Doug Henwood writes:
>When to the right, and actually much of the American populist left,
Marxism
>is just another continental theory, one of those odd Yurpean imports
that
>has no relevance to the New World.
One of my self-flagellating habits is reading David Horowitz's Frontpage magazine, and I've noticed his tendency to to conflate what he calls the "nihilism" of post-structuralism with Marxism. Like I've said before, these gasbags don't make distinctions. Sure, the NAS types want Judith Butler gone, but they'd also off Chomsky and Jameson given the chance. To quote the Reverend Lovejoy's wife on the Simpsons, "think of the children!" Do we want an American where kids are subjected to Harold Bloom and P-(g)ag-lee-(d)uh?
Paul Henry Rosenberg writes:
>I don't agree with the basic thrust of PoMo
>theory or practice (the practice of hiding in universities, IMHO)
Yeah, but are the "PoMos" (as you call them) the only people doing this? I mean, besides nominal ties to Communist parties, how many of the Western Marxists were engaged in day-to-day struggle? Or to take a contemporary non-"PoMo" Left example, look at someone like bell hooks. I never see her name attached to any radical movement. No socialist ties, no feminist ties, no involvement with the BRC, nothing, zip, nada. Should we disregard her work because she's insufficiently committed to praxis? I think not. IMHO, her various writings on how black folk (particularly females) are portrayed in popular culture are invaluable.
And for the record, I'm tired of the canard about "PoMos" not being sufficiently committed to Praxis. Where is the evidence for this? Just because Jean Baudrillard seems to think resistance is futile doesn't mean that everyone else does.
Carrol Cox writes:
>On one point I take Lenin as axiomatic
<snip>
Man, I learned long ago not to take anything as axiomatic. Lenin's strategies were formulated in response to Russian conditions at the time.
To claim anything more is to create a Marxist cult around St. Vlad.
On the rest of your post Carrol, you're really constructing an elaborate strawman. I never advocated squelching gay rights, or feminism, or the black liberation struggle all in the interest of "working class unity." What I was calling for was solidarity among Left academics of all stripes, and the necessity for self-proclaimed Marxists within the academy to defend their "PoMo" brethren against outside attacks by reactionaries like Bennett, Bloom, Horowitz, the NAS, etc.
Alan Sokal has become a veritable hero to the Right. It got to the point where he actually had to write a letter to Newsweek pointing out that he himself was on the political Left and that his goofy hoax was not an attempt to discredit the Left as a whole. But that disclaimer was too little, too late. Right after the Sokal hoax, I read an article in the National Review in which Sokal's little stunt was compared favorably to red-baiting on campuses in the 50s. The author of the piece then proceeded to ridicule the Social Text website, what with its links to the Noam Chomsky archive and the like (to the reactionaries, Chomsky is no different from Aronowitz. All academic Leftists are alike, right?)
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