Louis Proyect wrote:
> >I probably should resist getting dragged into this but: 1) I am
> >[split]
> >Doug
>
> Doug, Mine can (and I am sure will) speak for herself, but it occurs to me
> to pose the question what a "humane liberal" would be doing taking a job to
> head up the World Bank to begin with? The World Health Organization I can
> understand, but the World Bank?
As Lou knows, I and Yoshie have been conducting more or less
open warfare with Doug Henwood on a number of issues on
lbo-talk for nearly two years. It is a conflict that has sometimes
exploded into open flame war. No doubt it will again in the future.
But Doug Henwood is not a fool and he is not an apologist for
capitalism. He knows perfectly well, for example, that physical
capital exists and is of fundamental importance -- and Mine's
posts on this illustrate either a real inability to read *or* a
delusion that procaiming one's marxist purity on mailists is
a revolutionary act. And in this post, Lou, you are being a
perfect asshole, letting your personal feud with Doug corrupt
your intelligence. You pose "the question what a "humane
liberal" would be doing taking a job to head up the World
Bank to begin with?" What in the fuck do you think a humane
liberal is? That is *exactly* where one would expect to find
one. Whatever Doug's political errors (and he shares with
you and Mark Jones the very serious political error of
voluntarism) being soft on humane liberals is not one of them
and he has made quite clear his belief that politics so described
are toothless. The enemy is the World Bank -- and by your
silly little personal feud with Doug you are blurring the
attack on that enemy.
And you are not doing this maillist any good by encouraging
Mine's incredible misreadings of Doug, for which there is no
possible excuse (nor is ther any for her serious distortions of
Yoshie's relationship to "libertarianism") and if you were not
blinded (I hope temporarily) by personal animosity in this case
that would be clear to you. Were any other name but "Doug
Henwood" attached to his presentation to the marxism 2000
conference you would have been the first to recognize that
it is a fine savaging of the concept of a "new economy," as all
the *marxists* as well as the "post-marxists" in the audience
recognized.
Doug seriously underestimates the strength of the capitalism
in general and of u.s. capital in particular. That leads him to
his error of believing there are alternative routes to socialism.
But you make the same basic error, and you share with
Doug the delusion (perhaps fatal delusion) that the defeats
of the left are to be ascribed primarily to errors of the left.
(Mao's essay on where do correct ideas come from should
have be appled equally to incorrect ideas, which do not fall
from heaven either.) Thus neither of you is able to ask the
simple question, Why, in the decade following the 1973 slump,
did so many committed and intelligent people follow Avakian
into RCP or follow Laclau and Mouffe into radical democracy?
I suspect neither of you has ever thought of putting Avakian
and Laclau into the same sentence?! Try it. There has been
some discussion lately about the demonization of Milosevic,
which led to a few remarks in some post (I forget whose)
on whether the whole process of demonization wasn't
wrong. Perhaps the easy demonization of Avakian and of
Laclau and Mouffe has obscurred more important matters.
And perhaps your joint demonization of each other is
just as unwise.
The amount of damage your personal quarrel is doing the
movement is in precise relation to the importance of the
marxism and the lbo lists. If they are trivial, quarrel away.
Otherwise, stop and think.
Carrol
P.S. U.S. capital will destroy the human species before it
allows itself to be voted out of power. It is either violent
socialist revolution or Rosa's barbarianism. If insurrection
is permanently impossible, then the only question facing us
is how to best limp through to our personal deaths.
P.S. 2. Oil Shortages, economic disaster, and global waming
will never produce the forces necessary for insurrection. If
we don't have time to build a revolutionary force without
that appeal, then the only question facing us is how to best
limp through to our personal deaths.
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