[lbo-talk] Universal Asceticism and Social Levelling

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat Jul 14 09:28:54 PDT 2007


On Jul 14, 2007, at 12:01 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


> Where is practical opposition to the multinational empire? Only
> Islamists, whose revolutionary doctrine and practice, like "[t]he
> revolutionary literature that accompanied . . . first movements of the
> proletariat," have "necessarily a reactionary character" and often
> inculcate "universal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest
> form" (<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-
> manifesto/ch03.htm#c>)
> .
>
> Social liberals cannot tolerate such leveling and asceticism.

Every time you put it that way, you make the multinational empire sound more appealing.

I don't really get your point - are you endorsing Marx's critique of the crude reaction of your Islamists, or are you embracing the crude reaction because it's the only opposition around, or are you embracing crude reaction itself? It's not like these guys don't have a multinational empire of their own in mind, either.

Doug



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