Mike, thanks for your statement

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Oh gosh.

First let me thank you for your ending.


<<<<<<
   On a personal note; Chris, If I have misread your post, as I think I have,
I apologize.  I did not mean for this post to sound so agitated or annoyed.
 I usually agree, or at least take interest in, all of your posts.  I do
think, though, that you have made some false assumptions of my character.
 The post "Are you going to read...." was merely my thinking out loud.

Sincerely,
       Mike Dean
>>>>>>


I think you did misunderstand my motivation quite a lot. That may
be partly the way I put it, and partly the way you read it.

As you wrote:

<<<<
    What!?  Are you complimenting, agreeing, making fun of, or dissaproving
of my thoughts on class struggle? >>>>

I really wanted to respond to what I had read as an intensely personal
post in response to another article about the death of marxism.

I genuinely liked your sincerity. I wanted to reach out to you, but it seems
I got the tone wrong, and it seemed pretty persecutory. I did not want it
to sound patronising. Perhaps I got the worst of all worlds, and at least
there will be another 60 mails tomorrow, and I hope you can forget about it,
and I guess skim my own posts a bit more speedily than you did in the past.
But e-mail can seem some a strangely personal medium.

Your original post was a highly contradictory one. Everyone who read it
must I guessed. have wondered, is this guy really hopeless? Perhaps I
read it differently to other. I don't know you but I *assumed* you were in a way
speaking the often unspoken thoughts
of thousands, actually millions, of sincere people who once believed in marxism
or communism, and have given up in despair. The article you were responding
to on the death of marxism, was almost certainly deliberately playing on those
doubts. I am sure the magazine will not publish a reply called "The
renaissance of marxism". That would not be in the class interests of the 
ownders.

Yours was not a polished theoretical statement trying to compete with all the 
other
polished theoretical statements on this list. I respected you for putting
on the line, in a very personal way, an example of a crisis that many
people have gone through. (As I guessed, perhaps wrongly). Several subscribers
extended their hand to you, but perhaps in a less problematic way than I did.

My reply was not about you but about us, and perhaps really about me.


My statements were about where *I* anchor myself. They are anti-utopian.

(I suppose my remarks about your anticipation of a future socialist
president of the united states would come over as personal - but your own
remarks to which they were responding were highly ambivalent to say the least).

I took the liberty of suggesting that the sort of people who call themselves
marxists, are always going to be dissatisfied, always grumbling, always
arguing, always trying to champion the underdog.

Because any future
socialist or communist society will IMO be riddled with contradictions,
will have inequalities of power and influence, dilemmas about contributions
and rewards, actual conflicts about the distribution of material resources,
serious perceived conflicts about who is valued socially and who is
not respected.

Sorry you found my humorous way of responding to your contractory sentence
about a socialist president of the United States so problematical.
It is risky dealing with humour on e-mail. Not many people on this list,
including me, seem to like smiley faces.

I think I would still rather we  had this very frank tangle and tried to
sort it out.

I am glad you have stated your own views more clearly. They do overlap with mine
on important points. Especially, that even if Marx had never been born, class
struggle would go on.

Perhaps others can step in an say whether they agree with the principles or not.

For me the absolutely bottom line is about having faith in people. I think many
left wingers get hopeless and bitter thinking why are the majority of the
human race stupid. Why have they not had a revolution already? For me that
is a political dead end. However big our difficulties as marxists, it just
cuts us off from ordinary people. We need to respect and value IMO always
what is "good" in ordinary people even if it comes down to trying to understand
why 90% of the population of England placed a bet on the lottery last week.
That is a challenge, but I am prepared to work on it.

Because of my job and interests, I am in danger of being seen as the persecutory
analyst on this list, and I guess quite a number may be agreeing with you
about what a pain that sort of contribution can be. On the other hand I would 
say
psychological and emotional things come up on this list quite often, and I would
say that is because political events are not divorced from peoples lives. I
actually believe that all the mathematical stuff about the law of value, is 
acutally
connected with the business of how we value each other and ourselves
psychologically. When I have been unemployed it affects my valuation of myself
a lot. I also think the feminists have a good point that the personal is 
political,
and we should put this into practice.

So Mike I am glad we have challenged each other personally. I am glad you are
staying on this list, because I was afraid when I read your first post, you
would go. Its good I was wrong about this.

Take care,

Chris







     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---

     ------------------