[lbo-talk] Re: The Importance of Choice

Tahir Wood twood at uwc.ac.za
Tue Mar 16 23:50:37 PST 2004



>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



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