<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">I'm determined not to get into a flame war on this list, so please forgive my use of the word "crap". I just spent about a year and a half reading <I>Capital</I> with two comrades in my local Solidarity branch. In the last month before I started graduate school (now more than twenty years ago), I decided the one book I needed to reread very, very closely was <I>History and Class Consciousness.</I> And one of these days I really will read Postone's book! I promise! Right now, though, it's Gramsci (whose complete notebooks are very slowly being translated into English), as well as some thoroughly bourgeois authors (Wittgenstein, LaFontaine, and Lorca).</SPAN><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">For the record, I don't think that capitalism is the rule of sinister Jews. I do think that greedy corporations and unscrupulous governments abound in capitalism, but:</SPAN></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">(a) even an "ideal type" of capitalism without those institutions would be exploitative and alienating</SPAN></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">(b) that "ideal type," of course, is a pure fiction - there will be powerful greedy corporations and unscrupulous governments as long as there's capitalism</SPAN></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">(c) so, the greedy corporations and unscrupulous governments are a necessary by-product of capitalism, but the struggle against capitalism is only incidentally (but no less necessarily) a struggle against greedy corporations and unscrupulous governments.</SPAN></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">So we are going to continue to disagree about Chomsky and Finkelstein. Do we agree about capitalism and the struggle against it?</SPAN></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Chomsky and Finkelstein aside, the left has made so many wrong turns in the U.S. (and elsewhere), that the left "deserves" to lose. But the struggle against capitalism doesn't deserve to lose, and unfortunately it's stuck with us as its paltry bearers.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Michael McIntyre</DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span"><BR><DIV><DIV>On Oct 18, 2006, at 2:07 PM, Angelus Novus wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">A left that reads Chomsky and Finkelstein rather than</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Marx or Lukacs deserves to lose, and lose badly.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">There are enough right-wing populists promoting</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">foreshortened models of capitalism as merely the rule</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">of sinister Jews, greedy corporations, and</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">unscrupulous governments.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>If you go in for that sort</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">of thing, at least become a Haider or Buchanan</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">supporter and get it in undiluted form.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></SPAN></DIV></BODY></HTML>