Date: 25 Nov 96 21:44:57 EST
From: robert scheetz <76550.1064-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: List Sociology


Bob Malecki,

What a pleasant surprise!

Ya know, when I got the notices from Hans Erbhar and picked
"marxism-international", I had no idea I was barging in on a coven of
unreconstructed CP'ers doing their cadre training.  My first post,
one night, near blind with fatigue, in all innocence, I asked Mother (btw, you
got it) Proyect if the trotskyan critique of the '80's Central
American War, i.e. essentially the betrayal of the uprising by
the liberals, Castro and Ortega & co., opting for the "Contadora"
route, etc., was not definitively confirmed by a NYT item on Danny
Ortega and the Nicaraguan elections (which restored the Samocistas)
he had just excerpted for the list;...came back privately, he proofed
my paragraph, and called me all sorts of filth; and never addressed
the question at all.  I was puzzled...thinks I, "this is a bit
gratuitous."...well the butter soon clarified...funny, no?

You are kind enough to ask my politics.

I'm afraid, the older I get, the more austere they become.
For casual purposes I just own to being a Chomskyan, Nader-ite, etc.
But my metaphysical core is: 1) sacrality of life, and supremely,
human life (recently saw Dead Man Walking, considered it a 
powerful statement of this thesis), and 2) labor theory of
value (from Aristotle's artificer to Marx, and from my own
carpentry to Bramante, I have an existential conviction of
the creativity, rising to miraculous, of human labor. So
this is my general notion of the way salvation lies.

On the first head, I found the Theology of Liberation
component of the 80's Central American resistence very
appealing and hopeful (and the wonderfully diabolical irony of
it being betrayed to the death squads by the Pope, undoubtedly at the instance
of the CIA).

What d'ya think? pretty humble stuff, eh?

Bob Scheetz



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