[PEN-L:1889] Re: miscellaneous comments

[blairs@xxxxxxxxxxx (Blair Sandler)]

>There is no reason why left-leaning professors should not have a medium
>for sharpening up the academic weaponry that they need to use in
>intellectual confrontations with Keynsians, Hayekians, etc. in the
>Economics Department that you work in. I subscribe to a number of lists
>that I use for professional purposes (Sybase, Unix, etc.) But the idea
>that any PEN-L discussion would seep down to the average person is just a
>joke.
>
>But the idea that the average person could make heads or tails out of
>PEN-L chit-chat is a delusion that Jim "socialism from below" seems to
>find useful. However, for "socialism from below" to have any
>meaning, you have to be able to reach people who are actually "below".

Louis: I am not tenured; I do not have a tenure-track job; I don't have a
permanent job; I don't even have a full-time temporary job. I teach two
part-time jobs at small local colleges, for more than full time work, plus
an extra commute (7-1/2 hours/week), at a real rate of pay of about $7-$9
per hour. (I know this is not bad for unskilled labor, but after my
economics Ph.D. I'm large sums of money in debt.)

I teach "average" folks, not lefties, not activists, not the elite. I
critique neoclassical theory, and introduce them to Marxism. Occasionally I
actually get a "convert," mostly (at best) I manage to shake things up a
little in their minds. I also give occasional public workshops I call, "The
economics we all already know whether we know it or not" (about the popular
religion of neoclassical theory). I find some (not all) of the discussion
on PEN-L useful for helping me teach. I was on the Marxism list for a while
(and re-subscribe every once in a while to check it out) and found much of
it extremely esoteric, the kind of material I would love to get involved in
thinking about if I didn't have paid work and political organizing to keep
me busy.

And just for the record, people on this list routinely equate
post-modernism with post-marxism, as if there did not exist a school of
social theorists striving to integrate the best of Marxism (including a
commitment to Marxian value theory and the "basic economic categories" of
Marxism) with the best insights of post-modernism.

Blair Sandler