i can't tell if this is a reply to my comment. only 'OP' i can think of is "op Tribe" (they're on imeem.com).
i'm actually not against academic conferences, or even top-down things like obama, but i see their problems (they tend to do what is done in medicine (i forget the term---you save some but some of the rest basically are seen as neccesary casualties (possibly, for example, the US prison population)). intellectuals like boudou, or in the us, chomsky, nader, zinn, or media elites like amy goodman, etc all do play a role (just as in abolition era there were political and religious elities along with grassroots types like fanny lou hamer). i'm not sure what the optimal mix might be, if there is one, or is a theory of one. i'm not even sure if there is 'social progress' (eg people's history)---it may just be an epiphenomena of technologicial change (sirens of titan by vonnegut being the scientific theory----"its not in our genes, but blame it on the microchips, because information wants to be free, so dig up the congo" ).
also, the n+/-1 article i cited was itself somewhat skeptical it seemed, though even less than my comment. and it was respectful of what i called cranks (no disresepect intended, since that is a generic word).
i do think one problem is you have one segment of the 'left' who do things (a la chomsky) like write 100 books, while another segment has never even read a book (see bomani's hiphop tune 'read a book'), so there is a bit of a disconnect. it seems alot of academia (especially in science policy discussions) focus on people who write alot discussing why other people (such as the people who work in university food service) don't read books. something in the food?
perhaps a more general kind of conference, one which bridges the divide between elite academic discourse and pop dialects might be useful. e.g. using the theory of differential games (or hamilton-jacobi-bellman equations) to determine the optimal music lineup at some radical fest, such that the difference makes a difference. (or one could use difference equations, to look at identity politics---eg why some things are equal to others, and how that determines funding. ... some kinds of love ..)
also, it seems free markets, capitalism, etc are (like socialism or communism or democracy) such generic terminology (signifiers which point to multiple signifieds) its hard to know what people are talking about. anarcho-capitalism may be one example of a real, cash based free market, but possibly barter might qualify too. i soemtimes consider capitalism to mean an ideology which worships capital, rather than being an economic system. (standard econ, eg general equilibrium, actually has no profit or capital theoretically, even though sometimes its viewed as the theory of capitalist systems.)
--- On Sat, 7/25/09, Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] An Open Letter to Lefty Friends, Colleagues and Bitter Foes Who're Disappointed by Obama
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Saturday, July 25, 2009, 12:25 PM
> this is a misunderstanding. you would
> do better to do some more research on
> badiou's background and role in/relationship with the OP.
> you may not like
> this, either, but it is not at all the same as a bunch of
> academic
> conferences for tenured white male radicals and cranks (do
> i count here,
> even though i am not tenured? yeah, i guess i do, so caveat
> emptor). badiou
> IS asking for us to think, which i don't think is such a
> bad thing. marx did
> a lot of that. also a lot of time in the library.
> peter hallward has
> a fair bit to say, in what i think is a balanced (if
> admiring)
> assessment of the OP and badiou's relationship with it. you
> will find
> most of it in NLR, I think, which is where I'm guessing you
> found the
> snippet from Badiou's book on Sarkozy.
>
> On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 10:52 AM, mart <media314159 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > the alternative proposed ('communist
> hypothesis'---ie a set of academic
> > conferences for tenured white male radicals and
> cranks)
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>