Brad De Long wrote,
> You write as though there is a mental process called "agreement" going
> on here--as if Paul Sweezy reads Stalin's _Economic Problems of
> Socialism in the USSR_, analyzes it, decides which parts are accurate
> and helpful, and then incorporates it into his mental framework.
>
> Surely you are not so naive... [or sentimental?]
I'm not sure if Brad's irony is deliberate, but if it is I would have to
agree that there is an irreducible 'ideology' [in the earlymarxian sense]
pervading both Stalin's and Sweezy's analyses. Pardon my short hand, but
they both reify the isms in a decidedly unmaterialistic way. It still
isn't clear to me how this all plays out in Brad's Areopagitica. If Sweezy
can be said to have an 'elective affinity' with Stalin, then no
anti-communist can be said to have any less an affinity with, say, Louis
Bonaparte. Nevermind the Thermidor, the Brumaire in Areopagitica is so
thick you can cut it with a knife.
More light.
The Spectre
