When you change a quote, never leave what the other person actually said appended below. People will read it and catch on.
I said: "My beef is with your implication that you've given any reason why marxism is less useful. You haven't" You turned that into "You misunderstand my point. I am not saying that 'Marxism is useless'", and had the effrontery to put it quotes as if you were quoting me. OK, lacking anything worth saying on my more nuanced point, you needed a strawman to whack, but don't you think you should be more, um, circumspect. As opposed, that is, to stopping the distortions in the first place, which, of course, is the best approach.
Second, when you have nothing further to say, or want to break off for some other reason, try to avoid covering your frustration/ego by gratuitously insulting the other person. And on that point, you shouldn't flatter yourself that I would waste my time trying to show that my intellect is superior to yours.
RO
Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
> You misunderstand my point. I am not saying that "Marxism is useless." I am
> saying that its core ideas can be expressed in terms that ordinary Americans
> can understand and will be receptive to, but not if people who wish to talk
> to the laity insist on talking in the language of 19th German social
> democracy or early 20th century Russian revolutionaries. For these ideas not
> to be rejected, they have to expressed in familiar accents.
>
> I don't pretend that this is a startlingly new or original idea or even that
> it is deep. It's just true and useful. It also has not been absorbed by many
> self-identified Marxists. Not all: some Marxists and Marxist-inflienced
> activists activists and thinkers do a good job of talking plain language,
> even in expressing deep. hard insights drawn from Marxist traditions.
> Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin come to mind as models.
>
> In addition I am not saying that there is no point to using a Marxist
> technical vocabulary in some contexts. I do this, and have done it, myself,
> where I thought it appropriate. But it's not appropriate for activist work,
> at least that aimed at a mass, or hopefully mass, audience. There will be no
> mass audience in America for people talking about "the proletariat" and so
> forth. I'd be happy to be proved wrong about this, but we have had over a
> century of experience to the contrary.
>
> As to the thought that the Marxist commonplaces I say most people accept
> could be assented to by right wingers: that is true, and they often are, but
> not for the reason you suggest. You translate them into the language of
> neoclassical economics. which is just as alien to ordinary folk as Marxtalk.
> What I mean is something that ordinary people of little education can
> understand because they have experienced it. I do not think that the basic
> Marxist critique of capitalism expresses ideas that bear no relation to the
> actual experience of working people. Nor do I think that workers are so
> befuddled that they do not know more or less what is going on.
>
> Anyway, you seem more interesting in establishing that you are a superior
> intellect than in enagging in a discussion, so I'll stop here.,