pre-capitalist sex

[Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema]

There's another place in ONE NATION.... where Wolfe becomes argumentative in favor
of his subjects' middle class outlook towards poor people. It comes where he
defends them against the charge that suburbanization is a flight from social
responsibility, and the need to recognized, as an urban person, that people of many
strata share a common destiny, etc. He cites, in defense of suburbanization the
expressed willingness of  his subjects to do volunteer work, or contribute money
(can't remember exactly, if people like, I could dig up the exact reference) to the
"deserving" poor. The book came across to me as an expression of sanctimonious
schmuckery with a veneer of  pseudo-objective social science.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema

Doug Henwood wrote:


> 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