[PEN-L:687] Valis on Cockburn

["Eric B. Ross ISS" <ross@xxxxxx>]

It's hard to know how to reply to Valis on Cockburn, etc.  Where does
tongue in cheek end and imbecile sarcasm begin.  Cockburn's so-called
antics during the Spanish civil war are described in part in his own
memoirs.  If true --and Philip Knightly assumes they were in his
book, The First Casualty-- they make clear that Cockburn had no
hesitation in inventing a military victory for the Republicans in
order to increase the prospects of assistance from the French.
That is, to his immense credit, he had no loyalty to the bourgeois
idealisation of his journalistic craft in the face of his political
commitments.  Hail Cockburn.

Meanwhile, what is this crap that Marx and Engels --sorry, "Moses and
Aaron"-- ignored the "inconsistences of their culture and origin"
like most exiles?  The political exiles I've known in England --from
Ireland, Chile, Iraq, etc.-- live out the pain of those
inconsistencies everyday; but, they also get on with their political
work (as opposed to academic memo-writing).  What's the answer: a few
years of expensive psychoanalysis to convince them their politics is
all screwed up?  If you think Engels ignored his contradictions of
his upbringing and his politics, trace the development of his
thoughts on Ireland, from the prejudices in The Condition of the
English Working Class in 1844 to his later, more mature comprehension
of the Irish.  Much of this transformation was due to his long
relationship and cohabitation with Mary Burns, an Irish factory
worker; this relationship, as Steven Marcus observes, represented,
for Engels, a "shifting and consolidation in conscious and
unconscious identitifications," about which, of course, it would be
interesting to know more.  But, our ignorance of further knowledge
about the details and complexities of that relationship is one thing;
another --and more important-- is what the hell difference does it
make to the ultimate meaning of Engels' work?

Eric Ross
Institute of Social Studies
The Hague
The Netherlands