On Friday, May 10, 2002, at 11:01 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
>> Historical materialism in some form is not only true but obviously
>> true. Class analysis is inavualble and essential for understanding
>> society. Marxism as a movement, organozed around traditional symbols,
>> vocabulary, and organizational forms, is dead as a doornail outside a
>> few embattled locales--maybe Kerela? Maybe Cuba. Berkeley, Madison,
>> Ann ARbor, parts of Greenwich Village, the Kite in Cambridge (if that
>> still exists), etc. In the West it is beyond recussitation.
>
> Weirdly, Liza Featherstone, on a little tour of the northwest to
> promote her book, Students Against Sweatshops, told me yesterday that
> the campus Republicans at the very conservative Western Oregon
> University (located in a dry county, filled with would-be cops and
> soldiers) have organized a debate on capitalism. As a system, pro or
> con. This is not an activist campus. So why are they doing this? Is
> there something in the air that makes them nervous?
>
in the middle ages, christians organized debates with jews in synagogues over the relative validity of the christian and jewish faiths. i'm not sure this was because the christians were nervous. it was more like finalizing the imposition of christian hegemony. sort of like if francis fukuyama had been writing in the 12th century and declared that christianity can no longer be disputed, so from here on out it's just a question of how long it takes christianity to complete global conquest.
jeff