>>>Not to distract you from your sparring, but I don't see Gorvachev having much of a conceptual apparatus at all. What you have are general humanitarian notions--not a terrible thing to have--left in the wake of the collapse of Marxism-Leninism, but no substantive linkage to a systematic conception of social organization. This was true also of the rhetoric of glasnost and perestroika. "Universal human values" instead of "Marxism-Leninism" and class struggle, but what this is a non-specific cry for help.<< Comment Charles and I spar as a way of life. What was called Marxism-Leninism has more than less been regulated to the dustbin of history. Charles romantic notions of the working class will be his undoing. Charles expresses an ideological current of great men and women, who, not withstanding their greatness, could be no more than militant and selfless fighters embodying the logic of the Negro bourgeoisie in its life and death fight against legal segregation. Occasionally, I ask him publicly about his last "great fight" within the CPUSA for a black leader. Charles continues a line of reasoning associated with Dr. James Jackson - the noted Negro bourgeois leader within the CPUSA. We come up in the very same city during a very similar period of time but with very different politics and class orientation. Charles undying loyalty to whatever ideological clique was in leadership of the former Soviet Union is based in some material reality. Soviet Power helped opened many doors for the African American masses that would have remained shut for perhaps decades. This Cold War dynamic of the post WW II period bred a certain loyalty amongst members of the Negro bourgeoisie and intellegencia. Peace at all cost and universal human values was the ideological form of the struggle to consolidate the Khrushchev group. Charles failed to understand the meaning of Lumumba. Charles is ashamed of his own history and I am not. I clearly outline my roots and legacy in the old League of Revolutionary Black Workers. We represented the historic split between the Negro bourgeoisie and the Negro workers or as it is called today the Black Workers and the Black bourgeoisie. When we split and the workers and students components of the League of Revolutionary Workers merged with a group of Communist in Los Angels - Watts, it was a grouping formed in the wake of the Chicano Moratorium. Today our history has come full circle and we did not evolve as a polarity of and within the old CPUSA. Here is the history and crux of all our difference, although Charles becomes upset when I label his many writings that of the black petty bourgeoisie following in the wake of the Negro bourgeoisie. Charles is of course my brother but we express profound class differences and different class orientation. These differences are not enough to stop us from working together on various issues . . . at least they did not in the past. Charles is correct to label my writings "wrongline" - a clever designation I will gladly use, because my line is wrong according to the Negro bourgeoisie and black petty bourgeois intellectual sympathetic to Marxism in its struggle against the bonds of legal segregation. Melvin P.
_______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
