[lbo-talk] Yoshie: "dialogue" takes listening on your part, too

Eric Beck rayrena at realtime.net
Wed Jul 12 11:52:01 PDT 2006



>[I can't read everything that goes by, but I've read enough of
>Yoshie's writings on Iran to know that I disagree with them. And I
>find it distressing to see a branch of MR, a publication with a long
>history of secularism and Marxism, be used as a transmission belt
>for apologetics for a reactionary theocratic regime. Yeah, so it's
>sweetened with a bit of populist economics, but populist economics
>are mostly pretty dodgy, as most Marxist economists would be eager
>to show.]

What happened to Yoshie? Politically, she's always irritated the hell out of me, but that was because of major philosophical differences. Back in the day, at least her by-the-book Leninism was by turns interesting, provacative, or harmless. But this Green Party-populist turn she's taken in the last couple years--which, probably not coincidentally, has been accompanied by a severe moralizing streak--is very creepy. Her embrace of the Iran regime, however "critical," gives me the shivers.... I want to spin some cautionary tale about how easily statist-socialist politics can warp into statist-reactionary politics, or about how for many on the left principled anti-racism, -sexism, and -imperialism is a disguise for/must take a backseat to anti-Americanism. But that would be churlish and not in my character.



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