At 20:30 12/11/00 -0500, Proyect wrote:
>Chris Burford:
> > I do not see that one would expect him to put the thesis and be able to
> >martial the facts that Proyect and Philip Ferguson expect.
>
>But clearly it is not the case that the argument I was postulating was not
>opposed to the thesis that despite the existence of fen-clearing in the
>16th century Ireland was not subject to democratic accumulation forces not
>on account of the absence of a butterfly ballot when Cromwell clearly
>stated that the revolution would have to defend itself from ground-rent
>seeking papists? Or if this argument is not clear, one can only say so
>because it is not specious in the contradictory sense especially when you
>squint, however when it is risen in a dialectical fashion like yeast in a
>cupcake, you can not deny that the same point was made by Dmitroff at the
>1937 Comintern, can you? You'd better not.
I think this post is offensive, and is intended to be offensive. If Michael
thinks it is an example of humour I would suggest that there is humour that
is shared with someone and humour that is against someone.
Of course it is often the stuff of debate, subtly or not so subtly, to
discredit another opinion or another person. Michael has laid down
draconian rules for this list that generally IMO have contributed to a rise
in standards so that the issues that are debated are ones of content, and
not of status in a pecking order.
But if Proyect wants to suggest that the problem is my obscurity arising
from over-long sentences I suggest that he is more vulnerable to the charge
of obscurity due to his elusiveness and his tendency to muddle and distort
arguments.
Yoshie has already gently commented on Proyect's summation of Brenner (6th
November):
>Actually, I think that there are ways in which we can constructively
>criticize Brenner's views, but while Lou insists on misrepresenting them,
>others don't get around to critical examination of Brenner, since we are
>busy saying, "No, that's not what Brenner says...". This gets very tedious.
One cannot expect an interlocutor or protagonist to agree with oneself. But
for an exchange to get anywhere one does not expect the arguments to shift
around.
I cannot comment on the evidence that Proyect misrepresents Brenner, but it
is a serious and damaging charge in the long run from his point of view.
What is the point of spending time reading a lengthy summation of Brenner,
if it is subtly wrong?
[Is that sentence short enough not to be misrepresented by ridicule?]
Now in Proyect's summary posted on 6th November to which Hinrich Kuhls
quoted a passage by Hobsbawm, among other things Proyect seemed to be
alleging that some of the English marxist historians did not give "due
emphasis" to the question of Ireland, and that this was somehow linked to
"Stalinist" influence on the board of NLR, a couple of decades later.
I put the proposition clearly enough and I apologise for the typo:
>It is hard to evaluate the argument [that] to which you responded with the
>passage from Hobsbawm, that some of the English marxist historians did not
>give the proper emphasis to Ireland.
I then took evidence from Hill and concretely illustrated how he handled
Ireland in the course of his main focus on the English bourgeois revolution
of the 17th century.
That could be commented on as to whether it is sufficient or insufficient.
Did Hill give Ireland no more attention than the fact that clover seed
became available in London in 1950 and is valuable for using waste-land?
I think Proyect shoots himself in the foot as a serious owner of 'The'
marxism list if he makes out that he cannot comment reasonably on such a
question and instead has to retreat to implying that the questioner is
chronically unclear.
What also is the point in attributing Dimitrov's strategic speech to the
Comintern as 1935 instead of 1937, except to suggest it is unworthy of
serious consideration?
What is the point of muddling up words and concepts instead of clarifying
their inter-relationship in the paragraph at the head of this post?
I had refrained from explicitly posing a question for Proyect's comments in
my previous contribution on this thread, because I had not read all his
material on the Brenner thesis.
However the issue of the place of Ireland and other colonies in the rise of
English capitalism is conceptually a question of the relative contribution
of primitive and capitalist accumulation.
It is not clear to me that Proyect handles this distinction clearly.
Perhaps he would like to demonstrate that he does.
All serious left-wingers are to a large extent self-taught, but as in
conventional academic circles, if you do not attempt to address a serious
argument in a serious way, ultimately you disqualify yourself from serious
debate.
Chris Burford
London
