Fw: On Twain and socialism

["Sol Dollinger" <soldoll@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: ngoro <ngoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: soldoll@xxxxxxxxxxx <soldoll@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Friday, April 28, 2000 10:12 AM
Subject: On Twain and socialism


>Dear Sol,
>
>I am proud that my mention of Mark Twain brought you to write on this
issue. I
>agree with all that you say on your posting, and would like to read that
>"Twain of American socialism" whose work "smacked of American language" and
>who brought your wife Genora to our struggle.
>
>My only comment is that non-academic, clear and straightforward language is
a
>need for Socialists not only during the moments when the tide is high, but
>also during lows. I accept that my understanding of the American scenario
is,
>at best, schematic and to a great measure uninformed. But I also believe
that
>one of the tasks of revolutionaries in your country is to struggle and try
>against the Great Walls that set intellectual revolutionaries apart from
>American masses at large.
>
>The basic idea is that our people must raise with the class, as De Leon
said,
>but also must help the class raise itself. Bringing complex ideas UP into
>concreteness implies generating a new kind of concrete, vivid, speech, that
>people can discover as their own speech "writ short"  (Milton: "Presbyter
is
>priest writ large").
>
>In this sense, revolutionary publications have an educative
and -dialectically
>enough- creative task before them, that bourgeois media do not: to discover
>the link between the means of expression and the goal, a link that will be
>tested only through mass readership. During the ebbs of the tide, "mass
>readership" means something different than during the high moments of
history,
>certainly, but the general thrust of the idea is that it will be easier to
>catch up with the tide if we endeavor to "smack American" and not to "smack
>Academic" or, worse still, to "smack Marxist".
>
>The idea is to put people´s speech and Marxism thought/action within a
>crucible, and then see what comes out. I remember that, some years ago, I
>wrote a leaflet for a branch of my party acting in a very poor neighborhood
>who were struggling for proper sewage. On the leaflet, I rose from mud to
>socialism without resorting to great language. I take pride in that this
>simple leaflet, where I displayed an ironic view -from the point of view of
>the dwellers in that neighborhood- was greeted with a "Why, this is exactly
>what I think" from people there (as told to me by comrades). This kind of
>rediscovery and reconstruction of popular speech and writing is, in my own
>humble opinion, something that does not depend on the flows of history, but
on
>the decission not to become a sectarian Marxist, not to allow the
bourgeoisie
>to set us apart from the class.
>
>If you believe there is something here that may be of use, you are free to
>send it to the list. If not, I would like to have your opinion sent to my
>addres at gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>With all my respect,
>
>Lic. Néstor M. Gorojovsky
>Dirección de Estadísticas del Sector Primario
>Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos
>Argentina
>
>Tel.: (0541) 349-9728
>
>