Yesterday, Carrol Cox provoked a totally useless argument by making a series of vapid straw-man claims (and note that I am not taking a position on "left-liberalism," but on the self-evidently worthless form in which they were stated). He all but admits that is was a self-indulgent provocation--just "doodling," he calls it, a wonderful model for left agitational action.
Now, he delivers a rabbit-punch in the form of a lecture on rhetoric, the shallowness and self-contradictions of which lecture I might list, if I felt the "argument" was made in a good-faith attempt to advance us intellectually or politically--which I am quite convinced it was not, so I will not bother. I will only note that a quick search of the archives shows not one use of the word "rhetoric" in the thread "lefty percentiles, or why we lose?", indicating yet again Cox's cheap use of the straw man and careful, distracting irrelevancies.
Cox claims:
<< My contributions to lbo-talk are most frequently driven by
concern over
>the utterly undeveloped theory of agitation in current left
practice. >>
Nonsense. Cox's contributions and chief concern can be summed up much more succinctly: "Shut the fuck up."
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 16:12:59 -0600
>On the need for a left "rhetoric"
>
>(I believe that term has been invoked in recent threads, along also with
>"narrative" as a form of rhetoric).
>
>I believe the dictionary (or handbooks of composition) will list quite a
>few legitimate senses of the _word_ "rhetoric," and no one can fight
>against mere usage of a word.
>
>But in this post I'm going to assume that in most, perhaps all, uses of
>the term (not just on this list but by, e.g., Kenneth Burke, Deirdre
>McCloskey, or Wayne Booth) its original senses still operate powerfully
>-- and all those original uses of the term (Aristotle, Cicero,
>Quintilian, Renaissance rhetoricians) make two assumptions: (a) that
>speaker (usually speaker, not writer) and listener (audience rather than
>readership) directly confront each other in a framework agreeable to
>both (e.g., a parliament) and (b) that there is _almost_ complete
>agreement on all the important issues between speaker and listener. The
>"almost" is of great importance, for the difference is of course the
>reason for speaking; but the "[nearly] complete agreement" is the
>context within which the persuasion proceeds. The whole of the art is
>directed to demonstrating that this large shared agreement dictates that
>the speaker's position on the small area of disagreement should prevail.
>
>(This kind of rhetoric still exists today only in churches which put a
>great emphasis on sermonizing.)
>
>Rhetoric is not only of little use to the left; attempts to develop a
>left rhetoric aid the right.
>
>There are no "new ideas" here, incidentally. The ideas I'm opposing go
>back over two millenia. The ideas I'm proposing go back to the late 19th
>century (developed within the ranks of the German social democracy.)
>
>The left (willy-nilly, incidentally, even when leftists think they are
>using a rhetoric) casts persuasive discourse under three headings
>officially, four in practice: theory, propaganda, agitation. The theory
>of all three is ill-developed (in part at least because of the freezing
>of leftist thought under the Third International), so there is plenty of
>room for fresh thought. Clearly factory gates can no longer be the
>favored locus of agitation, so it is particulary methods of agitation
>that needs most rethinking, but the deadend which leftist concern with
>rhetoric (as shown on this thread) constantly reaches is merely one
>indication of the need to carry on that fresh thought within the
>classical categories.
>
>(The fourth is polemics -- for which there is very little theory to
>guide us, mostly because it was never recognized as a distinct genre of
>left writing and speaking, though it is one of the most often
>practiced.)
>
>My contributions to lbo-talk are most frequently driven by concern over
>the utterly undeveloped theory of agitation in current left practice.
>
>Carrol
>
>P.S. These categories have nothing to do with "Leninism," though the
>most convenient source for a summary of 2d international thought on the
>subject is to be found in WITBD.
>
>___________________________________
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>
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