Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 11:33:08 -0600 (CST)
From: Chegitz Guevara <mluziett-AT-shrike.depaul.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Jargon


On Sun, 24 Nov 1996, Anthony J Caruso wrote:

> 	I only meant to refer to sex as an imperialist pleasure when it
> becomes such a distraction to the individual that they cannot go on in
> ordinalry everyday life as they once did...kind of like a mania, I
> guess. 

	But that isn't what you said. What you said is that American
communists are not interested in sex. I pointed out how wrong you are. 
Then Jay Miles jumps in to make me out to be some kind of fiend, because I
recognize that its wonderful to be human at times. 

> 	When sex can take your focus off of the Proletarian struggle --
> I'm not talking for a few hours or for a day -- I'm talking about when
> you indulge so heavily in an activity that everything else takes a back
> seat.

	Yes, yes. Lenin wrote a small piece about how people's attitudes
towards sex was endangering the revolution. The context was overcourse,
the Civil War, and people were spending so much time being rutting animals
that there weren't getting the vital jobs done. However, what this points
out is that Jay Miles was incorrect when he stated that it is wrong to
think that humans' natural sexual desires are repressed under class
society and will flower after the revolution. For this is precisely what
happens. 

> 	When people get to be like *this* is what I meant by refering to
> sex as an "imperialist pleasure."  Sorry...I should have spoken much
> more clearly.

	Frankly, 'tain't much of of your business how much sex people have
as long as it is between consenting adults. Your hatred of this horrible
system, while quite justified, is so overwhelming that it is blinding you
to the joy of being human.

	It is easy to give one's self over to hate. I did for a long time. 
One only has to look at the South Asian sex trade to lose it. I still get
frustratingly, sometimes insanely, furious when I learn about female
genital mutilation, foot binding, the destruction of the environment, the
expulsion of the Palestinian people of their ancestoral home, and the list
just goes on. But you can't build a better world on hate alone, or even
mostly.

	Che Guevara, the real one, said that what motivates the true
revolutionary is a love for the people, not some mythical people, but real
people in their real world circumstances. That same sense of love for
humanity and our possibilites is very strong in Marx and Engel's "The
German Ideology."

	How can we possibily build a better world when we only focus on
the negative? I can't possibly see hate motivated revolutionaries building
a world based on joy.

> Anthony J. Caruso

Marc, "the Chegitz," Luzietti
personal homepage: http://shrike.depaul.edu/~mluziett
political homepage: http://shrike.depaul.edu/~mluziett/chegitz.html

"What is robbing a bank, compared with founding a bank?" -- Brecht



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