On 2013-11-10, at 4:12 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Marv Gandall: I wasn't commenting on your statement above, but on Mike
> Yates' noting with approval your statement last week "that a real left, when
> it came into existence, would (among other things) demand that the Prison
> System be abolished...Well, most activists now are close to demanding that,
> and I suspect that it would be attractive to about 5% of the population."
>
> ----
>
> Before invoking the nebulous concept of "attractive to the public" would it
> it not be useful _first_ to explore the actual content of the proposal?
> "Prison _system_," incidentally, is the subject, NOT, "Prisons." I know that
> in commonplace usage the term "system" means something like "all those
> things out there someplace," but must we be confined to that sense of the
> word? Can't we, for a minute, be serious intellectuals (or pretend to be)
> and take our terminology seriously? If, as is possible, "the prison system"
> does not exist, debating its popularity would seem pointless. If it _does_
> exist, dit is still pointless to debate its (hypothetical) popularity until
> we have some notion of what are the priciples defining that SYSTEM.
>
> The principle describing Marv's statement above, I submit, is that political
> discussion is inappropriate on lbo-talk, and he enforces that principle by
> shifting the topic away from either the prison system or capitalism to
> chit-chat about public opinion.
> Carrol
Carrol, with all due respect, the comment about public opinion to which you're objecting - "I suspect that it would be attractive to about 5% of the population" - was YOUR comment, not mine. I was quoting you. It can be found here:
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20131021/003066.html
My reference to your comment is here:
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20131021/003087.html