[lbo-talk] Cockburn cut back at Nation

[Mike Beggs]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 3:05 PM,  <wrobert at uci.edu> wrote:
> E.P. Thompson initially made the accusation in his polemic against
> Althusser.  (If you're interested in this, look at Dennis Dworkin's
> Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain, although it makes no attempt to
> actually represent Althusser.)  Perry Anderson wrote the defenses for the
> productivity of Althusser in response to Thompson. I suspect the article
> is referencing this conflict. robert wood

Yeah, as it happens I'm presently proofreading a friend's manuscript
about'The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays' - EP Thompson's
political and intellectual background and the context. (There's also a
chapter on the rancorous exchange with Kolakowski which SA might find
interesting.) The book's being published this year.

Anderson's response is 'Arguments within English Marxism' which I
think is pretty good. Like Anderson, I'm more sympathetic to Althusser
than Thompson is, but the Poverty of Theory is a brilliant essay in
its own right.

I like Perry Anderson an awful lot, and find him only occasionally
pompous (e.g. titling an essay 'Jottings on the Conjuncture'). But I
really think the UK New Left milieu as a whole - even if half of it is
in polemic with the other half - produced a hell of a lot of great
stuff which is still useful today. We don't really have to choose
anymore between Thompson and Althusser, or Thompson and Anderson, or
Poulantzas and Miliband, etc. The debates themselves are great.

Mike Beggs