Yes, I see, Cde Louis.
I am not sure if you wrote this before or after I sent the material from
Andy Blunden, and to you individually, the six-page obituary by John Plant.
In any case I think you are covered by now.
VC
On 2010/08/09 01:10 PM, Louis Godena wrote:
Dear Dominic;
Well, it is important to know something of a person's class, the
forces which shape one's outlook, and whether theories have been
tested by actual practice, where and under what circumstances. One
of my professors at Harvard was, theoretically speaking, nothing short
of brilliant, possessing gifts of logic and exposition which were
practically legend. He designed and built a grain combine for John
Deere. It's "theory" was unassailable; it was flawlessly
constructed. Yet, when you turned on the ignition, nothing happened.
I wonder if perhaps a great many of our erudite intellectuals and
theorists are not bit like my professor. Isolation from the masses, a
tendency to favor the ethereal over practical necessity, and the
inevitable sense of ennui and demoralization gained from long periods
of frustration and despair; all these have marked our leftist
intellectuals. I was just wondering to what extent Cyril Smith
conformed to this unhappy model.
Louis Godena
On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 1:15 AM, Dominic Tweedie
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Comrade Louis,
I don't know anything about Cyril Smith's life. All I know of him
are those of his writings which are on Marxists Internet Archive,
which I find very scholarly and very honest.
I did not find anything with Google. I have written to somebody
who may know a bit more about the man.
But really, what do we need to know? Do I need to know anything
about you, for example, other than what you tell me?
Cyril Smith's writings challenge us because they put a positive
view about Karl Marx's legacy. Not only does he constantly
demonstrate, using Marx's own texts, that it is all about freedom
(i.e. that "the free development of each is the condition for the
free development of all" as the Manifesto puts it); or that he
agrees with Caudwell about that. It is that Smith is able, with
considerable knowledge of who said what and when, to trace the
history of the way that Marx's successors have dealt with the
legacy, all the way up to the time of his (Smith's) death in 2008.
I suspect that Smith's knowledge of the ins and outs of especially
Soviet political history derive from the Trotskyist body of work
that is mainly devoted to redeeming Trotsky, but Smith has gone
much further than that. Probably he is a Trotskyist revisionist,
so to speak. He has come to the point where he sees the "burying"
of Marx as something that began very early, maybe while Marx was
still alive, and which is still present today, and would be so
with or without the story of Stalin and Trotsky.
The problem starts with one's interactions with Marx's work. One
can grab at the easy interpretation of Marx, where one is really
using Marx to confirm one's prejudices, or expectations. Or, one
can grapple with the difficult, challenging Marx, which is the
real Marx, who brings us an eternal challenge: the challenge to be
free, which is also the challenge to be human.
VC
On 8 August 2010 23:22, Louis Godena <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I had never heard of Cyril Smith before today. What's his
claim to fame? I know he was British, but did he lead any
party, or work in any revolution?
Louis G
On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 11:29 AM, DomzaNet
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
*Philosophy and Religion, Part 7b*
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