p. 28)\n\nThis formulation differs from the earlier account which was based on a 'philosophy of consciousness' that produced the subject\/object dualism. From that philosophical stance, the problem of _constitution_ through a form of interaction was the center of concern: the proletariat was the embodied subject of history, whose traces philosophy follows through a world which proletarian action directly and indirectly constitutes. Marxism opened a new understanding of history; but the substitution of the party for the actual proletariat made it incapable of realizing its promise.\n\nThe renewed understanding of history uncovered in the wake of the political failure of Marxism demands a new ontology to interpret a history that is neither purely rational nor wholly recalcitrant to thought. The Marxism that interpreted history as the product of proletarian praxis neglected the _density_ of the historical milieu that Merleau-Ponty called its 'flesh'. In that environment, the effect of actions is never what the rational actor may have intended, although it is not therefore only accidental or arbitrary.\n\n> To understand at once the logic of history and its detours, its sense and what in it is resistant to sense, the Marxist would have had to conceptualize the sphere proper to history, the institution, which does not develop according to causal laws, like another nature, but always in dependence on what it signifies, not according to eternal ideas, but rather by bringing more or less under its laws events which, as far as it is concerned, are fortuitous, and by letting itself be changed by their suggestions. ( _AD_ , p. 88)\n\nThe implications of this passage move toward horizons to which Merleau-Ponty's earlier work had gestured but left aside for the moment. The phenomenologist had cast wide his net during his years of teaching and writing. Pursuing his reinterpretation of what history must mean for a Marxist, he describes it as an 'order of \"things\"' that understands that it is bound to the order of nature by virtue of 'relationships between persons,' that are sensitive to all the heavy conditions of interdependence while remaining open to all that personal life can invent. This is, 'in modern language, the sphere of symbolism, and Marx's thought was to find its outlet here' (ibid). Merleau-Ponty had referred to this 'sphere of symbolism' in his theory of linguistic the sign; it is present as well in his writings on artistic expression.\n\nThe more political implications of this new departure are found in Merleau-Ponty's discussions of what he calls the _institution_ , which belongs to what he called the 'sphere proper to history'. In his lectures at the Coll\u00e8ge de France on 'The \"institution\" in Personal and Public History', Merleau-Ponty stressed that '[w]e are looking here for a remedy to the difficulties of the philosophy of consciousness in the notion of the institution' ( _R\u00e9sum\u00e9s_ , p. 59). This notion leads to a 'revision of Hegelianism' (ibid., p. 65), whose implications he sketches briefly.\n\n> We thus understood here by institution those events in an experience that give it durable dimensions, making it an experience in relation to which a whole series of other experiences acquire meaning, forming an understandable succession or a history. Put differently, the institution is an event or events that leave with a sense that is not a survival or residue but the appeal to a succession [of other events], and thus it is the demand for a future. (ibid., p. 61)\n\nThis lapidary assertion can be understood as a philosophical reformulation of his polemical reply to Sartre. The question, he wrote in _The Adventures of the Dialectic_ , 'is to know whether, as Sartre says, there exist only men and _things_ , or whether there also exists that inter-world called history, symbolism, truth-to-be-realized [ _v\u00e9rit\u00e9 \u00e0 faire_ ]' ( _AD_ , p. 269). The philosophy of the _cogito_ , whose sophistry and violence Merleau-Ponty unravels at length in his polemic with Sartre, is incapable of recognizing the flesh that is history.\n\nObsessed with this 'thickness' of the world, unwilling to abandon the imperatives of philosophy, Merleau-Ponty's thinking focused on the problems that emerge from his recognition that philosophy had to embrace what he called 'non-philosophy'. This concept did not refer to what he had earlier called Hegel's concern with 'the irrational'. Its signification appeared in his efforts to reinterpret the traditional idea of 'nature' as irreducible to the status of an object independent of and opposed to a conscious subject. His summary of his lecture course of 1956\u20131957 on 'The Concept of Nature' insists on this distinction.\n\n> Pure object, being in itself in which everything that exists is contained, and which nonetheless is not to be found in human experience because, from the outset, experience works on [ _fa\u00e7onne_ ] and transforms it: nature exists for experience everywhere and nowhere, like an obsession. In seeking to elucidate this problem, one is thus not so far from history. ( _R\u00e9sum\u00e9s_ , p. 93)\n\nOnce again, the philosopher returns to the problem of history in all its opacity. In the same breath, he describes nature with the phrase which reoccurs repeatedly in his thought: everywhere and nowhere, nature like philosophy and history is at once an obsession, but also an appeal. The earlier analysis of the 'problem of passivity' in the lecture course of 1954\u20131955 had shown the limits of a phenomenological approach to these questions.\n\n> These descriptions, that phenomenology, always have something disappointing because they limit themselves to uncovering the negative in the positive and the positive in the negative. Reflection seems to demand supplementary explanations. The description will not have its full philosophical weight until the foundation of that demand itself is interrogated, until the principled reasons for which the relations of the negative and the positive present themselves are given: this is nothing but the posing of the bases of a dialectical philosophy. (ibid., pp. 72\u20133)\n\nMerleau-Ponty devoted two lecture courses in 1955\u20131956 to the problems of a dialectical philosophy and\u2014after two years devoted to the concept of nature\u2014studied Husserl and the limits of phenomenology in his course of 1959\u20131960. No fully developed conceptual theory emerged from these preliminary studies. The nearly finished posthumous manuscript of _The Visible and the Invisible_ , edited by Claude Lefort, was published in 1964.\n\n## 7.4 The New Left, Marx, and Philosophy\n\nRereading Merleau-Ponty from the standpoint of the experience of the New Left has been rich but frustrating. The temptation for the would-be political actor is to stop the rereading, to leave philosophy to the philosophers, and to refuse to leave politics to the politicians. Along the way, Marx could be defended against the philosopher's criticisms, perhaps turning phenomenologist's descriptive discoveries to good use.9 The persistence of his concern to understand the relation of politics and philosophy, his combination of rigorous exposition and creative interpretation in his reading of Marx, and the insightful Preface to _Signes_ published shortly before his death made a good fit with the experience of the New Left. It would be a betrayal of that experience which permitted and forced us to think for ourselves outside the routine of the political rituals to abandon Merleau-Ponty simply because he offers no ready-made solutions. The only honest continuation of our own project today seems to demand that we think it through to the end; that is just another way of conserving the legacy of our origins.\n\nIn 'Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence', an essay dedicated to Sartre in 1952 that was published in the journal of which they were co-editors, _Les Temps modernes_ , Merleau-Ponty criticized a 'neurosis of the future' that expresses what he called a 'non-philosophy that is a deliberate refusal to know what one believes in'. The search for solutions for the future makes it impossible to understand present history; it creates the illusion that history could teach lessons. The reply of Marxists such as Henri Lefebvre, at the time a faithful party member, countered that the refusal to define the future 'justifies [the present] situation instead of denouncing it'.10 On a first reading, _Humanism and Terror_ could appear to defend a similar point of view.\n\n> Efficacious or not, [the role of philosophy] is to clarify the ideological situation, to underline beyond the paradoxes and the contingencies of present history the true terms of the human problem, to recall to the Marxists their humanist inspiration, to recall to the democracies their fundamental hypocrisy, and to maintain intact, against all propaganda, the chances that history might once again become clear. ( _HT_ , p. 196)\n\nOnly a few years later, reflecting in his Inaugural lecture, on the political claims of _Humanism and Terror_ , Merleau-Ponty clarified the philosophical foundation of his argument. 'Philosophy explains that, dialectically, in given conditions, an opponent becomes the equivalent of a traitor. Such language is precisely the contrary of that of the ruling power; those in power cut short the premises and say more succinctly: there are only criminals in that group' ( _Eloge_ , p. 69). By making these premises explicit, the philosopher restores the dimension of uncertainty, of choice, and the work of history in the making; he is not an external moral consciousness. In a philosophical text dating from the same period, this position is stated explicitly.\n\n> Perhaps the reader will say here that we leave him without an answer, and that we limit ourselves to a 'So it is' which explains nothing.... But when it is a question of speaking [ _la parole_ ] or of the body or of history, unless one wants to destroy what one seeks to understand... one can only show the paradox of the expression. ( _Prose_ , p. 160)\n\nPhilosophy must deliberately restrain itself, becoming 'phenomenology' in the sense of Hegel, the presentation of the logic of the forms of appearance. Such a self-limitation must, however, be philosophically grounded.\n\nThe phenomenological project led the philosopher to the ontological question of the mode of existence of history as the mediation and medium of social life. Subject and object were relativized, and the philosophy of consciousness, as well as a theory of real constitution and the _Sinngebung_ by an intentional subject, had to be rejected. Merleau-Ponty had defined his task already in an article of 1947 that insisted that\n\n> Metaphysical consciousness has no other objects than those of everyday experience: this world, other people, human history, truth, culture. But instead of taking them all as settled, as consequences with no premises, as if they were self-evident, it rediscovers their fundamental strangeness to me and the miracle of their appearing. ( _SNS_ , p. 165)\n\nMore than a decade later, he restated the philosophical task in significantly modified terms:\n\n> Philosophy has as its charge not to decompose our relation with the world into real elements, or even into ideal elements which would make an ideal object of the world, but to find the articulations in it, to awaken regulated relations of pre-possession, of recapitulation, of encroachment, which are asleep in our ontological landscape, which remain there only in the form of traces, and which, nonetheless, continue to function in it, to institute novelty into it. ( _VI_ , p. 137)\n\nIn the first citation, the world is still 'out-there' waiting to be rediscovered by the subject using its analytic capacities. By the time of the second suggestion, the role of the subject has become almost dependent on the instituting activity of that 'ontological landscape', which itself can be approached only obliquely. A further assertion in the second passage leads the argument further. Philosophy must neither decompose the world into real elements nor constitute it from purely ideal moments because the stuff of the world, the Being at which ontology aims, falls into neither of these preordained slots.\n\nPresaged in his earlier phenomenological work, Merleau-Ponty's development of a 'new ontology' was encouraged by another aspect of his confrontation with Marxism. At the outset of his first course at the Coll\u00e8ge de France in 1952\u20131953, 'The Sensible World and the World of Expression', he insisted that '[p]erceptive consciousness is thus indirect or even inverted in relation to an ideal of adequation that it presupposes but does not look at face to face' ( _R\u00e9sum\u00e9s_ , p. 12). The dream of truth as an adequation of thought and thing is an impossibility; the expression can never coincide with what it seeks to express. The collapse these poles into a single unity would eliminate both: the coincidence of thought and thing, expression and expressed, is the dream of positivism, or of the technocrat; it makes human action, history, or even consciousness impossible. The study of perception revealed a paradox whose understanding demands a rethinking of the notion of the Being which it is to perceive or express. In the _Visible and the Invisible_ , this problem of representation continually recurs. 'What I want to do', he writes in a working note, 'is to restore the world as the sense of Being absolutely different from the \"represented\", that is, as the vertical Being which none of the \"representations\" exhausts but which they all \"attain\" \u2013 savage Being' ( _VI_ , p. 306). Such 'savage Being' is not equated with a kind of pristine nature; it is not without the effect and affect of human action, nor is it somehow a-logical or inaccessible in its brute being. The lecture course on 'The Problems of Passivity: Sleep, Unconscious and Memory' (1954\u20131955) attempted to work through one aspect of the assertion, insisting that the analyses of these phenomena show precisely the ambiguous structure at which the philosopher is grasping. He invokes Freud, for example, to demonstrate that\n\n> [t]he essential contribution of Freudianism is not to have shown that there is an entirely different reality underneath the appearances, but that the analysis of behavior finds several layers of signification, that each of these has its truth, that the plurality of possible interpretations is the discursive expression of a mixed life where each choice always has several senses without our being able to say that one of them alone is true. ( _R\u00e9sum\u00e9s_ , p. 71)\n\nThe importance of Freud, and what Mereleau-Ponty's earlier phenomenological descriptions illustrate, is that the most strict attention to the facts, to experience and to individual praxis, discloses the ambiguity of a multi-layered structure that cannot be made univocal without losing the originary experience it expresses. What is needed is a philosophy that is simultaneously a non-philosophy, a way to preserve the chiasm that unites paradoxically experience and its sense.\n\nThis philosophical project recalls the task undertaken by the young Marx in his confrontation with the systemic claim of Hegel to demonstrate at once the rationality of the real and the reality of the rational. This was the theme of the course that Merleau-Ponty was teaching in 1961 at the time of his sudden death. Although its title did not refer to Marx, Merleau-Ponty's lecture notes for 'Philosophy and Non-Philosophy Since Hegel' contain a sympathetic rereading of Marx that may surprise the reader who remembers the sharp refutation offered in _The Adventures of the Dialectic_. What is more, the citations from Hegel's text, on which he comments paragraph-by-paragraph are taken from the German edition of Heidegger's essay on _Hegel's Concept of Experience_. In addition, the fact that the lecture notes were published in the little-known journal _Textures_ , among whose editors were Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis is significant because they were the co-founders of the path-breaking journal _Socialisme_ _ou Barbarie_ which engaged its own critical debate with Marxism.\n\nHegel describes the way that consciousness learns that the truth (the Essence, or the Concept, in Hegel's terms) that it assumed was found in its object can only be understood as through the experience of the 'subject'. For Merleau-Ponty, this instable movement from the object to the subject in the process of experience implies that the standard of truth lies in experience itself.\n\n> It appears that dialectics is neither a fact of consciousness in the sense of a spiritual motor \u2013 for then it would be _unsere Zutat_ [our addition] to the experience \u2013 nor is it (for the same reason) an objective movement. It is the _movement of the contents,_ of experience, of this new ontological milieu which is the _Erscheinung_ [appearance] that cannot exist without a relation to someone who has the experience of it. It is not a property of consciousness; it is rather consciousness which is a property of the dialectic. We can say that dialectics has consciousness (and seems impossible without the consciousness through which it makes itself the production of the new object) \u2013 but it is an opaque consciousness: experience. ( _PNP_ , p. 116)\n\nAlthough the 'new ontological milieu' is opaque, it would be wrong to think that it should be wrenched loose from its experiential axis and posited as a univocal and transparently knowable truth.\n\n> The ambiguity is not a lack of univocity. It is 'good.' There is no problem if the _Zweideutigkeit_ [dual signification] is present as such; if the absolute is the light of truth that appears in the thickness of the experience and embraces the relativized subject and object. But if one formulates this relation in terms of consciousness, one has an equivocation. ( _PNP_ , p. 127)\n\nThe traditional philosophical rejection of ambiguity is based on an implicit philosophy of consciousness that posits the dualism of subject and object, appearance and essence, being and truth. As a result, it rejects the idea that philosophy can flourish on the soil of experience. 'The problem of a philosophy which _is_ non-philosophy remains entire', writes Merleau-Ponty, 'as long as one thinks _Consciousness_ or _Gegenstand_ [object]' ( _PNP_ , p. 118). Rejecting the tradition, the philosopher must assure himself that his new grounds are solid (although not stable). The reference to the absolute here is not accidental or insignificant, any more than is Merleau-Ponty's return to Hegel, whose attempt to integrate the 'irrational' into philosophy he had praised 15 years earlier.\n\nThe difficulty that must be faced in the attempt to show how experience moves toward truth results from the fact that, as defined, experience differs from the _lived_ experience because it has lost its immediacy. Merleau-Ponty had discussed this difficulty already in his long commentary on Malraux's notion of a _d\u00e9formation coh\u00e9rente_ in the phenomenon of artistic expression. Here, after the commentary on Hegel, he analyzes it in the context of Marxism.\n\n> To put the dialectic back on its feet (and one forgets that it is Hegel who said explicitly that the dialectic is a world on its head) would be to destroy it. Philosophy, that is, the access to the absolute, seems to be essentially experience, that is, entry into the phenomena, taking part in their maturation, in experience. It is this because it is only in the relation of _experiri,_ by existing the things, that one can be present at the advent of knowledge. ( _PNP_ , p. 104)\n\nPhilosophy must be experiential, but it cannot be conflated with the _things_ of experience. Experience is a relation; neither subject nor object, it is what makes both of these possible, while it itself cannot be accounted for simply by their combination. The dualism tends, however, to re-emerge in the confrontation of two orders: the _idea_ of experience acting from outside the experience as a control on that experience itself. This, he adds in a marginal note, is like the _idea_ of the proletariat in the form of the party becoming a controlling director over the proletariat. The result, he concludes a few pages later, is that 'either the experience is truly taken into account, in which case it is a wandering, skeptical one; or it is understood, transformed into its truth, but then it is transcended. The pretension that one has reached this second order by experience is the most complete dogmatism, for it is a dogmatism disguised as the movement of things' ( _PNP_ , pp. 121\u20132). Such a 'dogmatism', Merleau-Ponty suggests, is present in Marx as well as in Hegel.\n\nThe young Marx seems to have recognized and confronted the antinomic task of a philosophy which, in refusing to transform or transcend experience, would be a non-philosophy.\n\n> Marx critiques the pretension of philosophical _Denken_ [thinking] to remain itself in [knowing] what is other than itself, to contain in itself and possess its contradictory \u2013 to go beyond it from within or to understand it from outside, without experience. The problem is to reconceive the philosophical proximity and distance, the nowhere and everywhere of philosophy, under the condition that one not give to consciousness \u2013 and especially not to 'self-consciousness' \u2013 the power of carrying in itself its contrary, of being within itself in what is the inverse of it. Not to construct under the name of _Wissen_ [knowledge] an illusory power of being everything, a negativity that is so total that it digests and founds everything and nothing. ( _PNP_ , p. 164)\n\nWhen the young Marx sought to make philosophy worldly while making the world philosophical, he recognized that this did not mean collapsing the one into the other. Philosophy, he insisted, was both true _and_ false; it was not to be corrected either by the 'philosophical party', which wished to apply it to the world, or by the 'practical party', which wanted to change the world without the aid of philosophy. 'Philosophy and non-philosophy, the philosophical and the practical, are non-dialectical insofar as both suggest implicitly that the world of experience and its philosophical understanding are separated one from the other. But as separated, each is false. Under the influence of Feuerbach, the young Marx moved on to seek a \"philosophy\" which is not a philosophy of consciousness but of sensuous man' ( _PNP_ , p. 159). As such, Marxism could be the 'non-philosophy' whose task is to remain true to experience in witnessing the advent of its truth.\n\nMerleau-Ponty had argued in _The Adventures of the Dialectic_ that the philosophical project of the young Marx had been abandoned by 1850 in favor of 'scientific socialism' ( _AD_ , p. 85). Returning to Marxism now by analyzing the nature and possibility of a non-philosophy, his analysis is richer and more nuanced.\n\n> It is not the passage from philosophy to science; it is the passage from 'direct' philosophy (man , nature, Feuerbach) to another conception of philosophy (man, nature attained through the experience of capitalism; that experience understood and brought to its concept uncovers the proletarian class that is the historical formation in which the understanding of capital is realized; the identification of the theorist who thinks [or interprets] the functioning of capital with that historical formation itself: the latter, thus, reveals that the _corresponding point_ to absolute Knowledge, is _Erscheinende Wissen_ [appearing knowledge]. _Capital_ rejoins the intuition of the proletariat just as the _Logic_ of Hegel rejoins the _Phenomenology_ ). ( _PNP_ , p. 147)\n\nMarx's discovery of the proletariat as the subject\/object of history that solves what he had called the 'riddle of history' appears at first to follow the parameters of a non-philosophy that remains faithful to the phenomenological task. Much of the analysis in the 1844 _Manuscripts_ can be understood from this optic. But just as Hegel was unable to remain with experience, finally subordinating the _Phenomenology_ to the encyclopedic system of his _Logic_ , so too Marx was driven by his _philosophical_ presuppositions to subordinate the proletariat to the logical imperatives of the reproduction of _Capital_.\n\n> Here one goes from reality (capital) to the appearance (the proletariat): the 'becoming of the truth' is substituted for the 'becoming of consciousness' just as with Hegel's _Logic_. But this is still philosophy and still Hegel \u2013 under the appearance of abandoning philosophy, it is the most audacious philosophy: the philosophy which hides itself in the 'things', which is masked by an apparent positivism \u2013 philosophy precisely in the sense that it doesn't want to be philosophy. And, conversely, the explicit philosophy of 1844 is not far from the concrete. ( _PNP_ , p. 160)\n\nMerleau-Ponty's argument is that just as the proletariat is the truth of the experience of capitalism, even while itself remaining an experiential praxis, it itself needs to be brought to its truth, which is the science of _Capital_. Moreover, as Marx insists repeatedly, the reality of capitalism is itself an 'inverted world'; it relates to the concrete proletariat as philosophy does to experience. From here it is but a short step to the assertion that _Capital_ is nothing but the experience of the proletariat brought to its truth or concept. Insofar as the relation of philosophy and experience is implicitly maintained, Merleau-Ponty correctly indicates that the mature Marx presents a disguised philosophy hidden in the movement of the things themselves. At the same time, moreover, the experience of the proletariat is transformed into the logical truth of capitalism. The result is the kind of 'mystery of reason' to which Merleau-Ponty had referred in _The Adventures_. The expression of the truth of History demands rethinking the relation of philosophy to non-philosophy in order to avoid such 'mysteries' that claim to show that the idea of experience dominates over the experience itself, making way for a dogmatism that justifies itself as being the movement of the concrete itself.\n\nThe contribution of the new ontology sought by Merleau-Ponty begins to make itself felt in this confrontation of Marx and Hegel. Both remained caught in a philosophy of consciousness, accepting its corollary, a philosophy of the object. The tension could not be maintained; the absolute was imported to bridge the gap: from the side of the Reason for Hegel, from the side of the material world for Marx.11 As opposed to this, Merleau-Ponty had argued earlier, in his course on 'Dialectical Philosophy', that\n\n> [t]here is thus a dialectical absolute, which is there only in order to hold the multiple in its place and against its relief, to oppose the absolutization of these relations. It is 'fluidified' in them, it is immanent to experience. This is by definition an unstable position ( _R\u00e9sum\u00e9s_ , p. 82)\n\nIf the instability cannot be maintained, the possibility of philosophy itself as the analysis of the advent of knowledge in experience is put into question. This question was dealt with in the course of 1958\u20131959 by means of an investigation of Hegel's legacy as refracted through Husserl and Heidegger. Concerning the latter, Merleau-Ponty insists that\n\n> [t]he term Being is not, like other terms, a sign to which one could find a corresponding 'representation' or an object: its sense is not distinct from its operation; by it we have Being which speaks in us rather than we speaking of Being. (ibid., p. 155)\n\nHeidegger's philosophy fails because he seeks a direct expression of Being, even while knowing that such an expression is impossible. Merleau-Ponty's option, which is to approach the problem of Being through the beings of Nature, finds a congenial resonance in its reading of the young Marx. The philosophy elaborated in 1844, he says, seeks\n\n> a single Being where negativity is at work. Thus: nature will not be defined as a pure object, exteriority, but as 'sensible', sensual, nature as we see it. Natural beings have a preordered internal relation to one another. Man will not be defined either as pure subject or as a fragment of nature, but by a sort of coupling of subject\/object with two faces: relation to an object, or an active object and thus as essentially relation to other men, generic being [ _Gattungswesen_ ], to society \u2013 this relation being a transformation and result of the natural relation of a living being to external beings. History being in this sense the flesh itself of man. ( _PNP_ , p. 168)\n\nBoth the unstable dialectical absolute and the Being whose sense is expressed in itself are, like nature, facets of what Merleau-Ponty calls the flesh of history. 'The task of philosophy would be... to elaborate a concept of Being that permits the contradictions \u2013 neither accepted nor \"surpassed\" \u2013 to find their place in it' ( _R\u00e9sum\u00e9s_ , p. 128). Such a philosophy would express a different ontology than the one built on the perceptual metaphor of a subject perceiving an object distinct from itself; it would point toward a different conception of truth than the classical notion of adequation or expression. History would not be a future conceived spatially and linearly\u2014as judge of the past, open horizon toward a beyond or materially predetermined by present conditions. Nor could the goal be what Merleau-Ponty had previously called a _v\u00e9rit\u00e9 \u00e0 faire_. History would participate in the present as a task always to be begun anew, whose accomplishment would be the mark of its end.\n\nMerleau-Ponty has in effect returned to Marx's own starting point, explaining now the ontological presuppositions that led him astray. When Marx describes what is 'positive' in Hegel, he thought that it would permit him to solve the 'riddle of history' by means of the negation of the negation. 'Marx', writes Merleau-Ponty, is a 'positivist for a far-off future, beyond communism' ( _PNP_ , p. 168). In effect, he wants to replace alienated objects by their non-alienated form. This is a form of positivism that\u2014as in Hegel\u2014claims that the essential structures of the given world deliver their reality to a disincarnated consciousness which receives them passively. 'Positivism, in a sense \u2013 ironically \u2013 produces the same result as the absolute negation or the negative absolute of Hegel: i.e., the hidden sense of history, combat of the gods. Stalinism and Hegelianism. One could even say that Hegel maintains more clearly the sense of negativity, of tension' ( _PNP_ , p. 173). It is this 'sense of negativity' that would be expressed in the new ontology which does not demand either the overcoming of philosophy or the elimination of the opacity of the flesh of historical experience.\n\n## 7.5 And Now?\n\nI explained at the outset that I wanted to reread Merleau-Ponty in order to gain a self-understanding; more precisely, I wanted to appreciate the meaning of critical reflection on one's own past. I was attracted not only to his philosophical project but as well to his political sensibility. In his preface to a collection of his essays written over more than a decade that he published in late 1960 under the title _Signes_ , the philosopher explains the difference between the two types of writing.\n\n> At first glance, what a difference, what a disparity, between the philosophical essays and the circumstantial remarks, nearly all of them political, which compose this volume. In philosophy, the path can be difficult, but one is certain that each step makes others possible. In politics, one has the oppressive impression of a breach that must always be repeated. ( _Signes_ , p. 7)\n\nThis distinction needs further explication, which I take the liberty of presenting in outline through the construction a series of citations that suggest the way in which the goal pursued by Merleau-Ponty contributes to a self-interrogation of the New Left.\n\n _The Adventures_ devoted more than a hundred pages to the critique of Sartre's politicization of philosophy, which is contrasted to Marx's manner of presenting their relation. In a telling contrast, Merleau-Ponty points out that whereas for the Marxists consciousness can be mystified, for Sartre, it is simply an example of bad faith. Similarly, for the Marxist, there are fools ( _sots_ ); for Sartre there are scoundrels ( _canailles_ ) ( _AD_ , p. 213). The ontological source of this distinction, as explained 50 pages later, introduces a new step in the argument.\n\n> If [as opposed to Sartre] one agrees that no action assumes as its own everything that takes place... and that all action, even a war, is always symbolic and counts as much on the effect that it will have as a signifying gesture and the trace of an intention as it does on the immediate results; if, in other words, one gives up 'pure action' which is a myth (a myth of the spectator consciousness), it is perhaps then that one has the most chance of changing the world. ( _AD_ , p. 270)\n\nMerleau-Ponty illustrates his claim with another conditional formulation. 'If all action is in fact symbolic, then books in their manner are actions and they are worth writing according to the rules of the trade, without abandoning the obligation to unmask' (ibid.).\n\nPursuing this line of argument in one of the chapters of _Signes_ , the philosopher explains Marx's admiration for Balzac in spite of his reactionary political views in a way that illuminates his insistence on the dual task of the author (which is, implicitly, also that of the actor).\n\n> Marx wanted to say that a certain manner of _making visible_ the world of money and the conflicts of modern society was more important than Balzac's ideas, even his political ones, and that once that vision was acquired it would bring with it its consequences, with or without the consent of Balzac. ( _S_ , p. 96; also _Prose_ , pp. 125\u20136)\n\nBalzac's novels make present the weight and thickness of the world as the individual strives to understand himself in action and through action. Balzac writes the world in the same way that Marx tried to think it, which does not entail the elaboration of the kind of step-by-step development that characterized the work of philosophy for Merleau-Ponty; it is more like the breach that must be constantly repeated. A passage from the introductory presentation of _the Eye and the Mind_ , written during summer while the philosopher was preparing also his lectures on 'philosophy and non-philosophy', evokes the uniqueness of the work of art and its relation to its creator.\n\n> But art, and especially painting, draw from that pool of brute sense of which activism wants to know nothing. They alone do it in all innocence. One seeks counsel or advice from the author or the philosopher; one does not permit them to hold the world in suspense; one wants them to take a position, they cannot decline the responsibilities of speaking man.... [As opposed to that,] [n]o one attacks C\u00e9zanne for having lived in hiding at L'Estaque during the war of 1870. ( _OE_ , pp. 13\u201315)\n\nThis passage concludes with heavy irony that 'everyone cites with respect [C\u00e9zanne's affirmation that] 'life is frightful', when the least advanced student, since Nietzsche, would roundly repudiate philosophy if it was said that philosophy did not teach us to be great beings' (ibid.). The reference to Nietzsche can be interpreted also as an allusion to the temptations of Marxism\u2014or at least of Marxism-Leninism, where everyone wants to be a 'little Lenin', giving advice for the realization of history.\n\nI suggested that Merleau-Ponty's description of the dual task of the author applied to the actor as well. If that is true, it would seem possible to rethink the adventure of the New Left in the same light. One effect of such an interpretation would be to explain critically the misleading influence of classical Marxism on its self-understanding. Although this was not, of course, the philosopher's concern, his repeated returns to Marx point in a similar direction. He recognizes in _The Adventures_ that\n\n> it is correct to say that there is not much sense in beginning Bolshevism anew at the very moment when its revolutionary failure is evident. But there is not much sense either in beginning Marx anew if his philosophy is put into question by that failure; no sense in acting as if that philosophy emerged intact from the affair, as if it were in fact the end of the interrogation and self-critique of humanity. ( _AD_ , p. 124)\n\nThe allusion to the idea that the 'revolutionary failure' put Marx's philosophy as a whole in question is in fact a reference to the claims of Cornelius Castoriadis to whom Merleau-Ponty had been introduced by Claude Lefort, to whom I now turn for further development of these reflections.12\n\nFootnotes\n\n1\n\nIn the text, all citations from Merleau-Ponty are indicated with a reference-sign and page number in parenthesis. All citations are from the French editions and are rendered in my own translation. The sources cited are _Ph\u00e9nomenologie de la perception_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), indicated as _PhP; Humanisme et terreur_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1947), indicated as _HT; Sens et non-sens_ (Paris: Nagel, 6th ed., 1966), indicated as _SNS; Eloge de la philosophie et autres essais_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1953, 1960), indicated as _Eloge; Les aventures de la dialectique_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), indicated as _AD; Signes_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), indicated as _S; L'oeil et l'Esprit_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), indicated as _OE; Le visible et l'invisible_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), indicated as _VI; R\u00e9sum\u00e9s de cours_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), indicated as _R\u00e9sum\u00e9s_ ; and _La prose du monde_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), indicated as _Prose_.\n\n2\n\nThe point was in fact made in Sartre's 'Merleau-Ponty vivant', in _Les Temps Modernes_ , Oct 1961 (reprinted in Sartre, _Situations IV_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p. 243), but with reference to Merleau-Ponty's influence in an earlier period.\n\n3\n\nJames Edie, 'Introduction', in _The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays_ (Northwestern University Press: Evanston, 111, 1964), p. xiv. Since this statement was made, both volumes have been translated, though _Humanism and Terror_ was not admitted to the philosophically consecrated series directed by Mr. Edie. I suppose that, in the end, we have to thank the 'blind forces of the market' for doing what the philosopher could not!\n\n4\n\nDick Howard, 'Ambiguous Radicalism: Merleau-Ponty's Interrogation of Political Thought', in Garth Gillan, ed., _The Horizons of the Flesh_ (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973).\n\n5\n\nClaude Lefort, 'La politique et la pens\u00e9e de la politique', in _Lettres Nouvelles_ , lie ann\u00e9e, nouvelle s\u00e9rie, no. 32, p. 58.\n\n6\n\nCompare the statement in _HT_ : 'The decline of proletarian humanism is not a critical experiment which would annul Marxism entirely. As a critique of the existing world and of the other humanisms, it remains valid. At least in this sense, _it cannot be surpassed_ ' (p. 165), with the statement printed over a decade later (but written in 1955, at the time of _AD_ ): 'The decadence of Russian communism does not mean that the class struggle is a myth, that \"free enterprise\" is either possible or desirable, nor in general that the Marxist critique is void' ( _S_ , p. 338).\n\n7\n\nIn an earlier formulation ( _PhP_ , p. 456), Merleau-Ponty writes: 'To say with Marx that man poses only those problems that he can resolve is to renew the theological optimism and to postulate the explosion of the world'.\n\n8\n\nCompare the following passage on Trotsky: 'On the plane of the individual, this type of person is sublime. But we must ask whether they are the type who make history. They believe so strongly in the rationality of history that, if for a time history ceases to be rational, they throw themselves toward the wished-for future rather than pass any compromises with the incoherent present' ( _HT_ , p. 85).\n\n9\n\nAs I did in op. cit.\n\n10\n\n _M\u00e9saventures de l'anti-Marxisme_ , _Les Malheurs de M. Merleau-Ponty_ (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1956), p. 102. This collective volume published by the political-theoretical 'heavies' of and in the orbit of the French Communist Party shows how threatening Merleau-Ponty's critique was felt to be the dominant intellectual tradition of the left at the time. The volume is interesting as an antiquity; from the point of view of theory, it is strictly and simply empty and vain verbiage.\n\n11\n\nInsofar as the theory of the proletariat is interpreted as an account of the praxis of a plural subject, the dilemma posed is replaced by its inverse opposite: the proletariat is treated as an absolute subject constituting the world. The transcendental subjectivity rejected by Marx is now situated in an object within the world. The result is a justification of the voluntarism of the Party, or a mystical view of praxis as the achieved unity of subject and object. Merleau-Ponty's critique of Sartre in _AD_ showed clearly that these are two sides of the same coin.\n\n12\n\nAs previously mentioned, Lefort had been a student of Merleau-Ponty and was the editor of his posthumous manuscripts; he was also the co-founder with Castoriadis of _Socialisme ou_ _Barbarie_. Some indications of Castoriadis' encounter with Merleau-Ponty are given in Chap. , note 10, along with a reference to his contribution to a special issue of _l'Arc_ edited by Lefort.\n\u00a9 The Author(s) 2019\n\nDick HowardThe Marxian LegacyPolitical Philosophy and Public Purpose<https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-030-04411-4_8>\n\n# 8. Bureaucratic Society and Traditional Rationality: Claude Lefort\n\nDick Howard1\n\n(1)\n\nDepartment of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA\n\nDick Howard\n\nThe work of Claude Lefort highlights one of the paradoxes of the Marxist tradition. Despite its claim to be the theory _of_ the revolutionary proletariat, developing dialectically with the advances of the working class, a specifically Marxist approach to sociology and political theory was never developed. This might be the result of the 'traditional' structure of these disciplines, whose aim is prediction and manipulation of human objects. While the Institute for Social Research set itself the task of filling this lack (including in every issue extensive book reviews of contemporary empirical research), the political theory that would have been necessary to fuse its philosophical self-understanding with its empirical concerns was never developed, cut short by the development of what its leaders called the 'authoritarian state', fascism.1 What remained was the assumption that classical Marxism provides a theory of the inherently contradictory and exploitative nature of the societal infrastructure, leaving the contemporary theorist with the task of elaborating the more or less independent tensions in the superstructure.\n\nThe relative weight accorded to these cultural and political variables reflects the search for a potential catalyst that could ignite already existing but still latent infrastructural contradictions. This is curious since any reader of Marx's historical writing knows that Marx did not make this kind of distinction between ideas and the supposedly real. Yet, with the occasional exception in the work of Rosa Luxemburg, the poles of theoretical reflection, empirical social analysis, and political practice that Marx wanted to unite remain separated from one another. The theorist reconstructs what he takes to be the Marxist break with philosophy as implying the priority of the economy; the social analyst works with an often unstated model of this breakthrough, adapting the empirical materials to it or working out new permutations of the historical development; and then the political actor makes choices and tries to understand and justify their logic in terms of the theory and the sociological corollaries. Lefort's critical appropriation of Marxism asserts first that this separation of what was united by Marx accounts for the underdevelopment of the practical side of Marxism and that, correlatively, this is not an accident but a flattening of Marx's theory itself.\n\nLefort can be seen as carrying out the philosophical program of Merleau-Ponty, his high-school teacher who once suggested to his young student that he read Trotsky. Lefort followed this advice to its logical conclusion, which led to his early political engagement. When he left the Trotskyist Fourth International to join in founding of the group 'Socialisme ou Barbarie',2 Lefort also joined Merleau-Ponty at _Les Temps Modernes_ , taking part in the editorial discussions and writing for the journal. His collaboration ended\u2014as did that of Merleau-Ponty3\u2014with Sartre's move toward the Communist Party in his essay on 'The Communists and Peace'. Lefort's critique of Sartre and his reply to Sartre's rebuttal are masterful applications of that unity of theory, social analysis, and political judgment found in Marx at his best. Lefort's answer to Sartre is a step toward the realization of Merleau-Ponty's penetrating critique of Sartre in _The Adventures of the Dialectic_ (which remained theoretical, whereas the axis of Lefort's essay lies with his social analysis and its political implications). More generally, the movement of Lefort's thought begins with Merleau-Ponty's critique of the rationalist illusion that theory can grant absolute knowledge of a social totality which is the 'really real'; but it moves from this starting point to the social and historical _experience_ by which a society reproduces itself and its members, rejoining in this way the work of Marx's own investigations.\n\nLefort's development is complicated by his insistence on working with Marx and against the consequences of Marxism. From the break with the Fourth International through his second split with 'Socialisme ou Barbarie' (in 1958) and the foundation of the group ILO (Informations et Liaisons Ouvri\u00e8res, later ICO, Informations et Correspondances Ouvri\u00e8res), the struggle against the form of _bureaucratic_ domination was foremost in Lefort's political concerns. Beyond the critique of the Soviet Union and the orthodox Communist (and Trotskyist) organizational forms, Lefort was attempting to elaborate the conditions of the possibility of the self-organization of revolutionary struggle. While he agreed with the economic critique of Marx that Castoriadis was developing in  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ , Lefort found that it did not go far enough. Following an argument from Merleau-Ponty, Lefort insists:\n\n> I wanted to show that the concept of Leadership [ _Direction_ ] was tied to that of Revolution in the sense that we inherited it from Marx. The root of the illusion was the belief in a point of radical rupture between the past and the future, in an absolute moment (even if it is stretched out temporally) in which the sense of history is given.4\n\nAs he worked with the Marxian concepts of alienation and ideology, examining the phenomenon of history and the conditions under which a society reproduces and also interrogates its self-identity, Lefort articulated a reinterpretation of Marx helps to explain the devolution and flattening of the Marxian project. With Marx, and against Marx, he elaborates a theory of the mode of thought, sociality, and politics of revolution in its historical specificity. It is no coincidence that the central theoretical articles in which Lefort lays out this approach were not published in  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ . In that journal, under the pseudonym Claude Montal, he published practical texts, on organization, on specific conjunctural events, and on the tasks of the militant. Since he felt bound to Marxism in some form, it takes a careful reading to see the originality of his approach as compared with such anti-Leninist variants as the Dutch Council Communists. Nonetheless, his analysis of the 20th Congress' revelations about Stalinism, his critique of the 'progressive intellectuals', and his lucid analysis of the 'proletarian experience' show the direction in which he was moving. The political critique of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union as well as its role in the Marxist parties and sects opened toward a general interrogation of the interpenetration of the social and the political.\n\nLefort's fundamental insight is the need for a critical theory that is a general critique of the pretensions of all theory; it must offer an analysis of the social that lays bare the structuring principles of the dependence of society on unarticulated premises; its political translation must destroy the idea that political solutions can put an end to political questions. This critical attitude neither makes for a skepticism nor excludes political engagement. Lefort explains himself in a long passage.\n\n> In short, I had to denounce as illusory it is the belief in a solution, in a general formula for the organisation of society by showing that the power of the bureaucracy had built and builds itself on that illusion, and by showing that breaking with it (or attempting to break, for this is a break which must continually be begun anew) is the fundamental condition of a struggle on all terrains against the actual or potential forms of domination.\n> \n> It is a struggle against the strata that monopolize the decisions that affect the fate of the collectivity in each sector of activity; a struggle against the monopolisation of the means of production and of knowledge; a struggle that prevents the petrification of the social due to the effect of a coercive power that is necessarily driven to grow, to close in on itself, to imagine itself as the origin of the institution of the social; a struggle, therefore, that does not have to determine itself in terms of the alternative reform or revolution, global or partial objectives, but that has its own internal justification by virtue of the fact that its effects are felt at a distance from the place where it develops, that its specific efficacity is at the same time a symbolic one, that is, that it threatens the established model of social relations which heretofore was taken as natural.5\n\nThe theory that pretends to give knowledge of the real, like a sociology describing preformed facts or a politics that would resolve all social contradictions, falls into the rationalist dualism which must either give all power to the 'facts' or to a transcendental principle floating above the real. In both cases, thought or praxis is alienated, separated, and particularized; in both cases, the result will be ideological, taking part of the whole, imposing univocity on the multivalent.\n\nAt this point in his development, Lefort's rejection of Marxism, although based on Marx's own analyses, becomes controversial. As his former comrade, Castoriadis, asserted, Lefort appears to be forced to give up the idea of revolution itself! Lefort denied this implication for a long while. The difference of the two positions became clear when the two united in a book publication analyzing, in the heat of the moment, the possibilities opened by May 1968. As opposed to the immediate practical steps that Castoriadis proposes, Lefort sees in May the realization of the beginning of a revolution of a new type whose advent his critical confrontation with Marxism had demanded. Lefort had insisted on the need to abandon the traditional, philosophically rooted, notion of revolution as the completion of a rational system\u2014what the young Marx had called the making philosophical of the world and making worldly of philosophy\u2014because that demand is what leads to totalitarianism. Revolutionaries must give up the idea of the Good Society where all contradictions are resolved, the world made transparent to itself, and human praxis stripped of its contingency and ambiguity. The Good Society is not a state to be realized, an end to (pre-)history, or Engels' famous replacement of the government over people by the administration of things. Lefort argues that the _myth_ of revolution, anchored in that traditional philosophy, expresses in fact the world and world-view that the revolutionaries must combat; this myth is responsible for the degeneration of revolution. If one can speak of a 'convergence' between East and West, its roots in Lefort's view are not in shared industrial techniques, but a shared _logos_ based on traditional philosophy.\n\nLefort adopted the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, attempting to lay bare the structure of the _experience_ of theory, sociality, and politics. The very style of his analyses recalls the manner of presentation adopted by Merleau-Ponty: rejecting the transcendental, non-situated, or constitutive subject, starting from one argument, showing its seeming necessity, only to drive it to the limit where it inverts and opens a new path. This _experience_ , what Lefort calls the _work_ of interpretation, _is_ in fact the object being analyzed. Truth is not adequation of thought and (external) thing; it is a process that includes the situated thinker\/actor. Through an analysis of the historical representations of Machiavellianism, and a confrontation of the lacunae of the classical interpretations which pretend to establish _the_ meaning of the Florentine's work, Lefort prevents the reader of his monumental _Machiavel_ from imagining that Machiavelli's thought could be reduced to a univocal message. He follows the path of the work, confronting its ambiguities, lapsus, and contradictions. Sociological and historical materials are introduced, not as a criterion of falsification but to illuminate the _sense_ of Machiavelli's chosen deformations (an allusion to Merleau-Ponty's ' _deformations coh\u00e9rentes_ '). The 776 pages of this volume could no more be condensed than the equally admirable application of Lefort's interpretative technique to La Bo\u00e9tie's _Discours de la servitude volontaire_ : a sinuous thought, doubling back on itself, opening and closing, restoring finally the _in_ determination of the text whose movement or work is its sense. Lefort describes the process concisely:\n\n> I therefore said that the question of interpretation already implies the question of the political. Through the discovery of the illusion of a disembodied thought taking an overview [ _pens\u00e9e de survol_ ] which gives the interpreter his power, I am led to understand what Machiavelli said from the point of view of the Prince who, blinded by his position of power, hides from himself the fact that this position is engendered in the division of the social, that the Prince himself is _caught_ in that division.6\n\nWhat makes a work live and become an object for the thought of successive generations is not its unique 'message' but the interrogation which it itself is and to which it gives rise. The author does not impose a view but guides the reader's questioning. The situation of the Prince, or La Bo\u00e9tie's apparently naive questioning of our submission to the Name, and thus to the power, of the One, interrogates the _experience_ of the political. Similarly, what makes Marx a source of continual discovery is not the results which emerge from his analyses but rather the work of interrogation which bares the tensions and contradictions of the experience of capitalism, making Marx's work precisely a theory _of_ the proletariat.\n\nThe danger for theory is structurally identical to the risk that drives politics to become a form of domination rather than the sphere where a community debates and articulates the forms of its communality. In politics, the danger of the _One_ , the Prince or the Party who becomes the unification and incarnation of the Good Society, separate from it and dominant _over_ it is either the entryway to totalitarianism, or the moment that crystallizes a revolt from a society whose unity is no longer expressed by the One. For revolutionary theory, Lefort continues, the danger is also that the _One_ , the idea of a unique Truth or Being that is the 'really real' that determines the nature of the appearances has either been lost among those appearances or has forced their neglect due to the position of overview that it claims for itself. This does not mean that a phenomenologically based metaphysics becomes the last rampart against invading totalitarianism whose theoretical justification would be the theory _for_ a revolution that would, at last, be adequate to its human goals. The quest is more complicated.\n\nLefort's Marxian heritage served him in good stead; the logical structure opened by phenomenology needed to be articulated as a _social_ theory . Marx moved from the critique of the political state to a theory of the social, but remained at the level of civil society. Lefort rejects this reduction because it claims to have found the positive, 'really real' base on which all else is seated; it becomes a traditional theory. Lefort's phenomenological stance demands the interrogation of the _experience_ of the social, not of its ultimate reality. This claim needs to be explained in order to see how Lefort's contribution to that active inheritance from Marxism fits into the framework that permits understanding a New Left.\n\n## 8.1 Developing Theory and Developing Society\n\n### 8.1.1 Politics and the Social\n\nIn his polemical reply to the 'ultra-Bolshevist' panegyric, 'The Communists and Peace' that marked Sartre's political conversion (as he described it in his memorial essay on Merleau-Ponty), Lefort attacks Sartre's atomistic and voluntaristic conception of the proletariat. Following the stress of his earlier essays on the notion of the proletariat as its accumulating _experience_ ,7 and presenting a subtle interpretation of Marx's analysis of the modern industrial process, Lefort points out that Sartre begins from the _idea_ of the unity of the class rather than the everyday experience of the class itself; and that Sartre concludes with the idea of the class as a pure act, without material conditions, by which the individual transcends himself to partake of social universality and therewith of freedom. Lefort stresses that this ideal omits the _social_ 8\n\n> in its premises, because it mentions only the individuals; in its conclusions, because it ends with a collectivity united by the same will, identifying itself in action, perfectly present to itself and clear to itself. But this is only apparently what is designated by a collectivity; in reality, it is nothing but an individual, or better, a consciousness.9\n\nTwo central themes of Lefort's theoretical approach already emerge here: the notion that the self-transparence of the social is impossible\u2014such self-transparence being the classical rationalist dream of a perfect, god's-eye view, or the modern dream of the bureaucracy\u2014and, second, the attempt to pinpoint the _specificity of the social_ , its relation to the individuals who institute it, and who are instituted by it.\n\nThe political misunderstanding of this specificity of social experience is manifested in Sartre's acceptance of the communist party as incarnating the class from the standpoint of historical necessity. Sartre's attitude is typical of left-leaning intellectuals; Lefort castigates their assumptions as '[t]he method of the progressive intellectuals'. Their position is rooted in a philosophical dualism that separates the particular (as individual, brute factuality) from the Historical; the latter is said to represent the truth of the particular; its universality dominates the particular individual, whose action and errors appear as only accidents in the linear course of History. On this basis, the 'progressive intellectual' interprets the choices posed by concrete historical situations.10 The upshot is that the _experience_ of the class is neglected, with the result that there is no way to understand the possibility of autonomous activity. Instead, pure reason, or its inverse correlate, pure will, governs the historical process. Summarizing his argument in the counter-polemic to Sartre's, Lefort goes on the attack.\n\n> I accused you of confusing the party and the class, and I saw at the source of that error your incapacity to define the class as an economic, social and historical reality. I tied that incapacity to your narrow rationalism which locked you into the oppositions of activity and passivity, subjective and objective, unity and division; I thought that this rationalism prohibited you from understanding the idea of praxis, which you understood in fact as the pure act of a pure organism, and which, in my opinion, supposes an interweaving of all the economic, social and political determinations.11\n\nLefort's polemical exchange with Sartre mobilized political implications of the theoretical work that he had undertaken in the early 1950s when he tried to understand how a specific type of rationality and the nature of the social mutually implicate one another, for example, in ethnographical studies, cultural anthropology, or in the historical example of sixteenth-century capitalism as interpreted by Max Weber. This work, as with his _Machiavel_ , is important for understanding how Lefort's critique of Marxism becomes essential to understanding the Marx _ian_ legacy.\n\n### 8.1.2 The Origin of the Social\n\nLefort took the occasion offered by L\u00e9vi-Strauss' publication of a new introduction to the works of Marcel Mauss to clarify his own notions of reason and of the social in an essay titled 'L'\u00e9change et la lutte des hommes'.12 Mauss, says Lefort,\n\n> proves to be one of the most representative authors of our times, who have undertaken the project of defining a new rationalism in the sense of Hegel, Marx and Husserl. His constant preoccupation is not to explain a social phenomenon in terms of another which is judged to be its cause, but to tie together all the economic, juridical, religious and artistic traits of a given society, and to understand how they work together in the same sense. (op. cit., p. 1400)\n\nMauss' 'Essai sur le don' studies nothing less than the foundations of society itself. Exchange is seen to be a 'total social fact'; its sense is not only economic but juridical, moral, religious, and aesthetic. Exchange relations exist prior to the 'economic' forms of reciprocity known as barter. The _potlatch_ is the most famous example of an exchange relation that cannot be explained in terms of economics alone; Mauss' essay draws together a manifold of other societies that have been studied by anthropologists. To explain these social forms, the analysis must go beneath the empirical. 'Overall', writes Lefort, 'the greatest error is to want to treat exchange as a fact' (ibid., p. 1406). Yet L\u00e9vi-Strauss' Introduction to Mauss interprets his importance precisely in his handling of this manifold of facts, which corresponds to L\u00e9vi-Strauss' own early efforts at mathematization by reducing social phenomena to their symbolic nature. He concludes that Mauss' importance lies in seeing that what is crucial is the fact of exchange itself, not the operations that are its manifestation. As a result, it is necessary to analyze exchange itself before turning to its operational variations. This can lead to the postulation of a kind of Kantian transcendental consciousness that is interpreted as the seat of the categories which make possible the operational world of experience. Lefort disagrees:\n\n> The unconscious, L\u00e9vi-Strauss tells us, would be the mediating term between me and the other person, because it gives us 'forms of activity which are at once _ours_ and those of the _other_ , conditions of all the mental lives of all men and of all times'. But this is to forget that from the perspective of such a collective consciousness, the notion of the other person\u2014and, in fact, that of myself\u2014no longer makes sense. (ibid., p. 1408)\n\nPut differently, L\u00e9vi-Strauss' position is based on a rationalism which dissolves the specificity of the particular in the universal.\n\n> The problem is that, to use Mauss' terms, L\u00e9vi-Strauss interprets society as based on _'rules'_ rather than _'behaviors'_ ; that he assumes artificially a total rationality in terms of which groups and men are reduced to an abstract function instead of basing that function in the concrete relations that people establish among themselves. (ibid., p. 1409)\n\nWhat is crucial to understanding is not its symbolic function within a given framework but the way that its behavior is itself signifying; analysis must focus on the immanent intention in action and not a logical order assumed to underlie concrete appearances.\n\nThe potlatch offers the most paradoxical form of exchange relation: in it the individual demonstrates reciprocity with others and with nature through the _destruction_ of the gift offering. For Lefort, 'not only is this an act, but the act _par excellence,_ through which man conquers his subjectivity' (ibid., p. 1413). Mauss proposed as a first explanation of the reciprocity involved in the potlatch the idea that destruction of the goods was conceived as a kind of exchange with the gods. The problem with this assumption is that the potlatch experience is also a form of competition: whoever destroys the most goods becomes chief, receiving recognition or honors. Mauss thus adds a second suggestion: in destroying the goods, the giver is in effect putting the other under an obligation which cannot be repaid, establishing a relation of domination. If that were the intention, it would destroy the reciprocity that the gift relation in general is based on. The analysis then goes further, recognizing that the destruction of the goods implies that the giver is independent of those goods, independent of external things in general and, ultimately, of nature itself. The domination that is established by the potlatch appears to be based solely and simply on the persons themselves, not on any external signs of power; in Hegelian terms, the confrontation with the other is effected through the mediation of the confrontation with nature. The goal is not simply the submission of the other, but wrenching free from nature itself. The resulting establishment of persons as independent is also the establishment of a specific _sociality as distinct from nature_.\n\n> We thus see that our analysis leads to a more profound reality than that of individual relations: to social reality itself. Exchange by gifts appears at first to offer the double character of an opposition between men and an opposition of men to nature. In a first sense, it is the act by which man reveals himself _for_ man and _by_ man. To give is just as much to put the other person in your dependence as to put yourself in his dependence by accepting the idea that he will return the gift. But that operation, that initiative in giving, presupposes a primordial experience in which implicitly each knows himself to be tied to the other; the idea that the gift must be returned presupposes that the other person is an other-than-myself who _must_ act like me; his act in return must confirm to me the truth of my own act, that is, of my subjectivity. The gift is thus at once the establishment of difference and the discovery of sameness. (ibid., pp. 1414\u201315)\n\nThe opposition and difference without which the gift relation could not exist only becomes real when the other returns the gift, an action that overcomes that opposition. This 'reality' is not seen from without, by an observer; it is instituted in and by the social relation. 'One does not give in order to receive', writes Lefort in italics, 'one gives in order that the other give' (ibid., p. 1415).\n\n> Behind the struggle of men for mutual 'recognition' there appears the movement of a collectivity which attempts to behave like a collective subject. But far from abolishing the plurality of subjects, this 'we' only exists insofar as each affirms his own subjectivity by the gift. The behavior of the empirical subjects cannot be deduced from a transcendental consciousness; such a consciousness, on the contrary, is constituted only in experience. (ibid.)\n\nThe obligation to return the gift is not simply a contract between two private persons; it is a 'social' obligation which, if broken, would threaten society itself, which is a human reality that has ripped itself free from nature and constituted itself as a society. The social is more than the sum of individual actions, and yet less than the self-transparence of a pure subject that was implicit in L\u00e9vi-Strauss' quasi-Kantian interpretation.\n\nAt the conclusion of his essay on the exchange relation, Lefort indicates a direction for further reflection.\n\n> These remarks, which are meant as a prolongation of Mauss' analysis, should permit a _confrontation of the social and the historical._ It is striking that the exchange by gifts in its generalized form, and the institution of the potlatch, predominate and maintain themselves in societies that are incapable of developing a history. (ibid., p. 1416, my stress)\n\nThe social relations instituted by the potlatch regulate the rivalry between men and others as well as their relations with nature. The society which they institute still contains competition among its members. But the competition remains at a level of immediacy, never threatening the basic social relations that have been instituted. 'Change' exists only if the analyst claims to look down on society without being a part of it. For its part, history that is based an accumulation of experience that transcends immediate relations allows no such transcendental perspective.\n\n### 8.1.3 Societies Without History and the Origin of History\n\nLefort takes up the challenge he has formulated in an essay on 'Soci\u00e9t\u00e9s sans histoire et Historicit\u00e9' in which he analyzes what he calls a problem for 'all rationalist theories of human history'.13 Be it the idealism of a Hegel or Husserl, or the materialism of a Marx, the _origin_ of historical society remains opaque. Once a historical course is engaged, the rationalist does fine. But there exist societies that never enter onto the path of history or at least do not do so of their own will and logic. By what human _decision_ , through what bestowal of sense, does history emerge as structuring the interrelations of humans among themselves? The response need not postulate a 'first town meeting' at which a collective decision is made. What is important to understand how individual behavior finds itself determined by a collectively assumed decision which wrenches society from its naturalness and structures its behavior.\n\nSocieties without history known by anthropologists are not free from conflictual behavior: jokes hide hostility, counter-magic is used against the spells of the other, paternal love for the son may conflict with duty to the nephew in matrilineal societies. In spite of conflict, the society continues and reproduces itself daily. Lefort reformulates the question.\n\n> [S]ocial reality is never totally given in the present; the synchronic order always encloses a discordance between its elements; and the harmonious configuration itself does not reveal an essence but presents itself rather as a _solution that has come into being_ [ _solution advenue_ ], as an ensemble of concordant replies given to past situations even though the sense of these situations escapes actors in the present (an encounter with another people, discovery of a new mode of production, for example), and hence one does not know in what sense this is a reply to the unexpected. (ibid., p. 98)\n\nLefort reformulates his question, starting from the recognition that _the lack of a past is not nothing_ ; 'its absence calls it to our attention, suggests a style of becoming that can at least be described' (ibid., p. 99). The question of the origin of society, which poses the philosophical question of the institution of institutions, has more than an antiquarian interest.\n\nThe particular mode of becoming of societies without history underlines the need to reconceptualize the concept of history itself.\n\n> What is specific to an _historical_ society appears to be that it envelops the event, and has the power to convert it into a moment of an experience, such that it appears as an element in a debate which men pursue among themselves. In historical society, change is not essentially the passing from a state to another, but the progress of an intention which anticipates the future by tying it to the past. (ibid., p. 102)\n\nHistory is 'a style of collective behavior' that makes sense of the world while defining social relations (ibid.). For this reason, historical _memory_ becomes crucial:\n\n> If a society preoccupies itself with interpreting its past and with situating itself with relation to that past, if it explicitly formulates the principles of its organization, if it relates its factual activity and everything _new that happens_ to it [ _lui advient_ ] to its consciousness of its role and its values\u2014such a society presupposes a particular type of becoming. (ibid., p. 103)\n\nThis lapidary definition suffices for the moment; it permits Lefort to reformulate his question by asking how societies without history could _live_ a collective past. These societies must have made the _decision_ to avoid the path of history. That choice would point to the importance of the _representation_ of the past (or future) through which a society becomes conscious of its own identity.