This is classic LBO/LPO- talk discourse. I think it is nonsense, and that it sucks.
Michael, I havent seen them, and -- moreover -- I sure havent seen anyone accuse her of being a stalinist. (I have no idea what quote mongering means, is that like being a fish-moger, and are there benefits?) That was my job last week, and I still think I was pretty good at it, "because I had some very strong arguments in that thread." It is in the archive, where you can look it up. Interestingly, Angela, whom you really should read b/c you would learn a lot from her, has recently shown the stalinist nature of Carrol's recent, and characteristically ill-humored post to her, one which was also -- like yours here -- a melodramatic defense of yoshie, apropos of nothing. Nothing that I can see at least. I am shocked that Ted's critique of the way Yoshie interprets Derrida and other stuff, did not engender more such responses, though of course Carrol tried. I regret having to name names here, but more on that in a short bit. I am not saying Ted and Angela and me and etc are Right. I am saying they have made the most sense to me, just as Doug and Max and etc have. As Ted said, if these are spitballs, well then, duck.
Eric and Doug and Max and etc do not need defended because they are, um, adults and intellectuals in their own right, who have made what I think are very strong arguments in the thread about material and institutional limits. Eric, too, b/c he has I think suggested that it is a-historical to think things like jealousy will rapidly peter out (excuse the pun perhaps) in post-rev society, just because capital has been socialized, and the expropriators, expropriated. He was not talking about an a-historical or eternal human nature, but its exact opposite. Imho, it is positively un-marxist to be utopian, and moreover to wax poetic about the post-rev. culture and society. Bloch might well disagree of course. What you will.
Talk of institutional arrangements is good sense, and a useful thought experiment, and that is what max and doug did. It is in the archives, too. (I am not mocking anyone, just the word "archive" in the context of mail-lists) I would also have added that it is an out-and-out cheat, and positively un- marxist, to wax poetic and such, without some type of detour through the histories of actually existing socialism. People do -- avoid -- this all the time of course ("Well, next time it'll happen *here* and we'll get it right b/c capitalism will have been..."); and this makes marxism and socialism look silly, and purely reactive. This is just an aside, mind.
Anyway, I think it would be swell if (some of) us listers could do a better job of not "personalizing" these here chats. Sometimes this place sounds and reads like a dysfunktional family, with petty side-taking and pathetic and familial side-taking ("us and our supporters" versus "those jerks who are always just throwing out epithets like stalinist w/out any arguments"). Can we drop this crap please. Is there any way to impersonalize this list. This is not a plea for undistorted, ideal speech situations. As Angela has noted, e-list protocols call this idea into question. But something needs to be done imho. "Dreadful oedipal atmosphere," as a couple communists used to say.
Jim O'connor has properly asked for dialectical reasoning. I think we could do a better job of approximating that (assuming we all know what this means of course) if we impersonalize this list. To hell with identity, I tell you. (I exaggerate here, of course.) Alternatively, maybe Doug could set up a chat room on LBO/LPO- site and all the personalist crap can happen in there (i jest).
------------------------------------------------------ Daniel F. Vukovich Dept. of English; The Unit for Criticism University of Illinois Urbana, IL 61801 ------------------------------------------------------