Re: [Marxism] Re: Andy Coates re recrudensce Schiavo etc.

[Les Schaffer <schaffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

acpollack2@xxxxxxxx wrote:

> I couldn't agree more, and hope there is a forum in which we can kick that 
> around.

your comment made something click for me, and it relates also to another
thread i've been involved with, viz, posts on the WTC collapse.

and what is occuring to me is whether Lou would be interested in
allowing this list to include discussions between people working (job
wise) in similar areas, kicking around what they see. i'm no high
falutin marxist theorist, i'm pretty simple minded about it. and i
figure that one of the most political organizing actions that can happen
right now on an e-list, at least for people in a country like the U.S.
(i do not want to generalize for a Nestor, or a Phil Ferguson, or
comrades from the Middle East, anyone living and fighting on a different
battlefield), is for workers in a given field to kick around reactions
to their working environment, albeit under the marxist banner.

i do not know if Lou wants that kind of thing here, and i have thought
about creating a sister list that would be such a forum as you seek, at
least for tech professionals, to start. but lets start here and see what
happens.

so, how does this connect with the WTC collapse thread??? well, i'll put
it this way: when i read that you and hari kumar work daily in the
medical profession, my ears perk up, regardless of how different our
political philosophies and interpretive styles may be (cf Lou's remarks
about Hari)..

what surprised me about the "alternate WTC theorists" is they seem to
not want that kind of collaboration on this list. it's better if they
heard of some guy who wrote a letter while working for some company that
they heard was an expert in some field they heard was appropriate to
judging the technical issues at hand (steel weaking under heat). put
someone who works in that field in their face, and you start getting
lectures about how bourgeous are the technical institutions involved.
that's not the kind of forum i seek on this list.

i assume there is a danger of elitism here: once you segment into
"professions", discussions can take on the air of a clique. i do not
know exactly how to avoid that, but i think there must be a way. most
marxists i have personally met are eager to be as self-educated as
possible in any number of fields. my mother tells me that my
grandfather, a Red cloth cutter in Manhattan many many ages ago (i'm not
sure he even finished high school), would meet with fellow comrades
regularly and try to learn some arithmetic and science. i salute this
tradition and explictly accept that non-professionals (in a given area)
and professionals should mix it up. i've learned as much about physics
communicating offlist with Jim Farmelant (ok, he's a physics person too)
and Carrol Cox and Charles Brown as in any academic institution i've
been involved with.

or am i wrong about all this? should we be leaving our work lives out of
marxist debates, even theoretical ones???

anyway, its not every day one gets to add a word to one's vocabulary
(recrudensce).

Les Schaffer




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