\n\nLefort uses Gregory Bateson's analysis of Bali as a 'schismogenetic' society to illustrate the way that the conflict-ridden Balinese society established a variety of mechanisms to preserve itself from upheaval. Crucial in this account is the way that the Balinese society depends on a rigid set of orientations in time, space, and status. Outside these coordinates, the individual is lost, quite literally becoming neurotic. This cannot be explained, as Bateson suggests, by psychoanalytic concepts.14 In such a society there are no neutral situations; all behavior is governed by the social relations that cement together the society and constitute the individual as what he is. The past and future too must be brought into the structure of the presence of the present; otherwise the experience of indetermination would destroy the capacity of the socialized individual to function. Non-historical social relations thus serve as a way of avoiding the outbreak of social conflict, legitimating the particular forms of domination that give the society its particular character.\n\nIt would be misleading to think of a 'passage' from one type of society to another. Societies without history are structured as if the only goal for the individual is to relate to others in order to create together a 'we' that is distinct from nature and continually reproduces itself through the network of immediate relations to others. All activity is multi-valued, joining together economic, moral, religious, and aesthetic values such that none is taken to exist as its own domain; each is simply as an expression, open to many interpretations, but never neutral or valueless.\n\n> On the other hand, it is when activity becomes _labor_ that its signification is fixed, that it acquires objectivity by showing the adequation of an intention and an object, that it turns men from their debate among themselves to draw them into a finality which was not given with their simple co-existence. (ibid. p. 113)\n\nThere is nothing necessary in this development; nothing in the non-historical society prefigures the transformation to a new social form based on a new temporality. There is no reason why the significance of the previous experience of social division should change its sense or challenge its legitimacy. The process is not a natural, gradual evolution. Whereas production was subordinated to the confrontation and integration of people into the collectivity in the non-historical society, 'it is by a revolution in historicity that men transform production into productivity, disengage themselves from the investment in the other person that characterized their primitive situation, and inaugurate a history' (ibid.). The paradox is not the one that puzzles the rationalist\u2014that there exist non-historical societies; the surprise results from what appears as an ' _adventure_ ' in human relations surging forth without necessity. The search for a causal explanation of this novelty would lose sight of the specificity of the social, whose understanding Lefort seeks here.15\n\nFor Lefort history and society are institutions (in the transitive sense) that emerge from human co-existence without material or moral preconditions. In a later, unpublished, reflection on this stage of his work, Lefort suggests that a further question concerned him.\n\n> What ethnologist, I ask, has questioned the conditions which give him access to an experience of the world incommensurable with his own? Who examines the unavoidable fact that we are anchored in this time, in this space, that there is the possibility, perhaps one should say necessity, of knowing the meaning of other human societies, whereas within the frontiers of these latter societies, at least for savage societies, there is not a _view_ on the foreign world.16\n\nLefort's analysis is not based on a cultural relativism; his concern is with the place of memory and of representation in a historical society. This far-ranging analysis is reinforced in another article written during this period, 'Capitalisme et religion au XVIe si\u00e8cl\u00e8'17 that contrasts the economic determinist views of Robertson with the more open interpretation by Tawney of the origins of another form of historical society, capitalism. Going beyond Max Weber's insistence on the role of Protestantism in this development, Lefort stresses the 'revolutionary' character of this historical invention.\n\n> A revolution supposes... a vision of the past and an apprehension of the future as the negation of the past, a heterogeneity of time or of temporality; it sees an _act_ in which men join together in opposing, as ' _we_ ', other men whom they dispossess of their sense of the world. (ibid., p. 1897)\n\nWhile it is possible, retrospectively, to point to the existence of 'capitalist' behaviors and institutions as early as the thirteenth century, and while at least the Jesuits attempted to adapt Catholicism to these new conditions, neither the economy nor ideology alone can be said to univocally determine the emergence of capitalism. What is more, he continues, the Reformation had a revolutionary signification insofar as, by introducing a new attitude to the world, it marks a rupture with the established mode of representation. A 'capitalist' existing in the world of universal Catholicism could not intend to create capitalism as such; only through the opening of a new signification could the capitalist come to know himself as a self-conscious subject. This _institution of_ a form of _sociality_ is central to Lefort's more directly _political_ concerns, as he explains in his next major essay, 'L'ali\u00e9nation comme concept sociologique' where the particularity of _historical_ society is developed more fully.\n\n### 8.1.4 Alienation, Ideology, and the Real: The Structure of Capitalism\n\nLefort's intervention in the debates occasioned by the publication of the young Marx's philosophical writings, particularly the _1844 Manuscripts_ , makes use of his anthropological and historical studies. He summarizes Evans-Pritchard's description of Nuer society\u2014a society which, at first glance, appears to be reified, alienated, and mystified by one commodity which, although important, was not its life source: cattle. All social relations are expressed in bovine terms: lineage, marriage, exchange, aesthetics, and religion. Indeed, the language of the Nuers seems to have a manifold of nuances when it comes to cows, even while it is impoverished elsewhere. Although Nuer material life is not solely dominated by cattle, its world of representation, down to its metaphors and proper names, is; the society seems to express a type of cattle-fetishism. It does not matter that the Nuer's use of cattle is not 'economically rational'; the _image_ of the cow, its fetish, is crucial to understanding social relations. Wars, quarrels, personal relations are all hidden behind bovine mystifications. Indeed, even the Nuer dream content seems to indicate a latent hostility to the cow, as do its myths and rites. From the outside, it would seem that the society is fragile; from within, it functions harmoniously. This contrast encourages Lefort to offer a closer analysis of Marx himself.\n\nAt its most general level, Marx's notion of alienation is derived from the difference between a historically specific reality and its unreal self-representation: the socialized nature of productive labor is a reality in capitalism; but the commodity form in which it appears is an unreality, an appearance which hides and deforms the reality. Alienation is this unity in difference. A 'natural' form of labor is not deformed or exploited under capitalism, causing the appearance of alienation. Marx's insistence on the historical specificity of the capitalist form shows that the socialization of labor is an _achievement_ of capitalism; the same is true for the formal equality among human labors (in the notion of abstract, socially necessary labor) which did not exist before capitalism. A critique based on 'natural' human qualities would return alienation to the domain of traditional philosophy. Marx's achievement was based on the social and historical specificity of capitalism. Moreover, Marx points out that the alienated fetishized forms are _nonetheless_ real, actual conditions. When he criticizes a society in which the movement of things dominates people's activity and self-understanding, Marx notes that it is not things but people acting through the things who create these conditions of domination. What is more, as Lefort's anthropological studies showed, domination has existed in manifold forms and societies; only in capitalism has it had the double structure of alienation: a negativity with positive implications.\n\nConcentration on the notion of alienation makes it clear that capitalism is not simply an economic form in which money is invested, returning a profit, which is reinvested in production of greater and more efficient results (the process that _Capital_ describes simply as 'M-C-M'\u2014money buys commodities, including labor power, which produce a surplus value). Lefort's concern is to understand the model of _sociality_ that is implicit in this process. He turns to _Capital_ 's discussion of the phases of economic development that culminate in what Marx calls 'Machinery and Modern Industry'. Whereas the earlier stages (called manufacturing) subordinated the worker to capital, he remained still an individual, with particular personal skills applied to work in specific branches. In the further development, these personal skills are surpassed; the individual becomes simply a cog, part of the 'collective worker' whose work is ever more decomposed into its component parts. As a result, the worker has no idea of the meaning of his work, which becomes only a job, a function that depends on conditions he cannot understand. At the same time, however, the interdependence of each and all is increased. Modern industry thus presents a Janus face:\n\n> It appears, in effect, that the specific movement of industry by which the unity of all the productive acts is established\u2014a universal society \u2014is at the same time the movement by which separate spheres of activity are constituted18\n\nThe social (and socialized) character of production is patent in the activity of work itself at the same time that the division of labor into separate spheres, its constant decomposition into partial processes, separates the individual from others within the productive unity. Whereas in earlier forms of manufacture the labor that produced value in the product was the work of individual craftspeople, in modern industry value is the product of 'average socially necessary labor'. In manufacture the measure of value was the theorist's reconstruction of the market-function; in modern industry _it is the structure of the experience of reality itself_ : the unity of labor exists effectively in the multiple tasks which compose the industrial process; but each task is only a fragmentary moment of that unity. The technological form of a given productive task gives that production a (historically specific) universality; while the division of capital and labor , mental and manual, makes each activity particular. In this sense, the actual process of assembly line production, for example, incorporates a contradiction: each gesture is at once radically particular (turning this bolt, welding this joint) and effectively universal (as part of the total social process). But this terminology, borrowed from philosophy, should not mislead.\n\n> The contradiction is not that between universalization and particularization, but rather consists in the fact that the experience of the particular criticizes itself because it presents itself as privation of the universal, because the experience of the universal degenerates into the particular. (ibid., p. 51)\n\nLefort's point, once again, is not that individual work is robbed of its essence, deformed, and distorted.\n\n> From this perspective, one cannot speak of a society alienated in technology, in money or whatever; or of an alienated man, as if it were possible for the being of the society or the man to become Other. Alienation is not a state; it is the process in which activity is cut up into a manifold of independent spheres at the same time that each of these divided activities is subordinated to a single productive schema. (ibid., p. 52)\n\nThe individual is destined at once to have a 'profession', a concrete form of activity which objectifies and socializes him; and at the same time, such stable activity loses its sense and becomes a particular fragment within a social process that is continually changing but always riven by the contradiction between the socialization that renders it universal and the particularization of the activities of the individuals.\n\nThis specification of alienation _within the structure of capitalism itself_ implies both a development and a critique of Marxism. The notion of _ideology_ can be grounded sociologically. Ideology is defined by Marx as an inversion of the real that is not the fault of consciousness but is built into the social structure itself. In theoretical terms, ideology is the transformation of the particular into the universal, taking part of the whole. The necessity of this transformation can be seen in the description of the fragmentation and atomization of the worker in the act of production in modern industry whose defining characteristic is the socialization (i.e., universalization) of society. Each particular domain, from the menial to the mental, from production to juridical or artistic activity, _is_ effectively particular, and yet within the socialized totality, it is historically universal. Each particular facet of the division of labor tends, therefore, to attempt to realize the universal in its activity, to generalize from what it does to what the social totality as a whole is. The result, of course, is self-deception and the impossibility of having a totality view on the society, because each sphere, as particular, is closed in on itself, cut off from communication from within to without; and yet each does effectively, structurally, communicate in spite of itself. Ideology is thus not just a form of consciousness _within_ a given social formation; _ideology is the structure of capitalism itself._ It is misleading to identify ideology with religion (or 'fetishism') or to interpret it as a function left-over from a pre-capitalist social formation. Those pre-capitalist forms are based on reference to an _external_ or _transcendent_ universal, whereas in modern capitalism's socialized society, the universal is immanent in the activity of the particulars.\n\nThis analysis not only makes more precise Marx's intent in formulating the concept of alienation; its implications led Lefort in the 1960s toward a more political interpretation that culminated in his _Machiavel: le travail de l'oeuvre_ (1972). The processes of alienation, and of ideology, pose the problem of reality and of truth. What is most real and immediate appears in fact to be what is least real. The occultation of reality is built into the structure of capitalist social relations. Marx thought that his analysis uncovered the really real basis of capitalist reality itself. In fact, according to the logic of the structures it uncovers, Marxism is itself part of those structures: it is thought in alienation thinking alienation, ideology thinking the structure of ideology. As a result, the demand for totality that is built into, but denied by, the social structure leads to the demand for a kind of truth or rationality which is systematically and structurally unattainable. This paradox demands a redefinition of the task of theory. Theory becomes society's self-interrogation; philosophy is not the unveiling of an always present truth that had been distorted; it is the continual process of interrogation, destined to ambiguity, prohibited from absolutizing its results. With this development, the kinship between the Merleau-Ponty's 'philosophy of ambiguity' and Lefort's own political development re-emerges. Lefort concludes his essay on alienation:\n\n> If the idea of alienation in the last analysis calls forth that of truth, it is on the condition that we find its properly sociological content. (ibid., p. 54)\n\nThis will be the grounds for a double operation: critique of the presuppositions of social and political analysis and action, and at the same time a return to and re-evaluation of philosophy. Traditional Marxism and its definition of theory, praxis, and of revolution are called into question in the same process.\n\n## 8.2 The Political and the Philosophical\n\n### 8.2.1 The Proletariat and the Problem of the Real and the True\n\nIn his homage to Merleau-Ponty written shortly after the latter's death, 'La politique et la pens\u00e9e de la politique', Lefort tries to understand the inability of the French Left to deal with the Algerian revolution and its implications in France. During the revolution, the Left united in its support of the Algerian FLN (the National Liberation Front); with the victory, the FLN itself showed its divisions, and the transferred enthusiasm of the Left was shattered in the face of the realistic decisions imposed on the Front. In France, the war's end did not bring an upsurge in political action and consciousness, but a depression and decompression. What bothered Lefort in the attitude of the Left was that\n\n> politics increasingly bases itself on a moral perception of the world in terms of which one must chose at each instant between two principles which exclude one another; and since these principles express themselves in men and structures, one must give one's unreserved adhesion to the party of revolution whose very existence is its justification.19\n\nThis moral politics differed from traditional Marxist politics based on a rational image of society produced by joining together revolutionary consciousness and structural necessity to produce a socialist future. The new 'revolutionary' morality replaces Marxism's rational interpretation of history. Sartre stood for this moralist position; counter-position was that of Merleau-Ponty.\n\nFor Merleau-Ponty, the question of revolution and that of reality and of truth were inseparable.\n\n> In a sense, Marxism taught him what he was looking for, what his work on the body and perception had already opened to reflection: a relation with being which testifies to our participation in being, specifically, a philosophy of history that uncovers our historicity. The proletariat is precisely that singular being where we find the genesis of history, where the past lives on in its signification, where the truth of what is not yet announces itself. (ibid., p. 58)\n\nLefort's detailed analysis of Merleau-Ponty's attitude toward Marxism, in _Sense and Nonsense_ , then in _Humanism_ _and Terror_ , shows how the 'singular being' of the proletariat becomes the central axis on which Marxism turns. Attempting to remain within the opening that he found in Marxism, Merleau-Ponty confronted it with its empirical correlates, bringing together the theoretical proletariat and its actual incarnation. The crucial moment for Marxism was its claim to join in one subject the empirical and the true, of praxis and theory. Yet this unique opening, the passionate analysis of which makes _Humanism_ _and Terror_ appear at times like a defense of Stalin's purges, is precisely the grounds for the degeneration that Merleau-Ponty would trace a few years later in _The Adventures_ _of the Dialectic_. If the proletariat is taken as the Truth which coincides with the Real, and if its project is defined outside its control, then the empirical proletariat and its activities no longer enter into the dialectical interaction. Correlatively, if the empirical proletariat is analyzed in itself, the truth claim essential to the revolutionary project can no longer be maintained. If one sticks to the Marxist premise, the result is the idea of the Party-as-Truth, as Moral Absolute, or as Revolutionary Will, as it appears in Luk\u00e1cs, Trotsky, and Sartre.\n\nThe result of Merleau-Ponty's series of confrontations with Marxism is a reformulation of the dialectic of being and truth, history and historicity. Marx's error is that he attempted to find a _place_ in history which would be the incarnation of his theory. He thinks of history in terms of totality, in terms of the principle of the _constitution_ of that totality. This, however, falls back into _representational_ thought and the idea that the concept and the object are separate; it denies both truth and historicity:\n\n> Society cannot become an object of representation, or a materiality that we would have to transform, because we are rooted in it; we discover in the particular form of our 'sociality' the sense of our projects and our tasks. (ibid., p. 67)\n\nThe task of political theory is not to explain and express the individual's attachment to a society and a history which determine it from the outside; what must be restored is the fundamental indetermination of our historical situation. The path to this restoration is the process of _interrogation_ of the real.20 This task presupposes the rejection of the goal 'of instituting a regime freed from the exploitation of man by man, which translates into the program of a party which would demand Power' (ibid., p. 68). This does not mean that for Lefort the class struggle no longer exists; to the contrary, modern capitalism makes resistance all the more necessary.\n\n> The idea of a thought committed to indetermination and of a politics committed to contestation is not foreign to the spirit of Marxism... We can recognize in Marx's image of the proletariat the symbol of a rupture of the social unity, and of a questioning, within the movement of history itself, of the relation of man to being. (ibid., p. 69)\n\nThis aspect of Marx's theory of the proletariat and its praxis had been neglected not simply by the weak-willed epigone or by the changing structure of capitalism. Lefort's 1964\u20131965 Sorbonne lecture series, 'R\u00e9alit\u00e9 sociale et histoire', shows why this loss has occurred.\n\nMarx's claim in his early writings was that the critique of theory in specific social conditions is a critique of reality itself. This can be understood on the basis of the analysis of capitalist social relations as a process of alienation that gives rise necessarily to the forms of consciousness known as fetishism and ideology. The socialization of society accompanied by the continual and increasing division of labor means that from within the society knowledge of the social totality\u2014the self-knowledge or transparence of the social\u2014is not possible. As the impossible attempt to know society from within, bourgeois theory manifests bourgeois reality in its contradictoriness. It is ideological in the previously defined sense. Marx himself would fall under the same strictures\u2014unless he could claim that his theory is _itself_ the praxis of a class of society, a social reality, which is not subject to the distortions of the alienation process. This is why Marx was driven to find anchorage in a _place_ that is both within society, a participant undergoing its alienating processes while also escaping the final fate of society. This praxis, this place, is of course the proletariat. Lefort explains why Marx can make this claim, looking first at the nature of the proletariat as a commodity, then its actual functions in the work process, and finally its political role. As the commodity called labor-power, the proletarian is a formally free contractual partner; in selling his labor-power, the proletarian lives the contradiction of being a commodity and being a proprietor. Moreover, the particular commodity labor-power has no fixed value; its value is determined through the process of the class struggle itself. The proletarian enters the labor process at first as a private individual; but the hours at work are lived as part of a collective, followed by a return to private life. This movement from individual to collective and back to individual again does not take place in the sphere of circulation but in a specific kind of production, modern industry, where the veils are lifted and the worker experiences the material social reproduction (as opposed to the still artisanal manufacturing process).\n\nModern industrial production must obey a double demand: that the worker do what he is told and yet that he participate, want to produce, and confront the unexpected quickly and creatively. The proletarian experiences rationalization at the same time that, not tied to one branch or job, and especially not tied to the commands of profit, he also experiences the perversions of that rationalization. When the proletarian emerges to find a political role, this is not simply a defensive move; it reflects also a struggle for social control. In this expression of its goals, the proletariat does not need to conceal from itself its intentions, whereas the bourgeoisie must hide from itself and its supporters the structure of domination which its rule perpetuates.\n\nThese structural conditions explain the possibility of true social knowledge for the proletariat. An infinite dialectic is established in which the proletariat, while still a part of bourgeois society, continually engages in its own self-critique. The argument is not circular. Marx presents a description of the proletarian situation and then claims that the description grounds the revolutionary implications (or the 'truth') of that description. Theory is subordinated to praxis\u2014but from the point of view of theory. Marx supposes a dialectic of theory and praxis that ultimately refuses to make the one depend on the other. But once the validity of the option for the proletariat is _assumed_ , the impossibility of falsifying the theory arises. Some social tendencies seem to confirm the analysis, others deny it. These latter are the problem. To reduce them to mere accidents would be similar to the 'method of the progressive intellectuals'. Lefort suggests that it is necessary to stop trying to formulate indefinite corollaries to Marxism; it is time to ask about its premises.\n\n> Can thought ever postulate that there exists an empirical place where history and society unveil themselves in their totality, where all equivocation is dissipated, where institutions, collective behaviors and symbols become transparent, where all the significations of the event are recuperated in the same truth?21\n\nThe question goes to the heart of Marxism. One could reply that Marx does not treat the proletariat as already universal, fully conscious, free from contradictions and that he doesn't suppose that society can be fully known but, on the contrary, stresses its contradictory character. What is more, Marx insists that history need not lead inevitably or logically to socialism: barbarism is also a real possibility. The question nonetheless reemerges.\n\n> How can there be a correct relation with history, an exchange between social theory and social praxis, open investigation and true interrogation, if we have only the choice between the continual affirmation of an absolute sense and the negation of this sense which becomes the negation of all sense? (ibid., p. 69)\n\nIf the task of History is the achievement of socialism, if particular historical events and social configurations are to be interpreted as functions of the movement toward this goal, if those phenomena that stand in the way of this movement are either integrated into the process or ignored in the press toward action, and if, in other words, the contradictory reality is taken up only in its positive aspects, then the dialectic is eliminated, experience cannot do more than modify a presupposed truth, and theory becomes raw empiricism.\n\n> The result is thus paradoxical. Pretending to discover within history, at the level of the phenomena, an absolute foundation, the theorist rejoins the position of the philosopher who flies above history and subsumes empirical reality under the idea of a transcendental becoming of truth. But this paradox should not surprise us, for if the two procedures coincide, this is because in both cases thought postulates an adequation of sense and being (of the being of society and the being of history). (ibid., p. 70)\n\nThe result is the temptation to have recourse to the myth of possessing the entirety of the phenomenon, which is precisely what the analysis of the alienated structures of capitalist society warned against. The theory becomes ideological. It is a totality separated from the real that it claims to represent.\n\nMarxism opens the question of the reality and truth of the social; but it closes off hastily the interrogation that could give access. Its error can be said to result from the equation of the signifier (the working class) and the signified (the revolution), reflecting the failure to go beyond representational and rationalist thought. Lefort's lectures show that Marx did not always fall into this error. The analysis of the Asiatic societies, for example, or the discussion of the peasantry in the _Eighteenth Brumaire_ demonstrates the role of the symbolic in social constitution. Rather than following Lefort through the analyses of Marx, his development of the insights that he has won from his careful reading of Marx into a theory that interweaves theory and political practice bears consideration on its own. A link between this new stage and his previous work is provided in his 'R\u00e9flexions sociologiques sur Machiavel et Marx: La politique et le r\u00e9el', which takes its starting point from the attempt by the Italian philosopher and communist party leader, Antonio Gramsci to reconcile Marx and Machiavelli.\n\n### 8.2.2 Political Realism as Interrogation\n\nGramsci suggests that beyond their obvious differences, Marx and Machiavelli share in a common _political realism_ which opens up a new _experience_ of the world, a new conception of society and truth.\n\n> What constitutes the common originality of their work is that both begin from the certainty that the real is what it is, and that in a certain manner there is nothing to be changed in it; and yet both induce from this a practical task.22\n\nFrom this perspective, Marx's famous 11th Feuerbach Thesis (opposing the contemplative stance of the philosopher to the activist imperative to 'change' the world) is not the simple demand for engagement, moral choice, or spontaneous activism. It is the assertion that the real is through and through praxis and that recognition of the contradictions of the present already points beyond the present moment. Similarly in the case of Machiavelli, Gramsci finds an anticipation of the 'philosophy of praxis'.\n\n> Knowledge of the past teaches what men are; the reading of empirical history is a reading of human nature. Realism consists in acting in such a way that, bringing the present back into the historical conditions of the past, it becomes possible to either apply the adequate remedies previously conceived, or to imagine other ones because we are aware of the errors that have been committed. In all events, our power of intervention is based on the consistency of both human passions and of the struggle that opposes everywhere a privileged class and the people. That opposition is the origin of all the difficulties as well as all the solutions. (ibid., pp. 117\u201318)\n\nGramsci notes that although they were apparently addressing different classes\u2014Marx for a revolutionary proletariat, Machiavelli for the Prince\u2014in both cases the relation of the work to its public was similar. True, the _Prince_ was in appearance written for the ruler; but the ruler has to justify his domination, which means, in reality, to hide it. Machiavelli's recipes may be correct; but a Prince could never publish them! Machiavelli did publish them, because he was writing for someone else: the rising, yet still timid, bourgeoisie.\n\nMachiavelli is said to be a political realist insofar as he recognizes the historical task that the new bourgeoisie, blinded by tradition, has not yet understood.\n\n> If he draws our attention to the nature of power and shows that it is a human creation arising from the permanent conditions of social struggle, it is because he is speaking to those who are blinded by Power, who haven't yet understood that it is within their grasp if only they prove to be the stronger. And he shows the price of its conquest. (ibid., p. 120)\n\nIn this way, _The Prince_ appears to have the same demystifying function as the 'philosophy of praxis', as Gramsci calls Marxism. The idea of a historical task that the Prince recognizes must be made accessible to the consciousness of the people. In this critical translation, Machiavelli's Prince becomes the 'Modern Prince', the Leninist party. The Prince\/Party has the task of understanding what is historically necessary and seeing in it the actuality of the people's will, however mystified its momentary form. The Prince\/Party is the mediator. 'In such an interpretation, Marxism permits us to rediscover the sense of Machiavellianism; but Machiavellianism rejoins, and defines in its place, the Marxist intention' (ibid., p. 123). Overthrowing the traditional authorities and mystifications permits the establishment of a new authority, which is the _task_ to which all other considerations are subordinated.\n\nThe political implications of this realism are the distinction of the meaning of class struggle from the daily life of the class. The sphere of politics is circumscribed and separated.\n\n> Precisely because of the opacity that it maintains with regard to the masses, it calls for the elaboration of a particular strategy whose objective is to obtain and to maintain their _consensus,_ to convince them of the legitimacy of their leaders and the utility of their own sacrifices. (ibid., p. 124)\n\nThis lends assurance to the leaders, giving them the certainty that they are the agents of History and that they are correct in subordinating all else to the achievement of their task. The writings of the political realist are functional; they are judged by the success or failure of their appeal. A problem emerges here. Since the appeal is to the universal, no particular case can disprove it; either the position of the realist is effective, or he must remain silent. Lefort offers an illustration. The bourgeoisie exists as an economic class, but it needs political representatives because the basis of its economic unity is competition; the proletariat, however, cannot operate through political representatives because it is itself only when it actually struggles. This distinction refutes the claim of the Prince\/Party to represent the universal because its real foundation in the particulars of class struggle is denied. The origin of its legitimacy in proletarian praxis lies outside of the Prince\/Party; its claim to universality is simply _ideological_.\n\nPursuing his notions of indetermination and interrogation, Lefort challenges Gramsci's insistence on realism by describing more closely at Machiavelli's originality.\n\n> That originality does not consist in certain propositions which would support an essential thesis. It consists in an approach which makes the writer pass from a position to another, which permits him to outline successively this or that thesis and then to destroy them as theses; to conserve certain markers [ _rep\u00e8res_ ] in this movement, to multiply them, and thanks to them, to circumscribe an order of phenomena whose unity had never been previously perceived. (ibid., pp. 126\u20137)\n\nThis movement from thesis to thesis, a multi-level unity in difference, is similar to Merleau-Ponty's philosophical interrogations. Lefort takes care to insure that he is not imposing a thesis on Machiavelli. The nature of the _reality_ he is analyzing can only be seen through this process because it is a _historical_ reality; it is not a series of circumscribed events in objective space and time, nor is it an idealized image of the progress of humanity to self-knowledge.\n\n> History in the life of a people is the repetition of the project which constitutes society: the assembling of men who understand that they depend on the same public thing, acquire a collective identity, inscribe their respective positions in a common natural space, their institutions in a common cultural space, and determine themselves as a specific community vis-\u00e0-vis foreign people. They find a certain equilibrium in the relation of forces (even if they constantly put it into question), and are led by the will of the Master, that of the most powerful or that of the majority among them, to find the means for their security and their development. (ibid., p. 129)\n\nHistorical reality is in one sense a repetition; but the repetition itself is itself historical, taking place in a specific milieu, in structures and institutions that offer a finite number of choices. Machiavelli's multi-signifying illustrations from Roman history in his _Discourses_ manifest the social divisions out of which an equilibrium has emerged; how it is threatened by ignorance, rapacity, and fear; and how the equilibrium is maintained by the singular combination of the Republic and its imperial ventures. Similarly, he recognizes that the people is virtuous, but can be misled, and that although the Republic may choose the best leaders, their position is challenged by the fact that one stratum cannot dominate the theater of civil strife. No regime can incarnate the one good regime; politics must recognize that reality is historical, indeterminate, and constantly changing.\n\nMachiavelli's 'realism' is based on the denial of any system of fixed representations. It is the 'realism' of the phenomenologist. The same is true, Lefort argues, of Marx.23\n\n> If Machiavelli's thought has come down to us, it is because it forces us to embrace simultaneously these diverse perspectives. We make his realism our own when we observe that the conquest of the real is realized in the critique of each image at which we would be tempted to stop. (ibid., p. 132)\n\nThe upshot of Lefort's analysis of Machiavelli is the project of defining an interrogation of the _logic of the political_.24 'Doesn't realism consist precisely in defining the _terms_ of a situation, in ordering them in the form of a question?' (ibid., p. 131) The question is more fundamental than the classical problem of political philosophy, which imagines that there can be one unique and stable Good Life in the City. The _political_ question must ground the realist analysis of the _social_. It poses the questions of rationality, truth, and the nature and goals of theory. The emergence of the social to itself which preoccupied Lefort in his earlier writings reappears here as fundamental to a redefinition of the political.\n\n### 8.2.3 The Logic of the Political\n\nLefort's logic of the political is not the traditional, static onto-logic: it is historical and social in the sense that these terms have been redefined here. The political as such is constituted along with, and inseparately from, the social as such. It institutes a specific mode of experiencing the historical. The earlier analysis of Mauss's interpretation of the gift relation made clear that the social is a wrenching free of interpersonal and communitarian relations from their natural insertion that defines at once the individual and the social community. With this _institution_ of the social, the political necessarily emerges. It may not be recognized as such due to a concerted effort to avoid the decisions and divisions that it opens up. The 'society without history' appears to be such a society without the political. Lefort refers here to Pierre Clastres' ethnographical demonstration that although retrospectively division is seen to be present in primitive societies, they are organized around its denial; in some cases, they deny that the difference that makes a difference (e.g., justifying what might look like social division as resulting from a transcendent, external source), or they may refuse to distinguish what appear to modern eyes as separate spheres of life (the economic, political, religious functions remain immediately interwoven). Although the political cannot be separated from the social, the two spheres do not exist on the same level, as determined by, or as determining, the social. It is not possible a priori to affirm that these phenomena are political, those are cultural, the others economic, as if history had come to an end and the analyst is able to stand outside and above it. The political is co-institutional with the social. It is a society's self-reflection, the image that it gives to itself of what makes it a 'self'. In this way, the political attempts to diffuse awareness of the problem of social division. Because the political is representational and symbolic, it cannot exist separately from or independently of the social that it at once represents and brings to self-awareness. Were it to be separated, it would lose its grounds, its origin, and become ideological. Nor can the political be separated from power.\n\n> It is necessary to begin from the general division [of the social and the political] to understand where power acquires a form, how it is effectively circumscribed, how it is represented, how it represents itself to others\u2014[as well as] how the collective representation invests power in the social body and what simultaneously happens to the determination of nature and the gods. This will show how power separates itself and is perceived as _Other,_ at a distance and 'above' society; and how the position of the separated power is modified.25\n\nThis is the general task that the political in any society must fulfill, even when it is not articulated self-consciously as the political relations _different_ from other forms of experience. A logic of the political can thus be established. It will be the logic of a unity in difference whose differentiations are not _aufgehoben_ in a more complete unity but remain open to the contingencies of historical creation. The system is unstable, riven by conflict; change is always possible, never necessary.\n\nThe implications of Lefort's approach can be seen by a reflection on the advent of democracy in Athens. With democracy came new forms of sociality; the space and time of life acquired a different sense, the relation to nature and to other humans was modified, and discourse took on a new meaning, becoming philosophical interrogation. Simultaneously, the political and the image of power changed: as politics and power moved to the center of the city, they were not perceived as forms of domination, but as open to the interrogation by society of its own nature and goals. In this way, as Lefort argues, society is attempting to incorporate in itself the law of its own origin, accounting for its own institution rather than accept a transcendent justification. Societal units and their articulations are in constant communication; their interrelations are openly readable in the social space. In a word, the society seeks its _self-transparence_. This self-understanding is specific to democracy.\n\n> [It is an] attempt that culminates in, and is rooted in the idea of a power which is _de jure_ inoccupiable, inappropriable, at an equal distance from all those who are bound to it; it is no one's power, _neutral,_ and as such, _instituting_ the social; it is at once the instigator and guarantor of the Law under which each finds his name, his place, and his limit. (ibid., p. 2)\n\nPolitics does not become a separate sphere of discourse; it is interwoven throughout the society and the socialization of the citizens. It is important to see that politics is not the whole that gives meaning to the parts; that would be metaphysics.\n\n> [Rather, the] interrogation of the political is born in a society where, as an effect of an identical historical rupture, both power and knowledge are put into question. Power is questioned in the relation it maintains with the social division in all its forms; and at the same time the knowledge is translated into a multiplicity of social discourses. Through these discourses knowledge of the markers [ _rep\u00e8res_ ] of the real and of the law is opened to question. (ibid., pp. 2\u20133)\n\nThe linkage of the political and knowledge occurs through the medium of a discourse that carries both of them, in which they represent themselves as they are instituted in and institute the process of socialization. Lefort's analysis of the political and that of knowledge once again manifest a similar structure. The logic of the political is not only referred to the social, but to the search for knowledge; the questions of reality and truth are linked in this way to the political.\n\nLefort spells out his logic of the political in a long article, 'Sur la d\u00e9mocratie: le politique et l'institution de social', written with his former student, Marcel Gauchet, on the basis of Lefort's lectures at the Universit\u00e9 de Caen, as well as in his dissertation: _Le travail de l'\u0153uvre Machiavel._26 The logic of his argument can be seen by looking at the position of the Prince, as democratic, tyrannical, or even self-proclaimed socialist. The Prince must incarnate the unity of society. He is the symbol of the Law; he has no proper function because the political, as symbolic, has no independent existence. That means that the society itself has no real delimitation; it cannot properly be called a society. Insofar as there is no Other different from the collective that incarnates its self-representation, socialization cannot take place, and collective consciousness and historical memory are not possible. The Law must be greater than and different from the individuals in order for them to find their place in it. As a result, the Prince must now assert the separation of the political from society as well as the independence of the Law. This, in turn, poses legitimation problems.\n\nEither the Prince must attempt to rejoin society\u2014but this defeats his purpose by making him dependent on society and destroying the symbolic incarnation of the Law. The other option available is to impose the law, running the risk that the citizens will revolt. The dilemma of the Prince is that he is at once the incarnation of the social yet distant and distinct from it. This dilemma does not result from the subjective choice by the Prince; it is a problem that arises when society rips itself free and constitutes itself through its political self-representation. Navigating between these two poles, a variety of mediations can be established by different forms of government; none escapes the dilemma. The courts are to instantiate the Law, yet they must be open to the new; legislators are to be representatives who establish the Law for everyone; pressure groups and political parties act from their specific positions in society in the name of the entire society. The dual claim to be within and yet without, particular and universal, opens the danger  _ideology_ if experience is reduced to one or the other pole. On the other hand, these same conditions open political discourse to the questions of interrogatory philosophy: reality and truth.\n\nThe interdependence and interrelation of the phenomena of ideology and the political are implicated in the self-assertion and self-maintenance of the social and its discursive character which is lost when the difference of _political_ experiences collapsed. Aware that his use of the term 'political' may appear too vague, Lefort tries to explain himself more precisely.\n\n> If we nonetheless call political the 'form' in which the symbolic dimension of the social reveals itself, this is not intended to privilege the relations of power among all other social relations, but to make it clear that the power is not 'something' empirically determined but is indissociable from its representation, and that the test of it is simultaneously a test of knowledge and of the mode of articulation of the social discourse that is constitutive of the social identity.27\n\nPerhaps the most striking illustration of his thesis is found in Marx's discussion of Asiatic Despotism. The concept itself indicates that this 'mode of production' is articulated in terms of something other than the productive base itself. What struck Marx in this social formation is its permanence through all types of material and social change, which is due to the absolute separation of political power from the rural community it governs. This absolute separation gives this form of rule its transcendent legitimation, diffusing the potential for revolt arising from the existing divisions inherent in the society. The efficacity of this power reflects what Lefort calls _l_ ' _imaginaire_ , a Freudian term that conceptualizes the representational dimension of psychic functioning, expressing the self-image that humans need in order to function as a social being. This self-image can be articulated in the Oedipal drama where the Father represents the Law, indicating to the male child what is socially forbidden, teaching the child his place in the society. Analogously, the social _imaginaire_ would represent the Law of society's structuring, telling it what is and is not legitimate, what can and cannot be changed, and ultimately defining and limiting its self-identity. The _imaginaire_ , symbolically articulated, structures the scientific, religious, and aesthetic discourse through which a society comes to know itself. Its function is to neutralize the conflictual _origins_ of the social, to create the illusion of permanence and necessity which characterized the 'society without history'. This task must ever begin anew and engender the logic of the political; to imagine that the political (or ideology) could succeed in conjuring away the menace is to believe in a society without origins, a thought without its situatedness, a self-transparency of the real\u2014in short, a positivism!\n\n### 8.2.4 Politics and Ideology\n\nThe interdependence of the political and the ideological is articulated through the discourse on, and in the knowledge of, the social. To be, the political must enunciate the Law. In this process, the logic of its function leads it to neglect its origins in the social. It is the articulation of the law that insures that social division becomes _real_. Once again, Lefort explains his argument by reference to Marx, who is said to sometimes conflate the discourse _on_ the real (or social) with the discourse emerging _from_ the real itself. This is another variant of the distinction of a theory _of_ and a theory _for_ practice. Although Marx interprets the 'mode of production' in a way that includes not only material production but social reproduction (including the spheres of language, consciousness, and community), he describes this social self-production in the naturalist space of a linearly progressing humanity. Marx seems at times to realize the difficulty. When he asks about the origins of social divisions, he falls back on empirical data, appealing ultimately to the division of 'labor' in the sexual act. 'Here', writes Lefort, 'Marx's positivism is unequivocally unveiled'.28 The idea that some brute fact, whose origin cannot be further explained, could come to give meaning to self- and social representations offers no bridge between a supposed natural state and the meaning attributed to it. Lefort's goal is to interrogate such political presuppositions that affect what he called a 'realist politics'.\n\nThe next step in Lefort's argument again begins with a critical reading of Marx's theory of ideology. The first point to be made is that Marx _discovered_ the phenomenon; he did not apply reductively a criticism of ideas in order to discover a 'reality' beneath them; that reduction makes sense only if the critic knows already what is truly real. Marx himself took a different path from his orthodox followers.\n\n> From the 'Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of the State' to _Capital_ , one principle of interpretation is maintained, which invites us to discover in the social structure the process of representation, first of all circumscribed within the limits of the philosophical, religious or political discourse. And it does not seem exaggerated to say that if Marx became disinterested in Hegel, it was because he discovered in the capitalist system as such the identification of the real and the rational that he had criticized [in philosophy]. It appeared to structure the form [ _mise en forme_ ] of the relations of production where the logic of operations exhibits itself thanks to the obliteration of the conditions of their appearance. But such is the virtue of the deplacement effectuated in _Capital_ that ideology shows itself there not only rooted in but pre-formed by the mode of production; that capitalism shows itself to be, in a sense, the original ideological discourse\u2014a discourse, it will be recalled, that the author designates explicitly as such several times by making the protagonists speak.29\n\nThe argument that ideology and alienation are expressed in the very structure of capitalism opened the career of ideology which adopted different forms as social complexity increased. Lefort distinguishes what he calls bourgeois ideology, totalitarian ideology, and the contemporary manifestation of an 'invisible ideology'. These figures are expressions of the _imaginaire_ in the given social and historical situation.\n\nIdeology is articulated in the attempt to re-create the society without history. Its characteristics include the neglect of origins, the denial of the division, and the pretense of rendering social space self-transparent. _Bourgeois_ ideology is specified by its continual reference to Ideals (Humanity, Justice, Democracy, Progress, etc.), its belief in Rules guiding action, and the multiplicity of accepted discourses it legitimates. Each of these discourses presents clearly the distinction between the Ideal and the Real, the Rule and its Application, Power and the Social. It is admitted that the Ideals are not (yet) realized; the existence of the Rule is assumed, yet believed only when its effects become manifest; and the multiplicity of discourses bears witness to the ongoing attempt to bring together the poles of the ideal and the real. A 'logic' similar to that of the political manifests itself in the framework of this form of ideology. In articulating itself, the social pretends to self-transparency, yet as articulated, it separates itself from itself; as separate it is open to question, challenge, revision; finally, a new articulation or discourse emerges. Bourgeois ideology is vulnerable for this reason; yet from within its own logic, any challenge simply becomes grist for its mill (as in the expression that 'the exception proves the rule'). Challenges appear as appeals to progress, confirming the twin projects of the advance of Enlightenment and History.\n\nThe traditional Marxist critique of bourgeois ideology correctly points to its mystifying nature; the puzzle arises for the Marxist when the overthrow (or 'transcendence') of bourgeois ideology takes the form of totalitarianism. Lefort's 'meta-sociological' suggestion is that the bourgeois logic of indefinite repetition is 'haunted by tautology'.30 Totalitarianism tries to achieve in reality the 'reconciliation' of the poles that bourgeois ideology holds apart. That separation is to be eliminated in a new type of sociality with no barriers between the spheres of life. Totalitarian ideology attempts to incarnate a mastery of social reality from within society itself; it is a politics which denies its separateness from civil society. It does not speak of the real, but attempts to incarnate itself in it, particularly through the vehicle of the mass party. Typical of the totalitarian ideology is the appearance of a 'new social agent', the militant, who pretends to incarnate the universal, speaking in the name of society itself.31 The militant is both in the social and of it; and yet he claims also to know its reality and its immanent goals. The question of subjectivity is covered over, as is the problem of interpersonal relations. A new functionality becomes operational; the artificial nature of the party becomes a virtue, representing a smooth logic claiming to function in terms of the image of the totality.\n\nThe functioning of totalitarianism closes the society in on itself; there is no external source of identity, legitimation, or socialization. This change in the nature of the social itself explains how totalitarianism differs from previous despotisms which were always marked by the separation and autonomy of the Prince. It explains also its instability, and the concomitant function of the Terror, which is not accidental or arbitrary. The goal of the totalitarian is to abolish the difference between the political and the social, the ideal and the real, signifier and signified. At the same time, it must _show_ what it has done, in order to identify itself as absolute Power. Where the bourgeois ideology spoke of the social without claiming to be fully incarnate in it, the totalitarian has no distance. If the organization goes awry, the Plan fails or the bureaucrat misuses power, the whole edifice is put into question. Terror is not only necessary for this reason; it also makes each individual contingent and particular; all are alike in that the Terror may strike anyone. The result is that the desired fusion and elimination of the division within the social is realized; although viable, the edifice is fragile. It need not fall on its own.32 Its grotesque forms\u2014in Nazi Germany or in Russia, for example\u2014suggest that perhaps another means for conjuring the division which marked bourgeois ideology is possible and that our modern Western societies may be taking another path.33\n\nLefort calls the western alternative to totalitarian practice (similar to what Habermas called 'late capitalisim') 'the invisible ideology'. Reacting to both bourgeois and totalitarian ideologies, the attempt, again, is to close over the distance between the representation and the real which threatened bourgeois ideology while at the same time renouncing the completion of the representation within the real by means of its totalization, as is the case with totalitarianism. Analogously, the invisible ideology stresses the role of the group as both an expression of and the goal of social communication. What is communicated is not important; what counts is bringing everyone together in a homogeneous here-and-now, conveying the impression of a mastery over the social that is felt by each member. Personal presence is stressed, even though the person and the message are dissolved in the ritual of communication itself. Nothing is taboo: 'in no epoch has one talked so much' (ibid., p. 45). There are no Masters, no Rules or Ideals, and no image of the Historical Totality (as in bourgeois ideology); there is only the information that is experienced as being the social itself shared by all.\n\nThe result cloaks social divisions. Although talk about class, social contradictions, inequalities is permitted, these simply become part of the socialization process. Everything is communicable, sayable, intelligible; nothing is sacred, but everything is equal, equally real, and equally unreal. Science too changes: no longer acting on the real or a theory of it, science is the real itself. Organization is not acting on the real but obeying its dictates. There are no longer bosses and employees, workers and machines; all are part of a functioning whole, organized by a rationality independent of individual desire and human choice. Science spreads further insofar as everything is in principle equally intelligible; Nature, Psyche, and Society are united through the artificialism of method, be it formalism, operationalism, or systems theory. A further facet of this machinery is the modern ('structuralist') attempt to eliminate the subject in favor of the text. Pedagogy plays also a role, using its measurement techniques and ultimately the notion of self-evaluation to eliminate the (bourgeois) role of the Master. As a result, knowledge is no longer related to the Truth or the Law but only to the supposedly real itself. This reality is transmitted through information, which all must possess on every conceivable subject in order to join the others in the group. On the other hand, this knowledge is not a closed system; everything can and must be said; the quest for perpetual novelty illuminates a present that never becomes a lived past nor opens onto a future.\n\nLefort's description of the forms of ideology, written in the 1970s, implicitly recognizes but does not develop an idea of convergence; it is based on structural analogies that are governed by the logic of the political. Lefort's analysis is descriptive, not predictive, letting 'the real' speak for itself. That characteristic opens it up toward future evolutions. In his text, he considers as well the ideology of consumption, the transformation of nature into environment, the role of psychology, changing fashions, and more. What is at issue is (1) the attempt to destroy or deny the historical dimension of society through the 'novelty' of a perpetual present; (2) the closing of the question of the origins of the social by instantaneously and continually re-creating the group personality; (3) the denial of the division that institutes the social and creates the illusion that through the plethora of information and communication the social itself is speaking; (4) the homogenization of the real so that it no longer poses a threat through its divisions and difference; and (5) the socialization of the individual in such a manner as to limit the possible expressions of desire to a sphere defined in advance as the real.\n\n## 8.3 Philosophy Again\n\nIn his conclusions to a long review of Lefort's _Machiavel_ , Marcel Gauchet writes that 'he restores for us the possibility of thinking about society in a manner which is _philosophy_ and knows that it can _only_ be philosophy'.34 From the time that he broke with the Fourth International, Lefort had rejected the theory of the Leninist party as leader of the proletarian revolution. He split twice with  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ over the implications of this issue and has analyzed it extensively in his essay on May 1968, written in the heat of events and published in _La Br\u00e8che_. Lefort's insistence that the proletariat alone can make its own revolution through its own experience earned him epithets from Sartre for being a 'pure consciousness' above the fray. While he has abandoned the theory of the proletariat in its classical form, Lefort's attitude toward social change has remained constant. A theory of the social which knows that it can _only_ be philosophy is all that the intellectual\u2014or anyone else, for that matter\u2014can claim. To think that you are doing more is not only self-deluding but dangerous. At best, such a theory which ignores its own limits can be an honestly bourgeois ideological stance; at worse, ignoring its own origins and claiming knowledge of the totality, it falls over to the totalitarian side. But this limitation of theory does not imply an 'existentialism' of some vague sort: that would be to enter 'the invisible ideology'.\n\nIn his essay on Merleau-Ponty after the sudden death of the philosopher, 'La politique et la pens\u00e9e de la politique', Lefort stressed that a reflection consistent with the philosopher's thinking would support proletarian goals insofar as 'we can recognize in them the symbol of a rupture of the social unity, and of a questioning, in the movement of history itself, of the relation of man to being'.35 That rupture is not only due to the action of the proletariat. Within the context of the totalitarian and the invisible forms of ideology, such a rupture is open and inevitable, although inarticulate and unaware of its own nature. The political imperative, however, is not to play the modern Prince. Each participates from his own place: each must analyze, write, and speak for himself. No more can be done. This is not the position of a pure spirit watching the contradictory particulars fight it out, although it certainly is not Lenin in the Zurich library reading Hegel's _Logic_. It is the place of lucidity guided by theory; the place of theory and the place which the individual cannot but occupy within a social written in the double register of the Law and the Real. To want to be the leader, or to think of oneself as the Marxist militant, is to be open to contradiction in one's own attitudes and from the social reality itself.\n\nThis does not mean that there will not be social change, that all horizons are blocked, and that exploitation and domination will continue. Lefort's position does not imply a quietism; he expects struggle to continue in all domains. But social change will not follow a linear logic any more than it follows mechanical laws. It surges forth unexpectedly. Not every action that calls itself 'revolutionary' is in fact conducive to political change. Lefort's contribution appears to some critics limited to nay-saying, calling for an always awake attentiveness to the dangers of bureaucratization and renewed forms of domination. There is more to be said. In the domain of theory\u2014as philosophy and as an approach to a radical sociology and political theory\u2014Lefort elaborates insights which, from its own point of view and through its own praxis, the New Left has gropingly sought. His attempt to renew that unity of the theoretical, the social, and the political inaugurated by Marx and interrogated repeatedly by Lefort suggests the need to remain in touch with the origins of that New Left  _experience_ .\n\nFootnotes\n\n1\n\nAs was shown in Chap. , the earlier work of J\u00fcrgen Habermas tried to avoid this reproach. I will return to the further development of his version of critical theory in the 'Afterword' to this volume. I take the liberty of adding to this note a reference to a recent article that I wrote on Habermas as himself an engaged political thinker under the title 'Citizen Habermas', in _Constellations_ , November 2015. https:\/\/\u200bonlinelibrary.\u200bwiley.\u200bcom\/\u200bdoi\/\u200bpdf\/\u200b10.\u200b1111\/\u200b1467-8675.\u200b12190\n\n2\n\nOn the group 'Socialisme ou Barbarie', see also the discussion in Chap.  of Cornelius Castoriadis. It would demand a separate monograph to trace the nuances of the group's history or to try to separate the contributions of the individual members. By treating Lefort and Castoriadis separately, I hope to make clear both what unites them and at least the basis, if not the substantial details, of their differences. (The third member of the group to become a well-known critical philosopher in the 1970s was Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lyotard, a friend to whom I am also indebted, whose later work on the post-modern and the end of 'grand narratives' falls outside the scope of this present work.)\n\n3\n\nOn the quarrel, cf. Sartre's 'Merleau-Ponty', published in the commemorative issue of _Les Temps Modernes_ and reprinted in _Situations IV_ (especially pp. 257ff.). It is hard to avoid adding in reference to this article that Sartre seems never to have understood the radical novelty of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. His continual categorization of Merleau-Ponty as expressing a longing for the primal happiness he lived in his youth may be interesting psychology, but it explains little about Merleau-Ponty's work, although perhaps much about Sartre!\n\n4\n\n'Entretien avec C. Lefort', in _l'Anti-Mythes_ , No. 14, p. 10. (The interview dates from April 19, 1975, and is now translated in _Telos_ No. 30, Winter, 1977. The _l'Anti-Mythes_ has also published interviews with P. Clastres, Henri Simon, and C. Castoriadis, the latter having been translated in _Telos_ No. 23, Spring 1975.) The animating spirit of the _l'Anti-Mythes_ seems to have Lefort's student, Marcel Gauchet, who later broke violently with his teacher. Gauchet became the co-editor of the journal _Le D\u00e9bat_ , a central organ of the French intellectual center-left.\n\n5\n\nIbid., pp. 12\u201313.\n\n6\n\nIbid., p. 27.\n\n7\n\nThis argument is developed particularly in 'Le prol\u00e9tariat et sa direction' and 'L'exp\u00e9rience prol\u00e9tarienne', both of which are reprinted in _El\u00e9ments d'une Theorie de la bureaucratie_ (Droz, 1971). In the latter article, Lefort develops a methodology for the sociological analysis of what the experience, and hence the consciousness, of the proletariat in fact is, how it changes, and why it can be so volatile.\n\n8\n\nThe term will be defined more precisely below. It might be noted that this definition of the specificity of the social against Sartre's idealism points to the importance of recognizing that the properly sociological deals with '2 plus _n_ persons' (as opposed to Sartre's existential individualism).\n\n9\n\nIn _El\u00e9ments d'une Theorie de la bureaucratie_ (hereafter _El\u00e9ments_ ), op. cit., p. 65.\n\n10\n\nFor example, _Les Temps Modernes'_ support for Gomulka as the only choice in the post-1956 situation in Poland, even though he clearly was not helping to extend\u2014quite the contrary, he sought to normalize\u2014the movement that brought him to power. At least by saving the party, and acting cautiously to prevent another Russian invasion, he appeared to the 'progressive intellectuals' to be giving History another chance. Similarly, Lefort shows that the application of this same 'method' transforms Sartre's apparently critical 'The Ghost of Stalin' into a superficial critique that denounces and sees a series of errors and contingencies at the root of Russian political behavior rather than analyzes the foundations of Stalinism.\n\n11\n\nAside from some nasty polemical remarks, Sartre's major criticism of Lefort is that he denies mediation, seeing the proletariat in a crypto-Hegelian fashion. Sartre sees Lefort's notion of the accumulation of proletarian experience as built on the representation of an evolution from seed to flower to fruit. Lefort's proletariat is said to be modeled on Goethe's Wilhelm Meister or Marivaux's Marianne: it earns its education through adversity. Sartre portrays Lefort's attitude as one of the pure intellectual consciousness standing outside the fray because he insists that the Stalinism must be accounted for through an analysis of the actual experience of the class. Sartre's criticism points to a real problem in Lefort's position, although he neglects its nuances for his polemical purposes. Lefort has seen the problems with his understanding of the proletariat, although not by making apologies to Sartre. On the other hand, Lefort's attack on Sartre remains valid despite the modifications that Sartre's _politics_ have undergone since then. Lefort is correct in pointing out that, although it stresses ambiguity, the Sartrean ambiguity is always _for consciousness_ , subjective; as a result, it can be cleared up once one chooses the path of History. For Lefort, Sartre thus leaves behind Hegel, returning back to Kant: 'Where the best of Hegel is in his attempt to describe the becoming of Spirit, to show how activity develops within passivity itself, you [i.e., Sartre] reintroduce the abstraction of moral consciousness\u2014not the least sure of itself, certainly, nor clear to itself, but transcendent in relation to all its determinations, pure activity permitting neither deliberation nor critique inasmuch as it coincides with its project of revolution' (in _\u00c9l\u00e9ments_ , p. 92). And, continues Lefort: 'That the proletariat is already a class at the level of the production process, but not in the least a completed synthesis, that there is a dialectic but not a finalism, that the activity of the vanguard organizations must be put within the dynamic of the whole _[ensemble]_ while this does not in the least mean that there is an undifferentiated totality nor a miraculous spontaneity\u2014it is clear that all this, which upsets the relation subject-object is for you a \"magical thought\"' (ibid., p. 100). In effect, for Lefort, Sartre's position is nothing but a 'social' exemplification of the dialectic of Self and Other; forgetting that already _Being and Nothingness_ showed that such a dialectic, even in the example of love, turns out to be antagonistic.\n\n12\n\n'L'\u00e9change et la lutte des hommes', p. 1400. I am citing from an offprint of this article given me by Lefort; unfortunately, I cannot find the exact date of publication. The article was written in 1951. All citations from this article in this part of the text are given as 'ibid.', followed by a page number. As indicated in the text, these essays were published together in _Les forms de l'histoire. Essais d'anthropologie politique_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1978). The present essay is found at pages 7\u201314.\n\n13\n\n'Soci\u00e9t\u00e9s sans historie et Historicit\u00e9', p. 92. Again, I am citing from an offprint and have not found the original text. The article was written in 1952. Citations in the text follow the form indicated in n. 12. The present essay is now at _ibid_ , pages 15\u201329.\n\n14\n\nLefort also appeals critically to the notion of a 'basic personality' presented by the cultural psychoanalysis of Abram Kardiner. C.f., his 'Notes critiques sur les m\u00e9thodes de Kardiner', in _Cahiers internationaux de sociologie_ , No. 10, 1951, and the 'Introduction \u00e0 l'oeuvre d'Abram Kardiner', in the French translation of _L'individu dans sa soci\u00e9t\u00e9_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1969). (The essay is reprinted in _op. cit._ , pp. 80\u2013111.)\n\nI will return later to Lefort's use of Freud, mediated in part by Jacques Lacan, when I discuss his notion of the _imaginaire_ of a society. Lefort does not believe that concepts can be carried over from one domain of explanation to another, nor does he believe in an applied psychoanalysis. However, the _experience_ confronted in the psychoanalytic cure and its meta-psychological reflection show parallels to the problematic Lefort is confronting. In the previously cited Interview with the _l'Anti-Mythes_ , he notes that 'whether it is a question of the critique of the myth of revolution, of the myth of the 'good society', of the critique of the contradictions of power, the idea of social division as the original division and hence of the permanence of conflict, of the idea that societies order themselves as a function of the demand for and the impossibility of thinking their origins, or again of the idea that the discourse which a society maintains about itself is constitutive of its institution, or of the relation that I attempt to establish between the figures of knowledge and power\u2014in all these cases, the borrowing from Freud is felt' (op. cit., p. 27).