Louis Proyect wrote:
>
> >That is, any 'movement' that "makes these facts the basis and guiding
> >compass of [its] politics" will never mobilize sufficient political
> >weight to be of any significance. Hence anyone seriously interesred in
> >these facts will _not_ focus on them but work towards building a left
> >_within_ which these facts cold become important. I would laugh at
> >someone who wanted to pass out leaflets proclaiming "Smash Commodity
> >Fetishism." Tom and those who agree with him are equally irrelevant to
> >any actual politics.
> >
> >Carrol
>
> This is wrong. Marx and Engels wrote about scientific and ecological
> problems their entire lives. The question of soil fertility preoccupied
> them in particular.
Of course -- and Marx also wrote extensively about commodity feteshism.
And we need more writing and analysis about both global warming and
commodity fetishism. But if you think either can be at the forefront of
the agitation and organizing that go into building a mass movement, then
you are living in a dream world.
The academy has one real defect that only political practice and
constant retheorizing of that practice can correct and recorrect -- the
belief that truth translates directly into practice. You and Mark _must_
somehow break free from your academic ivory towers where you commune
with pure truth and steadily forget all you ever learned of politics.
Such truth is a necessary but not in any way a sufficient condition of
political action.
I as well as you and Mark have felt the powerful seduction of pursuing
the truth for its own sake; who among us does not envy Marx those years
in the British Museum;
Carrol
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