Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Muddled Thought

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote:
>
> Carrol,
>      I am not going to debate your point in general
> But, if I remember correctly, Paul Douglas
> (codiscoverer of the Cobb-Douglas production
> function, btw), was very much for the Vietnam War.
>

Correct. At a time when I didn't remotely think of marxism as a possible
perspective on the world I remember saying to a black woman at some
conference (I think in Springvield) that we should clobber our lukewarm
friends == and it was Paul Douglas I had in mind. In other words, at
that time I held to the theory that the explanation for the actions (or
inactions) of Democratic liberals was their lack of backbone.

I wrote Douglas a letter at the time of the invasion of Santo Domingo,
and though I didn't know it at the time, it was his reply and the
outrage it generated in me that started me on the road to Mao, Lenin,
and Marx. I have lost my letter and his reply, but I think I was still,
when I wrote, attached enough to the DP to accuse him, through his
support of LBJ's military adventures, of "stealing my party from me" or
something like that. From 1952 through 1964 I had every two years voted
the straight Dem ticket every two years, and with enthusiasm, not with
lilylivered nonsense about the lesser evil. As late as 1964 I didn't
vote _against_ Goldwater, I voted FOR Johnson.

Carrol