\n\n15\n\nLater, Lefort will identify the emergence of History with that of a Power, the political, separated from the society and claiming to incarnate its unity. He will return to this question from the point of view of the anthropological work of Pierre Clastres, _La soci\u00e9t\u00e9 contre l'\u00e9tat_ (Paris: Minuit, 1974).\n\n16\n\n'Rapport de Recherches', p. 16. This essay was submitted to the CNRS, Lefort's employer, as part of the dossier for his yearly evaluation. It has not been published.\n\n17\n\n'Capitalisme et religion au XVIe Si\u00e8cle', in _Les Temps Modernes_ , 78 (1952). I am again citing from an offprint, following the above procedure; this time, however, the publication data were on the offprint! (now reprinted in _op. cit._ , pp. 112\u2013126).\n\n18\n\n'L'ali\u00e9nation comme concept sociologique', p. 50. Again, I am citing from an offprint and have not got the publication data. The article dates from 1956. Citations in the text follow the above pattern (now reprinted in _op. cit._ , pp. 49\u201368).\n\n19\n\n'La politique et la pens\u00e9e de la politique', in _Letters Nouvelles_ , lie ann\u00e9e, nouvelle s\u00e9rie, no. 32, p. 30. Again, citation is from an offprint; date of the article is 1961 or 1962; citations follow the above practice.\n\n20\n\nLefort will later call this procedure _interpretation_ in order to indicate that the interrogation follows a logic and method that arise from the imbrication and participation of the subject in the subject-matter.\n\n21\n\nCitation is from 'R\u00e9alit\u00e9 sociale et histoire', p. 68. This is the mimeographed version of the student notes, usually reread and corrected by the professor, and for sale in a bookstore near the Sorbonne. Lefort was asked to give these lectures by Raymond Aron, who was on leave. Lefort was planning to revise these lectures for eventual book publication; instead, the essential thrust of the course is found in 'Marx: d'une vision de l'histoire \u00e0 l'autre', _op. cit._ , pp. 195\u2013233.\n\n22\n\n'Notes sociologiques sur Machiavel et Marx: La politique et le r\u00e9el', p. 116. Once again, I cite from an offprint\u2014but found the data: _Cahiers internationaux de sociologi\u00e9_. Vol. 28, nouvelle s\u00e9rie, 7e ann\u00e9e, janvier-juin, 1960. References in the text follow the usual format (now reprinted in _op. cit._ , pp. 169\u2013194).\n\n23\n\nLefort points out in 'La naissance de l'id\u00e9ologie et l'humanisme, Introduction' ( _Textures_ , 73\/6\u20137, pp. 27\u201368), that Marx and his followers tended to neglect this fundamental insight when they reduce ideology to a simple masking of the real. Such an argument supposes that it is possible to know the real in itself\u2014for example, that the real basis of Roman society was its system of production (now reprinted in _op. cit._ , pp. 234\u2013277).\n\nA propos of the 'realism of the phenomenologist', c.f. Merleau-Ponty's 'Note sur Machiavel' in _Signes_ , pp. 267ff. The text is based on a lecture given in Rome in 1949.\n\n24\n\nThe term is taken from the title of a review of Lefort's _Machiavel_ by Marcel Gauchet (in _Critique_ , No. 329, Oct 1974). The suggestion of such a logic, however, is already contained in the article we are discussing.\n\n25\n\n' _Rapport de Recherches_ ', op. cit., p. 12.\n\n26\n\nIn _Textures_ , 71\/2\u20133, pp. 7\u201379, and _Machiavel: Le travail de Toeuvre_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1973).\n\n27\n\n'Esquisse d'une gen\u00e8se de l'id\u00e9ologie dans les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s modernes', in _Textures_ , 74\/8\u20139, pp. 3\u201354. A slightly revised version appears in the _Encyclopedia Universalis_ (Organon) under the title 'L'\u00e8re de l'id\u00e9ologie' (now reprinted in _op. cit._ , pp. 278\u2013329). A further elaboration of these themes is found in Lefort's 'Le nom de l'Un', in E. de la Bo\u00e9tie, _Discours de la servitude volontaire_ (Paris: Payot, 1976).\n\n28\n\n _L'\u00e8re de l'id\u00e9ologie, op. cit._ , p. 78.\n\n29\n\n'La naissance', op. cit., p. 48.\n\n30\n\n'Esquisse', op. cit., p. 31.\n\n31\n\nIbid., p. 36.\n\n32\n\nLefort's recent study of Solzhenitsyn's _Gulag Archipelago_ , _Un homme en trop_ (Paris: Seuil, 1976) elaborates this theory brilliantly.\n\n33\n\n'Rapport de Recherches', op. cit., p. 12.\n\n34\n\nGauchet, in _Critique_ , op. cit., p. 926.\n\n35\n\n'La politique et la pens\u00e9e de la politique', op. cit., p. 69.\n\u00a9 The Author(s) 2019\n\nDick HowardThe Marxian LegacyPolitical Philosophy and Public Purpose<https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-030-04411-4_9>\n\n# 9. Ontology and the Political Project: Cornelius Castoriadis\n\nDick Howard1\n\n(1)\n\nDepartment of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA\n\nDick Howard\n\nFor those who emerged from the political upheavals of the 'New Left' in the early 1970s, it has become at once more difficult and easier to be a Marxist. The difficulties are evident: numerical decline of the industrial working class as well as its depoliticization and domination by labor bureaucrats; the impossibility of deluding oneself about the heirs of 1917 and the kind of society they have instituted in the Soviet Union and its satellite states; and the seeming displacement of the axis of contradiction to the Third World, leaving only a vague cultural malaise at home that can be easily co-opted and ephemeral. The paradox is that precisely these difficulties make Marx _ism_ more attractive. Blocked in practical politics, Marxism offers a theory of the 'essential' course and agency of history. It defines the nature of revolution, condemning all reformism. The absence of an industrial proletariat leaves the political intellectual both a theoretical and a practical task: the empirical appearances must be interpreted critically in order to discover their essential structure; at the same time, these foundational structures must be translated into practical propositions whose aim is not simply reforms for their own sake but projects whose realization points to human possibilities beyond the immediate good they can bring.\n\nMarxism remains a _theory_ that needs a practical mediation: an organizational form. The concept of 'theoretical practice' popularized by the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser cannot fill this gap. Others have returned for inspiration to the history of leftist-political debates, starting from those that opposed Marx, Bakunin, and Proudhon in the nineteenth century, moving on to those sparked by Lenin, Luxemburg, and Trotsky or latching on to Gramsci's concept of the 'organic intellectual' or to the militant anarcho-communism of Karl Korsch or the Dutch Council Communists. For some, crystallization in a party (or 'pre-party party') is the essential task; for others, local activities on different levels can replace it until the temperature for fusion is reached. For all, implicitly or explicitly, the theory continues to serve as a rallying point. However interpreted, the theory is the source of meaning, the glue holding together fragmented activities and lives. Even if this or that aspect is questioned, there remains the idea that 'the theory' must exist. It is a Holy Grail that motivates the eternal quest.\n\nThe development of the group 'Socialisme ou Barbarie' and its _spiritus rector_ , Cornelius Castoriadis, offers a critical mirror that puts this quest into a different, more radical, context. Although the journal  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ was no longer published, its reputation was almost mythical among critical French leftists who might find old copies in a used bookstore on the rue Cujas in the Latin Quarter, the journal never published more than a thousand copies; members of the group numbered roughly 100. Castoriadis himself, a Greek refugee, published pseudonymously under the names Pierre Chaulieu and Paul Cardan. In the wake of the 1968 revolts, his work began to be republished in popular editions; and his major philosophical work, _L'institution imaginaire de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9_ , appeared in 1975. Although it should not be forgotten that his work developed within an activist political group, Castoriadis' evolution is significant for those who are still motivated by the search for a Marxism that can fulfill the promise that the founder invested in it.\n\nA member of the Greek Communist Youth Party under the Metaxas dictatorship, Castoriadis, recognized during the Occupation that Stalinist politics was radically opposed to the project of proletarian self-liberation. Joining the Trotskyists of the IVth International was the logical step, which meant spending the years of anti-fascist resistance dodging not only the fascists but Stalin's thugs as well. Moving to France after the war (to study philosophy), Castoriadis quickly found himself in opposition to the dominant tendency of the IVth International, not simply with regard to conjectural questions, but concerning basic issues such as the nature of the Russian regime, the structure of capitalism and the kind of crisis that would affect it, as well the role and function of a revolutionary political party. With Claude Lefort (under the pseudonym C. Montal), he took the lead in forming an oppositional tendency within the IVth International. The final rupture came in 1948 and led to the founding of the political group and journal,  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ .1\n\nAs 'Socialisme ou Barbarie' strove to relate theoretically and practically to the political and social changes of contemporary capitalism, its approach was colored by an increasingly critical attitude toward the ambiguities in Marx's work itself. The basis of the critique was the insistence on taking Marx seriously\u2014Marx as revolutionary, not Marx as a theorist of politics. In the last five issues of the journal (numbers 36\u201340, April\u2013June 1964 to June\u2013August 1965), Castoriadis published a lengthy article, 'Marxism and Revolutionary Theory', that argues for the basic incompatibility of the two. He and the group opted for the latter. Shortly thereafter, a letter was sent to the journal's subscribers announcing the cessation of publication. The editors stressed the correctness of the journal's analyses, adding optimistically that its audience was growing. Nonetheless, the audience remained only consumers of theory, while the theory itself did not indicate any political Archimedean point on which political action could build. 'Marxism and Revolutionary Theory' had concluded with the promise of a further article, under the title 'On the Status of a Revolutionary Theory'. In the letter, Castoriadis indicates that the theoretical retooling he was calling for could not be accomplished while attempting to maintain the journal as part of a political project. Hence, both the journal and the group were dissolved.\n\nThe analyses that had appeared in  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ appeared to many to have come to their first fruition in May 1968. Personally, despite their different ages and backgrounds, its ex-members found themselves at home in that movement which, as Castoriadis wrote, was not just the demand for but the affirmation of revolution.2 Along with Edgar Morin and Claude Lefort, Castoriadis published (under the pseudonym Jean-Marc Coudray) a short volume of essays in early June 1968, attempting to contribute some analysis to the events in process. Yet the group did not reunite. After May 1968, Castoriadis left his job as a professional economist at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED) (acquiring French citizenship, which permitted him to publish under his own name) and devoted himself mainly to theoretical tasks. He began the publication of his writings, became a practicing psychoanalyst, and completed the promised essay on the status of revolutionary theory, which was published as _l'institution imaginaire de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9_ and which laid the groundwork of a systematic ontology.3 He began teaching a course on political economy at Nanterre and with Claude Lefort and Marcel Gauchet was a member of the editorial board of the journal _Textures_. After a recent split (1977) in the editorial board of _Textures_ , a new journal, _Libre_ , began publication with Castoriadis and Lefort as leading members.4\n\n## 9.1 The Political Critique of the Economic and the Economic Critique of the Political\n\nIn a conversation about the evolution of 'Socialisme ou Barbarie', Castoriadis once remarked that the group had 'pulled the right string'\u2014that of bureaucratization\u2014and had simply and ruthlessly kept pulling. For militants emerging from Trotskyism, this starting point is not surprising. A demystification of the results of 1917 was an essential political task. The tools chosen by Castoriadis were at first those of orthodox Marxism. Yet the implicit logic of his political approach contained, in germinal form, an essential element of his later critique of Marxism that should be mentioned from the outset. The working class will continue to revolt against its immediate conditions, showing its willingness to struggle now for a better life. Yet so long as that better life is imagined in Stalinist tonalities, the political translation of this immediate struggle can only be provided by the Communist Party. What is important here is not simply that this strengthens the manipulative capacity of the Communist Party. This suggests implicitly that the stunting of the creative imagination of individuals, due to the existence of a socially legitimated collective representation\u2014an _imaginaire social_ , as Castoriadis refers to it later\u2014must be analyzed for its own sake. The imaginary social representations are, in effect, a material force in their own right. To come to such an 'idealist' conclusion, Castoriadis took a strictly 'materialist' path.\n\nThe position of Trotsky was a pole of attraction for those who refused to recognize in Russia the true realization of their struggles and hopes. Yet a moment's (Marxist) reflection shows the inadequacy of Trotsky's notion of Russia as a 'degenerated workers' state'. If, in spite of accidents that could appear temporary aberrations, Russia were still essentially a 'workers' state', the implication would be that the elimination of private ownership and the replacement of the anarchy of capitalist production by the Plan are the essence of socialism. The 'degeneration' would concern only the form, not the essence, of the Russian social formation. But this claim confuses the juridical forms of property with the actual relations of production. For Marx, it is precisely these relations of production that determine the forms of distribution and their (deformed) reflection in the superstructure. The vacillations in Trotsky's own analyses\u2014for example, on the question of 'Thermidor' or on the tactics to be followed by the Opposition\u2014stem from this identification of form and essence.\n\nCastoriadis' analysis of, 'The Relations of Production in Russia' (1949),5 takes up this empirical problem which Trotsky had not dealt with. His virtuoso Marxist analysis serves as an illustration of what consistent Marxism can propose to empirical study. It had political implications as well. By 1934, Trotsky had been led to recognize that the working class was effectively excluded from control in the Stalinist state and that a new revolutionary party was necessary. Castoriadis' critique of the priority given to the juridical representation leads him to an examination of the social relations that underlie it. His conclusion is that '[t]he dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be simply a political dictatorship; it must be above all the economic dictatorship of the proletariat, for otherwise it will only be a mask for the dictatorship of the bureaucracy'.6 This conclusion is not only interesting from a historical perspective; more important is the way it is established by following the example of the young Marx's demystification of the juridical superstructure before examining its relations of the socio-economic infrastructure.\n\nA further consequence of the analysis in 'The Relations of Production in Russia' is the demonstration of the central, and independent, role played by the bureaucracy. The critique of the Trotskyist position could have led to the theory of 'state capitalism'.7 It would assert that the state (or the party) plays the same historical role in developing the forces of production that the capitalist class played in the West. The implication is that what exists in Russia is still a form\u2014the most advanced, and therefore presumably the most contradictory form\u2014of capitalism. It follows that the laws formulated by Marx in _Capital_ are still valid in Russia, and that a proletarian revolution can be expected there. Castoriadis' analysis of actual conditions in Russian industry (and agriculture, to which he devoted a separate article) showed in fact that the role of the bureaucratic state is to set these laws out of play. A _political_ intervention has occurred, making it impossible to claim that the state is a collective capitalist and demanding recognition that Russia presents a _historically new social formation based on a new form of domination: the bureaucracy_.8\n\nThis recognition of the _political_ role played by the state implies a specific reading of the Marxian notion of political economy that has implications for the idea of revolution itself. Marxism is not understood as a (technical) economic theory, nor as a closed system in the classical rationalist sense. Marxism is in fact a theory of _social_ relations. The critique of the Soviet Union and the demystification of the juridical mask that uncovers the human relations that permit the continuance of the bureaucratic form which structures these relations can be extended to formulate a critique of capitalist society as well. Bureaucracy is not simply a political category. With the appreciation of the bureaucratic 'string' comes, necessarily, a re-evaluation of the _content_ of socialism. This further break with Trotskyist essentialist formalism was confirmed and furthered by the events in East Germany (in 1953) and Poland and Hungary (in 1956). The idea of self-management that had been central for the group since 1948\/49 was transformed and developed into a concrete and elaborated demand for the restructuring of daily life in the 1955 essay, 'On the Content of Socialism', whose second and third parts were completed in 1957\u20131958.9\n\nThe _political_ critique of bureaucratic society demanded a re-examination of the _economic_ base of Marxian theory. The political critique had been based on that economic theory. The tensions and antinomies it laid bare in the sphere of the political now rebound, putting itself into question. The theoretical lesson is there is no privileged position from which to observe the goings-on in the world, no detached observer, and no mythical proletarian subject-object of history.10 Neither economics nor politics has a God's-eye-view of a once-and-for-all existing world structure. Just like the original economic thrust into the political, the political rebound into the economic turns out to destroy its own foundations. In one of the young Marx's favorite Hegelian phrases, 'Its victory is at the same time its own loss'. It loses its sense of itself as critical.\n\nThe _economic_ critique of the political points to the central role of the _relations_ of production, which are determined by the relation of capital to labor. Command over the means of production assures the command over the central commodity, labor-power. Once capitalism as a system of production and of social reproduction becomes dominant, capital tends to accumulate at the expense of labor, new and more 'scientific' modes of exploitation are devised; there ensues either an absolute or a relative pauperization of the working class. Marx does point to countervailing forces, most importantly the class struggle which increases its intensity with the growth of trade union power. Later analysts nuanced this picture, pointing, for example, to the relative privilege of the working class in the advanced countries due to imperial or colonial domination. The crucial point for Castoriadis is that Marx thought of his system as deciphering economic _laws_. To do this, he had to assume a fixed level of wages (even though he admitted that it was determined by 'historical and moral factors'). Castoriadis points out that there is nothing in Marx's theory that permits this level to be established; nothing explains why the trade union movement cannot succeed in decreasing\u2014rather than increasing, as Marx's theory supposes\u2014the rate of exploitation. As a result, the creative activity embodied in the social relations of production is destroyed in its economic translation into a Marxist 'law' of increasing exploitation and pauperization. If the 'law' did hold, the proletariat could only exist as an object caught up in the reified forms in alienated production. Castoriadis insists on the political dilemma that results. _Either_ the proletariat is passive objective material doomed to continued exploitation and impoverishment at all levels of life, in which case it is difficult to see the positive content, or even possibility, of socialist revolution and its difference from the desperate revolts of the downtrodden which have colored history; _or_ it is a creative human force seeking self-assertion and struggling continually for its freedom in socio-historical conditions that can change as a result of its own action, in which case the law of value and its scientific certainty of capitalist collapse falls, and with it falls the edifice of _Capital_.11\n\nA further aspect of this political problem that had appeared already in Castoriadis' analysis of the relations of production in Russia reappears in his analysis of bureaucratic capitalism. If the law of value were to be maintained, not simply as determining wages but across the board, that would demand the existence of competition and a free market situation. The competitive free market permits the determination of the value of a commodity (in Vol. 1 of _Capital_ ) as measured by the amount of _socially necessary_ labor time it contains; and (in Vol. 3) it explains the difference of value and market-price as determined by the _equalization_ of the rates of profit. What occurs under the bureaucratic domination is the interference of the political factor into the play of these supposedly free forces. The implication of this political state action is that the sphere _of validity of economics as science is limited_. For the Marxist used to looking to the determination by the material base, the result is a fundamental _indetermination_ of the process of revolution.\n\nThe political critique of the economic, like the economic critique of the political, sends Castoriadis back to basic theoretical questions. He knows that both spheres have deeper roots. He admits that even to talk about a 'content' of socialism is misleading insofar as it implies something fixed and external that can be possessed. In fact, writes Castoriadis, 'the absurdity of all inherited political thought consists precisely in wanting to resolve men's problems for them, whereas the only political problem in fact is this: how can people become capable of resolving their problems for themselves?'12 The 'content' of socialism can only be the _process_ of self-management, which Castoriadis later reformulates as the self-institution of society. Indeed, as his political reflection was driven toward an increasingly virulent critique of Marxism as itself instituting a hindrance to revolutionary activity, Castoriadis went beyond the conception of self-management as an _economic_ notion to assert that revolutionary self-management must be _total_ if it is to cope with the problems created by the socially inculcated tendency toward privatization, isolation, and consumptive mystification typical of bureaucratic societies. A revolutionized society would be one in which the relation of the individual to all institutional forms is involved in a continual process of self-criticism. The problematic of the _institution_ , as both instituted and instituting, becomes central once the antinomies of the economic and the political are worked through by a consistent Marxism.\n\n## 9.2 Organization: The False but Necessary Debate\n\nCertain of the orthodoxy of their Marxism, and sure that self-management was the only adequate form for a revolutionary society, the group 'Socialisme ou Barbarie' was confronted with the question of its own identity. Many members were strongly _ouvri\u00e8riste_ in their attitude; this conviction convinced them that more than the replacement of the Communist party by a Trotskyist organization was needed. They remained convinced by the Marxist theory of the existence of an essentially revolutionary class and sought to find a vehicle for relating to that class without claiming to impose on them a theoretical consciousness external to their own experience. The experience in the Fourth International had also taught the group that the organizers of the revolution risked becoming a ruling bureaucracy rather than incarnating a microcosm of the future self-managed society. The splits led by Lefort and his constant criticisms were an important counter-balance, although they offered no positive solution. As the debate continued, the combination of the economic critique of the political and the political critique of the economic led to a stress on the less traditional, more innovative aspects of the class struggle that had not been imagined in the nineteenth century by Marx. Ultimately, over the years, self-criticism led to the elimination of its postulated centrality as the mythical and mystified image of revolution was rejected.\n\n'Socialisme ou Barbarie' itself functioned according to principles consistent with the Marxist theory they adopted. Members paid a steeply proportional percentage of their income as dues and accepted the tasks that the majority of the organization assigned them. There were general assemblies on a regular basis, while special groups with specific tasks, responsible to and revocable by the group as a whole, were established for particular conditions. There was a constant attempt at the development and self-education of each of the members, both in theoretical analysis and awareness of ongoing struggles. The journal they published was the organ in which both forms of this self-education were expressed. On the other hand, the stress on the self-education of the proletariat which must take its own fate into its hands meant that the group did not attempt to 'parachute' outsiders into their ongoing struggles. They organized where they worked and published their views in the journal and in leaflets (after 1959, they published in the small newspaper _Pouvoir Ouvrier_ ). Outside of their group, they held public meetings and attempted to recruit new members who shared their views. Some members were active in an industrial milieu, some in white-collar arenas; later there were some student members. International contacts were also established. In short, there was nothing unusual about the activities of this self-defined radical political organization.\n\nFurther pulling the 'bureaucratic string' created a series of tensions around the question of organization. In the first place, Castoriadis posed a simple question 'What is important?' From a traditional Marxist standpoint, the proletariat alone can seize power, and to do so it must conquer and destroy the bourgeois state. The implication was that attention was to be centered on the workplace with its attendant struggles that should eventually lead to political unification at a national level. But 'Socialisme ou Barbarie' was not traditionalist. It had recognized that bureaucratization is a _social_ phenomenon that could be avoided by a concentration on the everyday where their task was to convince people that their concerns are not private but manifest socially important grievances that are worth struggling over. The goal was to convince people that capitalist control is maintained by convincing people that only the concerns of the experts really matter. This turn to the everyday not only broke with the traditional conception of revolutionary politics; it demanded that the organization itself transform its mode of action. Some members insisted that there should be a newspaper, or a part of the journal, given over to the readers. The first difficulty of this proposition was that too many non-intellectuals do not think that what they have to say is 'important'. A second and inverse problem would emerge if readers began massively to contribute, which would force the organization to choices among contributions that were inconsistent with the goal of self-management. A similar difficulty existed when it came to the selection of factual reporting to appear in the journal, where editorial choice was necessary, and general criteria for selection had to be invented. To make a choice without explaining its reasons would render a disservice to readers.\n\nThe acute awareness of the dangers of bureaucracy posed an even more central question for the organization: that of its own existence. The problem that emerges here is not that political organizations tend to adopt bureaucratic forms insofar as they separate themselves from the ongoing struggles and concerns. From a Marxist perspective, each case must be explained historically and materially. The existential problem for 'Socialisme ou Barbarie' was made acute by the implications of the analysis of the 'Relations of Production in Russia' which insisted that there is no privileged position from which to survey and judge objectively ongoing struggles. Lefort drew the conclusion that the group's very existence postulates that it itself possesses the keys to that heavenly perspective! Without that assumption, 'Socialisme ou Barbarie' would be only another particular group expressing its own particular desires. Its interventions into ongoing struggles in the name of a theory, with the goal of aiding a practice, presupposes that it possesses knowledge that is not available to the participants. This implicit assumption is the foundation of an eventual bureaucratic domination over the class. The group takes itself as the General Staff of the Revolution; its activities become rigid and formal; it passes resolutions and debates as if the eyes of History were constantly upon it.13 Castoriadis' reply to this criticism by Lefort and his supporters points out that opposition to organization is self-contradictory insofar as it separates theory from practice, insisting on theory at the expense of experience. His stinging, rhetoric is direct and brutal: 'Am I to govern my whole life on the supposition that I might one day return to infancy?'14 This was hardly a response; the question remained open, but the cloture of further argument.\n\nThe organizational question had further implications. At least until Castoriadis' break with Marxism in the article series of 1961\u20131963 (which led Lyotard, Souryi, and Maille to quit the group because of their unwillingness to abandon Marxism as such), the politics of 'Socialisme ou Barbarie' was _ouvri\u00e8riste_. The presupposition that the proletariat must be the agent of its own self-liberation meant that the group was necessarily separated from the working class whose consciousness it sought to raise. In classical nineteenth-century Marxism, this distinction of the party and the class led to a distinction between reformist trade union activity and the revolutionary party. The resulting dualism is overcome only conceptually by distinguishing the immediate activity of the class from the historical sense implicit in its struggles (as Rosa Luxemburg had done when she rejected Bernstein's revisionist slogan that the movement is what counts, not the postulated ends that it seeks). This historical distinction apparently defines 'what is important' for Castoriadis. In practice, this attitude suggests that the organization must keep its distance from the everyday struggles which is a learning process through which the class comes to self-knowledge as a result of its defeats as well as its victories. In effect, the revolutionary organization presupposes the existence of a concrete and real goal that can be known; from this perspective, its role is simply that of a tolerant pedagogue. That self-understanding forgets that Rosa Luxemburg also insisted (in the _Mass Strike_ ) that 'revolutions allow no one to play schoolmaster to them'.\n\nPushed by the irresoluble organizational question, Castoriadis is led ultimately to challenge the foundational Marxist assumption of an inherently revolutionary proletariat.\n\n> One sees... the profound duplicity of all Marxists: that revolutionary class, to which superhuman tasks are attributed, is at the same time profoundly _irresponsible:_ one cannot impute to its own action what happens to it, nor even the actions that it undertakes; it is _innocent_ in the two senses of the term. The proletariat is the constitutional monarch of history. Responsibility belongs to its ministers: to the old leaderships that erred or betrayed \u2013 and to us, who once again, against all opposition, are going to construct the new leadership.15\n\nFor Marxists, the proletariat is defined and created by its relation to the means of production; its revolutionary activity, which transforms it from a class in itself to a class for itself, is the result of its social-economic insertion in the process of production. This implies that the class is defined by its _being_ and not by its _praxis_. Never immune to history's ironies, Castoriadis points out that for Marx the bourgeoisie was the creative class whose actions changed the world. His account of the origins of capitalism shows that its necessity cannot be explained by material conditions; the process that Marx is called 'Primitive Accumulation' in _Capital_ shows how the bourgeoisie created its own world by introducing the ideas of technological change, ever-expanding reproduction, and rationalization as the dominant significations and goals of social life. The proletariat, for its part, is defined for Marx by the economic-technological conditions through which it reproduces itself and society at large. This explains claims by Marx that have influenced his heirs, such as the famous assertion that 'what counts is not what this or that proletarian does or thinks; what counts is what the class _is_ and _must_ do'. If the class does not appear to be following the lines decreed by history, the Marxist no longer defines it by its _being_ ; instead it makes the class into an _essence_ , whose temporary manifestations are only accidents on the way to its self-realization as laid out by the rationality of Historical Materialism. Castoriadis' claim that the Marxist proletariat is 'innocent' and that it is the 'constitutional monarch of history' draws attention to these consequences.\n\nIn spite of his criticism of Marx, Castoriadis insists that the class _is_ its praxis, and that the praxis of the class in turn defines the social conditions in which it finds itself.16 That praxis is not a free creation apart from the social conditions in which it finds itself. These conditions change continually as a result also of the praxis of the class. While in their practice Marxists have often tried to take account of the praxis of the proletariat, their theory proves a hindrance. 'What is important' is always defined by reference to the class-as-essence. The essentialist view of the proletariat induces a blindness to struggles that do not fit the expected pattern. It also introduces a set of blinkers that hide a basic aspect of capitalism. Reading _Capital_ from the point of view of proletarian praxis rather than an essentialist philosophy of history, Castoriadis demonstrates that the proletariat is not so innocent as it seems. Looking at Marx's account of the transition from the production of absolute to relative surplus-value production, he shows how the introduction of economic rationalization by management and the use of machinery to replace human labor are made necessary as responses to the threat posed by proletarian demands. The implication is that capitalism as it has come to exist is the _result_ class struggle. Technical development, the internal expansion of the market and creation of consumer society, and the ideology that accompanies them are necessary to capitalism's continuation. Developing this analysis further, it is possible to suggest that the struggle that began within the material conditions of production will have moved beyond that sphere, making it necessary to find another agent who can carry forward the struggle against alienation and exploitation.\n\nSpurred on by the continued existence of struggles against capitalist domination, within, around, and outside of production, Castoriadis' interrogation ultimately put into question the foundations of Marxism itself. He could not 'solve' the organizational problem because the question was based on historical conditions that no longer existed. That did not imply that the quest for autonomy was abandoned. Over and again, he returned to the problem of organization, insisting on the need to cast off the blinkers in order to recognize the new and to interrogate its political sense. Writing in June 1968, Castoriadis insisted again on the need for organization, pointing out that the struggle was not intended to win a night of love but a life of love. The organization he calls for in the heat of the May revolt would not claim to assume the direction of the ongoing struggles; its task would be theoretical, thematic, and praxical, intervening only in the sphere in which its members were involved. The necessity of an organization, he insists, springs from the practical needs of its members who recognize that there are many others who would share the kind of political analysis he is suggesting; the role of the organization would be to create the space for them to come together, to talk, learn, and act. What more such an organization would do can only be defined in the concrete situation in which it exists, he insists. Yet Castoriadis admits that this is not a 'solution'. He himself has in the meanwhile left the field of practice to develop the theoretical implications of the critique of Marxism that he had carried out.\n\n## 9.3 Marxism: The Problem of Metaphysics\n\nUsing Marx to critique Marx leaves unanswered question: what is Marxism? The strongest case for Marxism\u2014which neither Marxists nor Castoriadis always make\u2014would insist that it goes beyond what Horkheimer called a traditional conception of theory, offering neither knowledge to be used for power nor theory to guide practice. Marx wanted to overcome the contemplative dualism that separated theory from the world about which it was supposed to produce knowledge. Marx's theory was to be a _theory of_ : of history, of revolution, and of the praxis of the proletariat. It was a theory of history because its own conditions of possibility were historical: prior to the socialization of society by capitalism, no theory of this type was possible. Insofar as the capitalism that had given rise to this new type of totality was itself founded on constant innovation and change, the theory had to be mobile, open to the changing course of social relations, and, most importantly, revolutionary. The revolutionary nature of the theory springs from its being the theory _of_ the proletariat: of that class which is nothing, which suffers no specific wrong but general alienation, is created by and constantly reproduces capitalism; Marx's proletariat is the concrete negation of capitalism, and the theory which expresses its actual position and struggles is for that reason at once historical and revolutionary. That theory is itself a part of the revolutionary praxis of the proletariat which is historically rooted and must, with the aid of that theory, come to an awareness of the task history has made possible: the overthrow of the social conditions of which it is the negative product.\n\nThe specific character of Marxism _as a theory_ means that it must analyze and describe social relations of which it is itself a part; and at the same time it must be involved in and continually changing those very conditions, thus eliminating its own conditions of possibility. In order to justify this claim, Marx presupposes a view of history as based on class struggle. This concept of history affects the concrete tasks assigned to Marxist theory, permitting it to decipher the ideological nature of concurrent theories and to learn from the ongoing struggles of the proletariat. The process of its continual transformation through self-critique and its learning from proletarian praxis is built into the theory. The basis of this learning process is what the historically engaged theory tells it is 'important'. It can do this because, at the same time that it is historical, it is also the expression of a self-critical theory that recognizes the role of praxis in the formation of the social world.\n\nIf today's Marxism does not live up to Marx's project, it should be possible for a critical theory to explain how such a devolution was possible. A powerful attempt to salvage Marx's theory was proposed in Georg Luk\u00e1cs' _History and Class Consciousness_. His discussion of 'The Changed Function of Historical Materialism' asserts that Marxism is true _as a method_. As a result, he makes the paradoxical claim that even if all the empirical results of Marx's research were proven wrong, his method could be applied anew to produce results that are revolutionary. Luk\u00e1cs seems to forget that a method is only valid for specific contents; if these are not present, the method cannot do what is claimed for it. He could reply that it is possible to know what these conditions are only through the application of the method itself, reminding his critics that in a society that is _essentially_ capitalist, appearances are deceptive. The critic could reply by pointing out that the distinction of essence and appearance characterizes traditional contemplative philosophy for which the concept of essence is ahistorical, unchanging and self-evident. The Marxist insists on the praxis of the proletariat, which is constantly changing its world. As historical, Marxism works with a combination of efficient and final causes; as the theory of the revolutionary proletariat, it is a paradoxical theory of social change whose result will be the elimination of the conditions in which the theory was formerly valid. In this sense, Marxism _is_ responsible for its destiny.\n\nPursuing the problem further, what can be said of Marx's concrete analyses? Some aspects of it have maintained signs of life, others seem frozen, rigid, and formal. A popular interpretation suggests the need to distinguish two Marxes. The undeniably positivist and scientistic aspects of Marx's work are said to reflect a problem facing any discoverer of a 'new continent' (Althusser ) who is forced to describe the voyage in the language left over from the past. This syncretism does not take seriously Marx's claim that his theory was capable of explaining the course of history, _including_ the conditions of its own possibility. The 'two-Marxes' theory treats Marx as if he was just another philosopher from whom partial or pragmatic insights can be gleaned; it does not treat him as a Marxist. To deny his own intention is to seek to inherit the past rather than to look forward toward social change. It is a confusing, or scholastic, attempt to preserve a 'true' Marx untouched by time and history.\n\nMarx described his theory as the expression _of_ proletarian praxis; examples abound in his work. His early analysis on the revolt of the Silesian weavers (1844) draws on the implications of a collectively undertaken praxis; he himself visited and took part in meetings of revolutionary workers in Paris in 1844; later, in analyses from _Capital_ that were cited earlier, he shows how the actions of the proletariat induce changes in socio-economic conditions. Among contemporary Marxist historians, E. P. Thompson's _The Making of The English Working Class_ demonstrates that many of Marx's ideas were already in the minds and on the tongues of English workers before Marx had ever crossed the Channel. However, it is also true that Marx's ideas did not penetrate the broader socialist movement, which was more influenced by Proudhon, and later by Lassalle, and even Bakunin. When Marxism finally made its organized appearance, despite Marx's own misgivings, it had become a catechism popularized by the nineteenth-century appeal of science and progress, as well as by the growing acceptance Darwin's theory of evolution (for which Marx, and especially Engels, expressed their admiration).\n\nCastoriadis is not concerned to salvage a 'good' Marx. Whatever the validity of the various attempts at Marxist reconstruction, these remain _theoretical_ efforts. Castoriadis' crucial point is that it is necessary to admit the fate of Marxism in order to be faithfully inherit his legacy. Analysis of Marxism from this revolutionary standpoint has implications for the understanding of present society.\n\n> Marxism can from now on serve effectively only as an ideology, in the strong sense of the term: an invocation of fictive entities, pseudo-rational constructions and abstract principles that, concretely, justify and hide a social-historical practice whose true signification lies elsewhere. One must really be a Marxist to ignore, or to consider as anecdotal, or to rationalize as accidental the fact that this practice is that of a bureaucracy that imposes its exploitation and totalitarian domination over a third of the world's population.17\n\nCastoriadis argues that this understanding of Marx-as-ideologue is unintentionally the purveyor of key elements of capitalist ideology: the primacy of production, the inevitability of capitalist technological forms, the justification of unequal wages, scientism, rationalism, blindness to the question of bureaucracy, and the adoration of capitalist modes of organization and efficiency. How could Marxism become, in his words, 'the flesh of the world we combat'?18\n\nThe paradoxical assertion that Marxism has become a theory of capitalist society needs further elucidation. It is only in capitalist society that the economic sphere achieves its full independence and reveals its _essential_ , productivist, and profit-seeking social function. This essence was manifested only indirectly, through manifold appearances in pre-capitalist societies, but that it is said to be nonetheless dominant there as well. Yet, for Marx himself, the specificity of capitalism is that it is not simply production of commodities, but that it represents the continually expanded drive for the augmentation of social reproduction (M-C-M, in Marx's formula). Under capitalist social relations, the economy dominates all the other spheres of society; and its model of organization, which demands increasing rationalization in all spheres of society, spreads its corrosive influence over custom and tradition, creating a proletariat whose praxis is the condition of the possibility of an all-encompassing, rational theory of history. In spite of the difference between the place of the economy in capitalist societies and its function in pre-capitalist societies, Marxism asserts that history and historical transformations can be understood as a function of the development of the economic base. Although Marx is of course right to assert, polemically, that men cannot eat religion, the law, or even democracy and philosophy, it is necessary to ask what kind of theory could make this kind of reductionist materialist claim? And what does this reductionism say about Marx's implicit notion of 'human nature'?\n\nA theory of human history must be able to account for the social change that overturns a prevailing mode of social relations. For Marx, the motor of history is of course class struggle. He offers two explanations of the origins of class society. The first is functional and rationalist in suggesting that history be read as a series of adaptations to the productive base. To the windmill corresponds feudal society, to the steam engine corresponds capitalism (to which socialism added Lenin's aphoristic definition: 'soviets plus electrification'!). A counterpoint is offered by ethnography, which looks at the other side of enlightenment rationalism to find hundreds of examples of societies whose productive and technological bases are identical while their social structures are radically different. Marx's second claim suggests a reply to the first, reductionist version. In a given society, there arises a surplus which permits certain social strata to live from the work of others. They go on to arrange political institutions that preserve their power and life-style. This is an explanation, but it still does not go far enough; the ethnologists have shown the existence of many societies that produce a surplus without creating an exploiting class. The deeper question is why there could occur a shift in social attitudes permitting this division of the society. The existence of a surplus only explains the origins of class society if the nineteenth-century model of _homo economicus_ is presupposed by the analysis. The difference between capitalism as expanded reproduction for profit and pre-capitalist economic formations warns us against this anarchronism.19\n\nIt could be objected that Marx's theory of ideology does not conceive of human being in such a simplified, capital-centric perspective insofar as he develops from this material factor a more complex and articulated perspective in which production is only one determinant, alongside of social interaction, language, and species possibilities. The difficulty is that the dependence of the superstructural forms on their infrastructural base makes sense only if the two structures can communicate in some manner or another. Expressed as the action of the forces of production on the relations of production, the assertion is at least logically consistent since the _relata_ are both forms of production. In this formulation, the dominance of production over all other modes of social activity is assumed. This will be seen to be ultimately an ontological assertion. For the moment, Marx's argument appears to be the result of a sociological functionalism. Insofar as the system is oriented to its economic reproduction, all of its elements have an economic signification, and hence the dominance of the economic is assured. But the economic premise is not self-evident; it is a presupposition (about human nature), whereas Marx's goal was to demonstrate its validity. There is no reason to assume that philosophy and democracy, let alone Dionysian cults or matrilineal kinship systems, have solely or even primarily economic signification.20\n\nIt could be objected that Marx does not reduce _everything_ to economics and that his understanding of the economic sphere does not refer solely to production but includes also the _relations_ of production as well as the forms of social intercourse in a given society. Castoriadis agrees; but he concludes from this claim that there are times when _Marx_ at his best appears to think just like the _capitalist_ at his worst, treating the whole social world as simply parts of a system of material production for profit. It may be true that 'this is how capitalism is', and that Marx is simply describing its contradictory nature. Rather than occupy a revolutionary function the proletariat becomes from this point of view an integral part of capitalism. That was the reason that Castoriadis criticized the theory of the proletariat as the unique revolutionary subject. In the present context, he criticizes Marx's theory _qua_ theory, going beyond the critique of its reductionism or its functionalism to challenge Marx's _rationalism_. That step leads him to reexamine the revolutionary project as such.\n\n'It is completely indifferent', Castoriadis insists, 'whether we say [with Hegel] that nature is a movement of the _logos,_ or [with historical materialism] that the _logos_ arises at a given stage of the evolution of nature, because from the outset both entities are posited as being of the same\u2014i.e., of a rational\u2014nature'.21 For the dialectic of 'the negation of the negation' to be effective, there must be supposed a rational system that provides for the homogeneity of the objects which relate to one another. This homogeneity could be established on the basis of an assumption about the universality of _homo oeconomicus_. In a more critical formulation, the claim would be that critical Marxism has the task of extracting the _rational_ kernel of reality, its essence, from the appearing world. The important point is that in each case the argument depends on an ontological equation: _rational = real = essential_. _The reader familiar with Marx's work will recall aphorisms such_ as 'the rational has always existed but not always in a rational form', or his continually recurring organic womb-and-birth metaphors, as well as the accompanying assertion that theory exists to lessen the birth-pangs of the new society. In each case, the assumption is that history and its milieu are _ultimately_ rational, _ultimately_ progressing toward a goal which is already ' _essentially_ ' prefigured in the present. The _telos_ that is presupposed by these claims only seems different from the Hegelian Spirit because it is dressed in historical garb, but its rational essence is ultimately the same: fully realized humanity, species being.\n\nTwo political positions that share identical premises emerge from this ontological stance. If the material present is ripe with a potentiality that makes it unstable and opens it to the possibility of change, what prevents its transformation? The answer must lie in what Marxists call the superstructures, for example, in the contradictory role of present-day educational structures, the family, or patriarchal dominance in society. Critical analysis can show that their system-preservative function is not perfectly fulfilled and that this lack of full functional fit creates the space for political practice. The goal of this critical analysis will be to create ultimately a new functionality that is not prey to internal contradiction. This has the unintended consequence of transforming the space of politics into a field for sociological intervention that seeks to impose harmony and unification from without. As a result, a bureaucracy is implicitly seated in the place of power. The grounds are cleared for Leninism and its consequent development in the soviet form of bureaucratic society. If there is a rationality to the world, and if history has ultimately a progressive direction, then those who can apply the theory to find the 'really real' beneath the appearances must become guides for those still lost in the shadow world. In this sense, 'what is important' is not what individuals may think but what the class 'really' is; the law-like activity of the infrastructure tells the naked truth of the future. Theory becomes social science, and the party with its specialists easily becomes the stand-in for the class. Substitutionism is justified; socialism becomes identical with the Plan. And, concludes Castoriadis, 'humans no more make their history than the planets \"make\" their revolutions; they are \"made\" by it'.22 Politics becomes technology; praxis becomes rational-bureaucratic.\n\nThe root of the error here is that the systemic standpoint that follows from the rationalist premise which is assumed to be realized (or at least in principle realizable) in reality. Once that assumption is made, it becomes necessary to find the practical means for incarnating its reality. The theorist moves from analysis to intervention in reality; and with that, the critical theorist is replaced by the political party. The theoretical problem is that such a realized systemic totality would be a contradiction in terms. Were it to exist, it could not be known because it would be impossible to stand outside of it in order to see it as an object of knowledge. Put differently, if such a systemic totality existed, individuals would not exist as such; everything would dissolve into the rational system, difference would disappear. What is more, if such a totality existed, no praxis would be possible; pure rationality is nothing but pure contemplation, absolute obedience, another form of positivism. 'The idea of a complete and definitive theory', insists Castoriadis, 'is nothing but a phantasm of the bureaucracy', serving all the better to manipulate the masses.23 In spite of these paralyzing consequences, Castoriadis claims that it is precisely this sort of theory that Marx needs in order to justify his claim that the revolutionary process is _necessary_ as well as to insist that his theory is a 'scientific socialism'. The move from philosophy to science in Marx is ultimately based on a traditional assumption about what theory must be, despite Marx's attempt to open a new, critical type of theory.24,25\n\nThe reason that Marx falls back into this paradigm of contemplative theory is that he has not succeeded in radically historicizing his own historical theory. His claim is that proletarian revolutionary theory is the product of history; but he does not consider the possibility that history, for historical reasons, could make itself antiquated. The root of the difficulty lies in Marx's _linear_ conception of history. History is assumed to be the working out, through trials and tribulations, conjectures and refutations, of what already was already latent with the birth of humanity. Indeed, when Marx asks himself what is the specificity of human being, he has recourse to the famous distinction between the architect and the bee: the bee creates instinctively, whereas the architect works from a mentally created plan. This appealing image ignores the further question of the origins of the architect's plan. Why this plan and not another? Why this invention, at this time and place? To assert that the specific content of the plan depends on the material circumstances in which it is formulated is to return to sociological functionalism and the idea that the knowing subject could fly above and gaze down on the 'really real' material world. If that were possible, revolution in Marx's sense would be impossible. It does not matter whether the architect's plan is presumed to exist potentially from the beginnings of humanity, emerging through stages and struggles; or whether it is a functional or rationalist reaction given social conditions. In the first case, history is only an illusion, a chimera with no real meaning (or a 'slaughter-bench', as Hegel observes lucidly); in the latter case, history is reduced to natural history, which in turn is conceived as either essentially rational (in which case it is no different from the first illustration), or it is a jumble of accidents (in which case there is no reason to suppose that revolution is inevitable).\n\nIn a word, for Castoriadis, Marxism is a metaphysics whose structure, premises, and elaboration are simply an adaptation of the conditions in a specific historical moment to the recalibrated demands of traditional rationalist theorizing. Marxism claims to be a revolutionary truth insofar as it is the bearer of the solution to 'the riddle of history'. It justifies this claim by means of its own theory of history, which is itself based upon the primacy of the proletariat whose praxis is said to be expressed by Marxist theory. What appeared to be a radically new type of theory emerges as a tautology. It claims that Marxism is true because it is the theory of the proletariat; the proletariat, in turn, is said to be the truth of history because Marxism has shown it to be naturally necessary; hence Marxism is true. Twist and turn as its theorists may, Marxism turns out to be based precisely on premises that make the realization of its self-defined revolutionary goal impossible. A new conception of theory is necessary if the revolutionary project is to be maintained.\n\n## 9.4 Ontology: The Status of Theory and the Political Project\n\nThe political tensions to which Castoriadis' radical critique of Marxism led 'Socialisme ou Barbarie' were confronted directly in 'Recommencer la r\u00e9volution' (1964). Summarizing again his rejection of classical Marxism, Castoriadis stressed the everyday struggle of the working class against the hierarchic, bureaucratic organization of labor. Because of this struggle, 'labor-power' differs from the other inputs into production; the capitalist knows precisely how many calories of heat will be produced by a ton of coal, but not how much labor is actually purchased by the wages paid. The everyday form of the opposition of capital and labor can be understood as the struggle between those who command and those who (are supposed to) execute. Industrial sociology proposes techniques to combat worker resistance; its most progressive proponents recognize that the most effective techniques must enlist the participation of workers. This combination of the workers' activity and passivity in the formal and informal workplace spreads to all the institutions of society, from the consumer to the student, patriarch to patriot. Castoriadis had analyzed similar structural features in the bureaucratic forms of Soviet society. The only logical way to overcome the contradictory imperatives of command and execution is through self-management. Referring implicitly to Marx's 11th _Thesis on Feuerbach_ , Castoriadis insists once again that his goal 'is not to deduce the revolution but to make it'.26\n\nCastoriadis had confronted previously the practical difficulty to which he returned in 'Recommencer la r\u00e9volution'. In his three-part article published between 1955 and 1958, 'Sur le contenu du socialisme', he attempted to concretize the implications of his vision of industrial workers' councils.27 He returned to the difficulties that remained unresolved in another three-part article published in 1960\u20131961 that proposed to analyze 'Le mouvement r\u00e9volutionnaire sous le capitalisme moderne'. These essays made a new claim (that would lead to a split in the group in 1963); the irresolvable contradictions in the vision of a socialist society governed by workers' councils led Castoriadis to abandon finally the classical Marxist theory of the proletariat. The challenge now was to offer a new theory that could take the place of critical Marxism, offering at once a critique of the present and reasons to struggle for the realization of a positive future. This was the task taken up in the five-part article published in 1964\u20131965, 'Marxisme et th\u00e9orie r\u00e9volutionnaire'. Those essays were then published as the first part of his major work, _L'institution imaginaire de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9, which was published in 1975._\n\nCastoriadis now argues that the historical agent of revolutionary change, the proletariat, must be seen as the appearance of a deeper ontological structure of history. Although he was still working within the parameters of Marxism, he was attempting to overcome their limits. Marx tended, often for partisan reasons, to reduce the creative ambiguity of choice in history, subsuming it in a linear-progressive fashion and subjecting it to a philosophical rationalism. The past was seen as absorbed into the present, then becoming pregnant with a future which would, ultimately, eliminate irrationality and scarcity, putting an end to (pre-)History. But the end of History is a myth. Looking at actual history, it is clear that 'the living being is more than the simple mechanism because it can give new responses to new situations. But historical being is more than the mere living organism because it can give new responses to the \"same\" situations, or create new situations'.28 The idea of the _creative_ ability of human praxis to produce a radical alterity, and thus historical change, is fundamental to the Castoriadis' new ontology.\n\nThe new responses and new situations are not simply the result of rational-critical working through of what is already there; nor are they the product of a (materialist) Cunning of Reason. The projects which animate human praxis, and the rationality attributed to it, are themselves historical products. It is not possible to suggest that a material situation or a new technology _of themselves_ call for social praxis; nor can it be claimed that an essential rationality was always implicitly present as a guide. 'After the fact', writes Castoriadis, 'we can always say of any phenomenon that it was ideally possible. That is an empty tautology, which teaches nothing to no one'.29 Rather, he suggests,\n\n> [a]cting or doing something _[le faire]_ implies that the real is not thoroughly rational; it also implies that it is not chaos, that it contains... lines of force... which delimit the possible, the attainable, and indicate the probable, permitting action to find support in the given.30\n\nUnderstanding this ambiguity, which is constitutive of praxis, is necessary to avoid the phantasm of true theory, of total knowledge or disembodied thought. Neither engendered by material conditions alone (and therefore, ahistorical) nor the result of pure knowledge applied to brute matter (a technological denial of history), the activity of everyday life itself is praxis. The educator, artist, or the doctor does not 'know' the final result he seeks; nor does he simply follow material lines of force, as if these could be somehow read directly from the given, as if the significance of the given were immediately and univocally present. There is an indeterminateness in every praxis: the project is changed as it encounters the materiality of the world; and the visage of the world is altered once the project enters into contact with it.\n\nThe problem is to account for the creativity that is history. Castoriadis' debt to Merleau-Ponty and to Lefort is evident. Praxis is not simply individual; as embodied, the individual is always-already-social; the pure thinker and knower, just like the pure actor or univocal action, is a fiction based on abstraction.31 Embodiment entails impurity, which is also the condition of the possibility of thought or praxis. The individual can never have exhaustive knowledge of himself; in psychoanalytic terms, the 'I' can never replace the 'It'. The unconscious, the multivalency of representation, or desire cannot be eliminated; they are crucial to the creativity of the social-historical process itself. Rather than strive like the rationalist for their elimination, the concrete challenge is to understand the relation to them. The individual can relate to them, act on them and through them, only because they _are_ Other, something that is always-already-present and also continually changing. They are the horizon that gives sense to thought and action and thus the condition of the possibility of creation. Their constantly changing nature poses a problem for contemplative rationalist theory which considers Being and beings to be defined and known by the fixed determinations which, ultimately, are said to make them what they are. This explains the need for a reformulation of the traditional notions of theory; reconsideration of the ontological nature of Being in turn affects the status of political theory and the nature of political practice.\n\nEmbodiment implies sociality not simply because it insures a physical co-presence with others, but also insofar as it entails the historical sharing of an intersubjective world of symbolically mediated discourse. The body opens out to the discourse of the Other just as it does to the unconscious. In this way, the temptation of what Castoriadis calls the 'philosophical narcissism' of the rationalist is avoided. 'Autonomy is... not the elucidation without residue and the total elimination of the discourse of the unknown Other. It is the institution of an other relation between the discourse of the Other and to that of the subject'.32 Elimination of the social Other would imply the end of history, just as elimination of the body entails the end of praxis. The social Other and individual embodiment are constitutive of the historical nature of the present and the possibility of a project. In this sense, the individual always-already has a theory, plan, or project that is _his_ ; he does not act as the result of the discovery of some objective 'gaps' or contradictions in the supposedly objective world because the real does not present its meaning immediately. The steam engine does not immediately imply capitalism; humans do not act solely from physical need. The world which is confronted by individuals alongside others is _instituted_ ; as such it is active, instituting forms of individual and collective praxis in its turn. Such a social institution is not transparent, univocal or purely rational; nor is it the wholly opaque product of accidental interactions. 'The social', writes Castoriadis, 'is that which is everyone and that which is no one, that which is never absent and nearly never present as such, a non-being more real than any being, that in which we are wholly immersed but which we can never apprehend \"in person\"'.33 This ontological theory implies a radical reformulation of the Marxist political project. Its formulation here recalls also the project of Merleau-Ponty.\n\nPolitically, the theme of alienated praxis now acquires a more specific meaning. The problem to which it points is not simply that the individual is determined by an Other; Otherness is now seen to be the condition of the possibility of praxis or creation. Were alienation defined as domination by the Other, speech or communication would by definition be alienated. What constitutes alienation is that the Other to whom the individual relates _disappears_ into an anonymous collectivity (the law, the market, the plan, or the bureaucracy). Of course alienation is not just a subjective phenomenon: it is backed by the force of those who stand to benefit from it. As opposed to exploitation, alienation is concerned fundamentally with the relation of the society itself to its own institutions. Revolutionary politics, concludes Castoriadis, must concern 'henceforth a struggle for the transformation of the _relation_ of society to its institutions'.34 When the 'string' of bureaucratic society from which 'Socialisme ou Barbarie' began is now stretched further, its contemporary figure appears when 'the phantasm of the organization as a well-oiled machine cedes its place to the phantasm of the organization as a self-reforming and self-expanding machine'.35 The kinds of struggle appearing in contemporary society, from the family to the military, from the ecological to the ethnic, as well as in the changing workplace, are expressions of a revolt against the way that bureaucratic society perpetuates itself by means of this phantasm. As such, they can be seen as attempts to reinstitute a praxical relation to the social institution.\n\nCastoriadis offers a series of historical examples to illustrate his argument that no 'rationalist' or 'materialist' explanation can comprehend such epochal social-historical transformations as the invention of democracy and philosophy in Greece, that of monotheism by a small Semitic people, or the revolution in political thought in fifteenth-century Florence. These inventions are historical leaps; they are revolutions. History is _discontinuous_ ; it brings about the introduction of _alterity and creates_ the space for the originary _creation_ that institutes temporality. History in this sense manifests the effects of what Castoriadis calls the ' _imaginaire radical_ '.\n\n> Its mode of operation is implicit, it is not specifically intended by anyone, it realizes itself through the pursuit of an indeterminate number of particular goals... which show in their effects that they have been over-determined by that central signification [the _imaginaire radical_ ] that was in the process of instituting itself. That central signification can thus be seized after the fact, as the non-real condition of the real coexistence of the social phenomena: a non-real but eminently effective _[wirklich]_ because effectuating _[wirkend]_ condition.36\n\nThe _imaginaire radical_ appears at first to be a type of Kantian transcendental 'condition of the possibility' of the existence of the historical. This is not exactly what Castoriadis intended. If it were a super-individual subject constituting the individual and its historical world, Castoriadis would have presented at best kind of Hegelianism. The new ontology as reformulated in _L'institution imaginaire de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9_ makes clear Castoriadis' explanation of the possibility of the new, and thus of the historical, without falling into the reductive pattern of transcendental philosophy. It will become the ontological basis for a theory of revolution that avoids the dilemmas of Marxist theory and practice.