[lbo-talk] Re: plagarism watch

[JBrown72073 at cs.com]

JB:
>>Given that we don't have a guaranteed universal income, we should want the 
>>playwright (or Doug) to be paid because we want that work produced--not
>>just now but in the future.  We don't want to deter writers from writing by 
>>promising them poverty and desperation for their efforts.  We don't want
>>the next book never to come cause Doug's out driving a cab.
>
Todd Archer:
>Mmmmmaybe.  It's possible to hold down a 9-5 and write (just less gets
>done).  You've got to enjoy it then (although I have sincere doubts the vast 
>majority of writers, much less "left" writers, get all that much in the way 
>of pay anyway for their work; I happened to mention in a letter I wrote once 
>to Norman Finkelstein about having talked someone into reading one of his
>books.  His response, though kind, was purest distilled sarcasm on the
>topic).

Yeah, which means that the left is stuck with most of its writers and 
thinkers having to squirm around in academia, meaning that there are significant 
limits on what you can say, and you better not say it plainly if you go outside 
those limits. 

Left conventional wisdom can be just as useless as mainstream conventional 
wisdom, if you want to puncture it you have to have time to put in the work.  
And there's a feminist point here too.  You mean a 9-5 job (no overtime?  no 
staying late?) and no family responsibilities.  Works out if you  have a wife who 
will do that full time home job after her fulltime job, but what if you are a 
wife, or are splitting the care jobs (and here we must include caring for 
parents as well as children.)

JB:
>>It might be bourgeois ideology (created by conditions under bourgeois
>>supremacy), but there is a political economy to the struggle, too, and if 
>>we want working-class writers to write we must contribute to making that
>>possible.  Otherwise they end up paid by Soros, not by us.
>
Todd:
>So what?  Linda McQuaig used to work for Conrad Black, I think, while she
>was writing a book or two.

It's not a very stable base though, is it?   You can squeeze through the 
cracks--I'm not opposed to that--as long as you don't start thinking it's more 
than a strategic alliance.

There's a long and sorry history of corporate foundation-funded 'opposition' 
in the U.S.  One example with which I'm familiar is the replacement of the 
genuine leadership of the Women's Liberation Movement with foundation-funded 
(Warner Communications) feminism, in the form of Ms. Magazine and its various 
offshoots.  The problem is that certain people with certain ideas get fed on the 
sugar teat of corporate foundations and certain others with certain other ideas 
can't get published or reviewed at all.  It's a blocking motion.  The WL 
journals in each city folded, and Ms. became *the* journal of the movement.  The 
founding feminists who no longer could find other places to write and wrote for 
Ms. found out quickly that their stuff would be dumbed down and cooled off, 
in the name of making it more appealing to women.  The history was rewritten, 
and feminists were cut off from the ideas of the movement that had made Ms. 
possible in the first place, with disastrous results.

As a friend once quipped, yes, there ARE many feminisms, some get you jobs, 
some get you fired.

Jenny Brown