ravi wrote:
>
> i see value in someone (pretty assured
> to be in the minority) playing the contrarian, keeping alternative
> theses, even weaker ones, alive
You offer a perfect description and defense of Alex Cockburn -- who shows the logical extension of taking in isolation Marx's demand for the ruthless criticism of all that exists. What that quote, in isolation, asks for is the kind of attitude Hugh Kenner thought he detected in Wyndham Lewis who, Kenner suggested, occupied a machine-gun nest in no-man's land, firing away in all directions. It is the essence of individualism: not truth but originality, "independent thinking," is the object of the intellect.
Carrol