[lbo-talk] Open letters from Stefano Kourkoulakos and Leo Panitch

Alan Rudy alan.rudy at gmail.com
Thu Nov 4 06:09:44 PDT 2010


All I can say is that - already predisposed to be uninterested in Nitzan's work - this only intensifies it. What a supercilious, superior and snotty first letter from Kourkoulakos, what an enlightening response from Panitch and what a mystery that Nitzan thought this worth sending along - particularly without commenting in a manner that would help us understand more of what's going on behind the letters. Perhaps most stunning of all, is the implicit suggestions that Marx was either right or wrong, that Marx either wrote about economics OR economics and politics, that these were issues not already debated for 125 years and that Panitch and others didn't already have clear stances on them. It's as if everything from Gramsci to Harvey, from Benjamin to Offe - much less all the debates around these issues - didn't exist.

My favorite unremarked moment is when Panitch tells us that Nitzan has stated (at least in one exchange about one part of one text) that his work is so qualitatively different from Panitch's that Nitzan wouldn't know where to start in addressing it... true or not, it is striking that Nitzan in sending this along to us doesn't comment on it, or how it might have some bearing - in addition to Panitch's explanation of why he wasn't at last spring's seminar and how the conference last week was presented to him AND it was scheduled - on the implicit accusations Koukoulakos makes about Panitch et al., avoiding (out of fear?) addressing what Koukoulakos appears to believe is Nitzan's excellent - or at least provocative work.

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Jonathan Nitzan <nitzan at yorku.ca> wrote:


> Open letters from Stefano Kourkoulakos and Leo Panitch
>
> On October 29-31, the Forum on Capital as Power held a three-day conference
> at York University, dedicated to the subject of “Crisis of Capital, Crisis
> of Theory.” Below is an open letter from Stefanos Kourkoulakos. It was sent
> a day before the conference to Professors George Comninel, David McNally,
> Leo Pantich and Jonathan Nitzan who were to participate as Faculty Guest
> Speakers at the event. The letter is followed by a reply from Leo Panitch.
> Both texts are posted with the permission of their authors.
>
> FULL TEXT: http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/303/
>
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>
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>
> Jonathan Nitzan
> Political Science
> York University
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-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319



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