> Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 10:59:34 -0700 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [PEN-L:8423] Re: Re: MR "debate" on Brenner > Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Just because you seem to have personal animosity towards Comninel (and > Wood?) does not seem to be an adequate reason to trash him (and her?) > publicly on pen-l. It is doubly inexcusable since you provide no logical or > empirical or methodological critique of his work. This approach seems > designed to combine personal dislikes, academic rivalry, and sectarianism, > a bad mix. > > I don't know Comninel personally (and haven't read much of his work), but I > found his book on the French Revolution to be very useful. Among other > things, he provides a useful critique of the inevitabilist "Marxism of the > 2nd & 3rd Internationals." (Beyond that, I don't know enough about the > French Rev. to say anything more.) > If you consider that trashing that's because of your own "personal animosity" towards me. As far as I am concerned, I am still on friendly terms with Comninel, however difficult that is (or was) given his intransigent approach to historical materialism. Same goes for Wood, though I just audited her one semester seminar. I also wrote something on Comninel's work, where, I might add, I defended the classical Marxist interpretation of 1789 as a 'bourgeois revolution'.
