==> I had not intended a reply to never-before-heard-from Brother Ross
at ISS in the very soft exile of The Hague (and my mail program,
being a somewhat better judge of people, dropped him into the inbox
about 30 hours late), but a local friend urged me to say something.
Well, what are friends for?!
valis
> It's hard to know how to reply to Valis on Cockburn, etc. Where does
> tongue in cheek end and imbecile sarcasm begin. Cockburn's so-called
> antics during the Spanish civil war are described in part in his own
> memoirs. If true --and Philip Knightly assumes they were in his
> book, The First Casualty-- they make clear that Cockburn had no
> hesitation in inventing a military victory for the Republicans in
> order to increase the prospects of assistance from the French.
> That is, to his immense credit, he had no loyalty to the bourgeois
> idealisation of his journalistic craft in the face of his political
> commitments. Hail Cockburn.
I admitted, if implicitly, knowing little or nothing re what David Walsh
was on about, and I merely moved the whole argument along in order that,
in order that what? In order that some frenzied pedant like you should
come along and bite on it, I suppose.
So what are you saying here; that Claud Cockburn used his reporter's
entre to concoct and transmit propaganda for the side he preferred,
and that the end - to coin a new phrase - justifies the means?
Are you also saying - it could be my gross misperception - that honesty
of word and deed is just bourgeois nonsense that _our_ NWO will make
short work of, and that his strategic lying makes Cockburn a hero?
Well, Bro Ross, being little more than a street thug I was ignorant of
all this about both you and him, but thanks muchly for the news.
You should have Cc'd it to David Horowitz as well; he probably needs
some fresh material by now.
> Meanwhile, what is this crap that Marx and Engels --sorry, "Moses and
> Aaron"-- ignored the "inconsistencies of their culture and origin"
> like most exiles?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Quoth I: "- exile can do that -" Different.
> The political exiles I've known in England --from
> Ireland, Chile, Iraq, etc.-- live out the pain of those
> inconsistencies everyday; but, they also get on with their political
> work (as opposed to academic memo-writing). What's the answer: a few
> years of expensive psychoanalysis to convince them their politics is
> all screwed up? If you think Engels ignored [the] contradictions of
> his upbringing and his politics, trace the development of his
> thoughts on Ireland, from the prejudices in The Condition of the
> English Working Class in 1844 to his later, more mature comprehension
> of the Irish. Much of this transformation was due to his long
> relationship and cohabitation with Mary Burns, an Irish factory
> worker; this relationship, as Steven Marcus observes, represented,
> for Engels, a "shifting and consolidation in conscious and
> unconscious identifications," about which, of course, it would be
> interesting to know more. But, our ignorance of further knowledge
> about the details and complexities of that relationship is one thing;
> another --and more important-- is what the hell difference does it
> make to the ultimate meaning of Engels' work?
This is hilarious in an awful sort of way. I have said more than once
on this list that anthropology will be more important than economics in
making the revolution, since the battlefield is now global and capital
seems ever more to be an electronic shell game about which few can agree.
Checking the ISS Website I see that my critic is in that very field;
well, I didn't say who in particular should do the work that's wanting.
I'm not ignorant of Mary Burns, the Marcus book or these other things
you mention quite beside the point I thought I was adequately conveying.
Unless you simply live for rhetorical flourishes, you know I was raising
the perennial question of just who all you academic firebrands think
you're working for other than people who can understand what you talk
about and why it's organized thus. For the rest bowl games and the
subliminal sops of fascism will serve just fine. At least recognize
that first and the antidote might follow; in any case I see this massive
shift in objective class position, that the workers may be as thoroughly
out of it as buffalo hunters in downtown Omaha, and I won't pretend
otherwise. Stick it in your pipe, Professor.
valis
