[lbo-talk] Re: The Importance of Choice

[Tahir Wood]

>Carrol = Louis Althusser who writes better and is more honest.
Yoshie got annoyed when I suggested this sort of thing is a 
depressive symptom, but the more I think about it, the more 
persuasive it seems. Depressives are haunted by feelings of guilt 
and/or emptiness, feel that taking action is hopeless, and often 
advertise their sense of helplessness and self-reproach at high 
volume. What I see here is that depressive constellation masquerading 
as a political philosophy.
Doug

Doug this is quite apparent, and therefore the comparison with
Althusser all the more apt. The pathological nature of the leftist
thinker who is unable to conceive of the subject in any way other than
as an effect of structure, therefore having no place in his/her thought
for agency, will or intention, has been made obvious since Althusser's
brand of vulgar scientistic Leninism became a dominant element in
certain benighted sections of the left. It is moreover a negation by the
supremely alienated intellectual of the daily struggles of the working
class in all their various particularities. It insists that there is no
political activity worth talking about unless all this purposeful
self-activity (but the mole of class struggle NEVER stops burrowing)
unless it is subordinated to some STRUCTURE - yes THE PARTY! This
negation of real working class activity needs to utterly discredited for
the anti-communist, alienated and deathly obsession that it is. The
sooner the "party builders" (and the "builders of socialism") depart the
scene the sooner one of the greatest obstacles to communism and freedom
will have been removed. The working class has put up with this monkey on
its back for far too long. Down with all the builders and their
hideously ugly buildings.
Tahir