[Marxism-Thaxis] Eisenhower/McCarthy era? a Misnomer, was Irwin Silber 1925-2010
c b wrote: Irwin Silber 1925-2010 by Ethan Young submitted to Portside by the author September 12, 2010 Irwin Silber died at the age of 84 on September 8, 2010, after complications from Alzheimer's. Silber's life intersected with the emergence of the radical left out of the Eisenhower/McCarthy era, This is a serious mislabelling of an historical era of great importance. Joseph McCarthy was an opportunist who exploited the Great Red Hunt, but it is false to name that period after him. The Cold War and the Red Hunt were launched by the Truman Administration, and the era should be labelled the Truman Era, for he and his fellow Democrats were responsible for all the horrors of that period and the great loss of life in the Philippines and Korea. Calling it the McCarthy Era is part of the endless excuse for the DP by liberals who simply cannot bring themselves to see the actual sourcesd of U.S. domestic and foreign policy over the last 70 years. Carrol ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Scope and Limits of Theory
I will get back to the various responses to my post but when one is 2/3s blind one moves slowly on such activities. Carrol ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Test
Test ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Scope and Limits of Theory: Provisional Draft
There was a thread on marxism, ending today, which I started with a post
on theory. At first the response it got was to an incidentally remark
on the Panthers. Then Angelus Novus reopened it, and then at someplace
Lou went ape-shit and it got wilder and wilder, at least from him, and
it ended with him unsubbing Angelus and someone who had defended
anarchism (mildly).
My initial post was labelled a draft, and I indicated it was to be
continued. I'm sending it here to see how it fares on this list.
{Applogy: Becaus of my fucking eyes I can't even find this book on the
shelf, let alone quote exactly from it. Later I will look up the exact
words and post them.}
In Revolutionary silhouettes, Lunacharsky makes an interesting
comparison of Lenin Trotsky. Lenin, he says, was more opportunist
in a special sense, while Trotssky was the more orthodox Marxist. By
opportunism he he means readiness to seize the opportunty as one shows
itself, without letting doctrine get in the way. An incident from WW 2
may illustrate the distinction being made here. When the German
Engineers failed to completely destry the bridge at Remagen (w?) an
opportunity opened up for crossing the Rhine, which ahd to be seized at
once because the damaged bridge might collapse at any time. But this
involved a radical change of plans, including major shifting arund of
troops, etc., and that change in carefully laid plans, some of
Eistenhower's generals believed, would cause too much trouble. They
favored proceeding with original plans to avoid too much confusion.
Other generals said _seize_ the opportunity, which is what Eisenhower
chose, with a result that very possibly shortened the war and definitely
decreased casualties. This is not a bad illustration of theory versus
concrete analysis of concrete situations.
As a matter of fact, in the past Lou has criticised Trotsky for sending
messages from Mexico dictating daily tactics to his followers in Spain.
But Trotsky was merely being a good orthodox Marxist: he believed there
was a Marxist revolutionary theory and that that theory could dictate
the correct tactics regardless of special local circumstances. Similarly
the 'orthodox' U.S. generals who opposed using the bridge had a
long-established military theory as to the correct way to make an
assault over a river, and their plans had been drawn up accordingly.
Another way of putting this, is that they assumed there to be a direct
relationship between theory and praactice: abstract theory could dictate
detailed tactics in all situatios. (Assuming a direct relation of theory
to practice is, I think, the most useful definition of dogmatism.)
That is probably true in the more rigorous physical sciences. It is true
for _some_ cooking_: There are many items for which you can go to the
cookbook (theory) and followiing it directly will come out with the same
results everytime. But this is not true, for example, in kneading bread:
there is no way theory (a manual) can dictate to you this process, since
it has to be known in the fingers, so to speak, rather than merely in
the brain. The ability to judge the relevance or irrelevance of theory
(recipes) in various contects is as vital in politics as in cooking!
The spectre that looms over all Marxist political theory/thought is,
of course, WITDBD, and WITBD has been seen almost wholly in the light of
one fateful sentence: There can be no Revolutionary Party withut a
Revolutionary Theory. All varieties of Leniniism derive from treating
this ne sentence as Scripture. Though Lenin himself seemed to be able to
proceed quite happily without further recourse to this bit of Scriptural
Wisdom. That is the reason Lenin himself is so superior to the
Leniniism created by Stalin and Trotsky. But the if...then of Lenin's
sentence is in fact valid. There can be no Revolutionary Party without a
Revolutinary theory. And since there can be no Revolutionary Theory, it
follows that in fact there can be no Revolutionary Party -- no Vanguard
possessing the scientific truth. And there has been no Revolutionary
Party in history. There have been, and there will be a gain, parties
including many members who, when the revolutionary moment suddenly
emereges will be among the leaders of those who seize the occasion. But
parties can only operate in the concrete context of non-revolutionary
'terrains,' setting themselves, as best as they can various
interferences with the smooth working of capitalist power and capitalist
ideology.
