Date: Wed, 17 Aug 1994 00:38:18 -0500 (CDT)
From: MICHAEL BRUCE MCDONALD <S1MBM-AT-ISUVAX.IASTATE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Marxism and academia


My, Louis, for someone who has taken on the onus of railing against
academics, your posts certainly have a remarkably, well, *academic*
quality.  If you're so hot to take it to the streets to "end capitalism,"
as you put it, why have you bothered working so hard at studying the]
history of Marxism?  Haven't your own studies robbed you of precious time
organizing, etc.?  Why *are* you spending so much time on e-mail, anyway,
pursuing activity that is *transparently* failing to organize the
contributors to this group in the way that you would have them organize?

You really just can't bear the thought that there are self-professed
Marxists out here who don't accept *your* definition of Marxism, can
you?  Frankly, if yours *were* the only available definition of
Marxism, I wouldn't have the slightest interest in the same.

Marx was simply too good a thinker to fall for the sort of readymade
binaries you seek to proffer us here.  For you, capitalism is the
equivalent of the Christian Satan, the source of evil in your universe.
Thus, you seem, anyway, to be utterly oblivious to the dialectic
wherein capitalism *has* wrought "good" things in human history, 
bringing us to the stage *necessary*, as Marx was wont to insist,
for a more egalitarian world to succeed.  If you go on railing against
a wholly demonized capitalism, you ain't gonna make it with anyone 
anyhow . . .

Michael McDonald

p.s.  So what about that Columbia address, anyway?  Looks suspiciously
academic to me . . .


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