pen-l  

Re: Re: Re: There Was a Lad (was Re: O Happy Day)

Carrol Cox
Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:33:51 -0800



Louis Proyect wrote:

>  My only interest in these
> sorts of questions is based on the importance of intellectuals being
> integrated into socially necessary manual work in developing societies that
> have just overthrown capitalism. A rather arcane subject, I know, but one
> that is of intense interest to me.

I have always argued that communists also have a r ight to have
fun, and if their fun consists in intense arcane interests not relevant
to revolutionary work in their own country, that is fine. I still read
Pound and am subscribed to the Pound and the Milton maillists.
But one's arcane private interests shouldn't be allowed to interfere
with the process of building a revolutionary movement where one
is. We don't live in a country where capitalism has been overthrown.

Contempt for intellectuals on the part of intellectuals has always
been an extremely serious barrier to political development of
revolutionaries in the U.S.

Carrol