Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 13:27:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alex Trotter <uburoi-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: histoire du marxisme americain



Not to belabor the point, but...

Justin says I misrepresented his position on American marxism not 
producing anything of worth post-WWII. Very well, perhaps so. But he in 
turn missed my point about the New York intellectuals. I didn't say that 
they all broke with marxism (Justin offers Irving Howe as one example); 
if you go back and look at what I wrote, I said that they all broke with 
trotskyism, not with marxism. That *is* true, as far as I know (although 
there must certainly be those who believe that trotskyism is the ne plus 
ultra of marxism; therefore they must be identical).

And concerning my remark that the failure of theory are the failures of 
the proletariat, Justin took that to indicate that I'm 'blaming the 
victim.' Actually, although my meaning may not have been clear, what I 
was thinking of was a thesis from Debord's *Society of the Spectacle*, 
which begins, "The weakness of Marx's theory is naturally the weakness of 
the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat of his time. The working 
class did not set off the permanent revolution in Germany of 1848; the 
Commune was defeated in isolation...." It is possible to look at an 
example such as the Paris Commune and point out rather obvious tactical 
blunders of the revolutionaries (not seizing the Bank of France, waiting 
passively for the attack of the Versailles army instead of trying to 
knock it out during its regroupment, etc.), actions which may or may not 
have led to ultimate victory, but whose omission made defeat that much 
swifter and more certain. The victims can, I think, be "blamed" for their 
own mistakes.


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