From owner-marxism-international  Fri Apr  4 08:58:00 1997
From: cbcox@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox)
Message-Id: <9704041356.AA37740@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Grammatical Clique/Bourgeois Populism
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 07:56:59 -0600 (CST)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970403204544.16496B-100000@lictor.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Brian M Ganter" at Apr 3, 97 10:59:36 pm

    Brian Gantner in his invention of bourgeois grammatism or whatever
cites my bit of irritability about his group's original posting. That
is all that response was, a flash of irritation, grounded mostly in
the fact that some parts of the post did look interesting. I apologize.

    But, I did post later on my fears concerning a trend in which I
had read rather widely and strongly admired, and my *considered*
ire was not based on either style or format but on a deep fear that
what seemed to me a really important contribution to contemporary
socialist struggle was threatening to self-destruct.

    My specific fear is that that trend (or, I hope, only some of its
more inexperienced followers) is beginning to put an abstract metaphysical
TRUTH ahead of any embodiment of that truth in practice, or any grounding
of it in the total practice of the working class over time.

    One *possible* manifestation of this "better dead than incorrect"
mode is the group's apparent response to the *title* of Wood's book
(*Capitalism against Democracy*) rather than its substance: Wood has
been a principled and vigorous *foe* (not follower) of radical
democratic theory (e.g. Mouffe etc).

    The Buffalo group's "manifesto" is thoroughly *academic* in
style, and in this sense Andrew could learn from it: how an obsession
with precise "truth" destroys marxist theory and practice.
    Carrol


     --- from list marxism-international@lists.village.virginia.edu ---