Re: Salem revisited, was RE: Susan Sontag . . .

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Please Knock it Off!

I think that Jared's web page is a major contribution to the
left in the United States (and the world), and I have great
admiration for his work.

BUT:

Katha and Beth are  essentially correct  as to the course of this
thread, and accusations of slander, etc. from all concerned rather
confuse the actual issues involved.

Back off Mark. Your rhetoric doesn't work in this thread. Rather
it creates a smokescreen which calls attention to itself an hides the
content,

I have written some fairly savage polemics on LBO claiming
that the characteristic motion of red-baiting is to ascribe this
or that position to "Leninism in general" rather than focusing
on the actual positions held by this or that "Leninist" poster.
For example, one poster had suggested that I and another
subscriber opposed X because X was not marxist enough.
I replied angrily and have deleted every one of that person's
subsequent posts unread. My friend Mark has engaged in
analogous baiting in this thread. And he has confused his own
case in the process.

A couple other points. Rather many people (male and female) who
were not feminists in 1974 may well be so now. So information
going back to that period is at most of marginal relevance. And
though I have had many quarrels with PLP and PLP positions
over the years, I think that PLP made a really major and permanent
contribution to the left by forcing so many in SDS to begin to
think in class terms. Some of the best material I ever read in
New Left Notes (and material which, though I forget all its
details now, was crucial in my own political development) were
articles submitted from the PLP-dominated SDS chapter in
Boston. I don't know where the authors of those articles went
politically thereafter, but honor is due them for making SDS
members think.

I don't like arguments based on ascribed motive. I don't believe
in mind-reading or depth psychology in political debate.

Carrol