Moderator's warning to Jim Drysdale

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Drysdale wrote:
>Thanks Chris, but as you can see from LP's reprimands, I have to watch what
>I say.
>I point out, possibly in great peril, that the evolution to communism *will*
>require that the working class
>move beyond observing and understanding of capital at the level of
>appearance only.

Drysdale, do you actually have any idea what happens in a revolution? Read
Trotsky's "History of the Russian Revolution". The working class was not
sitting around discussing m-c-m'. It was trying to find a way to keep its
young men from dying in the trenches and to put food on the table. These
are class issues, just as they are in Colombia today. Revolutions are not
made because a majority of the working class finally understands the labor
theory of value. They are made because it finally decides that the current
system is a failure, whether or not they have an understanding of how the
system works. By continuing to harp on these questions, you are wasting
Marxmail's time. If you want to organize a study group in a working class
neighborhood around Marx's "Wage Labor and Capital", that would be a good
thing. Just don't use up bandwidth trying to educate people here, many of
whom have been in the revolutionary movement for at least 3 decades.

>Tomorrow, for example, there is a public debate around the position of
>scottish independence, currently held by the leadership of the SSP.  This
>gives some of us an opportunity to question this position at a level that
>moves beyond speculation and emotion.  Particularly around the existence or
>not of the mysterious *scottish identity*.   Point...the working class have
>no country.  Bit like capital, really.

The working class have no country? Jeezus fucking christ. If you ever waste
bandwidth making this kind of point here again, I will remove you from the
list. What arrogance, to assume that nobody else here understands that. My
suggestion is to go join Doug Henwood's LBO-Talk list where there are lots
of liberals who have never read a single word of Karl Marx. Just stop
preaching to the choir here. This mailing list assumes that everybody
understands m-c-m' or that workers of the world should unite. When you
devote bandwidth to reminding us of such things, you are not only wasting
the people's time, you are wasting your own. Go out and get involved in the
mass movement. Try writing about the class struggle in Scotland in concrete
terms, but enough already with the abc's of socialism.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org



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