pre-capitalist sex

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Apr 16 06:57:28 PDT 2001


Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema wrote:


>I certainly agree. Another of Wolfe's early books is good too. Forget the
>title. My observation is that where old leftists moved to the right around
>issues of the USSR, the new leftists who do so do it because, in some way or
>other, they deplore the decline of the father-dominated family, and the sexual
>values that go with it. This leads to various accommodations with
>anti-feminism
>and homophobia.

I did a review of Wolfe's last book - One Nation After All, a real piece of crap - for The Baffler. I talked to a bunch of people who knew him at various phases of his life. The story that emerged was that sometime in the 80s he started making some $, moved to the suburbs, and came to regret his youthful radicalism - part of which included his childish rebellion against middle American culture (including suburbia). While he was a dean at the New School, he did his best to purge the Marxists for the econ department. But unlike some other god-that-failed types, his rightward move included an embrace of middle American values. Lots of people don't like this guy, for both personal and political reasons - I was surprised by the intensity of it, even.

Doug



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