Forwarded from Michael Yates (Foster, Panitch, Bond)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(Michael Yates is a MR editor)

I think that Patrick Bond doth protest too much. Panitch and Foster have
disagreements, not just about imperialism but about the nature of the
economic crisis. Louis sides with Foster and says why. Panitch responds by
urging Louis to read what he wrote. (I noticed, however, that he did not
address Louis's main point.) What exactly is so horrible about all of this?
People have different ways of engaging in debate. Some of us have spent so
much time in academe that we have been sucked into a certain type of
exchange, overly polite in my view. Once a colleague of mine said to
another, "I agree with what you said but I cannot support your position
because of the way you said it." So in the end good ideas get flushed down
the drain because their proponent doesn't speak the proper language.
Believe me we academics often deserve to be skewered. Once at Monthly
Review, two of us working as editors edited an article by taking turns
reading it to each other. It was written by a very prominent leftwing
academic. It was hard to read it for long without laughing--at the
pomposity of the language and dizzying use of name-dropping, smart
references, overly long series, etc. By the time we were done, I needed a
drink, or two, or three. I wondered if this article and thousands like it
will ever matter. Hopefully some revolutionary somewhere might distill from
it something useful (and it did have a few interesting things to say) and
act upon it or put it in language useful for those engaging in the
struggle. But this seems unlikely.

One more point. By talking about his day in the park and asking Louis and
Mine don't they have better things to do than engage in this discussion, he
trivializes their efforts. But of course we must not see his points as
trivial. But couldn't we ask, if the whole business is too trivial to
continue with, why didn't he stay in the park, play with his kid, and
ignore what was said?

Michael Yates


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