Louis Proyect
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:33:37 -0700
Last April I wrote about Platypus, a group of young academics with Eustonite politics. I thought that I had said about all that was worth saying but felt inspired to have one more go at it after participating in a thread on the Kasama Project website. This is run by Mike Ely, whose Maoist politics I do not share, but who strikes me as a remarkably intelligent and principled person.
Mike was taking exception to an interview that Platypus had conducted with Jairus Banaji, an Indian professor who I have read in the past for ammunition in the transition to capitalism debate involving Maurice Dobb, Robert Brenner et al. The interview focused on the Naxalite movement in India and Arundhati Roy’s sympathetic “Walking with the Comrades” article, which Banaji and the Platypus interviewers care little for. Banaji’s main complaint is that the Naxalites appear to have no program for India’s urban working class. Unlike Banaji, I have no problem with movements with a Maoist leadership. In fact, I consider the Chinese Revolution one of the epochal achievements of humanity in the 20th century despite the fact that it departed from classical Marxist norms. How can one not cheer a revolution that rids the country of a despotic landlord class in league with imperialism? Upon further reflection, it dawned on me that I have run into Platypus type people before who remind me of those “end of the world” cartoons that appear in the New Yorker magazine, you know the kind—it shows a guy in a robe with a long beard carrying a sign with “Repent” or some such thing. full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/thoughts-provoked-by-the-platypus/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l