Ganter —•— M-I: OLD MAN OF THE LEFT

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  TEXT VERSION: M-I

See also: Re: M-I: OLD MAN OF THE LEFT   (post by Doug Henwood)

See also: Re: M-I: OLD MAN OF THE LEFT   (post by Andrew Wayne Austin)

See also: M-TH: OLD MAN OF THE LEFT   (post by Louis N Proyect)

From owner-marxism-international
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 18:54:31 -0500 (EST)
From: Brian M Ganter <bmganter@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: M-I: OLD MAN OF THE LEFT

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REVOLUTIONARY MARXIST COLLECTIVE at U of Buffalo:

Louis Proyect, once again has reached the limits of his theoretical literacy and as always has reacted with the violence typical of the RULE OF IGNORANCE that he has advocated on this list. His brand of populism is one that has haunted Marxism throughout its history. This marketing of ignorance as “activist” politics (a repetition of a Weitlingian practice) is engaged and critiqued by Marx addressing Weitling: “Ignorance never yet helped anyone." Louis Proyect whose rrrrevolutionary practices these days are basically writing book reviews on the net and organizing cyberseminars has become an old man ... an old man who is now simply reminiscing about the good old days. The Revolutionary Marxist Collective's text is simply beyond his grasp; thus his return to the vulgarities of bourgeois polemics and intimidation. This old man of the left in fact goes further — he privatizes critique itself by not making his response to our critique available on the list to all — all as a means of quietly intimidating into silence a collective of students that has “dared” to speak out against his reformist “activist” brand of populism. It is, unfortunately, not only Louis Proyect who has learned techniques for containing radical Marxist knowledges and philosophies. Carrol Cox, echoing the responses of others on the list confronted by a critique which exceeds their literacies ("Gobbledygook on Stilts"), falls back to the schoolteachers' role of commenting on our spelling and typography!

This is the true poverty of left philosophy now, the diversions of an anti-theory bureaucracy that has become so bankrupt that it now openly announces and asserts — like Proyect in his response — that working persons are incapable of grasping even the most fundamental theoretical terms and concepts ("problematize"). Marxist philosophy should confront and be inventive in dealing with the most advanced bourgeois theories and in doing so should begin as Lenin teaches in “What is To Be Done?". It should begin not with workers-as-activists and adherents of the RULE OF IGNORANCE as the Projects profess again and again, but, rather with workers as “socialist theoreticians” (to use Lenin's term). It is not surprising that Proyect invokes Huberman who during the thirties with texts such as “Man's Worldly Goods” and “We The People” alleviated the need for working class revolutionary theory, similar to the folk/populist and empiricist historiographers of late capitalism: the Proyects, the E.P. Thompsons and the Howard Zinns of today. With the assistance of Louis Proyect, Carrol Cox and their supporters, Marxism has been purged of all philosophical sophistication and reduced to reminisces and typographical checks.

Uphold the Marxist-Leninist tradition of class struggle in the combat zones of capitalism — in the streets, in philosophy and on the net. Marxist theoretical thinking and practice lives!

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