File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1995/95-07-marxism/95-07-31.000, message 99


Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 08:08:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: Definitions of Imperialism?


On Thu, 27 Jul 1995, Howie Chodos wrote:

> Two comments. First, the identification of imperialism with a phase of
> capitalism that is moribund seems to me to be hard to sustain. Much of
> Lenin's argument concerning the expansionist, aggressive character of
> imperialism was built around this idea. Which isn't to say that imperialism
> isn't aggressive and expansionist. It's just that it isn't dying, it isn't
> technologically stagnant.

Louis Proyect:
You should run your posts through a grammar checker first. There are far 
too many (ie., more than zero) uses of the passive voice. In the business 
world we try to avoid the use of the passive voice as much as possible, 
because too often people use it as a way to shirk responsibility. (For 
example, "the forms will be delivered at 9 am...." Who will deliver the 
fucking forms, goddamnit?!)

You spin a web of gossamer about "ideas", Lenin's adoption of such ideas, 
all held together with the most maddening use of the passive voice. This may 
stand up in the academic world, but it won't in the world I live in.

When in the hell did Lenin say capitalism was moribund? You naughty 
thing, you wouldn't be putting words in the dead leader's mouth, now would 
you. So forth, and so on....


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