Rob>...> And, as you're a pal, I'm happy that the reservations you expressed
in *Wall
> Street* might be vindicated at the expense of the credibility of rude
critics
> like that chap on the book's jacket.
>
Alan Abelson, early in his journalistic career, dissed (deliberately
misunderstood? or is he just dense?) a speech by Martin Jay at a late 60's
session of the original Socialist Scholars Conferences in NYC (see, "The
Revival of American Socialism, " ed. by Fischer, Oxford Univ. Press, 1970.
Texts by Genovese, Birnbaum, Lasch, Jay...),
entitled, "Dear Herbert." As in Marcuse. Jay, was criticizing the New
Leftish alienation from Amerikkkan Kultur. Abelson thought he was endorsing
it.
Michael Pugliese
P.S. A grad student from UCB, an ex-girlfriend of an old chum, told me yrs.
ago, after a study group on Deleuze & Guattari, told me sourly, that Martin
Jay drives a Porsche! An enemy of the people! Heh, S.M. Lipset, drives a
beat up socdem Volvo, as I saw with my eyes once at UCSC after he talked on
the hardy perennial, "Why No Socialism In America?"
pen-l
http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob Schaap" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 5:12 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:15090] Re: Re: Re: Speaking of volatility
G'day Doug,
> Once again, I have to remark on how weird it is that a bunch of
> friends of the working class are getting all excited about the
> prospects for recession, which means the disemployment of millions
> and lower wages for everyone else. Does the ghost of Andrew Mellon
> lurk over PEN-L?
My superannuation, over the disposition of which I have no control, is
somewhere in that mess, too, you know. As are all our futures. I just
think
it quite rational to react to something about which one can do nothing, no
matter how ghastly, by looking for the silver lining. And the silver lining
is that lots of smug suits get burned, lots of smug experts get loudly
contradicted by the facts, (the sensuous schadenfreude component) and people
might start thinking twice about surrendering their material, social and
political agency to unaccountable Big Finance and 'shareholder value' (the
virtuous political component) - geez, some might even think deeper than
that.
And, as you're a pal, I'm happy that the reservations you expressed in *Wall
Street* might be vindicated at the expense of the credibility of rude
critics
like that chap on the book's jacket.
Gotta go now - the Beeb is talking about how Japan's zero interest rates are
not stopping unemployment and bankruptcies rising at unprecedented rates.
Oh, and Beijing has the Samarympics, apparently.
Cheers,
Rob.
Hi again Doug,
> Actually I think it's quite relevant to the intellectual and
> political marginalization of left political economy - it has no
> analytical vocabulary for talking about "good" times,
If the times are usually good for most people, and sustainably so, well, I
wouldn't be a lefty. That's not to say you don't have a big point. 'The
end
is nigh' is empty and lousy politics in the long term.
Unless it is, of course ...
> and overtly or covertly roots for crisis to do the hard political >
work of discrediting capitalism.
Not only wouldn't that be a political strategy, I reckon it'd be wrong.
More
xenophobia, demagoguery, fragmentation, belligerence, and maybe even crassly
dangerous protectionism is what I expect. But then, I'm an industrial
strength miserablist in my very atoms - optimism being more an American
thang.
> It's temperamentally doomy and gloomy, and
> therefore has little emotional appeal to an audience broader than a
> hardy band of miserablists.
You'd have to be hardy indeed to be anything else, I reckon. The world is
actually in recession, I reckon - and good cheer is hard to find as I trail
my
questing finger around my little globe ...
Cheers,
Rob.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Henwood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 7:28 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:15091] Re: RE: Re: Re: Speaking of volatility
Mark Jones wrote:
>Doug Henwood:
>>
>>
>> Once again, I have to remark on how weird it is that a bunch of
>> friends of the working class are getting all excited about the
>> prospects for recession, which means the disemployment of millions
>> and lower wages for everyone else. Does the ghost of Andrew Mellon
>> lurk over PEN-L?
>
>I hope we can raise the level of debate above this.
Actually I think it's quite relevant to the intellectual and
political marginalization of left political economy - it has no
analytical vocabulary for talking about "good" times, and overtly or
covertly roots for crisis to do the hard political work of
discrediting capitalism. It's temperamentally doomy and gloomy, and
therefore has little emotional appeal to an audience broader than a
hardy band of miserablists.
Doug