Now, why there can be no revolutionary theory. Partly this depends on
how narrowly one wishes to use the term theory. (Given the limits of
any language including English, one will of curse often have to use a
given word in many contexts where its rigorous sense is irrelevant. That
is a matter of usage.) Here I suggest the word should closely correspond
to its usage in the 'hard' sciences. A Theory of Gravity applies to the
whole universe, regardless of time and place. A social
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Scope and Limits of Theory: Provisional Draft
I think we are in general agreement, but detailed thought on that will have to wait. But I wanted to express appreciation of one paragraph: Ralph Dumain wrote: You are aware of course of the Trot fetish for Malcolm X, and presumably the theory behind the fondness for black nationalism. Those who support this perspective have not had another original thought about it since 1965. - Yes, but I had forgotten it until all the first responses to this post ignored the substance and focused on how bad the Panthers were. Some people seem to have been able to recover from the SWP-virus, but it seems to be a pretty strong one. I'm reminded of Krupskaya's remark that beeting with Trotsky was like meeting with the agnent-plenipotentiary of a sovereign state. Carrol ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Launching Language: The Gestural Origin ofDiscrete Infinity
Charles, I don't understand the purpose of so many posts. Since reading them all is out of the question, and I have no principle of selection that would work, I end up not reading any of them, thogugh some of them must be important or at least inteesting. Carrol ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Launching Language: The Gestural OriginofDiscrete Infinity
Shane Mage wrote: What is truly bizarre is lumping an advanced technology--the wheel-- with the most primitive of technologies--the stone ax. I was thinking of the wheel in terms not of wagons but of pottery. That is I assume that the really important 'early' use of the wheel was the potter's wheel But you would still be correct. Wheelmade pottery was a sophisticated technological development, while the stone ax is pre-homo s. I'm too fond of the word bizarre and should learn to control my use of it, since the wrod more often conuses than develops conversation. Carrol ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Launching Language: The Gestural Origin ofDiscrete Infinity
As usual, I'm just breaking into the middle of a thread, and I do not know who CeJ is quoting here, but I wholly agree with CeJ on this. The idea of learning how to make a wheel from stories rather than directly from another wheelwright is nothing short of bizarre. That in any case was never the purpose of stories, ancient or modern. They are indeed crucial to human society, more crucial than wheelmaking perhaps, but not because they have the sort of utilitariand use claimed here. CeJ's army anecdote is telling: even skills that _can_ more or less be abstracted into a technical manual (and only in the last couple centuries has that been common) cannot often be mastered without an instructor to _show_ one how to do it. And many skills cannot be so abstracted. Frying eggs, for example: My grandmother could serve soft eggs with the yolks broken ans pread out over much of the white. Now she had the advantage of fresh eggs, but still. One can now buy 'organic' eggs with greatly improved taste, and the yolk does hold better -- but I have tried vainly to recover her skill -- and I doubt very much that a 1000 stories could help much. One has to do it under the practiced eye of someone who has the skill. Browse through any good cookbook. You will find the recipes divide rather neatly into those which guarantee the same produce each time by merely repeating the instructions and those which at crucial points demand some kind of personal sense (gained only through another person who has it or through constaant trial and error, not by following instructinss. And a much greater proportion of pre-modern skills were of the frutying-an-egg rather than mix-these-ingredients-in this-exact-proportion type. In principle, perhaps, someone could have learned how to make pottery on a wheel from some ditty passed down, but I doubt it very much. And no one coulld ever master handmade pottery from a manual. One hint to what (for 'primitive' peoples: i.e. say 30k b.p.) is given by the lady in the play who said how can I know what I think till I see what I say. The 'wisdom' not the technology of the tribe belongs in stories. They would define who they were by the stories they told of where they came from. Carrol CeJ wrote: And stories are exactly it. In a story can be passed on to unborn generations how to make a wheel, how to make a stone axe, or the habits of predators and prey , how to organize a hunt or gathering socially ( brothers relate based on kinship in the hunt or in the defense against a predator, say). Chimps don't have stories like that. Having a wheel or a stone axe is a big adaptive advantage over whomever you might be competing with. The wheel or how to make a stone axe may be invented by some chimp genius, but if there is no way to pass it on When I was in the Army I knew guys who could not read an Army manual if their life depended on it, and yet you could blindfold them and they could take apart, clean, and re-assemble an M2 Browning machine gun. They didn't get this sort of skill because stories of their dead ancestors were passed down and accumulated over thousands of years. They got such dexterity (and lack of literacy) growing up in places like Lynchburg, VA, taking apart cars in their backyards. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Evolution of Culture