\n\nHistory is marked by _alterity_ , the emergence of the radically new that did not exist prior to its advent. This history concerns society, whose existence presupposes the institution of a world of common significations: all members of a given society must be able to identify this thing as a cow, this other as a law, and that third as male or female. The cow may also be a god, the law a heritage from ancestral struggles, the male or female an uncle or mother; whatever they are, all members of the society must recognize them in order to speak of them. The first social institution is this shared universe of discourse; it is based on the rules of what Castoriadis calls an 'identitary-ensemblist logic'. A thing must be identified as _this_ thing; and at the same time, these identifiable things must be capable of being collected in an ensemble that is _different_ from those things themselves. _What_ this thing signifies, and what those things are, differs in different social formations according to the _imaginaire_ of each of them. Castoriadis calls the institution of a 'logic' and of a 'technology' correlative to this _central imaginaire_ by the Greek names of _Legein_ and _Teukhein_ ; they provide the means through which this central institution becomes manifest. The result is the social world which, for any given society, is the 'real' world in which it functions. The forms in which the world, individuals, and technology are instituted can vary indefinitely; the only constant is that there must be a commonality established that permits society to exist and to have an identity. Naturally given features like climate and geography play only a minimal role in these institutions; nature does not decree _how_ any social-historical institution takes it into account, only _that_ it must be considered. Borrowing a concept from Freud, Castoriadis suggests that nature serves as the _anaclitic_ foundation for the institution.37 As anaclitic, nature cannot explain the advent of its institution. The institution, however, can explain nature (as 'this' nature); it can explain the individual, the social, the technological, and all the rest of what Castoriadis calls secondary institutions and secondary forms of the _imaginaire social_. What it cannot explain, however, is its own advent. To do that, it would have had to be present before its own institution, which is impossible.\n\nThe first institution, the one that wrenches humanity from nature and makes it at once historical and social, is the _institution of the institution_. This is only apparently paradoxical or tautological. When Castoriadis points out that 'the first law is that there is law', his point is that before legal codes can be established, society must institute the signification 'law' as a shared meaning for the members. Only when 'law' is instituted will the society recognize that its material social conditions need legal codification or alteration. This institution changes the world. Previously existing relations form the anaclitic basis for the institution of the legal system; but they are effectively altered by the institution of 'law' which opens new possibilities for social relations. There is no Theseus who institutes the laws; no material conditions send Moses to the mount. If posterity attaches a name to the law-givers that is a result of the fact that it lives in the wake of the institution, within the significations it instituted and their material results. The institution itself is an anonymous collective product.\n\n> It is doubtful that one can directly grasp this fundamental phantasm; at best it can be reconstructed from its manifestations because, in effect, it appears as the foundation of the possibility and the unity of everything that makes up the singularity of the life of the subject38\n\nOnce it is instituted, the institution can go on to institute a manifold of reorganizations, redeterminations, reformations of the already-present social significations. For example, the institution of capitalism's domination by the economic could build on and reorganize a variety of already-present tendencies and structures in order to affirm itself. Those already existent forms\u2014banks, a centralized government with financial needs and standing army, the influx of Spanish gold, technological advances\u2014did not cause the institution of capitalism; but once capitalism was instituted, their nature became capitalist while also bringing new variations into being. Castoriadis recognizes that his argument had been anticipated by Marx's aphorism that a machine is a machine that becomes capital only in certain social conditions. He goes beyond Marx for whom these social conditions are treated seen as 'real' material existences; their changed signification is said to result from a 'dialectic' through which quantity becomes quality.\n\nTo exist and to reproduce itself, any society needs the two fundamental institutions that are reciprocally dependent on one another; their designation by the Greek terms _Legein_ and _Teukhein_ points to their ontological signification, which is more significant than their immediate translation as logic and technology. Castoriadis translates the Legein as the multivalent actions 'distinguish-choose-pose-assemble-count-speak'; it is that institution by which a 'thing' is recognized as self-identical and distinct from other things. The _Legein_ does not define _what_ the thing is, only _that_ it is; it says that it is a this, that it is self-identical and different from other things. Nature obviously lends itself anaclitically to this operation, which can be viewed as the imposition of a code; but the institution of the _Legein_ is not the result of the observation of empirical constancy in nature. The _Legein_ not only institutes the self-identity of the thing, as well as that of _the sign itself_ ; it institutes as well the _relation_ of the sign and the thing that it signifies. In this way, it makes possible language as a code that organizes and fixes significations, making possible social discourse. The institution of this _relation_ has ontological consequences that explain both the conditions of possibility of Western metaphysics and its limits.39 As he does frequently, Castoriadis stresses the originality of this institution of the _Legein_ with a simple example. 'One cannot reflect too much on this simple fact: the word dog and the dog belong together in a manner totally different than the paws and the head of the dog belong together'.40 The institution not only institutes a whole gamut of relations, but simultaneously institutes itself as the condition of the possibility of these relations. This is inherent in the nature of the institution as originary; its consequence is that the code of significations it established consists in an indefinite series of relations to others, while at the same time the relation of signification itself can never be exhausted. In this way, the institution institutes a necessary stability of society while at the same time never ceasing to institute new forms compatible with it. It also retains the possibility of restoring the alterity at its foundation.\n\nCastoriadis' translation of the second facet of his originary ontology, the _Teukhein_ , also combines plural significations. Rendering it as 'assemble-adjust-fabricate-construct' shows that it is both dependent on but also constitutive of the _Legein_. The activity of the _Teukhein_ depends on the prior institution by the _Legein_ of a code establishing the identity of the thing and the sign, as well as the relation of signification between them. As the structuring of social activity, the _Teukhein_ is itself an originary social institution. It adds the notion of a goal (or end) of the action undertaken to the functions of the traditional identitary-ensemblist logic. This goal is itself necessarily structured by the instituted logic of the _Legein_ , _as_ Castoriadis illustrates with the example of the law. The code and the signifying relations that permit an event to acquire the signification 'legal' or 'illegal' must be first of all instituted. Beyond (and co-originary with the institution of the legal logic) the institutions of legal activity must be instituted because a legal logic makes sense only insofar as it insures the enabling actions. In other words, if a society is to reproduce itself as society, it must not only institute the _Legein_ but also the _Teukhein_ that specifies the conditions from which action begins, the ways in which legitimate action occurs as well as the possible aims of those actions; these are all aspects of the _Teukhein_ that depend on the specific social institution of the central _imaginaire_ of a given society. The institution of the _Teukhein_ only appears to depend on technology. Hominoids may use a branch or a stone in a way that appears retrospectively to function as a rudimentary technology. In fact, argues Castoriadis, the reason that the branch or stone is 'distinguished-separated-sought-after, in order to make..., in a manner appropriate to..., and with the aim of' depends on an originary _Teukhein_ that is socially instituted within the horizon of some sort of finality.41\n\nThe primary concern of Castoriadis' ontological theory is to account for the possibility of historical creation by showing how society is instituted in a manner that makes its apparent _stability_ and _self-identity_ possible . His goal, like Marx's, is critical; he wants to show how _instituted_ society comes to ignore its own nature as also _instituting_ , thereby becoming alienated from itself. His thesis can be illustrated by a tripartite vision of History. In a first stage, society's instituting character is denied; its origin is explained by reference to an external source (Ancestors, Spirits, or Gods). A second stage imputes its instituting character to nature and\/or rationality (the development of the capitalist _imaginaire_ , culminating in the bureaucratic mentality). Finally, a third stage would bring the explicit overcoming of alienation (although not of History) by recognizing explicitly and self-consciously the instituting character of society. Castoriadis insists that there is no necessity for this development. Its possibility depends on the ability of Castoriadis' ontology to explain the constitution of the _individual_. In effect, according to the _social-historical_ account given to this point, the individual appears to be instituted in the same manner as a cow or a tool. While the individual is indeed socially instituted, its existence entails a significant 'more' which makes its action creative.\n\nCastoriadis' reinterpretation of Freud proposes a theory of individuation that elucidates further his social-historical ontology. The unconscious presents itself _as_ , not through, a flux of representations. These representations are over-determined, interwoven, and continually fleeing determination: dreams, whose manifest content appears in a (more or less) identitary-ensemblist form, show themselves in analysis to be a multi-layered set of signifying relations. The stubbornness of the unconscious\u2014which knows neither time nor contradiction, that condenses and distorts, uses jokes, rebuses, and wordplays\u2014makes the socialization of the individual appear almost miraculous. What Castoriadis calls the 'miracle' of socialization\u2014that feudal society produces persons adapted to the roles of Lord and Serf, that capitalism produces the capitalist and the worker\u2014cannot be explained by the constraints of external reality; the existence of psychosis proves that external force can be resisted and that the unconscious may call for 'liberty or death'. Freud apparently appeals to the idea that unconscious representations derive from a 'lack' created by the withdrawal of the first satisfaction, the breast. The individual seeking to recover what is lost identifies it with the meaningful social world where outward conformity guarantees individual fulfillment. This at first appears to explain the internalization of societal norms.\n\nCastoriadis argues that this interpretation of Freud commits the same double error that vitiated Marx's work: it takes the real as somehow pre-given and knowable by an outside observer; and it begins from a supposed division of subject and object ( _the infans_ and the breast) rather than explaining the origin of this division. For the subject to feel a need or lack, and to act as a result, that need or lack must make sense for it, must be meaningful. Freud's basic insight was that the originary satisfaction was itself representational; the phantasy of the breast, indeed phantasy-life in general, can provide satisfaction. Castoriadis' interpretation of dreams does not see them as wish-fulfillments but as _fulfilled wishes_. The unconscious in its originary state is always-already-satisfied; it is all-powerful, forming the _unity_ he calls 'Ich bin die Brust'. 'The great enigma here, as throughout [concludes Castoriadis], and which will always remain an enigma, is the emergence of separation'.42 Closing in this way the ontological circle, it now appears that the individual 'enigma of separation' cannot be resolved because it expresses at the level of the individual the logical structure that institutes the social-historical.\n\nAn individual _imagination radicale_ corresponds to the social-historical _imaginaire radical_. Equally irreducible in their radicality, the two are not identical; their material manifestations can never exhaust their sense because they open space for different types of creativity. In the ontogenesis of the individual, the first stage is dominated by the all-powerful phantasy of the _**infans**_ ; everything and anything has significance for it as the realization of the phantasized fulfillment. This is not the manifestation of a natural primal desire or the reply to a perceived absence; desire supposes that the desired or its absence be invested with a sense that makes it meaningful. At different stages of individual development, and in different social-historical societies, different objects are invested with meaning. There is no 'real' basis for the investment of specific objects. It is true that mouth-breast and penis-vagina must be treated as meaningful if society is to reproduce itself, but there is no such necessity for the psychic investment of the third apparently natural relation, that of anus-feces. The _imagination radicale_ is a 'matrix of sense' that cannot be represented as such; it shapes a world of fulfilled sense for the _infans_. The ontogenesis of the individual depends on a rupture of this unity that opens the _psyche_ toward a potentially meaningful external world.\n\nIn this way, the phantasy of omnipotence is replaced by the projection of omnipotence onto the parent(s). This second omnipotence can only be overcome through its own self-destitution. This is the 'Oedipal' moment which Castoriadis interprets as the point at which the parent is recognized as only a 'parent-among-others' occupying a socially instituted role. Only then can the individual emerge as a person for himself in a social world.\n\n> Only the institution of society, proceeding from the _imaginaire social,_ can limit the _imagination radicale_ of the psyche and create a reality for it by creating a society. Only the institution of society can permit the psyche to emerge from its originary monadic madness43\n\nThis is where the ontology of the individual and that of the social-historical function in unison; the _imaginaire radical_ encounters the _imagination radicale_.\n\nCastoriadis rejects the claim that society imposes itself on the individual; what is instituted in the social-historical presents the individual with a sense that satisfies the criterion of meaningfulness established by the nature of the originary unity that is the _imagination radicale_. The result of ontogenesis is a return to the originary unity, the always-already-fulfilled phantasm that is the matrix of sense. The presence of this same structure in the instituted world of social significations explains why an idea, a word, or a sign can provide a meaningful satisfaction for a mature individual. This is the paradox that psychoanalysis calls 'sublimation'. Commenting on Freud, Castoriadis explains that\n\n> To say that sublimation has been imposed on the drives by civilization when it is evident that 'civilization' \u2013 that is, no matter what form of instituted society, even language \u2013 can only exist if and only if there is sublimation shows the irreducibility of the social-historical to the psychic and at the same time shows the inverse irreducibility.44\n\nHe adds a concrete illustration a moment later.\n\n> [T]he 'sublimation of homosexuality' in social relations between individuals does not mean only or especially that one renounces the sexual satisfaction which the others could offer, but that these others are not simply sexual 'objects' but social individuals.45\n\nSociety presents the individual with significations that the imagination of the _psyche_ alone could never pose. Although their modes of being are radically different, each individual needs the other. The congruence of social roles that exist in every form of societal organization cannot be explained by privileging either the social-historical or the individual. In order to explain their congruence, a different ontological premise and a different type of theory are necessary.\n\nThe irreducibility of the originary is common to the social-historical and the individual. The _imaginaire radical_ and the _imagination radicale_ exist in their manifestations, but they are never explained or exhausted by them. Castoriadis introduces a new direction with his notion of a magma that is intended to express the unity-in-difference of the two types of radicalism. 'An indefinite number of ensemblist organisations can be extracted from a _magma_ , but it can never be reconstituted (ideally) by an ensemblist composition (finite or infinite) of these organizations'.46 The _magma_ serves to replace the traditional ontological concept of Being.\n\n> We assert that everything that can be effectively given \u2013 representations, nature, signification \u2013 exists in the mode of a _magma_ ; that the social-historical institution of the world, of things and individuals, insofar as it is the institution of the _Legein_ and the _Teukhein_ , is always also the institution of identitary logic and thus the imposition of an ensemblist organization on a first stratum of givenness which lends itself interminably to this operation. But also, that it is never and can never be _only_ that \u2013 that it is also always and necessarily the institution of a _magma_ of imaginary social significations. And finally, that the relation between the _Legein_ and the _Teukhein_ and the _magma_ of imaginary social significations is not thinkable within the identitary-ensemblist frame of reference \u2013 no more than are the relations between _Legein_ and representation, _Legein_ and nature, or between representation and signification, representation and world, or 'consciousness' and 'unconscious'.47\n\nFrom this perspective, the contribution of Freud to a radical critique is not his demystifying of traditional morality, but rather the demonstration of the multivalency of representation and the function of phantasy which throw into question the ontological basis of the classical tradition. The 'fetishism of reality' is shown to be the product of a specific social-historical institution.48 With this, the perceptual metaphor must fall: 'A subject which would have _only_ perception would have _no_ perception; it would be totally caught up in the \"things,\" flattened into them, crushed against the world, incapable of turning away from it, and thus incapable of fixating on it'.49 The standpoint of the outside observer, for whom there exists relations of subject\/object, signifier\/signified, thought\/being, is destroyed. 'All expression', writes Castoriadis, 'is essentially a trope'.50 There is never a single, cardinal referent, existing separately and singularly, waiting to be taken up by thought. The ontology of the _magma_ shows that while the identitary-ensemblist understanding of Being as determined is necessary for the functioning of a society, it does not exhaust and cannot exhaust the significations that _are_ society as _magma_. The originary and radical nature of the _magma_ is what accounts for the possibility of historical creation, just as it explains the creativity of the individual.\n\n## 9.5 What Is Revolution?\n\nCastoriadis' radical ontology draws out the political implications of his critique of Marxism's imbrication within traditional rationalist philosophy.\n\n> What escapes [the traditional view] is nothing less than the enigma of the world that remains behind the shared social world. This enigma is [not a substance but] that which can become [ _\u00e0-\u00eatre_ ], the inexhaustible provision of alterity; and it is the irreducible challenge to all established signification. What escapes the traditional view is the very being of society as instituting society, that is, finally, its source and the origin of alterity, or its perpetual self-alteration.51\n\nInstituted society is only apparently an alienated and dead product, a set of fixed matrices described by identitary-ensemblist thought; in fact, as magma, it is inherently historical. The theoretical project and the practical one come together; the structure of both is axed around the awakening of the instituting nature of society through the theoretical and practical critique of its reified self-understanding. This perspective was already implicit in Castoriadis' redefinition of alienation in institutional terms. He makes its 'revolutionary' implications explicit in a series of questions that lead him to redefine the notion of revolution.\n\n> In what measure and by what means can individuals accept themselves as mortal without any imaginary instituted compensation; in what measure can thought hold together the demands of the identitary logic which are rooted in the _Legein_ and the demands of what is, which is surely not identitary, without becoming for that reason incoherent; in what measure, finally and especially, can society truly recognize in its institution its own self-creation, recognize itself as instituting, institute itself explicitly, and overcome the self-perpetuation of the instituted by showing itself capable of taking it up and transforming it according to its own needs and demands and not according to the inertia of the instituted, in order to recognize itself as the source of its own alterity? These are the questions, _the_ question of revolution, which not only go beyond the frontier of the theorisable but situate themselves right away on another terrain... the terrain of the creativity of history.52\n\nCastoriadis admits that theory can offer no reason to expect that this revolution _will_ occur and that no material or logical grounds can be produced to argue for it. Rather, on the final page of _The Imaginary Institution of Society_ , he justifies his revolutionary claim.\n\n> [W]e aim at it _because we want it_ and because we know that other people want it \u2013 not because these are the laws of history, the interest of the proletariat, or the destiny of being. The instauration of a history where society not only knows itself but _makes itself_ by instituting itself explicitly implies a radical destruction of all known forms of the institution of society.53\n\n'Tu fais la r\u00e9volution pour toi' was one of the themes of May 1968; 'participation in the decisions which concern our lives' was the slogan of the American New Left. Castoriadis' thought is of a piece with the times even while it brushes a philosophical tableau that reaches beyond them.\n\nCastoriadis offers no recipe for revolution; he has shown that the Marxist idea of 'revolution' is built on a philosophical impossibility. At the same time that he shows how traditional theory is built on the occlusion of the social-historical, he explains why that form of alienation was necessary and how it remains always a threat. The ontology of the _magma_ does _not_ mean that the identitary-ensemblist organization of the world can be avoided. The _Legein_ and the _Teukhein_ must exist in all societies that remain stable. The differences among them depend on the central _imaginaires_ of each of these societies, which manifest themselves in the different social significations they institute. Castoriadis' aim is to encourage a changed _relation_ of society to its institution, rendering conscious and open to discussion what had been occluded or repressed. Because he admits the necessity of the institutions of the _Legein_ and _Teukhein_ , Castoriadis continues to insist that a  _revolutionary_ _organization_ is necessary because his changed vision of the meaning of revolution implies that the inherent danger of bureaucratization in the organization can and must always be fought. The task of the organization would not be to take the lead in action but (as Castoriadis had argued in 1968 in _La br\u00e8che_ ) to initiate reflection on the nature and limits of imaginary institution of society itself. Any specific set of demands should not be understood as a governmental program; their efficacy would depend on their ability to further interrogation and debate by the participants. For example, the demand that the revolution establish immediately equal pay for all members of society would not be based on considerations of justice or morality and certainly not on the 'labor theory of value'. Its justification would be that such equality puts into question one of the central forms of the capitalist _imaginaire_ and its productivist logic. Similar considerations would affect other points in an organization's program, such as the elimination of hierarchy.\n\nCastoriadis' new ontology explains more fully his rejection of Marxism as 'the flesh of the world we combat'. The distance traveled can be seen in a familiar example. When Marx describes the relations of production as the relation of persons by the mediation of things, he appears to treat the persons and things as existing independently before they are combined into specific relations. Castoriadis had criticized this perspective as early as his early essay on 'The Relations of Production in Russia'. He adds now a further remark to specify his point.\n\n> Society does not, in a 'first moment', pose goals and significations in terms of which it could deliberate on the most appropriate technology to serve and to incarnate them. Goals and significations are posed from the outset in and by the technology and the _Teukhein\u2014_ just as the significations are posed in and by the _Legein_. In a sense, the tools and instruments _are_ significations; they are in the 'materialization' in the identitary and functional dimension of the imaginary significations of a given society. A production line _is_ (and can only exist as) a 'materialization' of a manifold of central imaginary significations of capitalism.54\n\nMarx of course knew, and repeated, that a machine is not 'capital' because of its real properties, any more than gold is automatically money. He tended nonetheless to treat 'things' as if their significations were neutral. In that sense, it is Marx who was the 'philosopher' while Castoriadis recognizes the full richness of social possibilities.\n\nCastoriadis' ontology of the _magma_ is still not fully elaborated; he has promised a second volume tentatively titled _L'\u00e9l\u00e9ment imaginaire_ ; and he continues to intervene actively in political and intellectual debates. Overcoming the traditional ontological prejudice that imposed the separation of theory from practice, Castoriadis opens a vista of research and reflection. Despite his differences with his former comrade, Claude Lefort, each of them combines philosophical reflection and political thought in ways that open the domain of 'the political'. The structure and presuppositions of this project, in politics as in philosophy need to be understood if the radical project is to advance.\n\nFootnotes\n\n1\n\nBiographical material cited throughout is adopted from 'Introduction g\u00e9n\u00e9rale', in _La soci\u00e9t\u00e9 bureaucratique_ , _1_ (Paris: UGE, 1973), the 1974 Interview with Castoriadis by the Agence Presse Lib\u00e9ration de Caen (translated into English in _Telos_ , no. 23, 1975), and the Interview with Claude Lefort by the _Anti-Mythes_ (Paris and Caen) in 1975. I have also relied on long discussions with Castoriadis and Lefort, as well as with former members of the group, such as D. Moth\u00e9, and J-F Lyotard. Where there are several versions of an event\u2014such as the splits in the group\u2014I have tried to present a balanced argument of the alternatives presented.\n\n2\n\nJean-Marc Coudray (C. Castoriadis), in _Mai 1968: la Br\u00e8che_ (Paris: Fayard, 1968), p. 92. The programmatic part of this essay was distributed as a mimeographed leaflet during May by some of the ex-members; a further discussion was added for the book's publication.\n\n3\n\nThis was published, along with the first five installments, as _L'institution imaginaire de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9_ (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1975).\n\n4\n\nOn Trotsky, cf. Claude Lefort, 'La contradiction de Trotsky', originally in _Les Temps Modernes_ , no. 39, d\u00e9c\u2013jan 1948\u20139, now in Lefort, _Elements d'une critique de la bureaucratie_ (Gen\u00e8ve-Paris: Librairie Droz, 1971). In the Interview with the _Anti-Mythes_ , Lefort stresses his debt to Castoriadis for the economic part of his analysis.\n\n5\n\n'Les rapports de production en Russie', reprinted in _La soci\u00e9t\u00e9 bureaucratique_ , _1_.\n\n6\n\nIbid., p. 179.\n\n7\n\nAn American splinter from the IVth International, in many ways similar to 'Socialisme ou Barbarie', did take this direction. The 'Forrest-Johnson' (Dunayevskaya-James) tendency was in close relation with 'Socialisme ou Barbarie', which translated some of their articles into French. This is not the place to enter into the differences between them, or the split of James with Dunayevskaya; it suffices to note that by the mid-1950s, the distance had become radical.\n\n8\n\nCf. Lefort's 'What Is Bureaucracy?' _Telos_ 22 (Winter 1974\u20131975). In 'Le totalitarisme sans Staline', Lefort insists that the transformation effected cannot be called 'primitive socialist accumulation', as Isaac Deutscher suggests, because primitive accumulation in Marx's sense brings about the establishment of relations of domination of Capital over Labor\u2014not socialism. Lefort uses the term 'state capitalism' because he still believed that the existence of the proletariat means that Marx's vision of socialism remains possible. Lefort goes on to suggest that the relations between state and civil society in bureaucratic Russia differ from those in bourgeois society, where competition maintains the separation between civil society and the state. 'Totalitarianism', he writes, 'is not a dictatorial regime, as it appears when we speak summarily of it as a type of absolute domination in which the separation of powers is abolished. More precisely, it is not a political regime: it is a type of society, a formation in which all activities are immediately tied to each other, deliberately presented as modalities of a single universe in which a system of values predominates absolutely, such that all individual and collective activities must necessarily find in that system their coefficient of reality; in which, finally, the dominant model exercises a total constraint at once physical and spiritual on the behavior of the particular individuals. In this sense, totalitarianism makes the pretense of negating the separation characteristic of bourgeois capitalism among the various domains of social life, the political, the economic, the juridical, the ideological, etc. It effectuates a permanent identification of them all. Thus it is not so much a monstrous growth of the political power within society as a metamorphosis of society itself by which the political ceases to exist as a separate sphere' ( _El\u00e9ments_ , p. 156).\n\nThe role of the party is crucial for this argument; it 'is the agent of a complete penetration of civil society by the state. More precisely, it is the milieu in which the state changes itself into society, or the society into the state' (Ibid., p. 157). Individual action is transformed, given a collective meaning. The party claims to be a mediator; but since the society remains divided, in reality the party is just another particular among the particular interest groups, although it pretends that its decisions have universal social validity. Lefort's interpretation of the 20th Congress of the Russian Bolshevik party in February 1956 argues that it is not a loosening of the grip of the party but its self-affirmation. During the heroic period after 1917, the bureaucracy, like the bourgeoisie of the French Revolution, had to hide its real purpose from itself, draping itself in mythical robes. A quarter of a century later, with the industrialization of Russia, a calming of the passions, ending the violence, became possible. Where the rising bureaucracy needed the Terror and the myth of socialism to forge its own unity, once its base was established, it had to find forms to legitimate its control. This was all the more necessary as, during the same quarter of a century, a working class had also arisen, forged from the ex-peasantry, and laboring in conditions of modern industry. Its needs too had to be addressed, at least partially. The limits of what the bureaucracy can do in this context are\u2014in Lefort's interpretation at the time\u2014those of the proletariat's need for self-management, as well as the fact that, to maintain itself, the bureaucracy establishes wage and work hierarchies whose effect appears in the impossibility of making the Plan work, since in such conditions it is not possible to calculate the cost of socially necessary labor power. The inefficiency of the Plan and the new social needs of an industrial proletariat force the bureaucracy to assert its hold through new measures of 'liberalization' (as at the 20th Congress), aimed at increasing participation in production and thus raising productivity.\n\n9\n\nThe analyses of the events of 1953 and 1956 in Eastern Europe which were published in  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ remained refreshingly actual long after the events. Their implications for the revised view of capitalism were drawn later, as the 'bureaucratic string' was pulled even further. See also 'Sur le contenu du socialisme', in  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ (hereinafter _SB_ ), nos. 17, 22, 23. Both Castoriadis and Lefort have recently published new essays on the 1956 Revolution in Hungary, in _Telos_ , No. 29, Fall, 1976.\n\n10\n\nThe relation between Merleau-Ponty and the 'Socialisme ou Barbarie' group would bear further study, as the essays on Lefort and Merleau-Ponty in this volume also suggest. There are circumstantial overlaps, among them: Merleau-Ponty's use of Benno Sarel's manuscript study of East Germany, his indebtedness to Lefort particularly as concerns the discussion of Trotsky, or the (unacknowledged) citation from Castoriadis in _Les aventures_ (pp. 312\u201313) or Castoriadis' own citation of Merleau-Ponty's definition of praxis ( _SB_ , no. 38, p. 62) and his use of Merleau-Ponty's adaptation of Malraux's 'deformation coherente' to describe the imaginaire radical (ibid., no. 40, p. 45), or the return to the ontological problematic of the institution. There is also a more substantial philosophical debt. Worth mentioning here is the edition of the journal, _L'Arc_ (no. 46, 1971), directed by Lefort, to which most of the editors of _Textures_ , including Castoriadis, contributed.\n\n11\n\nThis problem is elaborated concretely in 'Sur la dynamique du capitalism' ( _SB_ , 12\u201313, 1953\u20134) and in 'Le mouvement r\u00e9volutionnaire sous le capitalisme moderne' ( _SB_ , no. 31, 32, 33, 1960\u20131). Castoriadis developed further his critique of Marx's naturalistic presupposition in 'Justice, valeur et \u00e9galit\u00e9: d'Aristote \u00e0 Marx et de Marx \u00e0 nous' in _Textures_ , 1976. In this essay, Castoriadis' political argument looks to the ontological presuppositions that deform Marx's account of human laboring activity which appears to be both ahistorical and naturalist. Marx's image of human being as based on labor is shown to reflect the imaginaire of capitalism.\n\n12\n\nIntroduction g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, op. cit., p. 38.\n\n13\n\n _SB_ , no. 38, p. 85; now in _L'institution imaginaire de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9_ (henceforth _L'institution_ ) p. 129.\n\n14\n\nThis analysis is developed clearly in 'La question de l'histoire du mouvement ouvrier', which is the Introduction to the first collection of his earlier essays, _L'exp\u00e9rience du mouvement ouvrier, 1_ (Paris: UGE, 1974) (henceforth 'La question'). The debates, and quarrels, between Lefort and Castoriadis from the early 1950s, and again from the 1950s, have been reprinted in collections of their work, and each has returned to the problem in the interviews with the _Anti-mythes_. The crucial point in the present context is that both Castoriadis and Lefort recognize that insofar as their positions were still determined by the problematic of the proletarian revolution, the debate was deformed.\n\n15\n\n'La question', op. cit., p. 78.\n\n16\n\nCastoriadis makes use of E. P. Thompson's _The Making of the English Working Class_ to stress this point. Where Thompson avoids drawing the theoretical conclusions from his own work, Castoriadis brings them to the fore. In effect, Thompson recognizes the creative role of the working class in shaping itself as revolutionary subject, but he refuses to draw the implications as concerns the Marxism to which he doggedly held. Thompson combines the most acute historiographical methods with an ultimately dogmatic and unthinking maintenance of what he takes to be (humanist) Marxism.\n\n17\n\n'La question', op. cit., p. 113.\n\n18\n\nIbid., p. 112.\n\n19\n\nIt is obvious that human need is a factor in history; a starving society can establish no social formation. As will be seen in Section IV, Castoriadis deals with this problem under the heading of an always present 'natural stratum'. For the moment, it suffices to add here the observation that the same supposedly natural needs have given rise to a dizzying multiplicity of forms of satisfaction, implying that their explanation in terms of need is either trivial or practically useless.\n\n20\n\nThus, the _Communist Manifesto_ 's beginning sections read like a hymn of praise to capitalism. Lefort presents similar criticisms.\n\n21\n\n _SB_ , no. 37, p. 45; _L'institution_ , p. 75.\n\n22\n\n _SB_ , no. 38, p. 50; _L'institution_ , p. 90.\n\n23\n\n _SB_ , no. 35, p. 10 (article 'Recommencer la r\u00e9volution').\n\n24\n\n'Introduction g\u00e9n\u00e9rale', op. cit., p. 14.\n\n25\n\nIbid., p. 32.\n\n26\n\n _SB_ , no. 35, p. 25 (article, 'Recommencer la r\u00e9volution').\n\n27\n\nClaude Lefort's comments on this attempt are worth citing here. 'It is already a fiction to suppose that men could decide \"en connaissance de cause\" the general objectives of production if only they were put in the position of being able to evaluate (thanks to the Plan-producing factory) the comparative costs of investments in all sectors, of being able to appreciate the consequences of their choices and to hierarchize those choices. The implication is, in effect, that once it is freed from the false representations and artificial constraints engendered by capitalism, \"desire\" relates directly to the real and modulates itself with the aid of a slide-rule' (Interview with _the Anti-mythes_ , p. 13). Castoriadis' developed ontology does not make the assumption that in socialism (or anywhere else for that matter) an individual could relate directly to a 'really-real' object.\n\n28\n\n _SB_ , no. 37, p. 32; _L'institution_ , p. 61.\n\n29\n\n _SB_ , no. 39, p. 63n; _L'institution_ , p. 187n.\n\n30\n\n _SB_ , no. 38, p. 67; _L'institution_ , p. 109.\n\n31\n\nIn _Les Aventures_ , Merleau-Ponty works through the implications of these _identical_ assertions in his lengthy critique of Sartre.\n\n32\n\n _SB_ , no. 39, p. 28; _L'institution_ , p. 143.\n\n33\n\n _SB_ , no. 39, p. 37; _L'institution_ , pp. 153\u20134.\n\n34\n\n'Introduction g\u00e9n\u00e9rale', op. cit., p. 54. In comparison with Lefort's 'logic of the political', it becomes clear that what for him is constitutive of the _experience_ of the political is interpreted ontologically by Castoriadis.\n\n35\n\n _SB_ , no. 40, p. 63; _L'institution_ , p. 222. Similarities to Lefort's analysis of the 'invisible ideology' are no doubt due to the fact that the two of them were again working together during this period, although not always in full harmony.\n\n36\n\n _L'institution_ , p. 486.\n\n37\n\nIn this way Castoriadis avoids the reproach of 'existentialism'. A cow can be instituted as all sorts of things, from totem to tool; but it can never write a poem or invent the windmill. 'On ne peut pas dire n'importe quoi', repeats Castoriadis again and again. He put later his interpretation of psychoanalysis to the practical test as a clinician.\n\n38\n\n _SB_ , no. 40, p. 44; _L'institution_ , p. 200.\n\n39\n\nCastoriadis illustrates this point in detail with examples from mathematics and philosophy. The relation instituted by the _Legein_ establishes a set of significations in terms of which the world is presented. To that end it constitutes what Castoriadis calls an 'identitary-ensemblist logic'. The operators of the _Legein_ \u2014which include relations of separation\/identification, distinctions such as with regard to\/insofar as, and comparisons of validity as\/validity for\u2014can be iterated and combined indefinitely. The _Legein_ brings with it the relation of finality or instrumentality insofar as it refers to what is not yet but could be\u2014is added, the tradition of practical philosophy can be derived as well.\n\n40\n\n _L'institution_ , p. 341.\n\n41\n\nThe result here suggests a reformulation of Marx's insights. Every society has a different finality that is instituted by its _Teukhein_ and its _imaginaire central_. Revolution properly speaking would be the institution of a new social finality. In fact the revolution that Castoriadis calls for would go further; it does not simply introduce a change in the finality of production, although it includes that. The call for a change in the productivist finality of capitalism remains within the instituted thought of the _Legein_ and the _Teukhein_. While recognizing the impossibility of doing without these, Castoriadis wants to change society's relation to them. Reform would be a change in social finality; revolution implies a change in social relations. C.f., the concluding section, below, which examines Castoriadis' redefinition of revolution.\n\n42\n\n _L'institution_ , p. 406.\n\n43\n\nIbid., p. 417.\n\n44\n\nIbid., p. 420.\n\n45\n\nIbid., p. 422.\n\n46\n\nIbid., p. 461.\n\n47\n\nIbid., pp. 462\u20133.\n\n48\n\nIbid., p. 446.\n\n49\n\nIbid., pp. 450\u20131.\n\n50\n\nIbid., p. 476.\n\n51\n\nIbid., p. 495.\n\n52\n\nIbid., pp. 295\u20136. Lefort's criticism on this point should be noted here because it avoids one possible misinterpretation and clarifies what was said about his theses in Chap. . He insists that '[t]he idea of auto-institution partakes of the most profound illusion of modern societies, i.e. of those societies in which (as Marx observed) little by little the relations of man to the earth, and relations of personal dependence are dissolved; of those societies in which there is no longer the possibility of inscribing the human order, the established hierarchies, in a natural or supernatural order\u2014or better, the two at once\u2014because the visible disequilibria there always pointed to an invisible order... [M]odern societies (and I am obviously not thinking only of the work of theorists, but of the discourse implied in social practice) are busy seeking in themselves the foundation of their institution' (Interview with _Anti-mythes_ , p. 18). Lefort sees Castoriadis giving in to the illusion of a total theory, in spite of his awareness of the danger. Castoriadis' reply would no doubt be to point out that Lefort's phenomenological ontology of experience leaves no room for a political project and hence that he denies the possibility of revolution. Castoriadis would further point out, as noted above (n. 27) with reference to Lefort's critique of his analysis of the content of socialism, that while Lefort's description of modern societies is accurate, their search for their own foundation continues to take the form of a traditional ontology based on a rationalism. His own notion of auto-institution does not follow the common-sense image of the consumer consciously choosing guns or butter, nor is it a version of the theme that 'knowledge is power'. Despite their differences, the two positions seem to me closer to one another than either would admit.\n\n53\n\n _L'institution_ , p. 498.\n\n54\n\nIbid., p. 483.\n\u00a9 The Author(s) 2019\n\nDick HowardThe Marxian LegacyPolitical Philosophy and Public Purpose<https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-030-04411-4_10>\n\n# 10. Actualizing the Legacy\u2014New Social Movements in the West and Civil Society against the State in the East\n\nDick Howard1\n\n(1)\n\nDepartment of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA\n\nDick Howard\n\nThe reader of this volume may wonder why some thinkers were included while others are absent. The answer lies in the concept of a legacy and in the politics of its inheritance. The wordplay is important. Designating the legacy as Marx _ian_ suggests that Marx and those Mar _xists_ who claim to be his heirs have no monopoly on the theoretical definition or practical realization of radical politics. By refusing to accord Marx the sole paternity of the political search for what classical philosophers called 'the Good Life in the City', it becomes possible to rethink political theory and the light that it casts on contemporary political choices. My principles of inclusion and exclusion can be explained by this broader goal. As for Marx himself, to whose work I have returned several times during the years since the first edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ , he is also best understood within the context constituted by his legacy, which has practical as well as theoretical, as the title of this chapter suggests.\n\nThe first two sections of this chapter, published in 1988 as an Afterword to the book's second edition, treat the general question of the relation of theory and practice. I examine first what I call 'The Politics of Theory' and then turn to 'The Theory of Politics'. The play on words is again intended to make a theoretical point that has practical consequences. I contend that the 'New Left' politics within whose horizon the first edition was written retains its radical potential. The symmetrical difficulties encountered by those who insist on the priority of theory for understanding political practice, as well as those for whom practical choices constitute the dynamic foundation for any radical political theory, permit me to explain why the book is divided into three distinct parts: 'Within Marxism', 'Using Marxism', and 'Criticizing Marxism'. The young Marx had encountered similar difficulties when he tried to distinguish his own approach from both those contemporaries whom he called 'the practical party' and those he designated as 'the theoretical party'. These difficulties also suggest the reason why the critique of Marxism remains essential to the Marxian legacy, which is not a unitary product that can be passed on without alteration regardless of historical changes that have intervened in the meanwhile. A legacy is not a birthright or patrimony, still less a gift or a bequest; it has to be earned in order to be truly possessed.\n\nThe third and fourth sections of this Afterword turn next to the questions 'Why the Legacy?' and 'Why Question Marx?' in order to explain first the principles that governed the inclusion and exclusion of such candidates as Georg Luk\u00e1cs, or the work of other members of the Frankfurt School. I go on to introduce some more recent critical accounts of Marx's contribution to his own legacy. This third section recognizes also that the triadic structure that moves from 'within' to 'using' before 'criticizing' Marxism could be read as constituting a dialectical progress. However, as the fourth section indicates, that assumption would be misleading insofar as it leaves no room for further development, from the side of theory or from that of practice. That is why this fourth section discusses some works written after the first edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ was written. I discuss here the ambitious theoretical project of J\u00fcrgen Habermas' _Theory of Communicative Action_ (1981) which forms an insightful addition to his earlier work that was discussed in the first edition. Similarly, from the perspective of Sartre's 'existential Marxism', Andr\u00e9 Gorz's _Adieux au prol\u00e9tariat_ (1980) seeks to recapture the legacy by rethinking the philosophical and practical premises leading him to subtitle his book provocatively as 'Beyond Socialism'. Although they interpret the terms differently, both Habermas and Gorz recognize the broader question of 'the political'; both seek solutions by reinterpreting the politics of democracy.\n\nReturning to the criticism of Marxism by Merleau-Ponty, Lefort, and Castoriadis that was discussed in the first edition, it is clear that it was articulated from the standpoint of a critique of the 'politics of theory'. The fifth section of this Afterword, 'Criticism and the Question of History', shows how Lefort and Castoriadis moved beyond their earlier critique toward a positive theory of democracy during the past decade. Although their conceptions differed, Lefort and Castoriadis shared an understanding of totalitarianism as the deformation of the socialist project. That critique has opened out to a positive perspective on democracy over the recent years The Marxist temptation to replace the formal institutions of 'bourgeois' democracy by a 'real' or 'social' democracy suggests that, in essence, totalitarianism is above all an immanent potential of democracy. As a result, democratic politics can be understood as posing a _question_ to which, each in its own way, capitalism and totalitarianism try to formulate an answer. Both 'answers' fail because they eliminate the very question that animates radical politics. Hence, the final section of this Afterword, 'The Legacy as Present History', tries to draw different practical, and theoretical, consequences from the Marxian legacy by reframing that question in different terms.\n\n## 10.1 The Politics of Theory\n\nDespite Hegel's downgrading political theory to the role of 'the owl of Minerva' who flies only after the fact, Marxist intellectuals stress the vital importance of theory. Struggling to come up with a 'correct' understanding, they naturally assume that their work is more than that 'idiosyncratic need' to which currently modish deconstructionists such as Richard Rorty want to reduce their labors.1 The young Marx's move from philosophy to political economy was based on a left-Hegelian reinterpretation of the theory-praxis problem. Marx argued that Hegel's systematic demonstration of the rationality of the real could not be true as long as the real world's imperfections were so painfully obvious. Theory had to be wrenched from its splendid isolation and turned to the world. Praxis was made necessary by the theoretical imperative to complete the system by changing the world, negating the negation. At least for the young Marx, theory justified and called for praxis. Theory was not, as is often assumed, the result of a praxis to which it merely gives a rational form. This is why the _Communist Manifesto_ rejected other forms of socialist practice; their theories were inadequate to the task they proposed.\n\nThe priority of theory for radical politics is not absolute. Political intellectuals would not be the people they are if they were insensitive to the world around them. That was surely my own case during the years when I first wrote this book, and so it remains. The first edition contained two introductory chapters, which are not reproduced here.2 Although the remaining chapters of the book treat the same thinkers as in the first edition, they have been rewritten in 2018 because this book is not simply document testifying to another epoch. This claim demands some explanation, since I clearly situated, and situate, myself within that earlier 'New Left' which may appear in retrospect as the reflection of blue-eyed generosity by a lucky generation produced by an ephemeral post-war prosperity whose welfare-state bounties began to wither away as the Vietnam War wound down and the civil rights movement diminished. That 'New Left' seems to have been condemned, with the old Left, by the history that Hegel called 'The Court of Last Judgment' and on whose progressive path Marx had relied. What is to be said in the face of changes in Portugal, Cambodia, or China, let alone Ethiopia, Iran, Afghanistan, Poland, or even Nicaragua? Or, to stay within the territory of what is called 'Western Marxism', does the German Social Democrats' attempt to update their Bad Godesberg program under pressure from the _movement_ called the Greens offset the lack of imagination displayed by the French Socialists when they finally came to power in 1981? Is the problem simply one of theory?3\n\n _The Marxian Legacy_ is critical of Marx _ism_ and of Marx. When the publisher of the first edition proposed a photograph of a demonstration from May 1968 as its cover, I had it replaced by a reproduction of Bruegel's painting, _The Blind Leading the Blind_. In the Preface, I cited Castoriadis' assertion that Marxism has become 'the flesh of the world we combat' but added immediately that 'whatever we may think of Marxist _orthodoxy_ , we cannot think without _Marx_ '. I did not mean that qualification as a political apology; _thinking_ with Marx is precisely his legacy, as the third part of this book shows. The problem is not so much Marx himself as it is understanding what political thinking in fact is. Theory has its politics, as politics has its theory. The point can be illustrated from contemporary Marxist theory; it can also be seen in Marx himself.4\n\nTwo types of theoretical politics try to use Marx and his legacy to save Marxism. This rescue-mission is necessary because, without a theory, praxis seems adrift, without a compass, meaningless. Worse, without a correct interpretation of its meaning, the sense of what praxis has in fact wrought may be misunderstood, stolen by opponents, or distorted for its addressees. One contemporary variant calling itself Marxist simply returns to the work of the Master, in order to demonstrate that competing views have misunderstood its sense. This is easy enough; the works of any great thinker, engaged with his times, provide grist for many mills, as the examples of Althusser, Della Volpe, or Colletti, and a host of less global reinterpretations, have demonstrated. Often invented for ulterior political purposes, such Marxism is not part of the legacy.5 Nor are the other contemporary attempts which adduce syncretically new theories in order to enrich the original, broadening it to treat questions that had not arisen in the nineteenth century. Freud is the most frequent mate for such mixed marriages, but he is hardly alone among the potential candidates, as the pages of the Frankfurt School's  _Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Sozialforschung_ illustrated abundantly.6 The resulting union is no more fecund than the return to the original texts. Applications of Marxism to disparate domains are not part of the legacy. There is no need today to continue to read the  _Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Sozialforschung_ because of its book reviews.7 The rescuers misunderstand the political nature of the theory because they implicitly equate it with the praxis it is supposed to determine. In doing so, they in fact separate the two spheres, excluding reciprocal influences that enrich both of them by their dialogue.\n\nThe dilemma for Marx's rescuers is apparent in the twin goals that they pursue: to explain or to explain away. Some try to give sense to phenomena that escape the inherited texts. They practice the mixed marriage technique, and while their work is not devoid of sociological interest, it threatens to reach too far, explaining _away_ the novelty of the phenomena it confronts. The paradigm illustration of this temptation is found in Marx himself when he tries to reduce cultural superstructures to socio-economic infrastructures. If this temptation is the exception in Marx's thinking, his successors made it the rule. Trotsky's insistence on the 'socialist' nature of the Soviet Union's economic basis (because it had done away with private property) made him an appealingly tragic figure for many intellectuals, then as now. Lefort and Castoriadis developed their critical theories because they saw through the politics of this theory both in its justification of so-called really existing socialism and in the analysis of the changing nature of capitalist society. The danger is that theory claims to define a truth against which reality is to be measured. The Marx who is salvaged in this way is separated from the world with which his theory claimed to be inextricably bound. The theorist saves self-certainty by his illusory political engagement. The quest for a coherent understanding of the sense of social practice that animated the rescue-operation is forced to conclude that the real world is made up of constituted by accidents, external circumstances, or failures of leadership. Its result is the opposite of its intention.8\n\nMy goal is not to save Marx, not even from himself. Marx's thought is relevant because of his questions, not his answers or even his mistakes. Lefort's recent rereading of the _Communist Manifesto_ illustrates the difficulty. Marx announces that a 'spectre is haunting Europe'. This implies that communism is already a power and that the _Manifesto_ is simply the statement of what already is the case. The politics of theory becomes the theory of politics. The resulting proclamation is not Marx's claim; he speaks in the name of a London meeting that authorized him to proclaim internationally this message. The reader is not an individual questioning the world; the _Manifesto_ is addressed to the world to which it explains its very own movement toward a necessary end. Although they are a political party, the communists do not speak as a particular, partisan group; they take no positions of their own but speak in the name of the world. The source of their knowledge is none other than the facts themselves, whose interpretation is evident to the observing Reason of the theorist. By contrast, when the bourgeoisie comes to speak, Marx shows that its assertions have the ironic result that its own principles turn against it; the abolition of the family, private property, and 'all that is holy' are part of a naturally unfolding history over which no one has control. The bourgeoisie must lie to itself and the world because its material position blinds it to the truth. On the other hand, if the communist speaks the truth, it is the voice of all previous history, a history that culminates in the proletariat whose essential nature is expressed by the _Manifesto_.\n\nIn this way, the Marx of the _Manifesto_ is neither political nor a theorist. History is the theorist. Politics disappears because the proletariat is a curious sort of hero; it has no personality, no illusions in the present, no conflictual social bonds, and its only option for action is revolution. Its power comes not from what it does but from the very 'nothing' that it is, which makes it the executioner of history's final judgment. This is not the proletarian analyzed in _Capital_ whose productive learning that makes it a revolutionary subject is analyzed at length (e.g., in the long chapter on the struggles to limit the working day). The paradoxical a political politics of the _Manifesto_ reappears in its refusal to think about the future that it wills. This is again paradoxical; 'the history of humanity which takes place entirely before the eyes of the communists gives rise to a society _without ideas_ , a society that is self-identical to the point that it abolishes any possibility of judgement. This is why Marx refuses to imagine the character of the future; society is for him self-sufficient; it excludes any representation of itself; it cannot name itself nor even explain why it claims to be free and just'. How, then, can Marx speak of oppressors and oppressed, or describe a struggle for emancipation? The secret of this antipolitics is the position adopted by the theorist, who is not an individual or a party but the voice of History itself, speaking the truth that which has finally become fully visible in the reality of the proletariat. The _Manifesto_ marches forward, with the force of a rushing river or the monotonous movement of a machine. Retreat is ruled out since all other theories have been shown illusory, while Marx's own text is not 'theory' but history made fully visible to itself.9\n\nThe paradoxical assertion that Marx is not the author of the _Communist Manifesto_ coincides with the implicit reconceptualization of the politics of theory that transforms it into a theory of politics. If the theorists are correct in claiming the importance of their work, that is because of the peculiar nature of the Marxian _theory_ rather than the result of the politics that it encourages and legitimates. Marx never made the distinction between the two spheres explicit. The implication of the _Manifesto_ is that interpretation of his theory depends on its practice. This had important implications in Eastern Europe in the 1980s when, after the failures of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the crushing of the reform communism in Czechoslovakia in 1968 an oppositional movement of a new type emerged in the 1980s. Thinkers especially in Poland (Kuron\u00b4 and Modzelewski, Michnik) and Hungary (Konrad and Szelenyi, Kis) recognized that 'theory' in the form of wooden slogans that serve to rationalize bureaucratic domination has been discredited.10 The opposition that has emerged finds itself in the inverse identical position of the young Marx. Praxis that is expressed in new forms of resistance and creative forms of social solidarity in civil society, outside of the state, make theory necessary just as it had been theory that founded the young Marx's turn away from philosophy to political practice. The new resistance that characterized the emancipatory movements in East Europe shows that politics need not depend on pre-given theory; it may produce its own self-critical understanding, which proves not to be foreign to the concerns animating the Marxian legacy, even when (as it had earlier in western Europe) it takes the form that I call in Part III, 'Criticizing Marxism'. The Marxist theory of politics that results from those reflections will, in turn, have to overcome its own paradoxes in order to inherit the Marxian legacy.\n\n## 10.2 The Theory of Politics\n\nThe opposition between a theory demanding practice and a practice that calls for theory is based on an oversimplification of both theory and politics. Wherever priority is placed, one pole is treated as a question, the other as supplying the answer. A 'revolutionary' theory or practice claims implicitly that there is a hiatus between the two poles; the revolution is conceived as a rupture that is neither an 'after' which reveals the truth of the old order nor a 'before' that explains the necessity of the new regime.11 Although revolution can be conceived as the 'truth' of both politics and theory, it is not identical with either of them. This is what so fascinated Merleau-Ponty. Revolution is the moment in which theory and practice are united but distinct, each passing into the other, fructifying and transforming, questioning and challenging. The richness of Marx, and of his legacy, lies in the persistent attempt to think together these two poles which, for 'common sense', remain apart. Separated, theory and practice seek one another, need one another, and yet distort one another in their necessarily fruitless quest for identity. United, they _destroy_ one another, as Lefort's reading of the _Manifesto_ demonstrates, and the practice of totalitarianism witnesses. While this does not mean that revolution is impossible, it points to the need to rethink the _politics_ of revolution and the _theory_ that explains its necessity.\n\nThat 'New Left' that I claimed as a participant in the Marxian legacy illustrates the difficulty. It was a cultural phenomenon, a mode, and life-style; and it was the sociological correlate of a specific political-economic conjuncture. But it was more than that; it was a movement for justice and a quest for happiness, freedom, and equality; and it was a democratic movement that continued to question itself. For just these reasons, its demise was predictable once it began to take itself for something it could not be: the agent of revolution.12 Its practice became afflicted by theory; it sought to become what the theory demanded: a 'revolutionary subject'. It travestied itself, searching for a sociological reality in which it could nest its desired subjectivity, from which it could define its identity, divesting itself from its own real conditions. It passed from the quest for unity with the labor and black movements, to seek unity with the Third World before tasting the 'cultural revolution' and finally splintering among the plurality of possibilities defined by its naive sociology. It could not recognize its own originality as a new politics because there was no place for the new in the Marxist theory that it found itself adopting. It could not formulate the theory of its own practice. It did not recognize that political theory is neither the description of a relation of forces nor the utopian projection of a final state of realized happiness or justice. Political theory can neither remain in the 'before' nor flee to the 'after'. The New Left confused theory with practice and came up short on both ends.\n\nAlthough the New Left has disappeared as an actor, it remained an absent participant in the debate initiated by the rise of a neo-conservative politics at the same time that post-modern theory began to make known its presence in the university in the 1980s. Both of these phenomena were in a sense anticipated by the New Left; together, they illustrate the critical nature of the Marxian legacy. In the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany, a neo-conservative politics challenges the extension of democratic participation that appears to threaten the foundations of the liberal _Rechtsstaat_ .13 Habermas has pointed out that this interpretation treats a cultural effect as if it were a socio-political cause, ignoring conveniently the capitalist economy in which the new popular participatory demands are anchored. But that criticism is only a beginning. It is not enough to distinguish real from false causes of political problems; the problems persist. The neo-conservatives have raised significant questions about the _limits_ , and therefore the  _nature_ , of political intervention. Their critique of the so-called new class that has accompanied the extension of the Welfare State ignores the reality of the needs to which that intervention answers, although the reality of the needs does not mean that the only solution comes from state action. The question of the limits of the political sphere cannot be avoided, especially by a tradition that tends to reduce the state to its economic function. The 'New Left' argument that 'the personal is the political' is in itself not the answer to the need to redefine politics.\n\nThe neo-conservative attack on the modern welfare state is not limited to the narrowly defined sphere of politics. The formulation of similar criticisms under the heading 'post-modernism' suggests that neo-conservatism is not necessarily a politics of the 'right'. Much of contemporary French philosophy, under the influence of Heidegger, has turned vigorously against the rational (or 'rationalizing') principles of the Enlightenment, of which Marx was said to be a prime example. The origin of the rationalist error is said to begin with Descartes' project, which takes the ego as the 'master and possessor' of all it surveys. This 'philosophy of the subject', whose project of mastery has negative ecological correlates, is blamed for the project of unlimited domination of which capitalism is only one manifestation. This mentality produces the _modern_ myth of a progressive philosophy of history articulated in the nineteenth century by the German 'Master Thinkers' culminating in Hegel and Marx. Their 'mad project' can be resisted by 'decentering' the subject through what Foucault called 'micro-strategies' for the defense of daily life. These 'post-modernist' French themes had a familiar ring to German ears already attuned to Horkheimer and Adorno's _Dialectic of Enlightenment_.14 Habermas heard in the post-modernist jargon a reformulation of neo-conservatism's demand for limits. He feared that the French influence was leading to new elitism incarnated by those who can afford the individualism of micro-strategies; and he worried that they were encouraging unintentionally the renewal of an anti-rationalism that haunted German politics since the times of first Romantic movement.15 These observations are suggestive; it remains to formulate a political theory that situates the novelty of the present moment.\n\nHabermas' equation of neo-conservatism in politics with the French post-modernism in theory is revealing. His _political_ attack on the neo-conservatives is the expression of a classical Social-Democratic political stance. When he comes to the French, his analysis is more complicated. Like the Frankfurt School, Habermas knows that the Enlightenment tradition and Marxism are not unambiguous heritages. Indeed, Habermas admits that what he considers as the excesses of post-modernism are part and parcel of the development of late-capitalism.16 But when he tries to understand systematically the place of post-modernism as philosophy, in _The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity_ (1985), he returns to the young Hegel's struggle to integrate the imperatives of the Enlightenment with his image of the ethical community in order to understand the refusal of the young Hegelians (including Marx) to accept Hegel's systematic equation of the rational with the real. In this way, Habermas transforms the political problem raised by the neo-conservatives into a theoretical dilemma. He eliminates the specificity of the political question; theory replaces politics. The political question, whether posed by the New Left, the neo-conservatives, or the French post-moderns, is dissolved in theory before being transformed into a general analysis of modernity (whose 'philosophical discourse' for Habermas begins with Hegel, not with Marx). Analogous to the ways the _Manifesto_ made theory depend on politics, Habermas tends to make politics depend on theory.\n\nHabermas' theoretical politics is elaborated in his two-volume _Theory of Communicative Action_ which he began in response to the rise of a neo-conservative political reaction in Germany toward the end of 1977.17 The first volume concludes with a long chapter describing the movement 'From Luk\u00e1cs to Adorno: Rationalization as Reification'; the second concludes with another intellectual voyage that passes 'From Parsons Through Weber to Marx'. The first volume presents an immanent critique of the tradition inaugurated by Luk\u00e1cs' _History and Class Consciousness_ and culminating in the _aporias_ of the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_. The second reformulates the Frankfurt School critique of instrumental reason as the 'colonization of the life-world', which Habermas contends is a _modern_ version of Marx's own theory. The 'tasks of a critical theory' follow from the analogy to the notion of a 'real abstraction' which Marx took over from Hegel for his own purposes. Marx's thesis was that the revolutionary critique of political economy became possible only at a specific historical moment, when the 'abstract' concept of labor power actually governs the behavior of capitalists such that the 'concept' of labor power becomes a real problem in the experience of a working class exploited by the capitalist mode of production and struggling for better conditions and a shorter working day. In these conditions, the particular wrongs suffered by the workers become general wrongs imposed by the entire system, which must itself be overthrown; the practical rebellion of the workers and the critical theory of capitalism are united by the _reality_ of the theoretical 'abstraction'. By extension, Habermas suggests that modern societies create autonomous individuals capable of free and rational communication at the same time that continued modernization demands the reduction of this autonomy in the name of the systemic rationality imposed on the life-world by the demands of late-capitalist social reproduction. The result parallels the situation described by Marx as a real abstraction; the modern life-world is threatened by colonization and as individuals we cannot _not_ be struggling to overcome it. Practice and theory are joined by the fact that 'communicative action' is the foundation of both.