Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 16:21:08 -0400
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: Charlotte Kates <ckates-AT-mosquito.com>
Subject: Re: The Professors' Plaintive Wail


The post to which you refer, forwarded by me, was written by Erwin Marquit,
a well-known Marxist academic who has done *a lot* of important work
relating to social, economic and theoretical problems. 

>>This venerable system of protecting, in the main, quarrelsome, arrogant, 
>lazy,self-important pipsqueaks is a distorted reflection of the skewed 
>values under capitalism.  
>>

This has never been a description of Marquit. He is none of the above. I
agree that all workers should have job security, including academics. Tenure
is valuable--there are still attacks on academic freedom. There is no need
for a virulent anti-academicism like that which permeates Louis's post.
Academics and intellectuals have a role to play in the building of a new
society and Marquit has been doing the utmost to bring about that society.
There needs to be unity of workers of hand and brain--and these categories
are far from exclusive, much manual work requires complex thought--in our
struggle for socialism. 

>>The picture of the modern pedant, "mean-minded, provincial, and envious", 
>producing little outside of a "sullen" "coerced activity" (most professors 
>do little research and less publishing and there are statistical tables to 
>prove it), enjoying a lifetime sinecure in dross-covered institutions that 
>have long outlived their usefulness, engenders little sympathy in this 
>writer, and, I suspect, in the public at large.

Hardly pertains to Marquit again. He has done much valuable research and
publishing and is one of the founders of the Marxist Educational Press.
Actually, the struggle at U of Minnesota has received public and student
support. 
Comradely, Charlotte

	    ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++
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