Re: [Marxism] Swarthmore professor gives Ward Churchill failing grade

["Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition"
<marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 9:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Swarthmore professor gives Ward Churchill failing
grade


> Carlos:
> > Not that I will attempt to provide an answer, because I am in no position
> > answer, as I live in the racially disputed border of Crown Heigths and
> > Prospect Heigths in Brooklyn, can't afford even English Rose, and dont
> > have a stereo. But it does require one that goes deeper than an evasive
> > "it doesn't matter", or an exercise in dialectical denial.
>
> The merits of an argument for socialism must be detached from the
> life-style of the person advocating it. Engels was a factory-owner, after
> all.

If I had a penny for everytimeI have heard this argument, I'll be so rich,
Bill Gates would be my personal programmer...

Face it. Being a child of priviledge does skewer one's view on reality. As a
matter of fact, Engel's became radicalized (in one of the biggest
coincidences in marxist history, so was Mao) when he performed an in depth
study of the condition of the working class. Until he did that, he assumed
things were much better.

Even then, his worse traits as a political leader were exhibited, only
Marx's "workerist" inclinations kept this tendency on check. WHich didn't
Engels of funding himself a private revolutionary army to go on an
adventure.

Workers who are radical left in the USA, outside of NYC and San Francisco,
et al, and who are workers because they couldnt be anything else, not
because they choose to, a too few and too far between.

This is unlike other countries, were even if the leadership tends to be
dominated by intelelctuals, nevertheless is heavily proletarian (Lula,
Arlette, etc etc etc),even when it represents a small percentage of the
class and the population.

And it does indeed boils down to the specifics of lifestyle issues. The US
radical left, with its heavy academic slant and academics being what they
are in the USA, tends to be affluent and utterly disconnected from the
living relity, and the subjective concerns of the working class.

To paraphrase my favorite liberal, James Carville, its the subjective,
stupid!

"You defend Cuba, but what about my scaming landlord? My harrasing boss?
What about you living better than a top level party bureaucrat in Cuba?"

Much like white skin privilege is something that to this day still presents
a challenge to a truly multi-racial left, economic and educational privilege
still presents a contradicotry challenge for a left that claims to be for
the working class, but is as afraid of being labeled "workerist" by fellow
marxist intelelctuals as a primatologist is afraid of being called a
"antropomorphist".

> I think that the Swarthmore professor is not that much more sophisticated
> than this woman, despite writing books with "objectifying practice" in the
> title.

This might be so, but if pigs flew, we could have bacon buffalo wings.

In other words, Swarthmore might be an "un-sophisticated" person, but the
world, and indeed the revolution, will be made by unsophisticated people.
Sophistication is a superstructure of privilege. When your sole debating
point with him is his lack of sophistication, you are telling people who are
not sophisticated to go out and fuck themselves.

No wonder they wont join us!

sks


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