[lbo-talk] School Debate: Central Focus

[shag carpet bomb]

At 05:36 AM 2/17/2012, Tahir Wood wrote:
>T: Yes I can, but now that its' being directed towards me, I won't. What's 
>kak about Cox is his dumbed down retreat from Leninism, which takes 
>someone who's been through that and sees where it leads to recognise. 
>There's absolutely no recognition that a communism that never departed the 
>framework of Progress Publishers and Lawrence and Wishart was worthless 
>from the start. It is intellectually dishonest not to settle accounts with 
>that and move on, rather than to retreat into dogmatic 
>anti-intellectualism instead.
>
>Unfortunately what has always annoyed me about Henwood's list, and which I 
>confess I had forgotten about, is the endless circularity and utter lack 
>of conviction in anything other than a sub-cultural-studies commentary 
>about American personalities and their views. Trying to raise Sri Lanka or 
>DRC here is an utter waste of time. It wouldn't be so bad if the American 
>focus actually led to something enlightening, but it never does because of 
>the continual knee jerk responding to anything that smacks of genuine 
>radicality: such as pointing out the absurdity of seeing an 
>anti-capitalist possibility within the framework of the current nation 
>state system.

retreat from Leninism? I don't know b/c I don't understand these categories 
that well. I assume the only way you learn them is through membership in a 
communist party?

Anyway, I had never really made the connection you make: the fear of 
radicality. Or maybe I did but partricipate in it so much I'mnot aware of 
it. I do see the TINA response a lot.

also, hilarity of this is that wojtek isn't from the u.s. and has 
frequently complained of the us-centric focus. ha ha ha ha!

also, unclear as to what you say in last para:

you are saying it's absurd to think there's an anticapitalist tendency 
within the nation state system? and that people here reject this response 
as too radical?

or that it's radical to think that there's an anticapitalist tendency 
within the nationa state system and people reject this radical claim?

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