Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 23:12:45 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Zabar's bagels (lnp post #2)


On Sat, 8 Feb 1997, Viraj Fernando wrote:

> You can stuff your Zabar bagels anywhere you like, Sri Lankan peasants eat
> rice and roti. So let's have it that way. No self-respecting person would
> compromise the way you propose. These are two different issues. Let us solve
> them issue by issue, without deals. In your culture everything is a deal.
> Now they call it win-win. I do not want it.
> 
> Besides, your statement has racist connotations. 
> 

Louis: I agree with you. This would amount to a rotten, if not racist,
attempt to get you to compromise your political integrity. Why would I
have ever attempted to buy your silence with the most expensive bagels in
New York? You impress me as a man who would resist such blandishments the
way that Comrade Gonzalo resists peace negotiations with the Fujimori
dictatorship in Peru. 

Why just this morning I paced back and forth in my apartment trying to
decide whether to make this offer or not. I came to realize the terrible
choices that Lenin was forced to make at the time of Brest-Litovsk. A
shipment of bagels to Sri Lanka would represent a financial sacrifice for
a person of my modest means on a par with the concession of territory the
infant Soviet republic made as a result of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. I
am glad that you turned this offer down. It shows tremendous revolutionary
fiber. (Of course, if you eat too many bagels, you may find yourself in
need of dietry fiber. Especially those delicious but heavy bagels from
Zabar's. Yummmy!)

Now returning to the other offer. I will contact my scientist brothers and
sisters at Columbia on monday morning. There is a Professor Kaplan-Lopez
who has invented a clock with thirteen hours instead of twelve. He claims
that there is a passage in Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks which lends
credence to the notion that feudal superstition caused the clocks of the
modern era to be based on twelve hours rather than the more useful
thirteen. (The argument of course is that thirteen hours in a day allow
more time for the class struggle) This superstition is similar to the
curious practice in some New York skyscrapers of calling the 13th floor
the 14th floor. I myself live on the thirteenth floor and have never
experienced any bad luck. (Except for the one time that I invited a woman
back to my apartment one night after one drink too many at a lower east
side bar. She turned out to be a Spartacist League member.)

Tomorrow morning I will send email to this Professor Momzer at the
University of New Mexico I told you about. He is writing a paper on the
connection between leap years and the Kondratiev "long wave" economic
theory. You can expect to hear from him shortly. He claims that if leap
years were eliminated, the "long waves" would become shortened and
capitalism's fall would be hastened. A brilliant chap, I do say.




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