[A-List] Re: the Communist Manifesto: critique

[Andre Gunder Frank <franka@xxxxxxx>]

 From:     Jack Goldstone
>           University of California - Davis
>           jagoldstone@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
> Responding to Gunder Frank (14 March 2002):
>
> Dear Gunder,
>
> I wholly agree -- many years ago I wanted to jettison the term
> "capitalism," but people cling to it like a lifeboat in a storm.
>


In this case quotation of the original is more than apt, if only because I
had intended to add a note about that to my own: THAT is where virtually
ALL my friends/comrades/colleagues and I part company for the very reason
that Jack says, only moreso: I get the impression that the clinging to
"capitalism" by those how reject it [!] is by no means an only an
''academic'' or theoretical or political matter. NO, it is highly
[intimately?] personal as well. The ''clinging'' as to a life-boat in a
storm is a defense of their very personal idendity, which is tied to their
- like mine! - life-long dedication to combatting ''capitalism''. So to
admit - or even to consider that maybe - there is none and never was any
such challenges one's identity in perhaps having to admit having
mistakenly followed Don Quijote tilting at will-of-the-whisp windmills.
Perhaps that is not a problem for me personally, because I know that I
have made lots of other mistakes and because I have and need no identity
to defend. Lest any reader wish to propose that we leave such personal
matters out of public discussion, permit me to note that this is a case -
borrowing from feminists - where the 'personal is political'- and
theoretical as well as''academic'in the non-pejorative sense of the word
-- if any!

respectfully submitted
gunder frank

 On Fri, 15
Mar 2002, Patrick Manning wrote:

> Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 16:45:20 -0600
> From: Patrick Manning <manning@xxxxxxx>
> Reply-To: H-NET List for World History <H-WORLD@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: H-WORLD@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: the Communist Manifesto:  critique
>
> From:     Jack Goldstone
>           University of California - Davis
>           jagoldstone@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
>




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               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@xxxxxxx

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