Marcuse and the CIA

Louis Proyect lnp3 at panix.com
Mon Nov 2 16:09:16 PST 1998



>It never occurred to me that Marx was anything but a libertarian.
>Freedom is the essence of his critique of capitalism and of the state.
>No synthesis necessary there.
>
>I can't answer for LM, I just write for it, I'm not the editor.
>--
>Jim heartfield

This is one over my quota, but I want to protest this prodding of where Jim stands in relation to LM. He should be judged on his contribution to LBO and to the Marxism list and not by anything that happens outside it. Although everybody knows that my conception of Marxism differs radically from his, I respect his own efforts to figure things out using whatever criteria he deems useful. It occurs to me that one of the reasons Jim likes these moldy old fig mail-lists is that they are different from what people close to him think and say. Another LM'er who goes by the name "Big Mac", as in the hamburger that will kill you, posts everyday to the Trotsky newsgroup but it is not the LM "line". I doubt that the former RCP is in any position to discipline its members (?) to promote the group. What would this entail? Demanding that they exceed the speed limit? Not use condoms when they fuck? For all practical purposes they seem to have relaxed the discipline that is characteristic of groups that come out of the Fourth International tradition. God bless 'em, I say.

Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)



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