\n\nHabermas' reformulated Marxist model of the relation of politics to theory repeats, in inverse form, the relation of theory to politics criticized in Lefort's reading of the _Communist Manifesto_. Action is reaction, negation is affirmation, and Habermas can claim that it is 'political' because the threat to which it responds has a universal potential. Practice is made theoretical in the same way that the _Manifesto_ made theory practical: by denying its particularity. Habermas wants to produce a Marxism that is also modern; and he wants to do justice to the 'new social movements' which continue, in their manner, the New Left. He does not, however, ask whether the transformations of modern society call for a different understanding of politics. The 'politics' that Habermas tries to theorize are _social_. This is no doubt the reason that, when it comes to philosophy, Habermas' concern is morality before it is politics.18 That is why he criticizes the post-moderns, even while accepting the utopian vision of Adorno\u2014and even of Benjamin, in what is surely his most brilliant piece of _writing_19\u2014while refusing the sometimes strikingly similar post-moderns. 'Adorno does not merely bale out of the _counter_ -discourse which had inhabited modernity ever since the beginning; rather, in his desperate adherence to the procedure of determinant negation, he remains true to the idea that there is no cure for the wounds of the Enlightenment other than the radicalized Enlightenment itself'.20 Habermas' attempt to inherit both the Enlightenment and Marxism through a theory of 'communicative action' seeks to add the universalization of practice to the universalization presupposed by Marx's theory of History. The question whether this combination of a philosophical theory of communicative action with a sociological analysis based on a reformulated Marxism can provide the basis for a modern politics will return; for the moment, the political implications of the post-modernist argument against which Habermas directs his polemical energies points to the fact that his theory of politics rejoins the idea of a politics of theory, whose implications remain to be analyzed.\n\nIn some of their most egregious oversimplifications, French post-modernists have identified the Enlightenment as the intellectual foundation of the Soviet Gulags. Often expressed by the 'new philosophers', who became popular in the latter half of the 1970s, this point can be left as an anecdote here.21 Pierre Rosanvallon's contemporary attempt to explain the emergence of a 'second left' that had become for a moment a real political option in France in his _Pour une nouvelle culture politique_ (1977) is more significant. Rosanvallon sees no exaggeration in the assertion that 'We experience the gulag today similarly to the way German philosophy experienced the French Revolution: as a radical questioning which marks a decisive turning-point'.22 The assertion that parallel questions are posed by the revolution and by the experience of totalitarianism demands explanation. It suggests that totalitarianism, like revolution, reveals the 'truth' of politics. The 'before' and the 'after' only appear to differ; on analysis, they prove to be identical. Before totalitarianism, there was democracy; after totalitarianism, there shall be democracy. What is the totalitarian interlude? What is it about democracy that makes it turn against itself?\n\nIn the background of these questions lies the experience of the New Left and its practice of participatory democracy, as well as its na\u00efve and ultimately self-destructive attempt to identify the personal with the political. I was attracted by the French preoccupation with the critique of totalitarianism and its relation to democracy at the same time that Habermas' radicalization of the first generation of the Frankfurt School was an attractive option. Whereas Habermas ultimately came to defend the formal institutions of democratic procedure, the French understanding of the relation of totalitarianism and democracy pointed to a more radical possibility: the idea of a new form of politics. The critique of the Marxian legacy proposed by Lefort and Castoriadis offers a positive theory of the political that avoids the formalization of democracy at the same time that it opens the idea of a political theory of modernity.\n\nThe paradoxes that have emerged in these first discussions of the practice of theory and the theory of practice cast light on the new politics that _The Marxian Legacy_ attempts to theorize. These paradoxes also explain the structure of the book. The emergence of 'democracy' in the practice of the New Left and in the theories of post-modernism pose more questions than they answer. The French Revolution demonstrated the inability of direct democracy to give itself institutional (representative) forms. Democracy is not a state of affairs. What I call Marx's 'phenomenologies' of French history witness his dynamic understanding at the same time that they demonstrate that his own theory could not be 'applied' to guide practice.23 This is no surprise; revolutions present the political moment in its pure form. They call for theory precisely because they manifest the new, which cannot be predicted nor discerned in the past. This 'revolutionary' nature of revolutions calls for a specific type of theory. Revolutions pass through three phases: they exist first as lived experience, which comes to recognize that it is neither presaged by the old nor marks a complete escape from its grasp; they must remain a constant process of self-affirmation; a first conceptualization then tries to fix the lived experience in an institutional form whose fundamental feature is determined by the fact that, knowing it is a rupture that is not yet complete, it remains open to further modification even as it attempts to anchor itself in society; finally, the reflective and critical result of the conflictual interplay between the new and the old may succeed in anchoring the revolution by preserving the ambiguities of democracy, or it may destroy democracy in order to preserve 'the' revolution.\n\nInsofar as the Marxian legacy is revolutionary, the three sections which compose this book can be understood to follow the path of the democratic revolution. 'Within Marxism' describes the  _experience_ of Marxists whose rigor as theorists and probity as political actors poses the question of democracy under the conceptual mantle of revolution. 'Using Marxism' _conceptualizes_ the experience and confronts its contradictions, although it is still unable to name the political question that implicitly drives its conceptual thought. Finally, 'Criticizing Marxism' captures the political question whose democratic openness preserves the legacy rather than embalming it a theoretical Kremlin Wall. There is a fourth moment to revolutions if they are successful: they live on. This Afterword, including its claim to preserve the 'truth' of the New Left experience, expresses that fourth moment, attempting to explain why my particular reconstruction is adequate to its object. Before bringing that argument to its conclusion, the first three phases of the legacy need to be specified theoretically. That will permit me, a decade later, to specify further principles of inclusion and exclusion and to bring the argument up to date by integrating the new work of Habermas, Lefort, and Castoriadis.24\n\n## 10.3 Why the Legacy?\n\nAlthough he did not use the term, the notion of a legacy that is not simply handed down as whole cloth to the legal successors was conceptualized implicitly in Merleau-Ponty's _Adventures of the Dialectic_ (1955). On the surface, the phenomenologist appears to be retracing the intentions guiding an intellectual movement that is ultimately betrayed by Sartre's 'ultra-Bolshevism'. His own _Humanism and Terror_ (1947) had earlier brought him too close to a communist orthodoxy from whose conceptual underpinnings he sought to free himself. Merleau-Ponty did not reject only the practical consequences ('Stalinism') of Sartre's political theory; if his goal had been to criticism a politics of theory, he could have criticized Luk\u00e1cs for any number of political compromises rather than interpreting him as initiating the tradition of 'Western Marxism'. Merleau-Ponty's philosophical intention is suggested also by the fact that he begins with a phenomenological interpretation of Max Weber's method for bringing together the objectivity of the scientist with the passion of the politician. Weber's 'historical imagination' is situated in the present while claiming to understand the past and to act politically toward a future that he knows cannot be known. This paradoxical mixture of theory and politics points to a conception of history that is foreign to Marxism but compatible with the Marxian legacy. The question posed by the concept of 'Western Marxism' is theoretical before it is political.\n\nClaude Lefort's Introduction to the 1980 re-edition of _Humanism and Terror_ suggests the path through which the immanent critique of communist politics pointed the philosopher toward the theoretical reorientation. In the immediate post-war climate, Merleau-Ponty's book had a double goal. He defended Marxism's critique of the hypocrisy of the self-proclaimed goals of bourgeois humanism that are contradicted by their material realization in capitalism. To do so, he had to rescue the originality of Marxism as a specific type of political theory. Merleau-Ponty juxtaposes the fictionalized portrait of Nicolas Bukharin in Koestler's _Darkness at Noon_ to the records of the actual Moscow Trials in order to develop a properly philosophical argument. He criticizes Koestler's gross alternative between an impersonal logic of history and the integrity of existential intention that reduces political praxis to the choice between that impersonal logic and an abstract morality. Merleau-Ponty's account of the Moscow Trials assumed the veracity of the revolutionary ideals proclaimed by the regime rather than challenge _their_ material realization. As a result, the debate that he plays out between the supposedly revolutionary prosecution and the presumed still revolutionary Bolshevik is intended to preserve the openness that he thought characterized Marxism as a theory of proletarian praxis. As a theory of praxis, Marxism could pretend to certainty; its task is only to elucidate the necessity\u2014not the content\u2014of engagement with the world. This assumption permitted Merleau-Ponty to imagine that Bukharin would confess to error because, as a revolutionary who accepts the uncertainty of history, its judgment has condemned his concrete choices but not his revolutionary intentions.\n\nOnce Merleau-Ponty establishes his argument, the usually neglected third part of _Humanism and Terror_ reopens the debate concerning the validity of Marxism. The victor appears to be a Marxism that is not the theory of the proletarian praxis Merleau-Ponty defended against Koestler. Marxism is now interpreted as the theoretical foundation for a critique of bourgeois humanism; it becomes a logic of history necessary to guide practice. The theory of practice is replaced by a consideration of the practice of theory. The result of the new stance is that the temporary absence of the revolutionary proletariat in contemporary Western societies suggests adopting a tactic of 'revolutionary waiting' for its reappearance. When he turns to the political role of intellectuals, Merleau-Ponty seems aware of the implicit change in the nature of the theory. He attacks the notion that political theory can treat historical problems as if they were parts of a kind of geometry problem to which a logical solution needs to be found. If there were such definitive solutions in history, there would be no place for the 'existentialist' ambiguity of proletarian praxis that his rebuttal of Koestler had shown to be essential to Marxism. In that case, it was not clear what the revolutionary was supposed to wait for. The _question_ of the legacy is posed by just this absence of a _solution_ to the problems of politics.\n\nNearly a decade later, _The Adventures of the Dialectic_ elaborates the question that concludes _Humanism and Terror_ while abandoning the tactic of political waiting. Merleau-Ponty returns to Luk\u00e1cs' _History and Class Consciousness_ whose condemnation by the communist party and renunciation by its author had not destroyed its influence as an underground classic.25 There is no need to reconstruct here Luk\u00e1cs' synthesis of Hegel and Weber to reinterpret Marx. No Marxist today can avoid confronting Luk\u00e1cs' philosophical effort to understand _at once_ the revolution and its failure. In a way, Luk\u00e1cs' explanation of the failure by means of his reconstruction of Marxism testifies to the eventual success of his project. That is just the difficulty; his theory accomplishes too much. His explanation of reification explains the lack of proletarian class consciousness while at the same time assuring the conditions of its possible re-mergence. The question is when, and how, possibility becomes necessity. Luk\u00e1cs' answer, like that of the _Communist Manifesto_ , replaces philosophy by history. The 'ascribed class consciousness' attributed to the proletariat on the basis of historical necessity was in reality transferred to the communist party in the absence of real proletarian practice. The politics that result from this theory destroy the autonomy of the political question. The tactic of 'revolutionary waiting' becomes the unwilling accomplice of a Bolshevized Soviet Union whose traits Merleau-Ponty had tacitly recognized in _Humanism and Terror_ .\n\nMerleau-Ponty's reconstruction of _The Adventures of the Dialectic_ concludes with a devastating critique of the philosophical premises and practical consequences of the 'ultra-Bolshevism' of Sartre. Merleau-Ponty is part of the Marxian legacy because he restores to Luk\u00e1cs' theory its philosophical character. One of the threads composing _History and Class Consciousness_ is the critique of the scientistic positivism of Engels who could claim to be Marx's legitimate heir. Merleau-Ponty's reading of Luk\u00e1cs shows that Marx's legacy is built around the questions that he posed rather than the answers he proposed. Luk\u00e1cs' Hegelian reconstruction of the political-economic theory proposed in _Capital_ , his specification of the dialectical method rather than any specific practical goal is the foundation of Marx's work, and his integration of Weber's theory of rationalization with Marx's account of the fetishism of commodities are remarkable theoretical insights. Their fruitfulness could perhaps be described as a 'legacy' built on questions that he tried too quickly to answer.26 The critical theorists of the early Frankfurt School would be among the legatees. Luk\u00e1cs himself moved too quickly toward synthesis; his Marx became a materialized Hegel, his later _Aesthetic Theory_ and _Ontology_ can be seen as paradoxical attempts to reclaim his own testament, which is not part of the Marxian legacy.27 The fact that the young Luk\u00e1cs, student of Max Weber and close friend of Ernst Bloch, could reconstruct Marx's answers more clearly than had Marx himself suggests that Marx's genius lay in his ability to pose _new questions_ for which neither his own theory nor the world that he knew had answers ready-to-hand.\n\nLuk\u00e1cs devoted two of the essays in _History and Class Consciousness_ to Rosa Luxemburg. He demonstrates her dialectical understanding of the need to interpret politics from the perspective of totality; and he defends her _Accumulation of Capital_ , and its explanation of the relation between economic theory and proletarian practice. His acrobatic attempt in the second essay to refute her critique of the anti-democratic political practice by Lenin during the early months of the Russian Revolution without denying the virtues ascribed to her in the first essay rings false. His attempt should be noted here also because Luxemburg is said to present a non-Leninist alternative to the political stagnation that followed the Bolsheviks' seizure of power in Russia and domination of the International.28 That assertion cannot be proven (or disproven). It poses a question in the guise of an assertion. The notion of revolution inherited with the Marxian legacy implies that the founding experience will always have the character of ambiguity that permits its partisans to say, in retrospect, 'if only we had stopped here, following this or that advice, avoided this or that contingency'.29 That foundational experience, rather than its conceptual formulation as a 'dialectical method' that defines orthodoxy as Luk\u00e1cs argued, determines Luxemburg's place in the Marxian legacy.\n\nRosa Luxemburg illustrates, but does not ask explicitly, the questions Marx left unanswered. She represents the _lived experience_ of Marxism before it had been clouded by war and the failure of revolution to spread beyond Russia. What appear in retrospect as 'contradictions' emerge in their fullness because _life_ itself, which for the Marxian politician includes theoretical life, draws them along in its unity. The difficulties are apparent only after the fact, when its life has ended, and its reconstruction undertaken. At that point the deeper unity of the life becomes an 'ism'; it cannot serve the new generation, who face new problems, a new heritage. It is not possible to 'use' Luxemburg for a conceptual reconstruction of the legacy. She was the purest of Marxists, as Luk\u00e1cs, himself an 'owl of Minerva', had the insight to see. All that remains today are the contours of her experience; her answers have lost their relevance, her questions have to be reconstructed anew. Her defiant testament, from the ruins of the Spartakus rising, proclaims that 'Revolution is the only kind of war in which the final victory can be built only on a series of defeats'. The chapter on Luxemburg in _The Marxian Legacy_ is only a preliminary. It is not surprising that her critique of the Bolshevik Revolution turned around the problems of democracy; she could only pose it as a question, not as a model for those who follow her.\n\nBecause her experience _is_ the legacy of Marxism, Luxemburg does not pose the question of that legacy. To illustrate the problem of the legacy from within Marxism, I turn to Ernst Bloch's contribution, particularly his critical debate with Luk\u00e1cs, and his attempt to understand the newness of fascism. I titled an essay that I wrote for the _Festschrift_ for his 90th birthday 'Ernst Bloch\u2013Our Contemporary'.30 The title was not fortuitous. Bloch's long life is larger, more textured, and contradictory than a single chapter could possibly portray; to have known him late in life was also to imagine the diverse facettes of his experience. In its unity the experience is striking; the ability of Bloch's 'warm stream' within Marxism to remain contemporary suggests that, like Luxemburg, he too is part of the lived experience of the Marxian legacy. Considering Bloch within the 'legacy' suggests that, more than the 'principle of hope' with which he is usually identified, the question of _how to inherit_ the legacy characterizes Bloch's life. This may explain some of his political choices that retrospect judges harshly, as well as others, including his support for the New Left, which appear more favorable. The utopian element in Bloch was anchored always in the present, whose newness he sought constantly to measure.31 What distinguishes Bloch from Luxemburg, in the present context, is that he was aware of the problems posed by the legacy which he lived. What joins them together, however, remains an  _experience_ which no theory can exhaust, and that fact challenges any theoretical attempt to define it. As neither practice nor theory, this experience exists for those who seek to inherit it in the form of a question.\n\n## 10.4 Why Question Marx?\n\nThe  _experience_ that founds the legacy remains affirmative; as a result, it excludes political reflection in the way that is suggested by the legacy: _reflection as question_. Of course, the experience of Marxism included tactical and even strategic thinking; and of course, alternatives were weighed, positions debated, texts interpreted. It could even be said that the Marxism of the Second International was overly concerned with political theory, at least as concerns interpreting what counts as orthodoxy. But the Second International was working with an inheritance, a solid basis which it sought to fructify for coming generations. Luxemburg and Bloch at times showed a similar attitude, which accounts for their occasional dogmatism when theory is invoked to justify a given practice. But a political theory that proposes specific actions separates theory and practice which, as Merleau-Ponty saw, the legacy attempts to hold together in the form of an interrogation. That is not the kind of theoretical politics that distinguished Luxemburg from her ally Karl Kautsky in the 'revisionism debate' or from another temporary ally, Eduard Bernstein, in opposition to the Social Democratic war policy in 1914; nor is it what characterized Bloch's attempt to understand the novelty of fascism when faced with the dumb orthodoxy of Dimitrov and the leaders of the Third International. But Luxemburg did not conceptualize her political experience, and Bloch's repeated attempts to describe the 'unconstructible questioning' that emerges in the 'darkness of the lived moment' only restate the dilemma by identifying revolution with a utopian moment. The question emerges explicitly only when experience is conceptualized in the attempt to use it.\n\nThose _within the legacy_ who 'use' Marx do not apply the kind of political theory that was inherited by the Second International. Their project was not to bring Marx's theory in line with the new phenomena revealed by a developing capitalism as it was confronted by a 'really existing'\u2014if only in one country\u2014socialism. Nor is the challenge to account for the failure of the revolution to spread after the Russians had broken the 'weak link' in the capitalist chain in 1917. Such issues were of course present; the legacy is not a mystical grail accessible only to the pure and purified. The three illustrations of the 'use' of Marxism presented in this section offer portraits of thinkers who continued to be involved in the problems posed to an inherited Marxist theory. They are included precisely because of their attempt to bring Marxism to bear on the new problems they faced. Conversely, creative contributions like as those of Adorno or Benjamin are excluded because of their imaginative transcendence of these more mundane problems of Marxism. This discussion of 'using Marxism' tries to show how the apparently practical application of Marxism _poses questions_ that its rigorous theorists cannot help airing. The difficulty for their interpretation is not the absence of answers; the failure arises from the inability to identify the necessity of the question itself. It is not easy for a radical political theory, faced with a world whose change it desires, to remain in the interrogative mode.\n\nThe attempt to 'use' Marxism arises when the experience within the legacy is no longer directly accessible. Historical events do not explain this transitional moment. Different theorists are driven to realize the novelty of their situation by different historical conjunctures. The failure of world revolution, the rise of fascism, the nature of the Soviet Union (recognized at different moments by different theorists for different reasons), the persistence and apparent stability of capitalism after the Second World War, and the process of decolonization are still accidental occasions for a new attitude to politics and its theory. A more conceptual account of the transition to the 'use' of Marx _by the legacy itself_ is necessary. It is important to explain why there occurred a renewal of Marx _ism_ at the very moments when its inability to explain or to guide action becomes manifest. The analysis of 'the politics of theory' has already suggested the theoretical weaknesses of such attempts. Whatever the rhetorical claims by the 'users' of the legacy\u2014for whom practical considerations like getting a public hearing or the personal desire to remain 'of the left' may have justified a claim to orthodoxy\u2014the results of their appropriation go beyond the immediacy of the experienced legacy to articulate the novelty of the _question_ it contained. Their failure to formulate this question will be shown to result from the fact that they remain still within the conceptual universe of Marxism\u2014which seeks positive solutions to social problems\u2014even while the rigor with which they pursue their engagement forbids them from assuming that they have found such answers.32\n\nUsers of the legacy are theorists, self-defined and self-limited. But their theory remains a 'theory of politics' whose limitations make it necessary to pose anew the question of the legacy. The paradox was not apparent to them. Marx had warned against the 'idealism' that believes that theory can guide practice. It would be useful to recall his youthful epigram proposing 'to make these petrified relations dance by singing before them their own tune'. Reflection on the question why the mature theory of socialist revolution was presented by a study called _Capital_ was called for. Users of the legacy tended to abandon the Marxist economic reductionism but not the appeal of the materialist infrastructure constituted by capitalism's 'petrified relations'. Theirs would be a theory that, they thought, would not be separate from the object theorized. Finding that 'object' which could replace the revolutionary proletariat hypothesized by Luk\u00e1cs and Marx proved to be difficult.\n\nAs the varieties of experience drove one or another engaged political thinker to recognize the need to 'use' the legacy, they seemed to differ in their designation of the missing revolutionary 'object' for reasons that depended on circumstance or personality. This apparent ground for their differences proves to be inadequate; its limits explain another set of exclusions from _The Marxian Legacy_. However insightful one finds Frankfurt School collaborators such as Frederick Pollock, Otto Kirchheimer, or even Franz Neumann on the autonomy of politics, or however fruitful the 'genetic structuralism' of Lucien Goldmann or the 'critique of everyday life' of Henri Lefebvre may appear, they do not belong within the question posed by the legacy. This is because the 'object' which _in fact_ concerned the users of the legacy was the  _experience_ of the legacy, not a specific political conjuncture or the longer-term transformation of capitalism. _This_ is the theoretical ground for the transition to the explicit 'use'; it explains the strengths, and the limits, of their project's orientation to the use-value of Marxism. The Marx who is in question in the legacy is both the father of Marxism and the thinker for whom history existed only in the interrogative mode.\n\n### 10.4.1 The Frankfurt School: Inclusions and Exclusions\n\nThe conceptual 'use' of the legacy explains why I concluded the chapter on Max Horkheimer at the point where he had become, despairingly, aware of his relation to that legacy. I do not present him in the context of the Frankfurt School as an evolving intellectual project attempting to come to grips with its times, driven from a first phase characterized by 'materialism' to a second stance defined by the distinction between 'traditional and critical theory'.33 I do not analyze its debt to Luk\u00e1cs and discussed the work of Herbert Marcuse only with regard to his specific elaboration of 'critical' as opposed to 'traditional' theory.34 The impact of psychoanalysis, mediated by Erich Fromm, is absent from the account, as is discussion of the actual research undertaken by the Institute for Social Research.35 Perhaps surprisingly, I conclude my analysis at the point where, in Dubiel's reconstruction, a shift to a third phase that concentrates on the 'critique of instrumental reason' occurs. As a result, I present an 'existentialist' Horkheimer, who marks a transition to Sartre as well as to the early Habermas because the basis from which his thinking drew was incapable of conceptualizing the political question that underlies the twin fascist and soviet 'authoritarian states' that were about to go to war.36 In the intervening years, Habermas has elaborated a new theoretical orientation that breaks consciously with the 'subject philosophy' which, he argues, vitiated the Frankfurt School theory.37 The new theory of 'communicative action' claims to be able to reformulate those goals which animated both Marx and his Frankfurt heirs.\n\nHabermas is of course not the only claimant to this legacy,38 nor is he an uncritical heir. Among the reasons for the cessation of publication of the  _Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Sozialforschung_ , he explains, was\n\n> [p]erhaps... the fact that even those who have given Marxism the pseudonym of critical theory still did not proceed in a sufficiently unorthodox manner. Because they understood what Marx had called the \"productive forces\" too traditionally, they soon had to discover that the growth of the forces of cognitive\u2013instrumental rationality do not of themselves guarantee forms of life worthy of men. For perhaps the real productive forces, their rational potentials, are based more on a state of communication than on working conditions.39\n\nThe critical interpretation of the first-generation Frankfurt School need not depend on the validity of Habermas' own position. He suggests another reason for the ambivalence of the founders after their return to the new Federal Republic of Germany in an 'Afterword' to a re-edition of Adorno and Horkheimer's _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ (whose republication Horkheimer had steadfastly refused until 1969, despite requests, including those of his co-author, Adorno). That book represented for Horkheimer a rupture with the project of the _Zeitschrift_ , which he had nurtured and directed for a decade; after its completion, Horkheimer's productivity was never the same; his projected speculative philosophy was never completed and his social pessimism continued to grow. Marx was increasingly replaced by Nietzsche as an immanent condemnation of the Enlightenment. No such wrenching shift was required for Adorno; motifs from his early work, which had not stressed the relation to Marxism, enter directly into the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_. The eschatological pessimism that Horkheimer's _Eclipse of Reason_ (1946) had been present throughout Adorno's collaboration with the Frankfurt School.40 Habermas, ever the dialectician of the present, concludes that if the earlier Marx-inspired Frankfurt School appealed one-sidedly to the student radicals of the 1960s, it would be equally one-sided for the present generation to adopt only the Nietzsche-inspired 'post-modern' variant which condemns the Enlightenment as 'totalitarian'.\n\nThe _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ presented a totalizing philosophy of history whose pessimistic conclusion was that reason's progressive development is purchased at the cost of the oppression of outer nature and the repression of inner nature. There is no room for freedom, creative social relations or human dignity within this ever more tightly interwoven edifice whose human producers are also inevitably its deformed products. A seamless web runs from clever Odysseus through calculating Sade and on to the ad-men and the anti-Semites who treat others as means to their own ends. The optimism of Marx is condemned; its success could only bring about the failure that Horkheimer had denounced in the 'authoritarian state'. The theoretical political project of Marx is impossible; there are no grounds from which the critique can build practically, and none from which it can legitimate rationally its project. The eschatological pessimism of Benjamin's famous 'Theses on the Philosophy of History' expressed radically the mood of the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_. There is no artifact of culture that is not also a monument to barbarism. Salvation is possible only through a mystical theology which the work of art can perhaps prefigure; the philosophical _logos_ in its modern garb stands utterly condemned. Capitalism and socialism are caught in the same nightmarish dream of material progress and false happiness that produced Auschwitz.41 Horkheimer and Adorno's vision radicalizes Weber's 'iron cage', which is no longer restricted to modernity alone. Political thinking is helpless and hopeless.42\n\nThe Weberian overtones in the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ suggest to Habermas the direction for a more positive interpretation. The repressive costs of enlightened progress can be separated analytically from the gains they purchase. Weber's notion of the perverse consequences of societal rationalization need not be generalized to the entirety of reason as _logos_ : the latter then can equally be imagined as the immanent opponent of its repressive consequences.43 This would permit the articulation of an immanent 'critique of instrumental reason' which provides guidelines for rethinking human history, as well as a research program for contemporary social investigation, and perhaps even a platform for political engagement. This immanent critique would provide a deeper foundation for Marx's intuition of the potential for immanent critique of the capitalist mode of production. The authors of the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ had already insisted that their condemnation of 'the culture industry' did not imply a rejection of 'mass culture' as such; their analyses sometimes sounded elitist but they remained in principle open to democracy. This is the point where a second correction of Weber is necessary. The sociologist had argued that no legitimate rational standard can guide political action within the instrumental parameters of a desacralized modern world; his political 'ethics of responsibility' is based, ultimately, on an existential _decision_ that cannot be founded in any external standard. This irrationalism could become the basis for a right-wing political theory and practice (as in the case of Carl Schmitt) or it can justify the kind of post-modern antics that so disturb Habermas. The _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ is a powerful argument because it takes seriously the demands of reason; to escape from its consequences by abandoning reason is a petition of principle unworthy of, and unthinkable for, those who want to save that very rationality whose self-condemnation they refuse to accept. Under these conditions, Habermas has to produce nothing less than a new theory of rationality itself!\n\n### 10.4.2 J\u00fcrgen Habermas: Philosophical Foundations, Political Questions\n\nA rationally grounded 'critique of instrumental reason', which Adorno and Horkheimer's _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ could not provide, would have the positive effect of restoring the Marxist notion that revolution is the immanent self-critique of capitalism. The self-division of reason into an instrumental and a human, social, and emancipatory reason is the obvious path. Habermas' attempt to develop this proposal in _Knowledge and Human Interests_ did not distinguish the social effects of the different forms of rationality (which can be described empirically by an outside observer) from the immanent grounds of this rationality (which make it necessary for reason to divide itself into distinct types). Habermas' assertion of a 'quasi-transcendental' status for the specific knowledge-constitutive interests can be seen as an implicit admission of the difficulty. That is perhaps the reason that this philosophical framework is absent in the analyses of _Legitimation Crises_ . That theoretical politics was developed within the paradigm of an immanent, sociologically reformulated self-critique that would lead to the crisis, and the eventual transformation, of the capitalist system. Comparison of the two approaches suggests that the difficulties in the attempt by _Knowledge and Human Interests_ to show that philosophy _is_ social theory led to an apparent abandonment of philosophy in favor of social theory. The inability of _Legitimation Crises_ to think the political question within this framework is one reason that Habermas returned to the philosophical foundations of social theory, completing the project that the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ had left its heirs.44\n\nHabermas' _Theory of Communicative Action_ proposes a radical reorientation toward the basic concepts45 of traditional philosophy. When it avoided recourse to a mystical theology, the later Frankfurt School, and especially Adorno, developed the notion of a _mimetic_ , non-(or pre-)conceptual relation to the world as the antidote to the paralyzing dialectic of enlightenment. This approach was especially suggestive with relation to art in which paradoxes such as the highly formalized and abstractly rational forms of modern music since Schoenberg could be adduced as 'proof' of the presence of the resistant 'other' from which revolt, and humanity, could be hoped. Habermas criticizes this attempt for its political implications,46 but more importantly he puts into question the philosophical premises that make it possible. His goal is to return to the old project of a critique of instrumental reason by adopting a changed paradigm, the communication theory of action, and thereby to renew critical theory. The old theory was based on a 'philosophy of consciousness' that pictures a separate and self-sufficient observing subject standing over against an equally separate and autonomous objective world. The new theory goes beyond Hegel's critique of Kant's use of this model (as elaborated in _Knowledge and Human Interests)._ The 'decentering' that stresses the primacy of intersubjective communicative action over the experience of the consciousness of the individual subject in the three domains of knowledge, social interaction, and expressive behavior provides the basis for Habermas' renewal of the interdisciplinary project of the Frankfurt School. At the same time, the unsullied experiential basis of the revolt provided by the 'mimetic' moment can be given a rational foundation in the notion of a communicatively structured life-world.47\n\nThe novelty of Habermas' program can be illustrated by comparison with the problems unresolved by _Knowledge and Human Interests_. The 'quasi-transcendental' foundation of the critical 'emancipatory interest' has to be reformulated. It cannot be attributed simply to the achievement of self-reflection, as in psychoanalysis, since the subject-centered philosophy of consciousness has proven inadequate to escape from the dialectic of enlightenment. The intersubjective notion of communicative action suggests that rational understanding is based on the ability to explain the conditions in which any action can be accepted as valid by another individual. Such formal validity conditions concern three domains: the truth about objects, the appropriateness or rightfulness of the social relations in which that assertion is made, and the subjective truthfulness of the other actor(s). Standards must be developed to show that this understanding is not merely subjective. The method that determines these standards is called 'reconstruction', which Habermas sees illustrated in the work of Piaget and Kohlberg. Reconstruction avoids the problems of the constitutive orientation proposed by the dualistic philosophy of consciousness. For example, Alfred Sch\u00fctz's attempt to formulate a social phenomenology fails because the totality of the life-world can never present itself to a single gaze because that gaze, itself, is a part of that world. This is the same difficulty that vitiated the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_. Reconstruction, on the other hand, 'can be certain of the rational content of anthropologically deep rooted structures through an _at first_ reconstructive analysis, i.e., one that begins a-historically. It describes the structures of action and of understanding that can be deciphered in the intuitive knowledge of competent members of modern societies'. By underlining 'at first', Habermas suggests that reconstruction will not suffice by itself to explain the necessity of emancipation.48 This was already clear from the fact that among the three conditions evaluated in communicative understanding, the earlier concern with an emancipatory interest is replaced by the 'subjective truthfulness' of the actor.49 This self-limitation of theory to the 'reconstruction' of already existing practice will have important consequences on Habermas' claim to inherit creatively the project of the Frankfurt School.\n\nHabermas integrates the goals of critical theory into his new theory of communicative action by defining his project as the realization of the Enlightenment. This seems to exclude the moment of revolutionary or utopian rupture fundamental to the more clearly Marxist project in which the 'emancipatory' interest was rooted. Habermas' understanding of the Enlightenment project is not so directly political. The relation of his interpretation to his new theoretical framework is made explicit in _The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity_.50 When modernity is equated with the Enlightenment, the economic interpretation of social action which Marxism adopted because of its subject-centered theory of knowledge and action is placed into a broader context that Habermas defines as the 'life-world', which has primacy over the actions performed in it. 'The life-world is the resource from which the participants in an interaction draw the arguments about which they seek consensus; it is the equivalent of what the philosophy of the subject attributed to the synthetic action of consciousness in general' (PDM, p. 379). The critique of Sch\u00fctz suggested that this life-world can be known only through the reconstruction of its formal pragmatic structures. Habermas does not, however, remain at the level of formal reconstruction. He applies the conceptual arsenal of systems theory. The social differentiation that comes with modernization 'uncouples' the life-world from the systemic conditions of its formal reproduction. System and life-world follow different logics in the process of modernization. Modernization of the social system increases its complexity, permitting it to confront new problems rationally; modernization of the life-world increases the rationality of its specific structures by freeing them from the traditional forms of heteronomy that deny freedom of communicative interaction.51 The co-existence of these different logical imperatives suggests a potential conflict which, Habermas insists, cannot be avoided because the separation of the spheres was the precondition for the breakthrough that inaugurated modernity. The conflict reintegrates the emancipatory goal that the theory of communicative action showed to be anchored in the life-world. Yet Habermas is not simply affirming a 'politics of the life-world'. Because the Enlightenment project only emerges historically in a modern society characterized by the co-presence of the two logics, the concrete form in which it could be 'completed' remains to be specified. The development of an autonomous systems-logic was the prerequisite for the autonomy of the life-world; modern politics has to take into account their mutual dependence.\n\nHabermas' argument can be reformulated in terms that recall the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_. The system can only increase its complexity if the individuals in the life-world behave autonomously and rationally. Individuals in society confront two kinds of imperatives. The material system reproduces itself in the formal-bureaucratic mode described by Weber and refined by Parsons' theory of the impersonal media\u2014money (the market) and power (the political-administrative system)\u2014that assure the appearance of neutral rationality. But these media-directed sub-systems, which become autonomous in modern societies, function effectively only when individual behavior obeys a goal-oriented, functional rationality that conflicts with the communicative rationality that is the basis of autonomous rational interaction in the life-world. The basic conflict in any modern society is defined by the attempt of the sub-systems to 'colonize' the life-world.52 Habermas sees this conflict as a reformulation of Marx's basic distinctions between work and abstract labor or use-value and exchange-value. But Habermas does not expect a revolution which would eliminate the abstract sub-systems and their rationality; that kind of naive 'politics of the life-world' would only bring about a return to a pre-modern situation. Nor does that vision of political change make Marx's error of confusing 'bourgeois' universal legal forms with the capitalist mode of production that is to be eliminated. The increasing complexity of modern society is not simply a threat to the life-world; increasing complexity means the creation and spin-off of other distinct sub-systems, such as the law, science, and art. The independence of these sub-systems, whose logic is rooted in the life-world, is guaranteed by the autonomy with which they set their own standards, appealing to nothing external or handed down by tradition. This autonomy is founded by the universalizability of their claims.53 It permits Habermas' version of the dialectic of enlightenment to have a potentially positive outcome.\n\nThe completion of the Enlightenment is not its overcoming, nor its end. The dialectic between system and life-world must continue if modern society is not to implode or explode. Although his model is Marx, Habermas does not expect a simple _Marxist_ overcoming of the contradictions his theory describes. The realization of the threat of 'colonization' would destroy the autonomy of the life-world; that is why it is a danger _also_ to the system itself. A thoroughly colonized life-world would no longer provide resources permitting the system to continue to increase its own complexity in order to face new threats to its advanced reproduction. This contradictory relation of dependence and independence defines the parameters of Habermas' Enlightenment politics.\n\nHabermas reformulates his position in contemporary terms. 'In short, the result of this awareness is a new state of consciousness in which the welfare state project becomes, in a sense, reflective; it orients itself to the taming not only of the capitalist economy but also of the state itself' (PDM, p. 421). But he does not develop this implicitly political argument politically54; nor can he apply his reconstructive theory of communicative action to explain how this new, 'reflexive' consciousness comes into being. He turns to Marx, who 'explains the process of real abstraction through the reification ( _Versachlichung_ ) of socially integrated contexts of action which comes about when interactions are no longer coordinated by norms and values, or by a process of understanding, but are coordinated through the medium of exchange value' (TdkH, II, p. 494). But Habermas does not expect transformation to follow a logic of necessity.55 He stresses the ' _empirical_ question of when the growth of the monetary-bureaucratic complex will touch domains of action that cannot be reformulated as system integrative mechanisms without pathological side effects'. The analysis of Parsons' theory of media, he continues, 'has led me to the assumption that this limit is reached when systemic imperatives intervene in the region of cultural reproduction, social integration, and the socialization of the individual' (TdkH, II, p. 548). This satisfies Habermas' desire to formulate a research program for critical theory; but its relation to the political form assumed by the interminable process of the Enlightenment is not clear.\n\nHabermas' use of the notion of democracy suggests the source of the political ambiguity of his Enlightenment project. Increasing democratization is one, unintended, result of the process of social modernization that he describes. As the sub-systems within the life-world become autonomous, they are freed from the bands of tradition; each is self-governed, independent, and obedient only to the force of the better argument. Habermas describes this process as a democratization that accompanies modernization; he devotes many pages to tracing its expansion into ever-wider spheres of the life-world. This 'democratization' produces a social decentering of the life-world parallel to the theoretical structure defined by communicative action. This decentering invalidates any social theory that, similar to the one Luk\u00e1cs constructed for Marxism, is formulated from the point of view of a radical subject and claims to speak in the name of the totality. Similarly, Weber's inability to see the specificity of the autonomous and communicatively founded structures that emerge within the life-world explains why modernity appeared to him as only the increasing power of the system over the isolated and defenseless individual. The same blindness helps to understand Marx's misunderstanding of the achievements of bourgeois law and morality, for example, in his 1843 essay 'On the Jewish Question'. Despite Habermas' stress on its importance, and despite its analogies with the theory of communicative action, democratization of the sub-systems within the life-world is always described as a _result_ ; there is never an explicit movement _for_ democracy as a goal and good for itself.56 The reasons for Habermas' simultaneous recognition of democracy as the positive output of the 'dialectic of enlightenment', and yet his inability to thematize this process, can be found in the structure of his theoretical framework.\n\nThe paradox of democracy is that it exists in the life-world, but it is the product of systemic imperatives which could crush it if there does not emerge that 'new state of consciousness' that sees the need to 'tame' not only capitalism but the welfare state. Habermas describes the structural conditions for the reproduction of the life-world\u2014which performs the active 'synthetic' function that was attributed to the philosophical subject (be it Hegel's Spirit or Marx's proletariat)\u2014in the spare synchronic terms of his reconstructive approach. 'The life-world reproduces itself insofar as these three functions, which go beyond the perspective of the actor, are fulfilled: the cultural tradition must be continued, norms and values must serve to integrate groups, and new generations must be socialized' (PDM, p. 349). Under these conditions, 'which go beyond the perspective of the actor', there is no reason to expect a positive movement for democracy _unless_ the life-world is threatened. Yet the premise of Habermas' structural argument is that the modern life-world is _always_ at once _both_ threatened _and_ maintained by the imperative of the reproduction of the system. This means that the 'new social movements' of which Habermas speaks positively are only a defensive reaction. He supports them _not_ because they are creating democracy as a positive end, but because they are protecting the life-world (and therewith, of course, the system). The dichotomous structural framework of his reconstruction does not permit a _political_ differentiation between movements whose reactive protection of the life-world is politically reactionary and those which will increase the space of democracy. Habermas is aware of the difficulty, but his description of the 'pathological side-effects' that constitute this threat leaves the matter as an ' _empirical_ question' (TdkH, II, p. 548). To say more than this would demand going beyond the limits of reconstruction.57\n\nHabermas' theoretical self-limitation can be justified, and also criticized, from within the framework that he himself elaborates. When he introduced the notion of reconstruction, he suggested that it was 'at first' an analysis which 'begins a-historically'. Although that might have suggested that 'something else' would follow, Habermas insisted that there is a distinction between a logic of development and the 'dynamics of development'. Reconstruction is limited to the logical; it is aware that normative claims 'lead to error insofar as they suggest a concrete form of life'. This error characterized Marxism. Habermas explains that he wants to avoid 'the confusion of a highly developed communicative infrastructure of _possible_ life forms with a specific singular totality which claims to incarnate this good life\u2014namely, the specific utopia which, in the past, crystallized around the potential of productive society ( _Arbeitsgesellschaft_ )'.58 This Marxist representation of the Good Society absolutized the position of the proletariat, which it treated as a collective subject in whose name political philosophy was to speak. Alfred Sch\u00fctz's phenomenology again serves to illustrate the difficulty of such a philosophy of the subject: Sch\u00fctz searched in vain for a correct position from which to describe the life-world, not realizing that he himself is a part of it and that _it_ decides on his place, not vice versa. This situatedness of philosophy means that it is merely the guardian of the standards of rationality, as Habermas concludes in another reply to critics.59 But this anodyne and apparently modest assertion forgets the 'Copernican revolution' that accompanies the shift from a philosophy of the subject to the theory of communicative action. If the life-world precedes and pre-determines the philosopher, the 'standards of rationality' must be affected by that same life-world. Within the process of modernization and enlightenment of the contemporary life-world, the 'new social movements' whose action Habermas wants to support can be said to be putting into question those standards.\n\nDespite his insistence on the limits of his project, Habermas does suggest at times that political questions must be given their place. He recognizes the consequences of his rejection of the Marxist model of revolution based on the self-transformation of a productive society: 'Once we give up the praxis\u2013philosophical understanding of society as a self-referential macro-subject that is introjected into the individual subjects, then the corresponding models for the diagnosis and the overcoming of the crisis \u2013 division and revolution \u2013 are no longer useful' (PDM, pp. 402\u20133). This negative conclusion concerning the anti-capitalist struggle is supplemented later, when Habermas speaks of the need for the self-limitation of the welfare state in order to avoid the pathological effects of 'colonization'. But this time his argument is not couched in terms of the theory of communicative action and the Marxist critique based on the notion of the 'real abstraction'.\n\nHabermas employs here, in 'scare-quotes', the substantive formulation, _das_ ' _Politische_ ' to designate a political function that cannot be reduced simply to the media-directed administrative 'steering' the social system (PDM, p. 420). He does not propose alternative steering media, as the _Theory of Communicative Action_ might have suggested. He explains 'the political' in terms that ring differently from the description of democracy as a reactive result of the _sociological_ process of modernization. 'Self-organized publics must develop the astute combinations of power and intelligent self-limitation that are necessary in order to sensitize the self-steering mechanisms of the state and economy when confronted with the goal-oriented results of radical democratic will formation' (PDM, p. 423). The unasked question here is why these publics would be inclined to pursue such results? This is yet another formulation of the earlier unanswered question of the 'emancipatory interest' that remains central, although latent, in the politics of Habermas' new system. The key must lie in the structure of the life-world, which was described as performing the synthetic functions attributed to the subject by the 'philosophy of consciousness' that Habermas has now rejected. This is suggested when he asserts, in a subjunctive clause, that the life-world presents itself 'when an _objective provocation_ ( _Herausforderung_ ) appears that makes _the life world as a whole problematic_ ' (TdkH, II, p. 590). A 'challenge' that makes the whole 'problematic' is a _question_ : it is the political question.60\n\nThe _question_ of the political cannot be reconstructed here by recourse to the Marxist notion of the 'real abstraction'. Yet the conclusion to the _Theory of Communicative Action_ appears to stress that option.\n\n> The theory of modernity that I have sketched in its broad lines permits us to assert at least the following. In modern societies, the room for contingency in the interactions that have been freed from their normative context expands so far that the proper nature ( _Eigensinn_ ) of communicative action is 'practically true' both in the de-institutionalized forms of behavior in the familial private sphere and in the public sphere that is determined by the mass media. At the same time the imperatives of the autonomous subsystems penetrate the life-world and use the paths of monetizing and bureaucratizing to force communicative action to approximate formally organized activity even where the action-coordinating mechanism of understanding is functionally necessary. Perhaps this provocative threat, this challenge ( _Herausforderung_ ) which puts into question the symbolic structures of the life world _as a whole_ makes plausible the reasons for which that life-world has become accessible _for us._ (TdkH, II p. 593)\n\nThe 'challenge' to the life-world is said here to come from the systematic imperatives of modernizing late capitalism. But the same modernization is treated in _The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity_ as posing a _question_. The challenge in that case comes from the very decentering that 'communicative action' sought to theorize. Habermas points out that 'in their communicative everyday action, modern, quite decentered societies maintain a virtual center of self-understanding... Granted, this center is also a projection, but it is an effective one' (PDM, p. 417). In this context, the process of democratization is portrayed as actively related to this 'virtual center', which recalls also the question of ' _das_ _Politische_ ' invoked in the same pages. 'All partial public spheres point to a global public sphere, in which the society as a whole forms a knowledge of itself' (PDM, p. 418). This knowledge is 'in fact temporary. But this reflective knowledge of the society as a whole _does exist_ ' (ibid.). Its existence does not take the affirmative mode of the Marxist 'real abstraction'; it exists, rather, in the mode of the _question of the Marxian legacy_. It is the presence of an absence which cannot be ignored even though it can never become fully present in the form of an answer or closure.\n\nThe necessary self-limitation of the state (or 'steering mechanism'), for which Habermas' system could not account, finds its locus in the political question. Habermas described the 'welfare state' as steering society through the media employed particularly in taxation (he refers to the state in this context as the _Steuerstaat_ , playing on the terms for steering and taxation). He did not distinguish here this state from the _Rechtsstaat_ , which might be said to be the typically modern form of the enlightened state. While law, justice, and morality are independent sub-systems within the life-world of the administrative welfare state, their relation to the _Rechtsstaat_ captures more adequately their ambivalent position in Habermas' description. _Recht_ , after all, can refer to each of these conceptual domains, which can potentially be _either_ 'colonized' media through which the system reproduces itself _or_ forms that increase the (communicative) rationality of the life-world. They become pathological forms within the life-world when they are reduced to _mere_ media. Their democratization is not the automatic result of a dialectic between the imperatives of system and life-world. Nor can their democratization be reduced to the defensive reaction of a threatened life-world. Habermas' systemic theory of democratization as the result of modernization results from his perhaps unconscious desire to remain within the Marxist camp, theorizing a _social_ practice to which he attributes political efficacy. When he tries to explain the attempt by the new social movements to limit the pathologies introduced into the life-world by imposing limits on administrative and economic restriction of autonomy, Habermas admits that this is 'a defensively formulated task, but this defensive redirection of the steering process will not be able to succeed without a radical and broadly based democratization'.61 But this radical democratization is not predictable or explicable on the basis of _Marxist_ sociology.62\n\nThe political _question_ that Habermas' system covers over in his attempt to remain still within Marxism is nonetheless brought out by his _practical_ political recognition of the importance of the democratic project. His implicit Marxism explains Habermas' insistence on the limits of theory. Yet his own paradigm shift to a decentered theory of communicative action broke with that type of Marxism. Had he concentrated his analysis on the _Rechtsstaat_ instead of the sociological _Steuerstaat_ , not only would he have been able better to analyze the ambiguous nature of the modern process of social differentiation, but he would have been able to explain the systemic necessity of the radical democracy crucial to his politics. The completion of the Enlightenment, the realization of modernity, and the refusal of the 'post-modern' option are all based on the  _utopia_ of an unending because unendable process. 'The probabilities of conflict free reproduction processes', he insists, 'do not in the least grow with the degree of rationalization of a life-world\u2014what happens is that the level on which conflicts appear simply shifts' (PDM, p. 403). This shift is spelled out a moment later in an uncharacteristically mysterious formulation. 'From the dark and polyphonic projections of totalities, there is also formed in modern societies a diffuse common consciousness' (PDM, p. 417). This common consciousness is nothing other than that absent presence that Habermas calls in the same pages 'the political'. Its concrete historical form is the ambiguous _Rechtsstaat_ , conceived in its three dimensions of law, justice, and morality. The interpenetration and difference of these three autonomous sub-systems could be analyzed within the counter-factual discourse that Habermas' _Theory of Communicative Action_ develops into a new system. The result would be a theory that can understand ambiguous phenomena like the new social movements from the standpoint of the political, instead of groping at political engagement on the basis of a social analysis.\n\nHabermas does not develop this political theory (although his recent research [published only in 1992] has turned toward questions of law). The presence of the political question within his new system, as in his earlier efforts, suggests that, typical of the ' _users_ ' of Marxism, he sits astride a two-sided project that is still drawn toward both the original Marx _ian_ experience and toward the application of Marx _ism_ to the resulting problems. There are hints of what can only be called a 'democratic utopia' in Habermas' stubborn insistence that the project of the Enlightenment must be realized _with the means of the Enlightenment_. His break with the philosophy of consciousness and the consequent rejection of the imagined _Arbeitsgesellschaft_ of self-reproducing producers could not but point him in a new direction. Yet his decentered social theory is still haunted by a vision of _social_ transformation based on a Marxist critique founded by the 'real abstraction'. This orientation is reinforced by Habermas' attempt to join together the theory of modernity with the strategy of contemporary analytical and post-Kantian philosophy that leads to the equation of universalizability with democracy in a way that destroys the political question posed by the democratic project.\n\nThe result is a sometimes hesitant defense of the radicalism of the 'new social movements' on the modest grounds of empirical social analysis. 'A social theory that has given up on the self-certainty guaranteed by a theory of history without abandoning its critical claims', concludes Habermas, 'can only see its _political_ role in using its more or less sensitive diagnoses of the present to sharpen attention to the essential ambivalences of the contemporary situation'.63 If this is all that the radical new theory can offer, it is hard to see how it fulfills better the radical goals of critical theory than did the pessimistic perspectives of the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_. The further path through the legacy has to be developed instead by drawing out the explicit theorization of practice which Habermas broaches but refuses because his theory of practice gives way, ultimately, to the imperatives of the reconstructive project of a general theory of communicative action. Habermas remains still, despite his temptations, within the politics of theory. The primacy of democracy that he nonetheless recognizes can be thematized on the basis of the ideas of political engagement proposed by Sartre and elaborated more recently by Andr\u00e9 Gorz.\n\n### 10.4.3 Sartre to Gorz: Political Questions, Philosophical Proposals\n\nSartre did not begin his theoretical investigations as a Marxist, nor did the famous assertion at the beginning of the _Critique of Dialectical Reason_ \u2014that 'Marxism is the unsurpassable horizon of our time'\u2014prove justifiable even in his own eyes.64 This may have become apparent to Sartre in his three-volume study of Flaubert, _L'Idiot de la famille_. It may have been clear to him even earlier, when he began work on the second volume of the  _Critique_ .65 That continuation of his project proposed to analyze two major examples of societies that were more or less integrated, the post-revolutionary Russian case of a 'directorial society' as well as the categorical structure of a 'disunited' society illustrated by bourgeois democracy. Much of the study of Russia seems to have been completed, but Sartre left only general notes concerning 'bourgeois democracy'. His hesitation to take up the problem of democracy is perhaps not surprising in light of the difficulties immanent to the framework of the  _Critique_ , to which the first edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ pointed. Sartre returned to this text only after 1962. His two analytical examples were then elaborated separately, but the account of the relation of the relation of democracy and totalitarianism could not be carried out, in part because of Sartre's prudish application of the vague notion of 'directorial society' to the Soviet Union. At a more personal level, Sartre may have turned away from Marxism as a result of his encounter after May 1968 with the ultra-leftist militants of the _Gauche Prol\u00e9tarienne_ , whose 'Maoist' insistence on the priority of 'popular power' led them to reject the terrorist option adopted by frustrated radical groups in Germany and Italy. These French Maoists opted for a verbal (and verbose) revolutionary politics whose foundation was ultimately the kind of ethical moralism that Sartre had outlined in _Being and Nothingness_ .66 But the personal evolution of a theorist neither validates nor invalidates the work he has left nor his engagement with his times; that is all the more true for Sartre's  _Critique_ , which is part of the Marxian legacy.\n\nThe living presence of Sartre in the legacy is apparent today in the work of Andr\u00e9 Gorz,67 whose politically explicit formulation of a theory _of_ practice makes clear the ultimate presuppositions of that philosophical choice while demonstrating the political need to criticize Marx in order to be faithful to his legacy. Gorz's _Adieux au prol\u00e9tariat_ begins with the statement that 'Marxism is in crisis because there is a crisis of the working class movement'. Analysis of that movement, from the point of view of Marx himself, justifies the title: saying 'good-bye' ( _adieu_ ) is not the same thing as bidding ' _au revoir_ ', which proposes to 'see you again soon'. The contemporary Marxist, Gorz insists, must take final leave of the proletariat. Searching for its replacement, under the heading 'Death and resurrection of the historical subject: the non-class of post-industrial proletarian', Gorz returns immediately to the stance of a theory of practice in his first sentence. 'The crisis of socialism is first of all the crisis of the proletariat'.68 This crisis of the proletarian working-class movement is interpreted in the _Adieux_ from the point of view of the actors. The socio-economic foundation for its arguments is presented in more Marxist terms three years later in _Les chemins du Paradis_. This essay seeks 'to imagine, anticipate, begin the fundamental transformations whose possibility is inscribed in the mutations taking place'.69 The 'practice' theorized in this second account is sought in transformations in both the social 'forces of production' and in the 'relations of production', which Marx had always included among the productive 'forces' of a society. From the standpoint of the legacy, the question whether this analytic stance, which Sartre suggested in his theory of the 'practico-inert', neglects the autonomy of the political question in favor of social analysis needs to be examined. Unlike Sartre, Gorz explicitly avoids that temptation in the _Adieux au prol\u00e9tariat._\n\nLike Sartre, Gorz accepts the fundamental fact of scarcity as the premise from which social analysis must begin. Like Habermas, he stresses the systemic imperatives that any society must obey in order to maintain itself. These imperatives are analyzed functionally as the production of a 'power without a subject' that reinforces the form of bureaucratic domination (p. 78). Gorz does not remain with the abstract criticism of power; power need not be alienating, as can be seen, for example, in the authority exercised by the skilled worker over the apprentice, which is not the same as the impersonal domination of one individual over another based on their respective positions within a bureaucratic hierarchy. Domination (like alienation) is a two-sided coin. It denies the individuality of the dominated; but it also denies that of the dominator, who abandons his individual freedom when justifying his position by referring to necessities imposed by the system. The dominated may react to the anonymity of those who exercise this systemic necessity which perpetuates oppression by seeking to take power themselves; but that is a dead-end insofar as it replaces one functionary by another without increasing the freedom of anyone, since the system's anonymous laws continue to dictate behavior. The other option for the dominated is either fascism or Stalinism, each of which seeks to replace 'the system' by a person who can at least stand up as a _free individual_ in the face of the machine. Gorz's existentialist premise is apparent in this analysis; he supposes that humans seek freedom come what may. Mass support for such totalitarian movements is assumed to result from a form of 'bad faith' that seeks an _ersatz_ for the freedom that the appeal to systemic necessity denies. In spite of this stress on the role of consciousness in political choices, Gorz also underlines the unavoidability of the system and its imperatives. Rather than see a contradiction in these opposed choices\u2014systemic necessity and consciousness of freedom\u2014Gorz recognizes that it is precisely their clash that creates and maintains the space for politics.\n\nGorz's 'non-class' replacement for the proletariat cannot be a supra-individual agent standing independently in opposition to the system as an alternative to its constraints; at the same time, however, he recognizes that it must be shown to be the immanent product of the system. Borrowing Alain Touraine's notion of 'post-industrial society', Gorz analyzes the crisis of capitalism as a productive system from the point of view of the lived experience of the producers. Capitalism produces the material conditions necessary for labor, not for the kinds of work in which individual self-affirmation is possible. Gorz does not romanticize the idea of production; he rejects Marx's idea of non-alienated labor as a political project defining the individual either in present conditions or as a future goal. Even if the romantic vision of creative labor were true, he points out that the kind of labor performed in post-industrial society is a routinized, indifferent activity accomplished by people who function as cogs in a system whose individuality makes no difference. Gorz calls such employees a 'neo-proletariat' who are 'a non-worker[s] employed at an indifferent job' and who incarnate only the negativity that Marx situated in the proletariat (pp. 97, 94). In that case, they are defined by their subjectivity, not by what their work makes of the world and themselves. Their subjectivity, existing within the concrete relations of modern capitalism, cannot find a substitute identity in a supposedly inevitable development of History like the one envisioned by Marxism. The existentialist conclusion follows easily from these analyses of post-industrial society. The non-class, or neo-proletariat, finds itself at the threshold of a liberation by the 'foundational act of freedom which, proclaiming itself as absolute, takes itself as the supreme goal in each individual' (p. 102). The question that remains to be answered is what would drive the non-class individuals over the threshold?70\n\nThe affirmation of individual freedom does not abolish the necessities of the system; to the contrary, society remains an external constraint on each subjective freedom. Gorz rejects the idea that a planned society, however democratic, could organize the necessities needed for the reproduction of the system in a way permitting each individual to recognize his personal freedom within these systemic necessities. That kind of planning works only in monastic communities, which are not only set off from the world, but which are by their nature alienated because the necessity they accept is justified by the commandments of a God or a Leader to whom they sacrifice their freedom. Such communities are _heteronomous_. For the vast majority of individuals, systemic necessity continues to exist at the same time that, paradoxically, freedom is to be affirmed. The revolt affirming their freedom has to be based on a liberation of the individual _as far as is possible_ , first by increasing free time, then, as the example of feminism shows, by affirming the values of intimacy, and finally by the development of what Ivan Illich calls 'tools of conviviality'.71\n\nThe freedom that Gorz understands to be the result of a 'cultural mutation' does not abolish scarcity; what Sartre had called the practico-inert remains a problem (pp. 114, 127). Gorz avoids the political difficulties to which this problem drove Sartre, opening him to the lures and allure of the communist party and the need for its leadership. Gorz instead proposes a 'dualist society' that distinguishes between technical and moral imperatives as expressing respectively forms of heteronomy and autonomy. He rejects a system that has 'rules without morality' while refusing also to accept a politics based on 'morality without rules' (p. 130). The system must be organized in a way that limits to a maximum the domain of necessity without opening the door to the arbitrary decisions of power; that is the dual function of rules. The imposition of such limits is possible only when freedom can recognize the necessity of _both_ itself and the system. The simple formula of workers' self-management is not the solution; freedom can act only within the constraints of _recognized_ necessity.