MSOFT versus Open Source movement

Archer.Todd at ic.gc.ca Archer.Todd at ic.gc.ca
Fri May 4 11:33:24 PDT 2001


Kendall wrote:

You should read what I said more carefully. I was specifically talking
> not about all workers or about society, but about progressive people
> who are already predisposed to self-regulating their consumptive
> practices based on their own moral reasoning.

Kendall, I think, given what Carrol has written before, that Carrol's problem with your "moralizing" is that progressive actions on an individual level are relatively meaningless given the power a mass movement would have when acting on similar issues. Forgive me if I'm taking seriously a private joke between the two of you, but it certainly sounded as if the two of you were doing your damndest to talk past each other.

Kendall also wrote:

It's further hard to see how I was attacking (irrespective of my intent or what I actually *said*) the "workers of the world"

Again, I think what Carrol might have been attacking you for was your harping a bit too much on individual action. The general tone of your words matched somewhat those of the bourgeois who insisted that the working class could better itself if only it's members would go to church regularly, cut down on drinking, and bathed more often.

And no, to the community at large, I am not Carrol's apologist. I simply find it difficult to believe that we could live up to what Doug would like to see "worked through" on this list if we misread one another's arguments and went to sulk afterwards.

Todd



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list