Re: CLR JAMES, SOCIAL BEING, TOTALITY, RACE

[boddhisatva <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

                Comrades,


        One thinks that the discussion on this group is in jeoparsy of
becoming a trifle shrill.  SImply because their is one (at least) among us
who feels to color his discourse with somewhat gutteral hyperbole, we need
not all clamor.


        Our moderator's well thought out letter on ettiquette is more to the
point than this group has acknowledged.  As Marxians, we are necessarily
revolutionary to some extent - therefore at odds with convention.  We must
express ourselves completely and allow an extra margin of acceptability.
Furthermore, for my own part, I am a lover of both overstatement and bad
language (when properly used) myself.  One cannot take the polemic out of the
political thinker without damaging the goods.  In addition, teh precise
coprolalia of Scorcese, Lee, Pryor, DeNiro, Roseanne, and Hopper are the
poetic coin of the working person.  Should one desire to walk the walk of
preoletarian revolution, one cannot talk the talk of bourgeoise modesty and
delicate sensibilities.


        All the same, as demonstrated, we must have an ettiquette.  A
beginning for a model might be the criminal defense/prosecuting attorney.  In
that milieu, a person can engage in the most atrocious slander with rapacity
so long as he has the traditional meter and tone, sticks to those things
formally considered germane to the issue at hand (or at least appears to) -
and begins every sentence with "may it please the court" or "the evidence
will show" or some such nonsense.  Anyway the point is that these are people
who spend their lives disagreeing with, libelling, slighting, and conning
their fellows with venality, but they do it with ettiquette, and necessarily
so.


        Lawyers dispute with people as a proffession.  As revolutionaries, we
profess what is constantly disputed.  I suggest that we do it with dignity
and style, and that we never deign to get personal.   After all, there is
nothing as awkward, even in a sea of profanity, as a second-rate off color
remark.  And there is no more devastating retort than to let that remark pass
completely ignored.







                peace





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