Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 02:52:07 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: M-TH: Grammatical Clique/Bourgeois Populism


On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, Brian M Ganter wrote:

> of "truth" of a theory has become its "readability".  Both Louis Proyect
> and Doug Henwood deploy the vocabulary test against our writings and
> Proyect goes even to such a laughable length as to defend the Monthly
> Review crowd on the basis that they reach more people than we do.  

Louis: I support MR for their politics, not because they reach more people
than you do. Your point of view was actually more popular back when I was
your age during the pet-rock fad of "party-building". There were dozens of
Maoist and Trotskyist groups with thousands of members who all had the
identical formula of declaring a vanguard and calling for proletarian
revolution. These efforts failed. What is pathetic about you is that you
have not absorbed these lessons, nor do you understand what Lenin was
actually doing.

> revolutionary practices in "Specters of Marx".  Louis Proyects' memoirs
> are no match for Deleuze-Guattari's "Thousand Plateaus" (just to give the
> names of two of the books he must eventually run into in his never-ending
> search for books to review...)...  

Louis: I didn't "review" Deleuze-Guattari. I dismantled it. If you had any
discernible ideas, I would take them apart also. All I can detect however
is empty phrase-mongering.


> by the RMC at Buffalo has "shellshocked" the left on the net.  Andrew
> Austin expresses this "shock" by asking "Where in the hell did this post
> come from?" and makes it clear that he is not asking about the
> "geographical" origin of the post.  

Louis: What kind of a schmuck are you? I replied to you on marxism-thaxis
and you replied to my reply on marxism-international. Andy couldn't figure
out where this squabble was originating from. By the way, he is an ideal
candidate for your vanguard party of sociology majors. He loves to use
words like "problematize".

> 
> Therefore we declare to this philosophically bankrupt left: stop whining
> and start reading!! Learn to read CONCEPTUALLY--not the
> New York Times or the Left Business Review but learn to read philosophy.

Louis: Oh. Learn to read philosophy. Now I get it. No thanks, I studied
with members of Husserl's inner circle back in the mid-60's and that was
enough. I much prefer to read studies of coffee or cattle ranching written
by obscure economists like Robert Williams. 

> 
> No more alibis against the rigorous conceptuality of Marxist theory!  
> For Red Critique not populist reminiscing!
> 

Louis: "Rigorous conceptuality of Marxist theory"? Yes, why not. Also,
throw in the need to "deploy a discourse of epistemic oppositionality"
while you are at it.



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