Parting words on Leo Panitch and company

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

After being warned by Patrick Bond not to "fuck-up" on the Debate list
again, I went ahead and unsubbed. I really have no animosity toward
Patrick, but I have my own way of expressing myself and tend to be even
sharper when the target of my polemics is not even on the mailing list
where the post is being filed.

To put it as succinctly as possible, people like Panitch, Gindin, John Saul
and Colin Leys are living in an entirely world from not only me, but from
most of the people on this mailing list who I identify with. We are people
who generally do not publish in refined journals, but who are the grunts of
the revolutionary movement who actually go out and build the movements.
There has been a self-selecting process on Marxmail that I think truly
honors the memory of Marx himself as well as all the great revolutionary
activists and thinkers of the working class movement.

I received a note from John Saul yesterday that really made me chuckle. He
wanted to know why I dragged Colin Leys into the debate. Since I am no
longer on the Debate list, I will tell him now that he was responsible for
an enormous amount of confusion on the academic left (and still is) for his
own assault on Marxist theories of imperialism. Saul says that he had his
own problems with Leys's overprojections about Kenya in 1978 that were
based on the fads of the time, including Bill Warren's neo-Menshevism, but
attacks me for not recognizing that Leys has moved on. But if you read the
recently published "The Rise and Fall of Development Theory" (god only
knows why I read this crap), you'll discover Warren's ideas running through
the book like a white thread. The main reason--such as it is--that Leys
distances himself from Warren is that his ideas might lack moral suasion on
the African continent, as they certainly would.

In any case, the one thing that has not changed in Colin Leys's approach is
his narrow focus on the capability of the African bourgeoisie rather than
the workers and peasants who are alone capable of changing society. In
chapter 8 of his book, which is titled "African capitalists and
development", he poses a series of "research questions", including the
following, which is fairly typical: "Studying the obstacles to further
capitalist development". Now nobody asked me, but I would say that such
research is a complete waste of time for revolutionaries. For if there is
anything that the last 100 years has taught us, it is that the main
obstacle to capitalist development in a place like Kenya is world
capitalism itself and the local comprador class. A young academic would be
better advised to study the working class, and--better yet--to build a
revolutionary movement that incorporates it.

The one thing that amused me to no end was John Saul admonishing me to have
respect for Colin Leys:

>>Debaters may be interested in the attached text that I wrote a few years
ago for a "festschrift" on the occasion of Leys' retirement (my essay deals
exclusively with Leys' Africa work, up to the time I wrote it at least, but
then he is also perhaps the most effective Marxist thinker on British
politics in recent decades as well!) - but please: a bit more respect (see,
for example, Richard Sennett's recent "Respect in a World of Inequality"
[Norton]) and the responsibility, to be shared by all, to make productive
exchange possible.<<

Now what in the fuck's name is a "festschrift" and how does one get invited
to submit an essay? Can't you see these York professors sitting around a
banquet table and toasting each other with champagne?

I should add that John Saul himself is filled with illusions about African
politics, no matter how many books and articles that he is written, which
number in the tens of thousands I imagine. A while back he wrote an MR
article that faulted the ANC for not living up to its historic mission. I
am not quite sure what Saul thinks this mission is, since the main problem
appears to be its unwillingness to carry out a "neo-Keynesian" program
drafted by a CP economist in its research department. If there is one thing
that unites all these left academicians, it is a lingering faith in such a
thing when any sensible person would understand that Keynes's theories are
not worth the paper they are written on. It is war that lifted the USA out
of the Great Depression, not deficit spending.

The amount of self-deception that goes on in these circles is staggering.
Not too long ago, I had a chat with a revolutionary minded York University
student who told me that Leo Panitch is not even considered to be a Marxist
among most leftwing political science students. Furthermore, he is so full
of himself that a sensible student would more often than not choose
somebody else for a dissertation adviser. Finally, this guy is so far high
up in the academic totem pole (large house and all the other blandishments
of full professorship) that he couldn't even bring himself to put his name
and reputation on the line when student-teachers went on strike at York a
few years ago. He is much closer to the administration than he is to these
poor souls trying to eke out a living while going through the hell of
completing a PhD.

Whenever I clash with the likes of a John Saul or a Leo Panitch, I am
always glad that I include these words of Max Horkheimer on my website:

"a revolutionary career does not lead to banquets and honorary titles,
interesting research and professorial wages. It leads to misery, disgrace,
ingratitude, prison and a voyage into the unknown, illuminated by only an
almost superhuman belief."


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