This was a fascinating post, I learned a lot from it. But it seems to me the understandings of language and change it describes could be expressed in other terms than the metaphor of evolution. Natural selection, applied to human history, including the history of language, seems to caught up in false notions of Progress as a comprehensive theory of histoy. Carrol ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko
Jim Farmelant wrote: On Sat, 27 Mar 2010 22:41:54 +0900 CeJ jann...@gmail.com writes: I guess if the project hadn't been authoritarian, it would have ben more 'efficient' and yielded enough bombs to wipe out even more of Japan. No, it would have been _less_ efficient. No one would, I thin, argue otherwise. But _efficiency_ is a stupid criterion for human activity. It constitutes what I call the Trap of the Present -- a trap glorified by Bernstein (The Movement is Everything) and decisively condemned by Luxemburg in her speeches at the a898 Converence of the SPD. Some former members of the SWP like to quote Cannon to the effect that The art of politics is knowing what to do next, which is just another way of featureing efficiency rather than intelligence in political thinking. Carrol ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Benjamin Button
Ralph Dumain wrote: Interesting. But I thought the message of Forrest Gump is that being white and a retard is a formula for bliss. Or as Swift put it in Tale of a Tub, the serene, blissful state of being a fool among roguess. Carrol ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] CORRECTION Re: Benjamin Button
I butchered Swift's phrase. It should be serene, peaceful state of a fool among knaves. Still from memory, but I think correct now. Carrol Carrol Cox wrote: Ralph Dumain wrote: Interesting. But I thought the message of Forrest Gump is that being white and a retard is a formula for bliss. Or as Swift put it in Tale of a Tub, the serene, blissful state of being a fool among roguess. Carrol ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] *The Professional*
The Nation February 1, 2010 edition *The Professional* By Eric Foner The first year may not be the best way to judge a president. After one year in office, Abraham Lincoln still insisted that slavery would not become a target of the Union war effort, Franklin D. Roosevelt had yet to address the need for social insurance in the wake of the Great Depression and John F. Kennedy viewed the civil rights movement as an annoying distraction. If we admire them today, it is mostly for what happened during the rest of their presidencies. Well, I'm not among the we who admire them today. My admiration is reserved for the people in the radical movments that _forced_ these men to reluctantly push forward watered-down versions of what was actually needed. FDR's sponsoring Social Security is archetypal here. What led hm to do that? Well there was the agitation for the Townsend Plan, which would have been _real_ retirement program, not the weak imitation that SS is. And the growing poularity of that plan would have been qutie a spur for FDR's Social Security. And that was in a larger context, which first emerged in the Bonus Marchers and the Hoovervilles of the early '30s, and was represented as well by Long's agitation for sharing the wealth. and the growth of the CPUSA of course, though it as a factor was weakened by its popular front subordination to the DP/Dixiecrats. As long as left liberals continue to support Obama there is not a chance of his moving to the left or supporting, even in a shit-eating way, left programs. He IS a conservative; he is NOT meely courting conservative opinion. He supports the Conservative Cause in principle -- he believes in it and will fight for it. Carrol ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] *The Professional*
c b wrote: I admire Lincoln and and Roosevelt There are indeed admirable aspects to Lincoln. But do you admire him more than you admire John Brown and Frederick Douglas? Without them, Lincoln very possibly wouldn't be Lincoln. Carrol ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Race Riots Grip Italian Town, and Mafia Is Suspected
One of the few TV programs I watched regularly before my eyes gave out was Real Sports on HBO. The best sociological program that ever appeared on TV. Some years ago they had a wonderful report on racism in European footbll (soccer to Americans). I can't remember any of the details, but it showed racism obviousl running pretty deep in Europe. Carrol ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
