Re: Parting words on Leo Panitch and company

["Xxxx Xxxxxx" <xxxx.xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 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.

Frankly, I have found Pat's post overly rude and patronizing. Here is a man,
may be 15 years younger than Lou, telling him not to "fuck up" with Leo, so
he will buy him a beer. What a "fucked up" attitude from a person occupying
a position in a university (to use the same language)!

It also seems to me that there are other issues at stake here. Pat
occasionally writes for the Socialist Register from South Africa. Leo is the
editor of the journal. Although, I beleive, this is a magazine with a
limited scholarly value, it is obvious that Pat does not like the criticism
of Leo Panitch. If we put things in perspective, allowing people to
challenge Panitch means that he won't be on the pay roll of  the journal
anymore. The issue is about politics and who gets what in the end.

Or should I say that all these African specialists are somehow related to
"development projects" with the South African government or some type of
populist NGO? This developmentalist Marxism strikes me as a great
project..:-))

Obviously these people do not want a civil debate, but resort to "warnings"
as a means of censorship. What an inconsistent behavior with the values of
the left! Such fake Marxists need to be challenged and exposed.

Mine

>
> 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 who generally do not publish in refined journals, but who are the grunts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
>
>