>>> Jim heartfield <Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> 08/13 11:23 AM >>>
In message <000601bdc6c7$8002ca60$02f246d1 at epi59.EPI>, Max Sawicky
<sawicky at epinet.org> writes
>Those who cede the ideal of freedom to
>the right certify their own political
>irrelevance
I agree with that. I wrote an article making a similar point
http://www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM101/LM101_Freedom.html _______________
Chas.: The Marxist Left has not ceded the ideal of freedom to the right. See for example, _Democracy, Freedom and Revolution_. Or recall Engels' famous quote that freedom is the mastery and leap from necessity.
Liberariantism puts forth a limited concept of freedom which is not negated by the Left concept , but preserved and overcome. For example, the abstract freedom of speech vis-a-vis the state is a hollow right if one can lose her job for speaking out. The libertarian concept of freedom is philosophically idealist. The Marxist conept is materialist.
So I think Louis is being a bit harsh when he writes
>Who cares what the libertarians say. We are more interested in what they
>do.
Which I suppose is faultless logic, but the problem is that the left give up the ground of liberty to the right. __________ Charles:
Only a distorted version of what the left sees it this way. _________
In the forthcoming LM, we have a contribution from Nadine Strossen of the ACLU, who has been campaigning against Mayor Giuliani's anti-porn drive in NYC.
Strossen is not left wing, by any stretch of the imagination. But she speaks with more authority about civil liberties than any American leftist I know of.
> Our
>fight is not with libertarian philosophy, it is with a section of the
>ruling-class that wants to grind the workers into the dust.
Fighting talk, but why is liberty and the struggle against capitalism posed as contradictory? __________
Charles: "Libertarian" and "liberty" or freedom are not the same thing. The libertarian concept of freedom basically the old bourgeois concept. This is sublated in the Marxist or Left concept of freedom, which demands that the material basis for freedom be a right as well as its abstraction.
Charles Brown
Detroit