So, what was the topic of discussion? Who was trying to pesuade whom on what issue? Are you going to tell us? Or is the Labor Party run on the basis of centralism that doesn't allow you to discuss such things in front of non-members?
>Practically everything I write on political economy is influenced by
>Marx, but I rarely use the received language. (I do like throwing in
>"bourgeoisie" or "capitalist hyena press" every now and then, for
>shock value.) I find people listening to me, and maybe even agreeing
>with me, who might well have stopped listening if I'd sounded like a
>party paper.
One must modulate one's rhetoric according to the audience, occasion, purpose, etc. of discourse, of course, but you stand on a non-existant aesthetic high ground when you try to lecture veterans of the freshman composition front like Carrol on Rhetoric 101.
Further, rhetorical discretion, when fully internalized, can create a superego that censors you without your knowing that you are submitting to it. That's the making of TINA, or Marxism in the closet. As your Verso comrade Zizek says, it's not that they know not what they do -- they know what they are doing, but they are still doing it.
Yoshie