RE: Re: RE: William Appleman Williams
> << Rutgers history department from '65-'75 was a hotbed of > these types. Included Eugene Genovese, Lloyd Gardner, > and Warren Susman, . . . . They had > little of special note to say about race or > poverty, the two other big concerns of the time.. . . > Genovese's subsequent > erratic path is well known. >> > > Genovese had little to say about race? What planet are you from? Klendathu, but let me qualify. I was speaking from my personal experience w/the profs, and EG had left by the time I arrived, as I noted. Of course EG had a lot to say about race. My point was those remaining did not, as I recollect. Their main contribution was in re: the war. mbs
Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: William Appleman Williams
Jim Devine wrote: >In the specific case of Genovese, there's more than just pressure >from fellow leftists or hatred of sectarians. He also became >attached to the notion that the antebellum South presented a certain >kind of natural order without all the chaos and individualism that >characterizes capitalism. That weird idea helped him along. He's hardly alone in that, or a version of that. There are plenty of leftish folks who revere "traditional" societies, either in our own past or somewhere else in space, as being more organic and gentle than the USA in the year 2000. I think this is a kind of exoticism, but I don't feel like having that fight right now. Doug
Re: RE: Re: RE: William Appleman Williams
you wrote that Eugene Genovese >... was amiable enough and seemed to balance the positives of his own >brand of marxism and conservatism more or less equally. How he >rationalized it is beyond my powers of comprehension. The best I can say >is that there were some things he hated so much about some or maybe most >of the left that it drove him all the way to the other side. this is a problem. Sometimes when people start "falling away" from the left, the rest of the Left start calling them names, while shunning them socially. (This is worse if they belonged to sectarian organizations.) For many, that encourages them to surge farther to the right. Right-wingers sometimes welcome them with open arms, encouraging that trend. Of course, it's not just the Left's fault. There's at least one case of someone who took this trajectory (e.g., David Horowitz of RAMPARTS fame) where the individual in question should have never been part of the Left. And there are jerks distributed randomly across the political spectrum, so there's no reason for the Left to beat itself up about this phenomenon. But I think we can at least try to avoid pushing people to the right. In the specific case of Genovese, there's more than just pressure from fellow leftists or hatred of sectarians. He also became attached to the notion that the antebellum South presented a certain kind of natural order without all the chaos and individualism that characterizes capitalism. That weird idea helped him along. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
RE: Re: RE: William Appleman Williams
> Max B. Sawicky wrote: > > Genovese's subsequent erratic path is well known. > > I have a dim childhood memory of Genovese becoming an issue in the NJ > gubernatorial campaign, after he said he would welcome a Vietcong > victory. As I recall, the issue was whether he should be fired or not. Right. He gave a speech where he said that, tho he had said as much before, but it became a media event. His last year at Rutgers was 66-67, right before I arrived, so all my info on him is second hand from radical grad students in the history dept. I was told he was not fired outright, just made to feel extremely unwanted. I believe his next stop was Yale, so one could imagine worse forms of punishment. > Back in '92, though, a friend of mine had dinner with him and he > sounded off about how he was going to vote for Bush, his only regret > being that Bush stopped Powell & Schwarzkopf from going onto Baghdad. > He also denounced the abortion clinic defenses that were big at the > time. A couple of years ago, Genovese had offered some effusive > remarks to the neo-confederate journal Southern Partisan on the death > of the reactionary literary scholar M.E. Bradford. Is that "erratic"? > Doug Seeing as how he had been a CPer, then a PLer, then an independent Stalinist who started and crashed a number of projects, yes I would say erratic is a reasonable summary of his trajectory. His wife -- Elizabeth Fox Genovese -- has had an equally fascinating intellectual journey.On the plus side, I am told he was very generous and non-elitist with young profs. I met him briefly after a talk he gave at the American Enterprise Institute. Told him I knew some marxists he had nurtured back in the day. He was amiable enough and seemed to balance the positives of his own brand of marxism and conservatism more or less equally. How he rationalized it is beyond my powers of comprehension. The best I can say is that there were some things he hated so much about some or maybe most of the left that it drove him all the way to the other side. My best & only Genovese story. After he had launched and then blew up another organizing project of some sort, his wife was quoted as saying, "Well, Gene wrapped up another one." mbs
