Re: what is to be done with what is to be done? was Re: AUT:

["Tahir Wood" <twood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Doug: And, as for the banks, well, to quote the Velvet Underground, those were different times.

"Jack he is a banker
and Jane she is a clerk
and both of them save their money
and when they come home from work ..."

European leftists can kvetch about the Third Way, but we've just inauguarted a reactionary moron who didn't really even win the election. It's almost enough to make me nostalgic for Bill Clinton.

Doug, this is the part of your enjoyable paper that I find less than honest. You ARE nostalgic for Bill Clinton and you really DO want to bring him back.

As for this conference, well I guess you were just in bad company - it happens to all of us - but those types do at least need some spaces to hang out together, just like everyone else, and those spaces are kind of shrinking for them I guess. Someone, a member (or ex-member?) of AUT, recently described this list as being "a leftist swamp these days", but that conference obviously really WAS a leftist swamp - a bad place to be no doubt. Callinicos used to come out to SA a lot when he thought the revolution was still up for grabs here, but he seems to have moved on to other pastures. In his tweed jacket and with his humourless and utterly witless mode of presentation, he just seemed to me the living embodiment of the stereotypical English twat. I would think to earn someone like that's hatred is not something to be regretted.
Tahir





>>> dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx 10/28/04 06:41PM >>>
Sebastian Budgen wrote:

>It will be published next year by Duke UP in the book collecting
>together the papers from the Essen conference on Lenin.

Interesting. I made a presentation at this conference - which the
lead organizer, Slavoj Zizek, described as the only truly Leninist
one, because it was so distant from the literal Lenin - but evidently
it's not included in the collection. Too journalistic? Too unfriendly?

Shortly after the conference, Zizek told me "They hate you." When I
asked who "they" were, he said, "Callinicos and Budgen." I guess they
do.

Anyway, the talk is at <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Lenin.html>.

Doug

PS: Most of the papers were pretty dull, so save your money and skip
this collection. And out of 17 presenters, 16 were men (if you don't
count the woman who read Badiou's paper for him).


     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---



     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---