On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Mark Jones wrote:
> Stephen E Philion wrote:
>
> > people on this list are suddenly talking about Pat Bond like he is
> > anything but what he actually is, a damn sharp committed anti-imperialist
> > activist-intellectual. So, I find such an attitude toward a solid comrade
> > to be less than worthy of serious consideration, hence my
> > irony. I think Pat Bond's politics are bang-up and even when I don't
> > agree with an argument he is making I learn something from him.
>
> All of a sudden if you criticise Pat Bond or Doug Henwood, or *don't*
> criticise S African president Mbeki (or so I've just been told on Pat's own
> Debate list) you're *unworthy*. What I would like would be for Doug or Pat or
> you to actually respond, to rebut, criticisms, not try to stifle discussion by
> petulance or one-liner put-downs a la Henwood. This is not an academic list.
> This is a list where revolutionaries analyse capitalist crisis and critique
> alternative analyses. That's what it was set up for: to analyse the *Crash*.
Well yeah, but since when is it 'academic' if you're being comradely in
criticism. I mean, the way you write about these people, they sound like
the enemy. If that's your argument, that Henwood or Bond are the enemy,
then forget it, I don't buy it. I don't have any problem with serious
criticisms, but for God's sake, isn't it possible to say anything positive
about these people?
> Over on pen-l on the other hand Doug (who for years has been celebrating the
> birth of a new capitalist golden age of growth) is right now lambasting people
> who don't understand that the big difference between the Japanese slump
> post-1989 and the Wall St slump now happening, is that the Bank of Japan
> raised interest rates by a little under 2 percent in response to their crisis,
> wherease the US Federal Reserve has dropped them by about one percent (if I
> understood him aright, and since I don't really give a solitary fuck one way
> or the other, I probably didn't). Pretty profound stuff, huh? This is what we
> must stand in awe of?
>
No, who said anything about standing in awe of anyone, or is that the
point of criticising, to find someone to stand in awe of?
> I'd like to think we should not be afraid of being a little more radical than
> that. And I also think that among the hot air now being let out of punctured
> balloons, there is the flatulence which has clogged our debates for years with
> the most asinine, futile reformism and defeatism.
>
perhaps. we might also not want to act like the pat bonds of the world are
our enemy...
steve
> Mark
>
>
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