Another exchange with Leo Panitch

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(My comments are on the bottom)

At 08:50 PM 6/5/2003 -0400, Leo Panitch wrote:
> Dear Louis,
> I assure you I don't consider you (only anyone else) riff-raff,
> and I have in any case nothing to lose whatever in debating you.
> If I don't use the internet much to debate anyone, that hardly
> justifies such a conclusion. I don't debate on the SR list at all
> so you need not feel discriminated against. (When I agreed to let
> Comninel set it up, it was so others could discuss SR essays,
> without the editors feeling the need to be defensive about this,
> but as it has mainly been used by those who have signed up to it
> to disseminate other useful things published elsewhere, that's
> okay too, and I often learn a great deal from this.)
>
> As I have told you before, I actually admire a lot of what you
> write and have often been very appreciative of your remarkable
> breadth of interests and knowledge. But you do have a very
> disagreeable tendency to distort things and engage in smear
> tactics when you set out to 'debate'. The fact that the smears,
> which - if my own case is any measure - are often based on
> completely off the wall allegations, such the one before on my
> allegedly supporting the US war on Aghanistan and now these
> equally bizarre ones about my not supporting the grad
> student-teacher strike at York, only demean you, and I don't
> understand why you feel the need to do this sort of thing.
>
> As for distorting things, here we go again. I did not say you
> said I was anti-working class. What you did say by way of
> introducing me to those you were sending your note (thus implying
> it was relevant) was that I had previously had, like Wallerstein
> and Hardt and Negri, written off the working class as a source of
> change. What I pointed out in response, so that your readers
> would not judge me on that basis before considering what you had
> to say about what I had to say imperialism, was that this was
> completely at odds with what my position is and always has been.
>
> And then I said nothing that suggested you were alleging I was
> not anti-imperialist. Your critique, apart from your misleading
> intro of me, was indeed 'innocent' enough. All I said, apart from
> setting the record staight on your 'intro' of me,  was that we
> could have had a more fruitful debate on my views on imperialism
> if you read the essay (where Willoughby's 1985 book is cited, but
> which was hardly very influential in what Gindin and I are trying
> to work out) rather than just relied on a radio interview. As the
> rather playful note on which I closed my original response to you
> should have indicated, I was rather looking forward to a good
> debate with you on the question of interimperial rivalry or the
> absence of it today. The way you responded with these shameful
> allegations about my lack of support for my students (and why
> shouldn't I be defensive about this?) is the kind of thing that
> makes rational and comradely debate with you impossible, and
> makes your wrapping your attacks in some sort of delusions about
> it promoting left unity, well, frankly ludicrous.
>
> I have no further interest in continuing any discussion with you
> about anything. This has absolutely nothing to do with me being
> an academic and you not. I know more fools with PhDs than
> without, I can assure you. I don't know what you do or have done
> by way of socialist organizing activity apart from spending so
> much time writing (often good stuff) on email. You don't know
> what I do or have done by way of being an active socialist. Why
> you presume to know that I don't think this is important or
> haven't spent a lot of time at it all my adult life (including
> this week), I cannot imagine, not can I imagine why you feel you
> must imply you think this is more important or are are more
> engaged in this than I am.
>
> It is truly unfortunate that such a fine mind and as committed a
> revolutionary spirit as yours should be weighed down by this kind
> of chip on your shoulder.
>
> So, Louis, goodbye (but I still value so much of what you have
> led me to in good jazz as well as other things that I can't bring
> myself to say good riddance),
> Leo

Well, goodbye to you to, Leo. As I told my closest confidant earlier in the
evening, I never met anybody in my life so consumed with his reputation as
you. Myself, I am happy to be regarded as a lout and don't feel quite
myself unless I am on the shit-list of an Ellen Meiksins Wood, a James
O'Connor, an Immanuel Wallerstein or some other luminary. Most of the time
when I get into these fracases, I feel rather like Groucho Marx sidling up
to Margaret Dumont with a cigar in one hand and a custard pie in the other.

In any case, I am glad that you have finally deigned to address the
substance of our disagreement.

Let me take up a couple of the points (briefly since I am sure you are
rushing off to some conference right now to deliver a speech).

1. I didn't say that you "had written off the working class as a source of
change". I think everybody who calls himself or herself a socialist pretty
much goes along with that nostrum, from the Dissent editorial board to even
Manny Wallerstein himself after he's had a couple of beers. That's our mom,
apple pie and the American flag. Instead I claimed that you thought that
proletarian revolution was an outmoded concept. Maybe I should have been
more precise and said that you were opposed to every major revolution of
the 20th century. In other words, you are for socialism in the abstract but
reject the concrete revolutions that have eliminated capitalism from 1917
onwards. You reject the Russian revolution of 1917, you reject the Chinese
revolution that transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of peasants
and you pay scant attention to Cuba. In fact I was informed by a very
knowledgeable long-time activist in Canada that the only article in your
journal ever devoted to this remarkable exercise in democracy was written
by one Haroldo Dilla who argued that you had to orient to political forces
outside the Communist Party in order to achieve true socialism. I
understand that this Dilla has signed Joanne Landy's anti-Cuba petition.
All that being said, it is quite laudable that you remain pro-working
class. One of the values of SR is its willingness to challenge
postmodernist fads around this all-important question and remind its
readers of the centrality of the working class. I certainly encourage you
to keep up the good fight in that arena. Of course, with all the ill-will
I've generated at this point, you might to decide to print Jean Baudrillard
at this point.

2. You said that we could have had a more fruitful debate if I read the
paper the radio interview was based on. Well, that may be the case or may
not be the case. My strong sense is that a debate was possible based on
your spoken word. The one thing that you have not done in these exchanges
is point out how I misinterpreted you. What I did was sit down with a
notebook and take careful notes on your initial presentation. Then I
prepared my reply. If I moved in your circles, I probably would have
written you an email to get the draft article so as to prepare a more
"scholarly" rebuttal. But I do not move in your circles and prefer to
operate on a more spontaneous basis. I like to strike while the iron is
hot. Sssssttt!!!

3. As far as my socialist organizing activity is concerned, here it is in a
nutshell. I was in the Trotskyist movement from 1967 to 1978. Afterwards I
joined CISPES and remained active until 1986 when I became the president of
an organization called Tecnica that sent volunteers to work in Nicaragua
and southern Africa. For the past five years, I have been intermittently
involved with support for Blackfoot sovereignty issues which have brought
me to Montana and Alberta on different occasions. Most of my time for the
past decade, however, has been taken up with building a nonsectarian and
nondogmatic pole of attraction for Marxists on the Internet. Marxmail has
over 450 subscribers from around the world, including the southern
hemisphere. The website receives about 1.5 million visits per year.

All the best,


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