RE: [Marxism] Weather Underground

["Craven, Jim" <JCraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with the general judgment of Weatherman politics expressed here.
In fact I've declared on various mailists over the years that I only
bear two grudges from the '60s, one against a certain  ISU Dean of the
Faculty, the other against the Weathermen, and for the objective reasons
Jim C. gives.

But frankly, if anything could make me sympathetic to the Weathermen, it
would be such blustering and empty rhetoric (focusing on motive) as Jim
C uses here. If I had never heard of Jim C before, and knew nothing
about him, and then read this post, my response would come close to
being, "Oh Shit, another verbal Weatherman."

His nasty tone and exercise in mental telepathy in analyzing the
Weatherman motives is _precisely_ the tone that drove me up the wall in
disputes with weathermen 35 years ago. Grow up Jim. You have so much to
say. Why spoil it with these childish temper tantrums.

Carrol

Response Jim C: I can see how some might not appreciate the TONE of my
missive (particularly sensitive House Marxians who see themselves, their
own self-absorption and their own machinations being portrayed in less
than flattering terms) but I do not see the rhetoric as empty. First of
all, as to their motives, it does not require mental telepathy, we have
their own words, pronoucements (at the time and now in retrospect).
Plus, I got some of it from some of them as I also was once in SDS. They
indeed wanted something visible and immediate that they were actually
doing something revolutionary and had neither the patience, inclination,
aptitude and backgrounds for long-term, patient, quiet and focused mass
work that is less visible and immediate but most critical--it is the
masses not tenured radicals that make history. They, like a lot of the
left from relatively privileged backgrounds and raised in a culture of
"I-want-it-all-and-I-want-it-now", narcissism and immediate
gratification, took to activities that were more about them and their
own narrow interests and proclivities than any concrete or seriously
studied sense of "What is to be Done?" and how--and with whom--to do it.
And I see a lot of the apparent narcissism, theatrics, irrelevance,
sectarianism, legend-in-one's-own-mind-ism and narrow agenda of the
Weather Underground in some of the Marxian academics today; they have
some of the same origins, intentions (from their own mouths and
writings) and objective effects in terms of not being really dangerous
to the system at all.

Just look at some of the shit, chit-chat, one-upping, tit-for-tat, quote
mongering, CV-notching, self-absorbed identity politics etc that goes
out on the net passing as "theory and praxis". I often take stuff from
the net written about Indians for example, back to the Rez and pass it
along. Invariably I get something like "Who is this asshole and why does
this individual pretend he/she knows so much about our reality when it
is clear he/she knows so little?; How do we use this and does the author
even care? What are they talking about? Why do they need to use a bunch
of big words to say nothing or something that could be said in basic
language? What do they know about us since they write about us yet none
has ever come to see us or even given us the courtesy of seeing and
responding to what they write about us before putting it out?" I have
heard the same from battered women "studied" by upwardly mobile feminist
academics, workers being "studied" by upwardly mobile labor economists,
gays and lesbians being "studied" by upwardly mobile LGBT theorists and
African-Americans being "studied" by specialists in Black Studies--that
is, when some of those academics actually dare to get next to the
objects they are puprporting to study.

My tone is as nasty as the real world consequences of phony leftists
being passed off as real ones and as nasty as the opportunity costs of
real and scarce resources not being used and directed to where they can
be most effective and do the greatest damage and as nasty as the
opportunity costs of irrelevant theory and/or wrecking "praxis" being
passed off as anything useful or revolutionary and as nasty as
cause-impeaching theatrics being passed off as real revolutionary
praxis.

Jim C.



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