<< Isn't there even a strand in Marxism, one that includes Lenin
even, that regards the universalization of bourgeois culture and education
as part of socialism? What about Marx and the civilizing aspects of
capital? I think there's a certain kind of militant who posits an
authentic, autonomous proletarian culture that doesn't exist. >>
Of course, up to certain limits. (Would you argue that there is no authentic, autonomous Black culture? I doubt it. Proletarian culture in the U.S. is not homogenous as it is in many countries, but it certainly does exist. One need not caricature it, invest it with imaginary insurgent content, nor deny the universality of the best in bourgeois culture, to agree with your main point but insist on the part you left out. Proletarian culture also has peculiarities that don't easily fit political classification. Recently Stephen Gould wrote about one unusual interest that is widespread among industrial workers, much less so in other social strata -- keeping tropical fish.) Except for your three final words, those are all points that are addressed in the texts on Marxism and music which have been discussed on another thread here.
But that is a different subject from attempts by r-r-revolutionary Marxists to stifle discussion of their own or their group's bourgeois tendencies, which in modern U.S. society take certain characteristic forms with unfortunate political consequences. As I understand it, that is the discussion which Henry Liu attempted to open with his reference to class struggle, and which you averted by reference to the short list of LBO's bourgeois advocates, which I thought an evasion of Henry's point. I don't understand your defensiveness on this topic, that's all. Why must it be thwarted?
My personal conviction is that much of last month's debate over "free speech" really falls under this rubric. Activists who by training, habit, and conviction place themselves under the discipline of the mass movements in which they participate (or at least ought to be participating) never could have or would have defended the "right" of a Nazi professor to teach or of the KKK to set crosses afire in a public schoolyard. Those who argue in support of free speech torn from its context in mass confrontation, and as legal precedent in the abstract, are doing so from a bourgeois perspective, in my opinion. Others have disagreed, vigorously. Was your list threatened somehow by that exchange? If not, why by this one?
Ken Lawrence