Re: Dialectical Emptyness

[bon moun <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

At 03:46 PM 6/29/00 +1200, you wrote:
>
>Carroll wrote:
>
>>(3) Does it come from sheer innocence (ignorance), or are you acting as
>>a troll in equating anti-communism with mere  "banning"?
>
>C'mon Carroll.  This is a needless slap.

Slap for a slap.  You know I disapprove of flame wars, and personalizing
these arguments through name calling.  But drop the "troll" comment, and
there is a real question here.  This did appear an attempt to trivialze the
contention of left anticommunism.

>
>
>>Anti-communism
>>refers to more or less systematic ways of poisoning the wells of discourse
>>by establishing the preconception that something is false or vicious simply
>>because it is a communist who expresses it. And amongst left anti-
>>communists (and, I'm sorry to say, in debatres among communists themselves)
>>the most common such method of silencing communists (or rather plugging
>>the ears of their readers/listeners) is to imply/argue/ hint that a
>>communist's arguments need not be responded to because they are
>>not real arguments, they are merely the mechanical and mindless
>>expression of some supposed "orthodoxy" which the poor sap of
>>a communist mindlessly parrots. Nevermind that wherever two marxists
>>congregate they will soon produce three "orthodoxies."
>
>And whose fault is this?  If some self-professed communists waste their
time by
>flaming each other on a public website, they just show themselves to be damn
>fools.

Ad hominem argument.  A staple of the blame shifting tactic.

>
>The problem with freedom of speech is that we take it too lightly.  We
*assume*
>that the invisible audience out there is already against us.  So we
blather on,
>full of self-pity, about how no one takes us seriously.

Caricaturing.  Straw man.

And open-minded people
>who wander into the audience, fully prepared to learn and pay attention, will
>just wander off again when they see our self-absorbed strutting and preening,
>our stupid little cock fights.

Now the straw man is constructed, we can proceed to tear it apart.  This
whole description has nothing to do with the millions of communists around
the world who work their tails off every day, and who have genuinely
internalized social change as a vocation.  I would again appeal to you to
examine your own reactions to your own possible preconceptions about
communists and communism.

>
>>Probably there is no more deeply held conviction amongst the majority
>>of people in the United States (including many who either think of
>>themselves or really are marxists) than that communists (or *other*
>>communists) don't think, they merely parrot an orthodoxy. All U.S.
>>intellectuals must parrot some version of this to establish their
credentials
>>as  independent thinkers and free spirits in contrast to that thundering
>>herd out there of "orthodox marxists."
>
>Thus "communists" and "other communists" are hanging themselves.  Who's the
>troll here?

Thus?  Peggy, this doesn't respond to the argument at all.  It is only
responding to your own redefinition of the argument as invalid, based on
your characterization of communists.

In struggle,

Stan



"If insurrection is an art, its main content is to know how to give the
struggle the form appropriate to the political situation."

			-Vo Nguyen Giap



"Rather than seeking comparabilities in statistical terms among what are
all too often superficial features of different situations, comparabilities
must be sought at the level of determinate mechanisms, at the level of
processes that are generally hidden from easy view."

			-Eleanor Burke Leacock



"Every day one has to struggle that this love to a living humanity
transform itself into concrete acts, in acts that serve as examples, as
motivation."

			-Ernesto "Che" Guevara