Let's see if I get the logic of the below. a) Brenner went to Oxford. b) Oxford is bad, a source of many Eurocentric misconceptions. c) therefore Brenner is wrong and bad. QED At 09:51 AM 10/12/1999 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: >I am considering the possibility of a novel approach to to understanding >the Brenner thesis. Some years back I was on several mailing >lists--including this one--with a Justin Schwartz. Justin was proud of his >connections to Robert Brenner, who he considered a jewel among Analytical >Marxists, among whom he included himself. He was insistent that real >Marxism was very, very, very rigorous stuff--which required the scalpel >like tools of AM to do right. It was also apparently necessary to be >educated at a proper university where such tools could be mastered, like >Oxford where he and Brenner were classmates. I get the picture now of a >couple of middle-class Yids like myself sitting in a classroom at Oxford >hearing about the exceptional wonders of Great Britain, the early >breakthroughs in constitutional law, Shakespeare and large farming units >based on profit. This would be the English equivalent of the sort of >nonsense dispensed at Harvard University on American exceptionalism. > >Now if you were a British kid at Oxford, you would want to gag on this >tripe. I can imagine someone like Alexander Cockburn or Perry Anderson >listening to some old fart in robes blathering on about yeoman farmers and >fantasizing about gunning him down with an AK-47. Apparently some Americans >found all this rather compelling. So a possible clue to understanding how >Wood and Brenner line up against Anderson and Blackburn is worship of >Merrie Old England versus a desire to destroy it like Johnny Rotten. > >Myself I can't understand the allure of Oxford. I think the definitive word >on the school was Laurel and Hardy's classic "Chumps at Oxford." Stan and >Ollie decide that their careers are going nowhere and they decide that >what's needed is to get a college degree. So off to Oxford they go. Stan >gets bumped on the head one day and remembers that he is actually Lord >Bumpley-Grosbeck or something like that. Not only is he a brilliant >scholar, he is a great athlete as well. The Oxford students come up to his >room to lionize him, while Ollie is turned into his valet whom Stan keeps >referring to as "Fatty". Finally, Stan bumps his head and returns to his >previous identity. Whereupon Ollie takes revenge... > >Louis Proyect > >(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
