Yesterday I was informed that Edward Herman and David Peterson had
responded a few months ago to my February 20, 2010 article titled The
Latest Idiocy from Edward S. Herman and David Peterson.
There was a time when I would have paid closer attention to what the two
had to say but have tuned them out because of their repetitiveness and
prolixity. Basically, their methodology is the same as Michel
Chossudovsky, MRZine, and some bloggers who have learned to put a minus
where the U.S. State Department puts a plus as Leon Trotsky put it:
In ninety cases out of a hundred the workers actually place a minus
sign where the bourgeoisie places a plus sign. In ten cases however they
are forced to fix the same sign as the bourgeoisie but with their own
seal, in which is expressed their mistrust of the bourgeoisie. The
policy of the proletariat is not at all automatically derived from the
policy of the bourgeoisie, bearing only the opposite sign – this would
make every sectarian a master strategist; no, the revolutionary party
must each time orient itself independently in the internal as well as
the external situation, arriving at those decisions which correspond
best to the interests of the proletariat. This rule applies just as much
to the war period as to the period of peace.
A few words about these two would probably be in order. Herman is an
85-year-old Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School of the
University of Pennsylvania, something that amounted to a kind of day job
I guess. (His first book was Principles And Practices Of Money And
Banking.) He is best known for co-authoring “Manufacturing Consent” with
Noam Chomsky. Unlike Chomsky—an anarchist—Herman has never written
anything that amounts to a program for revolutionary change. His main
preoccupation is with the propaganda system that American imperialism
uses to make war on its enemies.
Somewhere along the line Herman hooked up with someone named David
Peterson, who is a lot younger from what I can gather. About all I know
about him is that he describes himself as an independent journalist
based in Chicago. My guess is that he has never been involved with
socialist politics. If so, he has covered his tracks well.
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/in-response-to-edward-s-herman-and-david-peterson/
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