Is "jargon" jargon, was Re: dead topix

t byfield tbyfield at panix.com
Wed Dec 15 11:18:09 PST 1999



> Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 12:46:25 -0600
> From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>


> If the cartoon appears the day before an election, and the only
> goal of agitation is to generate assent for a candidate (or a
> referendum) during the brief period of deciding to vote, going
> to the polls, and then voting the right way. Then yes. Our only
> need is to make a complex point pungently and go home.

the failure of your critique resides in your 'we,' which serves first and foremost to exclude just about everyone as somehow beyond reach, defective, simpleminded, etc.


> But that kind of passive support evaporates fairly quickly. And
> most left movements of significance only begin to build real
> momentum after three or four years or more. The pungent
> cartoon or a thousand pungent cartoons and one-paragraph
> leaflets will not do unless they are incorporated into something
> rather more complex. All that cartoon says, really, is Proudhon's
> Property is Theft. As an agitational slogan even that isn't
> bad. As propaganda both that slogan and your cartoon are
> toothless.

phooey. you assume that 'a thousand pungent cartoons and one- paragraph lefalets' aren't themselves a symptom of 'real mom- entum' or something 'rather more complex.'

afaict, you're just defending the presumption of bureaucrats to leech^W 'build,' hm, well, just about anything at all.

<...>
> And cut it how you want, this is going to take hours
> and hours and months and months of internal discussion,
> and though such discussion, tied to programmatic
> action, is not quite as far ranging as discussion on a
> maillist, which can't but be separated from practice in
> a radical way, still it won't be simple.

feel free to form a fact-finding committee, but don't feel free to condemn those who don't join it or submit to it.


> So I have had in mind as I wrote these posts primarily
> two contexts. The first one is the conversation with
> someone who has seen a dozen or so of those cartoons
> and read a few leaflets written in agitational style. (I
> notice you use the term agitprop, which I believe is
> misleading because it combines rather different modes
> of discourse.) She is now tentatively *one of us*, not
> a nameless faceless cipher reading the newspaper or
> looking at the cartoon. (You keep speaking of language
> that will attract people, but you never speak of how
> we get them within earshot to listen to or read that
> wonderful language.) She's convinced. That's how that
> capitalist makes his money. Do tell? Where do I
> go from here.

<...>

a good way to 'get them within earshot' is to start with the assumption that they're already there. oh, yeah, and not ipso facto retarded.

and to the rest of what you say: phooey. elitist maunderings.

cheers, t



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