joanna bujes wrote:
>
>
> Overall, I don't see what can be gained by throwing Yoshie, Charles,
> Carrol, et al. in a Stalinist camp and then claiming that they therefore
> have nothing to say.
>
I _think_ the premise Tahir and others are operating from, more or less self-consciously, is that capitalism is so overwheliming, so strong not only in productive capacity, in political and military strength, in its domination of cultural and intellectual life but in its permeation of every aspect, every minute of daily life that there can be no build-up to insurrection but that the whole must be overthrown at once. In the conventional metaphor here, capitalism is like pregnancy: one cannot be a little bit capitalist.
Now I suppose that put like that Tahir would deny that this is his principle, but his attacks on "Leninism" (someday I will take up what I mean by those scare quotes)do seem to place him in that tradition which sees friends as enemies (in contrast to the tradition, represented most vividly by Nathan on this list, which sees enemies as friends.) Everyone falls into one or the other of those extremes all the time, and often both simultaneously, but a few, like Tahir, at least seem to grasp one of the poles with great enthusiasm.
While I cling tenaciously to various maillists, I do feel that it has yet to be established that they do not contribute more to disunity than unity among leftists. Traditionally, unity flows from practice: that is, people with sharply different principles can unite around a given practice under given conditions, and in terms of that practice explore that (partial) unity of principle which the shared practice implies. But on a maillist we become the ideal abstract individuals posited by a capitalist world, and we have only abstract principle to unite (or disunite) us. Any difference whatever in opinion then can become absolute.
Could be.
Carrol