\n\nGorz defines politics as the action of freedom on necessity. He distinguishes sharply what is necessary for production from what is necessary simply to maintain society itself. In post-industrial society, labor in the service sector increases as a result of the disruptive effects of the increasingly complex demands of the production process within the broader society whose reproduction is increasingly dependent on factors external to it. A reversal of this tendency would bring about a change in the mode of production defining contemporary society. Such a change cannot be introduced simply by withdrawing from a society that has become too complex. Gorz criticizes the counter-cultural ideology that wants to return to the simplicity and immediacy of the 'loving-community'. His argument has implications that go beyond the narrow case of the counter-cultural reduction of the political that he sees as vitiating the effectiveness of the new social movements. 'Any society or micro-society that abolishes the state\u2013or, if one prefers, the apparatus of the law\u2013as _a specific place, distinct from itself_ where the necessities for its functioning and its reproduction are objectivized in the form of external laws and obligations, eliminates by this act any possibility of struggling against the material necessity involved in its functioning' (p. 157). The possibility of freedom, the political existentialist now insists, depends on the existence of a state and laws distinct from the immediate relations among the members of society. Without such a distinction, 'morality has no necessity, and necessity has no morality' (p. 159). This interdependence implies concretely the need for social planification, which only the state can accomplish; but Gorz hastens to add that he is not advocating a return to the traditional socialist belief in the planned society that is to be the result of the conquest of power by the representatives of the working class. That would simply reinstall the domination of necessity over freedom in a new form, just as the simple revolt against bureaucratic domination was seen earlier ultimately to seek to replace one set of exploiters by another.\n\nGorz's political analysis is based on his recognition of the specificity of _the_ political. 'The political is the specific place where society becomes conscious of its production as a process involving everyone, where it seeks to master its results and to control its constraints' (p. 166). The plan is not the end that politics seeks to realize; it is merely a means used by politics to deal rationally with the sphere of necessity. Because politics is not reduced to planning, the agent who elaborates the plan can be confronted by the multiplicity of demands from the plurality of different individuals and groups seeking the means to realize their freedom. These movements pose _to_ the state the _question_ of the political. 'The essential end of the political is thus not the exercise of power. Its function, on the contrary, is to delimit, to orient and to codify the actions of power, to define its means and its goals, and to make sure that it does not go beyond the framework of its mission. The confusion of the political and power, or the failure to distinguish between political struggle and the struggle for power (that is, for the right to run the State) signifies the end of the political' (p. 167). Summing up his argument, Gorz adds a postscript that returns to his insistence on the distinction of the spheres of freedom and necessity while explicitly rejecting the famous argument by Marx, at the conclusion to volume III of _Capital_ , which claims that in the post-revolutionary society these two distinct spheres will become identical within a transparent totality, an ultimate unity, one. The final line this postscript warns that '[w]ith the death of the political is announced the birth of the total State' (p. 179). This laconic affirmation is crucial.\n\nGorz's success in formulating the political question that Sartre could never articulate poses to the heirs of the Marxian legacy the question: why try to _use_ Marx? The simple answer\u2014that Marx provides useful tools for analysis of capitalism as a systemic totality, even though it leaves no room for political intervention\u2014implies that these 'tools' are somehow separate or separable from the context in which they were elaborated and the function they were created to fulfill.72 Gorz does assert that '[t]here is no other theory for understanding the capitalist economy than the Marxist'. He also accepts Marx's 'philosophical anthropology', as interpreted through the primacy of the phenomenon of alienation. On the other hand, he rejects Marx's theory of history.73 He admits as well that political change cannot ignore the history in which it must occur, which is no doubt one reason that his formulation of the political question recognizes explicitly the potential totalitarian results of its neglect. Gorz's clear articulation of the place of the political is paired with an 'existentialist' insistence on the primacy of morality. The conclusion to the _Adieux_ insists that '[t]he political is not moral nor is morality political. The political is the place where moral demands confront external necessities. That confrontation must continue for as long as, in Hegel's words, consciousness does not meet the world 'as a garden planted for it'. Only the permanence and the openness of that confrontation will be able to diminish to a maximum the sphere of necessity while maximizing the sphere of autonomy' (p. 169). History, in other words, is constituted by and through this confrontation of freedom and necessity. This generalization, which would not shock a Marxist, still omits one element that needs to be explained: the choice of the theorist who tries to _use_ the Marxist theory.\n\nThe reason for seeking to use the legacy appears to be built into the contradictory structure of a theory _of_ practice. That theory is apparently modest. Gorz shares Habermas' self-limitation of its reach. He describes his aim in the _Adieux_ as 'not to put a coherent theory in the place of the traditional ones... I wanted to show what happens when one puts oneself into political thought as an actual and complex subject. The book was supposed to lead the reader to perform a similar experiment'. This is consistent with Gorz's description of history as the confrontation of freedom and necessity. It is not possible to tell others what to think, nor to think in their place. But, continues Gorz, because of the 'literary' quality of the _Adieux_ , his argument was often misunderstood. As a result, he reworked the implications of his thesis in _Les chemins du Paradis_ without that personal element of literary experiment. As a result, he concludes that 'I consider the _Adieux_ in its intentional incompleteness as the better, and the _Chemins_ as the more useful book'.74 This self-understanding is typical of the theory of practice. It assumes that there _is_ a movement 'out there' which needs to learn to identify itself, to understand its own nature and limits, and to posit goals that are not self-defeating. The theory of practice does not seek to _use_ Marx because it wants to tell people what they should do; it wants 'only' to enlighten them about the broader context in which they are in fact _already_ acting. The Marxian legacy that is used in this context is implicitly identical to that theory of History which Gorz identified as Marx's objectionable heritage.75 The criticism of Marx will break with this last premise, making possible the concept of a 'new Left'.\n\n## 10.5 Criticism and the Question of History\n\nThe contrast between the Frankfurt School, Habermas and the French existentialist political use of the Marxian legacy depends on their different understandings of the realities of history, even while they share an underlying attitude toward History. The earlier Frankfurt concern for immanent critique gave way to Habermas' reflection on the structure of the enlightenment project of which Marxism was a part. The motif of immanent critique remained, but its inadequacies were too apparent for it to be more than a regulative principle guiding the formulation of the theory; this was clear in the implicit and explicit use of the notion of a 'real abstraction' in both phases. Adherence to this regulative principle prevented Habermas from articulating explicitly the political question to which his theory pointed. From this perspective, Sartre's _Critique of Dialectical Reason_ appears to be a radical attempt to formulate immanently, on the basis of an existential ontology, the theory of immanent critique. The attempt failed because its existential subjectivity excluded in principle the consideration of the autonomy of the political.\n\nAlthough Gorz's political elaboration of Sartre's existential premises recognized the autonomy of the political, he did not formulate a political theory of  _democracy_ ; he insisted instead on the moral freedom of the individual acting within the economic framework of a social history accessible to, but not identical with, the Marxian legacy. The reason that he failed to take this further step is suggested by his failure to formulate a political theory of _totalitarianism_. He recognized that the 'total state' can come into being as a result of the denial of the distinction between political power and the question of the political. His failure to elaborate the conditions in which this denial occurs is due to the fact that rather than focusing on the particularities of real history, his account of the political was _H_ istorical in a Marxist sense. It was the description of a general, structural condition whose content depended on the sociological analysis that he elaborated in the 'more useful' _Les chemins du Paradis_. A theory of history, with a small 'h', cannot simply assume that the capitalist mode of production defines the present or determines the outlines of the future.\n\nThe distinction between History and history that I am introducing here is implicit in the attempt to _use_ the legacy; it becomes explicit in its  _critique_ . That critique is also a self-critique. Gorz's conceptualization of the political concretizes what Habermas referred to as a 'challenge' and 'virtual center of self-understanding' that is present as a 'diffuse common consciousness' in the 'dark and polyphonic projections of totalities'. But Gorz does not make this _question_ the principle from which further critical reflection is developed. Using the method of immanent critique, Gorz shows that what he calls the 'non-class' subject is produced by the system; but he asserts that it is unable to identify with any goals implicit in that system. As a result, the individual is left to his morality, while the sense of the totality escapes into History's series of changing modes of production where the Marxist can feel at home. The unending process of the Enlightenment, which Gorz also identifies as premise of the political, is not concretized in the processes of democratic institutions. Gorz is content to remain with the formal separation of politics and the political, which _can but need not_ lead to democratic politics. The idea that there exists, at least in principle, a logic of History leads him to deny the political formation of history; democracy becomes simply an attribute or a modality of the development of History.\n\nThe political theories of Horkheimer, Habermas, and Gorz each reflect the presence of a question that they are unable to bring to self-reflection. The History that gives sense to the theory of practice is not present _in_ history so much as it _is_ the history that the Marxian legacy seeks to understand. That History _is_ the _question_ of the Marxian legacy; it is _not_ its solution or a tool to _use_ for understanding history. This becomes explicit when Marxist visions of History are replaced by the question of the political. The result marks the transition to the reflective critique of Marxism. Its necessity is implicit in the paradoxes that emerge in the attempt to use the legacy, whose self-reflection in the implicit political question posed by Horkheimer, Habermas, and Gorz can now become explicit. The use of the legacy has been described the lived experience that leads to the transition. To complete it, an objective moment must be added to that subjective experience.\n\nThe replacement of History by history _as_ the Marxian legacy has a doubly objective foundation; it is ontological and political. The first is constituted by the history _of_ the Marxian legacy as both a lived experience and as its conceptual use. The false starts and dead ends that have been analyzed in the preceding reconstruction that illustrated the experience of the legacy and its use were temporarily occluded when the legacy remained external to a historical project; the progress of History seemed to give hope and meaning to a projected future. This self-blinding, an expression of a sort of Marxist filial piety, reflected the inability of critical theory to recognize that it is an _interrogation_. Merleau-Ponty's presentation of the adventures of 'Western Marxism' cast light on this blind spot. Beginning from an attempt to use Marxism (e.g., in _Humanism and Terror_ ), the philosopher was driven to rethink the \"adventurous\" search for the philosophical foundations that made that theory plausible. As a result, he was led to elaborate an ontology capable of explaining why theory was led freely and logically to mistake itself. This self-critical interrogation is the first foundation for the assertion that history _is_ the Marxian legacy.\n\nThe second foundation for the assertion depends on the political as a specific form of interrogation. The question of the legacy has to manifest itself in the 'flesh' of history. This concept, evoked by Merleau-Ponty, is elaborated by Claude Lefort, his former student and the editor of his posthumous works. Lefort's own works provide the concrete demonstration that when history is thought with reference to itself, it poses the question that the Marxian legacy was unable to articulate either in the form of a theory of practice or as a practical theory. The root of the difficulty was the tendency to think of politics in a functionalist or positivist framework. A first challenge to this misconception arose when politics took the form of a question\u2014implicitly for Habermas and explicitly for Gorz. A deeper foundation for that question had to be sought in the specific history whose flesh only becomes visible when the Marxist mediation by History is abandoned. This transforms the positivist interpretation of the Marxian legacy into the self-reflection of history itself. This implies that history is the critique of any attempt to fix the nature of that legacy. Specifically, in the cases of Merleau-Ponty, Lefort, and Castoriadis, their critical positions were developed only insofar as they had first attempted to remain, critically, within the legacy _at the same time_ that they refused to abandon the attempt to decipher _the new_ in history, in the historical past, and in history as they lived it. The only legitimate critique of Marxism depends on this double position, which is both ontological and political. This was, in fact, also the attitude of none other than Marx himself. The _critique of Marxism forms part of the Marxian legacy_. Marx's legacy is not his thought but his thinking.\n\nThe critique of Marxism from within the legacy has to satisfy two, apparently contradictory, imperatives. It has to remain true to the ontological demand for a theory which can explain its own foundations; and it must take into account the practical necessity that _the new_ be given its singular place in the form of what can only be called 'the' political question. The earlier discussion of Lefort's reading of the _Communist Manifesto_ showed why and how Marxism sacrifices the latter imperative in order to present a theory which includes its Other\u2014as practice, or as the world\u2014in its self-referential structure. The 'existential' conclusions of Horkheimer, Sartre, and Gorz illustrated the inability of users of Marxism to articulate a politics on the basis of a singularity that is not subsumed by the totalization by theory. The necessary condition of a revolutionary politics is the experience of the new\u2014as suggested by Habermas' recognition of the 'challenge'76\u2014but its sufficient condition is a theory which explains why this singularity, which Bloch called a _novum_ , is not an accidental appearance that can be explained away by a totalizing theory of History. These philosophical poles find their political translation in the work of Castoriadis and Lefort. The demand for a self-referential foundational theory corresponds to the experience of totalitarianism; the irreducible singularity of the new expresses the positive politics of democracy. As was the case for the two poles of the critique of Marxism within the legacy, these two political options cannot be thought separately from each other without finally leaving the revolutionary question that was posed, but was not resolved or resolvable, by Marx.77\n\n### 10.5.1 Claude Lefort: History as Political\n\nThe interdependence of the ontological and the political structures in the self-critique of the legacy elaborated by Lefort's earlier work is developed further in the three volumes he has published during the decade 1976\u20131986.78 The phenomenon of totalitarianism acquires theoretical depth when it is interpreted from the critical standpoint of the Marxian legacy. Although Lefort was not surprised by the facts detailed in Solzhenitsyn's _Gulag Archipelago_ , he was struck by the author's elaboration of their roots by means of a 'literary investigation' conducted from the standpoint of the experience of the _zek_ , the 'surplus man' sent to the camps. Lefort read the work of the Russian with the same eyes that had guided his study of the Florentine, Machiavelli. Lefort explains his project in language that recalls Merleau-Ponty and invokes Marx.\n\n> It is necessary to rid oneself... of the point of view of each particular group, to assume the position of the actor who is 'everywhere and nowhere', the position of the infantryman who is omnipresent in the theater of war and who, as a mere pawn, is simultaneously excluded from it. Knowledge of the bureaucracy is not neutral for Solzhenitsyn; it excludes the illusion of a possible flight above the social world; it does not assume the standpoint of God...; it emerges from the experience of the dominated, and only thus is it raised to the level of the universal.\n> \n> Does this language not recall something to those who claim the heritage of Marx? (UH, p. 37)\n\nThe 'literary investigation' of the Gulag tries to do what Merleau-Ponty had proposed as the necessary task of a Marxian analysis of the Soviet Union: it analyzes the anonymous process by which totalitarianism is installed and maintains itself. What is more, its third volume turns from the solitary moral truth to describe the birth of a new collective solidarity whose basis is not a spiritual truth but physical need, as well as new loyalties and collective decisions. Solzhenitsyn illustrates the origins of revolts that, in their form of struggle, have to be called revolutionary. They are 'fissures' in the 'ideology of granite' that do not result only from the protests of intellectuals or the weight of ideas; they spring from a demand for right and for justice that is the content of the democratic revolution.79\n\nThe totalitarianism that Lefort analyzes in the pages of Solzhenitsyn's 'literary investigation' is not an ideology, still less a theory; it reflects the anonymous, material practice that is the theoretical reflection of the interrogation of the 'surplus man'. The analysis does not deliver a ready-made theory; nor does it propose a political practice. The Gulag presents a certain type of society as a microcosm. There are no 'political' prisoners in the camps; even the infamous public purges of the later 1930s took place only when their victims were no longer a real political threat. No distinctions are made among the relative skills of those forced to labor in the camps; nor does their work have a direct economic value to the regime, which chews up the human raw materials of its 'penitentiary industry' with no care for efficiency. While anyone may become a candidate for the Gulag, the process taken as a whole is not arbitrary. A double political logic presides over the system of exclusion that produces this singular microcosm and is its reflection. On the one hand, the rejection of particularity is founded on the image of a society without division, the classless and egalitarian ideal that the Soviet Union pretends to incarnate. On the other hand, the reality of this ideal of social unity can be made visible only by the act that forcibly eliminates particularity. Lefort uses a phrase from Solzhenitsyn as a chapter title that describes the active process by which particularity must first be affirmed (in the persons of those who are incriminated in order for it to be eliminated (by their incarceration and relegation): '[t]he people becomes its own enemy'. In really existing Soviet society, the divisions among the people need a political intervention in order to preserve the unitary and harmonious socialist self-image. The Gulag is the Other whose necessary existence paradoxically mirrors the united society and preserves its self-image by actively eliminating particularity.\n\nTo achieve this socialist goal, the empirically divided people in turn need a friend, whom Solzhenitsyn labels 'The Egocrat'. The affirmation of the unity of the people by the elimination of particularity means\u2014as in Stalin's famous declaration of 1934\u2014that the withering away of the state can occur only by a maximum reinforcement of that same state. The state must be able, through the mediation of the party, to penetrate the entirety of society, to unite with the society in order thereby to unite the people. But this reinforcement of state power at the same time separates it from the particularity and plurality of really existing society whose social divisions it must at first implicitly affirm in order to justify its active intervention to eliminate them in the name of the preservation of unity. The will and the knowledge that guide its action must come from somewhere; they must be the action of someone. This is the role of the Egocrat, whose knowledge provides leadership for the little Egocrats who populate the party and the bureaucracy. The necessity separation of the Egocrat from the divided society that is unified by his action explains why Stalin's cult of personality could play the historical role that it did. No objective limits, no social interests, nor any physical constraints impose a 'reality principle' on this monstrous ego.80 The hymns to Stalin's glory testify to the Egocrat as the representation and the incarnate unity of the principles of power, law, and knowledge. The political truth and the ontological unity of the people relate to one another just as do the visible and the invisible.\n\nStalin's paradoxical proclamation that the withering of the state demands the increase of its power and its presence at once expresses, conceals, and reflects the reality of totalitarianism. The bureaucratic organs of the state integrate society into a unity; this process of unification hides the social divisions implied by the presence of particular interests; in so doing, it produces the real end of any autonomous mode of individual socialization. In such conditions, Stalin's claim is true; the power of the state is invisible because it is omnipresent. But this practice simply reformulates the paradox. If the people is a homogeneous unity from which particularity is excluded, it has to have the form of a self-maintaining organism. Solzhenitsyn expresses the new paradox by describing the bureaucracy as the 'organs' at the same time that the willful intervention of the Egocrat contradicts the self-representation of the bureaucracy as rooted within society's socialist unity. What is more, assumed possibility of such a willful intervention presupposes that society is simply dead material capable of being shaped externally by those possessing power and knowledge because it has no inherent lawfulness of its own. The result is an internally contradictory vision of society as artificially formed from without to the idea of society as an internally unified organism. The resulting contradiction must be overcome by the action of the organs. The frenetic activism of the party and its mass organizations thus challenges the idea that society is a truly unified organism. Ultimately, the Gulag resolves the logical contradictions insofar as the elimination of particularity affirms the unity of society, while the deracinated _zeks_ are made into the kind of merely artificial material that can be shaped at the will of the party in power.\n\nNeither Solzhenitsyn nor Lefort equates totalitarianism with Stalinism. Lefort had already analyzed the new conception of politics created by the Leninist militant acting in the name of History. Solzhenitsyn describes a similar phenomenon within the camps. The individual subjective 'I' is absorbed in the communist communal 'We' when a camp guard or judge asks disclaims responsibility by asking: 'what else could we do?' This is an expression of the communist 'We', which includes also the socially excluded _zek_ in a collective subject by identifying power with law, acting and justifying its action as if everyone were equal and equally subject to a common law. Those in power do not ask the _zek_ to agree with them in obeying a law whose necessity is imposed on each individual as a responsible individual subject; a unique point of view beyond the reach of any single individual incarnates for them a power to which all are subject regardless of their particular positions.\n\nThe Bolshevik becomes a new man\u2014an abstractly equal incarnation of 'Man'\u2014who has access to knowledge simply and solely by virtue of membership in the communist 'We'. Should the Bolshevik find himself in the Gulag, he explains his imprisonment as an error, or the result of a plot, a heritage from the old regime, the testimony of false witnesses, or simply as an incidental fact that has no general implications for understanding the nature of the regime, its need for violence, and perhaps injustice in order to lay the foundations of socialism. All of these elements culminate in the affirmation of the need to reinforce social discipline; the party-science serves to justify a submission that is not imposed by external necessity but is the result of obedience to a rational power presented by the reason of the party.81 The communist becomes ultimately a kind of moralist, someone who thinks well (a _bien-pensant_ ), whose good thoughts serve as a kind of protection from the material and particular reality of the Gulag. This moralism does not pretend to convert others, nor does it seek power, as was the case for the Leninist militant; Solzhenitsyn describes those who practice this morality as communists 'for the love of the Art'. Lefort stresses that their action manifests a narcissism reflecting in reality a 'love of the Same' that reduces difference and novelty to what has already been thought and predicted. The rhetorical affirmation of the onward march of History ultimately hides their desire for a society without history.\n\nLefort draws out the political challenge that the _bien-pensant_ covers over by taking seriously the communist's appeal to Marx. This strategy is suggested by Solzhenitsyn's own 'literary investigation'. Marx thought that capitalism was preparing the bases of socialism by making society increasingly homogeneous through its destruction of intermediary classes and its leveling of all work to abstract labor. Lefort doesn't mention the concept, but this is of course the expression of the 'real abstraction' by virtue of which knowledge of fact becomes equivalent to knowledge of principle, making possible the self-knowledge of society and justifying the 'use' of Marxism. When work becomes fully abstract, and thus transparent to itself, the difference of public and private, individual and collective, is dissolved; power, law, and knowledge become identical in a world without difference. The Gulag is the extreme realization of this abstract ontology. The  _symbolic_ difference between the facts and that which permits them to appear as they are is denied; power is treated as real and defined by its function; law appears to emerge only from the necessities imposed by the social division of labor ; and knowledge describes the causes for these supposedly real functions. The resulting positivism, like the knowledge of the _bien-pensant_ , serves to deny the need to _question_ the appearances _as appearances_ , permitting only their subsumption into an already given schema. The _bien-pensant_ elaborates complex causal patterns of thought in order not to have to _think_ the newness of the new.\n\nThe analysis of totalitarianism has to avoid the confusion of the symbolic logic that gives form and meaning to the material processes taking place in that society\u2014which _is_ total and totalizing\u2014with the inability of this  _symbolic_ logic to penetrate entirely the reality of the society.82 The Gulag is the political truth of the totalitarian project insofar as it has no economic rationality, obeys no legal criteria, and also because the Egocrat is not just a classical despot ruling by fear alone; its existence realizes the radical elimination of particularity and makes visible to society the unity which is denied by the reality of social division. The paradoxical goal of totalitarianism is to deny social division by identifying power, law, and knowledge with the real. The result, however, is fundamentally unstable because power, law, and knowledge are symbolic moments that are constituted according to a specific logic which is imposed upon a reality separate from it. The triple incarnation of power, law, and knowledge must be only temporary because its realization destroys the symbolic foundation on which the autonomy of each of the three was built. Although Lefort sometimes appears to assume that an 'existential' will to freedom is expressed in the resistance to totalitarianism, his argument is essentially political.83 Totalitarianism is not simply despotism, lawless tyranny, or a new theocracy; those classic political forms preserve, even while violating it in fact, the symbolic distinction of power, law, and autonomous knowledge. The question of the conditions of the possibility of this new political form is not simply factual; the symbolic mutation must be analyzed.\n\nLefort concludes _Un homme en trop_ with an analysis of popular revolts against totalitarianism. These collective actions are signs 'that permit us to glimpse the history that undermines totalitarianism' (UH, p. 253). He doesn't explain what he means by 'history' in this context, but he clearly refers to _political history_ (and implicitly to a history of the political). Lefort does not develop a history of political forms, analogous to Marx's History of social formations. The dual demand for an ontological and a political moment in the critique of the Marxian legacy is reflected in the _equal_ co-presence of the historical and political moments. Recalling the Marxian notion of revolution as developed within the legacy, political history for Lefort attempts to capture an experience that is neither a 'before' nor an 'after' but rather the _question_ (or the utopia) that Habermas called a 'challenge' and a 'virtual center of self-understanding' and which Gorz defined as the political. If society is not to be an accidental dispersion of autonomous atoms, it must be able to identify itself _as_ a society and as _this_ society. Society's quest for its own symbolic self-refection _is_ its political history. Political history in this sense does not concern only 'politics' or 'power'; that is the sphere of positivist history. Political history does not take place _in_ society because society is not a pregiven and neutral space; society is always already politically instituted, in both its unity and its divisions. Totalitarianism, like the positivism of 'political science',84 attempts to deny this political history by eliminating the reality of social division such that a _real_ presence\u2014the 'friend of the people', the Egocrat, or the party\u2014can claim to incarnate this symbolic social identity, making it an ideological 'reality'.\n\nThis concept of political history explains why Lefort insists that totalitarianism can be understood only through its relation to democracy, which 'it overthrows at the same time that it takes over certain of its characteristics and increases them fantastically' (ID, p. 170; cf. p. 41). This relation explains why opposition to totalitarianism does not entail the option for liberal democracy and certainly not for economic liberalism.85 It is incorrect to attribute political victories such as winning the rights of association, freedom of the press, unions and strikes, let alone the extension of suffrage, to a 'liberal bourgeoisie' that in reality did all that it could to limit such new freedoms. Democracy must be understood as a form of political history. This explains the claim that just as democracy is the key to a critical understanding of totalitarianism, so too totalitarianism is the key to a critical interrogation of democracy. The blindness of the left to totalitarianism is explained by the fact that the totalitarian claim to replace the formal institutions with 'real democracy' is not empty rhetoric (ID, pp. 83,105\u20136). 'Cannot totalitarianism be conceived as a reply to the questions contained in democracy, as the attempt to resolve its paradoxes?' (ID, p. 174). This is not to say that democracy is the 'cause' of totalitarianism or that it carries its 'seeds'. That claim would confuse a symbolic with a causal logic. Lefort's choice of 'the limits of totalitarian domination' as the subtitle for _L'invention d\u00e9mocratique_ expresses their relation as political history.\n\nDemocracy is a 'historical society _par excellence_ ; it is a society which, in its form, welcomes and preserves indetermination. This self-understanding contrasts remarkably with totalitarianism which, while proclaiming the creation of the new man, in reality is structured against indetermination, pretending to possess the law of its own organization and its development, and secretly creating itself in the modern world as a _society without history_ ' (EP, p. 25). The link between the 'indetermination' of democracy and its historical character expresses the singularity of the political institution of democracy. Democracy does not refer to an empirical political practice or an institutional arrangement. In several essays on Tocqueville's _Democracy in America_ , Lefort shows that Tocqueville's concept of the 'democratic revolution' describes more than an economic liberalism existing within an increasingly egalitarian society which constrains it to create a strong state based on the tyranny of opinion. That interpretation remains at the level of the positivism of political science; its implicit identification of Tocqueville's 'tutelary state' with totalitarianism is based on the same error. Tocqueville is not a liberal in the classical tradition; if private individual freedom must be protected against the state, it must also be defended by the state against the power or other private interests.\n\nTocqueville's _Democracy in America_ famously begins from the social _fact_ of equality; but for Lefort this fact is only apparently responsible for the purity of the American model of democracy. As his analysis moves on, the former student of Merleau-Ponty shows how this visible equality puts into question the 'invisible' freedom that had led the aristocratic French author to affirm his support not for what democracy does, but for what it 'makes people do' ( _fait faire_ )\u2014for example, in the creation of a multitude of associations that startle the habitu\u00e9 of a hierarchical society. The relation of visible equality to that invisible freedom is inverted in Tocqueville's second volume, published five years later; now freedom is the focus of the analysis and the democratic quest for a now invisible kind of equality (which exists in the form of mass opinion) constitutes the threat represented by the 'tutelary state'. 'Democracy', in other words, expresses indeterminate structured play of visibility and invisibility, freedom and equality, power diffused into society and society erecting itself as power. Democracy is a political form that is historical and 'reversible'; its character is 'indeterminant' and 'indeterminable'.\n\nThe historical and indeterminate character of democracy does not yet define or fix its political form as constantly renewed critical interrogation. Its reversibility means that no positive institutions can guarantee its continuation. This is clear by comparison to the _Ancien R\u00e9gime_ (to whose analysis Tocqueville turned after his brief period of political engagement after returning from America. Its hierarchical political structure made directly visible its social foundation. When the centralizing absolute monarchy attempted to ensure its domination by means of administrative centralization, it had the unintended consequence of spreading the corrosive  _symbolic_ principle of equality that would eventually undermine the visible edifice of power. The Revolution of 1789 not only destroyed what Marx called 'the illusion of politics'; it invented a new political actor, _society_ , in which all individuals are said to be equal in principle even though that equality cannot be made real and visible to all citizens. In the place of the old hierarchy where each knew his place, equality now brings individual alienation in the crowd; in reaction, the temptation is to make social equality visible in the political personage of _le peuple_. It is this  _symbolic_ shift\u2014not the overthrow of the monarchy\u2014gave birth to the 'idea of revolution'. The possibility of totalitarianism emerges when the revolutionary idea that society must be made visible to itself in the existence of a real political actor coexists with the indeterminacy of democracy . Before leaping to a pessimistic conclusion, Lefort insists that there is another side to democracy and that the French Revolution had another implication. The individual who is lost in the crowd and influenced by the vagueries of popular opinion is also freed from the constraints of the old hierarchy; the traditional bases of truth and justice are put into question by the resulting uncertainty. As with the social experience of democracy in America, the individual becomes agitated, disquieted, constantly forced to affirm himself or herself; democracy for the individual is not an end in itself; as in society, it is to be appreciated for what it 'makes one do' ( _fait faire_ ).86\n\nTocqueville's liberalism, as opposed to that of Guizot (from which, as is well-known, Marx borrowed the notion of class struggle), is not concerned to put an end to the effects of the Revolution. The French liberals of the nineteenth century sought to create representative political institutions that would _reincorporate_ 87 the society that the Revolution had liberated from the visible institutions of monarchical hierarchical society. The French literature and the politics of that century are haunted by the anomic new society whose description by Tocqueville has parallels in Quinet, Chateaubriand, and Michelet (to whom Lefort devoted separate essais), as well as in the _Manifesto_ of Marx, the _Philosophy of Right_ of Hegel, and the reactionaries Burke, de Maistre, and de Bonald. Lefort's historical reconstruction of the 'bourgeois ideology' that he had analyzed conceptually in the 'Esquisse d'une gen\u00e8se de l'id\u00e9ologie dans les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s modernes'88 shows that nineteenth-century representative political institutions failed to tame the social excess and indeterminacy of democracy by subsuming it ideologically under visible Ideals and Rules. The ground for the failure of bourgeois politics and its ideology is found in the identification of the empirical institution with its symbolic effects in the real. This makes it liable to empirical criticism because these symbolic Rules and Ideals can never be fully realized. Even Tocqueville's attempt to understand the transition from the _Ancien R\u00e9gime_ to the Revolution was vitiated by this categorial confusion of empirical action and symbolic effect. The equality of conditions instituted by the centralizing monarchy is not simply or only a reality which 'causes' revolutionary change; it is a symbolic, and a thus also a political, process. Its roots lie in the transformation of the absolute monarchy toward the _modern_ form of the state.\n\nFrom the standpoint of the history of the political, modernity is marked by the disappearance of any external standpoint in terms of which society can be made visible to itself, named or unified. As a result, the modern state is defined by its paradoxical relation to both a presence and an absence: the presence of a modern society to itself depends on the absence of any external source of legitimation. From this point of view, the absolute monarch is the secular manifestation of the religious belief in the incarnation of god as man; the monarch's 'two bodies'89 represent the divine within the kingdom, immortality within finitude, and permanence amid change. In this way absolute monarchy in the territorial state establishes the symbolic conditions in which the effects of the democratic process begin to be felt in the real world. 'The King is dead; long live the King' expresses the denial that power is truly incarnate in _this_ particular empirical monarch. The principles of power and authority are clearly differentiated; the absolute monarchy in effect presages the creation of the  _Rechtsstaat_ , the rule of law rather than that of men. The overthrow of absolutism, in turn, creates a paradoxical situation in which society is at once the only source of legitimacy and yet it itself needs to be legitimated. Legitimate power becomes an absent presence; no single person or institution can claim to be its incarnation. The search for the authority of a legitimate power is affirmed even though the establishment of the rule of law means that the place of power must always remain empty. This emptiness of the place of power makes democracy possible at the same time that it explains why, once established, democracy constantly puts _itself_ into question. Because the legitimacy of any temporary institutional power must be challenged, the indetermination that is essential to democracy preserves its historical character.\n\nLefort's analysis of the symbolic mutation represented by the democratic revolution illustrates the specific notion of the political that underlies his analysis and points to its practical implication. Democracy is not the ('ideological') creation of a dominant class, the 'bourgeoisie', that introduces the procedures of election and the separation of powers in order to mask the exploitative nature of capitalist economic relations. Although he knows that 'politics' is concerned with the acquisition and the use of power, Lefort insists that its basis is the symbolic function exercised by 'the political', which he defines as the 'generative principle of society'. Lefort first presented the distinction of the two spheres in an early essay in order to explain that 'the reason that power is the privileged object of knowledge of the political, is that power conditions the _mise en forme_ and the _mise en sc\u00e8ne_ of a social ensemble' (ID, p. 118). By insisting on these symbolic dimensions, Lefort emphasizes the fact that the political is not produced as a reaction to, or as the expression of, external constraints or particular interests. Lefort's thesis can be illustrated by Toqueville's _Democracy in America_ , to which he returns frequently. At the outset of the 'Introduction', Tocqueville writes that during his travels in America he came to see that equality was the 'generative fact [fait] from which each particular fact seemed to emerge [ _descendre_ ]'. Reading closely and contextually, Lefort points out that the generative fact has a different status from the particular fact(s); the latter are not caused by the former\u2014they emerge from it. Equality as symbolic generates a sphere of meaning within which the particular facts acquire a significance that is not inherent in their empirical existence (e.g., a factual difference between men and women, among classes and strata of society is perceived as an _in_ equality that expresses an _in_ justice that must be remedied).\n\nThe political defines the relations a given society defines as politically legitimate and socially just. In a later essay, Lefort adds a third symbolic dimension to his definition, referring to the 'mise en sens' by which the meaningfulness of individual experience is instituted by the symbolic matrix of a society (EP, p. 257). These three symbolic structures define the spheres of political legitimacy, social justice, and forms of individuation that, in turn, 'generate' the forms of power, law, and knowledge in a given society. In a modern democracy, society is both object of representation and the agent of representation. As a result, there can never be a perfect identity of the institutional representation of social relations, which must be valid for all of the members, and the particular conditions of each of them. As a result, democracy will always be marked by indeterminacy, interrogation, and self-criticism. That is why democracy, as distinct from other social formations, has an inherently historical 'mode of being' (EP, p. 254). As opposed to 'societies without history', this means that an essential aspect of modern democracy is that the place of power, law, and knowledge must remain empty at the same time that society constantly attempts to incorporate itself, giving 'flesh' to its understanding of the nature and limits of power, law, and knowledge. In this way, the distinction between the symbolic and the real is preserved, insuring that not only the difference between society and the state is maintained but also that society itself remains divided because no person or group of people can claim to have a monopoly of the symbolic. As a result, democracy is the only political form that legitimizes political conflict.90 This conflict is expressed in the political history of democracy.\n\nLefort's demonstration of the unique symbolic structure of modern democracy does not imply an option for 'bourgeois liberalism' or the abandonment of struggles for social change. He repeats his insistence that the historically existing bourgeoisie has constantly opposed democracy. His preface to _L'invention d\u00e9mocratique_ situates Lefort's arguments in the contemporary politics of France where the 'Union of the Left' came to power in March 1981 in an alliance of the Socialist and Communist parties. Toward the end of his argument, Lefort asserts that\n\n> [t]he worst evil is this: a democratic society without the representation of democracy at the same time that it is blinded to the nature of totalitarianism and to the logic of its expansion. It becomes a society blind to itself, foreign to itself, and ultimately disarmed. (ID, p. 36)\n\nThe threat of totalitarianism is not only a question of Soviet foreign policy91; the danger may come from economic crisis or war that creates a situation\n\n> where the conflict among classes and groups increases and no longer finds its symbolic resolution in the political sphere, when power appears to sink to the level of reality and appears as something particular serving the interests and appetites of vulgar and ambitious persons\u2013in a word, when power appears _in_ society\u2013and when, at the same time, society appears as _cut up_ ; at that point the phantasm of the united people, the quest for a substantial identity, for a social body held together by its head, for a power which incarnates society and a State freed from division appears. (EP, p. 30)\n\nThe advocates of a revolution that would introduce 'real democracy' can find an audience in these conditions, in the West or in the democratizing Third World because democracy appears unable to live with the representation of its own indetermination and is afraid to confront the question of its history. This argument does not commit Lefort to a defense of democracy as defined institutionally; political democracy is not identical with any specific social and economic structures. As with Tocqueville, Lefort defends democracy for what it incites people to do ( _fait faire_ ) because that is all that democracy 'is'.\n\nThe place of Lefort's thought within the self-critique and historical appropriation of the Marxian legacy is clearest in his discussion of the political implications of the concept of the rights of man.92 The issue was posed as a result of the growing respectability of the critique of totalitarianism in the French left in the wake of Solzhenitsyn's _Gulag Archipelago_ ; it took a positive form in the action of dissidents in Eastern Europe such as the Czech _Charter_ 77 and the Polish _Solidarnos\u02b9c\u02b9_. The debate took place on two fronts: against the 'Marxists', for whom only economic 'rights' are real, and against the 'new philosophers', for whom morality had replaced political thought. Like Merleau-Ponty in _Humanism and Terror_ , Lefort agrees with Marx's criticism of the hypocrisy of the moralists' humanistic defense of 'abstract man'. He recognizes as well that the fragmentation and alienation that Marx saw hidden by this abstract ideology of rights is also present in totalitarian society, which recognizes no rights and whose political state not only rationalizes exploitation within civil society but interferes in all forms of individual socialization. From this point of view, it is totalitarianism rather than bourgeois democracy that is the expression of what Marx called the 'political illusion'. This contrast explains the need to examine the specificity of the bourgeois forms that Marx called ideological. While Marx was not wrong to denounce the exploitation masked by liberalism's rhetoric of equality and justice, his debunking of the illusions of ideology in order to make visible a reality hidden behind alienation led him to neglect the 'invisible' political institutions, of which the 'rights of man' are an expression.\n\nLefort proposes a Marxian analysis that demonstrates that Marx himself was unwittingly a victim of ideology. He had criticized the French Declaration of the Rights of Man without looking at what these rights signify in actual social relations. His interpretation of the guarantee of freedom to do whatever does not harm others as the expression of a bourgeois, egoistic monad, separate from others and seeking to be protected from them, neglects the fact that 'the freedom to do whatever' entails a liberation from the constraints of monarchical, hierarchical society that makes possible new types of social relations. Similarly, Marx neglects the new mode of access to public space when he criticizes the separation between the private and public neglects in Articles 10 and 11, which guarantee freedom of opinion and the right to communicate those opinions. These are not the rights of isolated monads; they are based on a distinction between knowledge and power, not that between bourgeois and citizen. Marx's criticism of the right to security as another bourgeois limitation neglects the fact that it forbids arbitrary arrest and establishes the presumption of innocence. The latter, insists Lefort in a laconic phrase is 'an irreversible acquisition of political thought' (ID, p. 61). It expresses a symbolic mutation in the representation of the political, maintaining the distinction between power and law that makes possible criticism of the action of those exercising power. Marx is led to neglect these _political_ implications because his analysis focuses strictly on really existing society, which he treats as if it could be understood in its sheer positivity. This leads him to neglect the importance of the new public space created with democracy.\n\nMarx's criticism of the 'abstract man' created by bourgeois society is reinterpreted by Lefort.93 'Man' has rights by virtue of a triple paradox. Society is ideally one, yet it cannot represent or incarnate itself as a single body; as a result, no mode of activity can be forbidden by an external agency. Further, the rights which belong to 'man' are given by no one; no power ratifies the Declaration of Rights, which are given by 'man' to men through a self-declaration. Finally, as individual, these rights cannot be swallowed up into any all-encompassing totality; as individual, they are 'transversal', which means that their exercise demands their acceptance by others (ID, p. 66). As a result, what Marx criticized as 'abstract man' having no social determinations is shown to have the positive implication that the nature of man is indeterminable; like democracy itself, the democratic individual is necessarily open to history. Rights can be increased; acquired rights serve as support for new demands; but rights can also be invoked to prevent the development of other, different rights.\n\nThis symbolic mutation brings with it a new relation to politics. Rights exist only by means of their enunciation, and in their practice, which is plural and historical. Misunderstanding this democratic structure can mean a loss of freedom as rights become the province ruled by lawyers, judges, or political parties.94 The multitude of new demands for changes in sexuality, the family, children and women, prisoners, farmers, and even judges emerging from society since May 1968 suggests a different possibility. 'Are not these diverse rights affirmed on the basis of a consciousness of right, with no objective guarantee and, equally, with reference to publicly recognized principles that have in part been written into law and can be mobilized in order to destroy the legal limits that still constrain them' (ID, p. 71). Demands for economic rights against arbitrary dismissal like those by minorities of all types combine 'the idea of a legitimacy and the representation of a particularity' (ID, p. 74). The result demonstrates the symbolic efficacity of the concept of right anchored by a democratic society from which interest and social division are not excluded. It founds the historicity of democratic society on the permanence of the conflictual struggle for right.\n\nLefort is not proposing a new variant of what I have called a theory of practice, suggesting that struggles for rights embedded in democratic society need only to recognize their radical nature in order to transform the society as a whole. His proposal is founded in the self-critique of Marxism, which permits him to recognize the radically new politics of democracy. The plurality of rights, and their indefinite particularity, means that they cannot be regrouped into one platform acted upon by a single agency. Rights cannot be guaranteed by the state; they are won and held only in and by their practice; if they acquire a reified status as 'natural' they may well be lost. The search for a power which could guarantee rights presupposes the division between power and society as a reality that needs to be overcome by creating a 'real democracy' that could guarantee rights without the need for citizen participation. That is the road to illusion.\n\nThe analysis of the relation of democracy to totalitarianism shows the omnipresence of the totalitarian possibility within the movement for human rights. Lefort concludes his argument by recalling that it is 'the Soviets, the Poles, the Hungarians, or the Czechs or the Chinese in revolt against totalitarianism who teach us to decipher the sense of political practice' (ID, p. 83). To learn from the East, the West has to realize the specificity of democratic politics, of the totalitarian temptation, _and_ therefore the need to combat the abuses which 'bourgeois democracy' at once permits and condemns. This dual critical task avoids the other temptation that tries to propose practical measures on the basis of a purportedly radical theory.\n\nAs opposed to a Marxist theory of practice, Lefort's critique of Marx's 'realism' and his stress on the symbolic nature of the political show that the goal of an immanent critique of contemporary societies can lead to their totalitarian negation. The analysis of Solzhenitsyn's 'literary investigation' showed that the demand for truth is ' _politically_ founded'. But its foundation is not to be found a theory for practice.\n\n> I did not mean [insists Lefort] that it serves a political goal, however justified and important... it is an unconditional demand for knowledge and, precisely as such, it is completely political because it confronts not simply the collective lie... but a vision of humanity fantastically enfolded into itself, bundled up stiffly in its certainty, where knowledge is strictly conditioned by power (UH, pp. 131, 133)\n\nDemocracy as political history _is_ a different critique; it is its own self-critique, in theory as in practice. It is constantly open to the new, which it refuses to reduce to the already-known; at the same time, it builds from the existing acquired rights that are constantly put into question by the conflict which its symbolic articulation generated by the absence of any incarnate realization of the unity of power, law, and knowledge. In _this_ sense\u2014and not as an empirical set of institutions\u2014democracy becomes the locus of radical politics.\n\n### 10.5.2 Cornelius Castoriadis: Ontology as Political\n\nAlthough his analysis of totalitarianism differs from Lefort's, Castoriadis also recognizes the fragility of democracy.95 He distinguishes democracy\u2014whose crucible is the Greek experience that Europe received as a sort of legacy\u2014from both capitalism and totalitarianism, which share a different 'imaginary institution'. The transformation of the Greek heritage took place toward the fourteenth century with the passage described by the philosopher of science, Alexandre Koyr\u00e9, as the passage from the 'closed to the infinite world'. A new magma of imaginary social significations was created, the most important of which were the mathematization of a world that was now assumed to be thoroughly rational, the quest for mastery and domination over nature, and the idea of unlimited development within a universe characterized by its artificiality. These ontological presuppositions are said to be shared by capitalism and so-called socialist societies. The contradiction of the existence of a rational nature accessible to knowledge with the idea of an artificial world open to domination is bridged by the project of unlimited economic development, which can be pursued by different political means whose results are either a 'fragmented bureaucratic capitalism' or a 'total bureaucratic capitalism'. The former permits democracy to exist within its pores while the latter destroys it (so far as is possible).\n\nFrom the perspective of an instrumental rationality, 'total' bureaucratic capitalism appears superior to its 'fragmented' Western version because of its forceful unification of all facets of society. From this perspective, totalitarianism is a threat to  _capitalist_ democracy. But  _democracy_ is not the product nor the necessary accompaniment of capitalism; it is the expression of a different 'imaginary institution of society' that challenges _both_ fragmented and total bureaucratic capitalism. Like any institution of society, Greek democracy is not defined only by its political institutions; it is also represented in philosophy, tragedy, and the personage we know as that 'Greek man' best described in Pericles' Funeral Oration (Cf. DdH, pp. 282\u2013306). Modern Europe, East and West, is at once a radical rupture with the Greek 'imaginary institution' and yet it also continues to share in the Greek legacy. This apparent contradiction needs clarification.\n\nThe political ontology articulated in _L'institution imaginaire de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9_ can be reinterpreted from the perspective of the democratic project as incarnated by the Greeks. The analytic richness of that approach is evident in _Domaines de_ _l'homme_ , a collection of Castoriadis' earlier writings from the decade that followed the publication of _L'institution imaginaire_. The Greek inspiration is emphasized in the titles of its four sections: 'Kairos', 'Koin\u00f4nia', 'Polis', and 'Logos'. Castoriadis explains that he had first intended to organize these writings starting from the most general and moving to the more concrete implications of his philosophical position. However, as Aristotle put it, 'Plato was right to be uncertain and to ask whether the correct path ( _odos_ ) begins from principles ( _arkhai_ ) or moves toward principles'. The _odos_ becomes Castoriadis' _m\u00e9thodos_ , a movement to and from principles, alert to the moments when the principles find their realization, and where reality calls for principled action. This is the ground for the title of this collection and for the others that he would go on to publish over the next years as pointing to ' _crossroads_ in the labyrinth'.\n\nThe choice of the term 'Kairos' for his concrete interventions calling for the movement from principle to its realization, does suggest a priority accorded to practice; Castoriadis instead translates the concept as a 'moment of decision, a critical occasion, a conjuncture in which it matters that something be done or said' (DdH, pp. 7\u20138). This same orientation is stressed in the first lines of his renewed analysis of totalitarianism as it appears in the Soviet Union of the 1980s His book's title, ' _Devant la guerre,_ does not mean before the war but facing up to war. The book is not concerned with prediction or perspectives; its goal is to offer an analysis of the contemporary world that is necessary in order to _orient oneself in_ it' (DLG, p. 7). This intellectual attempt to move from reality to principles is more complicated than it appears. As he explained in an empirical analysis of the socio-economic problems of underdevelopment that was republished in _Domaines de l'homme_ , '[w]hat we can do is destroy the myths which, more than money and arms, are the most formidable obstacle in the path of reconstruction of human society' (DdH, p. 154). This principled method of politics is not a theory for practice; Castoriadis is treating 'crossroads in the _labyrinth_ '. Ontology\u2014Castoriadis' theory of the _magma_ \u2014cannot be separated from the political project that belongs to the critique of the Marxian legacy.\n\nCastoriadis insists on the consistency of his political project which began with dissent from the Trotskyist variant of Marxism. His theoretical rupture with Marxism was consummated in 'Marxism and Revolutionary Theory', published in  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ in 1964\u201365, and reprinted as the first part of _L'institution imaginaire de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9_. Castoriadis' critique used Marx against Marxism. A similar critical method had guided his earlier analyses of the Soviet Union; he insisted on the need to 'read _Capital_ in the light of Russia, not Russia in the light of _Capital_ ' (DdH, p. 187). From that point of view, he concludes, 'Marx represents the ultimate extension of the imaginary social significations of capitalism: determinism, progress, productivism, economism and especially the social phantasm of unlimited expansion of \"rational\" mastery' (DdH, p. 21). He made the theoretical basis of this analysis explicit in the 25 theses published in his 1982 summary of 'The Social Regime in Russia'. The concept of a 'social regime' does not refer to the party apparatus in power; the classical political term 'regime' describes the  _institution_ of a society in all its facets. By comparison, the concept of 'totalitarianism' has the disadvantage of suggesting that Soviet society is fixed once and for all, standing outside of history and only capable of change by a radical revolutionary rupture that can come only from outside forces.96 _Devant la guerre_ proposes a renewed analysis of the Soviet Union, integrating the earlier results into the new historical conjuncture that Castoriadis tries to explain. Castoriadis' thesis brings together his ontology with his critical Marxian reading of Russian reality; total bureaucratic capitalism pushed to the limit is said to found a new 'social regime' relating to its predecessor as capitalism had related to Greek democracy.97\n\nCastoriadis' attempt to leave a place for historical change within his model of totalitarianism applies the critical method that digs beneath the surface features and their ideological self-justification to Soviet society. 'The \"will\" of the regime is seen as the anonymous and largely blind result of all of its efforts and its inertias... And that \"will\" can be read in its results' (DLG, pp. 160\u201361). 'Power' in the Soviet Union is the expression of a relation that is not entirely visible to an external observer because it is not located in some individual or group that could be revealed by a 'perfect and total investigation'. 'The invisible\u2014and the important\u2014aspect of power is in the last resort that which produces effects without needing specific \"acts\" in order to manifest itself' (DLG, p. 280). This argument is consistent with a Marxist analysis which would stress, for example, that 'Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon, Ford, Vanderbilt, etc. were never President of the United States', any more than parliaments in capitalism are dominated by businessmen, or even that 'the National Association of Manufacturers did not telephone to Wilson or Roosevelt the order to enter the First or the Second World War' (DLG, p. 266). When Russia was dominated by total bureaucratic capitalism, power could be said to be located in the communist party; and Stalin was the ideal bureaucrat (DLG, p. 247n). But, not only did the Terror threaten the bureaucrats; objectively, the nature of a bureaucracy leads it to lie to itself about the real conditions of society, to preserve its position at the cost of efficiency, and to mask its ineptitude by appeal to ideology. 'Since Stalin's death and Khrushchev's overthrow, this ideological justification has disappeared; Brezhnev inaugurated the notion of 'really existing socialism', and the influence of his chief 'ideologue', Suslov, can hardly be compared to that of Stalin's Zhdanov. The creation of a new man, the transformation of nature, and the visions of a radiant future have fallen by the wayside' (DLG, p. 28; DdH, p. 57). This sober analysis of the Soviet reality suggests that the Marxist analysis will have to be rethought in this case as well as in the face of advanced capitalism.\n\nThe changing function of ideology is one sign of the new relations in the Soviet Union; the Marxist critic however continues to look for the real underlying key to the functioning of society. Castoriadis is struck by a paradox that leads beyond Marxism. A society whose civilian productivity is notoriously inefficient and qualitatively unsatisfactory has nonetheless come to rival\u2014Castoriadis says in fact to surpass\u2014the United States in the military sphere. This suggests the hypothesis that power in the Soviet Union belongs to a new ruling group, the _modern_ army. Castoriadis underlines the modernity of the new formation. The justification for his thesis depends on his insistence that, because the Soviet Union is a social _regime_ , it cannot be analyzed by Marxist methods. The 'army' is not simply men in arms; as has been known since the great mobilizations for World War I, modern military power encompasses the entirety of the way a society lives and functions. The military institution demands industrial production lines; it entails the direction and deployment of science and technology; it invades social life through educational institutions, vocational decisions, and the economic advantage it gives those who work for it. Castoriadis provides empirical documentation for the existence of a _separate_ military society, with its own privileges, life-style, and rewards. He explains that the army could assume its dominant role in the post-Stalin era because it was 'the _only_ one of the sectors of the bureaucracy to succeed in modernization... For the other sectors, if the irrationalities and the chaos of the Stalinist period have been somewhat limited, it is difficult to pretend that their functioning differs qualitatively from what existed before 1953' (DLG, p. 270). For this reason, Castoriadis calls the new Soviet society a _stratocracy_.98\n\nThe significance of ideology changes within such a stratocracy. Marxist analysis, which remains fixated at the level of the relations of production, cannot grasp the changed nature of the regime (DdH, p. 180). Castoriadis' distinction between total and fragmented _capitalism_ suggested that totalitarianism brings the logic of capitalism to its paroxysm. But in principle totalitarianism can never be fully realized; the state cannot absorb the society, even through the mediation of the all-powerful communist party. The attempt to engineer a totally rational unity produces massive irrationality; the self-representation of society, its ideology, contradicts its reality. Within the universe of capitalist significations, ideology as rational and scientific, transparent and explicable, is essential to the legitimation of social institutions. When it is translated into the regime of total bureaucratic capitalism, its self-contradiction reduces it to a mere empirical instrumentality serving to justify power and domination; it can no longer legitimate, even negatively, its promise of a radiant future. The ideological goal of controlling thought is modified; it suffices for it to produce behavioral conformity. Ideology becomes a 'lexitechnique' (that might be today called 'Orwellian') in which language functions as a 'code' that destroys the signifying function that is essential to human language (DLG, pp. 233ff ).99 This reduction of meaning to code seals the demise of ideology within the new social formation. The destruction of human signification is manifest in the 'massive production of Ugliness' and an 'affirmative hatred of the Beautiful' (DLG, 238ff ). It produces 'a new anthropological type', the cynic, whose mass social production of what the dissident novelist Alexander Zinoviev calls ' _homo sovieticus_ ' testifies to the void which permits the birth of the stratocratic society and which it in turn reproduces.\n\nA new imaginary organizing principle of society must emerge to fill the social-historical vacuum left by a communist party incapable of formulating goals for itself or for society at large. The modern army constructs a reality based on 'the ennobling of effective and efficacious Force in and by the national\u2013imperialist imaginary' (DLG, p. 253). Although some commentators interpret this development as reflecting a return of traditional Russian nationalism, Castoriadis argues that the ambient cynicism of Soviet society destroys the weight of tradition, culture, and the past. 'Russia' has become an empty signifier; the only content it can acquire is 'brute force for the sake of brute force' (DLG, pp. 222ff ). Because the military sector is the only functional element within Soviet reality, the new signification that fills the cynical void is reinforced. Castoriadis insists on the historical novelty introduced by this new social organization. The classical Greeks had recognized the decisive role of force, but they conceived of it as an external necessity and limit that society must confront in order to achieve its _own_ goals. The Soviet heir to the capitalist project of unlimited domination makes explicit the role of force as its underlying imaginary signification. This new phase goes beyond the totalitarianism that drew its power from the divisions and conflicts of democratic society; it is 'a new historical animal' that transforms the old goal of total domination over human beings into the goal of _external_ domination (DdH, p. 217f ). This is why Soviet control over East Europe no longer depends on the mediation of the 'sister parties' but (at least since the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia) is enforced by the reality of the Red Army.