(offlist) Re: KCW on the PMC

[Kelley Walker]

*sigh* had you read to the end where i speak of Stolzman and Gamberg, you 
will see that I maintain that any def but a marxist def "treats the symptom 
not the disease."  that's a pretty blunt statement carrol.  it's a really 
obvious statement in favor of marxist class analysis, particularly when the 
note it sounds is an applaud for that analysis at the end of a criticism of 
alternatives.

i agree that there is no common ground, but not because we differ about a 
marxist class analysis.  we differ because you insist on there being a 
difference.  you both seem thoroughly invested in defining your identity 
and entire raison d'etre on trashing everything everyone else 
says.  critique is important, it is good. but misrepresenting repetitively 
is NOT.

dev/null works for me.  next month's goal: linux box on line and procmail 
rule to send the detritus back into the aether.  neither of you show any 
respect for the possibility of having a serious argument or discussion with 
someone except those you consider your allies.  i am tired. i have been 
patient and reasonable purposefully lately, but to no avail.  i must have 
typed "alan wolfe deserves to be criticized for much" in about 10 different 
places, at least.  but yoshie continues to portray me as defending _every_ 
word he said. she keeps asking for textual evidence when she knows that i 
do not have the book right now and won't have it for awhile. she knows i've 
qualified what i've said with caveats that i might be wrong and that i'll 
eat crow.   and yet she continually harps away.  what is up with that?

in the course of a day, you have managed to misread me twice and yoshie has 
misrepresented everything i said. and she tried to suggest i was completely 
ignorant of my own discipline! lord!   it is so bad carrol, that i have 
people writing me offlist who think i'm defending wolfe when in fact i said 
several times that i am not. that is because she keeps refusing to 
acknowledge what i type and twists my words and imputes positions to me 
that i do NOT hold.

what i ask is this: lots or crits of wolfe, but i am demanding informed 
criticism and something a little above slander..  i think doug was wrong on 
a couple of technical points.  otherwise, there is plenty to criticize in 
wolfe.  for the upmteenth time i say this!

both of you have driven me to tears of frustration.

i give up. you have worn me down.  i like you a lot carrol and we've had 
productive conversations many times.  but this blindspot  and these bouts 
of purposeful misreadings have got to stop. there is solidarity to be built 
here, but not this way.


kelley
At 02:40 PM 4/18/01 -0500, Carrol Cox wrote:


>Kelley Walker wrote:
> >
> > o  Indeed, the debate over how to define and study class has been
> > central to the development of sociological theory.
>
>Kelley, this debate is really fruitless -- there is no common ground for
>it. Were you and I living in the same geographical area we might
>(probably would) be able to unite in terms of shared practice. And even
>in the rarified atmosphere of a maillist (as a browse through the
>archives would show) we share a good deal. But whenever the subject of
>class comes up, we are separate before we start. And I have argued this
>out with various sociologists going back to at least 1970. One can make
>the abstraction of "strata," just as one can make the abstraction of
>"humans-with-an-odd-number-of-
>remaining-teeth." The difference betwen them is that the latter is
>merely silly (though profoundly true) while the latter is a serious
>barrier to understanding capitalism. (Incidentally, the concept of
>strata is rather older than that of class -- it goes back to Plato. One
>of Marx's foundational achievements -- along with the recognition that
>what the object of knowledge is relations rather than the things related
>-- was his untangling of the concept of class from the trivialities of
>stratification. And the developed theories of stratification (from Weber
>on) have had no other real purpose or actual result (however expressed,
>and whatever the theorists _thought_ they were doing) but to hide the
>existence of the working class. Such theories probably also blur the
>outlines of the capitalist class, but it is the concealment of the
>working class from itself which is the real evil.
>
>Carrol