Charles Jannuzi wrote:
>
>
> Another problem with Empire is this: none of you really need some overblown
> economico-politico-philosophicus post-structuralist primer (the source
> material most of you haven't read anyway) to intermediate or interpret
> current events. (See Descombes).
>
On the left most broadly conceived, for over a century the ruling commonplace has always been that Marx was right up to 25 years ago, but now things have changed, and the capitalism Marx knew is utterly transformed, and we have to start all over again with a mostly clean slate, except for each person's private collection of his/her favorite set of out-of-context jewels from the Old Man.
Incidentally, I did pick up a nice tidbit about the Bolsheviks from an article in the current Critical Inquiry (apparently derived from a recent biog. of Lenin). When Lenin came out with his April Theses in 1917 all his fellow Bolsheviks thought he had lost his mind, and even Krupskaya was (as it were) embarassed by what their friends might say. _Pravda_ even publicly dissociated itself from Lenin.
Carrol