\n\nCastoriadis concludes from this analysis that the Russian stratocracy poses a direct and _external_ threat to western democratic nations. A Marxist analysis would suggest that '[e]xternal expansion, in this situation, is the only \"solution\" for the regime... because the use of military force is the only thing that present Russian society _can do._ We are facing a society which _constitutes itself in_ order to _do_ this: expand its domination, its Empire, while preparing itself to make war' (DLG, p. 217). Stratocratic society, Castoriadis warns, 'is destined to prepare war because that is all it knows, and can do'. But he adds to this functional account the expectation that '[t]his expansion does not take place in the Hitlerian form of rapid and brutal poker moves that bluff the adversary. It has its own slow and weighty rhythm'. The reason that Castoriadis nonetheless dramatizes this threat lies in his ontological, Marxian approach to social formations. This methodological approach is clear in his choice of a point for historical comparison.\n\n> When Islam was unleashed in the Orient and the Mediterranean, and spread within a century from a few Arab tribes to conquered lands reaching from Spain to the boundaries of India whose populations it assimilated, the cause was not their GNP, their technology, their 'fire-power', their numbers or their 'degree of civilization'. An other\u2013a new _\u2013type_ of society had emerged, a new institution of society was created, new (religious) imaginary social significations were imposed... The confrontation between Russia and the United States opposes two societies, two social\u2013historic regimes. (DLG, pp. 78f )\n\nThis does not mean, as some critics argued at the time, that Castoriadis casts his lot with 'the West', let alone with Reagan's projects for rearmament.100 He reaffirms his argument that the critique of capitalism remains valid, adding that critique does not justify 'critical support' for 'really existing socialism'. The unpublished second volume to _Devant la guerre_ promised to examine the question 'Can and should one defend liberal oligarchies?' The answer would surely not have been similar to Trotsky's definition of Stalinism as a 'deformed workers' state' whose infrastructure is 'socialist'. Castoriadis also promised that his second volume would conclude with a chapter trying to answer the question: 'What can we do?' His support for the Polish movement was evident in his preface to the Polish translation of his text.\n\nWithout waiting for his answer, it is clear that Castoriadis' analysis of what he called the stratocracy posed a serious challenge to the Marxian legacy from within that project. The inability of Marx _ism_ to think of war as anything but a product of capitalism is a reflection of that challenge (DLG, p. 18). But Castoriadis' argument is more radical than just that strategic consideration . _Devant la guerre_ closes with a critique (no doubt directed against Lefort) of what he calls even the most critical Marxist.\n\n> If he criticized Marxism, he put in the place of the 'economic' the 'political': he has created or assimilated a conception of the 'Party\/State' as the dominant instance in Russian society in a way that is \u2013 or appears to him to be \u2013 intelligible, arguing that it functions by means of ideology, which is something that he understands. But the military? Phooey! How vulgar, how unworthy, what an aberration. Brute Force: that destroys the rationality of history. (DLG, p. 281)\n\nCastoriadis insists that 'brute force' is the new imaginary signifier that explains the functioning of Russian society. He refuses to equate the stratocracy with known political forms such as 'Bonapartism, Pretorian domination, Latino\u2013American dictatorships'. '[F]or the first time in history', he asserts, 'we are witnessing the birth of a society in which the place of religion or any other magma of imaginary significations has been occupied by a \"signification\" that does not signify: brute force expresses nothing but brute Force for its own sake' (DLG, p. 282). The refusal to recognize this new, apparently 'irrational', reality results from 'the same motivations, the same refusal to admit that history can also be _that_ , as was the attitude of those who indignantly denounced Machiavelli's _Prince_ ' (DLG, p. 230).\n\nIn spite of his aggressive criticism of the Russian regime, which is coupled with a warning to Western democratic governments, the ruthless logic of Castoriadis' criticism of both of them recalls the existential despair of Max Horkheimer in 1940, when he faced the unfathomable emergence of the 'authoritarian state'. The critical theorist asserted despairingly that '[s]ociological and psychological concepts are too superficial to express what has happened to revolutionaries in the last decade: their will toward freedom has been damaged'. Two years later, with Adorno, he composed the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ , putting reason itself to a critical test. Castoriadis' account of Soviet society's descent from totalitarianism can be read as his variant of a 'dialectic of enlightenment' that has become fully out of control. The imaginary logic that culminates in the senseless world of force leans on an empirical description of Soviet society in order to give flesh to its categories. The thesis illustrated by these examples is not presented as a theory of practice; its movement from principle to reality is better understood by analogy to a Marxist theory for practice. As such, Castoriadis' theory cannot be refuted by appeal to empirical realities. The argument depends ultimately on his commitment to his ontology whose implications permit him a small measure of political optimism. In addition to an analysis of the 'decomposition of Western societies' and a criticism of 'Russian strategy and the US non-strategy', the second volume of _Devant la guerre_ promised to explain the 'specificity of European creation'. This became the guiding thread of the next phases of Castoriadis' work and the subject of many of the seminars that he taught at the \u00c9cole des Hautes \u00c9tudes. Reflecting particularly on the Greek legacy, including Thucydides' account of the decline of Athenian democracy, Castoriadis argues that the threat to democracy is above all _internal_ to it, a failure of imagination, an absence of judgment. From this perspective, the despairing analysis of the descent into the realm of brute force of the stratocracy can be understood as an attempt to shock Western democracies into critical self-reflection.\n\nIn an essay on 'The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy', Castoriadis recalls that the foundation of his ontological project was built on the idea of a 'circle of creation' which, for society, is the expression of its 'self-institution' (DdH, pp. 261ff.). This intuition had been present implicitly in his critique of Marxism. The Marxist failed to understand that relations of production cannot be determined only in terms of other relations of production; that assumption reduces Marxism to a form of positivism which does not understand that social institutions themselves must be instituted (DdH, pp. 81\u20132). Ironically, religion seems to at least recognize the difficulty insofar as it knows that the world that is instituted as _this_ world is based on _nothing\u2014_ no _thing_ explains the world of meaning instituted by religious belief. Religion covers over this act of creation by appealing to a visible image of its invisible creation, displaying a rich imagery to cloak the divinity. The religious attempt to relate the visible and the invisible expresses a form of 'heteronomy' that denies the autonomy of creation (DdH, pp. 364\u2013384). This heteronomy, which is clearly manifest in religion, exists also as the _internal_ threat to democracy insofar as it does not recognize the contingency of its own existence. The threat presents itself when, as with religion, the stability of a world of shared meaning is said to depend on a 'divine' guarantee: the 'rationality' of capitalism, its laws and commandments, and that 'invisible hand' of the market.\n\nThe legacy of the Greeks for the European project is the notion of autonomy which, ultimately, accepts the paradoxes of the 'circle of creation'.101 Politics takes place in history, but 'history' in and for itself has no meaning. History is the field in which meaning is created\u2014or, as heteronomous, it is the space where the senseless (like fascism or stratocracy) can emerge. Returning to his ontological thesis, Castoriadis insists that being is not 'in' time; it exists 'by time', by means of time. More strongly, he insists that being _is_ time; it is a kind of existence that must become and that is promised to become, what Castoriadis calls the _\u00e0-\u00eatre_. Time as well as history cannot be thought without the creation which brings them forth as new _forms_ ( _eide_ ). This creation is made possible by the 'excess of what _is_ over _what_ it is' as determined or fixed by its properties (DdH, p. 378). Traditional ontology, like positivist empirical science, negates this creativity when it interprets Being as fully determined; for the same reason, it cannot understand time because it treats things as being always and only what they are. As a result, any change appears to have been predetermined, as if the new were merely a spatial succession seen with the eyes of an absolute observer situated outside of time itself.\n\nThe political implication of this ontological account is that a society that denies its own autonomy cannot explain its own institutions; it is incapable of questioning itself, of self-critique. The Greek example serves to demonstrate that a society can be organized in a manner that keeps open the question of justice in 'an interrogation without end' (DdH, pp. 241ff, esp. 255ff.). That is why Aristotle's _Constitution of the Athenians_ describes 11 'revolutions' that fundamentally changed its laws.102 This recognition of the idea of revolutionary change signifies that the Greeks accepted the challenge of autonomy, which remains the legacy of democratic politics.\n\nEuropean history has been marked by attempts to inherit the Greek legacy of the autonomous institution of society. Autonomy is not the simple opposite of 'class domination', nor is it the absence of rules. Castoriadis accepts the Freudian idea that the _infans_ is a radically a-social and even anti-social monad that is biologically unfit for social life. Institutions that socialize it do violence to the immediacy of its desire by imposing its sublimation. These institutions create sense, meaning, and a shared social world. They can also make possible an infinite interrogation of this sense and world. Castoriadis insists that the 'leftist' critique of Freud's supposed 'paternalism' misunderstands the fact that civilization emerges only when face-to-face relations, which can only take the forms of fusion or of domination, are replaced by acceptance of the legitimacy of a third party outside them whose word becomes law. He admits that this civilizing process can also legitimate forms of domination or encourage the development of religious faith; it can also lead to the introduction of a fourth figure which delegitimizes the power of the third party or replaces it by the kind of collective oath postulated by Freud in _Totem and Taboo_ as the collective basis of the law that governs society. The upshot of these claims is that the institution of the law need not be heteronomous; the Greek example shows that it can take place in a public space organized through participation in its establishment and interrogation.103 There can be no human collectivity without rules, however they are instituted; although they can become alienating, rules like those of language are the also condition of liberation. Heteronomy, or alienation, is possible only because its foundation is the autonomy whose creativity is guaranteed by the vertiginous ontological experience of Being as existing without foundation as a 'magma' being as _\u00e0-\u00eatre_.104\n\nContemporary European history expresses a combination of the Greek legacy of autonomy as the search for truth and justice with the very different creation of capitalism and imperialism that build on the imaginary framework of bureaucratic domination. The result as a 'mixed society _with a dual institution_ , in which social division, domination by bureaucratic capitalism, and imperialist domination of the Third World co-exist with the democratic elements that popular struggle has succeeded in imposing on the institution of society' (DdH, p. 88). Although it did not invent war, racism, or exploitation, Europe practices them _at the same time_ that they are contested due to the continued presence of the other, democratic origin of its imaginary institution. This dual structure explains its crucial difference from the Soviet Union. The activation of the democratic legacy within the dual institutions of European society can only be understood in relation to the project of autonomy. Democracy, once again, is not simply a set of formal institutions and the corresponding practices; the Greek heritage preserved in the dual European societies remains active.\n\nCastoriadis' political ontology sheds light also on debates concerning the development of the Third World as well as illuminating the political role of the Rights of Man. The project of 'development' (which is not only economic) imposes capitalist institutions on other cultures. When well-meaning critics base their criticism of this 'cultural imperialism' on the idea that it violates the 'rights of man', they conceal an ontological assumption that they share with their adversaries. Both parties deny the autonomy they want to affirm. Proponents of the need for economic development appeal implicitly to its supposed 'rational necessity', while supporters of the rights of 'Man' base their argument on another abstract product of reason. Castoriadis' rejection of the former argument is not surprising. His counter position explains as well his critique of the latter. One of the 'contemporary functions of the simple discourse on the 'rights of man' and its praise of 'individualism' is to hide a flight from political and historical _responsibility_ ' (DdH, p. 110). Castoriadis' insistence that autonomy and responsibility condition one another is crucial to his understanding of democracy. The nature of this 'responsibility' is again embedded in the practical political legacy of Greece.\n\nEuropean culture at least since Herodotus' _Histories_ has been open to other forms of social experience; this recognition of otherness forces it to question itself and to relativize its own institutions. The twin inventions of democracy and philosophy in Greece were coupled with, and enriched by, this same openness that imposes the need not only to question oneself, but also to learn to think in the place of the other, and to relativize one's own institutions. Such cultural openness is a constituent of the democratic experience that should not be confused with a cultural relativism. It needs always to be complemented by the search for universality that is born with and essential to philosophy. The origin of democratic universality cannot be external to society, natural, or divine, because that would deny its freedom. It can only emerge from what Castoriadis calls an 'improbable' historical choice that asserts the equality of all as the condition of the freedom of each. Freedom and equality, _and_ their universality, are expressions of autonomy. They are the result of a _political_ choice for which citizens must recognize that they are responsible. That is why Castoriadis was critical of the peace movements of the 1980s whose 'zoological politics' claimed that the right _to_ (physical) life was, in the last resort, the first human right to which all others should be sacrificed. The failure of democracies to accept responsibility for their own democratic institutions appeared to him as the expression of an _internal threat_ to Western societies that led Castoriadis to write _Devant la guerre_. That book, which seemed to be focused on the devolution of Soviet Russia, was intended to speak to democratic societies (and the peace movements active during the 1980s in the face of the soviet threat).\n\nThere is no limit on what democratic societies can will or do; their freedom is founded on nothing other than their free self-willing. The Greeks were aware of the dangers of this radical democracy; they warned against what they called the _hubris_ which results from the paradoxical assertion that autonomy knows no limits and, as a result transgresses the democratic institutions on which that autonomy depends.105 Democracies can also destroy themselves insofar as they will their _un_ freedom insofar as they prefer life to the risks of war, opting for a 'zoological politics'. The danger exists also when they can try to institute protections of their freedom in the form of written constitutions whose (heteronomous) sanctity is maintained only for so long as it pleases the enemies of freedom. Castoriadis refuses all forms of representative democracy; he insists that only participation in the _choice_ of values breaks radically with the inherited habits of heteronomy. In this way, political democracy is not limited to the philosophical domain of 'the political'. Democracy exists as the constant self-questioning of all facets of life. Castoriadis' ontological foundation expands the sphere of political action. He insists that democracy cannot exist without the equality of participation whose presupposition is the equality of conditions. The essence of democratic political debate concerns the question of what is necessary for such equal participation, while democratic practice concerns the struggle to realize these equal conditions. In this way, like justice and freedom, equality is not an answer to the opening of an infinite interrogation.\n\nThe ontological circle of creativity that founds autonomy furthers the development of the kind of political judgment that chooses democracy while remaining conscious of the limits imposed by its very limitlessness. Castoriadis illustrates his thesis with reference to Kant's _Critique of Judgment_. The defender enlightenment rationality tried to explain how the individual judgment of the beauty of a singular work can be justified as universally valid without appeal to pre-existing rules of science or of morality. Kant's dilemma expresses the 'primitive circle of social\u2013historical creation' (DdH, p. 272). The emergence of the new that characterizes the beautiful work cannot be explained on the basis of a pre-existing structure. Yet judgment and taste must be sufficiently developed to recognize the artist's creation as truly art. Kant appeals ultimately to the creative instinct of 'genius' that works according to a 'natural teleology' that is not explicable by the causal principles of science or logic. 'The \"genius\"', insists Castoriadis, 'is at once a particular case and yet the expression of historical creation in general. The reception of the work of art is a particular case of the active and self-creative participation and cooperation of human communities in the institution of the new\u2013in the institution _tout court_ ' (DdH, p. 280). The ability of the community to _receive_ and to _recognize_ the novelty of the new is as mysterious as the artist's ability to create it. For this reason, Castoriadis suggests that Kant's _Critique of Judgment_ defines implicitly the relation of philosophy to politics as the relation of the visible to the invisible whose 'consubstantiality... does not signify the identity and still less the dependence of one of the terms on the other' (DdH, p. 308).\n\nLike politics, philosophy has no external foundation on which to base its questioning of established values. To philosophize is to create forms of thought in order to think what is beyond thought; 'to think is to aim at what is other than thought while knowing that this other can only exist in and by thought' (DdH, p. 309). This paradoxical relation of thought to being means that philosophy can never distinguish what it contributes to the object from what the object presents for it to think about. This is why philosophy cannot tell politics what it ought to do any more than politics can define the nature of philosophy. That does not mean that philosophy and politics are for this reason identical. Whereas philosophy seeks to preserve its paradoxical independence from the world, 'political thought\/will' does not seek to know the other but to make itself other, to change itself on the basis of nothing but itself. Politics is not based on philosophy, nor is it deduced from ontology; its goal is not to produce 'a rational political philosophy' (DdH, p. 15). The central terms in Castoriadis' philosophical-political vocabulary are _responsibility_ and _elucidate_. Political responsibility was seen to be essential to the project of autonomy; its imperative is to be constantly aware of the creative, foundationless, democratic choices whose autonomy is veiled by diverse forms of heteronomy. Philosophical elucidation replaces the (heteronomous) quest for exhaustive rational (or reductive) explanation on the basis of 'identitary-ensemblist' logic-ontology. Castoriadis insists that the two activities belong together:\n\n> To break the hold of the identitary\u2013ensemblist logic\u2013ontology in its diverse disguises is a political task belonging directly to the work for the realization of an autonomous society. What exists, as it is, permits us to act and to create: but it does not dictate anything to us. We make our laws; that is why we are _responsible_ for them. (DdH, p. 413)\n\nAlthough Castoriadis' ontology founds _both_ his philosophy and his politics, that ontology is not a 'system' which replaces or determines either philosophy or politics. Castoriadis' ontology reinserts the Marxian legacy into its Greek, and European, matrix. The dialectic of enlightenment was a correct description; but it misunderstood its own political implications. It is a theory of autonomy, not a philosophy of history.\n\nCastoriadis' _m\u00e9thodos_ that begins sometimes from principles and sometimes moves toward them can be characterized by a Greek aphorism that Castoriadis does not directly cite: philosophy begins in wonder. This attitude seems to characterize not only what he refers to as his 'thought\/will' but also his style, whose polemical vigor and mocking examples aim to incite his reader to see the world anew. This was Marx's style as well, when the desire for system and rationality did not weigh on his pen. One illustration will suffice to situate Castoriadis' place in the legacy in this context. 'The most important contemporary social and historical transformation... which was at work for three-quarters of a century, is neither the Russian Revolution nor the bureaucratic Revolution in China, but the change of the situation of woman and her role in society' (DdH, p. 160). He adds that the same holds for youth and now even for children. Significantly, this advance was not in the program of any political party; it is an autonomous creation, putting into question the domination of heteronomous values. This practical expansion of the forms of democratic equality, justice, and freedom constitutes the pole that can oppose the external threat to democracy posed by the Russian stratocracy. _Devant la guerre_ was no more written for the Russians than was _Capital_ for the capitalists. However real the external threat, the _internal_ danger is that democracy misunderstands its own precarious political judgment.106\n\nThe Marxian legacy that Castoriadis and Lefort appropriate critically returns finally to the question of 'the political' that was opened by the Greeks and renewed by Machiavelli. The politics of democracy is neither a theoretical nor a practical solution to the question of 'the political'. Democracy is nothing other than the question that makes both theory and practice possible and necessary. Criticizing the claims of Marxism and the relation of its 'solutions' to the totalitarian project permitted Castoriadis and Lefort to propose a new conception of radical politics, a politics of the new. With it, the question of the New Left returns.\n\n## 10.6 The Legacy as Present History\n\nHorkheimer's co-author of the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ , T. W. Adorno, began his own philosophical master-work, _Negative Dialectics_ , with a stark affirmation: 'Philosophy, which once seemed antiquated, remains alive because the moment of its actualization was missed'. The philosophy he refers to is Marxism; his goal was to retain a rational instance from which to judge and to criticize. Praxis alone can offer no answer to the failure of theory. The classical proletariat will not return; it cannot be pasted together from the shards of a disintegrating Western society. These negative elements exist; the practical critique of western capitalist society continues and will continue. It is tempting to think that since capitalism represents the 'enemy', the movements that challenge it will have to coalesce and converge as its united and really existing negation. That would demand the creation of something like a 'new working class'. Modern society, which is plural, fragmented, and divided against itself lacks the kind of unity that could be expressed by such a unitary actor. In spite of its divisions, that society is also united by a shared sensibility that articulates the values that give meaning to the diverse projects that constitute its warp and woof. This unity is not _social_ ; it is not visible _in_ society because it is the condition of the possibility of society's vision of itself. The unity of society is _political_ and _philosophical_. Adorno's aphorism is right, but for the wrong reason. The attempt to 'actualize' politics or philosophy was seen to lead toward a totalitarianism that makes the Other of society visible by destroying the very divisions that constituted it.\n\nThe Marxian legacy rediscovers _political_ history when it abandons the logic of History. Adorno's separation of critical reason from the world it criticized was based on an adherence to a negative theory of History; the deconstruction of that theory reveals only _society_ , in its difference, fragmentation, and lack of inherent sense. The negative option separates critique from politics; the deconstructive option transforms society into its own self-critique. In both cases, the critique plays ultimately a positive role in the narration, refusing to open itself to the _question_ of history. That history, which is the Marxian legacy, cannot be thought separately from its political flesh. Democracy is not simply the opposite of totalitarianism; it is not an empty form, a container within which social plurality persists unconsciously in its own way. The structure of democracy can be understood as revolutionary (and utopian): it exists neither before its action begins nor in its finished result; democracy simply is (or is not). It is not a theory that can be used _for_ future political action nor is it a theoretical expression _of_ an already existing politics. The path to the _question_ of the legacy that has been traced here excluded both of these options. The Marxian critique of totalitarianism that uncovered its positive political sense showed that democracy is rooted in society, which cannot be reduced to the unconscious play of social forces. This constraint explains why democracy cannot be given a visible figure or situated in a fixed place; at the same time, it provides the material stimulant that poses the question of revolution that animates the Marxian legacy. This paradoxical unity of negation and affirmation is expressed by the assertion that democracy simply _is_. The present history of the legacy illustrates this claim.\n\nFor their own reasons, Habermas, Gorz, Lefort, and Castoriadis have all stressed the 'new social movements' which are the contemporary manifestation of the New Left that _The Marxian Legacy_ tried to theorize. In their different formulations, each points to the need for a _political_ interpretation of these social phenomena. This 'politics' is not confined to questioning the relations between the state and society, nor does it lie within the institutions of the state.107 It takes the form of an implicit question that society poses to itself about itself and about the project that animates it. Although this is not necessarily the intent of the actors, it is the implicit sense that gives meaning to their actions and is the source of their ambivalent potential. The accent placed on their _social_ character in the self-understanding of these new movements expresses their refusal of what Marx called 'the political illusion'. Opposing society to the state, they seek to anchor their democratic ideals in a refusal of the institutions of 'bourgeois democracy'. The legacy's critique of Marxism warns against the double danger implicit in this orientation. For Marx, the end of 'the political illusion' led to the affirmation of bourgeois social relations; for Lefort's Marxian critique, this denial of the political implications of the Rights of Man limited the ability to conceive of a struggle for the expansion of these rights. The critique of 'bourgeois democracy' is blinded to the allure of totalitarianism that is latent in the promised achievement of 'real democracy'. That promised realization, which animates the positive extension of democracy's self-criticism to new questions of right and justice, is _also_ an internal threat to its continued existence in a global world where the reality of the threat of totalitarianism cannot be denied.108\n\nThe new social movements can be interpreted as a reaction to the expansion of welfare-state (or bureaucratic capitalism) into the pores of social and individual life. A second interpretative option understands them as the internal development of a modern society whose capitalist economy does not define exclusively its nature. The former option is chosen by Habermas and Gorz, the latter by Lefort and Castoriadis. The refusal to define modern society by its economy is consistent with the critique of Marxism. One way of drawing its implications, suggested by Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen,109 is to develop the concept of 'civil society' whose rich depiction by Hegel tended to be restricted in Marx's critique of the idealist philosopher. _Civil_ society is the public sphere which is not identical with the 'state steering mechanism' described by Habermas, nor reducible to the privacy of an indefinable 'life-world' from which occasionally arise empirical 'challenges'. The creation and expansion of civil society can be understood as the concretized expression of the politics of democracy. The new social movements that continue to emerge within it and which articulate its momentary structure are not the result of a quest for 'identity' by atomized and alienated victims of capitalism; nor do they express what Hegel called 'corporate' interest groups seeking to get their way. The new movements _are_ civil society, whose domination by the capitalist economy represents only a singular moment in political history. The contemporaneous emergence of social movements like the Polish _Solidarnos\u02b9c\u02b9_ for its part recalls that totalitarian societies are not societies without history; their refusal of historical change is the result of political choice. As Lefort demonstrated already in his analysis of Hungary, their struggle is part of the democratic project. It is their own path to the discovery of the Marxian legacy.110\n\nJust as it is an error to interpret political history solely with the categories of the economy, it would be wrong to think that the new social movements constitute the essential common denominator of the contemporary globalized world. Two opposed political orientations occupy space that abuts the Marxian legacy. The neo-conservative critique, which Habermas correctly deemed a threat, is not simply the reflection of capitalist political interests. Neo-conservatives are troubled by the 'excesses' of democracy which, for the legacy, are precisely the expression of the virtues of democratic politics. The much criticized report of the Trilateral Commission that insisted on the need to 'restrain democracy in order to save democracy' addressed what Castoriadis designated as the impossible and yet constantly present question of democratic self-limitation. Similarly, Jean Kirkpatrick's neo-conservative distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian government is shallow and self-serving (of American foreign policy interests), but a better argument for the importance of the specificity of the critique of totalitarianism is suggested by Lefort.111 It is not sufficient to reduce these neo-conservative positions to their self-interested legitimatory function. The presence of similar analyses encountered within the Marxian legacy suggests that the neo-conservative criticism is not without foundation, however much its authors' political use of it has to be criticized. In Western societies, where the welfare-state and social-democratic political projects have lost their force of attraction, and where what Gorz called 'the road to paradise' no longer depends on the creative potential of both capitalism and the working class, a New Left politics cannot remain attached to the old images of Marxism. The alternatives to the neo-conservative, or neo-liberal, politics that have come increasingly to prominence are neither reducible to the defense of the acquired benefits of the welfare state nor the all-or-nothing demand for social revolution. As did Marx's _Eighteenth Brumaire_ , Lefort rightly insists that the rulers of society are certainly not proponents of increasing the sphere of democratic participation. Castoriadis' insistence that democracy is only practicable where the equality of condition among the participants prevails points out that the democratic project is not without material consequences.\n\nThe second contemporary political orientation that challenges the Marxian legacy is labeled 'post-modernism'. The utilization of the prefix 'post' (like that of 'neo') suggests either that the phenomenon to which it is attached is ambiguous or that the theorist is uncertain whether and why the phenomena are in fact new. Habermas' attempt to criticize both neo-conservatism and post-modernism for their refusal of the project of the Enlightenment is not without foundation. Marxism can be understood as the most consequent expression of the realization of an enlightened society. One of the more influential formulations of neo-conservatism, written by a veteran anti-Stalinist leftist strongly influenced by Trotsky in his youth, carries a title that is significant in this context. Daniel Bell's analysis of _The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism_ (1976) followed the threat of his studies of _The Coming of Post-Industrial Society_ (1973) and _The End of Ideology_ (1960). The link of Bell's neoconservative politics with the theories of post-modernism challenges the premises of both liberalism and Marxism. One of the premises of post-modernist theories is a critique of the aesthetic idea that if a true avant-garde can realize the essence of art, it will make a revolution that will change the world.112 Post-modernism, like philosophical deconstructionism, rejects the notion of a subject separated from and acting on the world; it envisions a plurality of micro-subjects operating lateral strategies in a society whose essential normlessness makes immanent critique impossible. It would be too easy to reduce this 'micro-political' vision to a reflection of commoditized consumer culture that represents what the Situationists in the 1960s described (borrowing freely from Luk\u00e1cs) as a 'society of the spectacle'. More difficult, but more necessary, is the attempt to understand post-modernism as a challenge to the legacy and the political questions it poses.\n\nNew social movements, neo-conservatism, and post-modernism do not exist in a vacuum. The inherent instability of democracy and the threat of totalitarian antipolitics create a climate encouraging an uncritical search for solutions. It would be naive to ignore the role of capitalism or the existence of imperial interests. The realities of racism, sexism, and the ecological destruction of the environment can no more be forgotten than the massive stockpiles of atomic 'deterrents'. This list of qualifications can be extended by any morning's reading of the newspaper (or, in today's conditions of media monopoly, some newspapers). More important than these negative appearances is the lack of an ability to conceptualize the existing positive vectors. The decomposition of the left, fragmented into self-interested and identity-based coalitions seeking to defend a welfare state that some of them had condemned as 'pre-totalitarian' until the long economic crisis began after 1973, while others withdrew sullenly in the face of established political party machines that offer little space for citizen participation. In this context, the return to Marxism by the 'left' is not surprising; that theory offers certainty, explaining failures in the present while promising if not preparing future successes. Solzhenitsyn's _bien-pensants_ do not exist only in totalitarian societies. The critique of Marxism that reclaims Marx's legacy is not simply a theoretical project. Its politics cannot avoid the ambitious and ambivalent encounter with the political which remains a legacy needing active participation to realize its inherited potential. That will be the task of a New Left that is able to translate the critical potential of the new social movements into the _political_ interrogation that is the Marx _ian_ legacy.\n\nFootnotes\n\n1\n\nRorty makes this suggestion at the conclusion of a comparison of 'Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity', reprinted in _Habermas and Modernity_ , edited by Richard J. Bernstein (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), p. 174. He consoles himself, earlier in the essay, with the comment that 'it is not clear that these efforts have done the modern age much good (or, for that matter, harm)' (p. 168). Although his 'Deweyian' pragmatism claims to ground a progressive democratic politics, his theory points to the ambiguous situation of the critique of Marxism, as will be apparent in the discussion of neo-conservatism and post-modernism in section II.\n\n2\n\nThe first of these presented a general discussion of 'The Theory and Practice of Dialectical Theory' which insisted on the relatedness but also on the difference of theory and practice. It is not reproduced because I have, I hope, elaborated its arguments more convincingly, and certainly in more detail, in _From Marx to Kant_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985). The second introductory chapter tried to understand the political movement known as the 'New Left' within whose cresting wave this book was written. In its wake, this Afterword tries to understand what has happened. Both chapters have been reprinted in a collection of my political essays, _Defining the Political (1989)_.\n\n3\n\nI will not try to reconstruct historically what the 'New Left' was; nor of course, does the concept as it is used here stand or fall on the basis of empirical facts. I am generalizing from an experience that I conceptualize as the 'Marxian legacy'.\n\n4\n\nIn the book, and in this Afterword, I avoid the thickets of erudition as much as possible. There exist many studies of Marx and Marxism, undertaken from differing points of view, and with greater or lesser pretention to exhaustiveness. My goal is different. I want to restore the question that underlies 'the Marxian legacy'.\n\n5\n\nAn example of such ulterior motives can be found in Althusser, whose Stalinist dogmatism is dissected by Claude Lefort in his analysis of Solzhenitsyn's three volumes on the 'Gulag Archipelago' in _Un homme en trop_ , pp. 79ff.\n\n6\n\nHabermas suggests that when the Institute for Social Research, in emigration in New York, was isolated from dialogue with other intellectual traditions, it lost the critical impulse that kept it alive. As an empirical indication of his argument, Habermas notes the importance of the Book Review section of the  _Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Sozialforschung_ , which composed roughly one-third of each issue, reviewing with some 350 books each year, totaling nearly 3500 during its nine-year life (J\u00fcrgen Habermas, 'The inimitable Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Sozialforschung: How Horkheimer took Advantage of a Historically Oppressive Hour', in _Telos_ , No. 45, Fall, 1980).\n\n7\n\nC.f., Habermas' comments on just this aspect of the _Zeitschrift_. Habermas himself is a prime example of the attempt to arrange marriages among the disciplines, albeit from his own synthetic point of view. The place of his project within the 'legacy' will be discussed below.\n\n8\n\nThis gives rise to the familiar technique for defending 'really existing socialism', which is not the product of political opportunism or cynicism; it has theoretical roots as well. This type of politics of theory is not restricted to Trotskyists, although the stubborn purity in which this sect has persisted makes it archetypal. Lefort generalizes from his own experience as a Trotskyist in his essay on 'L'image du corps et le totalitarisme' (in _L'invention d\u00e9mocratique. Les limites de la domination totalitaire_ (1981)). He shows that the leadership positions within the Trotskyist 'micro-bureaucracy' are based on a certain kind of knowledge, exercised by the verb and capable of fitting facts into a mythical history. This knowledge defines what is and is not real for group members; its basis is a mythologized vision of what happened in the past. As a result, this self-proclaimed knowledge is invulnerable to criticism; it produces a closed world in which party members share by becoming one of 'us', the collective carriers of the theory. As a result, individual members lose their identity and their sense of the outside world.\n\n9\n\nLefort's essay, 'Relecture du Manifeste communiste', is printed in his _Essais sur le politique. XIXe-XXe si\u00e8cles_ (Paris: Seuil, 1986). The citation is from page 188. The original publication was found in the _Dictionnaire des oeuvres politiques_ (Paris: PUF, 1986).\n\n10\n\nPost-war Eastern Europe is, in a sense, the double heir of the legacy, as Soviet, but also as European. There is a theoretical story to be written about this double legacy; a first step is found in Jacques Rupnik's 'Le totalitarisme vu de l'Est', in Hassner and Rupnik, eds., _Totalitarismes_ (Paris: Econ\u00f3mica, 1984).\n\n11\n\nThe historian, Fran\u00e7ois Furet, has illustrated the theoretical dilemma in Penser la R\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), as Claude Lefort demonstrates in his critical review reprinted in his _Essais sur le politique_.\n\nThe impossibility of situating revolution in a temporal or a sociological 'before' or 'after' implies that revolution is essentially utopian! This intuition animated the work of Ernst Bloch within the legacy, as well as pointing to two other thinkers who adopt motifs from the legacy without therefore becoming full participants, Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno. I will explain below why they were not treated in _The Marxian Legacy_ , despite their awareness of revolution and utopia.\n\n12\n\nSee my article (with Brigitte Howard), 'Une mort n\u00e9cessaire?', in the monthly journal _Front_ (Paris: September, 1969, pp. 28\u201329). The problem of political 'agency' is central to any modern theory of politics, as I have tried to show in my writing since the first edition of this book, some of which are collected in _Defining the Political_ and in _The Politics of Critique_ (1988, 1989).\n\n13\n\nThe best study in English remains the first, Peter Steinfels, _The Neoconservatives: The Men who are Changing American Politics_ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979). Steinfels' work retains the freshness and surprise of discovery. Habermas has written a critical essay distinguishing the American from the German variety of neo-conservatism: 'Neoconservative Culture Criticism in the United States and West Germany: An Intellectual Movement in Two Political Cultures', reprinted in Richard J. Bernstein, ed., _Habermas and Modernity_ , op. cit.\n\n14\n\nOn the distinction between the Foucadian and Frankfurt orientation, see Axel Honneth, _Kritik der Macht_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985). In English, see Martin Jay's careful attempt to distinguish Adorno from typical Marxist views of reification, in _Adorno_ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), especially pp. 67\u201368.\n\n15\n\nThese worries are not recent, nor is Habermas focused only on dangers coming from the Right. Already in the 1960s, he criticized the German student movement for a susceptibility to what he called 'left-wing fascism'. That debate was documented in the collective volume, _Die Linke antwortet J\u00fcrgen Habermas_ (Frankfurt am Main: Europ\u00e4ische Verlagsanstalt, 1968). That collection presents a debate within the left, beginning from Habermas' own statement, published under the title 'Die Scheinrevolution und ihre Kinder'.\n\n16\n\nHabermas' _Legitimation Crises_ never reached a satisfactory explanation of 'late' capitalism. He returned to the question in his _Theory of Communicative Action (1981)_. The processes of modern rationalization take root first in the sphere of the economy, then in the increasing rationalization of law and administration, and finally in the affectively defined domain of personal life. 'Late' capitalism is characterized by the attempted rationalization of this third element of social life. The resistance to this 'colonization of the life-world' may take the forms described as 'post-modern'. C.f., the collection of interviews with Habermas edited by Peter Dews, _Habermas. Autonomy & Solidarity_ (London: Verso, 1986). The work of Andr\u00e9 Gorz, discussed below, offers a more rewarding political analysis.\n\nIt should be noted as well that Habermas' criticism of French post-modernism's political implications was first presented (in English) in 1985 as a series of 12 invited lectures at the Sorbonne in Paris. Its German version appeared as _Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne. Zw\u00f6lf Vorlesungen, in 1985_.\n\n17\n\nHe makes this claim in an interview with _Aesthetik und Kommunikation_ , reprinted in his collection, _Die neue Un\u00fcbersichtbarkeit_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985), pp. 180\u201381. The two volumes, well more than a thousand pages, are of course the development of theoretical concerns as well. Habermas offers other political reasons as well. At the conclusion to his comparative criticism of American and German neo-conservatives, he observes that 'If modernity had nothing to offer beside the praises of neoconservative apologetics, one could understand why parts of today's intellectual youth are returning (via Derrida and Heidegger) to Nietzsche, searching for salvation in the portentous moods of the cultic rejuvenation of a young conservatism not yet distorted by compromise' (in Bernstein, ed., _Habermas and Modernity_ , pp. 93\u20134). He adds to this negative argument a positive ground for developing his new theory in his interview with the _New Left Review_. After denying that he is a 'transcendental philosopher', he explains that 'I would not speak of \"communicative rationalization\" if in the last two hundred years of European and American history, in the last forty years of the national liberation movements, and despite all the catastrophes, a piece of \"existing reason\", as Hegel would have put it, were not nevertheless also recognizable-in the bourgeois emancipation movements, no less than in the workers' movement, today in feminism, in cultural revolts, in ecological and pacifist forms of resistance, etc.' (p. 102). The 'piece of \"existing reason\"' refers to the Marxist concept of a 'real abstraction' that was discussed earlier in _The Marxian Legacy_ and to which I will return in the next paragraph.\n\n18\n\nI use the common word 'social' here to designate what Hegel called 'civil society', which is defined by relations among individuals structured by the goal of maintaining their own particularity. Hegel's notion of the political is distinguished radically from this civil society (Cf., _Philosophy of Right_ , paragraphs 258 and 260). Habermas knows that the political must be able to claim universality, but his social premises permit its universalization only in the sphere of individual morality.\n\nExplaining the goals of his theory in his 'Reply to My Critics' in the _New Left Review_ interview, Habermas insists that 'Nothing makes me more nervous than the imputation that because the theory of communicative action focuses attention on the social facticity of recognized validity-claims, it proposes, or at least, suggests, a rationalistic utopian society. I do not regard the fully transparent\u2014let me add in this context: or indeed a homogenized and unified\u2014society as an ideal, nor do I wish to suggest any other ideal\u2014Marx was not the only one frightened by the vestiges of utopian socialism' (NLR, p. 94). Earlier in the interview, Habermas speaks of his 'somewhat restricted understanding of the task of philosophical ethics', namely, that 'the philosopher ought to explain the moral point of view, and\u2014as far as possible\u2014justify the claim to universality of this explanation, showing why it does not merely reflect the moral intuitions of the average, male, middle-class member of a modern Western society. _Anything further than that is a matter for moral discourse among participants_ ' (p. 84, my italics). I underline the notion of 'moral discourse' here because, in the present context, what is at issue is the place of the political within the Marxian legacy. When Habermas does talk about the place of politics in modern societies, he reduces politics functionally to a 'steering mechanism' that has been made autonomous by modern processes of rationalization. This conflates government administration with the political.\n\n19\n\nCf. 'Bewusstmachende oder rettende Kritik-Die Aktualit\u00e4t Walter Benjamins', in _Politische-Philosophische Profile_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1981). A propos of the utopian element on Benjamin and Adorno, it should be recalled that the young Habermas had praised Bloch as 'a Marxist Schelling' in an early essay published in his _Theorie und Praxis_ (1963).\n\n20\n\nNLR, p. 82.\n\n21\n\nAs I read them, the 'new philosophers' are neither new nor philosophical. They borrow without acknowledge political arguments developed years previously in _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ ; their philosophy is rhetorical, based ultimately on the 'morality' that they put in place of the political. A destructive  _critique_ is found in Castoriadis' aptly titled article on Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy, 'L'industrie du vide', in _Domains de l'homme. Les carrefours du labyrinthe_ (Paris: Seuil, 1986). It is no surprise that this product of media attention has dispersed, finding itself at different points in the spectrum, with Andr\u00e9 Glucksmann remaining, morally at least, on the left.\n\n22\n\nI have misplaced my copy of this book. The citation here is found in Pierre Gr\u00e9mion, _Paris\/Prague. La gauche face au renouveau et \u00e1 la r\u00e9gression tch\u00e9coslovaques, 1968\u20131978_ (Paris: Juilliard, 1985), p. 313 n 3.\n\n23\n\nI have tried to show in some detail how, and why, this is the case in _From Marx to Kant_ . That account was especially indebted to Lefort's earlier theory. Lefort's recent work on the French Revolution itself, and on its interpreters, goes still further, as will be seen below. My debt to Castoriadis will also be apparent in the following discussion.\n\n24\n\nThis reconstruction of the legacy around the concepts of revolution and democracy was not present in the first edition. Its chief concern was the definition of 'the political', for which Marxism had no clear theoretical role. The Preface to that first edition admitted that the substantive formulation, 'the political', might appear at first as a philosopher's mystification of everyday politics. I tried to give a better conceptual clarification in _From Marx to Kant_ . The discussions in this new Afterword of the newer work of Lefort and Castoriadis explain why I am replacing it here with the concept of democracy\u2014or better, with the question of democracy. As noted earlier, the concept of utopia could also serve as a guide-line for a different attempt to reconstruct a (non-identical) legacy.\n\nI have added also a discussion of the recent work of Andr\u00e9 Gorz, which draws from Sartre's 'existential phenomenological' orientation political and theoretical implications that the author of the _Critique of Dialectical Reason_ might well have seen as contributing to what would have been the promised second volume of that work. As will be seen, Gorz can also be read as contributing to the third, critical, moment of the legacy in the work that he began to publish in the 1980s, starting with the _Adieux au prol\u00e9tariat_.\n\n25\n\nAmong the earlier rediscovery, the contribution of Paul Breines to _The Young Luk\u00e1cs and the Origins of Western Marxism_ , co-edited by Andrew Arato and Paul Breines (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), should be mentioned. Arato's reconstruction of the crucial dialectic of _History and Class Consciousness_ remains the best presentation of the theoretical contribution.\n\n26\n\nThis legacy would not include Karl Korsch, who independently developed insights in some ways similar to Luk\u00e1cs' in _Marxism and Philosophy_ , also published in 1923. The differences between the two are apparent in Korsch's 1929 essay on 'The Present State of the Problem \"Marxism and Philosophy\"' published in the new edition of his earlier volume. Korsch's further evolution took an original path, intellectually and politically, on which cf. Breines, op. cit., and especially Michael Buckmiller's 'Marxismus als Realit\u00e4t. Zur Rekonstruktion der theoretischen und politischen Entwicklung Karl Korschs', along with a complete bibliography of Korsch's works, in _\u00dcber Karl Korsch, Jahrbuch: Arbeiterbewegung, Theorie und Geschichte_ , Claudio Pozzoli, ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1973). Volume 2 of _Jahrbuch_ contains a selection of nearly 150 pages of Korsch's letters from the 1930s.\n\n27\n\nThe relation of the so-called Budapest School, some of whose members were constrained to exile in the 1970s, and to Luk\u00e1cs' and to Marx's legacy would demand a separate study. In their own ways, Agnes Heller, Ferenc Feher, Gyorgy Markus, and Mihaly Vajda have attempted to go beyond Luk\u00e1cs' classicism in aesthetics, his linear theory of history, and ethics of duty; they have tried to replace the primacy of labor and the paradigm of production with attention to values, symbols, and communication.\n\n28\n\nI have had to exclude Antonio Gramsci from _The Marxian Legacy_ due to my inability to work with the Italian sources. Paul Piccone's reconstruction of his arguments in _Italian Marxism_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983) shows remarkable parallels in the intellectual, and even political, developments of Gramsci and Marx, particularly as concerns their attraction to and rejection of Hegel. Piccone goes on to argue that the attempts to revitalize a Gramscian politics undertaken by diverse Italian leftist groups\u2014not to speak of his canonization by Togliatti's Communist Party\u2014are doomed to failure because of the culturally and socially specific roots of Gramsci's theoretical and practical proposals.\n\nErnesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe reintroduce Gramsci's concept of 'hegemony', in _Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics_ (London: Verso, 1985). They reconstruct the history of Marxist Socialist practice and theory in order to show how that concept avoids the antinomies produced by the attempt to integrate a political theory of class unity and an economic theory of crisis. Gramsci is said to abandon the vision of politics as conjunctural intervention in a field of pre-given, economically defined interests. Class unity is treated on an 'intellectual and moral' plane, seeking to create a 'collective will' which becomes the cement of an 'historical bloc'. This explains Gramsci's insistence on the material nature of this 'historical bloc' which reflects Gramsci's conception of the material foundations of common world-views. These elements acquire their unity only from this new commonality into which their previous identity is dissolved. Hence, for Gramsci, the class does not take state power; it _becomes_ the state. Socialism emerges from the progressive disintegration of one civilization while another is constructed within it around the new class core.\n\nLaclau and Mouffe recognize that Gramsci is still burdened by economic orthodoxy. They develop the implications of his concept of hegemony by applying the methods of French deconstructionism. That is a procedure which falls outside the constraints of the legacy, despite Laclau and Mouffe's obvious debt to Lefort. The deconstructionist premises of their project are illustrated suggestively in their reconstruction of the history of the failures of Marxism as a political movement; but the link between politics and theory is only suggested, not justified. Their proposal of a radical, pluralist democratic politics as the basis for realizing what Marxism could not express is formulated in a conceptual universe that is foreign to the experience that is the Marxian legacy. The place of a democratic politics is better explained in the recent work of Lefort and Castoriadis\u2014and even in a reinterpretation of Habermas. For a critical interpretation of Laclau and Mouffe's work, c.f., 'Another Resurrection of Marxism' reprinted in my _Defining the Political_.\n\n29\n\nThe analogies to the French Revolution are suggestive. Each turning point, and each defeated leader, in the constant process of radicalization that was stopped only by Thermidor's destruction of what Marx called 'the illusion of politics' finds partisans who insist that it represents the 'truth' of the Revolution. Much of Lefort's work during the past few years has turned around questions posed by the French Revolution and the attempts by nineteenth-century politicians and historians (such as Guizot, to whom Marx owed so much, as well as Tocqueville, Michelet, and Quinet, and the Machiavellian 'dandy' Ferrari) to understand its jerky process of radicalization that seemed incapable of finding an institutional stability. Lefort's publications on the period are found in his _Essais sur le politique_ , op. cit., to which I will return.\n\n30\n\nIn Ernst Blochs Wirkung. _Ein Arbeitsbuch zum 90. Geburtstag_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975).\n\n31\n\nThis explains why Burghardt Schmidt, who assisted Bloch in editing the 20-volume edition of his Werke, has been able to write a penetrating account of the post-modernism debates from an unabashedly Blochian perspective. His _Postmoderne-Strategien des Vergessens_ (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1986) applies the logic of non-contemporaneity to the problem of the omnipresence of myth in the imagination of the post-modernists. With Bloch, Schmidt sees positive implications without being forced to accept the entire package, because he recalls that myths can be archaic or revolutionary myths, stabilizing or rebellious in their effects. Concerning the post-modernist critique of the Enlightenment, Schmidt rejects what he calls a 'hypochondriac anxiety of being touched' by the other that he finds in Habermas. The Enlightenment presents a utopia insofar as the presence of 'what has not disappeared because it has never fully become' remains as a subversive element pointing beyond the 'cynical antics' of the post-moderns in the present.\n\n32\n\nIn our correspondence, Andr\u00e9 Gorz asked me several times what I mean by 'a question', especially when I affirm that the political is a question which society poses to itself about itself. Is this not, he asks, to hypostatize society into a kind of meta-subject? He is correct on one level when he insists that only individuals can pose questions. They can question their relation to society, and they can ask what is usually called _the_ political question: what is the Good Society? But how, when, and why do individuals ask such questions? Gorz himself suggests an answer when he points out that a question is solicited by the absence of sense, adding that such an absence is itself a kind of presence: 'it exists but it is elsewhere, we don't know where'. By extension, the existence of society\u2014as opposed to the accidental coagulation of atoms that Sartre conceptualizes as 'seriality'\u2014supposes a kind of implicit sense of the unity and specificity that makes it _this_ society. That sense is never fully formalized in customs, rituals, or laws; and in modern societies, the forces of dispersion tend to become even greater. Because society's sense of itself can never be fully present (even as an absence), the political as a constant questioning by individuals of the sense of _social_ existence that can never be absent. The political question can be submerged as the process of modernization disperses and reifies individual existence to the point that (as Habermas recognizes) the sense of society seems ultimately to disappear. In such conditions, the attention of the critical analyst turns to the processes which are destroying the society's sense of itself; and the action called politics tends to become a defense of society against disintegrating forces (such as the capitalist mode of production, bureaucratic administration, or 'instrumental reason'). As opposed to such a defensive politics, 'the political', in the mode of interrogation, is a positive movement to give to society a new sense of itself. It cannot neglect the disintegrative forces, but its broader questioning casts these in a different light. This is the sense in which the critique of Marxism goes beyond the adaptive use made of Marx within the legacy.\n\n33\n\nHelmut Dubiel's _Wissenschaftsorganisation und politische Erfahrung: Studien zur fr\u00fchen Kritischen Theory_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978) adopts this approach. Each of his three chapters treats first the 'Historical and Political Experience', then the 'Theory of the Theory-Praxis Relation', and finally offers a concluding description of the 'Theoretical Position'. For example, in the first period, the Marxist project of a planned society is seen as a realizable goal; in the second period, historical possibility plays a lesser role in the constitution of the theoretical position; in the third, the concrete social project social philosophy is replaced by a universal philosophy of history.\n\nAn approach closer to my own is found in Andrew Arato's Introductions in _The Essential Frankfurt School Reader_ (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978). He suggests that the School had the chance to make a new contribution to Marx _ism_ because a politics based on the self-organization of the proletariat had, by 1923, entered a 'crisis of revolutionary subjectivity'. The Frankfurt theory of culture could be coupled with a political sociology in order to escape the dilemmas of classical Marxism because the struggle against domination in a reified, commodity-society no longer called for an immanent critique incarnated in the individuality of the proletariat; political mediation was necessary to break the 'technological veil' of 'instrumental reason'. In this context, Arato restores the originality and the rigor of three lesser-known members of the Institute: Otto Kirchheimer, Frederick Pollock, and Franz Neumann. He also explains the context that gave rise to debate about the persistence of 'crisis tendencies' in capitalism, with which Horkheimer's 'Authoritarian State' marked a rupture. This opened the possibility of a _political_ crisis theory, which found its place in the earlier work of Habermas.\n\n34\n\nMarcuse's philosophical background should be mentioned here. Marcuse's first publication, in 1928, 'Contributions to a Phenomenology of Historical Materialism', appeared in an issue of the _Philosophische Hefte_ devoted to Heidegger's _Being and Time_ (English translation in _Telos_ , No. 4, Fall 1969). When Marx's _1844 Manuscripts_ were first published, he laid the groundwork for a sort of 'Heideggerian Marxism' in his review, 'The Foundation of Historical Materialism'. His debt to Luk\u00e1cs was made clear in his essay 'On the Problem of the Dialectic' (English translation in _Telos_ , No. 27, Spring 1976). These developments are brought together in the essay 'On the Philosophical Foundation of the Concept of Labor in Economics' (English translation in _Telos_ , No. 16, Summer 1973). The reworking of these preliminary works in the book as a _Habilitation_ and in the Band in the book Hegel's Ontology and the Foundation of a Theory of Historicity was rejected as a _Habilitationsschrift_ by Heidegger.\n\nHabermas recalls his first meeting with Marcuse, in 1956, as the encounter with 'an embodiment and vivid expression of the political spirit of the old Frankfurt School'. He notes that at the beginning of his association with the Institute, Marcuse was more conservative than the others, but he ended his life an unyielding and even romantic radical. Habermas' essay, 'Psychic Thermidor and the Rebirth of Rebellious Subjectivity', traces the roots of this evolution, stressing that _Eros and Civilization_ is 'among Marcuse's books the most Marcusian one', but admitting the validity of Adorno's criticism of its inability to ground its optimism. Marcuse continued to search for grounds, but continued also his refusal to yield to pessimism, telling Habermas from his hospital bed that 'all basic value judgments are based on compassion, our sense for the suffering of others' (in Bernstein, ed., _Habermas and Modernity_ , citations from pp. 68, 74, 77).\n\n35\n\nWolfgang Bonss edited the materials gathered from Fromm's empirical study of the German working class in 1929; the English translation is available as Erich Fromm, _The Working Class in Weimar Germany: A Psychological and Sociological Study_ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984). In addition to Bonss' introduction, see also his more general study, setting the Frankfurt empirical research in context: _Die Ein\u00fcbung des Tatsachenblicks. Zur Struktur und Ver\u00e4nderung empirischer Sozialforschung_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1982).\n\n36\n\nA critic might say that I underplay the importance of the 'critique of instrumental reason' in the inheritance of the Frankfurt School. I will make clear its importance in a moment when I turn to Habermas' more recent work.\n\n37\n\nThe new theory is intended also to correct errors within his own earlier work, particularly the over-extension of the philosophical distinction between technical and communicative action to the plane of sociology, which he proposed first in 'Science and Technique as \"Ideology\"'. Although Habermas says that he tried to correct this error _Legitimation_ in Legitimation _Crises of Late Capitalism_ by the introduction of systems theory, he does not add that this self-critique puts into question the epistemological sociology developed in _Knowledge and Human Interests_. Cf. Habermas' 'Entgegnung', in Axel Honneth and Hans Joas, eds., _Kommunikatives Handeln. Beitr\u00e4ge zu J\u00fcrgen Habermas' 'Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns'_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986), pp. 379, 383.\n\n38\n\nThe New Left also laid claim to the heritage of the Frankfurt School. This worried the later Horkheimer, who finally consented to the republication of his _Zeitschrift_ articles only after they were already available in pirate editions. He felt obliged to insist in his Prefaces that their social-critical edge not be taken seriously by the younger generation, affirming that 'despite all its failures, the questionable democracy is nonetheless better than the dictatorship which its overthrow would bring about'.\n\nOne of the critical New Leftists, Hans-J\u00fcrgen Krahl, had worked closely with Adorno. After his death in a car accident, a collection of his writings was published under the title _Konstitution und Klassenkampf_ (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Neue Kritik, 1971).\n\n39\n\nOp. cit. p. 121.\n\n40\n\nThis is another reason for not including Adorno within the legacy, despite the attempt by Habermas\u2014who had been Adorno's assistant in Frankfurt student\u2014to show his place in the chapter 'From Luk\u00e1cs to Adorno' in his _Theory of Communicative Action_. Albrecht Wellmer offers the most persuasive arguments for the inclusion of Adorno in this legacy in _Zur Dialektik von Moderne und Postmoderne: Vernunftkritik nach Adorno_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, _1985_ ), especially in the essay 'Wahrheit, Schein, Vers\u00f6hnung. Adornos \u00e4sthetische Rettung der Modernit\u00e4t' first presented at the Adorno-Congress in 1983.\n\n41\n\nNeither the original Frankfurt School nor Habermas attempted seriously to apply the critical theory to 'really existing' socialist societies. Although Frederick Pollock did on occasion address the question, he tended to be concerned with the comparison to Fascism or the emerging Western welfare state. This is a significant omission; the phenomenon of totalitarianism is an important element within the legacy that affects the theoretical form it adopts. The most significant work from the point of view of critical theory has been that of Andrew Arato, which is presented in his contribution to _Habermas-Critical Debates_ , edited by J. B. Thompson and D. Held (London: 1982). Johann Arnason has tried to integrate this question into a general critique of Habermas' theory of communicative action. Habermas' reply showed him even less willing to engage Arnason than he was ready to consider the issues raised by Arato. Arnason's essay and Habermas' evasion are found in Axel Honneth and Hans Joas, eds., _Kommunikatives Handeln. Beitr\u00e4ge zu J\u00fcrgen Habermas' 'Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns'_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, _1986_ ).\n\n42\n\nThe concluding sentence of Marcuse's _One-Dimensional Man_ , which can be read as an application of the 'critique of instrumental reason' to contemporary Western society, cites Benjamin: 'Only to the hopeless is hope given'.\n\n43\n\nThe psychoanalytic variant of such an orientation is developed in Marcuse's _Eros and Civilization_. Joel Whitebook has presented a striking critique of Marcuse, making creative use of recent psychoanalytic work on narcissism to develop a perspective for a socially relevant critical theory. See 'Perversion and Utopia: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Social Theory' (unpublished paper, February, 1986).\n\n44\n\nThe previously mentioned concluding discussion of volume I of the _Theory of Communicative Action_ refers to this problem, under the title 'From Luk\u00e1cs to Adorno: Rationalization as Reification'. That first volume begins with a 200-page demonstration that modern social science cannot avoid posing the fundamental problem of rationality, followed by a 150-page discussion of Weber's theory of rationalization, confirming the importance of the Weberian mediation in order to find a way out of the circle of the _Dialectic of Enlightenment_.\n\n45\n\nInterestingly, Habermas does not propose a reorientation of the basic questions of philosophy, applying his new approach to the inherited tradition.\n\n46\n\nFor example, he asserts that '[h]owever opposed the intentions of their philosophies of history, nonetheless the culmination of Adorno's thinking is similar to that of Heidegger in their attitudes to the theoretical claim of objectifying thought and reflection: Mindfulness of nature (Eingedenken der Natur) in Adorno comes shockingly close to Heidegger's remembrance of Being (Andenken des Seins)'. _Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns_ , I, p. 516. Wellmer's above-mentioned book tries to reintegrate Adorno within the communicative paradigm, suggesting that something like the mimetic moment is necessary if Habermas' theory is to avoid the abstract formality for which it is often criticized. The question of happiness, so important in the earlier critical theory, is largely absent from Habermas' work, as will be seen.