> Btw, I do so much enjoy being called ignorant and a bitch, but I think Mack
> and Doug are entitled to the same attentions -- or is this some het thing
> happening that I don't quite understand?
There is no question that Ken M and Angela are about equally unscrupulous in debate, but Mackendrick offers evidence of having read my posts before posting his diversionary responses (and his ignorant ones too, as I have written in reply to his abysmal lines about the Commune), while Angela, as in this example, invents words for me instead, often attributing to me ideas I do not hold and stances I oppose instead of replying to my actual arguments.
Doug can be difficult in other ways. He virtually never acknowledges a persuasive argument in response to his, choosing instead to try a different line of debate, or to press on with a narrow excerpt of an otherwise abandoned argument, and he defensively styles strong critiques of academic arrogance and insolence as anti-intellectualism, but I think he sincerely wants to learn what others believe in contrast to his own sympathies. If I did not think that about Doug, I would not bother posting, because these other responses lack all political merit (and philosophical merit too, for that matter).
Recall that this thread began with Doug's report of Zizek's comment on Lenin, and his invitation to Leninists for responses, and following those responses, we got histrionics from anti-Leninists, who posted no substance whatever, but caricatures and pointed fingers of panicked accusation against Leninists instead, and demands for our banishment. Such is the overall quality of discourse on LBO-talk when the subject switches from reformist to revolutionary politics. In today's reactionary climate, liberals regard all visionary commitments to revolutionary change as lunacy. That will change only when the next mass insurgency captures their attention, and then takes a radical turn. It will happen.
I doubt that anyone in these debates expects to persuade the opposing participants, but the off-list replies from readers who are persuaded makes the project worthwhile, and even gratifying.
> > Paris Commune . . .
> 2. M&E did not embrace it unconditionally, and they had some pretty sharp
> criticisms of it, as you admit;
Here we get to the heart of Marxism, and how it is perverted by eclecticism. Yes, Marx and Engels and the First International DID support the Commune unconditionally. They placed no conditions on their support and solidarity whatsoever, despite holding very strong, privately expessed criticisms of the Commune's leadership and tactics, and published criticisms afterward. And THAT is the stance of principled socialism that is absent from this list. Even as he was anticipating the massacre ordered by Thiers that drowned the Commune in blood, Karl Marx wrote to Kugelmann on April 17, 1871, "The struggle of the working class with the capitalist class has entered a new phase through the Parisian struggle. No matter how things turn out now, a new point of departure of world importance has been won." Frederick Engels proclaimed that same conviction at the Commune's 20th anniversary tribute.
An earlier sentence in Marx's letter could stand as a general reply to all of Ken M's humbug: "World history, to be sure, would be very convenient to make, were the struggle to be taken up only on the guarantee of infallibly favorable conditions."
Ken Lawrence