Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 13:58:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: Scott  Solomon <ss341-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Erwin Marquit/Scott Solomon



     NEVER CONTEND WITH SOMEONE WHO HAS NOTHING TO LOSE. By doing so
     you enter into an unequal conflict. The other enters without
     anxiety--having lost everything, including shame, he has no further
     loss to fear. He therefore resorts to all kinds of insolence. One
     should never expose a valuable reputation to so terrible a risk,
     least of all what has cost years to gain and may be lost in a moment--
     a single slight may wipe out much sweat. A person of honor and
     responsibility has a reputation, because has much to lose. He
     balances his own and the other's reputation. He only enters into
     the contest with the greatest caution, and then goes to work with
     such circumspection that he gives prudence the opportunity to
     retire in time and bring his reputation under cover. For even by
     victory he cannot gain what he has lost by exposing himself to the
     chances of loss.


Professor Marquit, you are a great Marxist, scientist, and 
revolutionary.  I sense that you have a great vision for the left in 
America, and I don't want to distract you from reifying this vision.  
Pardon my youthful insolence in calling you a Stalinist hack. I'm a big 
liar.  You never wore a Jesse Jackson button.  You never got ticked when 
we mentioned Trotsky, the Moscow trials, Browder, Lysenko, etc.  I made 
it all up.  The course description never was changed.  I'm just a lousy 
contra.  I hang out with college republicans.  I read Louis Ferdinand 
Celine just like that fascist Leon Trotsky.






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