\n\n47\n\nAn outline of volume II will have to suffice to give a sense of the path to these conclusions. The construction is nearly parallel to the first volume. Mead and Durkheim are introduced in order to make plausible the transition from a subject-centered, goal-oriented rationality to the primacy of communicative action. The results are thematized through a historical reconstruction of the processes of modernization as they develop from the unity of 'system and life-world' in primitive societies to their double differentiation in modern society. The increasing complexity of the system denotes its distinct form of modernization while the increasing rationality of the life-world corresponds to its modernization. In the process, these two necessary moments of any society are separated one from the other. Talcott Parsons is introduced to suggest the attempt to explain their functional unity, paralleling the treatment of Weber in the first volume. Parsons' description of the means by which the social totality is ordered does not succeed in integrating the 'critique of instrumental reason' that was the center of Weber's analysis of modern societies because his functionalism does not stress the typically modern situation in which sub-systems, such as the economy or the administrative state, function as autonomous systems within the society itself. Habermas returns to Weber's theory of modernization, which he reinterprets by appeal to Marx as an 'inner colonization of the life-world'. In this way, he is able to propose the tasks for a critical theory of contemporary modern society.\n\n48\n\nThe passage continues by noting that 'No path leads from it [i.e. reconstruction] back to a theory of history which does not a fortiori distinguish between problems in the logic of development and those of the dynamics of development' (citations in _Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns_ , II, pp. 561\u201362). I will return to the implications of this problem below.\n\n49\n\nHabermas is not always clear about the relation among the aspects of his own developing theories. For example, Martin Jay's essay in _Habermas and Modernity_ suggests that although the parallel between the emancipatory interest and the criterion of 'subjective truthfulness' might be the back-door through which the philosophy of consciousness could reappear; another possibility would be that the 'subjective truthfulness' of the actor introduces that material content, or happiness, that Adorno sought to preserve for critical theory. Habermas' reply admits laconically that this could be a serious problem but offers no correction.\n\n50\n\n _Der Philosophische Diskurs der Moderne. Zw\u00f6lf Vorlesungen_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985), to which I will refer as PDM. Future references to the _Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns_ will be indicated in the text by TdkH.\n\n51\n\nThe historical character of this process of modernization should be stressed at the outset to avoid a misunderstanding of the political implications of Habermas' theoretical argument. The life-world is not a domain of primal innocence into which the imperatives of the 'system' intrude; and the political goal is not to restore its lost purity. Habermas insists that his model is analogous to Marx's reconstruction of the transition from concrete to abstract labor as the foundation of capitalist social reproduction. He adds that his systems theoretical approach can take into account, for example, the phenomena of 'micro-power' analyzed by Foucault. In the same essay in which he defends himself against the interpretation that portrays a benign, conflict-free life-world, he adds that '[o]ne can thus define the life-world negatively as the totality of the domains of action that do not fit into a description of them as subsystems steered by media' (in 'Entgegnung', op. cit. p. 387. The first two points are made at pages 395 and 375ff ).\n\nJean Cohen has developed the implications of this historically situated analysis with reference to the phenomenon of 'new social movements'. She insists on the fact the rationalization of the life-world in the 'autonomous cultural spheres of science, art, morality and law organized around their own internal values' contains 'the potential for increased reflexivity regarding all dimensions of action and world relations'. This makes possible a 'further modernization of the life-world... involving the replacement of gemeinschaftliche coordination of social life by potentially self-reflexive forms'. Capitalist class society can block this further development; but the new social movements can be seen as carriers of its positive potential. See 'Strategy or Identity: New Theoretical Paradigms and Contemporary Social Movements', in _Social Research_ , Vol. 52, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), esp. pp. 708\u2013716.\n\n52\n\nJohann Arnason develops a critical counterproposal to Habermas' _Theory of Communicative Action_. Habermas clearly has in mind the conditions within Western welfare state societies. Although Habermas' self-limitation is in itself legitimate, a theory which sweeps as widely as his should not avoid critical debate. Habermas replies to Arnason 'That [i.e., what Arnason has proposed] is an alternative starting point for explanation which sets other phenomena in the center... That discussion would go beyond the bounds of an already long reply. Let us wait for the book which will certainly soon ripen from Arnason's fruitful thoughts' (in ibid., p. 395). This is not the only example of Habermas' tendency to insist that he define the terms of debate. I had the same experience years later when I presented a long, critical comment on his legal theory, _Faktizit\u00e4t und Geltung_ in a special issue of the _Cordozo Law Review_ (Volume 17, Numbers 4\u20135, March 1996).\n\n53\n\nAnother motif from the communicative theory of action enters at this point: the criterion of universalizability, which Habermas had begun to elaborate at the end of the 1970s. The relation among the concepts of universalizability, autonomy, and democracy is not always clear. The autonomous sub-systems of law, science, and art seem to obey different logics of universalizability; and it is not clear that the concept of democracy applies in the same manner to each. Jean Cohen's interpretation of the new social movements, in _op. cit_., suggests that there is a confusion in Habermas between the functional rationality of the media-steered sub-systems and the discussion of society as a 'system'. She sees the media-steered sub-systems as operating in terms of system-rationality, while the sub-systems anchored in the life-world operate in terms of communicative rationality. This argument is made plausible by a comparison with Habermas' earlier attempts to understand social movements as simply ferments for a democratic learning process\u2014a position whose 'institutional deficit' Cohen criticizes well in 'Why More Political Theory', _Telos_ , No. 40, Summer, 1979.\n\n54\n\nThis neglect is perhaps due to its similarity to that neo-conservative argument against which Habermas continually polemicizes. The argument recalls Paul Piccone's theory of 'artificial negativity' that was developed over the years in the journal _Telos_ by Piccone and his pseudonymous double Moshe Gonzales, who polemicized frequently against Habermas.\n\n55\n\nHabermas makes explicit use of the Marxist notion of a 'real abstraction' when discussing his political theory as such (e.g., in a crucial passage (TdkH, II, p. 593) that I will cite in a moment). In reply to his critics, he writes that although 'Nothing was further from my mind than Marx-exegesis, I was only interested in comparing the transition from concrete to abstract labor with the transition from communicative action to media-directed interaction in such a way that my analysis of social pathologies would become understandable as an investigation of \"real abstractions\"' ('Entgegnung', op. cit., p. 395; cf. also p. 389).\n\n56\n\nCohen makes a similar point in op. cit., p. 710. She attributes this to Habermas' 'revival of the classical breakdown thesis'. Her own positive interpretation of Habermas depends on the assumption that this Marxist element can be separated from Habermas' argument. His use of the 'real abstraction' and his constant references to the Marxist model make me less confident.\n\n57\n\nHabermas' description can lead to confusions because he talks sometimes about an opposition of system and life-world in general, while stressing at other times the role of the functional media through which the system reproduces itself. In the latter case, for which Cohen and Arato's _Civil Society and Political Theory_ (1992) argues, colonization of the life-world means the spread of monetized and bureaucratic (or power) relations throughout the life-world, destroying the autonomy of communicative rationality that permits its reproduction without pathological distortions. This is the 'empirical question' that Habermas posed a moment ago. The difficulty is that, even if the empirical research does detect pathologies, this framework says nothing about how to confront them. Since the distinction and opposition of system and life-world is constitutive of modernity, whose project of Enlightenment Habermas wants to complete, it must be assumed that his theory would seek to propose other media that are characterized by something like what Ivan Illich called 'conviviality'. The difficulty, however, remains: How does the threat posed by the old media become the basis for conscious 'reflexive' action? What is the political means for the invention of the new media? What is the theoretical status of a politics which does not limit itself to reconstruction? The theories of Andr\u00e9 Gorz will be seen in a moment to deal more adequately with this problem.\n\n58\n\n _Die neue Un\u00fcbersichtlichkeit_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985), pp. 161, 162, 145. Other examples might be cited. The article 'Does Philosophy Still Have a Purpose?' had insisted that 'great philosophy' has come to an end; philosophy is 'merely a branch of research among others' (NLR, p. 85). Or, again, 'The thinker as a form of life, as vision, as expressive self-presentation is no longer possible. I am no producer of Weltanschauungen; I would in fact like to produce a few small truths, not the one great truth' (Aesthetik und Kommunikation, in NU, p. 207). Or, finally, in the NLR cited earlier, he explains his 'somewhat restricted understanding of the task of philosophical ethics' by asserting that 'the philosopher ought to explain the moral point of view, and\u2014as far as possible\u2014justify the claim to universality of this explanation, showing why it does not merely reflect the moral intuitions of the average, male, middle-class member of a modern Western society. Anything further than that is a matter for moral discourse between participants' (p. 84).\n\n59\n\nIn Bernstein, _Habermas and Modernity_ , op. cit. Habermas does not really treat adequately some interesting questions posed by Jay concerning the theory of art and by Whitebook concerning psychoanalysis; he limits himself once again to explaining his own position.\n\n60\n\nThis is, of course, my reading of Habermas, from within the legacy. His own interpretation of the 'challenge' remains within the frame of his communication theory. 'Now the change from one form of argument to another is often motivated internally, through bottlenecks in the course of the argument; but often such a transition needs external motivations ( _Anst\u00f6sse_ )\u2014namely, through problems that confront us (auf uns zukommen). How a transition takes place in each case is governed by the logic of argument; whether and when we must make a transition depends on that faculty of judgment that is embedded in communicative action. For this there is no meta-discourse' ('Entgegnung', op. cit., p. 343).\n\nWhen Habermas repeats this argument two pages later, the necessity for a theory of the political becomes clearer. 'The pragmatic doubt concerning the Cartesian doubt is based on the experience that real problems emerge\u2014and are not created by mere will. But we must pose such problems, which confront us (auf uns zukommen)\u2014that is not a problem for the faculty of judgment. It is certainly true that often the transition to arguments is not the 'most rational' answer to a problematic situation. But that can be known only historically\u2014and it is again not an affair for personal judgment. For example, it is only in the hypothetical look backwards that we are driven to the assumption that, after the defeat of the Nazis, a spontaneous reckoning that comes with a purifying revolt would not have been the better alternative to a decades long smoldering examination of conscience' (ibid., p. 345). Habermas may have had in mind the experience of the 1918 Revolution in Germany that cast a shadow over the Weimar Republic. It seems less plausible for the period 1945\u20131949, when there were oppositional and trade union alternatives that were undermined by the policies of the occupying powers, as illustrated, for example, in Eberhard Schmidt's _Die verhinderte Neuordnung, 1945\u20131952_ (Frankfurt: Europ\u00e4ische Verlagsanstalt, 1970).\n\n61\n\n'Entgegnung', op. cit. p. 393. Cf. the more detailed arguments in the title essay of Die neue Un\u00fcbersichbarkeit, op. cit. Habermas does stress, as will Gorz, who studied carefully his work, that 'In all events, for empirical reasons, I do not any longer believe that there is much hope for the democratic transformation from within of a differentiated economic system according to the simple recipes of workers self-management-that is, to want to transform entirely its steering from money and organizational power to participation' (ibid., p. 392). This would imply that the Marxist notion of revolution, and a utopian _Arbeitsgesellschaft_ , has to be replaced by a different set of political goals. This makes the restriction of democracy to a defensive reaction all the more disturbing.\n\n62\n\nAs will be seen, Lefort shows that the inability of Marxism to understand the political implications of human rights is due to Marx's schematic view of history which portrays the replacement of the feudal 'democracy of unfreedom' by the economic structures of capitalist exploitation. Marx neglects the crucial fact that between feudalism and capitalism there existed the Absolute State, one of whose legitimizing claims was its nature as a _Rechtsstaat_ .\n\n63\n\n'Entgegnung', op. cit. p. 391.\n\n64\n\nSartre made the point explicitly in an interview with Michel Contat, 'Autoportrait \u00e0 70 ans', in _Le Nouvel Observateur_ , juillet, 1975.\n\n65\n\nThe incomplete manuscript of the _Critique de la Raison dialectique, tome II_ , subtitled 'l'intelligibilit\u00e9 de l'Histoire', has been published by Arlette Elkaim-Sartre (Paris: Gallimard, 1985) along with a revised version of the first volume, subtitled 'Theorie des ensembles pratiques'. The revisions in the first volume mostly concern style, printer's errors, as well as the insertion of subtitles to clarify the development of the argument. Elkaim-Sartre notes that during the 1958\u20131960 period when he wrote the  _Critique_ , Sartre was also working on his Flaubert, writing his autobiographical _Les Mots_ , and developing a movie scenario for the life of Freud while finishing the play _The Condemned of Altona_. Because of this hectic schedule he paid little attention to such editorial details in the  _Critique_ , explains Elkaim-Sartre.\n\n66\n\nOn that evolution, see the essay by the pseudonymous Antoine Liniers, in _Terrorisme et d\u00e9mocratie_ (Paris: Fayard, 1985), and the study of the quite different evolutions of the Italian and German ultra-lefts by Philippe Reynaud in the same volume.\n\n67\n\nI did not treat Gorz in the first edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ , in part because this filiation was not apparent to me in his work at the time but also because his major philosophical work _Les fondements pour une morale_ had not been published. For an evaluation of his early development prior to the _Adieux_ , see my essay 'New Situation, New Strategy: Serge Mallet and Andr\u00e9 Gorz', in _The Unknown Dimension: Post-Leninist Marxism_ , edited by myself and Karl E. Klare (New York: Basic Books, 1972). The reason for my re-evaluation of his place is explained by Gorz himself in an interview titled 'Der Mensch ist ein Wesen, das sich zu dem zu machen hat, was es ist!' in _Soziale Bewegungen, Jahrhuch 2_ (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1985). Gorz stresses there his philosophical ambition to elaborate an existential ontology, of which one volume that was completed between 1946 and 1955 was published two decades later as _Fondements pour une morale_ (Paris: Galil\u00e9e, 1977). In 1958 and 1959, he published two more accessible, but still theoretical, essays, _Le tra\u00eetre_ and _La morale de l'histoire_ (both Paris: Editions du Seuil), to the first of which Sartre wrote a long Preface. When Sartre modified his philo-communist politics, moving toward the belief that anti-colonial rebellions, and especially the Algerian struggle for independence that culminated in 1962, now replaced the proletariat as the subject of world revolution, Gorz\u2014who was a journalist for the weekly _Le Nouvel Observateur_ , as well as an editor of _Les Temps Modernes_ \u2014went his own way. His _Strategy for Labor and Neo-Capitalism_ (1964) was his first answer to Sartre's political inconsistencies. The answer must have been convincing, because by the time he published _Le socialisme difficile_ (1967), the orientation of _Les Temps modernes_ (of which Sartre remained the chief editor) had clearly followed his proposals. This was the political theory that had I treated in _The Unknown Dimension_. Gorz sees a theoretical continuity between his earlier essays from the 1950s, this second period in the 1970s, and the arguments proposed in his recent works, _Adieux au prol\u00e9tariat_ and _Les chemins du Paradis_ (both Paris: Galil\u00e9e, 1980,1983). Common to them all is the concern which animated Sartre: morality, its philosophical foundation, _and_ its political translation. Discussion of the relation between the two periods, and his later work, is found in the more than 35 years' correspondance between the two of us, now in the DH archives at Stony Brook University.\n\n68\n\n _Adieux au prol\u00e9tariat_ (Paris: Galil\u00e9e, 1980), pp. 13 and 91. Future references to this book will be indicated simply by the page number.\n\n69\n\n _Les chemins du Paradis_ (Paris: Galil\u00e9e, 1983), p. 15. The Marxist intent of the book is apparent in its subtitle, 'L'agonie du Capital', which recalls the theoretical presuppositions of Marx's own intended contribution to revolution. This is the reason that I will not deal with this book directly in the text and why I call it 'more sociological'. As indicated below, Gorz insists that the difference of the two does not concern their theoretical foundations but the public to whom they are addressed. The 'left' public, he thought, could not 'hear' the arguments of the _Adieux_ because it did not understand its language.\n\n70\n\nThis is a familiar difficulty for any moral philosophy. Gorz describes well the many reasons that explain why the leap is not taken in contemporary society. The most important are anchored in the developmental logic of the capitalist economy in its post-industrial phase which produces a dispersion and fragmentation that presents the illusion of individualization in consumer society that is conducive to 'bad faith'. Because Gorz insists that capitalism no longer contains within itself any liberating potential, his positive politics has to explain how authentic 'good faith' can find a social anchor. His diagnosis of the end of capitalism's liberating potential leaves only existential ontological freedom as the foundation of a future politics.\n\n71\n\nIn each illustration of the spheres of increased freedom, Gorz insists not only on the place but also on the limits of systemic necessity. The 'tools of conviviality' may be better, and socially less costly, if they are industrially produced. Insofar as Marx recognized that freedom exists only outside the workplace, Gorz criticizes the Marxist-feminist idea that housework should be treated as wage-labor. He considers this to be a form of alienation insofar as it treats individual freedom as if it were itself a commodity, placing it _voluntarily_ within the sphere of necessity. Gorz insists on the implications of what he calls a 'totalitarian pan-economism' that considers society as a macro-subject while atomizing individual relations by treating them only from the utilitarian and functionalist point of view imposed by the necessities of capitalist reproduction. He uses the concept of 'totalitarian' to criticize the idea that the integration of the individual into the social community implies that personal and private-domestic life are _nolens volens_ contributing to the reproduction of society and therefore should be remunerated by that community (e.g., with a guaranteed annual income). This political demand treats the personal and private-domestic spheres as commodities, accepting in this way the logic of capital. Similarly, the Marxist-feminist criticism of the way capitalism treats women, children, and the family tacitly accepts the logic of capitalism while restricting the domain of freedom. Against such politics, Gorz cites Marcuse's essay on 'Socialism and Feminism' to argue that 'post-industrial socialism will be f\u00e9minine, or it will not exist at all' (p. 120).\n\n72\n\nSuch a separation and autonomization of moments within the totality of a dialectical theory had already been criticized by Luxemburg; the (Hegelian) grounds for the interrelatedness of the whole were worked out by Luk\u00e1cs' _History and Class Consciousness_. A similar point has been made vividly by Castoriadis. Separating Marx's arguments from their revolutionary claim in order to 'apply' them to a different and new reality denies the originality of Marx's theoretical and political claims. I will return to Castoriadis' arguments in a moment.\n\n73\n\nThese assertions come in the answer to a question in the above-cited interview in _Soziale Bewegung_ , pp. 121\u2013122.\n\n74\n\nInterview, Ibid., p. 146.\n\n75\n\nAlthough Gorz rejected the Hegelian-Marxist theory of the proletariat as the agent and subject of history, his 'non-class' as a 'non-proletariat' is nonetheless its functional replacement. This is why he still has recourse to History, despite his rejection of the Marxist variants of its theory.\n\nI should underline here that Gorz disagrees with this interpretation. He suggests that what I call 'practice' is 'in fact a visible technical-economic change whose disintegrating effects on society we are witnessing or suffering'. Its most general characterization is the serial-individualization which destroys all sources of social cohesion; the imperatives of capitalism and the technological mutations that go with it guarantee that this process will continue. The result is that 'the development of capitalism no longer holds any emancipatory potential. The question is how to bring this development under control, how to get a movement under way that will channel it towards human goals and put its own rationality in the place of a blind process'. Gorz therefore insists that it is neither modesty nor trust in the 'movement of history' that prevents him from proposing solutions, but rather 'the fact that, at the present time, no such proposition could be credible and avoid being wishful thinking'.\n\nThe practical political conclusions that Gorz has been advocating on the basis of this analysis get their positive thrust not from a logic of history but from his ontological premises. His insistence on the primacy of individual freedom as self-determined action taking place within a sphere of necessity whose limits can be rolled back implies the need to give priority to a cultural politics. Gorz explains this orientation in an interview with Peter Glotz, 'Kapitalistisches Konsummodell und Emanzipation', in _Die neue Gesellschaft_ , the semi-official monthly of the German Social Democratic Party (No. 5, May, 1986). The left, including the trade unions, must fight on the cultural plane for worker control over flexible time; it must replace the old struggle for equality with the goal of increasing the space of individual freedom. It must, in Glotz's paraphrase, create a 'left individualism'. Given the tendencies of contemporary capitalism, this is a feasible short-term goal; it is built on the '(re)creation of micro-social bonds, of a network of societal relations that cannot as yet be knitted into a societal totality and (as far as I am concerned) never should be... The most urgent task of unions and parties is to help micro-societies to emerge, to help the aggregation and solidarity and mutual aid of the individuals emerging from social disintegration'. (Non-attributed citations here are from a personal letter that is part of a 35-year correspondence with Gorz, much of which is found with his papers at the archives of the IMEC in France and now also in the DH archives at Stony Brook University.)\n\nWithin the context of the Marxian legacy, these at first plausible arguments still seem to me still to fall short. The theorist continues to be absent; ontology replaces History; and the question of the political that briefly emerged is submerged. Gorz objects to my tendency to underemphasize the economic. But the meaning of the economic, and the kind of necessity it imposes, depends on the political question that gives it meaning. The contemporary economic developments that Gorz describes could, as he admits, give rise to a one-dimensional society dominated by its culture industry. The liberation of the economic, and hence the ability to understand its function in a given society, depends on the question of its political place, as Gorz himself suggested in the _Adieux_. The movement that I say Gorz assumes as existing 'out there' is produced by the economic mutations that he describes; we both agree that if it does not learn to identify itself and find plausible goals, it will never realize human goals and a humane society. The existence of that 'absent presence' identified by Habermas, which Gorz calls the political, keeps open the room for that development, which of course depends finally on individual (and collective) action for its realization.\n\n76\n\nAlthough he would vehemently deny it, what I called Habermas' reactive theory of democracy reflects also involuntarily such 'existentialist' traits.\n\n77\n\nI will not attempt to compare the contributions of Lefort and Castoriadis, as if the 'correctness' of one analysis meant automatically the 'error' of the other. There are of course differences between them, as concerns the analysis of totalitarianism and with regard to the politics of democracy, as will be apparent. What is important in the present context is the way that Lefort and Castoriadis demonstrate why and how the legacy must become self-critical without losing its thrust as radical interrogation. Also worth mentioning again here is the fact (discussed in the new introduction to this third edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ ) that insofar as the New Left identified itself as 'leftist' because of its anti-capitalism, it had difficulty accepting the critique of totalitarianism, pointing out that during the Cold War the supporters of that critique were defenders of capitalism; and for the same ideological reasons the New Left tended to ignore the relation of that critique of totalitarianism to the politics of democracy.\n\n78\n\nLefort also published two collections of his earlier writings, to which I referred frequently in _The Marxian Legacy_ on the basis of offprints or manuscripts that he had given me. The earlier volumes are _Les formes de l'histoire. Essais d'anthroplogie politique_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1978) and _Sur une colonne absente. Ecrits autour de Merleau-Ponty_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1978).\n\nThe three new volumes are _Un homme en trop. R\u00e9flexions sur L'Archipel du Goulag_ (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1976, second edition 1986), _L'invention d\u00e9mocratique. Les limites de la domination totalitaire_ (Paris: Fayard, 1981), and _Essais sur le politique. XIXe-XXe si\u00e8cles_ (Paris: \u00c9ditions du Seuil, 1986). I will refer to these works in the text as UH, ID, and EP, following citations with a page number.\n\nAfter the demise of the journal _Libre_ , of which Lefort and Castoriadis were among the editors, Lefort founded a new journal, _Pass\u00e9-Pr\u00e9sent_ , of which four volumes appeared before its demise.\n\n79\n\nLefort draws some of the implications of this position in his essay commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution. Despite the massive departures from the Communist Party after the Soviet repression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, French intellectuals did not really understand the meaning of that revolution. Their critique of totalitarianism found a more accommodating platform in the Prague Spring of 1968 because\u2014adopting the position Lefort described as \"progressive intellectuals\", they continued to think about politics from the point of view of political power, as if that were the place where the fate of socialism is decided. Reform, their politics implies, is what the East needs; real revolution can take place only in conditions of capitalism.\n\nThe originality of the Hungarian Revolution as Lefort portrays it 20 years later is not limited to the formation of the workers' councils, their mode of election of delegates, and use of the imperative mandate. Lefort considers the debate of the Budapest council whether to decree itself a national council, to which the provincial delegates could adhere later if they so decided it was more significant. The option for efficiency in the face of danger was rejected in favor of the democratic movement from below because the workers knew from experience the limits of a top-down governmental structure (even if it were in the 'good' hands of Nagy and his ministers). They knew too the difference of economic and political power, which is why they insisted that even in a democratic government, unions must have the right to strike, and that the factory councils retained the right to propose changes. In a word, they rejected the idea of a wholly unified society because they had experienced the totalitarian relations that accompany it. Their goal was to prevent power from solidifying, to separate law from interest, and knowledge from ideology. This option for democracy rather than efficiency was not the 'finally discovered solution' that Marx thought he had seen in the Paris Commune. It was the way to pose the question of democracy, of power and the limits of even their own power. (See 'Une autre r\u00e9volution', as well as Lefort's essay on the Polish Solidarnos\u02b9c\u02b9, 'Reculer les fronti\u00e8res du possible', in ID.)\n\n80\n\nOf course the Egocrat may die, and he need not be replaced by another Egocrat; Stalin's successors enjoyed a different status than their singular master. Lefort's point is that the advent of totalitarianism\u2014not only in Russia, but elsewhere: in China, Cuba, or Ethiopia, among others\u2014demands his existence in order to constitute the logic of unification of state and society in the form of the united people which preserves the image of its unity in the act of eliminating particularity. This point is stressed in 'Staline et le stalinisme', in ID, where Lefort recalls the difficulties of Trotsky in the face of Stalinism. Trotsky could explain Stalin by historical events (such as the decimation of the politicized working class in the struggles following 1917); or he could explain Stalinism as the result of bureaucratic distortions (due to the entry of opportunistic and mediocre cadres into the Party once Stalin was in power). He could not explain the new political logic of totalitarianism. The attempt to say that Stalin's excesses were necessary in order to justify the sacrifices necessary to create the material infrastructure of socialism supposes that socialism is simply the end of social relations based on private property; and it implies that such excesses are merely the political form necessary to accomplish this transformation. That makes Stalinism a political necessity, at least in the short-run. Trotsky did come to see, toward the end of his life, one fundamental characteristic of Stalinism. Where the absolute monarch might say, 'L'\u00e9tat, c'est moi', Stalin could affirm, 'La soci\u00e9t\u00e9, c'est moi'. This insight is, for Lefort, crucial.\n\n81\n\nLefort points out that these rationalizations parallel those that serve Western intellectuals who still defend the truth of Marxism. Typical rationalizations include the following: Marx didn't say that; your source or informant is a false one; the texts cited show the remnants of bourgeois tradition; they are the texts of youth, circumstantial or accidental; only the logic of the system as a whole counts; this is simply another reason to separate true Marxism from its empirical deformations; and so on.\n\n82\n\nThis is the reason that Lefort's concept of totalitarianism cannot be equated with the empirical social-science formulations of that concept used especially in the context of Cold War ideology since it was first formulated by Brzezinski and Friedrich. When Lefort\u2014or Castoriadis\u2014insists on the radical difference between totalitarianism and classical forms of despotism or authoritarianism, the claim should not be confused with the distinction by Jean Kirkpatrick that was adopted by the Reagan administration. Lefort and Castoriadis are not claiming that the Soviet Union is totalitarian and therefore unchangeable for all eternity. The critique of totalitarianism exists also within totalitarianism itself, as Volume III of the _Gulag Archipelago_ shows.\n\n83\n\nThe term is in fact misleading here if it is identified with Sartre's philosophy or his politics. Lefort's interweaving of the 'existential' into the political is most clearly presented in his essay on La Bo\u00e9tie, 'Le nom d'Un', published as a Postface to the re-edition of _Le Discours de la servitude volontaire_ (Paris: Payot, 1976). La Bo\u00e9tie's interrogation of the 'voluntary' nature of political submission is not concerned simply to explain the 'desire' of the empirical individuals; he shows 'the plurality covered over by the fiction of the singular, a fiction whose irresistible effect is to lead us to conceptualize the people as we do Man in general and to erase the social relations under the supposition of a human nature' (p. 267). In a movement partially analogous to the symbolic logic that presides over the birth of the Egocrat, Lefort asserts that 'attached to the visible body of the tyrant, who is only one among others, is the image of a body without equivalent or model, at once entirely separated from those who see it (and, in this separation, entirely self-related) and which, entirely visible and entirely active, leaves nothing existing outside itself. It is the image of a separated power above the mass of the powerless, the master of the existence of each and of all; but also the image of the society as wholly self-related and having a single and unique organic identity. Or, to put it more strongly, the same image condenses division [of the monarch from society] and the absence of division [in society itself]' (ibid.). From the side of the subject, Lefort describes a 'self-love' and 'social narcissism' whose effect is a willed submission that is similar to the self-conception of the _Bien-pensant_ in the Gulag. 'With submission, the charm of the name of One destroyed the articulation of political language. The people wants to be named; but the name in which the difference between individuals is abolished along with the enigma of social division, and the test of unending social recognition is the name of the tyrant' (p. 274). The difference of La Bo\u00e9tie's tyrant from the Egocrat is that the monarch remains separate from the society he unifies. This monarchical tyrant cannot say, with Stalin, 'La soci\u00e9t\u00e9, c'est moi'.\n\nTurning to the practical implications of the argument, Lefort notes that La Bo\u00e9tie stresses 'the desire of the dominated; the strength of the tyrant, the efficacity of his lies, are shown to depend on their demand to be deceived. This leads us to think that reflection on the political is bound up with a political project [to free us from illusion]' (p. 296). Lefort then goes on to show that the political critique entails a social analysis that is based on the distinction between the dominated and the dominators that is itself instituted by the institution of political forms. He asserts that 'the secret and wellspring of domination depends on the desire in each, at whatever level of the hierarchy, to identify with the tyrant by making himself the master of another. The chain of identification is such that the lowest of the slaves wants [nonetheless] to think he is a god ... the enslavement of all is bound up with the desire of each to be carriers of the name of One in the face of the others. The phantasm of the One is not only that of a people united and named; it is simultaneously that of each man as a little tyrant within society' (p. 301). This is the political situation that _also_ makes possible the constitution of bourgeois society under the domination of the institution of absolute monarchy, within whose political forms both the bourgeoisie and the democratic project are born. As will be seen in a moment, Lefort's insistence on the political role played by the absolute monarchy adds a space left out of the Marxist theory of History.\n\n84\n\nLefort's essay on the 'Permanence du th\u00e9ologico-politique?', in EP, presents a sustained critique of the positivism of political science and shows the relation of its implicit theoretical presuppositions to the logic of totalitarianism. By showing that the theological has a justifiable claim to found symbolically the political institutions of pre-democratic societies, Lefort refutes the vision of history as a series of events taking place in a social space. As elsewhere, Lefort scorns the 'little professors of atheism' whose unthinking positivism denies the religious along with the question to which it tries to present an answer.\n\n85\n\nThis argument was important in France, where the belated discovery of Soviet totalitarianism by the left, along with the failures of the Socialist government elected in 1981, turned many 'progressive intellectuals' toward the supposed virtues of economic liberalism. The validity of the critique of liberal-capitalist society , and of its specific bureaucratic forms of domination, is not lessened by the critique of totalitarianism. See, for example, 'L'impens\u00e9e de l'Union de la gauche' in ID, as well as 'La question de la d\u00e9mocratie' and 'Les droits de l'homme et l'Etat-providence', in EP.\n\n86\n\nIn this context, Lefort criticizes Furet's innovative interpretation of the French Revolution (in _Penser la R\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise_ ) as founded on the 'illusion of the political'. Lefort titles his appreciatively critical essay, 'Penser la r\u00e9volution dans la R\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise' (in EP; cf. also, the study 'Edgar Quinet: La R\u00e9volution manqu\u00e9e'). Furet tends to restrict the political to what is done in and by actors involved in empirical politics. He sees that the French Revolution brought democracy to France; but he treats its dynamic at the level of ideology, which is only a partial description of the effects of the destruction of the visible element of power of the _Ancien R\u00e9gime_. The excess of the Revolution beyond its ideological form points to the fact that the emergence of democracy is based on a gap between the symbolic and the real, which in turn expresses a division within the being of the social. The failure of the Revolution to culminate in a representative democracy was not due to its ideology, as Furet's account suggests. As Edgar Quinet saw, the Revolution's ideology was unable to recognize its own political radicality; heir to the monarchy, it attempted to replace that incarnation of society by that of _le peuple_ rather than admit that the impossibility of bringing such an unified political figure into reality meant the opening of that infinite debate on the foundations of legitimacy, which is another way of defining democracy.\n\n87\n\nLefort developed the notion of incorporation, with its reference to the need to fix representation in a body ( _le corps_ ), in a lecture presented to a group of psychoanalysts, 'L'image du corps et le totalitarisme', in ID, pp. 159ff. The influence of psychoanalysis on Lefort's thought, mentioned in Chap. , cannot be explored further here. The liberals' notion of incorporation represents the positivist alternative to a theory of history as 'flesh'. Solzhenitsyn's depiction of totalitarianism made frequent use of images of incorporation, speaking of the bureaucracy, for example, as the 'organs' which have 'tentacles', develop 'muscles', and attempt to make society into one great 'Organ' (UH, pp. 29, 119).\n\n88\n\nThis essay was discussed earlier, in Chap. .\n\n89\n\nLefort's fundamental reference here is Kantorowicz's monumental study of _The King's Two Bodies_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). His most detailed discussion of these arguments is found in 'Permanence du th\u00e9ologico-politique?' in EP. Kantorowicz distinguishes four formations through which the transition from monarchy to the modern state passes: a Christo-centric power is replaced by a juridico-centric, then a politico-centric, and finally a humano-centric formation. In each case, the monarch makes visible in his person the union and the division of the natural and the supernatural, the finite and the infinite. The power of this symbolic representation of the political carries over into the secular state; Bracton, for example, speaks of the king as the vicar of the treasury; as such, the monarch is the public body of the state. At this point, the relation of the invisible and the invisible is transformed; monarchical power in the state claims universality, yet the territorial body of the kingdom, nation, or people is a particular reality that by nature is limited. Universal authority without limits is joined to limited authority; universal values are claimed to be present in a specific territory. The democratic revolution will consummate a rupture with this instable 'theologico-political formation'.\n\n90\n\nLefort illustrates the role of the symbolic in the electoral process of contemporary politics. The idea of elections appeared scandalous to nineteenth-century liberals and conservatives (as well as to Marxists). It is a neutral procedure by which the plurality of constituents in a divided and conflicting empirical society are represented by a simple addition of votes by citizens each of whom is considered as abstractly equal. This procedure not only legitimates the divisions in the empirical society; it also symbolizes the dissolution of the pre-modern corporate body of society while affirming the legitimacy of the popular sovereignty that is expressed in the form of an interrogation. The symbolic dissolution of pre-existing social interests, influences, and personalities reaffirms that the place of power is in principle empty; those who claim the right to occupy it can always be challenged and their legitimacy questioned. This procedure confirms a new relation between society and the political form that makes its identity visible in the form of a question (ID, p. 148f; cf. ID, p. 176, and EP, p. 28f ).\n\n91\n\nCastoriadis will insist on the real threat of Soviet expansion on the basis of a different analysis of the Soviet Union. Both agree that the inability of democracy to realize its own specificity constitutes a major weapon in the Soviet arsenal. They disagree on the reasons that could lead the Russians to use it, and the manner of its potential use.\n\n92\n\nC.f., the two essays, 'Droits de l'homme et politique', in ID, and 'Les droits de l'homme et l'Etat-providence', in EP. I will concentrate on the first, to which the second adds a discussion of the 'neo-liberal' (and conservative) criticism of his position by Pierre Manent. That criticism suggests that the increase in rights produces necessarily an increased role for the state. Lefort admits this as an empirical possibility, but points out that it does not affect the symbolic articulation of political relations by a politics of the rights of man. Manent's position tends to conflate too easily the welfare-state with the totalitarian state. For his part, Lefort insists on the way that the recognition of the rights of man is based on 'the right to have a right' as a symbolic mutation of what he earlier called the 'mise en sens' of the political, which opens the endless democratic adventure. Rights are declared by men; their only guarantee is the public action by other men who recognize the legitimacy of the idea of rights. Included in this guarantee is the right to question those specific rights proclaimed by the state on the basis of 'the legitimacy of a debate on the legitimate and the illegitimate' (EP, p. 53). Lefort argues strongly against those for whom the rights of man are a 'luxury' that poorer nations cannot afford, condemning the 'disdain' involved in refusing to others the right to have a right without which they are reduced symbolically to the status of animals (EP, p. 54).\n\n93\n\nLefort points out that Marx's critique of 'abstract man' is shared by conservatives like Burke and de Maistre and by bourgeois liberals like Guizot. The foundation of the rights of this 'man' is not found in nature or in reason; their foundation expresses the new structure of the political brought by the logic of democracy (EP, p. 51). Lefort's critique of Marx's materialist interpretation of ideology shows that he neglects to look at the real possibilities opened up by the symbolic mutation of the political.\n\n94\n\nThis misunderstanding results from the fact that rights are declared by men, who in that action declare their humanity and their co-existence as equal individuals, at the same time that these rights claim to be more than simply a human artifice. The crucial element defining the universality of rights is their presence in a public space. Lefort insists (in EP, p. 53ff ) that although the majority may support rights with which others disagree, the degradation of human rights does not result from errors by the majority but from the deformation or elimination of that public space. He admits that the increased function of the state can be interpreted as shrinking this public space; but he criticizes the neo-liberals for not seeing that increased mass participation in that space has also arisen as new rights are demanded and injustices denounced. 'There is no institution that, by its very nature, can guarantee the existence of a public space in which the questioning of right is propagated. But, reciprocally, that space supposes that distinct institutions articulate the image of their own legitimacy, and that the actors within those institutions exercise their political responsibility' (EP, p. 57). Lefort employs the classical political term 'corruption' to denounce the parties, press, and legal institutions that deny their public responsibility by virtue of their self-interested behavior. His argument concludes with a triumphant comparison of the claim by the conservative Gaullist French Justice Minister, Alain Peyrefitte, that 'public opinion' was not ready to accept the abolition of the death penalty with his Socialist successor (after 1981), Badinter, who spoke the language of justice, succeeded in prohibiting the death penalty because he understood that 'opinion' is not constituted by fears, hatreds and the desire for vengeance.\n\n95\n\nSince the first edition of _The Marxian Legacy_ , Castoriadis has continued the republication of his earlier essays in the collection 10\/18 and published two volumes of newer theoretical and political essays under the title _Les carrefours du labyrinthe_ (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1978, 1986). He also published the first volume of _Devant la guerre_ (Paris: Fayard, 1981) which develops his analysis of the Soviet Union to a new stage. His ontology, whose first phase is presented in _L'institution imaginaire de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9_ , discussed in the _Legacy_ , has been refined in the _Carrefours_ volumes, as well as two volumes in preparation, titled tentatively _l'Element imaginaire and la Cr\u00e9ation humaine_. Citations in the text below refer to the second volume of _Carrefours_ , titled _Domaines de l'homme_ , as DdH, and to DlG, followed by a page number. I will not return to the materials treated in the first edition, which are now collected in the first volume of _Les carrefours_.\n\n96\n\nThis could be taken as a critique of Lefort's analysis of totalitarianism, although Lefort insists that he is describing a symbolic political logic, not a social reality. Conversely, Lefort could be criticizing Castoriadis' arguments in _Devant la guerre_ when he asserts that 'one hears that the Soviet Union is a formidable power against which the armies of the West are of little weight, that their only chance is to hide under the nuclear umbrella ... But then one must explain that this formidable power is subject to no less formidable contradictions; that the bureaucratic State shows itself to be undermined by corruption; that in the USSR itself ideology has weakened; that if Russian nationalism can still assure resistance to the enemy, as it did during the last war, nothing justifies the belief that a society where oppression and penury are the rule is capable of furnishing a faith in conquering communism! ... One must stop giving credibility to the image of a Russian colossus which could suddenly turn on Western Europe, eat and digest it in a few weeks, unless it is stopped by the arm of deterrence' (ID, pp. 37\u20138). For his part, Castoriadis asserts explicitly that although the Soviet Union is 'no doubt still pregnant with a revolution', he abstracts from that possibility in the present analysis (DLG, p. 217; cf. CL, p. 186). Since the second promised volume of _Devant la guerre_ has not been published, no more can be said about this matter.\n\nI will not follow the sniping attacks of Castoriadis on Lefort, or vice-versa; neither names the other as the object of his attacks. My concern is not the opposition between Lefort and Castoriadis but their respective contributions to the Marxian legacy. The basic difference between the two men that led to Lefort's departure from  _Socialisme ou Barbarie_ concerned the nature of the 'revolutionary organization' and the possibility of a realized revolution. That difference remains; it is apparent in the attitude of each to the nature of a democratic society. The new refinements each has added to the critique of Marxism permitted their elaboration of different means to grasp the legacy still manifest the basic difference\u2014Lefort developing a theory of political history, Castoriadis a philosophical ontology. With regard to the nature of totalitarianism, their paths diverge radically. It was the publication of the first part of _Devant la guerre_ in the _Libre_ (No. 8) that led to a final break and to the journal's disappearance.\n\n97\n\nThis formulation is my way of accounting for an apparent inconsistency in Castoriadis' account. He explains the radically new Soviet regime as a development from the earlier 'total bureaucratic capitalism' while at the same time insisting on its radical novelty. He writes, for example, that 'just as when the imaginary of the unlimited expansion of \"rational\" mastery takes hold of the western world, it finds\u2014rather, it creates\u2014a privileged sector of social life where it at first incarnates itself. This sector is production, taking the form of organization called the firm, and finding a first human \"natural\" and \"organic\" carrier which is the capitalist class. In the same way, at the end of its path\u2014and after having exhausted the \"politico-ideological\" field by means of the total domination of the Party\/State\u2014this unlimited expansion of mastery becomes the simple reign of brute force wrapped in nationalist imperialism; it finds its natural field in violence, its form of organization in the industrialized modern Army, and its appropriate human carrier in what I have called military society' (DLG, p. 260).\n\nThis argument seems to suggest that the new Soviet form, like capitalism, is simply a variant within the 'imaginary institution' that began in the fourteenth century. More strongly, it suggests that the Soviet Union has brought this imaginary to its 'logical' conclusion and its self-negation. In that case, however, it would not be a new creation. My formulation tries to avoid this 'Hegelian-Marxism' which projects a logic of historical necessity by suggesting that there is an ontological underpinning explaining how the new can be instituted without radically negating what preceded it. This would explain why, just as totalitarianism need not arise only where its 'material conditions' are prepared, so too the new Soviet model can be seen\u2014bastardized\u2014in some Third World dictatorships.\n\n98\n\nIt is not important in the present context to decide whether Castoriadis' thesis is empirically valid\u2014indeed, although he provides extensive documentation, his argument is conducted essentially on the level of political theory and its ontological foundations. Its relation to Castoriadis' understanding of democracy, and particularly the ontological distinction between heteronomy and autonomy, will be developed in a moment.\n\n99\n\nCastoriadis explains the theoretical preconditions for this process in 'L'imaginaire: la cr\u00e9ation dans le domaine social-historique', in DdH, pp. 219\u2013237. He uses the concept of the 'imaginary' to refer to social significations in order to indicate that these neither correspond to nor are exhausted by references to the rational or the real; they are an ontological creation. Significations cannot be explained on the basis of non-significations, nor can they be reduced to a single, univocal element. This imaginary creation produces a world that can be understood by 'identitary-ensemblist' logic. This logic in effect forms a code that filters the world; it has no signification in itself; its own sense is instituted. Sense is the product of the imaginary; it is not determined, and the relations it establishes are not causal. Sense can only be 'elucidated', not explained. As Castoriadis argues in greater detail elsewhere, all social systems contain these two moments of creation and identitary-ensemblist code, as does all language, which cannot explain why the word dog is a 'dog' and the number three relates to god. Brute Force is the limit case of this relation, whereas the 'unreasonable effectiveness' of mathematics, despite its apparent abstraction, demonstrates the power of the imaginary in Castoriadis' scheme (Cf. CL, pp. 448ff ).\n\n100\n\nThe 1986 Preface to the Polish edition of _Devant la guerre_ stresses the failure of Reagan's politics, at home, and with regard to rearmament. Leaving aside cost-overruns like $200 hammers and $800 toilet seats, the question that concerns Castoriadis is what strategic good has been done by this program? He points out that there is a difference between having political tactics and deciding to pay for them, which he attributes to the Americans, as contrasted with what he sees as Soviet spending with no political or strategic goals. The imaginary logic of liberal capitalism assumes that all problems can be solved and that money will buy or produce the technology needed to solve these problems. The twin questions that remain to be resolved from this perspective are: will anti-bureaucratic political movements arise in the West when Reaganism and Thatcherism dissolve? And second, has Russian society has become so atomized that it remains caught up in Great-Russian chauvinism with the result that nothing positive can be expected from it? In the meanwhile, Castoriadis adds significantly, the Polish resistance to the government of general Jaruzelski shows that the struggle for freedom remains alive still in the lands of communism and that its realization demands not just a desire but a struggle (in DdH, pp. 122f and 126f ).\n\n101\n\nCastoriadis' comparison of his notion of autonomous social institution to the biological account of Varela suggests the difference between his manner of accepting the dialectic of enlightenment and that of another heir of Horkheimer, J\u00fcrgen Habermas. Both society and the organism have a form of organizational, informational, and cognitive closure. Both create their own world, in which they include themselves. They distinguish what is information, noise, and nothing at all; as systems, they have a programed response to any given facts once they identify them. As opposed to Habermas, Castoriadis insists that societies do not 'contain' a system that is distinct from their life-world; they are this system. As opposed to Varela's biological concept of autonomy which is defined by its closure, Castoriadis insists that the institution of society cannot be closed; if it were, the result would be either paranoia or 'the end of history'. Society is not organized functionally by its ends; it can constantly renew itself because it is essentially open to self-interrogation. Its finality is not its own reproduction; it posits values, which it seeks to preserve. The 'circle of creation' means that there is no external observer who, like the biologist or the critical systems-theorist, can explain these values. At most, societies like the Greek and its European legatees may institute a type of self-reference (DdH, pp. 226\u2013228, 236\u20137).\n\n102\n\nAs a contemporary illustration, Castoriadis' essay on the death of Brezhnev, 'The Russian Regime will succeed Itself', points out that those who expect that conflict will eventually break out within the Soviet Union are projecting a schema onto Russian history 'that has proven true nowhere outside of \"European\" history' (CL, p. 73). There is no reason to think that the cynical society instituted by and for Brute Force belongs to that tradition. Cf. the discussion of 'Development' and 'Rationality', in DdH, esp. pp. 165ff, and the essay in the same volume, 'Third World, Third-Worldism, Democracy', esp. p. 109.\n\n103\n\nCastoriadis stresses the fact that the Greek organization of public life was founded on a notion of _logos_ as the circulation of words. Each individual must have an equal _right_ to speak frankly (isegoria), and each _must_ speak frankly concerning public affairs (parrhesia). Historiography was invented by the Greeks in order to keep before the public its own temporality. Political experts never emerged because it was clear that a good judge of a product can only be its user. The remarkable institution of the graphe paranomon was invented to permit the people to question its own laws; it instituted the possibility to challenge a regularly voted law before by a jury chosen at random, listening again to the arguments that at first seemed convincing, and if necessary correcting decisions made under the influence of popular passion. Finally, the Greeks invented tragedy to represent the chaos of Being, the lack of order in the world, and the absence of correspondence between intention, action, and results (Cf. DdH, pp. 286\u2013306). (It need not be stressed that the theoretical implication of the 'oath' in Freud's psychoanalytic theory has literally nothing in common with the Sartrean version of the same concept, which depends on a self-willed alienation of each participant creating a heteronomous structure of domination.)\n\n104\n\nCastoriadis replies to Lefort (again without naming him) in this context. The rejection of the possibility of a totally transparent society is based on an '(already debatable) empirical observation dressed as an ontological tautology' (DdH, p. 381). Societies _may_ hide the radical creativity by which they institute themselves from themselves; that is the function played especially but not exclusively by religion. That does not mean, insists Castoriadis, that they must always deny their own self-institution. Autonomy does not mean self-transparency any more than it means the absence of rules. Autonomy refers to the relation that a society institutes to its rules just as, in the case of psychoanalysis, autonomy does not mean the replacement of the unconscious by self-transparent rationality. Castoriadis concludes that Freud's famous aphorism 'Where it was I must be' should be completed by the adage 'Where I am, it must emerge' (CL, p. 102).\n\n105\n\nThis lack of any defined or definable limit only apparently links capitalism and democracy. Autonomous democracy is aware of the need to limit itself even though it recognizes also that an external limit cannot be determined without introducing heteronomy. The rationality of capitalism, on the other hand, is based on the principle of unlimited expansion. This is why the 'crisis of development' in the Third World is a threat to capitalism (DdH, pp. 138\u2013143). Similarly, capitalism is threatened from within because its logic of infinite development may prove to be an abstract formalism incapable of producing that sense of meaning, without which social life loses its direction (DdH, pp. 416ff ).\n\n106\n\nThe relation between the internal and the external threat to European democracy remains to be elaborated in the second volume of _Devant la guerre_. The internal threat is lodged first of all in the 'dual institution' of contemporary Western societies that can tilt toward capitalist values of unlimited expansion if the specificity of the limits of their democratic political institutions is not recognized. The role that Castoriadis attributes to the transformation in the conditions of women and youth suggests that the failure to recognize the political potential of these social transformations (which Castoriadis does not identify as such with the 'new social movements') is also an internal threat. Castoriadis develops the implications of this suggestion in a debate with Daniel Cohn-Bendit published as _De l'ecologie \u00e0 l'autonomie_ (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1981). He distinguishes between a system of political authority and a scheme of needs, which together constitute the institution of society. Ecology has put into question the latter while recognizing that solutions cannot wait until after 'the Revolution'. The relation between the new needs and the global society that imposes limits on what the free individual can without telling him what he must will remain an open question. This paradoxical structure that integrates freedom with a recognition of its own limits both preserves and threatens democracy.\n\n107\n\nClaus Offe, who tries to combine the impetus of the New Left with the critical theory of Habermas in an empirical political sociology, makes this point in the Introduction to an English collection of his essays, _Disorganized Capitalism_ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986). His work has 'attempted to think of the modern state as a highly complex agency that performs a variety of different historically and systemically interrelated functions which can neither be reduced to a mere reflection of the matrix of social power not considered as part of an unlimited multitude of potential state functions' (p. 4). Offe analyzes the way the implantation of democracy affects the processes by which political authority is legitimated. His notion of 'disorganized capitalism' suggests a 'heuristic' approach to the inability of modern democratic societies to conceive of themselves from within themselves; it serves, in other words, as a critique of the positivism of political sociology. Offe does not make fully explicit the implications of his approach because, like Habermas, he still thinks of politics as a response to social problems rather than as questioning of society by itself through the mediation of the political. Offe remains, in his own terms, a political sociologist.\n\n108\n\nThe ambiguity of the new social movements on this regard is most obvious in the 'peace movements', as Castoriadis in particular has argued. The various points of view concerning the ambivalent potential of this phenomenon are well-represented in _Telos_ , No. 51, Spring, 1982.\n\n109\n\nThe suggestion appears in their numerous essays over the past years in _Telos_ , and in Cohen's Introductory essay to a special edition of _Social Research_ devoted to the new social movements from which I cited her comments concerning Habermas. Although Arato and Cohen use Habermasian concepts to articulate their theory, its implications go beyond the limits of Habermas' conception of democracy.\n\n110\n\nCf. Andrew Arato, 'Civil Society Against the State: Poland 1980\u201381', in _Telos_ , No. 47, Spring, 1981, pp. 23\u201347, and Andrew Arato, 'Empire vs. Civil Society: Poland _1981\u2013_ 82', in _Telos_ , No. 50, Winter, _1981\u2013_ 82, pp. 19\u201348. Arato notes, for example, that 'Instead of claiming to represent society, the workers' organization played a major role in helping organize other strata such as peasants and students' (p. 24). 'Society' is not the replacement for Marx's proletariat as the subject-object of History; society becomes civil society in the action of the new social movements.\n\n111\n\nPierre Hassner traces the changing meanings of the notion of totalitarianism from its theoretical-philosophical formulation by Hannah Arendt to its social-science and cold-war interpretation by Brzezinski and Friedrich, which then dominated the discussion among political scientists. Hassner concludes his well-documented survey with the observation that '[w]e began from the idea of introducing a political science perspective into the French approach to totalitarianism which seemed to us\u2014and still seems to us\u2014too ideological. We conclude with the idea that the concept of totalitarianism is not a concept of political science'. The basis for this assertion is formulated on the same page: 'No doubt the political scientist can only recognize different forms of authoritarianism; and the notion of totalitarianism takes on its sense, as Lefort suggests, only with respect to a theory of democracy and of the rights of man\u2014and, one should add, a theory of the relations between language and society, or between philosophy and politics'. C.f., 'Le totalitarisme vu de l'Ouest', in _Totalitarismes_ , op. cit., p. 36.\n\n112\n\nIt is not surprising that most of the neo-conservatives and many of the post-modernists are former Marxists. The adventures of the radical Trotskyists around the _Partisan Review_ whose quest to preserve the radicality of their revolutionary position took the form of a determined defense of modernist art and an equally determined attack on totalitarianism stand as a signpost and warning. Their anti-totalitarian politics was transformed gradually into a defense of 1950s America at the same time that its aesthetic partners succeeded, in Serge Guilbaut's phrase, in 'stealing modern art from Paris'. It does not follow from this, as Guilbaut's reductionist account implies, that some sort of Marxism would have been a better option. The cautionary tale is rather that the radical critics transformed a political question into a sociological solution. From this point of view, the 'slippery slope' of the _Partisan Review_ and those who once shared its radical goals did not manifest itself in the magazine's famous 1952 debate in which they 'chose America'. The roots of their descent are found in their option for a really existing, if socially critical, aesthetics as an answer to an essentially political question.\n\n###  Index 1\n\n### A\n\n'Actuality and Utopia' (Ernst Bloch)\n\nAdorno, T. W.\n\n_Adventures of the Dialectic_ (Merleau-Ponty)\n\nAlienated\n\nalienation\n\nart\n\nartist\n\nAlthusser, Louis\n\nA priori\n\nArendt, Hannah\n\nAristotle\n\nAuthoritarian state\n\n### B\n\nBaier, H.\n\nBakunin\n\nBalzac, Honor\u00e9 de\n\nBateson, Gregory\n\nBebel, August\n\nBeing\n\n_Being and Nothingness_ (Sartre)\n\nBenjamin, Walter\n\nBergson, Henri\n\nBernstein, Eduard\n\nBloch, Ernst\n\nBolshevik\n\nbourgeois\n\nBourgeois\/Bourgeoisie\n\nculture\n\ndemocracy\n\nindividualism\n\nphilosophy\n\nradicalism\n\nrevolution\n\nscience\n\nsociety\n\ntheory\n\nBreakdown theory\n\nBrecht, Bert\n\nBruegel, Pieter\n\nBukharin, Nikoli\n\nBureaucracy\n\n### C\n\n_Capital_ (Marx)\n\ncapitalism\n\ncapitalism, bureaucratic\n\nCapitalism, contemporary\n\ncapitalism, late\n\nCapitalism, liberal\n\nCapitalist\n\nCapitalist society\n\nCardan, Paul (pseudonym of C. Castoriadis)\n\nCastoriadis, Cornelius\n\nCastro, Fidel\n\nCezanne, Paul\n\nChaulieu, Pierre (pseudonym of C. Castoriadis)\n\nCivil society\n\n_Class consciousness_\n\nClass struggle\n\nClastres, Pierre\n\nCommunicative action, (theory)\n\nCommunist\n\nCommunity\n\nConsciousness\n\nContradictions, contemporary\n\ncontradictions, non-contemporary\n\nCoudray, Jean-Marc (pseudonym of C. Castoriadis)\n\nCritical theory\n\nCritique\n\n### D\n\nDaily life\n\n_Darkness at Noon_ (Koestler)\n\nDeconstruction\n\nDemocracy\n\nDemocritus\n\nDialectic\n\nDialectical\n\nDivision of labor\n\n### E\n\nEconomic\n\nEngels, Friedrich\n\nEnlightenment\n\nexistential\n\nEpistemological\n\nExistentialism\n\nExistentialist\n\nExperience\n\n### F\n\nFascism\n\nfascist\n\nFrankfurt School\n\nFetishism\n\nFetishized\n\nFlesh (Merleau-Ponty)\n\nFoucault, Michel\n\nFreedom\/necessity\n\nfuturity\n\nFreud, Sigmund\n\n### G\n\nGerman Idealism\n\n_German Ideology, The_ (Marx)\n\nGoal\n\nfinal\n\nGorz, Andre\n\nGramsci, Antonio\n\n_Gulag Archipelago_ (Solzhenitsyn)\n\n### H\n\nHabermas, J\u00fcrgen\n\nHegel, G. W. F.\n\nHeidegger, Martin\n\nHeritage\n\n_See also_ Legacy\n\nHermeneutics\n\nHerodotus\n\nHistorical materialism\n\n_History and Class Consciousness_ (Luk\u00e1cs)\n\nhistory\n\nHorkheimer, Max\n\nHitler, Adolf\n\nHuman\n\n_Humanism and Terror_ (Merleau-Ponty)\n\n### I\n\nIdealism\n\nidealistic\n\nIdentity\n\nIdeological\n\nIdeology\n\nInheritance\n\nInstitute for Social Research\n\nInstitution\n\ninstitutionalization\n\nInstrumental reason\n\n_See also_ Rationality\n\n### K\n\nKant, Immanuel\n\nKorsch, Karl\n\n### L\n\nLabor\n\nLacan, Jacques\n\nLefort, Claude\n\nLegacy\n\n_See also_ Heritage; Inheritance\n\nLegitimation\n\n_Legitimation Crises_ (Habermas)\n\nLenin, V. L.\n\nLeninism\n\nLife-world\n\nLuhmann, Niklas\n\nLuk\u00e1cs, Georg von\n\nLuxemburg, Rosa\n\n### M\n\nMachiavelli\n\nMaoist\n\nMarcuse, Herbert\n\nMarxian legacy\n\nMarxian theory\n\nMarxian heritage\n\nMarxian theory\n\nMarxism\n\nWestern\n\nMarxism as question\n\nMarxist\n\nMass strike\n\n_Mass Strike_ (Luxemburg)\n\n_See also_ Marxism, Western; Theory and Practice\n\nMay 1968\n\nmediations\n\nMerleau-Ponty, Maurice\n\nMetaphysics\n\nMilitant\n\nModernity\n\nMoral, _see_ Theory, moral\n\nMotivation\n\n### N\n\nNature\n\nNegation\n\nNegt, Oskar\n\nNew Left\n\nNew social movements\n\nNot-Yet\n\n### O\n\nOffe, Claus\n\nOntological\/ontology\n\nOrthodox\n\nOther\n\nOtherness\n\n### P\n\nParsons, Talcott\n\nParty\n\nPessimism\n\nPhenomenology\n\nPhilosopher\n\nPhilosophical\/philosophy\n\nPlato\n\nPolitical (the)\n\nPositivism\n\nPost-modern\n\nPotlatch\n\nPower\n\npractico-inert\n\npragmatism\n\n_praxis_\n\nPrince, the, (Machiavelli)\n\nproduction, forces\n\nproletariat\n\npsyche\n\nProletariat\n\nPsychoanalysis\/psychoanalytic\n\nPsychological\n\n### R\n\nRadical theory\n\nRationality (theory)\n\nReality and truth\n\nReason\n\n_Rechtsstaat_\n\nReconstruction (theory)\n\nReification\n\nReligion\n\nRevolution\n\nRevolutionary\n\nRevolution, French\n\nRights\n\nRorty, Richard\n\nRussia\n\n### S\n\nSartre, J.-P.\n\nScarcity\n\nSch\u00fctz, Alfred\n\nSelf-identity\n\nSocial\n\nSocialism\n\n_Socialisme ou Barbarie_\n\nSocialization\n\nSocial relations\n\nsocial system ( _see_ System, social; Theory, social)\n\nsociety\n\nSoviet Union\n\n_See also_ Russia\n\nStalin, Josef\n\nStalinism\n\nStructure\n\nStudent\n\nSubject\n\nhistorical\n\nphilosophy of\n\nrevolutionary\n\nSubject-object\n\nSuperstructure\n\nSurplus-value\n\nSymbolic\n\nSystems\n\nsocial\n\ntheory\n\n### T\n\nTechnology\n\nTheorist\n\nTheory\n\ncritical ( _see_ Critical theory)\n\nmoral\n\npractice\n\nproletariat\n\nradical\n\nrevolutionary\n\nsocial\n\nsystems ( _see_ Systems, theory; Theory, traditional)\n\ntraditional\n\nTheory and practice\n\nTheory of evolution\n\nTheory of history\n\nTheory of labor\n\nTheory, Marxian ( _see_ Marxian theory; Theory, moral)\n\ntheory, rational\n\nThird International\n\nTocqueville\n\nTotalitarianism\n\nTotality\n\nTotalization\n\nTranscendental\n\ntrade unions\n\nTrotsky, L.\n\ntruth\n\n### U\n\nUniversalization\n\nUtopia\n\n### W\n\nWelfare state\n\nWeber, Max\n\nWe-object\n\nWe-subject\n\nWorking class\n\nWorld, the\n\n_See also_ Proletariat\n\n### Z\n\n_Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Sozialforschung_\n\nFootnotes\n\n1\n\nNote: Page numbers followed by 'n' refer to notes.\n\n# Contents\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Front Matter\n  3. 1. The New Left and the Marxian Legacy: Early Encounters in the United States, France, and Germany\n  4. Part I. Within Marxism\n    1. 2. Theory, the Theorist, and Revolutionary Practice: Rosa Luxemburg\n    2. 3. Marxism and Concrete Philosophy: Ernst Bloch\n  5. Part II. Using Marxism\n    1. 4. Toward a Critical Theory: Max Horkheimer\n    2. 5. From Critical Theory Toward Political Theory: J\u00fcrgen Habermas\n    3. 6. The Rationality of the Dialectic: Jean-Paul Sartre\n  6. Part III. Criticizing Marxism\n    1. 7. From Marxism to Ontology: Maurice Merleau-Ponty\n    2. 8. Bureaucratic Society and Traditional Rationality: Claude Lefort\n    3. 9. Ontology and the Political Project: Cornelius Castoriadis\n    4. 10. Actualizing the Legacy\u2014New Social Movements in the West and Civil Society against the State in the East\n  7. Back Matter\n\n# Landmarks\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Table of Contents\n  3. Body Matter\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}