På tal om Cage-kritik, låt oss inte glömma Cornelius Cardews odödliga polemik Stockhausen serves imperialism - som inte bara riktar maoistiska rallarsvängar mot kapitalistlakejen Karlheinz, utan också mot Cage, "ghost or monster?". Här finns, bland all plakatretorik och citat från den store rorsmannen, en rolig anekdot som påminner mig om Jonas Bjurströms gamla artikel om klassiska musikers alienation inför nyskriven konstmusik (som jag skivit omtidigare). Cardew berättar om ett uppförande av Cages Atlas Eclipticalis på Lincoln Center i New York, tidigt 60-tal:

The parts for the musicians are again arrangements of dots and lines (this time traced from a star atlas) and every player has contact microphones attached to his instrument and an amplification system. The performance was a shambles and many of the musicians took advantage of the confusion to abuse the electronic equipmentto such a degree that Christian Wolff (usually an even-tempered man) felt compelled to rush in amongst them and protest against the extensive 'damage to property'. Cage lamented afterwards to the effect that his music provided freedom - freedom to be noble, not to run amok. I find it impossible to deplore the action of those orchestral musicians. Not that they took a 'principled stand' (I hope such stands may be taken in the future), but they gave spontaneous expression to the sharply antagonistic relationship between the avant garde composer with all his electronic gadgetry and the working musician. There are many aspects to this contradiction, but beneath it all is class struggle.

Cardew finner det också nödvändigt att göra upp med Ezra Pounds konfucianism, som tidigare inspirerat honom att skriva stycket The Great Learning, bland annat med denna oslagbara formulering:

Like many other miseducated products of a bourgeois upbringing, it was to the very wildness and contradictoriness of Pound’s work that I fell victim ...