After the Autumn of the Patriarch (was Re: New Economy, Mid East)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sun Oct 15 16:10:14 PDT 2000



>Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>>I think Yoshie's point can be underlined. The question is not what is the
>>proper solution for the Paletinians to pursue -- that is their decision.
>
>You say this often, but are the directly involved the only ones who
>have anything interesting or useful to say about a situation? This
>sounds like the standpoint thinking that most Marxists identitarians
>usually rail against. What about solidarity? What about our own
>implication in the situation of Palestines and the imperial strength
>of israel? If Arafat is really a bogus leader, shouldn't we point
>that out to an audience that might not know that? I suspect
>Palestinians have plenty interesting to say about what policy the
>U.S. should pursue. Is it only metropolitan leftists that are under
>this gag rule?
>
>Doug

You can offer a critique of political economy, philosophy, etc. at a high level of abstraction which may be of use to someone somewhere some time, in the spirit of a Marx ensconced in the reading room of the British Museum after his excitement about 1848 revolutions subsided. You can develop boils on your bottom doing so, and you will have contributed to the future of the Left (if we got any future, that is). You can, alternatively, do concrete analyses of empirical phenomena, which are likely to be even more useful for people who are gathering information (and which are actually the kind of work you have been doing).

As for Arafat, we are not in a position to elect a new leader for Palestinians; nor are we for any other people, for that matter. (Thinking that we could or should would make us the Kiplings of the Left.) We are free to offer our opinions (since no one is stopping us), and other peoples are free to ignore what we have to say (and no one can compel them to listen). We don't have a Communist International of any kind. We don't even belong to the same political party. We are fellow travelers without the Party to travel with.

BTW, I still think that you & Lou (& many other big-city leftists) should move to Columbus, Ohio; Bloomington, Illinois; or Orlando, Florida. You guys will get along very well, because there aren't many leftists here with whom you can get along. (Despite sometimes fierce polemical exchanges online, Justin & I have been good friends offlist -- perhaps because Columbus, Ohio has taught us to value friendship among leftists.) Columbus, Bloomington, or Orlando would cure you of the Fourth International ambition, too.

Yoshie



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