RE: [Marxism] Reply to Carl Davidson

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Julio, do you currently work inside the Democratic Party? Where? Are you an
> office holder. a former delegate for someone or other, a precinct
> committeeman, on a committee or what? Tell us about that.
>
> David McDonald

I would urge comrades not to waste too much time in debate with Julio. He
is a rather ideologically hardened opponent of revolutionary socialism who
obviously enjoys a good debate. In years past, I used to enjoy being the
bolshevique gadfly on lists like socialist-register or lbo-talk, but have
learned that the Internet is more productive when it is used for discussion
between people who share certain basic principles.

I know next to nothing about Julio, except that he is an economics
professor in New Jersey who is originally from Mexico. As I once stated
here in the context of a posting on the Brenner thesis, the Mexican academy
is strongly influenced by Spanish Communism, or what some people less
charitably inclined call Stalinism. It appears that after Franco's victory,
many intellectuals and college professors fled to Mexico where they took up
influential posts. Concretely, this meant a strong predisposition to
Kautsky's Marxism.

For Julio, this took the form of being soft on NAFTA which he tended to
view in terms of Marx's 1853 articles on India. He got Nestor so upset at
one point that he unsubbed rather than being on the same list with him. I
had to spend a small fortune in a phone call to Argentina to get Nestor back.

For all my reputation of being a Marxist Torquemada, I am not interested in
driving Julio out. I am far more interested in comrades listening to what
he has to say, answering him with one or two emails, and then moving on. We
have far more urgent tasks confronting us than to rehash the Lenin-Kautsky
debate. It is bad enough that I have to keep fending off the Stalin-Trotsky
debate without seeing our time wasted in arguments about why revolution is
necessary.

--

www.marxmail.org


_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism