Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 03:09:34 +0100
Subject: Re: Marxism: Raw Meat and Lumpy Potatoes Questions?


Leo writes a lot of anti-Marxist drivel, prefaced by the following
condescending and mistaken remarks:

>I don't think it is really this necessary to jump all over the >newcomer
>Mark Adkins; maybe he is just imitating Snoop Doggy Doug >Henwood without
>realizing he is adopting a truculent, second rate >version of Internet
>provocation. Yes, his questions are far too >general and broad-reaching to
>be all discussed in any depth, but they >are also not irrelevant -- in
>some ways they go straight
>to the core of the relevance of the Marxian project.

I was surprised by the serious, tolerant answers Mark received, and pleased
at the chord his challenge seemed to strike in Rahul.

If Leo thinks the list response is 'jumping all over' somebody, he's got a
strange idea of 'jumping all over' (and a very short memory). His own
gratuitous slurring of Doug H is a much better example of 'jumping all
over', but perhaps he thinks this is necessary, Doug H preferring m1 and
all that.

And there ain't no such animal as 'the Marxian project'.

*Marx* had a project -- helping society move from the historically spent
capitalist mode of production to the collectively owned and cooperatively
managed socialist mode of production, the preconditions for which had been
put in place by the development of capitalism. The main instrument of this
transformation he saw in an international, proletarian, revolutionary
socialist party.

But Marxists vary from complete support for this line to complete
opposition to it, depending on their degree of orthodoxy.

As others have said, Mark will have to decide for himself. From the
determined nature of his many questions, and the rhetorical flourishes he's
already shown in his response to one or two replies, I rather suspect his
mind is already made up and that he won't be with us for long.

I recall Mimi L doing something similar -- starting out by posing some
'innocent' questions about the role of women, and after two or three
postings laying down the law about how reactionary Marx and revolutionary
parties were. But I doubt that Mark will have a cure-all as entertaining as
putting catshit in corn flakes packets to shock the suburbs out of their
lethargy.

ciao 4 now!

Hugh




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