M-TH: Re: Monthy Review - friend or foe

[Hugh Rodwell]

Doug H amazed us all by writing about the shenanigans at the Monthly Review:

>Internal disputes. My lips are sealed, except to say it's more a
>clash of personalities than political principles.

Such loyalty! And yet so revealing!

Now let's see -- a megaphone for bureaucratic-academic scepticism exposed
as a hotbed of petty-bourgeois intrigue and backstabbing. Gee whiz...

Only thing that bothers me is that Doug is claiming to be able to recognize
political principles here.

Well, I suppose when he kicked me out of his own p-b incubator of
bureaucratic-academic scepticism for making some pretty self-evident
pro-revolutionary remarks -- about the astounding achievement of the
Bolsheviks and the October Revolution in turning around the war-weary
peasant masses of Russia so that they returned to the trenches and fought
heroically and voluntarily for three years against an unprecedented
onslaught of imperialist invasion involving fifteen states and civil war on
four fronts -- that showed that he is in fact capable of recognizing
revolutionary principles -- and acting resolutely to shut them up and shut
them out.

Let's all hope for his sake that no revolution happens in the near future,
and that a benign regime comes into power in the States that reduces taxes
on small publishing enterprises. Who knows, maybe such an administration
would have a cozy little position for him that would give him the nest egg
he needs to speed his early retirement.

Leaving the field free for a new batch of bureaucratic-academic p-b
intriguers to plunge their scoops into the pot and swill down some gravy in
their turn, for ever and ever or as the LTs might say in saecula
saeculorum, amen.

What inspiration for the present struggle, what visions of hope for the
future, what illuminating guidance for the working and poor masses on their
path to a better world than capitalism (strong or weak) could ever offer
them!

Let's drink a toast to Doug and the Manhattan Road to Socialism! (I think
that bottle of leftover Millennium bubbly is probably suitably vinegary by
now...)

Cheers,

Hugh

PS When you come to think of it, it's amazing what a burgeoning institution
this academic sceptical left has grown into. They're a bit like the rich
bourgeoisie in India -- there are so many of them that if they flock
together busily enough and shut their eyes tight enough, they're able to
pretend that the rest of society doesn't exist, except as some kind of
necessary but basically decorative backdrop to their own magnificence.

ciao4now,

M




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