[Marxism] Debate: The Personal Regime Vs. Ultramodern Centralism (Was: Soros's blog)

["Jeff Rubard" <jeffrubard@xxxxxxxx>]

> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 15:22:41 -0400
> From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [Marxism] Soros's blog
> To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
>       <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,  PEN-L list <PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Message-ID: <415DAE81.9080900@xxxxxxxxx>
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> 
[...]
>
> I don't want to say "The Worse the Better," but...
> 

Mr. Proyect,

Perhaps it is so.  The first debate was an archetypal example of the 
choices facing Marxists in US partisan politics, with both candidates 
giving textbook cases of the party lines.  Bush was relaxed, affable, 
even conciliatory: he was also clearly a executive/managerial figure 
quizzing subordinates as to the nature of his presidency and policy 
choices -- offering the administration you were going to get, whether 
you needed it or not.  Kerry by contrast was concerned about "the 
America", but as the pious know parapraxes are no crime in Democratic 
politics; and from the standpoint of the disinterested observer, an 
"absolute center" of American society, Kerry appeared to have a solider 
grasp of the political situation.  Perhaps it *in fact* is desirable to 
have fellow-travelers such as Soros, if it means that the "creeping" 
damage done to the American polity by the onset of an amnesia during
Republican administrations is replaced by simple contradictions of 
political and economic allegiance (false consciousness being, after 
all, a relatively total condition) along with issues of "social 
concern" being replaced by conflicts over effective political 
representation.  But I suppose this depends on how enthusiastic one 
has traditionally been for the blend of social obsolescence and 
totalizing modernization offered by the Democrats.

Jeff Rubard

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