Methinks Lou is just envious!
Michael Pugliese
----- Original Message ----- From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 at PANIX.COM> To: <SOCIALIST-REGISTER at YORKU.CA> Sent: Friday, May 12, 2000 6:44 AM Subject: Re: New Left Review/A Rejoinder by Tariq Ali
> Tariq Ali has replied to Boris Kargalitsky through an email, which just
> appeared on the Socialist-Register list. His reply is basically a defense
> of Perry Anderson's pessimism, to wit:
>
> "The collapse of all systemic alternatives is plainly visible. Seattle was
> extremely invigorating, but neither that nor the strike-wave in France
> amounts to a fundamental change in the situation. To exaggerate will only
> increase the despair. To recognise what has happened does not mean a
> passive acceptance of the status quo. We will carry on the debate,
> naturally, as Jeffrey Isaac and Alex Callinicos demonstrate in NLR 2, but
> the fact is we live in a different epoch from the one which Lenin
described
> as one of 'wars and revolutions'."
>
> The other thing worth noting is Ali's smart-ass attempt to "deconstruct"
> Boris's article as resentment over a Verso rejection slip:
>
> "When I met him recently at the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York
> he had very little to say about the NLR, but a great deal about his own
> personal complaints against the publishing house, Verso, which had
rejected
> his book on the European Left. I had no knowledge of this rejection, but
> was pleased on his behalf when he told me that Pluto Press had published
it
> in three small volumes and it was doing very well, but I could see he was
> very angry at being rejected by Verso and was particularly hostile to the
> letter he had received from Robin Blackburn rejecting the manuscript. But
> what could have been the 'suicide of Verso' for the crime of having
> rejected a manuscript from Boris has been casually transferred to the New
> Left Review."
>
> This bit of business says much more about Tariq Ali than it does about
> Boris. Basically, it is the sort of gossipy item that gets circulated in
> the claustrophobic world of big-name left journalists and scholars who
> compete for attention in the glitzy world of publishing and conference
> plenary sessions.
>
> Twenty-five years ago Tariq Ali was a British Trotskyist and
self-described
> "Street Fighting Man". As the 70s wound down, he switched careers. Instead
> of trying to make a revolution (what a foolish idea), he made a career in
> television and in novel-writing. There was one notable novel, a minor
> masterpiece really, called "Redemption." This was a delicious satire on a
> retooled Trotskyist movement that peddled religion instead of politics.
>
> I wrote a review of the book that, like Boris's article, made the rounds
in
> cyberspace, eventually landing on Tariq's computer. This led to a friendly
> exchange of email and a brief introduction at a Verso book party in New
> York City for Tariq's latest novel, a well-intentioned but lifeless study
> of Saladdin. He impressed me as being a world-weary, cynical and bored
> left-celebrity of the kind that is drawn inevitably to a house like Verso.
>
> I understand now that the satire of "Redemption" relied on a certain
> "marketing" zeitgeist that fundamentally reflected as much on the author
as
> his targets. There's something a bit "off" about the world of the
> Trotskyist movement as depicted in Ali's novel. The notion that people
like
> Tony Cliff or Ernest Mandel would decide to peddle religion instead of
> politics perhaps tells us more about the shift that Tariq Ali was about to
> undertake, one that the character in "Ploughman's Lunch" pursued: to find
a
> way to make a career in the glitzy world of television and publishing, no
> matter the product.
>
>
> Louis Proyect
>
> (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)