Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 18:57:54 -0500 (EST)
Subject: M-TH: OLD MAN OF THE LEFT 




Below we have circulated both a response to our original
posting on the "Performative Left" (on Marxism-international and
Marxism-thaxis lists) and our critique of that response.

--Revolutionary Marxist Collective at U of Buffalo (SUNY)


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 15:52:29 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
To: marxism-thaxis-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Cc: bmganter-AT-acsu.buffalo.edu
Subject: Ellen Meiksins Wood: Radical Democrat?

> The newest version of the new radical democracy is of
>course Wood's Democracy Against Capitalism which disguises itself as a
>Marxist critique of post-marxism while practically ending up in exactly
>the same place.  The rise of Wood to the status of a 'folk hero' of the
>left these days is itself highly symptomatic of the complicity of the left
>(especially its so-called 'radical' wing that in its literature critiques
>more obviously reactionary moves such as neo/post Marxism) with
>cybercapitalism. 
>
>The Revolutionary Marxist Collective at the University of Buffalo (SUNY).
>

Louis: What a load of crap. Here we have some graduate students denouncing
Ellen Meiksins Wood for not being a genuine rrrrevolutionary like they are.
What the hell does this "collective" do besides submit articles to the
Radical Orange? Organize steel-workers?

And what the fuck is cybercapitalism? Is this your contribution to Marxist
political economy? You blame Harry Magdoff for polluting Marxism. I can only
imagine the theoretical justification you use to coin this neologism.

I notice you like to use the word "problematize". I had a young friend from
Syracuse University, a trust-fund ultraleftist just like you guys, who loved
to use that word in every other sentence. I can just imagine the expression
on an ordinary working person's face when they hear bullshit jargon like this.

Whatever you want to say about MR, they knew and know how to reach people. A
book like "Man's Worldly Goods" is simply beyond the abilities of left
mandarins in training like yourselves to produce. When you pinheads get your
PhD's, and are lucky enough to get a job as sociology professors somewhere,
watch how fast your ultraleftism dissolves.

--------------------
REVOLUTIONARY MARXIST COLLECTIVE at U of Buffalo:

Louis Proyect, once again has reached the limits of his theoretical
literacy and as always has reacted with the violence typical of the RULE
OF IGNORANCE that he has advocated on this list.  His brand of populism is
one that has haunted Marxism throughout its history.  This marketing of
ignorance as "activist" politics (a repetition of a Weitlingian practice)
is engaged and critiqued by Marx addressing Weitling: "Ignorance never yet
helped anyone."  Louis Proyect whose rrrrrrrrrevolutionary practices
these days are basically writing book reviews on the net and organizing
cyberseminars has become an old man ... an old man who is now simply
reminiscing about the good old days.  The Revolutionary Marxist
Collective's text is simply beyond his grasp; thus his return to the
vulgarities of bourgeois polemics and intimidation.  This old man of the
left in fact goes further--he privatizes critique itself by not making his
response to our critique available on the list to all--all as a means of
quietly intimidating into silence a collective of students that
has "dared" to speak out against his reformist "activist" brand
of populism.  It is unfortunately not only Louis Proyect who has learned
techniques for containing radical Marxist knowledges and philosophies.
Carrol Cox, echoing the responses of others on the list  confronted by a
critique which exceeds their literacies ("Gobbledygook on Stilts"), falls
back to the schoolteachers' role of commenting on our spelling and
typography! 

This is the true poverty of left philosophy now, the diversions of an
anit-theory bureacuracy that has become so bankrupt that it now
openly announces and asserts --like Proyect in his response--that
working persons are incapable of grasping even the most fundamental
theoretical terms and concepts ("problematize").  Marxist philosophy
should confront and be inventive in dealing with the most advanced
bourgeois theories and in doing so should begin as Lenin teaches in "What
is To Be Done?".  It should begin not with workers-as-activists and
adherents of the RULE OF IGNORANCE as the Proyects profess again and again
, but, rather with workers as "socialist theoreticians" (to use Lenin's
term).  It is not suprising that Proyect invokes Huberman who during the
thirties with texts such as "Man's Worldly Goods" and "We The People"
alleviated the need for working class revolutionary theory, similar to
the folk/populist and empiricist historiographers of late capitalism : the 
Proyects, the E.P. Thompsons and the Howard Zinns of today.  With the 
assistance of Louis Proyect, Carrol Cox and their supporters, Marxism has
been purged of all philosophical sophistication and reduced to reminisces
and typographical checks.  

Uphold the Marxist-Leninist tradition of class struggle in the the combat
zones of capitalism--in the streets, in philosophy and on the net.  
Marxist theoretical thinking and practice lives!  







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