Date: Thu, 3 Jul 1997 20:29:45 +0200 (MET DST) From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens) Subject: Re: M-G: Farewell, heavenly windbag! Vladimir, *That's* real poetry! (Below.) Mainly true, IMO. But don't forget Bob's got some good points too. At least I think so. Rolf M. >Dear Bob, > >You have won another great victory. It will go in the long "anals of >history" of victories >of folly over reason. But since even folly today must dress in the >language of Marx I >find you a mocking confirmation of its strength. Marxism has sunk into >the >thickness of humanity so deep that it has not only its geniuses and >martyrs, great >villains and heroes, but its own street nuts as well. So now it's a >complete life world on >its own. And this is good. If we imagine Marxism as a city, your place >in >its topography would be a street corner. Every morning, when marxist >crowd busily >moves to work, a tribe of crazies waits for them on street corners, >one's own for >each nut: a trotskyist, a maoist, a marxist-leninist, etc. They talk >passionately, with >conviction and force. But if an occasional passerby , new to the city, >stops for a >couple of minutes to listen to this feverish flow of words he soon >realizes that the >they are connected only grammatically and, perhaps, also by some secret >logic >of madness that he cannot penetrate. At first, the passerby is mildly >scared by the >nut's wild gesticulation. He shouldn't. The nut's fists never cross >some imaginary line >between himself and the onlooker, as if there is a magic circle around >him that separates >him from the world and makes him invulnerable to it. And so the >passerby moves on. >He will never again return to the spot. As the rest of the city crowd, >from now on he >will see the street nuts as nothing else but a natural part of the city >landscape. Perhaps, >he is wrong. Perhaps, they cut some instructive allegory for us all >which we have yet to >decipher. Could it be that Bob is here to remind us that thought, >separated from deed, >takes revenge on itself and becomes its opposite, returns to myth, and >even >further back into the past, to the magic function of words? Or perhaps >Bob is >a divine jester telling us cryptically that communism is not of this >world and that >no amount of marxist normalcy takes us an inch closer to it? Whatever >it is I'm >leaving Bob's street corner never to come back. Go on, waving your >fists, >Bob. Go on, chanting your magic words, divine windbag. Farewell, >dear fellow, till I stop one day at your street corner in the City Of >Heaven. > >Vladimir Bilenkin > > > > > --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- > > --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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