>You take these disciplines as immutable facts.
Au contraire. They are contingent variable bureaucratic (in)conveniences.
Tahir: With no epistemological consequences whatsoever?
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.
Tahir: Yes, you mentioned. I would never have guessed if you hadn't told me.
>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.
Tahir: So as an outsider with some kind of unexplained attachment to marxism (so to speak), what is your favourite variety of Marxism?
>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?
Tahir: Actually you should go back and read what you said about the "conservativism" of marxism - you supported this with evidence from the SU and China. So you were making some other point then?
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!
Tahir: Sorry, the significance of this exhortation eludes me. I was just making the point that thinkers like Barrot had written off the SU and leninism years ago and had stuck to a very sound vision of the real thing. So guys like you who still throw the SU in the face of marxists have a bit of catching up to do.
>
>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: Give 'em time, give 'em time
Well, I'm a liberal democrat, so a statist by your notions.
Tahir: Yup.
>On the other hand the term "communist" has never been surrendered for a
>moment -
>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.
Tahir: Yes it is possible that I'm younger than you.
Hart & Negri don't impress me anyway, trendoids. I never thought much of Negri.
Tahir: Do you have a bit of a problem focusing on the thread of the discussion? Bit of a short attention span then? (it comes with age you know) What I said was that the term 'communist' was being reclaimed in the public domain by very different sorts of communist than the bureaucratic rightwing variety. The significance of Hart and Negri (I didn't think I would have to spell this out) is that they use the c-word with pride in a best selling book. That really does relate to what we were talking about at that point - I didn't express any opinion about H & N's intellectual abilities.
>
>Well, since I'm a practicing lawyer and not a professor,
>
>Tahir: Now THAT makes sense!
>
What's this, a lawyer joke?
Tahir: A bit sensitive, are you? No it's not a joke - you have the pedantic air of a lawyer, and this also fits well with your respect for institutions such as the state itself and the various paraphenalia of liberal democracy, not to mention your need to credential your arguments with reference to your publications list.
Lenin was a practicing lawyer too, remember,
Tahir: 'nuff said. Save that bit of circumstantial evidence for the leninists - it sure as hell won't impress me.
and Marx was trained in law.
Tahir: He dropped it while still at university and switched to philosophy instead. Could you honestly imagine the adult Marx as a lawyer? That would be up there with imagining Bush as a homosexual, smack-addicted grunge fanatic.