[lbo-talk] Re: Dull, dull, dull

[Carrol Cox]

This list is reasonably representative of a wide range of leftists. Is
it humorless? Why? Why not? Jan & I noticed at conventions and
conferences in the '60s that action was frequently blocked by debates
over how the conference should conduct its business, how people should
and should not speak, etc. In other words, with precisely the condition
which this thread represents: talk about talk replacing substance. Then
there would be long discussions of what it was that was causing long
discussions. This, then, would lead to a growing sea of complaints about
how "alienating" the conference was, with little if any recognition that
the talk about alienation, like the talk about how to talk, was itself
the source of alienation.

What is achieved, concretely, by this conversation about the lack of
humor and the causes of that lack? How does it contribute to the
increased scintiallation of journals x, y, & z.

And if these complaints are valid, why is it that the only people on the
left who are able and/or willing to expend energy on the production of
left literature are people who are too dull to provide that literature?
How does it happen that the leftists who do have a great sense of hunmor
and a powerful ability to write the way they think left writing should
be done do not write or publish journals themselves?

Is Seinfeld really the supreme model for attempts to change the world?
Why? Why not?

Carrol