>>> dhenwood at panix.com 03/28/01 02:32PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
> >>> dhenwood at panix.com 03/28/01 01:05PM >>>
>Charles Brown wrote:
>
>>How is the direct action of destroying the papers "self-defeating" ,
>>except with respect to the opinion of those of the predominanly
>>mental intellectual strata who have a fetish about the written word ?
>
>Wow, that's kind of scary Charles.
>
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>
>CB: Wow , Doug, what's so scary about it ?
I guess my fetish is showing, but I'm kind of attached to written words and their free circulation.
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CB: Do you doubt that down through history right up through today that the vast majority of the scribbling strata have been the servants and agents of ruling/oppressing/exploiting classes , and the vast majority of written words have been instruments of the ruling classes ? Speaking of Marx, aren't the ruling ideas of every age the ideas of its ruling classes, and haven't most written words been instruments of establishing the rule of those ideas ? Plato had bad politics , you know ? "Writer" is only exceptionally the same as "revolutionist".
Seems to me that radicals should be more discriminating about what written words they are attached to rather than just "written words " in general.
I have absolutely no doubt that the vast majority of ink spilled on paper in the year 2001 is done so in order to perpetuate ruling class dominance and serve its interests.
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Call me a liberal,
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CB: Well, are you a liberal ? I mean did you read Marx's discussion of bourgeois "rights and liberties" in "Critique of the Gotha Programme" ,as well as the essay on free speech you mention ? The latter has a different sense in light of the former, don't you think ? It means that Marx's defense of free speech is not the same as a liberal one, which is what you seem to be giving. It is the difference between a materialist and an idealist argument for free speech.
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but I believe that even vile pigs like Horowitz should be free to say and write what they want.
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CB: Why ?
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And saying there's no state involved, and therefore no issue of censorship, is a bit of a dodge; if it ever came down to who could summon the largest number of goons, we'd lose.
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CB:
The goons are on the other side. Your notion that those willing to fight physically on our side are goons is , wow, kinda scary , don't you think ? You don't think John Brown was a goon, do you ? How about Leo's quote of Fredrick Douglass on struggle, rain requires thunder and lightening ? Clearly the Nazis were the goons and the Red Army were the heroes. The Viet Cong were not goons, don't you know ?
Do you have an example where our side won without fighting ?
If you leave out the state, i.e. the police, my side would win. I know a lot more workers who would fight the Nazis and KKK than who would fight me and mine. Fascistic racists are a rather small minority.