But I think those who can't agree with Ollman, Postone, Marx at least part of the time, and innumerable other thinkers of the last two centuries might think seriously whether it is a position that can be dismissed with a label of "weird -- or, and here some strongly pejorative term is required, think that they can avoid serious conversation with smartass & quite illiterate [retemsopms tjat a rekectopm pf amu fpimdatopm fpr ,pra; cpmde,matopm demoes also the use of pejorative terms.
Doug frequently insists that we must model ourselves on Marx by reading all contemporary thinkers -- but he seems to exclude _any_ variety of Marxist from classification as a contemporary thinker. He seems not to have read Ollman, Albritton, Postone, Wood's Empire of Capital, or even have heard of any contemporary German Marxist thinkers. It is hardly conducive to conversation to continue to hallucinate that views held so widely are the unique weird positon of one person on this list.
Moral claims are in fact empty and/or redundant _unless_ they have some transhistorical basis, and it is the consistent denial of any transhistorical grounds for political judgment that is at the heart of much contemporary thought. Doug cannot escape that social fact by simple-minded distortions of my positions. Note that it is the distortion, not Doug, that I label simple-minded.
In contrast to Doug, Ted consistently argues for his position. I disagree with his arguments, but they are arguments rather than one-line sneers at imaginary positions held by no one that seem to be Doug's mode of discourse.
Carrol