[lbo-talk] nice man

[Rakesh Bhandari]

OK so you're noting that Marx used invective and unfair argument to 
make meat pie (your expression) of any and all opposing points of 
view. But you agree that he did not always do that. For goodness sake 
does the name Weston mean anything to you? Value, Price and Profit is 
not outrageously urbane by the standards of polemics of
his time?. How did Marx speak of the Owenites?  He was less than 
urbane in Poverty of Philosophy but admiring of the Communards 
inspired by Proudhon. And even the Critique of the Gotha Programme is 
hardly fiery; for that matter neither are the Notes on Adolph Wagner. 
And then as you admit the way Marx conducted himself in the First 
International (except  in relation to Bakunin) speaks against your 
image of a fire breathing unethical polemicist.  So then you have to 
specify the cases in which he used caricature and invective to 
destroy opposing points of view; you have to specify why in some 
cases he would indeed brook (and work with) opposition, but of course 
you said that he never did. False.

The character assassination via the generalization that he would 
brook no opposition and that he always used every tool, legitimate 
and illegitimate, to destroy views opposed to his is clearly unfair 
(as was your character assassination of me as a true believer whose 
commitments cannot be rationally discussed). That was your 
proposition. I never denied that Marx could be urbane, fair and/or 
inexcusably nasty with opponents--that is, that he was human.  You 
said that he was always the last. It's just vicious anti Marxist 
hyperbole from a person who actually agrees with very little of 
Marx's social science though for some reason you insist on calling 
him the Newton of the social sciences. 

Then you say that Marx was intellectually unfair to his opponents in 
general, implying use of strawmen and absence of charity in all his 
disputes with opponents. But you give no example.  Give me something 
concrete and we'll work from there.

It also makes no sense to me for you to claim that KM is the Newton 
of the social sciences and then compare KM to philosophers whose 
arguments you also reject. Was he a social scientist or a 
philosopher? Was his theory successful in some sense or was
it not?  What did he contribute to the social sciences that you take 
to be revolutionary?  Only vagueness.

Then the bizarre comment about my criticism of JS Mill--that I am 
focused on his personality? I never admitted that JS Mill was fair to 
his critics, explicit and implict. If he was a sweetie in 
argumentation, it was only because he  often did not argue with those 
who disagreed with him. Nothing was argued about. I take this to be 
often more violent, less sweet than open and honest polemic. Failure 
to recognize is often an attempt to humiliate and wound. Moreover, 
why play this evasive game? Your socialism is closer to JS Mill's 
pseudo socialism than Marx's. Why comment on personalities only to 
hide your real political commitments? Yet you can't have non 
capitalist relations of distribution with capitalist relations of 
production. By the way, Marx refused to lump JS Mill in with the 
vulgar economists.

You then say Marx's character hardly matters but that's what you were 
focused on.

You are the one who wants to take cheap shots against Marx, making 
outrageous generalizations about his modus operandi. I am resisting 
it.

And as you may know but others don't Marx seems to have been an 
active and good father in the raising of his quite accomplished 
daughters.

Rakesh
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