On 6/23/07, Julio Huato <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Leigh wrote:
> I don't know what "Weatherman
> tendency" is, except perhaps as
> embodied within the "Days of
> Rage" melee in Chicago 1969
> which for many of the people I
> knew considered worthless, and
> did not participate or condone...
> or vilify.
>
> That's still my view.
I find Leigh's hostility to Marxism very disconcerting. But I'm
entirely sympathetic with this view: not condoning, but neither
vilifying.
Actions that result from people discontent with the status quo,
especially young people (e.g. students), are mostly debits of the
status quo, even if those actions leave much to be desired on tactical
or strategic grounds.
I rather have students who protest, even if their protests take forms
I consider political immature and counterproductive, than students who
acquiesce or remain impassive in the face of injustice, or students
who take action to defend an unjust status quo.
Absolutely.
My objection to Marxism lies not so much in Marx or his writings
(honestly, I've read more Engels, Marcuse, than Marx), but in what I
see as a perverse culture that has arisen in the U.S. due to... I
dunno... interpretation through the physical isolation from the rest
of the world... American exceptionalism....
Cf. the legitimate practice of the Hare Krishna practitioners of the
Hindu faith in India compared to the den of junkies, mobsters &
thieves it became when exported west. The concept 'Demi-god' and
American culture clash dramatically leaving the group wide open for
people who are seeking to reinforce their belief that they are
better... more worthy than their fellow humans, and entitled to do
whatever they like no matter the effect on the other person.
To continue the comparison as philosophers and religious figures go,
George Gurdjieff was much wiser (IMVHO) than Srila Prabhupada. He
partnered up with a Russian Roman Catholic scholar, to meld a version
of the Sufi/Dervish faith that the western mind could 'wrap it's mind
around' with less distortion to the original concepts.
In summation, it's not the theory, it's the people, and I see little
change in the underlying socializations(sic), strategies and tactics
(the inability to form coalitions of convenience without needing to
control/micromanage/critique-to-the-point-of-disrupting the rest of
the coalition, *excessive* emphasis on theory whether or not it works
in practice (and Marx never saw the fruition of his theories in
practice).
Stan Goff's renunciation of Marxism a while back was a breath of fresh
air for me, a written vocalization of a litany of criticisms I've had
in regard to (not just) Marxism and it's practitioners (worshipers)
over the years, long years, 14 to (now) 53.
Leigh
"The industrial utopia imagined by Marx and touted by Lenin (who even
embraced the soul-killing efficiency doctrine of Frederick Winslow
Taylor) is not possible in the real world, and less so each day, and
it is a Man's world in any case, a notion based fundmentally on the
patriarchal belief in Man-Nature dualism (and the gendered pronoun is
not an accident, nor has it ever been neutral). It is the Marxist
method of inquiry that exposes the fetishism of the machine — the idea
that technology is innocent of the social system that produced it, and
that a factory under socialist control works differently than one
under capitalist control, even though the spirit-murdering machinery
of capitalism remains unchanged."
<http://stangoff.com/?p=423>
