Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> My major objection to the rhetorical style is that it alienates the
> unpersuaded rather than attracting them.
Doug, two points:
(1) Really, no one would ever object to this argument -- IF it was preceded by firm agreement on substance PRIOR TO and discussion of style.
(2) In part I think your concern is based on lack of acquaintance with how these users of jargon *actually talk to people* when they are (using the old Plekhanov-Lenin-etc distinction) engaged in agitational work (as opposed to theory, propaganda, or intra-movement polemics). In over 30 years not *once* have I ever offended a *non-marxist* whose political solidarity I wanted with what you call jargon. It doesn't even occur to me.
On the other hand, when I am speaking or writing to those who call themselves marxists, I sometimes rephrase what I have to say from non-jargon to jargon because jargon is less elitist than non-jargon. Those of us (most on this list) who have a bourgeois rhetorical training have no difficulty in finding a dozen ways to say the same thing (either newly coined or from our memories of things read or heard). But for communication (assuming convinced comrades talking) to proceed on a basis of minimal equality that advantage of the super-educated must be brought under control -- and the way to do it is make everyone speak the same language, that is, everyone sticks to a shared vocabulary, with no elegant variation allowed.
I first made this argument 28 years ago while at an NUC conference, talking with a University of Chicago Professor who was a red-diaper baby. He searched back in his memory and came up with the information that, indeed, the less education a comrade had, the more apt he/she was to make heavy use of jargon. Back in the mid-70s Jan and I had put together a substantial little communist group here in Bloomington/Normal Illinois -- and the experience in that group was also that the amount of jargon used varied inversely to education.
So if you really want to get rid of jargon, you are going to have to discover a way to give a 3-week equivalent of a Yale education to people who barely got through high school.
Carrol