[PEN-L:2411] Re: A new Threat on the Horizen -Post Tenure Review

[mmeeropo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Mike Meeropol)]

Blair Sandler wrote:

>
> Between Edwards and Gintis, I think this really says something about the
> whole social structure of accumulation crowd.
>
> Maybe I'm being too harsh, too judgmental, allowing my personal biases to
> get the better of me. I'm interested in other's opinions.

Leave out Herb Gintis for a bit ... but why make Rick Edwards' personal
behavior say ANYTHING about the "social structure of accumulation crowd" --

I am influenced by the S.S.A. analysis as are many of the people who are
involved in the Center for Popular Economics in Amherst.  I can't speak for
ALL of them but the individuals I've interacted with have been TO A PERSON
the most collaborative, non-elitist, non-hierarchical individuals I have
ever worked with in ANY political organization --- starting back with the
"old" SDS in the 1960s and moving through a variety of experiences in the
anti-war movement in Madison, Wisconsin etc. etc.  True, many of these folks
aren't "household names" [though some are...] but they are part of the "SSA
crowd" as much as Rick, Sam Bowles, Tom Weisskopf and David Gordon.

It may be certainly fair to complain that Rick Edwards doesn't practice what
his (earlier?) work might preach but what does this have to do with the
issues raised by the concept of the S.S.A. as a way of analyzing the
dynamics of late Capitalism??

The ideas that individuals write and espouse may or may not be contradicted
by the BEHAVIOR of those individuals [Engels was a capitalist for God's
sake!] but that's almost completely irrelevant (well it IS completely
irrelevant) to the value of those ideas.

I've just read a wonderful biography of the great radical historian William
Appleman Williams.  [Paul Buhle and Ed Rice-Maximin _William Appleman
Williams:  The Tragedy of Empire_]  His work had a tremendous positive
impact on the study of history and the force with which the anti-war
movement could speak to ordinary Americans about American imperialism ---
particularly in the mid to late 1960s.  Yet personally he was an unmitigated
sexist who treated a couple of his wives very shabbily and failed to
understand and credit the women's movement and the rise in women's studies
as a legitimate area of historical investigation.  THAT DIDN'T REDUCE THE
VALUE OF HIS BOOKS!

Sorry for going on ... and on




>
> Blair Sandler
>
>
>


--
Mike Meeropol
Economics Department
Cultures Past and Present Program
Western New England College
Springfield, Massachusetts
"Don't blame us, we voted for George McGovern!"
Unrepentent Leftist!!
mmeeropo@xxxxxxxx
[if at bitnet node:  in%"mmeeropo@xxxxxxxx" but that's fading fast!]