>You take these disciplines as immutable facts.
Au contraire. They are contingent variable bureaucratic (in)conveniences. When I was a prof, my colleagues used to grouse that my work wasn't really philosophy because I referred to empirical social science literature, history, etc. I'm a pragmatist.
>I find the prospect of re-establishing a non-atomised model of social and
>historical thought a highly desirable one and possible even within
>universities as we know them.
Me too.
>Tahir: There's no point if what you want to do is to trash marxism.
I have lots done more to defend Marxism in print than you--that's not a boast, it's a fact. I have irritated people here sometimes by referring them to my excessive pubs list, but "trashing marxism" is not what comes to mind on reading it. And I am not even a Marxist.
>The decisions to trash the left opposition worldwide and in the SU itself
>were not some sort of automatic consequence of Marx's thought,
And did I say they were?
I said: >
>The revolutionary stuff was sidelined and confined to the
>margins. That also doesn't mean that the revolutionary stuff didn't matter,
>just that it was less socially significant.
>
You replied:
>Tahir: I think it is re-emerging, as the title of Barrot's 1970s piece had
>it: The Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement.
1970s! 1970s! Tahir, wake up, this is 2002!
>
>As to the second point, you tell me what it is to be revolutionary. The
>workers and peasants soviets are not going to march on Washington, raise
>the
>red flag over the capital.
>
>Tahir: This has started happening already in symbolic and not-so-symbolic
>forms too. The images I saw of Genoa, for example, were of a sea of
>literally hundreds of thousands of people with red flags all over the place
>(not with the Soviet hammer and sickle though).
I assume you mean Genoa, Italy and not Genoa, Michigan, where a red flag of any sortw ould not get you mass support.
>
>Tahir: What's the point of hanging onto "socialist"? Why should we care
>about it when everyone from Tony Blair to Fidel Castro and all the rest
>consider themselves to be some sort of socialist? The term has no useful
>currency, and furthermore always was a statist concept anyway.
Well, I'm a liberal democrat, so a statist by your notions.
>On the other hand the term "communist" has never been surrendered for a
>moment -
OK, I have share my term with Blair and Castro, and you have to share your term with Stalin and Pol Pot. I actually don't think so badly of old Fidel. Blair of course is an arsewipe, but at least he's not two of history's great mass murderers.
>if you were more familiar with "leftwing communist" debates you would know
>that. Recently we have seen Negri and Hart, amongst others, insisting on
>that term - that one's not going to go away, trust me.
Don't presume to condescend to me, young Tahir. Hart & Negri don't impress me anyway, trendoids. I never thought much of Negri.
>
>Well, since I'm a practicing lawyer and not a professor,
>
>Tahir: Now THAT makes sense!
>
What's this, a lawyer joke? Lenin was a practicing lawyer too, remember, and Marx was trained in law.
jks
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